#he killed the wonder dragon for me<3 | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

psychedelic-ink · 4 months

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ㅤㅤㅤ✦ 𝐅𝐎𝐋𝐋𝐎𝐖𝐄𝐃 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐁𝐄𝐀𝐒𝐓

ㅤㅤjoel miller x f!reader

genre: angst, hurt comfort, minors dni

word count: 5k

summary: You, both a member of David's group and one of his former victims, are already contemplating escape when Ellie arrives at the resort. Seeking Ellie, you decide to take advantage of the unexpected opportunity to run. But before you can find Ellie, you cross paths with Joel instead.

warnings: age gap, virgin!reader, mentions of past grooming attempt, mentions of cannibalism, past rape attempt, PTSD, blood, canon typical violence, no smut for now, spoilers for s01 e08

a/n: this was previously named let me follow this is also new for me because I've never written virgin!reader before (mostly because i didn't have the best experience with that) but i felt like it was fitting with the story and where i wanna take it in the future.

Revelation 13:3-4 "One of the heads of the beast seemed to have had a fatal wound, but the fatal wound had been healed. The whole world was filled with wonder and followed the beast. People worshiped the dragon because he had given authority to the beast, and they also worshiped the beast and asked, 'Who is like the beast? Who can wage war against it?'"

The wind blows cold. You, a girl who has lost everything, sit on your knees on the ice. Your family has been long gone. Your hope dwindles, hanging only by a simple thread. You don't know how long you've been crying. Your hands, young yet covered in the warmth of blood. The scent of pine reaches your nose, and you sniff involuntarily, just like you did before you lost everything. Before the world ended. You hear the sound of men approaching you, and you wish they would just kill you. Sixteen and already you wish for the sweet mercy of death.

“Now what do we have here?” A man speaks, his tone is humorful. Melodic. Your mind and body already slipping and reaching towards the warmth of it. “You poor young thing. Where’s your family, girl?”

When you finally look up from your hands you see a man on a horse. Typical for this day and age. Near him hovers four others. All of them looking weathered and older than you. Your eyes move back to the one that seems in charge. He has strawberry blond hair and a thin beard of the same color. His eyes narrow slightly. They pop under the cold blue sky and the frozen lake. You don’t know what to say. How to answer this man who is an obvious threat.

He hops off the horse, and you attempt to move away but your legs are frozen in place, your heart beating loudly against your ribcage. He kneels next to you. Observing. You swallow, fear coating your tongue with the taste of bile. His eyes soften when he takes in the sight of you. Bruised and wounded. Your eyes squeeze shut as he reaches out and pushes a loose strand of hair only for the wind to bring it back.

“No need to be afraid, child. We’re a peaceful group and there are more like us if you want to join.”

“J–Join?” your teeth chatter, your lips hurting as you speak. There’s a bit of light filling the cracks of the iron cage of your heart. Hope. You realize it to be. Hope that you found someone to help you. To look after you in this infected world. He must’ve seen it in your expression because his soft smile grows, eyes glimmering with mirth.

“So afraid,” he hums. “But we’ll change that soon enough. You’ve been brought here for a reason. And I think I know what your purpose is in our small clan.”

He swiftly stands, leaving you dumbfounded and still upon the freezing ice. Your mouth gapes, your body buzzing with a newfound need to stay alive.

“What’s your name?” you ask. He throws an old coat over your shoulders. Not his own. But one he had extra on his horse. Probably taken from someone else who was more unfortunate than you.

“David,” he answers gently, as if he’s scared you’ll run away. Before you reach out, he grabs your hand and lifts you. You nearly fall, only prevented thanks to the strong arm that wraps around your waist. He’s warm. Much warmer than you expected. “Lovely to have you with us.”

The men near him don’t seem to share the same sentiment but you smile all the same.

You don’t want to think for a while. Maybe not even for a millennia. If possible.

10 YEARS LATER

Whispers of death surround you. The names of the fallen circling you and squeezing your heart tight. Suffocated. That’s how you feel. Helpless. Trapped. Consumed. Faint murmurs fill the hall room. The cold that seeps through the wood, the same wood that was intended for summer and not winter, worries everyone, including you. But at the same time, you think this is what you all deserve. An icy grave. Freezing to death and surrendering to the cold.

You were never meant to feel warmth. You know that better now.

The chair creaks next to you and when your eyes shift to the side. You see James taking a seat. A sudden rage fills you. An indescribable rage. It disappears as soon as it appears like it always does. He turns to you and gives you a curt nod. You don’t nod back. He might think he’s looking after you but he’s not. All he’s done is turn the other cheek to a faith that is spewed by a liar. A deceiver. A disgusting man that makes your stomach turn—

The aforementioned man finally stands and clears his throat. Loudly. But not loud enough to overpower Hannah’s cries. She sniffles. Rubs her eyes roughly. Her mother wraps an arm around her and starts whispering words of comfort. You have no idea what that comfort would be since it was her father that had died. You remember the day you lost your parents. You felt utterly defeated at the time. Hopeless. Swallowed by darkness. Your eyes rubbed raw and stinging from crying and crying and crying—

David opens the bible and reads. His glasses are perched innocently above his nose. His voice, despite the rasp of time, still carries that melodic lilt. You don’t listen. Refuse to.

“And I saw a new heaven and a new Earth. For the first heaven and the first Earth were passed away. . .”

You close your eyes with a stuttered breath. Your body is thrumming. Your legs shaking and heart pounding. These are the most painful times for you. The times where you have to listen to him and pretend to be moved by God’s will. You hate hearing his voice. The same voice that told you you were his. The same voice that commanded you to strip for him completely when it was only your arm that was wounded.

Your pulse quickens. Your cheeks grow warm.

You can’t breathe. You can’t breathe.

It happened years ago but it doesn’t matter. No matter the passage of time it still feels like it happened yesterday. His touch on your cheek. The way his blue eyes ate you up as he stalked around you, pretending to be worried while he was just taking in the sight of your body. A soft touch here and a soft touch there. Knuckles following the curve of your spine. Palms feeling the weight of your behind. The memory makes you sick. The way he was marinating you for something unspeakable.

He enjoyed when you flinched. Enjoyed the way you whimpered and curled away. He laughed and did nothing else. He wrapped a bandage around your arm while you remained stark naked. Then he left. Leaving it to James to come to the room, telling you to get dressed while averting his eyes.

You jerk, eyes going wide as a sharp cry echoes within the thin walls.

“. . . And I heard a great voice out of heaven say, ‘Behold… the tabernacle of God is with men. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes—’”

He’s trying hard to ignore it. You can tell by the way his lips twitch ever so slightly, his nostrils flaring with annoyance when another cry is heard.

He stops.

And your heart stops along with it.

You’re still afraid even when his anger isn’t directed at you. Cold beads of sweat make you feel clammy and gross. You want to hide. And even though you blame him, you want to move closer to James, hoping that whatever it is that’s going to happen, he can shield you from it.

David turns his gaze towards Hannah and Joyce, Hannah’s mother, and lets out a sigh as if it pains him to see someone so distraught.

“I’ve read this passage too many times,” He walks towards Hannah, his brows slightly furrowed and eyes full of rue. He places the book on the table and removes his glasses, placing it above it. You’re surprised when he kneels but your stomach twists as he places a hand above Hannah’s knee. She’s unaware, her bottom lip trembling. “Do you remember what comes next?”

She shakes her head.

“‘And God will wipe away all tears from their eyes… ‘that there will be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither will there be any more pain… for the former things are passed away.’”

Your eyes move to the crowd. Everyone holding on to one another, eyes red and wet. Hannah takes a sharp inhale, your gaze promptly landing back to the scene.

“Do you know what that means?” She nods and when she does, David grips her shoulder. “Good.”

He exchanges a glance with the mother and stands up, a groan dropping from his lips as he does so. You feel a momentary satisfaction at his discomfort.

“When can we bury him?”

The question surprises everyone, including David who doesn’t show it. The only oddity is him looking at James, a gaze so quick and short that if you hadn’t been sitting next to James you would’ve missed it. “The ground is too cold to dig. We’ll bury your father in the spring.”

Hannah seems content with the answer for now. The sermon is over when David opens the doors. His eyes linger on you as you get up, slow and groggy. Despite her recent loss, you find Hannah to be lucky. At least she had someone to protect her for a good while, her body free of being viewed as an object that belonged to someone else.

You don’t look at either James or David as you leave. Not that it mattered. They were too busy talking amongst each other.

You wipe the snow that catches over your eyelashes with the back of a gloved hand. Everyone had a job to do and yours today was to chop wood in the freezing weather. You hate the feeling of shivering and sweating at the same time. It’s a disgusting feeling. But you were the youngest of the group—and had fallen out of favor with David, which meant that he didn’t try to get into your good graces by giving you the stay-by-the-fire duties. Not that you missed it. You’d rather freeze to death than give any part of yourself to him.

Your feet drag over the snow. Your biceps ache with the added weight of the firewood within your arms. Breathing from your mouth, your eyes are drawn to one of the sheds. That place always gives you the creeps. It’s always locked. The windows dusty and blocked by cabinets from the inside so no one could see. You never thought of asking what the hell was in there, no one else did either. Everyone just wanted to survive. A herd of sheep following the blood-stained mouth of their leader. Not that they knew he had a blood-stained mouth. That information was only reserved for his victims and James.

A log slips from the top and you loudly groan towards the sky. You need to leave this hell hole. You don’t know when. But you have to.

Just as you lean down you sense someone coming towards you at full speed. Jumping, you move back only to see James huffing and puffing with a small package in his hand. You raise a brow. “Weren’t you supposed to be hunting?” you ask, picking up the log. “What the hell are you doing here running like a maniac? ‘Scared the shit out of me.”

“David is at gunpoint.” Good. “And the crazy girl demanded some medicine. Hopefully, I can sneak up on her.”

You scoff, “A girl? Since when does David follow any kind of demand?”

“It’s complicated.” He looks uncomfortable, you must’ve struck a nerve with that. “She’s with the man that killed Alec.”

“You’re taking medicine to her? Actual medicine.”

“David said. . .”

You raise a hand and shoo him away, “Just go. I don’t care.”

Watching him leave, your brows knit tightly together. This had to be a joke, they found the girl and by proxy, the man who killed Alec and. . . David is helping the girl? You don’t necessarily care for revenge— but the fact that he’s actively wanting to show just how kind he is to this girl is suspicion-worthy. He likes what he sees and pulls a curtain over his true colors to obtain it. You know word of this will come out soon. You’re positive that James told at least one person when he went in to get the medicine. It would spread like wildfire.

And most of the people here, starving and cold with no warmth left in their chests are hungry for the heat of revenge.

Just like you had predicted rumors were spiraling.

You’re sitting someplace unnoticeable and near the windows. Snow hits the glass like heavy rain. The clear panels freezing over, you visibly shudder. Your decades-old jacket isn’t enough anymore to keep you warm.

Your head turns with another whisper coming nearby. Something about a girl being with the man who killed Alec. Your eyes shift to Hannah and her mother sitting in the middle, the young girl seemed furious, her eyes hardened but still carried a juvenile chubbiness in her cheeks. The look doesn’t suit her. It looks like a drop of blood on top of snow. No one is touching their food. Steaming bowls of meat sitting on top of weathered tables. You’re not hungry so you push it away. You’re hoping with every fiber in your body that they haven’t found the girl. You wouldn't wish David on even your worst enemy.

The doors open with a loud, bone-chilling creak. You jump at the sound. Soft flakes of snow hurry inside, melting as soon as the light touches them. James holds the door open for David and the latter, with great effort, drags a large stag inside. The entire room stops breathing, their eyes glued to the scene, their minds full of questions.

The door closes. Suddenly you feel trapped and suffocated.

“Big one,” David says, looking towards the tables with a crooked smile. Not even one person is talking now. Just deafening silence. James moves away quickly, his eyes find yours, and takes a seat next to you. You’re not sure why he hovers around you. Maybe in some sick way, he thinks you’re friends?

David sighs loudly, bringing your attention back to him. “If you’ve heard a rumor… yes, we found a girl who was with the man who took Alec from us. When the sun rises, I’ll lead a group out to pick up her trail. Won’t be hard to find in the snow. We’ll follow it to wherever they’re hiding… and we’ll bring that man to justice.”

“You should kill him. You should kill both of them.”

David’s head snaps towards the vengeful voice. Your blood freezes, a tingle settling at the base of your neck, your skin grows taut over your muscles. You’re afraid. And your fear only grows when David stalks towards the girl, a faint smile on his lips, he removes his gloves. One by one. His movements slow, unrushed. He stands in front of Hannah, briefly stares down at her—

You flinch at the sound. The loudest smack and thud you’ve ever heard. Your eyes widen, heart beating in your throat as your eyes remain glued to Hannah who’s scrambling on the floor. David seems unbothered by it. Like he hadn’t just backhanded a young girl. The mom stands, murmurs getting louder, without thinking you attempt to get up too, thinking of all the ways you can kill the man.

But James—fucking James—he stops you with a hand on your knee. You give him a disgusted look and he quickly pulls his hand away. But the damage was done. You settle back, the chair groaning underneath you.

You watch as David halts the mother with a single hand, gently gesturing her to sit back down. She does—she does and it drives you insane. It’s surreal almost. There’s a loud hum in your ears as David kneels next to Hannah, her eyes looking anywhere but him. Scared, she takes David’s offered hand. You feel sick. Your stomach churns, bile rising to your throat. He helps her up and sits her down. He’s still on his knees, his eyes soft.

Disgusting.

“I know you think you don’t have a father anymore. But the truth is, Hannah, you will always have a father. And you will show him respect when he’s speaking.”

Tension rises with his words. You can tell from the brief glances that happen behind David’s back. However, it’s not enough. No one does anything. They just sit and wait as Hannah’s mother brings David a bowl of food. They begin to eat, the rest follows.

Spoons clink. Wind blows. Birds caw.

You look down at the meat, clutching the fork in your hand. You can’t. Something disturbs you. James also lingers before he takes the first bite. Something in his eyes makes you rather starve than taste.

You look back at Hannah. Her bottom lip is trembling, her cheek red.

She eats.

“Where is she?”

David’s eyes glimmer with amusement, his teeth showing as he smiles. You’re out in the open. Snow falling all around you. Your chest squeezes. You can barely breathe, yet your chest continues to rise and fall.

“Is my little lamb jealous?” Heat simmers under your skin. How fucking dare he? “Head back. This doesn’t concern you.”

“Like hell, it doesn’t,” you snap. His eyes narrow and for a brief moment, your mind flashes images of him tying you to the bed whenever you swore. A nasty shiver crawls up your spine. “Let her go.”

“And why would I do that?” he shakes his head. “Do you want to know why I never touched you again? I got bored. I knew I could have you whenever and wherever I wanted. The fire in your eyes died. You had no fight left in you.” he chuckles. You’re trembling now, your legs feeling weak underneath you. “And I enjoyed seeing the fear in your eyes whenever I entered the room. . . wondering. . . thinking about when I would finally make you my own.”

You don’t know what to say. The snowfall picks up in pace. Hurling, dancing around you both. A sign of a storm. The cold kisses your cheeks. David grins and extends his arms towards the sky, you take a step back.

“I finally found myself a pet that’s fun to play with. Someone that won’t be so easily broken.”

Broken. Broken. Broken.

That’s what you are, isn’t it? Broken. Alone. Unwanted.

You have to get to the girl and get the hell out of here.

You lift your chin, “You’re sick.”

Bad move. His nostrils flare with anger as he grips your chin and forcefully brings you closer to his face. As someone who went on and on about you being too submissive for his liking, he sure as hell seems to hate that you’re defying him.

“Don’t you dare talk back to me,” he spits, squeezing your jaw until your lips part with a whimper. “I'm the one who saved you and spared you. I’m a good man but never forget that you belong to me.” Without hesitation, he cups you between your legs. You stiffen at the touch, fear chills your skin, feeling little pins needling into your muscles. “You’re mine to break and when I do, you'll love it. And you'll finally be a woman.”

He doesn’t linger. Leaving you, he disappears between the cabins. You collapse to the snow, shaking, trembling and tears flooding your eyes. You fist at the snow, your fingers becoming numb as it melts between your fingers. You were a fool to think that you were safe. You genuinely thought that after so long he’d let you do your own thing within the community. But no. He still had his eyes on the “prize”.

You want to run into the forest but you can’t. Your eyes fall to the ground where his footsteps are perfectly visible. Now you know where the girl is.

The door that is always locked is open.

Your brows knit together as you observe the old wood swaying back and forth due to the wind. Your skin is icy cold. Coming closer you see that the lock had been broken, shattered. You see a spray of blood on the snow and that entices you to take a step forward into the dark cabin. You know you shouldn’t be taking any detours. Your backpack is secured tightly against your back filled with essentials and some sentimental items you gathered during the years. You should go. But you’re curious. You have to know what’s been in this shed for all these years.

You sigh. Curiosity killed the cat.

“But satisfaction brought it back,” you murmur.

You pull out your gun, your finger on the trigger as you explore. It seems pretty standard. Some items, lots of dust—

Two large hands shove you roughly against the wall. You choke, all the air leaving your lungs as your gun is knocked out of your hand. Momentarily you’re pulled away and slammed back against the wall again, this time the back of your head thudding against the wood. You groan in pain. Your body screaming at you to run and hide.

“Where is she?” you hear a man hiss through gritted teeth. “Where the fuck is she?”

You’re slammed once more, tears prick the corner of your eyes and you barely manage to raise your hands.

When you finally manage to open your eyes, panting heavily, you see a disheveled man. At first glance, he doesn’t make you feel that you’re in danger—which is an ironic feeling considering the throbbing at the back of your head is his doing. Lines run across his face, his eyes full of worry and anger. You immediately know who he is. There was only one girl after all.

“You’re—” you swallow. “You’re him.”

His hand tightens around your throat and a gun is hastily pressed against your forehead, “Tell me where she is or I’m shootin’ you.”

“I’m actually trying to find her myself,” you answer, which by the looks of it was the wrong this to say. “I—I wanted to help her. Free her. David. . . the man that took her—he’s a monster.”

His eyes narrow, “You from this community?”

“He took me in when I was sixteen,” you explain. “I had no choice but to join.”

“And why should I trust you?”

“Because I know exactly where she is,” you bite the inside of your cheek. “And I know that you’re hurt. I can help.”

“Then what?”

You shake your head, not understanding. He clarifies. “You help me and then what? What’s the catch?”

Your eyes blur with tears. You’re just so fucking tired.

“I just want to leave.”

Something about the way you whisper must’ve wake something in him because he lets you go. He lights the flashlight. “I ain’t in the business of takin’ in strays.”

What? “What?”

“Just leave. I don’t need your help.”

“You—You don’t understand!” Just as he turns you jump towards him, fisting the back of his jacket, the fabric isn’t soft enough for you to get a good grip on him so you grab his shoulder instead. “He’s a monster! Everyone fucking underestimates him—he’ll—he’ll—!”

He stills. Rushed steps coming to a halt. You think he’s going to shove you off, push you away but he’s glued. With the fear of silence, you pull back and step to the side. He’s still not acknowledging you. His hard gaze glued to where the flashlight is illuminating. You follow the light speckled with dust. Horror curling in your stomach like a hook.

There are three of them. Three bodies hanging like animals being prepared to cut into pieces.

“Oh god—”

You bring your hands to your head, your heart ramming into your chest, you shake your head. “No, no, no, no—” You take a step back. The man rips his gaze away from the bodies, away from what it implies. You take another step back and another. You’re shaking, your eyes glued to the floor. He—David—he fed you people.

Fucking people. People that you knew.

Finally, the scent hits you. The smell of flesh and blood.

You scream.

The man is on you in an instant, you tumble to the ground and he goes down with you willingly. “Shit—no no no. Shut the hell up— shut the hell up.”

The knot that forms in your throat is large and uncomfortable. You bawl your eyes out, hiccuping against his chest. He takes you into his arms and you can’t be bothered to think of the why of his actions. His biceps tighten around you. You’re still shouting, still thrashing around, crying—he presses you further into his chest, muffling your sounds. You vaguely hear him shushing you, telling you it’s gonna be alright. Lies. He’s telling you lies.

You start to quiet down and only then do you begin to make sense of his words. He’s murmuring bits of his life. Of what he’s seen. You finally learn the name of the girl: Ellie. The thick baritone of his voice is like a melody. It soothes you. Maybe not fully. But it helps calm your raging heart. You breathe. He smells like wood and snow.

“Thank you,” you manage to whisper, pulling away. “Please let me help you.”

“Yeah—Yeah, you can help.” He guides you to your feet in a way that your back is turned to the bodies. Just the thought of what's behind you makes your lungs cave in.

“What’s your name?” you ask, desperate for any kind of distraction.

“Joel.”

“Alright, Joel,” you head towards the door. “Let’s go.”

She escaped.

You can’t help but be impressed at the sight of an empty cell. But the pride for a girl you haven’t officially met dies in your throat when you see who’s against the wall, covered in blood.

“You knew him?” Joel asks, his tone lacking any kind of grief. A question asked more so as a courtesy than actual worry.

You stare at him. His blue eyes now lifeless, lips parted. It almost looks like he’s sitting, just taking a rest on the cold floor. It would be easy to make you believe that if it wasn’t for the cleaver sticking out of his neck.

“No,” you answer dryly. Yet, you still walk to the dead man and gently close his eyes. You warned him this would happen. Joel doesn’t ask any more questions. He doesn’t have to. “We need to find her before David gets to her.”

Joel immediately rushes out, you following him close by. You feel utterly useless. You have no idea where Ellie might’ve run off to. It doesn’t help that some part of your brain is still occupied with James. You hated him in a way but still, he was there. You’ve known him nearly your entire life. It felt off to be the one to close his eyes.

The storm had stopped. The sun reflecting from the snow irritating your eyes. Joel seems to be getting irritated with every step. Desperate.

He’s the one that sees her first.

Ellie staggers out the large building currently being engulfed in flames. Her walk is uncoordinated, her steps uneven as she breathes in the icy air. Before you can warn Joel not to startle her, he’s already running, grabbing her by the shoulders. Your heart shatters into a million tiny pieces when you hear her screams and shouts.

“It’s me,” Joel says, cradling her face with both hands. She hits his chest with sideway fists, he holds her more firmly. “It’s me.”

You see it in her face, the exact moment she realizes. You see blood splattered across her face, her expression hurts you. It’s the same expression you’ve seen on yourself for years.

“Hey… look. It’s me… It’s me. It’s okay.”

She mumbles, “He—” Before Ellie can complete the sentence she wraps her thin arms around Joel, the man hugs her tight. Your heart shatters then. The damns you were so adamant on keeping locked being teared down by people you barely know.

You cry. Salty tears just bursting out of your eyes. There’s no slow build, no single tear and then the rest. It just all comes down flooding. Your shoulders sag, your fingertips numb.

“It’s okay. It’s okay, baby girl. I got you.”

You sniff and look up to the sky. Fuck. It’s so hard to stop when it begins. You see grey smoke rising into the crisp air. He’s dead. You don’t need to see the body to know that he is.

Your eyes drop to the two survivors embracing infront of you. That girl saved your life while you were trying to save hers. You were too late. Both of you were. She looked the beast in the eye and slayed it. Freeing you.

They part and Joel quickly wraps his jacket around her tiny trembling shoulders. You’re empty. What now? That was his question. You don’t know. Do you go back? Do you explain to the people who David manipulated just how horrendous he really was? Would they believe you?

Your eyes are drawn to a flicker of movement. Joel is looking straight at you. Ellie still unaware of your presence and you can’t blame her.

You’re lost.

But then his eyes soften with something akin to understanding and he gestures you to follow.

Like a lamb to a stream, you do.

#joel miller x reader #joel miller x fem!reader #joel miller x f!reader #joel miller fanfic #the last of us fanfic #pedro pascal characters #pedro pascal character fanfic

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iamyourdailydoseofbi · 8 months

Note

Hii I was wondering if maybe you could write a Aemond Targaryen fic? Where Aemond is like Gomez Addams and he says, "Look at her --I would die for her. I would kill for her. Either way --what bliss." With maybe even a taylor swift song? Thanks :))

EITHER WAY WHAT BLISS ( House of the Dragon x Reader )

AUTHOR NOTE! It makes me so happy to know that you requested my writing! I love this idea! He does ( lowkey ) give off this vibe <3

pairing: Aemond Targaryen x Fem! Tully! Reader

prompt: Aemond is willing to die for the Reader if it means he'll get an ounce of her love.. ( The inspo was 'Gorgeous' by Taylor Swift. )

key: h/c = hair color, Dahlia = random servant girl, Evan Tully

word count: 2,000+ words

Brushing away a strand of white hair from their face, Y/n scans the rows of men, her eyes lingering on her brother Brynden. Her name day was supposed to be a small affair between her family and her bethorthal’s. But, the King was stubborn and insisted on having a Tourney at the very least. So, she’d be sitting through at least an hour of jousting, games of archery, and grueling duels. Not exactly what she wanted to do on her name day. But, what can she do?

Picking at her bottom lip, Brynden gives her a weak smile as he adjusts his armor, her heart clenched tightly. He could barely hold a sword, and of course, he had to enter a bloody swordsman match. Feeling Dahlia nudge her side hard, she snaps out of her daze, her cheeks flushing red from embarrassment. Shit. Turning to look at Dahlia, she tries to smile as the black haired girl continues to ramble away about something about men and their ‘walks’.

“I bet you my finest necklace, that knight. The one in black armor is really fine under that helmet.” Dahlia giggles, twirling a strand of her hair.

“Oh? How do you know that? For all you know he’s got the face of a donkey. How good he looks in armor, doesn’t mean that he’s that good in regular clothes.” Y/n scoffs, following Dahlia’s eyes.

“It’s the walk. Look at how he holds himself. A fine looking man walks with a little extra pep in his step. Like he knows that the moment he removes that helmet, girls are going to swoon over him.” Dahlia smirks, “Just like your little Prince.”

“Just because you want to fuck my betrothed does not mean that I wish to hear about it, Dahlia. Keep that talk for the other maids.” Y/n scoffs, rolling her eyes.

“I am envious that you, little Y/n Tully, are going to call that man her husband. The ungodly things I would do make him look at me the way he does to you. He looks at you like you crafted the moon and stars.” Dahlia rambles, a dreamy look on her face.

Scoffing at Dahlia’s teasing, she narrows her eyes at the knight, inspecting the black armor he adorned. His face was hidden under his helmet. Looking for some kind of hint of which house he was from, the only thing that was kind of a hint was the sapphire blue cape he was wearing. But, even then it could mean nothing. Tilting her head to the side, she didn’t like that the man was a mystery, why was he hiding? What was he hiding? Watching as he strolls over to Brynden, she stands up a little straighter in her seat, her jaw clenching. If he so much as touched a hair on her baby brother’s head, she’d make Maegor the Cruel seem like a baby compared to her.

“Brynden will be fine, Y/n.” Dahlia reasons, but her voice is weak.

“Brynden cannot even hold a sword upright.” Y/n argues, “Not to mention he’s got two left feet!”

“Well you’ve always looked rather pretty in black?” Dahlia weakly smiles.

“Dahlia!” Y/n scolds, shooting her friend a look.

“I know! But, at least he’ll look good dying?” Dahlia cringes at her own words, “I don’t know! I don't really know what to say..”

Slapping Dahlia’s shoulder, the pit in her stomach only worsens, her face curling up in anger and uneasiness. She did not have any other siblings but Brynden. He was her whole world. Her baby brother. She had practically raised him! She was the one to teach him how to say his first words. She was the one who taught him how to walk. She was there to teach him how to handle a horse. How to be a just and kind Lord. How to be the perfect husband. She did everything that a parent would do. Except how to hold a sword.

Picking at her bottom lip with her teeth, she slowly rises from her seat, pacing back and forth in place. She wouldn’t be able to stomach her baby brother getting hurt. It’d kill her, surely! Feeling Dahlia grab her arm, she’s pulled from her darkening thoughts. The taste of blood floods her mouth. Shit. Wiping her bottom lip clean of blood, she’s aware of the eyes that now shifted onto her. The maiden of the day. Aemond Targaryen’s betrothed. The sweet little Tully girl born with white curls. The Enchantress of the Realm.

"Ocean blue eyes looking in mine I feel like..I might sink and drown and die.."

“If that was your attempt to make me feel better, it failed..” Y/n breaths out, “Perhaps, I should just talk to him about pulling out. It’s not too late..”

“My Lady…” Dahlia tries, but Y/n doesn’t hear her.

“Do not try to talk me out of this, Dahlia. I will not allow my brother to make a fool of himself, or worse kill himself.” Y/n shakes her head, “I have made my mind! Come let us⎯”

“It’s your future husband..” Dahlia speaks through her teeth.

“You're so gorgeous, I can't say anything to your face..'Cause look at your face..gorgeous...”

Furrowing her brows at Dahlia’s odd words, the black haired girl turns her around, forcing her to look down. Shit. She finds herself staring down at Aemond, the mysterious knight in black armor. Her face flushes a bright red from embarrassment. The knight they had⎯Well the knight Dahlia was gawking at was Aemond. Staring at him with wide eyes, Dahlia nudges her side, trying to snap her out of her little daze. But, it feels like her tongue is made of lead. Looking him up and down, his long white locs are braided back from his face, but a few stray strands frame his face. There’s a small smirk on his face, as he adjusts his armor. Gods almighty, he looked gorgeous in armor.

“And I'm so furious..At you for making me feel this way..But what can I say? You're gorgeous..”

“Aemond..” Y/n breathes out, “You're the blue knight..I..I thought you didn’t give a shit about Tourneys?”

“I don’t. But, it would be a shame if I did not participate in my future-brides Name Day Tourney.” He smirks, licking his bottom lip.

“I..Aemond, could you..?” She chews on her bottom lip, “Could you possibly? Please watch out for my brother?”

“I will.” He nods, making her smile gratefully.

“Thank you.”

He kept his word, or at least that was what Dahlia was telling her. She hadn’t dared to open her eyes just yet. She didn’t not care if that made her a coward. She just couldn’t stand to watch the fights and not think about her brother while men pummeled each other with swords. Squeezing Dahlia’s hand tightly, she tenses at the call of her brother’s name and Aemond’s. Her eyes shoot open, her jaw dropping slightly. No. No. No. No. That couldn't be right! She must have misheard! Sharply turning her head to the fighting circle, she bolts from her seat, leaning against the railing. Her nails dig into the wood like a cat’s would. Her eyes are flickering between the two of them.

One of them would get hurt, she was sure of it, whether it be intentional or not. Her breathing grows ragged, her heart pounding against her ribcage. She was afraid that it would jump out of her chest. Watching as they raise their swords, she stuck in a trance as they slowly circled each other. Their swords collide, her eyes shutting tightly at the horrid sound of metal against metal. Biting her lip, she doesn’t know why her eyes peel open, but her heart stops in her chest as she catches the sight of Aemond falling to the ground. His sapphire blue cape slowly turned red. She nearly faints at the sight of red, he’s bleeding. Oh gods..He was bleeding.

“You make me so happy, it turns back to sad, yeah..”

“AEMOND!” She shouts, the words escaping her lips before she can stop it.

“My Prince!” Someone shouts, their voice a blur in her mind.

No. No. No. No. Watching with blurry eyes as Maesters rush to him, she wants to bolt to him, but her legs are frozen in place. Brynden drops his sword, the realization creeping on his face. Feeling Dahlia’s arms wrap around her, it seems like the Arena explodes with chaos in an instant. Everyone is shouting loudly. Guards are rushing around in every direction. But, throughout the chaos her eyes are on him. Her Aemond.

“He’ll be okay…” Dahlia reassures, “Maesters are tending to him..”

“Take me to him.” Y/n breaths out, tears flooding her eyes.

“Y/n..” Dahlia nervously warns, “I..I don’t think we should. Not right now at least.”

“Take me to him.” Y/n repeats, her voice more firm than before.

Shooting Dahlia an icy glare, Dahlia chews on her lip before nodding her head at the request, a nervous look on her face. What if it was bad? What if he died? Would Brynden be punished? Gods, how in the Seven bloody hells did this happen? Following Dahlia, she picks up her skirt, her eyes searching for the white haired man that was to be her husband. Pushing past frantic Lords and Guards, it felt like an invisible force had her by the throat, squeezing her lungs and throat with each step she took closer to a bleeding out Aemond.

Seeing him laying on the ground, his chest piece was removed, his white tunic cut open to reveal the rather gnarly gash on his stomach. Tears flood her eyes at the sight before her. Covering her mouth with her hand, she rushes to his side, her eyes scanning every little detail that she can. His chest was moving up and down, he was drenched in sweat and dirt. That was a good thing. Looking at his face, his eye patch was removed, his hair completely unbraided and spread around him like a halo.

“Oh..Aemond..” She whispers, petting his sweat soaked hair.

“My Lady, you should not be here.”

“He is my husband to be, I will not be leaving.” She argues, turning back to Aemond. “Aemond, are you okay, love?”

“I am fine. Do not worry.” He grunts, clenching his jaw.

Staring into his eyes, she tenses up at the sight of his missing eye-patch. Fuck, he looked gorgeous with that scar. Looking up at her, he notices her attention on his face. Lifting a hand to touch his face, his face drains of color when he doesn’t feel the leather of his eye-patch. He had been purposeful in hiding his scar from the world. He didn’t want to be viewed as a monster. But, she looked at him with such softness in her eyes. Hunching over him, she casually places her hand over his eye, hiding his eye from everyone. Giving him a small nod, his breathing grows shaky.

“You dodged his attack. But, not like someone as experienced with a sword as you are, would. Why?” Dahlia asks, narrowing her eyes at Aemond.

“Look at her, I would die for her. I would kill for her. Either way⎯what bliss.” He whispers, High Valyrian flowing off his tongue.

“You are a lovestruck fool, Aemond Targaryen.” Dahlia scoffs, “I hope this is the bloodloss talking.”

“What did you say?” Y/n furrows her brows, “Dahlia..?”

“He didn’t want to risk hurting your brother. That he rather he be the one hurt and not your brother. Come, let us reassure your little brother that he hasn’t killed your beloved.” Dahlia lies smoothly, nodding her head at Aemond.

Y/n looks between Dahlia and Aemond unsure, chewing on her bottom lip. She didn’t know enough High Valyrian to understand what the two of them were discussing. But, she trusted Dahlia enough to take her word for it. Opening her mouth to speak, Aemond grabs onto her hand, stopping her. Looking down at Aemond, her cheeks flushing involuntarily, her heart was pounding frantically in her chest. She wanted him to keep on looking at her like that.

“Go..” He nods, "I will be fine."

#hotd imagine #house of the dragon x reader #aemond targaryen imagines #aemond targaryen imagine #aemond targaryen x reader #aemond targaryen #aegon ii targaryen #aegon targaryen x reader #house of dragons x reader #house of the dragon imagines #house of dragons #house of the dragon #hotd imagines #hotd x reader #hotd

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dilatorywriting · 1 year

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Monster Mayhem: Donkeys & Dragons [Epilogue]

Gender Neutral Reader x Malleus Draconia Word Count: 12.9k

Summary: Slay the dragon? Nah, man. Lay the dragon. Or, Dragon Courting traditions are actually very sweet, and they are going to kill you.

A/N: This is the epilogue for Donkeys & Dragons, but it can also more or less be read on its own as well! If you'd like to read only the 7k+ words of fluffier bits and not the spicier, please stop at the section that begins with '“Tell me more about your human courting traditions."'

🌶️🌶️🌶️ WARNING for Spicy Content!

READ WHAT YOU LIKE, BUT BE MINDFUL OF WHAT YOU READ

[PART 1] [PART 2] [PART 3] [PART 4] [EPILOGUE]

If Tsunotarou—Malleus, you reminded yourself with a fizzy feeling like soda pop bubbling in your tummy—if Malleus had been sticky before the whole ‘held hostage by dragon slayers’ incident, then now he was the clingiest monstrosity to have ever existed in all four realms.

“What can you do?” Lilia had hummed indulgently upon seeing you struggle under the weight of an entire ass dragon head. (You had lied down, and then Malleus had lied down. And now his giant, frilled, maw was no better than a paperweight. With you of course being relegated to the role of some very flattened paper). “It’s the honeymoon phase.”

“There is no honeymoon to phase,” you spluttered out, as if that made even a lick of sense.

The demon? Fae? Monster? Horror beyond your comprehension? dainty gentleman just shrugged. He wasn’t always around—only occasionally slipping out of shadows like some creeping wraith. But when he was, he seemed incredibly fond of just propping his pointy chin against his palm and watching the pair of you. Like it was his favorite play, or some gaudy theater production he just couldn’t get enough of.

“I’ve never seen him so happy,” he cooed, crimson eyes soft and smitten. “What a time to be alive, hmm?”

The Gargoyles, as silent or huffy respectively as they often were, seemed to rumble their agreement.

“I won’t be alive for much longer if he keeps squashing me,” you threatened.

“Nonsense,” Lilia chirped from somewhere overhead. He dipped close enough for a moment that you were able to catch a brief flash of pink out of the corner of your eye, but little else. As much as the little monster enjoyed basking in his ward’s romantic endeavors, he seemed particularly cautious about maintaining his physical distance—especially when it came to the towering nest that had long since swallowed up most of the grand ballroom. “I’m sure all his coddling is doing wonders for your constitution.”

Despite his guardian’s cheery reassurances, Malleus rumbled low in his throat at your complaints, and you felt the vibrations of it all the way from your head to your toes. He lifted his huge head, instead plucking you from the hoard of bedding by the scruff of your collar and depositing you into the warm hollow beneath his wing. He curled his head around to tuck up against you—burrowing his scaly cheek against your outstretched legs like a cat making itself comfortable in the sunny spot on a windowsill. A compromise to your aching bones, at least. Even if it was really no less claustrophobic than being used as a chin pillow.

You sighed, hoping it sounded far more put upon than you were sure it actually did, and reached out to trace the grooves in his horns.

“You’re lucky you’re comfortable,” you grouched with no real heat, and he warbled contentedly as he settled in to continue his afternoon nap.

When your next mealtime rolled around (breakfast, lunch, dinner? Who had a concept of time anymore? Not you, that’s for sure), you plopped yourself at the little, makeshift, table you’d managed to construct out of some debris, and waited patiently for whatever culinary monstrosity was about to grace your palette this fine day.

Malleus claiming that he’d been going to see Lilia to ask after your ‘delicate, human, diet’ because the little demon ‘knew what he was doing,’ had turned out to be the worst joke ever put into existence. Made worse yet by the fact that he didn’t even realize it until one of his Pseudo-Parent’s oozing, tar-like, dishes had brought literal tears to your eyes. From the smell the alone.

So now, the quieter and more sensible of the Gargoyles—‘Silver,’ as the Angry One had called him—would duck out on occasion and return with something more or less edible. Fruits budded off near mystical plants that would glow ominously in the soft gloom of the castle’s interior. Strange roots and herbs that sometimes danced on your plate, like them waving around their little, planty, arms would make you not want to immediately murder them in coldblooded terror. The freshly carved meat off of animals you’d never even heard of before.

It was all certainly An Experience, but none of it had poisoned you yet. So you’d make do with what you had. Plus, a little sprinkle of Prestidigitation did wonders for making it all a bit more edible.

Malleus stepped forward, a suspicious lack of trays, or bowls, or anything else in his hands. Your brow furrowed in confusion for a moment before you shrugged—unbothered—and moved to lean your weight back on your elbows. Because Mister Clingy, Clingy, Clingy very much enjoyed using your mealtimes as an excuse to drape himself across your legs like an overgrown cat, and it was easier to just invite him in at this point than it was to wait for him to find a way to curl himself into your personal space.

But then, rather than plopping himself across your lap, Malleus knelt down and very pointedly swept you up into his. You definitely did not squeak, or flail around, or lose face in any sort of way. Nope. Not you. And when he settled back against the stone floor with a low hum and began to contentedly rub lazy circles into your hips, you most definitely did not melt.

Sure, it was a bit of a deviation from his usual brand of smothering, but it was far from unpleasant. And really, it would have been perfectly sweet and all. Except for that teensy, tiny (but not really ‘tiny’ at all, and holy fuck you were not going to let your brain go there), totally not something to immediately freak out about, problem. Which was, of course—

“You’re not wearing pants,” you entreated. “Or anything.” But the pants. The pants were the big issue at the moment. Because yeah. His chest was all fine sculpted planes of ivory and natural, aesthetic, perfection that would make the most accomplished artists weep with envy. And as distracting as all that normally was, the area below said spread of chiseled, lithe, muscle was what was setting off sirens in your brain.

His chin dug into your shoulder and you felt his cheek rub along yours as he ducked in closer to make eye contact.

“I am aware,” he said, arching a brow. “We’ve discussed the matter extensively.” And then a pout. “You told me to do what I found to be most comfortable.”

“This is comfortable?” You managed to squeak, incredulous. Because you knew that there were parts of you touching parts of him that surely could not have been—have been—

He hummed and tugged you closer.

“Of course,” he rumbled on the tail end of a contented sigh. “You’re so wonderfully warm. And besides, how else should I feed you? I doubt you’d appreciate me kneeling after you like a child.”

What.

“Feed me?” you spluttered.

“Of course,” he continued, nonplussed—like the idea of pressing dainty, bitesize, treats to your lips while you were stretched out across his very naked thighs was not a setup straight out of some terrible, trashy, erotica. “And while I admit the concept on its own is a temptingly enjoyable one, I’m only trying to maintain decorum.”

“What decorum?!” you wailed.

Tsunotarou went quiet then, almost like he was hesitant. Or… no—like he was preparing himself to launch into one of those grand, immortal, monologues of his. Usually they were about architecture, or the strange difficulties of tending to rose bushes. He took a soft, low, breath that whistled past your ear, and then his lips quirked back into a smile.

“Unique circumstances of our meeting and your species aside, I have decided that you deserve a proper courtship nonetheless,” he responded merrily, in the tone of someone who very much believed such a declaration deserved all the head pats. “I spoke with Lilia about the matter, of course, because while I am well aware of the concepts of such an endeavor, actually putting the ideas into practice is… unfamiliar to me,” he huffed, almost embarrassed. “And I wanted to ensure that despite our differences in culture and ancestry, that I could find a way to ensure you would enjoy our draconic customs as well.”

Which was—was—

It was certainly one thing to hear Tsunotarou make casual declarations of ‘bestowing titles’ and whatever other romantically archaic gibberish made it past his fangs, but to just sort of BAM. Lay it all out. Right there. With a ‘you deserve a proper courtship’ and everything. It had heat rising high along your cheeks and something light and bubbly dancing through your stomach.

“…That’s sweet of you,” you managed to get out, so thoroughly twitterpated that for half a second you even managed to forgot that you were having this whole conversation while you were sitting in his very, very, naked lap.

“Sweet?” he repeated, so openly bewildered it made you laugh.

“Yes,” you hummed, regaining a teeny bit of your courage, and let your head fall back to rest against his shoulder with an affectionate lil’ bonk. “Very sweet. The sweetest.”

“…I do not think I have ever been referred to as such,” he mumbled, sounding torn between being content at the compliment, and baffled over its existence in the first place. And yeah, objectively speaking, there were plenty of more fitting, much grander, descriptors you could attach to such an ancient, all-powerful, creature. Majestic, incredible, intelligent, awe-inspiring, handsome—

Tsunotarou made a strange sort of strangled sound from behind you, and you realized in horror that you’d been rambling all that out loud.

That brief spark of courage vanished even faster than it’d come, and you dropped your head forward to hide in your hands.

“I did not realize you regarded me so highly, Child of Man,” he crooned, puffing up in pride at your back.

You buried even further into your palms. Maybe if you pressed hard enough, you’d manage to lobotomize yourself. And then you’d never have to worry about being embarrassed ever again.

“How could I not?” you complained, sounding smooshed and pathetic behind your fingers.

“In my experience, most creatures tend to feel quite the opposite when I am involved,” Malleus mused, sounding far too soft. “But I suppose you have always proved to be the exception in many things.”

You could feel the familiar, firm, warmth of his fingers curling along your wrists as he gently tugged you out of your impromptu hidey hole.

“Humans are many things, and you certainly continue to surprise me. But I don’t think you’ve yet discovered how to eat without using your mouth.” He gave your palm a light squeeze before letting it drop back to your side. “So unfortunately, trying to hide your face away in shame isn’t productive at the moment,” Malleus grinned, sharp with humor. “But perhaps later, if you are still feeling too overwhelmed by your sentiments.”

“I’m not overwhelmed by my sentiment,” you grumped.

He hummed, low in his chest and terribly fond. And clearly not buying your bullshit for a second.

“And there’s not even any food for my dumb, human, mouth to eat,” you continued petulantly.

“Is that so?” he mused.

“Yes. Is so,” you snipped.

That little, happy, grin of his grew a bit too wide, a bit too pointy at the edges. And then he was reaching up with one hand to cup your chin and hold your jaw in place. Softly, carefully, in a way that certainly wasn’t uncomfortable, but with a firmness to it that definitely made it feel like you weren’t going anywhere.

“Open,” he ordered—kind as always, but with a haughty sort of authority that had heat rushing to your cheeks so quickly you realized that hyperbole of your earlier ramblings aside, you may actually be having a fucking stroke.

The dragon pinched his fingers at the corner of your lips, the sharp tips of his blackened nails bumping up along your canines, and your mouth fell open like your jaw had unhinged itself from your face. His other hand reached around you deftly in a grand show of ridiculous sparks and mist. And then there was something small, and warm, and mouth-wateringly savory pulled from thin air and tucked up between his fingers. He leaned over your shoulder to take a pointed bite out of the creation, chewing slowly and exaggeratedly, before moving to hold the remaining piece up to your parted lips.

Your mouth was more or less hanging open like you were trying to make a career out of catching flies, so he didn’t have much trouble setting the delicate, little, morsel atop your tongue. The burst of flavor was instantaneous, intense, and part of you wished that your brain wasn’t so high on its ‘what is HAPPENING?! AHHHH!’ madness so that you could better appreciate the taste of the ethereal treat. But it was. And your head was broken. So here you were—sitting in a handsome dragon’s naked lap, with some kind of mystical food in your mouth, and your tongue practically lolling out of it like you had brain damage.

“Aren’t you going to eat it?” Malleus asked, brow furrowing at your continued paralysis. Like you refusing to do anymore than sit there like a human vegetable was another one of your attempts at petty resistance.

And okay. Really. You weren’t trying to be a little brat. Your brain had genuinely fled the building—packed its bags, flipped your empty skull the bird, and sailed off into the sunset to find someone who might actually try and make use of it. There wasn’t enough ‘rational thought’ left for you tomake the decision to be a sassy little shit.

The dragon’s eyes narrowed at your completely unintentional obstinance and the pointed ends of his claws flexed against your cheeks.

“Swallow.”

You gulped, out of habit if nothing else—the rest of you spiraling away in a long line of holy fuck holy fuck holy fuck holy fuck—

“There,” he purred, and you were having a heart attack. “Was that so difficult?”

He loosened his grip enough for you to softly shake your head back and forth, and his countenance brightened once again at your assent.

“Excellent!” he beamed, and conjured up another one of those tiny bits of ambrosia. “What is that expression humans are always using…” he mumbled to himself, brow furrowed as he pondered. “Oh—that’s right.” He cleared his throat and pressed the next morsel back up your mouth. “Say ‘Aaah.’”

The choked off, gurgling, noise that tore out of your throat must have been an acceptable substitute, because he nodded and pushed the treat past your lips.

“Good,” he hummed, low, and rubbed more of those little circles into your hip with the clawed fingers that weren’t busy feeding you all kinds of magical nonsense. “Lilia did mention you might be adverse to this for some reason,” he muttered to himself, dragging his cheek along yours like an overgrown cat, before turning that indulgent, deadly, smile back on you with all the cutting efficiency of an assassin’s blade. “But I knew you’d do well.”

You were going to die.

“This food is made with my own magic,” he explained, proud, and definitely at least partially oblivious to the fact that you were one-hundred-percent having an aneurism. “And I would love to feed you nothing but these creations of mine, but unfortunately, Lilia was not entirely certain how much sustenance it would actually provide to a human body,” he sighed, practically pouty.

“Is that so…” you wheezed.

“Hmm,” he rumbled, and snapped another mouthful of arcane wonders into existence. “Would you like some more?”

You looked up towards the grey ceiling and the infinite, uncaring, void of space somewhere beyond. You prayed to every God, Demon, Deity, and half-baked Patron that you could think of for mercy.

“What did you tell him?!”

“Oh?” Lilia hummed, lazily glancing over his sharpened nails. You’d found him dangling upside down from a banister in one of the sparser hallways, like that was a perfectly pleasant place to relax for the afternoon. “Did you not enjoy it?”

You squawked like the world’s most indignant chicken, and Lilia had the absolute fucking gall to laugh at you.

“That’s not the point!”

“Is it not?” he chirped, looking beyond pleased with himself.

“NO!”

He trilled merrily nonetheless and floated down to stand before you.

“I’m sure this is all still a bit confusing to you, little one. But,” he smiled, positively doting, “a smidgen of embarrassment is certainly a fair price to pay for so many future years of happiness, don’t you agree?”

“That’s not—I’m not embarrassed,” you settled on, which was a lie.

Lilia grinned at you like you were something fascinating. Or like he was a cat, and you were a very funny little mouse who’d managed to trap itself under one of his paws. After a moment, he chuckled softly under his breath and reached down to fish about in the pockets of his robes.

“Perhaps this will help bolster you courage, hmm?” he hummed and slid a strange, glass, flask into your hands.

You glared at him cautiously for a moment before uncorking the potion and taking a swig. It settled along your tongue, heavy and fruity, with a soft, herby, aftertaste. Grandiose nature of its presentation aside, the concoction was actually pretty familiar.

“This is just wine!” you complained, and Lilia laughed harder.

When you ate your (assumed) dinner for the evening, Malleus took his usual spot draped across your lap and seemed happy to let you feed yourself. You stared down at the dragon cautiously, eyes narrowed. Suspicious.

“Lilia said it would be best not to overwhelm you with too much too quickly,” he said after a few long moments of your apprehensive silence, burrowing his nose against your thigh.

“I see,” you droned, still more than a little irritated at the tiny man’s meddling, but thankful enough that he at least seemed to understand that your fair constitution was not built to survive an onslaught of draconic ‘courting.’

“Unless you would prefer that I—”

“No!”

That night you collapsed atop your blanket nest like a log—physically and emotionally wrecked from trying to survive your first ever encounter with Seduction. (And wasn’t that a trip? A fully fledged Bard, stumbling over their own tongue and shriveling up like a pious little maiden at the first inklings of Romantic Intent. What a failure you were. ‘Fuck around and find out?’ Ace used to mock. ‘Nah, get fucked and find out, am I right, Bardy?’ And you’d laugh. Like you were some suave, sexy, master of love. And not just some moron who could sometimes talk their way in circles well enough to get their friends out of a tavern brawl.)

You squeaked out a yawn—some lazy, tired, tears pricking at the corners of your eyes as you burrowed deeper into your plush fortress. You were going to go to sleep and stay asleep for hours. Days. Months. You were going to make that ‘Sleeping Beauty’ chick look like an insomniac.

The blankets cocooning you dipped with extra weight, and you blinked your eyes back open to see Malleus looming over you, his neon eyes illuminating the dark and casting odd shadows over his cheeks.

“Are you cold, Child of Man?”

Huh. Weird. But whatever.

You hummed and burrowed deeper into the blankets. “I’m fine, thank you.”

Sure, the castle was gloomy and dank even when the sun was at its highest, let alone in the black of night. But you had a literal furnace camped out next to you, and no natural chill was breaking past that space heater. You yawned again and rolled back onto your side with a comfy little stretch. You were just about to sink back into the soft, foggy, cloud of sleep when—

“Are you certain?”

You sighed and scrunched your nose irritably. “Yes, Tsunotarou.”

A pause.

“Are you… too warm, then?”

You groaned.

“I’m fine.” And then, pointed. “Just tired.”

“I see.”

You waited, frowning sleepily into your pillow pile. When after a solid two minutes the dragon had made no further comments, you let your eyes slip back closed.

“But are you positive?” he asked again, and you wanted to scream. “There’s nothing troubling you about our nest? Nothing at all?” You smashed your face into a duvet and felt a panicked set of claws flutter along your shoulders. “I would only hope that you’d feel comfortable enough to inform me if there is anything amiss. If there is anything that I might do, to correct any inadequacies—”

“Malleus,” you interrupted, and you felt him freeze. Perhaps using his True Name out loud for the first time in a fit of overtired petulance was low, but come on. What else were you supposed to do? “The nest is perfect. You’re perfect. Can we please just—go to sleep?”

“Oh,” he breathed, and you watched the soft, emerald, glow around him pop in and out of existence as he blinked his wide eyes at you. The sharp, reptilian, lines of his pupils shrank to pinpricks—swallowed in a sea of green. “I see.”

You weren’t sure exactly what this great, eldritch, monster was ‘seeing,’ but he did shut his mouth with a content little rumble and haul you up against his chest to finally settle in for the night, so you couldn’t really find it in you to care about the particulars.

The next morning, when Malleus tried to feed you breakfast, you had prepared yourself enough to not keel over on the spot. You very respectably accepted his tasty treats and only thought you were about to pass out, like, three times. So overall, an improvement.

That is, until you dutifully swallowed the last of the tiny morsels he’d pressed to your lips, and he smiled at you like you’d hung all the stars in the sky.

“You really are such a good little thing, aren’t you?” he sighed, and you had to bury yourself in your blanket nest like an ostrich with its head in the sand for a solid half hour before you were ready to be a functional person again.

But other than that brush with near death, you were doing great! Great enough that you were even willing to indulge the angrier Gargoyle as it huffed and puffed about whatever had managed to ruffle its feathers that day.

“I still cannot believe you thought to steal from my master! TO STEAL!” he repeated. “FROM HIM!”

You sighed and rested your chin in your palm. “To be fair, we didn’t exactly know anyone was living here. It’s not like we intentionally tried to tangle with a dragon.”

“Well, you would have lost,” Sebek sniffed, indignant.

“We did lose,” you huffed, amused, and Lilia’s snicker echoed from some shadowed corner of the hall. “But I promise, if we’d known that we would be trespassing into someone’s actual home instead of just breaking and entering an abandoned castle, I never would have come.”

Malleus warbled out an unsettled sort of sound from his place resting at your back, his snout bumping up against your shoulder in an inquisitive little thump.

You reached out to give his giant, scaled, nose a pat.

“But I’m glad I did,” you promised. “My friends’ idiocy worked in all our favors, I guess.”

“You ought to thank them when they return next month, your grace,” Lilia called to his ward, still too entrenched within the darkness to be visible as anything other than a glinting, halfmoon, smile. “For ensuring your lovely human’s arrival.”

Malleus hummed and shifted his wings to settle back more fully once again—whatever unpleasant sort of discontentment brewing about him having clearly been assuaged.

“THOSE WHO WOULD ATTEMPT TO BURGLE MY MASTER DO NOT DESERVE GRATITUDE!” Sebek yowled, arching up like a pissy street cat.

“To be fair,” you said, “there ended up not being much actual theft involved.”

Sebek gasped and ducked in to complain straight to your face, like that extra foot and a half of distance would somehow make all the difference in his lecturing. But then, as he swung in closer, his stone talons brushed up against the edge of your mattress-nest. It was just a little thing, barely even enough to put a nick in the rippled corners of the more delicate fabrics. But with that movement, the atmosphere of the chamber melted from its usual pleasant haze into something cold, and dark, and heavy that pressed down on your shoulders like a tangible thing. Within the next moment, Sebek was falling back in a panic to avoid the set of massive, black, jaws closing around him.

Malleus reared forward with an absolutely blood curdling snarl—curling down from his perch at your hind to spit and lunge at his servant with all the terrible ferocity of the ancient beast that so many accused him of being.

Sebek reeled away in an absolutely manic frenzy, twisting from death’s maw with a slew of panicked squawking-slash-sobbing that sounded an awful lot like he was begging for forgiveness amidst his harried attempts at escape.

And as much as you certainly hadn’t wanted to be lectured for the umpteenth time about some trivial garbage, the blind rage twisting your dragon’s face was… definitely unfamiliar.

You reached out nervously to rest a hand against his flank, and instantly Malleus was back at your side—curling the entirety of his bulk around you and only unfurling the long, slim, stretch of his neck to hiss a low, threatening, sound in the direction Sebek had fled.

“Tsunotarou…?” you called hesitantly, letting your fingers twist against the slippery smooth surface of his scales.

He lowered his head, and you could see each and every one of those sharp teeth of his glinting in the lowlight. He kept his neon-green glare locked at the corner of the hall with that same, startling, intensity, but the simmering rage that had been sparking along his canines dropped into a softer, more reassuring, rumble.

“MY DEEPEST APOLOGIES, MY LORD!” Sebek wailed, popping up stupidly from behind the pillar he was using as a shield. “I NEVER MEANT TO—”

Malleus snapped at him again—his teeth closing around empty air with an echoing clack. The Gargoyle ducked back down with an ‘EEP!’ and the dragon curled his lips in distaste. The heavy scent of smoke and sulfurpooled from his maw, and emerald sparks danced dangerously up from his throat.

Lilia materialized then from the shadows, slipping forward from the darkness with a deep bow that nearly had his nose pressed to his knees. He hovered over the pair of them—the cowering, stone, monster and the fire spitting dragon that was seemingly determined to rend his faithful servant into pebbles.

“My Prince,” Lilia coaxed, composed and crisp in the face of his hissing ward. He started to straighten himself again cautiously, only to freeze half-way when Malleus started up his grumbling again. “Malleus,” he tried instead, voice stern and gentling. “It’s alright. I’m sure it was only an accident.” Crimson eyes flicked pointedly to the rafters. “Wasn’t it, Sebek?”

“I DIDN’T MEAN TO!” Sebek absolutely sobbed. “I WOULD NEVER DISRESPECT THE YOUNG MASTER SO!”

“What the fuck is even happening?!” you gaped, beyond confused.

“Little one,” Lilia began, only to pause when Malleus curled his lip threateningly at him. “If you wouldn’t mind, please inform your dearest companion that you’re perfectly well and unharmed.”

“What?” you frowned. “Of course I’m unharmed!”

“Once more,” Lilia chirped, without any warmth to it. “If you’d please.”

Your brow tugged together tight in bewilderment, but you turned back to face the heaving hide of the dragon that was currently wound around you tighter than a bow string.

“Malleus,” you tried, perhaps far too quietly all things considered. But that terrible, earthquake of a snarl of his broke off all at once—like you’d dropped a cone of Silence over the whole of him. His great, green, glare cut down to you and instantly he was lowering his sneering maw to blow misty smoke rings over your head. “Malleus,” you said again, running a hand along his scales. “It’s alright. I’m fine. Nothing’s happened.”

Tsunotarou blinked at you, tight and fast. And then after a very, very, long moment of that sneer twitching on and off his face like a flickering light, his pricked pupils relaxed back into something curved and long—still thin, but no longer constricted to the point of near absence. He lowered his head to crash into the heap of comforters, and pillows, and soft, cozy, things. The sigh that blew past his fangs was all kinds of exhausted—sounding like it’d clawed its way out from the very marrow of his bones. The little lick of green flames that accompanied it was a teeny, bright, thing—lacking that sharp bite of heat and sulfur.

Lilia sighed too, like he’d had the wind knocked out of him. Silver relaxed from the perch where he’d tucked himself away at the start of it all (high enough to be out of range, but close enough to dive in if needed), and Sebek nearly doubled over in hysterical tears.

The strange, little, demon turned then on the spiked Gargoyle with an unhappy click of his tongue.

“Sebek,” he huffed. “You should know better.”

“I know,” the Gargoyle hiccupped, uncharacteristically quiet. “I’m sorry.”

“Would someone please tell me what that was,” you begged, running nervous hands along Tsunotarou’s purple crests like they were a giant, wavy, set of stress balls.

“Drakes are naturally protective creatures. There’s certainly a reason that so many tales of our Lord’s ancestors stalwartly guarding their hoards have passed into legend,” Lilia explained, some of that black severity finally seeming to fade from his soured expression. “And, of course, when one is partaking in an event as monumental as the courtship of a perspective mate, they can understandably be… particularly tetchy about their territory being disturbed.”

“But it’s not like you’re intruders or anything! He’s known you all for ages,” you frowned. “And this is just—you’ve all been in here plenty of times before. It’s just a pile of pillows.”

“Not to him it’s not,” Lilia mused, soft.

You worried at your lower lip, and your gaze slipped back to the dragon pressed up against your side. He was busy fanning his tail out, carefully smoothing the fabrics that had been disturbed in his upset—fluffing up the blankets that had fallen out of place and rucking all those comforters up around the both of you.

‘A perfect nest,’ you had called it. For a perfect dragon.

Oh.

You cleared your sticky throat and patted reassuringly at the softer, more delicate skin at the base of Malleus’s horns. He paused his fretting to glance back down at you.

“Why don’t we hit the hay early today, yeah?” you offered, and he let out a relieved sort of huff as he settled more heavily at your side. His eyes slipped closed like they were physically weighted down, and his tail whipped up and around to encircle the two of you in a set of soft loops. Lilia sent you a look that was half-appreciative, half-outright fond.

“We’ll leave you both be for the next few days,” he said, before gesturing for the pair of Gargoyles to follow him out the door.

You nodded, and then called out just as the more haggard of the duo was about to slip past the threshold.

“He probably didn’t mean to get so mad,” you offered as kindly as you could, and you weren’t sure if a Gargoyle could actually get misty-eyed (what with the whole ‘entirely constructed of stone’ thing being a bit of hindrance), but Sebek was certainly putting the effort in to try.

Not that this whole thing had been entirely one-sided, but as you laid there in your nest with your dragon—carefully carding your fingers through his black hair and along the divots in his horns—you couldn’t help but feel like he’d been putting a whole lot more effort into this ‘fairytale romance’ of yours than you had.

Okay, granted, you were apparently the one being courted in this whole situation. Which theoretically meant that you were also the one who was supposed to be getting spoiled with attention, and food, and… whatever that whole territory debacle had been. But still… It felt a bit selfish not to be doing something for Malleus in return. Particularly seeing how much of himself he was putting into all of this. And again, sure, you were technically originally a hostage or whatever. Sure, not a few weeks ago you would have laughed off this entire thing like it was a bad joke. But now you were… sort of in it for the long haul, weren’t you?

Because Malleus was kind and startling intelligent, even if that big ol’ brain of his sometimes stumbled over the silliest things. He had a wickedly dry sense of humor and an inquisitiveness that was entirely endearing. And on top of it all, he was ungodly attractive and a motherfucking dragon. What sort of fool would turn that down? Idiot you may be, but man, even you weren’t that stupid. Deuce, maybe. But not you.

So you sighed, feeling very much like a haggard old maid doing their best to walk some moron through their own burgeoning romance—except in this case you were both the old crone and the idiot, and—Ugh. This metaphor was too much for your brain. You carefully slipped out from beneath Malleus’s arm, and man, if it didn’t say all the more about just how much he’d exhausted himself the other day that he didn’t immediately spring awake to demand to know where you were sneaking off to. You patted his silky hair and tucked him in a bit tighter before carefully making your way over to the corner of the nest where you’d stashed your travel pack.

You knew better than to try and start your own fire at this point, and while heating a kettle with the lingering, wispy, sparks of Prestidigitation was a bitch and half, you did it. Because you were—ugh—in love. Or at least getting there. And people who were (maybe) in love did all sorts of ridiculous, taxing, nonsense for the sake of making their Person (dragon) happy. You brewed a pot of warm tea, tossing in all the fancy, dried, leaves that you kept bundled in the little side pockets of your bag. Chamomile as a base, to settle his nerves. A pinch of lavender to aid that calm. A sprig of lemon balm for tartness and… also calm. Everything you had for relaxation. Just. Dumping it in the pot. You were halfway through debating if adding a bit of Passionflower would just make your already questionable concoction taste absolutely vile when a sleepy grumble dragged you out of your musings.

“What are you doing all the way over there?” Tsunotarou complained, head only just poking out from the mound of blankets you’d buried him in. And, wow, he must have been… He hadn’t even scuttled his way down to latch onto you like the leech he normally was.

You gingerly climbed your way back up the pile, balancing the mug of tea in your hands so, so, carefully—making sure not to spill a single drop.

Malleus had sat up fully by the time you arrived, and he was busying himself with rubbing the sleep from his eyes. He still looked a bit woozy—a bit out-of-body. You leaned forward and pressed the warm cup into his clawed hands, only pulling back once you were certain he had a good grip on it.

“I made tea,” you said lamely. “To, uh, help with… To help. Tea helps,” you finished, more lamely.

And then, because you never knew how to stop when you were ahead (and to be fair, you were never really ‘ahead.’ And your dumbass bumbling certainly didn’t land you anywhere near that), you leaned forward, valiantly fighting the butterflies having an all out rave in your fucking intestines, and planted a soft kiss on his forehead.

“Erhm,” you mumbled as he stared up at you with wide, wide eyes. “Feel better.”

Malleus gaped at you, and then slowly—like his limbs were moving through a vat of honey—he reached up to rub at the skin you’d just pecked.

“What was that?” he asked, bewildered but not… unhappy. No. Definitely not unhappy.

“A kiss?” you squeaked, warring with all Seven Levels of Hell that were fighting for real estate in your cheeks. “It’s… uh. It’s something humans do to… show our affection?” It wasn’t meant to sound like a question, but the statement twisted up high-pitched and thready at the end either way.

“I see,” he murmured, gaze still a bit distant. Though perhaps not for the same reason anymore. He blinked a few times, as if to clear away that cloudy haze, and then smiled one of those heart-stopping smiles of his. “May I have another?”

You spluttered, and fought the urge to bap him over the top of the head like an unruly bar patron.

“After you finish your tea,” you managed to squawk. “Maybe.”

And so he went about sipping at the concoction you’d brewed for him with all the steadfast determination of a good student. By the time he reached the bottom of the cup, his eyes were drooping all over again and he was stretching out to lounge back against the pillows with a sleepy little sigh. He slipped back off to sleep quickly enough, but you leaned forward anyways to give him a peck on the cheek—as promised.

“Tell me more about your human courting traditions,” Malleus demanded the next morning, clearly feeling well enough again to be back to his usual, sticky, habits. He had situated himself with his head in your lap—bumping his forehead up pointedly against your navel until you sunk your hands into his hair.

“I thought Lilia told you plenty,” you grumbled. “You just want me to kiss you again.”

His eyes sparkled with mischievous mirth. “Perhaps.”

You sighed and fought the urge to titter into your palms in embarrassment. You were a bard, goddamn it! And you would not shame your profession further!

“Well, from what I understand, one doesn’t exactly see their intended in your sort of state until much later in the proceedings,” you sniffed petulantly.

“My sort of state?” he repeated, canting his head.

“Naked.”

He laughed, sharp and loud.

“Of course,” he trilled, twisting to bury his nose into the seam of your thigh and sending shivers all along your spine. “I always forget about your antiquated sense of modesty.”

“My antiquated—?!You’re thousands of years old!”

“And yet, you are always the one so caught up in the notion of my propriety,” he sighed, that clever smirk still tugging at his lips. “Trying to defend my honor, perhaps?”

“My honor,” you hissed, giving into the urge to burry your head in your hands. “What do you do then, huh? What do dragons do if they don’t kiss each other?”

“Bite,” he shrugged, and the spark of something that shot through your gut like the first sparks off a campfire was entirely fucking unfair.

You swallowed.

“Like—erhm. When you’re like this?” you asked, gesturing awkwardly to his human-fied form.

“I suppose some must,” he hummed, eyes going lidded and dark as he pondered your inquiry. “But most prefer their scales, I’m told. Mating bites are a fairly universal practice—both in their practically of providing a physical telltale for differentiating those who have been claimed from those who have not, and also as a… more romantic overture.”

“How is biting romantic?” you huffed, only to immediately regret the question when the dragon’s eyes lit like firebugs.

Tsunotarou sat back on his haunches, dislodging your hand from his hair in the process.

“It’s all very poetic,” he enthused, face awash with genuine fascination. The same sort of way he got when he was talking about his precious gargoyles or the wonderful uniqueness in flavor of the different variations of frost giants. “It leaves the impression of a mortal wound that was, of course, in reality anything but. The careful curation of allowing one’s life to fall so easily into the hands of another. It really is all very lovely.”

“But dragon teeth are…” you trailed off, debating if you were just regurgitating the obvious. “It must leave some pretty nasty scars, at least.”

“Of course it does,” Malleus hummed. “That’s certainly the point of it. And usually, the goal is to bite deep enough that the scales can never regrow.”

“But, that’s—!” Again you tapered yourself into silence. He wasn’t saying that like it was bad thing. In fact, he sounded a bit dreamy. “Isn’t that dangerous?” you asked instead, quiet. “To lose some of your armor like that?”

“Oh, certainly,” he crooned, reaching out with one, clawed, finger to trail the tip of a blackened nail along the hollow of your throat. “The most common sites are here.” You gulped, and he dragged that talon of his down to rest at the center of your chest. He tapped at the skin there slowly, lightly, like the rhythm of a ticking clock. “And here.”

“I—uhm.” You swallowed. “That just seems more dangerous.”

“The hope behind it is to show your unwavering conviction—your faith,” he explained, his nail still tap-tap-tapping just above your heart. “That the one you’ve chosen to entrust yourself to will be the one willing to protect those delicate places instead.”

“Oh,” you mumbled, eyes wide. Because… alright. That was a bit—It was at least a little…

The hand lingering over your ribs reached out to tangle with your own, and he brought your palm up to rest against the soft, alabaster, curve of his neck. You could feel the steady thrum of his pulse beneath your fingers.

“I know your teeth aren’t quite strong enough to scar a dragon’s hide, but I’d be happy to gift you my scales, if you asked them of me,” he sighed, content. And woah. Holy fuck. Holy fuck— “Perhaps you could fashion your own armor from them,” he mused, looking far too invested with that burgeoning idea for it to be something he’d just magically thought up on the spot.

“I’d rather not do anything to hurt you at all,” you rambled, because your brain had evaporated.

“Oh?” he droned. “Even if I asked you to?”

And fwoosh went the ashy remnants of your intellect, completely blown out of your head.

Malleus leaned forward into your little bubble of space—the one that had more or less popped out of existence the moment he’d decided that he would very much like to keep you at his side. But somehow, despite all the times he’d crowded in on you before, this time felt… more significant. He kept your palm pressed into the hollow of his throat and ducked down to press his nose into the sensitive nook of your own. You could feel the whistle of his breath against the thin skin there—warm, and slow, and with just the slightest bit of humidity that pulled goosebumps up all along your shoulders.

“Of course I would never mark you while in my scales,” he assured, like that was even an option to begin with. “Your flesh is far too delicate. And while I know I could heal the damage, it’s not something I’m keen to inflict in the first place.”

You shivered and tilted your chin—away (exposed), not down. Not into the protective little bow you ought to have.

“H-Hypocrite,” you spluttered, and Malleus chuckled, delighted.

“I suppose so,” he hummed. “But it does make me wonder, what could we do, hmm? In these forms?”

You could bite me like this, you almost said. Like an absolute, suicidal, maniac.

“Oh?” he trilled, enthusiastic. “I could, couldn’t I?”

Holy fuck you needed to get your rambling under control before it killed you.

“I do hope you keep at it,” he mused, tilting forward so that you could feel the brush of his bangs tickling along the back of your neck. “You say the loveliest things when you’re not burdened with those poor attempts at filtering yourself.” His lips curled up into a smile and you could feel it pressing into your throat like a brand. “Incredible, you called me. Do you remember? Majestic. Handsome—”

“Yes, yes,” you spluttered, head still tilted way too far back for someone putting up any kind of token protest. “Mock the afflicted.”

“Afflicted?” He grinned. The points of his canines dipped past his lips to skim along your skin and leave the teeniest, little, divots in their wake. Never pushing forward, never breaking that soft barrier at your throat. But there. “With what, dearest?”

“Don’t make me say it,” you begged. Because you were already likely to keel over twitching from a stroke at any moment now, let alone if you tried to say—if you actually admitted out loud that you—you were—

“Should I, then?” he asked, a streak of something stalwart and genuine mixed in with the teasing.

And then, like a horribly unwanted Divine Intervention, Ace’s voice flicked through your thoughts with all of the stereotypical ridiculousness of a beam of sunshine parting a cloud covered sky.

‘Fuck around and find out?’ he’d laughed. And then you’d laughed. ‘Nah, get fucked and find out.’

And goddamn it all, you would never, ever give that smarmy, ginger, bastard credit for anything—let alone bestowing you with sage life advice. But, well—

“Fuck it,” you gasped and you threw yourself forward to tangle your arms around Malleus’s neck and pull him into a kiss.

It was perhaps the most inelegant smashing of lips ever put to record, and you immediately nicked yourself on one of his fangs. But after a moment of working past that driving ‘get as close as you can, get so, so, so close—’ you managed to maneuver things into something that was more a wave of particularly enthusiastic kisses than just outright gnawing at each other. Malleus didn’t seem particularly put off at your messy attempt to jump his bones, and leaned into whatever you were throwing at him with ardor.

You parted your lips and Malleus’s own opened immediately beneath yours. His tongue flicked out and you felt it run along the fresh cut there—tracing the little, red, graze and soothing the sting. It was a little longer than you were expecting, a tad thinner. Not quite reptilian, but different enough that you recognized it as something alien. But if there was any apprehension to begin with (hint: probably not. You were too far gone on this idiot), it was wiped clear when he tilted his chin forward to harshen the angle and attempted to plunder your mouth in earnest.

There was still all a bit more teeth and biting than the glorious romances heralded in all those garbage tavern songs, but for someone who’d only just yesterday been asking you ‘what’s a kiss?’ this felt like great progress. And honestly, there was something better about this too. Maybe because the feel of his sharp canines dancing so perilously close to your sensitive skin was a bit thrilling. Maybe the mess, and the heat, and that ‘closer, closer, closer’ made it feel more real. Or maybe it was just the simple fact that this was your Tsunotarou.

Eventually the kisses tapered off to dot along your cheek—with another long, slow, lick along the barely-bloodied nick in your lip for good measure—and then down the curve of your jaw. Malleus pressed forward, and you could feel the sharp intent there as he meticulously began to cover every available inch of your throat in little, stinging, love bites. His clawed hands began to work their way under the hem of your shirt, rucking it up along your abdomen until the fabric caught just beneath your ribs. He dug his thumbs into the newly exposed skin, and you fought through a wave of shivers to reach down to help him pull it the rest of the way off you.

The brief barrier of your shifting clothes cut you off from the world like a blindfold, and when you were back again, facing the softly lit gloom of the familiar cavern, you realized that you were staring down a fully naked dragon. Who, yes, was technically always running around in his birthday suit. But now—I mean—if you were doing this sort of thing with him, and he was really courting you and all… You could look now, couldn’t you?

So many painful hours you had spent counting pebble piles, and reciting mostly made-up religious verses, and smacking your cheeks like a school matron threatening rowdy teens. So ceaselessly hard had your poor eyes worked to never just look down.

And finally, you let yourself take in the entirety of him.

Woah.

And thank fuck he didn’t lurch forward with that wide, self-satisfied grin of his, because at least that meant you’d managed to keep your internal ‘!!!’ to yourself for once.

Malleus had always been unfairly pretty. Because naturally, if you were one of the most powerful creatures to ever walk this planet, you also had to be one of the most beautiful. It was the logic of fairytales and mythos only, and now all that ethereal allure was staring you down almost like a challenge. Like, ‘see? You thought people this stupidly hot could only exist in your dreams? Hardy, har, har. Have fun with your hypertension and newfound inability to feel anything below your navel.’

And now he was just there. All sculpted planes of white marble that cut sharp angles at the jut of his hips, and then the rest of him. Which was equally as well cast and pale, with just enough of a pink flush to look like something alive rather than some untouchable statue in a museum.

You averted your gaze with a self-conscious little ‘eep!’ Because surely being leered at like a slab of meat had to be all sorts of unpleasant. I mean, if Tsunotarou had been looking at you like that, you’d—Well. Actually. Maybe it wouldn’tbe that bad. But either way, you were practically drooling over the guy, and that self-indulgent ogling had to be at least a teensy bit embarrassing.

Instead, when you finally managed to lock gazes again, the dragon was practically preening.

“Do you find me pleasing, Child of Man?” he asked, eyes half-lidded and dark.

You looked back up at the ceiling and cursed all those stupid deities that had never deigned to grant you even a single sliver of that mercy you’d ask for.

“You know I do,” you finally said, fighting a losing battle against the rampant heat overtaking your entire face.

Malleus leaned back in to press a drawn-out peck to that same little cut, letting that thin tongue of his peek out to clean around your swollen lip one more time. You could see his pupils jumping within his irises—shrinking to tight, tiny, pinpricks before rounding out into something nearly human. The gaping black there practically swallowed the neon, green, sea of his eyes whole.

“You can take from me whatever you’d like,” he hummed, reaching out to drag the hand that had caught at his ribs down to rest along the sharp dip of his hipbones.

“You are literally going to kill me,” you hiccupped, cheeks burning like you’d just taken a merry jaunt through all Seven Halls.

His brow furrowed loosely in the familiar start of that ‘I am an Immortal Drake King and Have No Real Concept of Over Exaggeration as Comedy’ bewilderment of his, and you leaned forward to press a kiss against that little crease.

“In a euphemism sort of way,” you clarified with a flustered grumble. “I promise.”

“Of course,” he nodded, in a fashion that made it very obvious that he didn’t really get it, but also easily acknowledged that now was neither the time nor place for a lesson on human vernacular.

Instead of focusing on your so-claimed impending demise, Malleus leaned forward and picked up exactly where he had left off—even taking the time to pause over the last of his little love bites to soothe at it with his tongue and get it darkening up all over again. As he trailed those sharp, sticky, kisses down your front, you felt your own fingers begin to slip further south—naturally skating down deeper along the slope where he’d placed them.

Your knuckles brushed against sleek, near silky, skin and the shudder that worked its way up the dragon’s back had the teeth he’d buried at your collarbone near vibrating into your skin. Which was… probably good, right? Actually, you know what? If anything, it was a hell of a lot better than good. So you reached forward with a bit more confidence to twine your fingers around him in earnest, and the groan that rumbled out from Malleus’s chest was deep enough to rattle your bones.

The first few strokes were a bit clumsy as you tried to feel out what he enjoyed best. There was something not quite human about it all—just like how even though he had two legs, two arms, and a perfectly lovely face, there had always still been something just a smidge off about this form of his. A little too ethereal to be real.

Though he certainly felt real now—with the way his hips were rising in short, sharp, jerks against your sliding palm, and in how his breath was beating a brisk tempo against your throat.

“You know,” you admitted a bit shakily. “Do you realize how hard it was to just not stare at you every freaking hour of the day when you were waltzing all over the place with—with this,” you complained, giving the aforementioned ‘this’ a pointed squeeze. Malleus made a punched-out sort of noise that tapered into a growl, and he rutted back against your grip hard enough to nearly topple you over.

And then he kept pushing forward until you did fall backwards into the nest of blankets at your back. You landed with a breathy little ‘oof’ and he crowded over you immediately—bracketing you in between his knees. The clawed hand that had been playing along your waist shifted to better mimic the position of your own busy digits. He ran a blackened nail sluggishly along the inseam of your trousers before flicking it back up to undo the button there with a pop.

“You were always more than welcome to partake,” he beamed, sounding far too delighted for his own good. “I’d hoped my parading around was obvious.”

Well now it was!

“I was trying to be polite—” you cut off on a gasp as he pressed his own hand past the waistband of your pants andspread his fingers out like a fan, searching. “You—You were the one who said clothes weren’t—weren’t—” His skin was cold, smooth, and when he found what he was looking for, he pressed down so, so, carefully. You bit back an absolutely obscene gasp and managed to spit out, “—weren’t comfortable.”

“Of course they aren’t,” he sniffed, and took a long moment to lay another sucking mark at the bridge of your shoulder. “But I don’t make a habit of crawling into the lap of every adventurer who wanders through my home.” All at once his hand stilled against you and you fought the godawful impulse to whine. “Am I welcome as well?”

It took your scattered thoughts far too long to process that he’d been asking you a question.

“Are you welcome to what?” you breathed.

“To partake?”

Fucking hell in a handbasket—

“Yes,” you wheezed, squirming up against the wide, flat, surface of his palm. “Of course you are. Just—"

Malleus surged forward to capture your lips once more and immediately licked his way into your mouth—intent and probing. His fingers matched the pace, and he swallowed each of your squeaks, and squawks, and unintelligible nonsense enthusiastically.

It should have come as absolutely no shock just how attentive he was to… everything. Malleus always seemed so eager to soak up new information like the gigantic, draconic, sponge he was. Always so excited to learn. And he approached this new venture with all that usual enthusiasm and more. Like the terrible, embarrassing, noises pouring out of your throat were a symphony that he could not only learn to conduct, but fine tune to his liking.

Oh, he was happy to venture forth and explore the entirety of this unfamiliar territory, but he was conscientious to circle back to the softest, most sensitive, bits of you again, and again, and again. The parts that made you buck back against him and burry your nose in the crook of your arm like ‘hiding’ from your buzzing nerves was an option at all at this point.

Your pants were worked down to your knees before you’d even realized they were gone, and you kicked awkwardly out a few times to try and untangle yourself from the remainder of them. And then it was just you—laid out atop all those blankets and as bare as he was.

His bitey little kisses kept with their descent, until he’d slid himself far enough down that you couldn’t keep your grip on him anymore. He slipped out of your hand and you made a little grumbly noise of protest that only cut off when he dropped a particularly harsh nip at the inseam of your thigh. He nosed along the delicate skin there, laving his tongue indulgently over the teeny wound he’d left, and you gulped when his nostrils flared on a sharp inhale. His fingers were still tracing along the core of you, but slower now—steadied. Like his once rapt attention had clearly been snagged by other prospects.

Malleus’s neon leer ticked back up to lock with your own, and he rested his pointed chin atop your inner thigh with enough weighted intent to have you nearly leaping out of your skin.

“Is something the matter, dearest Child of Man?” he asked, brows jumping a bit in a way that gave away the fact that his polite, little, inquiry was far from the innocent fair he was putting on.

“You know,” you laughed, breathless and dazed. “When I first came here, before I actually got to know you, I was always so worried that you were going to eat me alive.”

“Is that so,” Malleus mused, pointed nails tracing the shivers that were dancing up your legs. “And now?”

Another startled laugh, and you hid your flaming cheeks behind the cage of your fingers. “Don’t make me say it.”

“If you insist,” he hummed, perfectly unruffled, before ducking forward to bury his face in the heart of you.

Your head fell back with a frankly startling yelp, and your hands immediately moved to twist into his hair. The inky strands melted like the finest silk through your fingers, and you had to take a moment to physically ground yourself to keep from yanking on him—only for one of Malleus’s own hands to reach up and tangle your fingers up all the tighter. He ran his tongue along the entirety of you, and you dug your nails into the soft skin where his horns met his skull. He rumbled out a moan, and that naturally vibrated all the way up from where his mouth was currently very busy devouring every part of you that he could reach.

It was messy, and wet, and occasionally you could feel the razor-sharp tip of a fang dance too close to things that were already far too sensitive. But maiden clumsiness aside, there was certainly something to be said for his enthusiasm. Soon enough, that embarrassing keening of yours was even starting to make your own ears ring, and it only got worse when he shifted his grip on you to maneuver your calves over his shoulders and lock your ankles behind the curl of his horns.

His mouth left you with a soft pop, and he looked up at you with eyes that were shot through with so much black that you could hardly make out anything else. His too-long tongue poked out to trace along his wet lips and you absolutely did not let out the most embarrassing whimper known to man.

“Do you remember the story you told me, about the Cheshire Cat and the Man with the mad hats?”

You blinked, not even sure if you were coordinated enough to manage that right. Your melted mind tried its best to put meaning to words, and then words to context. Eventually you managed to muddle through something that felt half-familiar.

“I think so,” you said, still not entirely cognizant.

“Hmm,” he hummed, and nuzzled his nose back against you. “I remember lying in your lap that day. And that was the first time I could really smell you.”

Oh fucking hell—

“And you felt so wonderfully warm,” he sighed, like your absolute mortification was one of his most pleasant memories. “I would have loved to savor you then as well, but you hadn’t entirely seemed amenable.” He burrowed deeper and gave one, last, long, lick that had you nearly shivering out of your skin. “And either way, that tall tale of yours was too compelling to speak over.”

“It was a children’s story about an acid trip,” you complained. “You are more than welcome to interrupt any of my godawful retellings of penny novels to—”

You cut off with another wholly undignified noise when Malleus surged back up to kiss you fully on the mouth. His tongue coiled around yours and you could, you could taste—

“But I do so love hearing your voice,” he sighed, pulling away again with a little rumbly purr that was far too besotted. “And, actually, I find it to be quite a shame. And perhaps one of my many failings,” he drawled, that teasing, spiked, smirk of his curling across his mouth and doing terrible things to the butterflies trapped in your stomach.

“What?” you managed to eek out as he pulled you back flush up against him.

“You’re a traveling minstrel, are you not?” he hummed, rubbing his cheek along yours as he had so many times before. “And yet, I’ve never quite managed to make you sing.”

You gasped into the next kiss and let him maneuver you so that you were pressed back-to-front, with his looming horns casting shadows over the both of you. And gods above, you knew you’d promised that the whole ‘killing you’ comment had just been a playful euphemism, but even you weren’t really sure about that anymore. Your heart certainly seemed determined to beat its way out of your chest, and you did probably need that to go on living. Not that you could find it in you to care even a lick. If you collapsed after all this and never woke up again, you would have at least died happier than most.

Malleus pushed forward, draping his bulk across your back, and you wound up on your knees—collapsed forward on your elbows and cushioned by the soft piles of blankets, and pillows, and every other comfy treasure that the pair of you had worked to find together.

“Did you mean what you said?” he asked, trailing wet, openmouthed, kisses across your shoulder blades.

“What did I say?” you mumbled, arching up under his mouth like a cat being stroked along its spine.

“That you would let me mark you like this,” he said, closing the last of the kisses off with a gentle nip.

Your head lolled to the side as if of its own accord, bearing your throat in a way that had the dragon flat out groaning from above you.

“My fangs are sharp,” he rumbled, rolling his hips down against yours and letting his lips pull back over his canines in an expression that in any other situation you would have called a snarl. “So sharp you might not even feel it. But,” he continued, with another languid grind, “I think I would prefer that you do.”

And how on Earth would you ever have been able to say no to that?

One of the hands ensnaring your waist slid back down south, trailing over the areas he’d already well acquainted himself with. You rolled your hips back into his palm, and something not unlike a hiss ripped its way out of his throat. And then he was pushing forward again with that same, near agonizingly gentle, probing. Even if this time there was a great deal more intent behind it than just feeling around for all the best spots to have you shaking out of your skin.

The glide of his fingers was smoother than you’d been expecting without the aid of oil, or, well, whatever. But then you remembered that magic was a thing, and briefly thanked all those gods you’d been cursing, because at least that was something. And also the fact that this gloriously wonderful dragon had only literally just eaten you out like his fucking immortal existence depended on it, and that’d probably helped quite a lot with the whole ‘making things a bit more slippery’ logic.

That same desperate call of ‘closer, closer, closer’was singing in your blood again, and by the time he’d worked up to two fingers, then three, you were writhing around like all the most ridiculous, overblown, Bard Stereotypes that you’d always hated. Because no one was really that wanton or clingy—it was just shitty, tavern, gossip that Ace liked to use to get a rile out of you. But man alive, if all those busybody bargoers who’d had to sit through your staunch ‘Bard’s Aren’t Actually Like That!’ speeches could see you now.

(Not that you had any delusions about Malleus letting anyone see you like this—what with the way his guttural growls were rolling through your bones like a tangible thing with teeth, and claws, and fire.)

“You look a bit flustered, darling,” he mused, the words a muddied kiss against the hollow of your throat. You couldn’t see his expression past your own, squinting, ridiculousness, but you had a feeling he was teasing you. Or at least really fucking good at ripping the thoughts out of your brain to comment on at his leisure.

“Really?” you gasped, hoping it sounded more annoyed than it probably did. “Why ever might that be?”

You managed to drill enough focus back into your brain to will your eyes to turn and glare up at your enchanting, wonderful, perfect tormentor. And didn’t someone have a lot of nerve trying to poke fun at you when he looked half-a-step away from feral—a fevered red stained high across his cheekbones and mouth parted with a perpetual sort of panting that had thin trails of grey smoke seeping past his fangs to swirl in the air around you.

You breathed in that heady fog and put every last remaining thread of your Bardic Charisma on the attack.

“Well?” you demanded, swaying your hips back against the pulsing heat of his own. “Was all this courtship stuff to make me your mate or wasn’t it?

The sound that punched out of Malleus’s gut was nearly wounded in its intensity, and then he was bullying his way as close into your space as was physically possible—latching onto your mouth from over your shoulder with something that was far more ‘bite’ than ‘kiss,’ and sinking all the way in to the root of him with one, long, push.

Your toes curled on a yelp and you just barely managed to swallow a noise that was even more humiliating than that. It took a few, solid, thrusts for him to figure out how to settle himself inside you without just shoving the both you forward at the hips—skidding through the unstable surface of the fluffy blankets pooled beneath your knees. His clawed fingers came down to dig into the pillows by your head, bracketing you in and creating a point of stabilization amidst all the senseless heat. And with that, your brain had officially abandoned the building. Malleus dipped his hips forward in a particularly sharp roll that had something inside you twitching and tightening on a gasp. You could see the muscles cord along his lower arms, how the tendons of his wrist stood out taught against all the smooth, sculpted, white of him.

Your elbows shook and your shoulders curved forward as you tried to steady yourself. Malleus slipped one of the hands that had bracketed itself by your head to instead curl into the space beneath your chin and help keep you propped upright. The support had your back arching into something new, and his hips rolled down against that fresh angle like it was a challenge. You squeaked, and that horribly embarrassing noise twisted up into something long, and high, and thready when he ground down hard.

“Ah,” he trilled, all animal satisfaction. “There’s that song of yours.”

Whatever sort of obligatory, whining, protest you were about to make was overridden by a hiccupping gasp when he dragged you back against him only to shove forward with enough force that you wound up with your face buried in fabric and your back aching. In a pleasant sort of way—not the ‘he may have literally just fractured my fucking spine’ way. Which, who knew? Maybe that was a possibility here. You were human, and small, and mortal. And he was a beast that sat only a ladder rung down from godhood. But with the heavy, hot, push push push drumming away at your core, you couldn’t find it in you to care if you never walked again.

You’d been prepared for a build—because that’s how it went, right? The slow, romantic, cresting of sparks that would eventually unfurl through the rest of you like a dream. But instead, one moment you were gasping like a damn asthmatic against the strong arm keeping you upright, and the next your gut was snapped tight, and sharp, and hot, and you were wailing into your pillows as a dam you didn’t realize was wearing away broke. You shuddered through the electricity searing your veins, and Malleus snarled over your shoulder.

He bit down into your neck with something that was practically a roar, and you felt your own teeth sink less impressively into the arm that he’d propped beneath your head. He was right—his fangs were sharp. And you were left less feeling like you’d had a chunk of your shoulder chewed into bits, and more like there was just a heavy, hot, pressure burrowing its way into your skin as far as it could go.

You gasped through the lingering, jerky, sparks zipping along your spine, before eventually that endless grinding, and fullness, and the new and very obvious flood of liquid warmth became too much, and you slumped fully on your front to pant into the blankets. Malleus collapsed at your back not long after, and immediately moved to curve himself against you like a pair of foxes in a den—entwined from head to toe. You could feel the snuffle of his breath as he sighed against you, his hands kneading almost absentmindedly into the sore flesh at your hips.

It took a great deal of time for your heartrate to settle back into a semi-stable rhythm, rather than continue its valiant attempt to gallop straight out of your chest. And you could feel the dragon’s own great pulse slowly gentling into a low thump-thump, thump-thump against your hide.

Once you’d melted into something a little less shivery and fucked-out-of-body, Malleus shuffled himself forward and began to drag his tongue in soft strokes against the weeping mark he’d left at the junction of your neck. That weighted pressure had faded into a tempered throb—nothing more sore than the rest of you, to be perfectly honest. Even if you could feel the beginnings of tacky blood trailing down your front. He cleaned you diligently, delicately. Like this new wound of yours was a treasure that rivaled those he kept hoarded away in the cavernous rooms beneath your feet.

“Is it what you expected?” you asked softly, mostly referring to the stark mark now stamped into your skin like a brand, but also too swirled up in contentment to differentiate too much from the pleasant ache burning through your hips. Through your everywhere.

“Better,” he trilled, chest rumbling with something that was too deep to be a purr, but was certainly something like it. He lifted his arm to observe the faint impressions your own teeth had left against the pale skin there. “Though this one will certainly need refreshing.”

“My teeth aren’t as sharp as yours,” you lamented, and he raised a lazy thumb to trail the pad of his finger along your blunted canines. “It’d probably hurt a lot if I tried to leave something more permanent.”

“You speak as if that’s any sort of deterrent.”

You huffed in fond amusement before rolling onto your back to give your muscles a good stretch. With all that jostling around, the sticky sort of wetness beginning to seep along the inside of your thighs became much more obvious. Malleus stared down at the mess between your legs with an expression that was half fascination, half frustration. He reached out with a stern sort of pout on his lips to run a finger through his cooling spend and press what he could back inside you. The sharp, hot, tug that yanked from below your navel was so much worse than any kind of wincing oversensitivity.

His petulant leer shifted back up to your own, uh, not entirely composed expression, and he huffed softly—sending a puff of warm, smoky, breath along your cheeks.

“I’d prefer for you to keep as much of it as possible,” he rumbled, like that wasn’t one of the most unintentionally debauched things you’d ever heard come out of another living being’s mouth. “Your human nose may not be able to discern the difference, but for us drakes, the change in scent is certainly a strong indicator that a mate has been properly claimed and is no longer free for the taking.”

You sniffed pointedly, and all that swam through your head was the heady, musky, perfume of sex—all underlaid by that familiar smoke and petrichor smell of his. Heavier now, maybe. Like the charred remnants of a forest fire being doused beneath the fat drops of spring rain for the first time.

“What?” you giggled good naturedly. “In case some other immortal, all powerful, dragon comes along to steal me away?”

He rumbled under his breath, and the claws at your hips flexed into pinpricks against your skin. Lightly enough to let you know he understood it was only a joke, but probably one that he wasn’t overly fond of nonetheless.

“You are certainly a worthy enough prize,” he said.

“Ah, yes,” you lamented. “With my spindly spells and impeccable ability to regurgitate the most garbage fairytales in existence. You’d have to go to war for my hand.”

“Of course I would,” Malleus said, with such quick certainty it had your heart kicking up a fit all over again.

“Well, if it’s that much of a concern, we can always just keep working at it,” you hummed, a little of that cheekiness tapering off into genuine fondness at the end. “You know, like a layering process.”

“Is that so?” he droned, a lazy, satisfied, grin working its way across his mouth. It was crooked and a little odd on his face—just like the lopsided smile he’d gifted you after you’d handed him a bundle of cheap fabric and stuffing and called it a friend.

“I mean, I still have a whole side of my neck with no teeth marks or anything, Tsunotarou,” you pointed out, and the bark of laughter that erupted from his throat was all dark, velvety, warmth.

“Oh, my dearest little human,” he sighed, far too besotted for a creature that could likely rend the world in two if he so wished. Instead, Malleus Draconia—last of the Great Briar Beasts of Old and Master of the Castle within the Lava Lakes—just tucked his silly, little, bard up tight into his chest, like he could crack open his ribs and hold you there forever. “I’ll definitely be keeping you.”

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heli-writes · 1 month

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A dragon's heart, part 4.

Pairing: Barbarian!Bakugou Katsuki x female!reader

Summary: The dragonblood tribe is known for being cruel, barbarian warriors that slaughter, loot and rape all places they pass through. They are feared among the villagers and even bigger cities. Having lost most of their women to a plague, they're trying to ensure their tribe's survival by kidnapping women from other places. However, they're not the only monsters in human form out there. When y/n experiences this first hand, she has no choice but to ask for help from no other but the barbarian leader Katsuki Bakugou himself.

Disclaimer: mentions of injuries, violence, beheading, blood

[Please don't read if you are sensible to or triggered by the topics mentioned above.]

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5

Series Masterlist

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

At first, y/n watches Katsuki pack by himself. Eventually, he starts barking orders at her that she doesn't get. He keeps pointing at things y/n starts moving his belongings toward his dragon. Katsuki binds the bags onto the saddle with some rope. When he's done, he shakes everything one more time to check if it's secure. Y/n stands next to him feeling a little bit lost. She feels insecure since she doesn't know what's going to happen next.

"Will he take me with him?", she wonders. If he does, what will it mean? She's not stupid. Y/n knows exactly who is standing in front of her. Bakugou Katsuki, leader of the dragonblood tribe, tamer of the biggest beast known to mankind, slaughter of man. The last thing she witnessed herself.

Clearly, she has heard enough stories about his clan. About their ruthlessness, their crimes. How ten of his men can take out an entire village. She shudders when she thinks about what the stories say they do to women. Y/n gnaws at her bottom lip in distress. So far, Katsuki hasn't shown any aggression or ill intentions towards her. She wonders if the stories are lies or at least exaggerations.

Then again, so far she's only seen Katsuki. He is rude and mean. Thinking back on how he laughed at her when she burned her mouth, he also likes seeing people in pain. Moreover, he easily could kill her if he wanted to. What would it be like if she was in a whole group of men like Katsuki? Group dynamics often develop a strange momentum.

The point is, does she want Katsuki to take her with him? If he takes her back to his home, she would have to live with these people she's heard so many terrible things about. She doesn't speak their language, she doesn't know anything about their culture. How would she even fit it? Y/n shakes her head trying to push the thoughts out of her head. She can't even be sure that that's Katsuki's plan. In addition, what other option does she have? She knows her chances alone out here are grim. Teaming up with the big scary men might just be a chance to survive.

Just when she decided that, as long as no other option opens up, she might as well go with the flow, Katsuki whistles at her sharply. Y/n is ripped out of her thoughts. He stares at her angrily and shouts instructions at her. When he gestures at her to come over, y/n walks closer to him.

When y/n stands next to him and the winged animal, Katsuki explains something speaking rather quickly and wildly gesturing. When y/n doesn't do what he wants her to do, he grabs her hips and lifts her up the dragon. Y/n throws a leg around the saddle and Katsuki pushes her up. Then Katsuki lifts himself up into the saddle. Sitting behind y/n, Katsuki grabs the reigns and gives the dragon a sign.

While y/n still feels anxious about being so high up in the air, she's not as scared as last time. She still clings onto the handle until her knuckles are all white. Katsuki's broad arms cage her in which gives her some sort of comfort. At least she can't fall off on either side.

After a while, she relaxes and suddenly becomes painfully aware of how close Katsuki is to her. She can feel his abs pressed against her back and his breath against her ear. She shivers even though Katsuki's body warmth keeps her comfortably warm.

Katsuki seems to have a plan for where they were going. They fly for about two hours before the dragon lands on the outskirts of the forest. Katsuki gets down first before he helps y/n get down. Y/n feels a bit unsteady on her legs. The inside of her thighs ache and y/n excuses herself behind a tree. Lifting up her skirt, she takes a look at the tender skin on the inside of her legs. They're red and sore. Y/n's surprised the skin hasn't grazed off to a point where she's bleeding. Her dress wasn't made for riding a horse or a dragon.

*~*~*

Katsuki watches y/n disappear behind the tree suspiciously. He noticed how she was still not comfortable with flying. He wonders whether she needs to piss or puke. Scoffing, he turns around and starts setting up camp. When y/n wobbles back, she starts helping him.

They were just about to undo the knots of the rope that secured the bags onto the saddle, when the dragon shifts and lets out a deep, threatening growl. Y/n shys away. "Woops, does he not like that?", she exclaims. Simultaneously, Katsuki swirls around watching the edge of the forest. His hand rest on the hilt of his sword.

Suddenly, the buzzing sound of an arrow fills the air. Katsuki grips y/n's arm and yanks her to he side just in time. Her injured shoulder almost gets pierced again. Next, a bunch or rough-looking men attack their little party with roars of war. "Bandits.", y/n thinks. Katuski yells something at her and gestures at the dragon.

The dragon moves quickly. One second he was behind them, the next he is in front of y/n biting a man's head off. Y/n ducks behind the beast. She hears Katsuki swearing and blades clashing against each other. Y/n rumbles through her back for her hunting knife.

Suddenly, a hand is pushed onto her mouth and an arm grabs her midsection. The person tries to drag her away. Y/n struggles against the man's grip. "Keep struggling and you only make it worse for yourself.", the man tells her.

The dragon blocks the view and y/n can't spot or yell at Katsuki. The man keeps pulling her backward. Instead of panicking, y/n suddenly feels very calm. Living on the road, the wandering folk teach all their children basic self-defense. The scenario of being grabbed from behind is something her elders have practiced her a hundred times.

She prepares to free herself out of the man's grip. She stomps onto his foot and bites his hand simultaneously. She bites so hard, she can taste the metallic flavor of blood. The man yells in distress and lets go of her in his surprise. Swiftly, y/n draws out her tiny knife. She goes straight for his liver. She should've gone for his Adam's apple, piercing his throat, as her elders taught her but somehow she's not courageous or fierce enough to do so. Instead, she stabs him in the liver. However, she's not sure if her tiny knife could even cut deep enough to harm the organ. Nevertheless, it's enough for the man to fall onto his back and clutch the wound in pain.

Y/n swirls around. The dragon is busy fending off some bandits. Somewhere behind it, Katsuki's fighting. Suddenly, Katsuki stumbles backwards and into y/n's view. There's a cut on his bicep and cheek. He holds a sword in his head that drips with blood. Three more bandits come into view, all three attacking the blonde at the same time.

"I've got to do something!", y/n thinks in a panic, "He can't fight them all on his own!". It's not a rational thought. Her elders always drilled into her head that the moment someone carries a knife or another kind of weapon, you do not try to fight them. Despite that, y/n finds herself rushing towards them. Without a real plan, she jumps onto on of the bandit's back. Her weight is enough to make the bandit stumble backwards. It also throws off the other two momentarily giving Katsuki enough time to swing his sword at one of them. He cuts open one of the bandit's throats similarly as he did to the man from y/n's village.

Meanwhile, y/n is still holding on tightly to the third guy's back who tries to shake her off. Y/n clings onto his throat for dear life and the bandit has trouble breathing. Luckily, bandits usually are not skilled swordsmen thus the man is too disoriented to get the idea that he could use his weapon against y/n. Unfortunately, he's still larger and stronger than y/n so he does manage to shake her off eventually.

Y/n falls onto her butt. An uncomfortable pain shoots up her injured shoulder. The man swirls around to her clutching his throat and raising his saber. His face is contorted in anger. "You little bitch!", he roars as he raises his weapon to strike.

Katsuki sees what is happening out of the corner of his eyes. He's still fighting the other bandit but upon noticing that y/n is about to get killed, he turns to the side in an attempt to rush to her aide. This gives the bandit an opening to strike. While Katsuki reacts quickly enough to stop the bandit from piercing him with his weapon completely, the bandit still manages to cut deeply into Katsuki's right leg.

Meanwhile, y/n is quick to roll over and the saber misses her by inches. Quickly she's on her feet again, crouching and holding her knife up in defense. The man takes another swing at her but before he can fulfill the action, his head is severed from the rest of his body.

While y/n wasn't looking, Katsuki killed the second bandit and went to her rescue. The bandit's head drops to the ground with a loud 'thup'. The rest of his body falls to the ground still twitching. Y/n stares at the sight in front of her with wide eyes. The sight doesn't seem to faze Katsuki at all but he is out of breath and his face in contorted in pain. He grabs y/n's injured arm and pulls her towards the dragon who is still fighting off some bandits. From the edge of the forest more cries of war are heard as reinforcements of the bandits run onto the open.

"Shit.", Katsuki curses. There are too many even for him. Where on earth were these assholes hiding? He should've been more observant. He shouldn't have been so distracted by this stupid woman. He pulls y/n towards the beast and pushes her up. Y/n is quick to react and pulls herself up into the saddle just as Katsuki does just seconds after her.

The dragon beats his wings and the force of the air sends a few bandits backwards. Some still try to climb the dragon in an attempt to get to Katsuki and y/n. When one manages to grab Katsuki's foot, y/n stabs her knife into the man's hand who immediately lets go.

As they rise into the air, more bandits lose hold and fall onto the ground. Arrows are shot at the three of them and Katsuki pushes y/n's head down in an attempt to stop her from getting shot in the face. Once they are high enough that the bandits can't reach them, Katsuki lets go of y/n's head.

Just when y/n thinks they're safe, Katsuki turns the dragon around and steers it back to the bandits. "Is he absolutely out of his mind?", y/n thinks as they descend again. However, they never touch land. Instead, the dragon lets out a rumbling sound and spits waves of never-ending fire. Suddenly, the world is burning and hot. Y/n hears the cries of the bandits and the heat licking at her legs.

Quickly they leave again and y/n watches the bandits and parts of the forest burn to the ground over her shoulder. Just when they are out of sight, she notices Katsuki's heavy breathing behind her. She also notices how his grip on her isn't as tight as it was before. That's when she feels a warm liquid drop down her leg. Katsuki rests his head on her shoulder.

Y/n lets go of the handle of the saddle and grabs his hands with both of hers stabilizing his hold on the reigns. The last thing she wants is for both of them to fall off the damn dragon.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Tag list: @graviewaviee @cosmicbreathe @tsukikoxo @nnubee @witchbishsblog @elajede @bsallergy @frxcless @berryvioo @eyesforbkg @shamelesjaroflaffytaffy @pastelbaby1111 @iamlizardgod @plvt0fvtvre @hello-peanutdoodle-blog @guccirosegold @kookiemyfeelsposts @sweetblueworm @54fangirl @sakurarr1122 @rv19 @leeliyah @king-dynamight @confused-smol-fan @xmaudx @waterstarz @pinkwhiskerglitter @adeline96 @zoom1374 @fingui @giuli-in-earth @colouringfrogssittinginleaves @futuristicallykawaiiturtle @tragedyofabrokensoul @dynakats @rebel-loves-anime @cloudxluv @itsssyagurll @sunshineandwitchery @cloudxluv @hollykanuki @atouchofmidnight @nutellaenjoyer @musicbecky @miacitocco @cassouandco @penguinlovestowrite @sleepykittycx

[Please comment if you'd like to be tagged in future chapters]

#mha #bnha #bakugou imagine #bakugou katsuki x reader #bnha bakugou #bakugou x reader #bakugou katsuki #barbarian bakugou x y/n #barbarian bakugou x reader #barbarian bakugou imagine #fantasy au bakugou #mha fantasy au #bnha fantasy au #bakugou katuski x y/n

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honey-milk-depresso · 1 year

Note

Hi hi Honey! I hope you're doing well and taking care of yourself!

how about crack headcanons for Malleus, Silver, and Lilia reacting to hearing reader shouting "they've had it with Adeuce and Grim" then chasing them with a broom. 😭 Idk it was just something that randomly popped into my head. Take your time <3

TW: Slight swearing, I will now put that as a warning as my friend's sister saw a cuss word and I will never forgive myself for letting her read my fics-

TWST S/o's had it with Adeuce + Grim

Malleus Draconia

It's a beautiful day outside.

Birds are singing, flowers are blooming,

On days like these...

Wait-

Well, on a nice day like this, Malleus was strolling merrily down his way to see you in Ramshackle.

The thought of you greeting him with a sweet, cheerful smile warms his heart and it made him more hurried in his footsteps, walking towards your dorm as he anticipated your cordial greeting.

And as he knocked on the door...

"I SWEAR TO GOD YOU THREE- WHAT THE FUCK-"

Malleus blinked, as he peered from behind the opened door. There he found you standing above with a broom in hand, the two first years and tanuki he had learnt about from you, kneeling with their heads bowed and hung with shame. Were those... anemones on their heads?

"YOU'RE TELLING ME YOU MADE A DEAL WITH SOME SHADY OCTOPUS IN OCTAVINELLE FOR AN EXAM?? YOU SHOULD'VE JUST STUDIED WITH ME AND JACK-"

Malleus quietly closed the door; thankful you had not noticed. He had definitely stepped in at the wrong time and to see you so unruffled and... fierce. No, that might be an understatement.

The dragon fae never would have thought you'd be a completely different person when you're upset. Whatever those three might have done surely had you erupt.

He doesn't want to know why you had a broom in the first place...

Lilia Vanrouge

He had met those three troublemakers during their first week of college, and he could already tell they were bound to create trouble.

Lilia went to Ramshackle on a particularly normal day. He was quite excited for you to try the dish he painstakingly made, and this time he finally had Silver's approval as he did not spat out the whole thing (at least).

He was proud of it, and whatever he had learnt from his Master Chef Class, he hoped you would be impressed by it.

On his way, he knocked on the door. "S/o-"

"YOU FUCKS- WHAT THE HELL- WHO ATE MY LUNCH"

"IT WASN'T ME- I SWEAR-"

"ASS TRAPPOLA, YOU BETTER GET ASS HERE OR I'M GONNA FUCK YOU UP-"

"PREFECT, PLEASE CALM DOWN-" "NYEHH- HENCHMAN'S SCARY-"

"BACK OFF-"

Lilia was cut short by the muffled screaming behind the door, and he wondered if what happened. He peered from the window and saw the chaos unfold: you chasing Ace with a broom, who was backed in the corner. Deuce and Grim were holding you back, as you almost gnawed on Deuce's arm.

My oh my, s/o. Who knew you were so chaotic? He decided maybe now wasn't the time to... say hello, and he went off.

"What friends they are... Fufufu..."

Silver

Silver had decided to meet you after a long day. He was up from classes till club activities ended, and he just wanted to take a good long sleep in the comfort of your presence.

He was desperate enough to brisk walk his way towards Ramshackle, urgently wanting to seek rest and comfort in your arms. He pictured you embracing him while whispering to him about how much you love him as he loves you as he would slowly be lulled to sleep by your voice...

"ACE- GRIM-"

"OH SHIT-"

"PREFECT WAIT-"

"DEUCE GET OFF ME-"

Silver was pulled back to reality and his daydreaming was cut short by screaming in Ramshackle.

He looked towards the window, seeing Ace running at full speed as you hunted him down with a broom. Grim was clawing onto the redhead's jacket as Deuce hurriedly followed you, trying to stop you from committing further acts of violence.

He could hear from Ace: "STOP- DON'T HIT ME, I SWEAR IT WASN'T ME-"

"THEN WHERE'S THE LUNCH, HUH-"

"IT WAS GRIM-"

"DON'T THROW ME UNDER THE BUS-"

"PREFECT, PLEASE DON'T KILL US-"

Yikes... Not a good time to enter now, is it? Silver made a U-turn back to Diasomnia as he sighed, reminding himself not to make you upset. Ever.

"I'll just go back to my room..."

Reblogs help! ^^

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just-some-random-blogger · 1 year

Note

Hello amazing blogger! I've been drowning in WIPs and rl chaos lately, and really need to take care of myself for a bit.

Do you mind doing a Daemon blurb where he tries to make her feel better with slow, intimate sex at noticing she's depressed?

Thank you, have a lovely day 💐

Lies Are Treason

Daemon Targaryen x Reader

Summary: The fire that drew your husband to you in the first place is now dwindling, and that was a serious problem.

Word Count: 3k+

Warnings: Opens with violence, fem!reader, wife!reader, soft!daemon T_T i love him, reader is not having a nice time, smut (reader kinda cries mid fucking and gets emotional, praise kink, bratty!reader, cock warming, cream pie), typos, etc.

A/N: hello my lover <3 i give you kiss. i am honored that you reached out to me during a time like this. i often wonder what value my fanfics hold in the grand scheme of the world other than silencing the loud romance ideas i have with fictional men i will never meet T_T, but then i think about how reading and writing fanfics makes me feel happy, and so i only hope my brain farts do something similar for someone else yeah may the imaginary dick imma give you suffice to alleviate a fraction of your heavy thoughts HAHAAHAH

Daemon knew.

He felt it in the way he woke up earlier than his lover, the way he had to slow his pace as not to leave her behind, how he had to chose what she would wear, and now, how he had to look for her, since he'd no idea where she gone.

There was something wrong. Something was bothering his wife and someone somewhere was going to pay for it.

In this moment, it was your handmaiden who was quivering in fear with Dark Sister between her eyes.

"My lord," she wept, "I- I-"

"You are her helper, are you not?" Daemon seethed, stepping closer to the poor, innocent servant girl who had fallen on her hind, terrified by her master's cold accusations, "your job is to keep my lady wife in your sight and attend to her every need."

"My prince," she shudders, raising her hands, "the princess is not kept by anyone-" tears streak her face, "-you know this."

Daemon hums deeply, moving stray hair away from the girl's face with his blade, "and yet the fact that you do not know her whereabouts enrages me still."

"My prince!" a separate panicked voice calls.

"What?!" Daemon quips, not prying his eyes on his target.

"The guards say they've seen the princess in the dragon pit."

Daemon turns away from the quivering girl, to the other that was fighting to save her fellow servant, "and you understand that lying to me is treason."

Dark Sister is upon the other's neck now.

Daemon moves closer to her, annoyance and boredom lacing his expression, "if I find your information false, not only will I return fucking fed up, but I will have the head of the guards who muttered the nonsense to you."

Daemon watches her squirm underneath his weapon.

He raises his brows, "well? The guards names?"

"Oswald and James, your grace," she shudders, cheeks stained with tears.

Daemon pulls his sword away and tuts, "you better not be wrong."

One could only imagine the collective relief across the castle after Daemon made it to the pit and saw who he had been searching for all along.

I hear a deep sigh and turn over my shoulder.

"You know I nearly killed your handmaiden a few moments ago."

My hand that was stroking Caraxes' face stills as I look off to my husband who was walking over, "what? Why?!"

"Well," he starts, only continuing once he was next to me, stroking Caraxes all the same. His dragon snorts hotly in greeting as Daemon continues, "my wife had gone missing."

I don't even roll my eyes at him as I look away and mutter, "overreacting, as always." I gently stroke the scales beneath my palm, "you will apologize with tears.'

I only turn to Daemon when he grabs my hand. His face is tense and his grip on me is firm, "at least I'm in character."

I knit my brows at him, tilting my head, "are you saying I am not?"

I turn from Caraxes and walk backwards until I can lean against the creature's large body. Daemon does not release my hand and follows me as I do so.

"I am bossing you around, clearly," I state.

"Yet there is no grit to it," he retorts.

Before I could respond to what my husband told me, Caraxes, who had been lying on the ground, begins to rumble softly. He lift his head, shaking it before craning his neck to look at his master.

The two stare at each other, wordlessly communicating, then the dragon pulls his head back down and grunts.

When Daemon turns back to me, he sighs, muttering something softly in High Valyrian.

I attempt to decipher the words, "Caraxes is not feeling good?"

"No," Daemon retorts, reaching his hand out to my cheek, "it is you who is not feeling good."

I stare at the man who inches nearer up until our chests are pressed together. Unable to bare his gaze, I turn away and nudge Caraxes with my elbow, "snitch."

Daemon sighs, leaning down as his hands snake around me. His face finds its spot at the crook of my neck, and by the curve of my shoulder, he presses a kiss. He rubs his cheek against mine as he whines, "you think I do not already know?"

I feel disarmed by his words, so much so I shift my weight and lean fully against him, pressing my face on his shoulders as my hands cling on his sides, "I hoped you would continue to ignore it."

"Nothing was ignored," he pulls me closer to him, propping his chin on the top of my head, "a ridiculous thought really," he tightens his arms around me, "why do you think I agreed to letting you drink until you could not walk the other night?"

I hum, tilting my head up so I could brush my lips on his neck, "I thought you just wanted your wife to relive her youthful alcoholism."

He draws shapeless patterns on my back, "I knew you needed a release."

"Release he said," I chuckle, "ironic when I took in so much wine that my belly swelled like I was pregnant."

He does not respond to this.

A moment of silence passes after.

Daemon begins to rub my back and I feel like I could fall asleep in his arms. I close my eyes and pull away from him however, hands instinctively finding their way to my husbands shoulders.

His hands are firmly gripping on my sides as I feel him lean down and press his forehead against mine.

I rub my thumbs on the fabric of his clothing and simply savor his presence.

"Speak to me," he whispers like a plea.

I raise my chin, eyes still closed. I grab his face and kiss him; warmth envelopes me the moment I do so. His hands force me closer and his lips are hungrier than mine. When I pull away, he chases me with one last peck and places another on my cheek.

"I do not know what to tell you, Daemon," I mumble, finally opening my eyes.

Daemon pulls back, looking down at me with concern, as if trying to will words out of his mouth.

"I just... fell unlike myself, and even Caraxes seemed desperate about it." I brush his silver locks behind his ear as I mutter, "I don't know. I am nearly as bad at this as you are."

His hands catch my cheeks. He caresses the area before he slides his palms all the way back down to my waist. He gently rocks me against him, averting his eyes in contemplation. He kneads on my flesh as he decides, "then let me do something that I am good at."

He turns back to me as I link my fingers behind his nape, "and what are you good at, husband?"

"Releasing into my pretty wife as she cries out my name," he sighs as he bends to kiss my neck.

I moan when he nibbles my skin, "Daemon."

He responds by muttering my name as he pulls away. His eyes locks on mine, as if searching for permission.

I place a hand on his cheek and brush my thumb on his lips, "take me back to our quarters."

Without another word, he grabs the hand on his cheek and drags me away.

The very moment we are in our chambers, he closes the door and grabs me, attacking me with kisses like a man starved.

Daemon pushes me backwards, fingers nimbly making its way down the laces on the back of my dress, up until my calves hit the bed.

Before he pushes me on the mattress, he pulls my dress down, dropping to his knees. He kisses my sternum on the way as he works on getting me out of my clothing. I bite my lip as I look down at him.

I lightly comb my fingers on his scalp as he bites my thighs while urging me out of my dress.

"Daemon."

He looks up at me.

I grab his cheeks, as he stands. Once he is towering over me again, I begin to undo his own clothing, pulling him out of his tunic and sinking down to free him of his trousers. He doesn't grant me the courtesy of biting his thighs as he pulls away, kicking his pants off and grabs me, pushing me back on the bed.

He allows me to crawl up on my elbows until my head is on the pillows. He doesn't waste time and gets on top me, positioning himself in between my legs.

He hums in appreciation of the heat against him. He praises me in High Valyrian and grabs my thighs as he rubs against me, "so pretty and warm.

I groan at the feel of him grinding on my sensitive nub. He slows as he sinks down on my shoulder, peppering kisses all over my skin. I wrap my legs around him as I dig my fingers into the roots of his hair.

He props his hands to the side and bucks his hips against me. I whine, pressing my lips on any part of his skin that I can reach.

"Daemon," I mutter against him, "you feel so good."

He sucks on my skin then bites down, making my stomach flutter. He connects our lips together and squeezes my sides, "I'll make you feel better, my love."

After saying this, Daemon sheathes his hard length that was wet with my slick. I roll my eyes back at the feel of him stretching me out.

He grunts, thrusting shallowly, but then stills as he sings me praises, "so nice and ready for me, sweet girl."

"Always ready for you," I mewl, licking his lower lip before grazing it between my teeth.

Daemon rubs my sides as he moans at the feeling of my bites.

He begins to move against me, but he barely pulls out, as if fearing the loss of me. I bring my hands to his hips and dig my nails in, "more, more, more."

He shushes me, then clicks his tongue, "so impatient."

"Break me, Daemon," I mutter, helplessly, moving my hips in sync with his, "please, I need you to fuck me."

He hisses when I rip at his skin. He pushes his face against mine, forcing my cheeks on the pillow, "behave, little one. I will not be bullied by someone who squirms at the very feel of my touch."

I whine again at both his words and the feel of his mouth on my jaw. I half expect a punishing thrust to be had. When he does not relent his excruciatingly slow pace, I begin to beg, "Daemon, please, please, please! I want to-"

His hands forcing my wrists to the sides shut me up with a gasp.

Daemon hovers his face above mine, and I nearly choke at the sight of him, "I told you to behave."

He rolls his hips into me, still so leisurely but so deliciously that I cannot contain my moan. Yet it's not enough. I want him to ruin me.

I whine out his name again, "Daemon please."

He sighs at the sounds I make and pushes himself up on his arms, "you know better than anyone that no one can change my mind once its made."

I chew on my lips as I look up at him. My desperate need of him makes my eyes begin to water. My hands dart up to his cheeks as I complain, "I can change your mind, my love. Please, please."

Daemon's dark eyes take in my wanton figure. He leans into my pulse and kisses it, "the world has broken you enough," he draws out a long breath when I clench around him desperately.

When he curses in High Valyrian and he sinks back down against my face, I mistake it as defeat. I seal him against me tightly and nip at his neck. I find myself ceasing my nibbling when I hear him whisper against my ear, "just let me love you tonight, my dear. Let me show you how much you mean to me."

Daemon then, although still brutally slow, begins to thrust more thoroughly, pulling out farther and plunging deeper. The sensation has me reeling and my stomach begins to tense.

"My pretty wife," Daemon groans, rutting against me, "so lovely, so soft, and all mine."

My nails find his skin again, scratching all the way to the center of his back.

He moans sucking at my neck as he continues his ministrations.

"I would burn the whole world if that's what it took to mend your heart."

I moan his name in response, voice not ceasing as it draws out pleasured noises. I look to him, trying to find his face, but he's too lost in his movements and too snug against me.

I screw my eyes shut when he finally begins to quicken.

I squeal before I speak, "yes, Daemon," I grunt, "so good- like that- more."

He pants, hand coming up to my neck, "I would do anything for you," he kisses my jaw, "you know this, right?"

I whine as I nod, "yes, Daemon, yes, yes, yes, yes-"

"So, let me do this. Let me take care of you," he mutters, "do not withdraw from me again."

When I open my eyes and catch his gaze, my throat goes dry and my eyes begin to spill with water. I groan out his name in a manner I am so not sure of.

He kisses the tears that begin to fall down my face and snaps his hips quicker, "take solace in me the way I do you."

My voice is too preoccupied with whines that I do not get to reply.

The bed begins to squeak and knock on the wall at his ferosity.

Daemon seals my whimpers against his lips as pressure begins to build within me. My lashes, dampened with tears, begin to flutter at the feel of my husband. At the rate he was going, my release was swift and inevitable. He drags his lips up to my forehead, kissing my nose and eyelids tenderly as he does, juxtaposing the roughness of his severity in my core.

I come around him all at once, growling his name in pleasure, tensing tightly then turning into putty.

Daemon mutters my name as well, over and over, until I feel his hotness spread inside me. I nearly choke on my spit at the feel of his unrelenting snapping even after the fact.

Just when I think he will not stop, he begins to grow sloppy. I sigh as he eventually halts. By then, I am plainly aware of the feel of his seed overflowing, though he is still snug within me.

Although I am utterly boneless beneath him, I manage to tighten my limbs around frame, absolutely unwilling to free him from where he was. The last of his movement fade and I fell utterly spent of his love.

Daemon presses a kiss on my cheek, hands coming to my sides, "I am here, my love. I will not leave."

Without warning, my lips begin to quiver.

I am suddenly overcome with emotion. I begin to feel my throat and chest tighten as sadness creeps out of me, finally seeing its chance.

I force myself not to cry, but I am powerless when Daemon begins to hush me, "sweet girl, it'll be alright." I am broken by the time he repeats, "I am here."

I bring my hands to his shoulder blades and knead at the area, "I need you, Daemon. I can't be without you, ever. I love you so much."

He kisses me as he nods, "I know. I would go mad without you by my side," he kisses me again, drawing out a long breath before continuing, "I love you like I have not known love before."

He allows me to empty my sorrows against him, comforted by his mere presence in the silence.

Sobs beginning to die down, I turn to him and bring my palms to his cheeks. He lifts his head to look down upon me and brushes his nose against mine.

I repeat, as if I hadn't made myself clear, "I love you."

"I love you," he repeats not a second too late, then kisses my lips, "I love you so fucking much."

I nod rapidly, kissing every inch of his face, "thank you for this, my love," I sigh and readjust my legs around him, "I did not know I needed it."

The vibrations of his laughter cause me to whimper. He places a kiss on the top of my head, "spoiled brats hardly ever do."

"I'm not spoiled," I furrow my brows and pout, "you're the one who grew up..." I moan, "a prince."

His minute hip movements tease out another sound out of me.

I whine in protest, "Daemon, please, I can't."

He clicks his tongue, "see? Pretty girls like you should take what they are given graciously without complaints," he brushes his nose against me, "especially when it is a generous gift from her prince."

I release a sigh once he ends his torture.

"Still," Daemon smirks, "I could not bare to make my wife cry even more."

"You can make me cry, if you want," I mumble as I kiss his shoulder, "just let me stay like this for a while," I rub his back, "I like it when I'm full of you."

Daemon relaxes on top of me and I relish the weight of him.

"I like it when you're full of me too."

#daemon fanfic #daemon smut #daemon x reader #daemon x wife!reader #daemon targaryen fanfic #daemon #daemon targaryen #daemon targaryen smut #daemon fluff #daemon targaryen x reader #daemon targaryen x you #soft!daemon #daemon fic #caraxes baby boy #house of the dragon fanfic #hotd fanfic #targaryen smut

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cosmerelists · 1 month

Text

Top 12 Sanderson RAFOs that Haunt Me

[SPOILERS! For Stormlight and Mistborn (both eras) especially]

"RAFO" = "Read and Find Out," AKA, a question that Sanderson says may be answered in a future book. Here, then, are Sanderson's "Read and Find Out" answers that most haunt me...insofar as I'm desperate to know how the answers will play out in the future!

(I'll link to @onlycosmere or the Coppermind for the sources!)

#12: Where is Design in Lost Metal?

Whenever Hoid appears in a book chronologically later than Stormlight 4, we all freak out if Design is somehow not there. There was (seemingly) no Design in Tress and no Design in Lost Metal. Someone asked about the Lost Metal and got RAFO'd (here). Sanderson's response of "oooh, excellent question" makes me especially curious. Like, does something happen to Design? Or is Design some sort of object that we don't realize is Design? So curious!

#11: Is Spook still alive?

Someone asked if Spook is still alive, and Sanderson RAFO'd it (here). I'll admit; I'm mostly curious about this because I'm curious about Kelsier and how he drew Spook into his terrible (?) schemes. And it's always interesting when those characters from early books come back. I wouldn't mind seeing Spook around again!

#10: Taravangian's Perfect Day

Someone asked if anything else of note happened on Taravangian's Perfect Day, and Sanderson said yes (!) and then RAFO'd the details (here). I can't even begin to guess what this might refer to, but it feels pretty important. I wonder what it means!

#9: Valor Will Be Mentioned in Stormlight 5

Well, name-dropped anyway (here). Valor is one of the few remaining shards we don't know much about, so I'm curious as to what we'll learn about her in Stormlight 5 and in what context she'll be name-dropped. I'm not as curious as I should be, I guess, because I frankly can't keep all of the shards straight. But it'll still be cool!

#8: Renarin's Detective Skills

Somebody asked if Renarin figured out on his own that Adolin killed Sadeas, and Sanderson gave it a "partial RAFO" (here). I really hope we find out more about this, maybe when Renarin is the flashback character. I want to know how he knew, and what he did with that knowledge. More Renarin overall, tbh!

#7: Hoid Dated a Dragon

Hoid dated a dragon once; it's canon (here). But which one? That we're still waiting to see! I'll admit; I'm curious.

#6 Were Glys and Tumi Dead-Eyes?

Someone asked if Glys & Tumi were dead-eyes before Sja-anat got to them (here). Sanderson RAFO'd it and said it was a good question (!!). That doesn't mean the theory is true, of course, but it means it COULD be true! And if dead-eyes can be restored by Sja-anat, then........is there hope for Maya???

#5: Missing Yellow From Pinter Ink

Someone asked Sanderson about the hion colors, and how blue and magenta are printer colors, and how yellow is missing. Sanderson indicated that this was exactly as he had planned and RAFO'd the missing yellow "ink" (here). Later, Sanderson explained a bit more that if there were a third Hion line, it would be yellow, and hinted that there was a reason it was missing (here). Sanderson has elsewhere indicated that "yin yang" type investiture is a Cosmere-wide phenomenon...which means...what? That there should be another magic outside of the dichotomy? That it's missing? Just from the hions or from all magic systems? Does this have something to do with aethers as the non-Adonalsium magic type?

I'm not smart enough with Cosmere science to know, but I AM very curious!

#4: If Kelsier and Moash Meet

When asked what would happen if Kelsier and Moash meet, Sanderson RAFO'd it (here). Now, that doesn't necessarily mean that they will meet, of course...but it means they COULD. And now I want it--I want it so much! #Let-Moash-join-the-Ghostbloods-as-Kelsier's-righthand-man-2024

#3: Ask Me About July 18

I think much of the fandom is aware of this RAFO, where Sanderson tweeted that we should all remind him to talk more about the important scene that he wrote for Stormlight 5 on July 18 (here). Like everyone, I am desperate to know what scene he is talking about. The Odium duel? Renarin and Rlain getting together?? Szeth and Kaladin petting a baby sheep while they talk about their feelings??? It could be anything!

#2: Rat skulls glow on Threnody?!

People who pay attention to my every comment on this blog may know that Threnody is my favorite Cosmere planet, and so I was definitely interested to see this RAFO, where Sanderson said that...rat skulls glow on Threnody for a reason?? (here) Not only did he say that they glow for a good reason, but he also "laugh[ed] gleefully" apparently. I am so curious...and so alarmed.

#1: Hoid Drinking Perfume Will Be Relevant

But the "RAFO" that most haunts me is from way back in 2016 (here), when someone asked why Hoid was drinking perfume in Bands of Mourning...and Sanderson RAFO'd it, saying that he planned to delve into it one day. D-Delve into WHAT exactly? How could it possibly be Cosmere-relevant that Hoid was drinking perfume? Is it about where he got it? Is there a perfume-drinking-based magic system??

WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN

#cosmere #cosmerelists #stormlight archive #stormlight archive spoilers #mistborn #mistborn spoilers #Hoid #Spook #Kelsier #Taravangian #Threnody

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hellfirenacht · 6 months

Text

Wing Man Part 3

A/N: This fic is all vibes, no plot so it's hard to write lol. I have a few ideas now thanks to the wonderful @crocwork-clockodile and @hellfiredarling 💜

As usual, typos are fixed live and in post lol

Summary: Steve ‘the Hair’ Harrington is your best friend, and is constantly striking out. Sick of this, you two make a deal; you’ll wing man for each other. Hooking Steve up with dates is easy, but he finds himself struggling to find you a date. At least, until Dustin starts talking about his new cool friend Eddie.

Part 1 Part 2

Steve did not show back up for at least a half hour after he ‘went to the bathroom’. Had you not been in your current situation, you would have made fun of him for being ‘backed up’ or something along those lines.

But in all honesty, you hardly even noticed that he was gone. When Eddie dropped the puck the world had faded into a whirlwind of clacking, yelling, and pitting children against each other. With the sudden death match, Dustin had won. You had taken Mike's place, giving him a condescending pat on the head. He hadn’t been pleased about the situation, but at least it kept him from saying whatever rule-grudge that he held against Eddie.

To your surprise, Eddie had stuck around to watch the match between you and Dustin. You tried not to be too nervous as the match went on, but your freshman friend was your saving grace even as he kicked your ass.

“Eddie’s been the leader of Hellfire for years now.” Dustin said, dropping the puck down and hitting it. “He’s always been the DM.”

“Except for Chris Morrison.” you said.

“Yeah except that guy.” Dustin nodded.

“He started the club, but I made it the merry band of bandits and misfits that it is today.” Eddie said, his hands resting against the side of the table, leaning forward. You’d only been chatting with him and Dustin for a few minutes, but you had quickly learned that Eddie was not the type to stay still for very long.

“You’re gonna get your finger smashed if you keep your hand there.” you said, glancing at how close his fingers were to the smooth surface of the rink. “You’re putting a lot of trust in geometry that this puck isn’t going to crush your hand. It’s already tried to kill me once.” You doubted that the heavy silver rings on his fingers would help at all.

Eddie looked down at his hands and pulled back, just in time for the puck to nearly hit where his fingers had been. “Shit, I didn’t even notice.”

“I notice everything.” You said, not noticing as Dustin smacked the puck at an angle that went directly into your goal. “I notice some things.”

Dustin laughed, and Eddie even grinned at the joke. With that point it was game set and match, or something like that.

“Alright, I’m going to go win some tickets now.” Dustin said, putting the clacker? Paddle? Not-Hockey Stick? Down. You still didn’t know what it was called, but luckily air hockey probably wouldn’t come up again later.

You expected Eddie to leave again, but instead he leaned back against the table, now free to let his fingers dangle without fear of being crushed.

“So you really were interested in Hellfire when you were still in school?” he asked, tilting his head over at you. That same distant and unreadable expression on his face. You really wished that you knew what he was thinking right now.

“Yeah, I saw you guys always having fun so I thought I wanted to try.” you said. “But, you know. Chris Morrison.”

“Forget about Chris Morrison.” Eddie turned towards you, standing upright and looking down at you. How did he feel so tall all of the sudden? How did he keep doing that? What magic switch was he able to turn on and off in his brain to make him go from ‘just a guy’ to ‘hey, I’m in charge here.’? “What made you have an interest in Dungeons and Dragons?”

“The dragons first, and then the dungeons.” It was the first thing that popped into your head, and you immediately realized it was maybe a little stupid and sarcastic. To be fair, you also were a little stupid and sarcastic, but with the way he was looking at you, Eddie wanted a real answer. The look on his face was actually a little funny, the way his whole face fell in annoyance.

Right, he didn’t know you. You didn’t know him. He was still trying to decide if you were some sort of friend or foe. You suspected that if Dustin hadn’t chatted with you so easily through your match with him Eddie wouldn’t have bothered talking to you more.

Maybe you should fire Steve and make Dustin your wing man instead.

He didn’t immediately leave though, which made you assume that you were being given a second chance to give him a real answer.

“Alright, I played a lot of make-believe as a kid.” you said. “Then as I got older, people stopped playing, but I wasn’t ready to be done. Then when I heard about this club where you could play make-believe again, I thought it would let me have that feeling again. I thought it’d be cool to, I don’t know, have people to play with again.”

It was a childish answer, but it was a real one. Everything in your life after middle school had been a steady monotonous stream of ‘work, home, work, school, home, school function, work, home’.

“Hellfire Club isn’t Make-Believe Club.” Eddie said, still staring you down. “Yeah, it’s a fantasy game but we take it seriously. It’s not all princesses and fairy tales.”

Actually, this guy might be getting on your nerves now.

“You’re taking my answer awful personally.” you said, straightening up under his gaze. You didn’t care how intimidating he was trying to be right now, he had pissed you off. “You asked why I wanted to play, I gave you my answer. You don’t have to like it, but there it is.”

He seemed taken aback by your bluntness. He blinked, his round eyes shifting to something else. “You’re right.” he said finally with a subtle laugh. “That was a dick thing to say. I really sounded like Chris Morrison for a second.”

“Yeah, you did.” you agreed. “You always this cynical about people?”

“Well, when you’re the town freak it comes with the title.” he shrugged.

“Does it come with a sash too? Or perhaps a crown?”

“No, unfortunately Hawkins High didn’t have that in the budget this year.”

“You should take that up with the student council.”

“Or City Hall.”

He was smiling at you now, and you hated how that smile was brighter than any of the flashing lights of the arcade. The longer you looked at him, the more attractive he got. God, you were going to kill Steve for delivering something you couldn’t have.

Eddie’s demeanor changed as you two bantered, no longer on edge now. Now that he seemed sure that you weren’t here to cause problems or were just looking to laugh at the freaks, his stance was much more relaxed. You looked him over again, taking advantage of his gaze drifting to where two other members were hunched over an arcade cabinet.

He had long wavy brown hair, and you tried to place how you could have missed that in school. Surely you would have remembered someone like him, right? It felt so much like you were missing something, but you couldn’t place where you knew him. It was going to drive you insane.

“So it looks like I’m done here.” You jumped as Steve appeared behind you. You looked over at him, your face reading with panic at the idea of him ditching out on you now. Yeah, things were going a lot better without him here, and he had not been very helpful-

Okay, maybe he didn’t need to be here to help with your attempt to flirt but you still weren’t exactly eager to be left alone.

Eddie looked between the two of you and you turned to Eddie. “I’ll be right back, I’m gonna see him off.” You said.

“Right, yeah.” Eddie nodded. He was on his guard again and you felt bad that Steve’s presence caused that.

Eddie and Steve looked at each other, a tension between the two of them. For five full seconds they just stared at each other with you in the middle, wondering what the actual fuck was going on.

That’s when Eddie threw up his hands over his hand in an imitation of horns and sputtered at Steve who was immediately taken aback. It was so out of left field, and you let out a laugh before covering your mouth and grabbing Steve and dragging him away towards the entrance.

“What was that about?” you asked as you two stepped outside. “And where the hell were you for the past half hour?”

“I was giving you space because you weren’t going to get anywhere with me around.” Steve said, looking back over his shoulder. Eddie had disappeared into the arcade with his club. “He really does live up to his nickname.”

“Nickname? You’re trying to set me up with a high schooler with a nickname?” You sighed.

“Yeah, and you were basically drooling over him the whole time you were talking so, you know, you’re welcome about that.” Steve said. “Everyone called him a freak in school so, Eddie ‘the Freak’ Munson.”

“Yeah, he mentioned something about being the town freak.” you said. “Why’s he a freak exactly?”

Steve tilted his head, as if he couldn’t tell if you were joking or serious. “He runs a club called Hellfire, plays that weird game you and Dustin keep talking about, and just- look at him! With the long hair and the chains and metal patches.”

“According to you, I was looking at him.” you snorted. “So he plays games and dresses differently and has taste in music. Doesn’t make him a freak.”

“Right, I forgot you’re a total weirdo who’d be into that.”

“He was your idea!”

Steve couldn’t argue with that. All the things that he would have found off putting to him in high school now seemed to parallel and fit with someone who he now considered a close friend. He’d been wrong about a lot in the past year, maybe he’d been wrong about Eddie too.

“So are you gonna actually flirt with him when I leave or are you just gonna stand there and make small talk?” Steve asked, crossing his arms. “I introduced you two, at least tell me you’re going to put in the effort.”

You winced and glanced back to the arcade, you couldn’t see Eddie but you knew he was still in there.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Steve gawked at you. “This whole thing was your idea and you’re not even going to try?”

“Listen, Steve, I like him. I do. That’s the problem. You actually hit the nail on the head, and he is absolutely my type.”

“So what’s the problem?”

“I’m not his type.” you admitted. “See, I know guys like Eddie. I’ve fallen for guys like Eddie. Funny thing about a lot of male weirdos, freaks, and outcasts, is that they still loooove themselves some popular girls. Girls like that love them because they’re trying to either fix them or piss off their parents. Freak guys don’t like weirdo girls.”

“You’re being the biggest dingus in the world and I think you’re full of shit.” Steve said bluntly. “Nice try, but you’re gonna go in there and flirt with him. Did he actually say that he was into that type?”

“Well, no but-”

“But nothing!” Steve sighed. “Listen, you’re cute, okay? I’ve seen what you look like when you’re not at work.” He gestured to your outfit. “If I took you to a party or a bar I’d be able to help you get at least six numbers by the end of the night.”

You furrowed your eyebrows. “So why are you so bent out of shape about Eddie?”

“Because you’re picky, and you’re my friend.” It was a surprisingly nice sentiment. “I’m fine dating around while I figure out what I want, but you’re not the same. You need someone who is going to understand what you’re talking about, and he is the only person in Hawkins who would also bite a head off a bat.”

“You know, everyone wants to talk about how Ozzy bit the head off a bat but no one wants to talk about how that whole thing actually happened-” you started.

“Nope. Not me. Don’t tell me, tell him.” Steve cut you off. “I should be telling you that talking about biting animal heads is not the best way to flirt but he might be into it. Just promise me you’ll at least try okay?”

Steve gave you a pleading look, and you couldn’t say no. You didn’t have the heart to. He was right, you’d given up before you’d even tried. Steve went out of his way to hand pick a potential date for you, someone he never would have even bothered talking to before. You had to try.

You breathed in the cool night air deeply, holding it before exhaling slowly. “Alright, I’ll try.” you promised.

“I expect you to tell me everything tomorrow!” Steve said as he started walking towards the parking lot you found yourself following him, your body reacting to all the times you two had parked next to each other at work.

“Yeah, yeah, you get first dibs on any kiss and tell!” you shot back. “After the details you gave me from your dates, I promise I’ll be worse.”

Steve pulled you in and gave you a hug, and you squeezed him tightly in return. You never would have thought that Steve Harrington of all people would end up such a good friend, but you were glad he was there. You two said your goodbyes before he got into his car. You waited until he’d pulled safely out of the parking lot before turning back into the arcade.

Just go in there, crash the Hellfire Club meeting again, and shamelessly flirt with Eddie Munson. Three things, that’s all you needed to do.

You pushed the doors of the arcade open and walked back inside.

You wander around the arcade.

You’re alone.

Shit.

There was no sign of Eddie or any of the Hellfire Club. You were completely alone in the arcade now and there was a pang in your stomach. You had told Eddie you’d be right back, but he was gone. Maybe your comment about still wanting to play had totally fucked over your chance to talk to him more after all.

You made your way back outside, just in time to see a van peel out of the parking lot. Your eyes widened when you saw Dusting looking out the window with an apologetic look and mouthing what you assumed to be the word “Sorry”.

Eddie must have gathered up the club to go somewhere else. You wanted to be fine, you wanted to shrug it off as you had every other time you’d failed to impress a guy, but you felt disappointed. Really disappointed. Sure you’d only talked to the guy for a half hour, most of which was spent talking trash as you all played air hockey, but you’d had fun. More fun than you’d had in a while with a guy, Steve notwithstanding.

It felt like Chris Morrison all over again.

You sighed to yourself and made your way to the car. Of course the second you wanted to try you ended up alone again.

Well, that killed it for tonight. You pushed the rejection out of your mind and made your way back to your own car, thinking about how you were going to tell Steve that you’d blown your chance.

Eddie Munson didn’t know what to make of the fact that Steve Harrington of all people was at the arcade. Popular? Played sports? Someone like him didn’t hang around at the arcade, not under any normal circumstances. The only thing that made sense about him being there was that he was with a girl, one that didn’t match up with the normal type that someone like Steve should be dating.

He had planned on avoiding Steve, choosing to focus on his club rather than antagonize the former king of Hawkins high. Really, he did. But then that shrimp Henderson had made his way over to Steve and his date. The kid already talked about Steve too much as it was, always going on about how cool he was while also dodging questions about how the two had met and become friends. Eddie had long since given up on asking about it, not that he cared. Not that he was jealous that the kid he was growing to see like a little brother already had another older male friend in his life.

That wasn’t Eddie’s style.

But this was Hellfire Club, and Eddie wasn’t about to lose another member to the dark side. Dustin had been looking forward to this rare gathering of the club outside of school, more than usual actually. He’d been wearing that same shit eating grin he always did when he was about to pull some bullshit at the table. Now Eddie knew why.

This little shit was trying to introduce him to Steve. Dustin talked Steve up so much, and now he just happened to be here on a date the same time as Sidequest Day? That was too convenient. Eddie shouldn’t have been surprised that Dustin was trying to bridge his friends together, but he was.

So, when Eddie saw Dustin watching Steve and his date chatting and playing Q*bert, he could have ignored the bait. He should have ignored the bait. But then Chris Morrison’s name was mentioned, and curiosity got the best of him.

Plus how could he ever resist talking shit about Chris Morrison.

So he walked up to the group, fully prepared to make agonzing small talk with Steve for thirty seconds before dragging Henderson away to focus on the real reason he was there. It wasn’t often that everyone had the time or money to come to the arcade like this, and Eddie had been lucky enough to make a special sale that day to some senior from the art department. He didn’t often have spending money for something like the arcade. He’d prefer to go to the movies or get his supply from Rick or buy anything to maintain his guitars, or upkeep of his van. Arcade time with Hellfire was something that happened once a semester at best, with the promise of him giving out advantages during the campaign he was running.

“Henderson is right. Morrison was the biggest asshole that Hellfire has ever seen. Worst DM too.” Eddie said, glancing between Dustin with a warning glare and Steve with a weary look.

He didn’t expect you, the girl playing the cabinet, to be the one to speak up. You knew Chris? This night kept getting weirder. When Eddie turned to Steve, to ask about what he was doing at the arcade, just to appease Dustin, Steve directed his attention back to you.

That made more sense, Steve Harrington wouldn’t be at an arcade on a Saturday night unless there was a girl involved.

When you turned around to face him, he noticed the way your eyes looked him down and up quickly. That was something he was used to with most people in Hawkins. They’d size him up just so that they could try and tear down the freak. There was a look in your eyes that he couldn’t quite catch before it turned into one of... disappointment? Discomfort? Shit, it was all the same to him.

Dustin made quick introductions of everyone, and Eddie was surprised when you offered your hand so easily despite the look in your eyes. Well, at least you were polite. It hadn’t even been two minutes and Eddie was already itching to get back to spending time with his club rather than crashing whatever meeting Dustin had clearly planned here.

But he’d be polite, humor the kid for just a second. If Dustin wanted him to meet Steve, then Eddie would be the contrarian and make small talk with his date instead.

You two would have graduated the same year, had Eddie not been held back. Yeah, it was starting to come back to him. He remembered you.

And that was enough of socializing with the upper class for the night. Eddie started directing Dustin back to club activities before Steve spoke up again.

“So, my friend here actually had an interest in Hellfire Club back in the day.”

It could have been left at that, but Eddie was getting more and more irritated over this situation. He looked at you, who looked like a deer in the headlights. Of course, Dustin might have seen something in Steve but he was no different now than he was back then.

“Really?” Eddie said. “And what about our little club was so interesting to you?”

He shot a glare to Steve, but looked down at you with a frown. You’d always seemed nice at school, but he’d made that mistake before. Eddie always liked the groups that kept to themselves and didn’t whisper behind his back or cause trouble for his friends. It was a shame he had been wrong about you.

But when you answered awkwardly about asking Chris to join, there was something in the way you spoke that was genuine. Either you were a really good actress, or you were being serious about it. Eddie might have been the biggest cynic in Hawkins, but he always did have a weakness to cute girls.

The conversation fizzled out quickly, and as much as Eddie didn’t mind talking to you he still wasn’t interested in crashing your date or getting to know Steve at this time. Not when his club started going wild across the room as Lucas was scoring big at a game.

So he turned around and left the two of you alone, running off to see what the jackpot prize was that Lucas had claimed.

For about ten minutes everything went back to normal. He was in the middle of an intense racing game against Jeff, when suddenly he heard Dustin screaming for him, causing his car to spin out and lose spectacularly.

Tonight was not going well at all for Eddie Munson.

Pushing down his irritation, he could hear it in Henderson’s voice that he was about to start trouble again. Of course as he made his way over to the hockey table, there you and Steve were again. Great. Eddie was so excited to be the third wheel during his club’s meet up.

But then Steve disappeared to take a shit. Well, he didn’t say that exactly but it made Eddie feel better to think of Steve having a miserable time in the bathroom. Jealous? No. Not at all.

Maybe a little.

You didn’t seem to like that Steve had left you, and Eddie figured you were uncomfortable without your date around. Dustin only ever talked Steve up, but had never mentioned you to his knowledge.

When the puck went flying towards your face a moment later, Eddie’s eyes widened with shock as you caught it with a laugh. The way you spoke to Wheeler and Henderson was familiar, as if you’d met them before. How did they know you? You were cuter when you were laughing with his friends.

As Eddie watched the chaos of you bantering with his freshmen, his mind wandered to what you would have looked like in the darkness of the prop department wearing the Hellfire shirt. With how easily you got along with Henderson and Wheeler he was sure you would have fit in.

Damn Chris Morrison and damn Steve Harrington.

He snapped out of his thoughts when you spoke up, a glint in your eyes as you handed over the puck.

“What say you, Eddie of Hellfire?” The way you spoke to him, a hint of a laugh in your voice but not in the normal mocking way he’d hear from others at school, made him break out into an unabashed grin as he took the puck.

“Sudden death it is.”

Making small talk with you was easy, and it wasn’t long until Eddie had forgotten about Steve completely as Dustin decided to bridge the gap between the two of you. You were the assistant manager at Family Video, had helped Dustin and Mike with homework on occasion, and were a regular at the Rocky Horror Picture Show that played at the seedy theater on the outskirts of town.

Eddie was starting to like you more the more the three of you chatted. When the topic od D&D came back up, your answer had struck a chord with him.

“I wasn’t done playing.”

Those words would tumble around in the back of his mind for the rest of the evening. They had been honest, raw words. There was a weight to them that he’d carried himself for a long time. Growing up with Al Munson didn’t exactly give him the idyllic childhood that one would see in movies or tv. Play time wasn’t exactly a priority when you were just trying to fucking survive.

He’d challenged your answer, when he knew in his cynical heart that he was the same. Between Hellfire and his band, there wasn’t much else he had going for personal enjoyment. Of course there was time to hang out with his friends and the occasional odd night where he crashed at Rick’s place when his home with Wayne felt too small or cramped.

Eddie wanted to ask you what you’d play, if you ever did have a chance to join a campaign. He wondered if you enjoyed fantasy the same way he did, if you were a fighter, a spell caster, or a healer.

Then Steve showed back up.

Right, you were here with Steve on a date. A date that had way too much fiber and had probably exploded the toilet while he left you hanging for going on forty minutes now. And now Harrington decided that the date was over? Jesus, this guy didn’t know what he was missing out on. Eddie felt for you, he’d been on his share of bad dates in the past too, and bad nights that he wished were dates.

He shook the image of Paige out of his head.

You gave him a smile as you said goodbye. Well, you said you’d be back in a moment but Eddie knew that the night was over. You walked out of the Arcade with Steve, and that would be that.

Sidequest day was always short, with limited spending money between members and the machines eating quarters like candy. Soon his little sheepies were gathered around him again, talking about their winnings and who deserved to get some sort of perk for the game. It was almost unanimously decided that it would go to Lucas, after he’d nearly broken the basketball machine from how fast he had been throwing balls.

Eddie still had a bill burning a hole in his pocket, having spent more time talking to you than playing games. He had to get this weird night out of his mind, and turned towards the group, knowing that he was going to regret this.

“Whoever has any money left, pool it in I’ll take us to get pizza.” He said. This was followed by cheers and a scrambling of pulling out loose quarters, dimes, and even a five that Gareth forgot he had in his wallet. Eddie lead them all towards the parking lot, his eyes scanning the parking lot for you.

You and Steve were chatting by his car and laughing the same way that you had laughed with him before Steve pulled you into a tight hug. Maybe your date wasn’t a bust after all. Eddie didn’t know why he cared, this was only the third time you’d met. You didn’t know him.

Dustin nudged Eddie, that same smug grin on his face.

“Pretty fun night, huh, Eddie?” he said.

“Your plan didn’t work, shrimp.” Eddie said. “I know you were trying to set something up and I’m not interested.”

Dustin looked surprised, and looked like he was going to argue but a sharp glare from Eddie shut him up. Eddie never had an interest in meeting Steve, and it was clear Steve felt the same way, going so far as to ditch his date to hide in the bathroom the whole time. Eddie didn’t know what the kid saw in Harrington but Eddie was less than impressed.

“Geeze, sorry.” Dustin sighed. “I thought you two would get along.”

“You know, a little humility wouldn’t hurt you.” Eddie said before grabbing his shoulder. “Next time you decide I have to meet someone, don’t make it during Hellfire, mk?”

Dustin looked disappointed but nodded as everyone piled illegally in the back of Eddie’s van. As long as Eddie didn’t drive like a madman (a difficult feat) it would be safe enough. He’d put the seats down to haul equipment years ago, and never could get them to come back up. He could fix it if he wanted, but there was never a real reason to.

As everyone got settled, Dustin looked over at Mike with a shrug. The two of them had thought that things were going well between the two of you, but the look in Eddie’s eyes had said otherwise now.

“Maybe she just wasn’t his type?” Mike said, as the rest of the club chatted. “Eddie doesn’t really talk about those things anyway. Maybe he doesn’t even want a girlfriend.”

“Yeah, but you didn’t see the way they were talking. Even if he wasn’t into her like that, they were still getting along.” Dustin sighed and shifted to look out the window as Eddie started up the van. Everyone in the back held on for dear life as Eddie started out of the parking lot.

As they passed your car, Dustin caught your eye just as you stepped out looking dejected.

“Sorry” Dustin mouthed to you.

It had been a bust tonight, but something felt off. Why would Eddie have such a clearly good time talking to you, just to turn around and say he wasn’t interested?

Dustin made a mental note to drop into Family Video tomorrow to talk to you and Steve.

Part 4

Dividers by @strangergraphics

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#wing man #eddie munson x reader #nacht fic

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dark-night-hero · 1 year

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Pls part 3 of without me can u make it that y/n meets the god who tried to kill her before and he tells her abt what happened and guilts herbinto killing herself then xiao finds her and she tells him not to tell zhongli🥺 that would be amazing

: Hi! Sadly, I have no intentions of making part three of without me. The part two open ending was for you to think of your own ending. Still! It wouldn't hurt for a little imagine because why not, that idea is chef's kiss* Also, apologies for taking too long to answer since I was thinking of what to do.

Imagine laying on the soaked muddy road was your bloody figure. The harsh rain pouring all over your body, yet you find it calming. Strange as it may sound, you feel nothing but your heart aching in pain, and your mind has never been clear for the past few centuries that have gone by. Despite all the wounds all over your body, the countless scratches as well as a missing arm and an open wound to your stomach. All you could do was lay in there and wait for your doom.

Imagine, the feeling honestly wasn't that bad. It was pretty bad and numb. The feeling of confusion, self pity, self hatred, frustration, guilt comes crushing into you the moment all memories came back.

"You.. You're the same being all those years ago." "It's a pleasure to be remembered by the all mighty being like you. It's such a shame Morax won't be around as you meet your doom." "Hah! Just because the era of war is over doesn't mean I grew weaker as centuries passed by." "I suppose that's true. But you know, for someone who killed their own friend with their own hands, you got quite the mentality." "What?" Your (eye color) iris were shaken looking at the being right in front of you. In the first place, how come this being is still alive? Didn't you kill him? You did. Right?

"What." "I don't know what you're talking about." "Huh? But I do know what I was talking about. After all, it was all fun making you act like a puppet on a string as I made you kill your own friend- oh wait HAHAHAHAHA oh celestia. I was wondering what happened but it looks like somebody sealed your memories, darling." "Don't call me that! And I have no idea what you're talking about." "But darling, you do." As his eyes stare at you with malice, it send shiver down your spine. "Here I was wondering why you're acting all tough in front of me. Turns out Morax could never leave you alone huh?" "Leave Morax out of thi-" As you burst out in anger, he dash towards you and grabbed you by the face. "Let's bring back your memories darling. But oh, let's be careful not to alarm the dragon away, okay?"

Imagine looking back on how pathetic you are, letting your guard down as your true, the rest of your memories started coming back. But perhaps you deserve this. Dying alone, in the rain.

"I was wondering how you manage to live on knowing you killed your own friends once again. And yet it turns out Morax protected you until the very end. I was just wondering how could he leave his one and only alone but it seems like there was a contract in return. Was it to leave you alone? It's such a mistake, but what can I say? It's very favorable for me." You didn't look at him, nor were you listening to him as tears started rolling down your cheeks as memories come back and started eating you up. "Darling." With a troubled mind, he grabbed you by your chin. "If you just accept by hand way before none of this would have happened, you know?"

Imagine as it gets harder to breathe. The only being on your mind was Morax. He had done so much for you and yet you used to think he doesn't love you anymore. It was so pathetic of you to doubt him. Maybe you do deserve this. Die out in the cold in the most painful way. The worst part is that you couldn't even kill the one who did this to you. Maybe they were right when they say it should have been you who died. Of course Morax would be sad, but only for a couple of years and maybe decated but he would soon be able to forget about you.

Imagine as you lay there on the muddy ground with rain drops falling all over your body, it is so hard to breath. Even your mind was going blank. Still right now, you want to see him at the same you don't. You don't have the guts and the face to see him. Not in this state, not in the state he hated the most. Still you want to see him. You missed him so much. You want to say sorry and maybe with a little bit shameless tell him you love him still. But you knew yourself you're running out of time.

"(Fi-First name)?" Fuck. If you could run, you would right now, or if possible, you wish you could disintegrate right here and now. Speaking of which, that fucking bastard who did this to you made it slow and painful as possible. "Yak- Xiao, was it?" You heard rapid footsteps in the rain. "I- I need to call Mo-" He was panicking. "It's alright." You tried yourself to smile despite the pain all over your body. "Ho-hold on, I'm bringing you to Morax right no-" "Don't." "Bu-" "It's useless Xiao. I'm already dying, I can feel it." You knew yourself the best.

"Still! We'll never know-!" "I killed your Master with my own hands and yet you still wish to save me?" You spoke with a chuckle that was cut off with a fits of bloody coughing followed by hard gasp for breath. "It was an accident." "It doesn't change the fact that it was I who killed her." You smile painfully, you don't know if it was because of the memories or because of the pain on your body. "I know how much you treasure her as a friend. It's okay to forgive yourself (First name). It was an accident, no one expected and want that to happened." He looked like he was about to cry as he utter those words that made your eyes wide.

Imagine he said those words, though suddenly came into mind. Forgive yourself? How? The truth is that, it was just an accident. He was right, none want that to happened, so why can't you forgive yourself?

"Xiao." By the sound of his name being called. Xiao looked at your face only for his eyes to go wide as he seen you started to disintegrate. "I'm sorry, but can you please keep this a secret to Morax? Oh wait, it's Zhongli right now, right?" The name you've made for him. That small memory made you smile. "I can't! I won't!" "I knew this would happened." You said with a small smile remaining on your face.

Imagine, with everything bit of power and strength left, you lift a hand to pat him by the shoulder. "Leave me here and forget everything you saw today." You spoke with a majestic voice fitted for a God and soon as you does. He stood up and left, leaving you off on your own once again. "Now then, this is nice." As you lay down looking at the now clearing up sky.

Imagine not too long after that, you disappeared with a contented, maybe a little bit of regret with only one thought in mind. You'll do just fine without me, My love.

Imagine, at the same time. Zhongli dropped his tea cup and hurriedly look out the window with a feeling of animosity on his chest. It felt like he just lost something. Something really precious to him. Looking at the dark clouds above the harbor, it felt like a storm was coming.

"(First name)?"

: Sorry if it was a little different from what was ask. Apologies also for taking too long to answer. Also rather than making them kll themselves, letting their guard down enough for them to get killed is what I did which I hope is fine. Anyway that's all, enjoy :)

#genshin impact #dark night hero #genshin imagines #genshin #ask #genshin impact x reader #genshin angst #genshin x y/n #genshin zhongli #genshin x reader #genshin impact xiao #genshin impact zhongli #genshin impact angst #genshin impact fanfic #zhongli angst #zhongli #zhongli x reader #xiao

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misguidedasgardian · 11 months

Text

The Winter Sun (24)

24. SnowStorm

MASTERLIST

Summary: An unknown ray of hope

Pairing: Cregan Stark x Fem!Targaryen Reader

Warnings: Cursing, medieval and asoiaf customs, AGE GAP, Cregan is 12 years OLDER than reader), arranged marriage, war, and all that comes with it, implied forced imprisonment, and implied non-con, pregnancy, angst, might miss some warnings

+18, MINORS DNI

Wordcount: 3 k

Notes: I don't know what is gotten inside of me, I'm inspired hehehe, remember that the timing on this has been paced by x3 haha

Nobody talked to you, nobody told you anything, but you could tell something was wrong, very, very wrong.

People seemed nervous and skittish, Aemond was gone for most part of the day, and night, he left you alone, and you took the opportunity to relax in your bed

You were grieving, but it was so hard, you had no process, no nothing, Cregan was far away, and suddenly he was dead, but you couldn’t process it, you couldn’t even think about it

A single tear fell down your eye as you touched your belly

Was it Cregan’s? or was it Aemond’s?

You couldn’t possibly know

Yes you had bled, but the maester said it was common having a little spotting in early stages of pregnancy… but still… you were showing up quite early if you were to believe it was Aemond’s

But you couldn’t help but wonder…

You guessed you had to wait until it was born.

You hoped it was a girl but… if it was Cregan’s you doubted Aemond was going to let you keep it, you could only pray that he would take the time to take it to Winterfell where she or he could be safe… but if it was his…

You cried louder

Once you stopped crying and were laying on your bed, Aemond entered the room

“I have news”, he said, his voice sounded strangled, you sat on the bed and looked at him wide-eyed

“What?”, you asked

“I will take you out of here”, he said, like it was good news, perhaps they were

“Are we going to King’s Landing?”, you asked, your voice plain

“No, I’m taking you to your home in the Vale”, that really surprised you

“What?”, you asked, not believing him

“I’m already making the arrangements”, he said, he was serious, but not like always, he did not have that superiority demeanor that always accompanied him

“And King’s Landing?”

“No”, he answered sharply, he wouldn’t tell you anything, a war had broken outside these walls and you didn’t even know what was happening, but one thing soothed you… If Aemond was here, he was not in the field, possibly killing members of your family.

The love of your life and father to your babies might be dead, but at least, at least, with your personal sacrifice, you could help your family in gathering and preparing, distracting the man with the biggest dragon in the world

it was a consolation

But not knowing what was going on outside those wretched walls did make you feel uneasy, the fact that Aemond was here the entire time made you believe that rather things were going terribly well with the Greens, or he was out of it completely

Aemond after looking deep into your face, prepared to leave

“What happened?”, you asked him, and then he looked at you, his eye then fell to your belly

“You are with my child, this is a terrible and dark place, you need to be in a more nicer place, if we want the child and you to thrive”, he said so seriously, like he was talking about a political arrangement

You wanted to remind him that it was Cregan’s baby, but you stopped yourself, one because you didn’t want him to… “get rid of it” as he threatened you he would do, and two, you weren’t even sure.

“When?”, you asked

“Tomorrow”, he said shortly, and then he abandoned your room.

You were almost blinded when you took a step outside, having seen the sunlight directly in months. You almost had forgotten what the clear, pure air smelt like, being trapped in that hellish room. Some days you thought you had lost your mind.

But here you were

You should be happy that you are going back to your own home, some place you had the advantage in, but then… the advantage for what exactly?

Trying to kill him again?

That would backfire terribly

Trying to escape?

And where would you go? back to Winterfell? your loved ones would pay the price of your actions, you knew it.

And if it was Aemond’s baby?

You whimpered when you realized… there was no way out of this, of him…

Vhagar roared in front of you both to prove it, in a greeting, and she made you tremble. Aemond grabbed your hand and led you towards her, your own dragon wasn’t even in sight, Aemond helped you up the ropes first and then he followed you closely.

Under normal circumstances you would be on the other side of the castle away from this wretched beast, but you didn’t want to fight, you didn’t want to upset him.

You accommodate yourself in the saddle, and Aemond arranged the leather straps around your thighs carefully and then he chained himself to the saddle, you felt him at your back his hand surrounded you to take the reins

You didn’t miss his fingers ghosting over your belly.

Vhagar was heavy and slow and yet, she took flight easily. Soon you were in the skies, the last time you had done so, was when you surrender yourself to Aemond

You leaned back, your body fully pressed against Aemond, trying to push up your own body was making you have a cramp, and you didn’t have the strength to endure one, not right now.

Aemond smiled, he took to the skies, with you in his arms, your body leaning completely on his, his baby in your belly, he felt like the King of the world, and how could he not?

“When I’m in the skies… it feels that this is where I belong”, he whispered in your ear, “specially with you in my arms”

And the funny thing is, you also felt the same when you were in the skies.

“This is why they say Targaryen are closest to gods than to men”, you said back, wanting to avoid the subject

The flight was longer than you had expected, Vhagar being slow. Or perhaps it was the company that made it dreadfully tiring

You were glad the wind made it difficult to sustain a conversation.

You wondered how Aemond knew exactly where your home was, but you tried not to dwell on it too much, for your own peace of mind.

Vhagar landed heavily on the ground, right in front of it. It was just like you remembered, from four years ago when you escaped the Red Keep when… When Aemond tried to pressure you into giving him your maidenhead

People started coming out of the castle, to your surprise, they didn’t even seem surprised to see Vhagar there, they had been expecting you… although… The people, your own people, seemed scared to see you, you remembered some of them, specially from when you escaped the Red Keep and spend here a couple of months, but they even dare to look at you

Perhaps this what Aemond had meant when he said “he had already made the arrangements”, meaning terrorize the servants of the castle out of their loyalty to you

The Vale was loyal to Rhaenyra, he surely needed to make sure nobody was going to open their mouths about you being here.

“It is quite beautiful”, Aemond said, placing his hands on your hips, encouraging you to enter your childhood home, where your father had raised you with his kindness and his love. You were sad it had to be tainted by Aemond, and what he was going to keep doing to you

You entered your home slowly, drinking everything in, you had missed it, it had huge windows and wide, colorful, sunlit rooms. It wasn’t as big as the seven great castles, but… it was a castle nonetheless

He walked the halls as he knew them, perhaps he had been here in your absence, and that made you even more scared, about how deranged Aemond was

You wanted to go towards your room, but Aemond continued down the corridor towards what it was your father’s old room

“Aemond”, you called, “that is…”

“The master bedroom of this castle I took”, he said, opening the double doors, signaling for you to enter behind him.

You weren’t fazed to enter the room, your father’s things had been taken away years ago, and.. you don't quite remember it from your childhood when he was alive.

The room had huge windows, a balcony, a huge bed freshly made, you could tell, a table with chairs in one corner, and nightstands on each side of the huge bed with a wood canopy.

“I could get accustomed to this”, Aemond said, you didn’t look at his face, but you could picture perfectly his smug face, “you, and me, reigning our small castle, with an army of silver haired children”, you sighed, already tired of his fantasy, you walked towards the windows and looked over at the sea and the risks of the Vale. You placed your hand on the window, longing for freedom, even though you wouldn’t know what to do with it.

Cregan was gone.

You felt the bed move behind you, and you turned around to see Aemond sitting on the edge of the bed. He taped the mattress by his side

“I want to feel you”, he moaned, and you only walked towards him, surrendering yourself to him, so broken to even fight him on this

What you didn’t know is that the greatest army the North has ever seen, had been gathering, marching from every corner to the coldest realm, already recuperated from the Winter, and ready to eliminate any threat to the reign of Rhaenyra Targaryen.

The Northerner Army met in Caitlin’s Vale, all around the castle of the same name.

Nobody knew who was going to lead said army. They had been called by Lord Roderik, to avenge their Lord, and they had all answered to the call.

For avenging Lord Cregan Stark.

Cregan

The huge camp was a sight to behold, each house of the North, the great one and the smaller ones, all of them had come.

And as their leaders met in the middle, to discuss strategy and where they were going to meet the Knights of the Vale, the remains of the Winter Wolves marched into the camp, leading them, as a hooded figure.

Every soldier made way for the huge stallion that led the main leaders of the small army, as they bowed their heads, they didn’t know who it was, but the bare figure demanded respect

The leaders of the Great army both payed attention to the group approaching, and it was only when they were in front of them, that Cregan removed his hood, revealing himself to the camp amongst gasps and cheers

“CREGAN CREGAN CREGAN!”, they started chanting for their Lord

“They embushed us!”, he shouted, “they burnt us! and yet… we are here!”, he said, to everyone’s cheers, “Aemond Targaryen, the Kinslayer, has taken my wife, the Lady of Winterfell, his brother the usurper, has taken our Queen’s throne!”, he said and he heard them booing, “For our burnt fathers and brothers, for your lady of winterfell, for the justice for the traitors, WE MARCH!”

With those words the army was fired up to march south, to kill every Green that stands in their way, to recuperate you

Cregan joined the leaders in the main tent.

“This time, we will not be alone”, he said firmly, “Daemon Targaryen and his dragon will meet us in the Crossroads Inn, he said, pointing to a map, but we, before that, we will join the Knights of the Vale, right about there as well”

“And the Rogue Prince will take care of the dragon?”, asked Lord Cerwyn

“That is what is expected, yes”, said Cregan.

“Is the Lady (Y/N) going to be in Harrenhal?”, asked another

“Our job is to take the castle, the real battle will be after we take Harrenhal and march souther still

“This is the greatest army the Seven Kingdoms has ever seen!”, said Lord Roderik, “it is impossible that we are going to march undetected through the Riverlands”

“In that case, the Baratheons and the Royal army of traitors will be there to meet us”, said Cregan, “and that will work to our advantage, it will save us a trip, we end half of the Green forces in one attack, they will have no chance against us”

The determination of their lord inspired all the men, this time, they will not fail

And so they started the slow march, as their number tripled the one of the last time, the pace was three times slower.

Cregan wanted them to know, he wanted all his enemies in one place, to kill them all at once. You were the only thing on his mind.

This was going to take him months, much to his dismay, but he knew his Queen held the Capital, he knew his son and his home was safe, and he knew you were alive, that monster might take you, but he wouldn’t harm you or he would have learnt about it by now.

You were waiting for him, he knew it

It was all that kept him sane, the thought of you, waiting for him.

It was in moments like this he wished he could fly, just like you, he wished to be strong just like you, his beautiful wife, mother of his child.

He wondered if you thought he was dead, he really didn’t hope so, although he knew the Kinslayer would have told you. He wondered if you were pregnant with his baby, he was sure you were when he left you in Winterfell, he had learnt to know you and your beautiful body.

He sighed as he saw his army march from over a hill

The only thing he wanted to do was to have you by his side, cuddling you, and his son on his chest, your pregnant belly pressed against him.

Soon, he thought

Aemond looked at you, you yourself were looking at the window, touching your big belly, he could not tell if what he felt in his chest was something good or something bad, it was a crippling feeling, a burn so intense he believed it could burn him whole.

He had to leave you for a few weeks, having to go to the battlefield, but his return was swiftly. His brother, the King, was missing, his mother was captured, his grandfather executed, and his other brother…

They said he died on his successful campaign as his burning tent fell on top of him, others say he was murdered in his nightshirt by a myrnise.

Anyways, they were losing this war

The only front that was winning was the seafront on the East, and the Lannister Army on the West, this was not lost yet, but his sister, was also a prisoner of Rhaenyra, he was scared of what they might do to her after the murder of his nephew,

And rumors had reached them that a huge Northerner army was marching from the North, he was longing to face them on the battlefield, to burn that wretched country once and for all.

He did not feared them, for they had no one to lead them, the last remaining Stark couldn’t even talk, it was a baby in a crib

Which led him back to…

“When I fantasized about being with you, I have never picture this”, he said bitterly, you turned to look at him, seriousness in your eyes

“You didn’t expect to kill my husband?, threatened my infant son? rape me? go figure”, you asked, you had become more bold as your pregnancy progressed, Aemond said it was because of the dragon inside of you, he had never been rough with you, he has been rather patient.

“I said you were mine and I was going to do anything to prove it”, of course it was your fault, perhaps if you had accepted the marriage with him in the first place, nothing would have ever happened, maybe Cregan would still be alive, “but there is no point on dwelling of what might have been”, he said, his voice plain.

It was hard to know what was going on inside his head, really

“I want to know what is happening”, you said firmly, looking back at him

“What do you mean?”, he asked

“What is going on with the war that broke out when you killed Lucerys?”, you asked firmly, he chuckled darkly

“What would you know about the intricacies of war?”, he mocked

“Is my family dead?”, you asked firmly

“If it was, do you think we would be hiding here?”, he asked

“Perhaps they all are, your brother regions on his usurped throne”, you bit back. He looked at you, analyzing your face, really wondering if he should tell you about what was going on

Perhaps if you knew Rhaenyra sat the Iron Throne, you would be persuaded to try to get away from him, perhaps you would try to escape him, knowing the blacks were winning

“i don’t know where your cunt of a cousin is, but my brother sits the Iron Throne”, he said bitterly, and you lost your attention off of him and back to look outside the window

He didn’t know if you did that because you didn’t believe him, or rather, if you did and you believed everything was lost, that you were irrevocably his

“I arranged for a short ceremony”, he said then, you turned to face him once more, frowning

“A short ceremony for what?”, you asked, angrily

“We are to be wed”, he said

“No”, you whined

“Yes”, he said firmly, your eyes filled with tears

“NO!”, you screamed, “why?”, you cried, accusing him

“You are a widow, and you are carrying my child, there is no discussion”, and his heart broke when he saw the utter despair and hate in your eyes who looked so much like his own.

more notes: is the baby Cregan's? Or Aemond's? what do you think?

taglist:

@severewobblerlightdragon @missusnora @stargaryenx @poppyreader @chainsawsangel @court-jester-stuff @batprincess1013 @eddiepicker

@lyannesworld @arujee @kamisunshine @mss-nthng @partypoison00 @grimistangel @elleclairez @may-machin @prettykinkysoul @justagurlwithships @champomiel

@laura-naruto-fan1998 @zoleea-exultant @devotedlythoughtfulanchor @zoleea-exultant @llleon666 @dark-night-sky-99 @bitchigoteverythingissues @harrypotteranna23-blog

@esposadomd @ajanauia @phantomtea19 @let-love-bleeds-red @kishie8 @dreamingofyourmoons @esposadomd @sandronebabyy @kemillyfreitas @trifoliumviridi @dreamingofyourmoons @darling-jace @biblichorr @ivvypg @mendes-bae @borikenlove @tssf-imagines @praline357 @alitaar @prettykinkysoul @aelora-a @a-mexican-waffle @ateliefloresdaprimavera @alexa40400 @lrboyd @anditsmywholeheart @weaselyssss @scarlettqueen190 @deeeeexx @cloudroomblog @dreaming-of-the-reality @yentroucnagol @crazymusicgirl104 @toodlesxcuddles

#misguidedwinter #cregan stark x reader #cregan #cregan x reader #cregan x you #cregan stark #hbo house of the dragon #house of the dragon #house targaryen #targaryen!oc #targaryen!reader #aemond targaryen x reader #aemond targaryen #aemond the kinslayer #aemond x oc #dark!aemond x reader #dark!aemond targaryen x reader

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kaiju-krew · 6 days

Note

Hey there! Firstly, big big fan of your art and headcanons, ty for your cool and awesome big brain ❤️ Now that you’ve seen the movie, I’m wondering what your thoughts are on Shimo??? I’ve just seen impressions of her so scattered. (I saw your post on how she will NOT be treated as a pet, and I so appreciate that.)

I will say, for me the ‘old gal’ vibes are so strong and I’m here for it. Like when Goji blasts his atomic breath into the sky at the end and she’s looking at it with such awe and her cute super gummy smile, it reminds me of when a grandma gets shown some common piece of technology that the rest of us are used to, but she just can’t heckin believe it because she lives in a damn cave??? I loved that.

hi hi! omg u think i have a big brain...... compliment of the century.... i must have ppl fooled bcuz i am viscerally dumb most of the time

anywAYS. gxk spoilers below (and a lot of ranting)

shimo my beloved💙 i appreciate most interpretations of her, besides people who are just straight up caling her a dog. and like, not in the way i’d compare goji to a cat? for me it's more mannerisms based, so for goji my main expression/mannerism inspirations are cats, wolves, and komodo dragons (obviously), and for mosu it's owls and cats, with a crumb of horses because of their 'ear' communication so i use that with her antennae.

sorry for tangent but anyways. i dont need someone barking at me that i call goji a cat/draw him acting like a cat so calling shimo ‘kong’s pet dog’ is fine. i think its the difference between goji having the personality i characterize him with + mannerisms inspired by other animals, vs. him having no personality besides Being A Cat. like, he’s a dumbfuck but he’s clearly an intelligent creature capable of communication and understanding. i make a lot of shitposts but truly in my personal hc i’d never reduce him to ‘pet level intelligence’

i think i’m extra touchy about people calling her ‘kong’s pet’ because like. dawg. did you watch the movie? she was JUST freed from being skar’s slave/beast of burden/abused pet whatever you wanna call it. why would you want her to become another creature’s pet again?(obviously minus the abuse) idk mannn it just feels…. reductive somehow. she clearly shows intelligence and understanding when she realizes what’s happening during the fight and helps to kill skar. i just refuse to reduce her entire character to kong’s pet status bcuz that makes me uncomfortable asf.

as a disclaimer, you’re welcome to have whatever hc you enjoy. me expressing my personal thoughts on the matter isn’t an attack on anyone who characterizes her that way, i’m just not interested in engaging with it in the slightest.

DOUBLE ANYWAYS i just needed to get that outta my system. TIME FOR CUTE FUN IDEAS YAHOOO

i’m seeing mixed info about her age so idk where she actually sits there?? i remember seeing something like she’s the First Titan but i also think the novelization of the movie said she’s only 3 million years old?? when im p sure they’ve said goji is 250+ million years old so…. i have no clue there lol. personally she feels less jaded and grumpy than goji does to me so my brain automatically sees her as similar or younger bcuz of my Grumpy Old Man bias.

i’m still workin out my ideas for her but based on how the movie ends i like to think she helps kong with relocating the apes to a better home, and they mostly live in HE. her n kong venture up for surface dates bcuz she gets what she fucking deserves 💙

goji nearly has an aneurysm the first time they come up, since mosu literally takes them for a lil tour of monster island. bro standing there clenching his fist like the arthur meme, he begrudgingly knows she’s right and eventually he gets used to it

i got more ideas cookin for her but this post is already too damn long cuz of my ranting time to stfu

SHIMO BEST GIRL 10/10

#gxk spoilers #kai talks #KAI FKIN YAPS SOMEONE SHUT ME UP #godzilla #mothra #shimo #kong #didnt have time to spellcheck dont @ me

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yanderes-galore · 13 days

Note

May I request platonic yandere Helaena Targaryen with yandere-daze's prompts 3, 12, and 79? For the plot, these prompts made me think of a childhood friend of Helaena's being her darling... maybe darling's guardians sense something's up with the friendship and try to put a stop to it - and Hel is not having it, maybe she enlists Dreamfyre to help ensure that she won't be separated from her friend...

🕊️ anon

Sure, I'll try! I'm a bit upset she isn't given much personality in the show... but I'll try my best! For drama, you are Rhaenyra's child and a Strong near the age of Jace (16/17) Not fully proofread, forgive me for mistakes. Plot may be a bit everywhere but I had a vision I guess.

Prompts Here

Yandere! Platonic! Helaena Targaryen Prompts 3, 12, 79

“They tried to take you away from me! I had to do something!”

“Shhh please be quiet. Everything will be alright.”

“Don’t be scared. I don’t want to hurt you.”

Pairing: Platonic

Possible Trigger Warnings: Gender-Neutral Darling, Obsession, Overprotective behavior, Forbidden friendship, Manipulation, Clingy behavior, Swearing, Kidnapping, Targcest briefly mentioned (Aegon II and Helaena), Dragon murder, Possible OOC Helaena, Forced companionship.

Your friendship was already problematic. After all, your mothers never liked one another due to recent events. Despite such a thing... a wonderful friendship bloomed between you and Helaena.

Helaena has always been eccentric, rambling on and on about strange cryptic sayings. Despite this you never judged the girl unlike her siblings. That... and Helaena never judged you.

You were not blind to what you were. Like Jace, you knew you were a bastard. However, Helaena never held that against you.

Even if your mothers didn't particularly enjoy you being so attached to one another, neither of you cared. Helaena only ever wished to chat with you and her dragon, Dreamfyre. You two were attached to the hip.

Which is why it began to anger Helaena when you were going to be separated from her.

Alicent didn't want you near Helaena anymore. Aegon and Aemond already were causing enough trouble with your siblings. So... to "spare" her daughter, you were to be sent back to Rhaenyra upon your dragon's back.

Helaena pleads and begs her mother to let you stay. She doesn't want to raise her and Aegon's kids without you. She doesn't want her best friend to go.

Things only get worse when Aemond's dragon, Vhagar, kills Luke. When the Dance of The Dragons begins, Helaena dreads the idea of letting you go.

So... she doesn't.

Behind her mother and Aegon's back, Helaena takes Dreamfyre and takes you away.

On your way home on your own dragon, Helaena sabotaged you. Similar to Aemond and Luke, she attacked you on your way home. By the time you woke up... you were in a cell and your dragon gone.

In her eyes, this was the best decision! Even though Aegon showed distaste towards Helaena using Dreamfyre to abduct you... he lets her do as she wishes. Having a captive might be good for the upcoming war.

However, even though you're in a cell... Helaena doesn't view your abduction as such a thing.

In her eyes... she's simply bringing her friend back to where they belong... with her.

---

“Shhh please be quiet. Everything will be alright.” Helaena whispers to you, holding you tightly to her chest. You shake against her, your chains rattling against the cold stone of your cell. You just wanted to go home... seven hells, you wanted to be away from the war.

"Where's my dragon!?" You panic, only to have Helaena shush you softly. She doesn't answer at first... but her pained look tells you everything.

Your dragon's dead by Dreamfyre's claws... but it's unknown if Helaena ordered such a thing.

“... Don’t be scared. I don’t want to hurt you.” Helaena coos, pulling you tighter against her. She lays her head on yours... yet your shaking doesn't stop. "I do hope Dreamfyre didn't harm you... I tried to make sure she was careful. Your dragon, however..."

There's another agonizingly long silence between you. You begin to feel yourself cry, Helaena wiping away your tears. You didn't want her comfort.

"Since I was young mother tried to separate you from me, she said you weren't true Targaryen." Helaena hums. "I don't care what she thinks... or what your mother thinks... I think you're meant to be here with me."

"In a cell?" You bring up, Helaena stiffening for a moment. "In a cell, captured by The Greens, with my dragon dead?"

“They tried to take you away from me! I had to do something!” Helaena snarls a bit. Her anger gets the best of her for just a moment before the dreamer calms herself down. "I couldn't let you leave me... Aegon won't mind... in fact he ignores me, and I won't let mother touch you!"

"This... doesn't feel like you, Helaena." You hiccup, only for Helaena to frown and hold you tighter.

"Time changes the best of us... it's about time I fight to get what I want." Helaena mutters bitterly. "I'm tired of political ties telling me who I can and can not speak with... since birth we played together..."

Helaena pulls away to cup your face in her hands. She rubs your cheeks affectionately. Her eyes are dark... yet at the same time, adoration shines within them.

"Since birth we were meant to be beside each other like siblings, my dear friend..." Helaena smiles.

"Nothing will take you away from me... not with Dreamfyre by my side."

#yandere house of the dragon #yandere hotd #yandere helaena targaryen #platonic yandere #yandere asoiaf #yandere a song of ice and fire

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writing-in-glitter-pen · 10 months

Note

hello!! i wanted to say that i really like the way you write! and, if possible, could i request headcanons of falling in love and flirting with childe? like the ones you wrote for kaeya 👉👈 have a nice day! <3

Hi!!!!!! Thank you so so much ♡♡♡ I can't tell you how much it means to me that you're my first ask ♡ I hope you have a wonderful day as well!!

So I know you asked for flirting headcannons but I just couldn't shake the idea that Childe would fall for his childhood companion. I hope you still like it ♡

When Childe Falls For You—Headcannons + Lil Fic!

Childe x Fem!reader. Hurt (for ONCE), comfort, and of course, FLUFF.

Content warnings: Childe is always his own warning but it’s really not as bad in this one. It’s sweet :> Possessiveness, slight obsession, mention of beating people up.

I made up the book title The Lost Princess so if it happens to be a real story whoopsie.

F/C is your favorite color :)

Childe is an extremely sentimental man. Every moment he’s in Liyue or away from home for a long time on a Fatui mission, all he thinks about is his family. Whether or not they are happy, worrying if they are taken care of well enough, missing their smiles and hugs and company.

The thing about Childe is, once you enter his heart, you never leave it. That’s why he’s extremely guarded—he can’t just let anyone into his heart because even if they hurt him, even if they betray him or break his heart or even kill him, he will always love them.

That’s why he saves this privilege for only his family.

Well, and you.

He could never forget you.

You were a childhood friend of Ajax, before he fell into the Abyss, before he joined the Fatui.

You used to be playmates—Childe was your next door neighbor growing up and your moms were close friends. So of course they encouraged their children of just around the same age to get along!

At first, you two were sworn enemies. You were only seven and Childe nine. When you first met, Childe found you annoying. He teased you for your excessive amount of plushies, your obsession with the color F/C, and your vehement insistence on marrying the main love interest from the book The Lost Princess. He found it stupid and distasteful that a princess was so infatuated with her bodyguard.

He thought your interests were lame and you thought he was a big ugly bully.

You would both groan when your moms dragged you to each other’s houses for their motherly tea parties, ushering you into the yard and leaving you to your own devices—their only instruction being, “Play!”.

You two would often beeline it for direct opposite sides of the yard. Childe would hit things with his wooden toy sword and you would play make believe with your plushies. One time, you left your plushies in the yard to go to the bathroom, and when you had returned, you found Childe hitting your big pink dragon plushie with his sword—cutting its soft tummy open. You cried so hard. You cried and cried and kept crying despite his attempts to shush you or make you feel better. You cried all the way home too after your mom had to end her tea time early because of the incident.

Childe felt so guilty. His mom didn’t even need to scold him. He just sat there in the yard sulking, head in his hands, for hours—until he finally stood up and broke his wooden sword over his knee.

The next day, he was at your house at 7:00 am, knocking on your door in his best Sunday clothes, a bouquet of hand-picked wildflowers in one hand and a gift in the other. He nor his family had the money to buy you a new plushie, so he brought you the only one he owned himself—a medium-sized grey schnauzer that was about the size of his torso, stuffed under his arm.

You opened the door in your pajamas—he often fondly remembers the look of joyful surprise on your cute little face when you saw him. You immediately started crying again, sending him into a moment of panic, before hugging him and thanking him for the presents.

That was when he first felt it.

For the first time, love blossomed in his chest for another person. Other than the love he already held for his family.

This was the first time he voluntarily loved. The first time he felt so much care and tenderness for a person that didn’t share his blood.

That moment began his borderline obsession with you.

He became excessively protective and possessive of you. He walked you to and from school every day to make sure you always got to your destination safe. Even when he graduated out of elementary school and entered the boy’s academy in the opposite direction of your once-shared school, he still woke up early to walk you there and make sure you were safely inside before sprinting to his own school across town. He risked being late every day and often was—suffering the quite severe punishments of his professors, just so he could relax knowing you were safe in class. He beat all of your bullies to a pulp, even when you pulled at his arm and cried for him not to. He always admired your compassion for others—even when they were beyond undeserving of it. He also just couldn’t refrain from deterring the other young boys he saw admiring you or trying to confess their affections for you. He didn’t understand why they annoyed him so much or why he cared when they weren’t out to hurt you, but that didn’t prevent him from cornering them after their classes and threatening them to stay away from you.

Childe also became insanely sweet and compassionate towards you. He often asked your mom if you could come over to his house for dinner or if you could sleep over—not wanting a single free moment to pass where he was not with you. He played with your plushies with you, even if the stories you came up with were naive and embarrassing. He brought you any F/C thing he could find—ribbons and buttons and sachets and candies. He even read to you from your favorite book that caused literal bile to rise in his throat—recounting the story of your favorite male love interest over and over.

He even found himself beginning to mimic the actions and characteristics of the fictional man you fawned over. He practiced well-composed compliments in his mirror—using a thesaurus from the boy’s academy library in order to expand his vocabulary so he could be as eloquent as your favorite character. He started dressing nicer, taking baths more regularly and picking up archery so he could mimic the lost princess’ bodyguard by using his signature weapon.

Childe loved you with the deepest parts of himself. Through the years you grew up together, him graduating into a more specialized boy’s academy for young men with a proficiency in weaponry and you passing an extremely hard placement test and being admitted to an honors scholar academy, he continued his dedicated care of you. He still walked you to school every single day. You were still his favorite playmate even though your interests evolved and changed. He adapted to them. And you became more interested in his as well—attending all of his archery tournaments as his #1 cheerleader.

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Through the years that you two grew and changed, so did his love for you. He realized that you were…very pretty. Prettier than any other girl he’d ever seen. And now your touch felt…different. Whenever you reached to hold his hand for comfort, he’d flush from his chest to the tips of his ears. His heart would thunder out of his chest when you’d lie down on him to take an afternoon nap. And my Archons…your habit of kissing his cheek in praise was going to be the death of him. Every time, you’d cup his jaw so sweetly, then lean up to place your soft lips on the stiffly clenched muscle. You’d say things like “Thank you so much, Ajax.”, “I couldn’t have done this without you.”, “I can always count on you”. He had to use all of the energy in his body to keep himself from collapsing at your sweet voice singing his praises. It was all he craved now. Many young ladies tried to court him—confessing their feelings for him and asking him if he felt the same way. Even if they wore nice clothes, even if they had perfect noses or cheekbones or hair or eyes, his gaze was for you and you alone. He broke many hearts this way—never being able to explain to the poor ladies that he was already taken by a girl that didn’t know he loved her like that.

And he could never tell you. What if you didn’t feel the same way? What if you rejected him and suddenly you didn’t look at him the same? If you refused to let him see you or protect you? He would rather die. So he kept his feelings hidden—tightly locked away in the depths of his heart and mind. A part of himself he would only visit when you weren’t around—when he was alone and his thoughts were quiet. Only then could he let himself ruminate on how he felt about you; his mind would replay the batting of your doe-eyes, how your voice jingled and blush was simply…perfect. He’d sigh and dream about kissing your pretty pink lips, hoping that when he did, you would throw your arms over his shoulders so that he could support your weight while you kissed him back. His chest aches at the thought of your romantic touch, of your loving gaze. He loved your face. He loved your mind. He loved you. And he wanted to be yours. Only yours. Forever.

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The academy you were admitted to as a young woman only accepted students who showed a natural brilliance in art, literature, math, science, and many other valuable areas of academia. You were always very gifted.

What Childe didn’t account for was how your gifts would someday take you away from him. In your pursuit of higher education, you accepted an offer to study abroad in the Akademiya of Sumeru when you turned sixteen. This was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity no one in your small Snezhnayan town could ever even dream of having. He knew he should be happy for you. He knew he should want you to follow your dreams of becoming a renowned scholar. But he just couldn’t make his heart accept it.

He tried to convince you to stay. He told you that he couldn’t let you go. Who would guard you in Sumeru? Who would keep you safe? But you insisted. He told you he needed you. You said he would be fine! You promised he would be fine. But he wouldn’t be. He knew for a fact if you left he would rot from the inside out. He would miss you too much—even if you swore to write to him every day, even if you would visit every Christmas, even if you missed him too.

He told you if you left he wouldn’t forgive you. That you would be nothing to him. That you could go and he would happily never see you again.

In the depths of night, when Childe is alone with his thoughts, his mind always wanders back to your broken-hearted expression that day. The tears that fell from your eyes mirroring those that he caused when you two were just children. Tears he swore he would never be responsible for again. But there they were.

There they were.

The next day, you were gone.

Before he could show up to your house with hand-picked wildflowers and his heart in his hands and an apology on his lips.

But you were gone.

And he was alone with arms overflowing with love for you and no you to give it to.

Childe knew how empty his life would be without you in it and he lived that nightmare every day since you left. From the age of nineteen to twenty to twenty one.

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He was now stationed in Liyue, living in an upscale apartment in the harbor. Archons knows he can afford it. Even after three years, you never left his mind. Yours was still the face he pictured every night, dreamed that he would wake up to in the morning, and sighed every time he opened his eyes, hand instinctively reaching out next to him for the first and only woman he loved just to catch a palm of empty sheets.

He still saw that face everywhere. In the caring nurses that treated his wounds at the Northland Bank after a particularly gruesome debt collection. In the sweet old woman who ran the toy shop in the harbor—the one with a proficiency for plushies that he could send home to his little brother. In the excessively pretty woman that bumped into his shoulder in passing on Main Street.

Wait

He turned around to catch the back of her head, a F/C ribbon holding up her fluffy hair.

He recognized that ribbon.

He tore through the crowd to reach you—mind blank and acting only on instinct.

You were right there.

The woman that owned his heart, that unknowingly carried it along with her everywhere, was right there.

Before he could stop himself, his hand clasped your shoulder a bit too desperately, pulling you towards him.

Your shocked gasp was all he needed to melt right there on the spot. Your gorgeous twinkling eyes didn’t help him keep his knees from buckling either.

You still were the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.

“Y/N…” he breathed, his awestruck freckled face and heaving chest registering in your eyes through the shock.

“…Ajax?” Your voice jingled like the most pure sleigh bell, just like he had remembered it. He was relieved his mind had kept the memory of the sound in such pristine condition.

His mind caught up to him in that moment, remembering the last thing he had said to you. His heart thundered out of his chest in fear—awaiting your inevitable shove or shout. Bracing himself for your rage or disgust or…indifference.

Your indifference would break him worst of all.

But it didn’t come.

“Ajax!” You sighed, immediately taking him into your arms and squeezing him—the love in your touch evident. “Did you get my letters? I was really worried about you…”

Letters? Worried about him?

He stared at you, perplexed and speechless. You really weren’t angry?

You took his cheek in your palm and leaned up to plant a kiss on it—effectively turning him tomato red, steam shooting out of his ears.

“L-letters?” was all he could stutter out.

You pulled back from his cheek, giving him a concerned look.

“You didn’t get them? I must’ve sent you a hundred! Did you change your address?”

He hadn’t been home since the day you left. Of course he wouldn’t have gotten any letters. He didn’t think there were any on their way to wait for.

He was still stuck in silence, trying to decipher whether or not this was a dream. If it was, he never wanted to wake.

Your concerned expression melted into a soft smile, “Let’s have dinner together tonight! I don’t have a lot of money, but you could come over and I can make you something!”

You toted the temporarily mute harbinger back to your apartment—much less nice than his. It was small but it felt expansive and welcoming, obviously from your aesthetic touch. Blankets and pillows and fairy lights and family photos adorned your space. Your bed was right across from your kitchen and right behind your couch. He found it charming how you could make such a humble place so filled with light and warmth. As you shuffled into the kitchen to whip him up dinner, he wandered around your home, soaking up every last drop of you that he could. He laughed at the underwear you left on the floor. He smiled at the adorable pictures of your family on your bedside table. His heart stopped as he saw the childhood photo of you two hanging next to your bed, as well as the well-loved schnauzer plushie resting under your blankets. His shaky hands touched the items. He would have cried if he could.

After all these years, after everything he said…did you really still love him?

He jumped at the sudden embrace around his torso, heart aching at the feeling of your cheek nuzzling his back.

“I missed you so much, Ajax.”

And just like that, all of those childhood emotions came flooding back tenfold—exemplifying the mere ghost of them he harbored for so many years. The feeling of needing you. The unshakable urge to guard and protect you. The feeling that you held his heart in your fist and he never desired for you to let it go.

You were, are, and always will be

his everything.

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BONUS: I know we've reached the natural conclusion to the fic but I couldn't just leave you hanging!!!

Childe is a total puppy dog for you.

Now that he's a touch starved seasoned solidier, he not only can't keep his hands off of you, but LIVES for your praise.

While you two eat dinner, he can't stop himself from reaching for your hand. You smile and interlace your fingers with his, and he holds it for the rest of the time you eat.

He still can't bring himself to confess to you for the same reasons as before. Now that he has you again, he can't risk you leaving for good if he ends up making you uncomfortable.

Luckily, he doesn't have to.

After his silence is cured by your kind company, you two catch up about what has happened in the last few years. He tells you about how he was relocated by his job from Snezhanaya to Liyue, though he neglects to tell you the true nature of the position. He feels guilty about it, but he didn't want to sully your reunion, so he is resolved to save it for another time. He won't keep it from you for too long, he knows that wouldn't be fair.

You tell him all about your studies and life at the Akademiya, as well as explaining that you decided to take a gap year to experience a life of independance and exploration.

As you talk about school, Childe can't help but dismally inquire as to if you had found a boyfriend in Sumeru.

"Of course not. I wanted you to be my boyfriend."

He actually did a spit take.

"WHAT?!?!?!?!"

In all honesty, Childe had inadvertently made it so literally no other man could have you. By treating you so well in all the time you had spent together growing up, he set your standards for a romantic partner insanely high. Only someone who loved you as much as he did could even dream of winning your heart.

That night, you both lay bare your feelings for one another. He tells you about how he's always thought you were the most beautiful woman in the world, that he has spent his entire life dedicated to you, and will happily spent the rest of it just the same.

Did I mention Childe literally has no filter when it comes to professing his love for you? Be prepared to hear paragraph upon paragraph of his loving musings every day for the rest of your life. Even though he needs to read from a thesaurus to make them even somewhat eloquent. You're just so precious to him. You're a dream. He can't help but shower you in affection and gratitude.

"I just love you so much, baby. I can't believe that you're mine. You're perfect. My perfect lady. So smart. So beautiful. I thought about you all day. I think about you all the time.", he goes on and on as he smooths his hands all over his favorite parts of you, kissing your shoulders, neck, and cheeks.

His style of flirting is insanely goofy considering how well you know him and how much intimate time you've spent together.

"Hey toots, looking mighty pretty sittin' over 'dere" is what literally every flirtatious remark by him sounds like to you.

So unserious. He's trying his best to woo you and you're laughing :(

Sad puppy dog face. Guess you've gotta kiss it better.

Childe can be really protective still. He doesn't want you going out at night alone and often insists on walking you to and from work. It warms your heart, but it can be a pain in the ass sometimes. He gets inconsolably upset if you're ever hurt; even if it's just a scrape from a bad fall, he will name a culprit and dispose of them swiftly. Not only that, but he can get pretty strict with you--the side of him that is two years your senior since childhood rearing its head. He's reluctant to let you do anything that could even remotely put you in danger. However, you have a golden ticket that works on him every time. Remember when I said he's an absolute FOOL for your praise? Yeah. Just smooth your hands up his chest and praise him for being your most handsome and loyal protector and he'll let you do anything or go anywhere you want. But he will worry about you the entire time.

Also I know I've mentioned how much he craves touching you, but it just gets even worse after you two officially get together. Don't expect to have any personal space whenever you're at home. He's hugging you from behind, face buried in your neck and basking in your scent as you fix dinner. Pulling you into his lap while you try to get some studying in, having no choice but to accept your new reading spot. If you really really require space for some ungodly reason, MUCH to Childe's dismay and pouting, he'll insist on at least being in the same room as you. Simply watching you and anxiously tapping his foot as you do what you need to do. Only at your soft "ok" once your task is finished does he pounce on you again.

You two are swift to move in together. I mean, you've already lived your whole lives together--you're both eager to get right back to normal! It's a breath of fresh air for both of you and you both sleep better at night for it.

When you two cuddle together in bed at night, your favorite position is big spoon Childe, little spoon you, and littler spoon schnauzer ♡

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