leon. (brume)
fem. reader. angst, suggestive mentions.
your husband is a stranger.
the man you married months ago has been reduced to nothing, ground to bits, reborn as a soldier, a tool, a puppet. he is no longer yours; he will never be again.
the color of the sky, his eyes shone bright, now sullen and sunken with unspoken hurt. hollow cheeks from missed meals, dark bags from little sleep. of these things and more, he says nothing. shares nothing. and you let him be, out of love, out of fear, to keep the distance between the two of you from growing further apart.
nevertheless, he treats you much the same. still kisses you soft, still holds you close in all the ways he knows you like. but there is a new edge behind his movements. unfamiliar. paranoid. his hands, calloused in places they weren’t before, grip too tightly your own when you’re out and about. his unnerving stares towards alleys and doorways, his too quick response to his hip at every sound. was he always this way? or was it the city, the hell that brought it out?
leon, you’d whisper, come lay down and rest.
he listens. in the evenings he curls up next to you, lets your scent, your warmth, engulf him like a cloud. a tangible reminder of what he wants to protect. lets you tuck his face close up against your heart. he listens to its beating until it slows to a pulse, then slips away to stand guard at the front door again. and when you wake up alone in the dark, you pretend his version in your dreams sleeps soundly besides you.
leon, your arms hug around his waist, make love to me today.
he listens. be it by day or moonlight, he indulges you in every way you ask. his too rough hands grabbing, bruising, taut muscles grown slick with sweat and lips parting to kiss at your breasts. this body is unfamiliar, no matter the pleasure it brings. his newly assigned training, grueling and relentless, has wrung out every bit of softness he once had — he is sharp, cutting at your flesh, pulling and shaping you beyond what you knew. who is this stranger, loving you as he did? who is this man, whose dark eyes you avoid when he looks at you?
“leon,” you plead, sorrow in your throat, “please tell me you love me.”
he is quiet. stops stuffing his go-bag with mission ready supplies, beckoned by an early morning phone call before dawn even crackled through the sky. a part of him wishes to throw this godforsaken bag out the door, or crush his phone into the pavement and hope he finds a way to keep from being found. another wishes you’d just go back to sleep.
“you know i do.” he replies without turning around, voice heavy with a humorless sort of huff. a disbelieving sound. “don’t tell me you forgot already.”
“just tell me, please. say it before you go.” your voice breaks faintly at the end.
leon turns and peers so intensely at you that tears swell forth in your eyes. it prevents you from discerning his expression. was it one of pity? exasperation? you bury your face into your hands, woe bubbling up like a spring.
strong arms embrace you. whispers of affirmation dull against your sobs, against the outpour displaying your silent suffering. if only you could find comfort in this man’s arms. in the way he kisses your seasalt tears across your cheeks, how tenderly he runs his hands through your hair. through the blur, you see the youth of your love, the hopeful candor who was once your leon. when you blink, then blink again, it is the face of a jaded, somber man who gazes at you the same way he did, once upon a dream.
“i do. i swear i do.” leon insists. he presses kiss after kiss on every inch of your pretty face, unsure how else to soothe you. “you’re everything to me, remember? you’re why i’m still here. you’re all i have. please don’t cry, darling. i love you, i love you.”
you close your eyes. bask in the noise. if you try hard enough, you can still make out the soft cadence of your leon’s voice hidden beneath his baritone pain. but it’s not him, is it? it’s not anymore. try, try harder, and perhaps you’ll learn to love him like the leon he was before. maybe then his kisses wouldn’t feel like thorns, and his hugs wouldn’t choke you blue.
“i just want you back. that’s all i really want. please stay here, don’t leave me waiting alone.
oh, leon, please don’t go again.”
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You know, I've only followed you for a little while and I did so because I was interested in your star wars posts but wow!! I was not expecting the misogyny and kinkshaming!
I also noticed that you tend to say that you're autistic when people call you out on things or you go and start talking about how terrible people are for giving you anxiety or making you sick, which is another wow!! Like being autistic or chronically ill doesn't make you mean or disrespectful. That's all you.
And to then use those things as a defense instead of admitting you may have done something wrong?
I don't think I can read or follow someone who refuses to take responsibility for their actions anymore, so bye I guess.
Bruh just tell me you’re too stubborn to understand narrative tone, it’s okay.
I once more. Never said I hated ABO (tho idk how that counts as misogyny lmao) but that I get. Tired. Of 100% sex and sexual expectation. I even said I read those. Because they aren’t bad. But I don’t think I’ve ever liked one if it’s 100% sex. That’s my opinion, not kink shaming. I’m fucking tired of them all being expected to be smut.
Also. I mention I’m autistic because they (most people that come at me) claim I can’t understand neurological disorders. I mention I’m disabled because they claim I don’t understand disability. I mention those, because we all function differently and what is upsetting to someone else might not be to you. What is upsetting to me, might not be to you.
I haven’t done anything wrong :) and I don’t need to justify that at all. I just went over everything I said and I’m fully blameless, even if I spoke about something that probably shouldn’t be in my notes. I stated my boundaries. I stated I don’t like it personally. I never said they were wrong for writing it lmao clearly I read it from time to time. I don’t care what you write I’m just tired of it being 100% about sex.
And not all fics are 100% about sex but boy oh boy the ones that are. Are.
I stated what made me want to write this, is a personal trigger. That’s it. You can scream ‘you said you hated it’ over and over. And I’ll stand by that too. It’s not even bad to hate something. I hate a lot of things while refusing to kinkshame for it because that’s someone else’s right to write it.
But I’m saying, that I can only be pushed so far before I decide to write my own fic. Which is what I did.
Anyways. What about any of that made you think I was personally decrying their right to write that? I didn’t mention another person the whole time. I didn’t actually say people can’t write it or shouldn’t. I said the opposite. I also said that I read one too many of them for my personal tastes and it’s getting to my head.
What you should have criticized me about???? Why the fuck am I reading abo when it’s clearly a minefield for me??? That part you can yell at me about. But I’m blameless about everything else. It’s not kinkshaming if I state I have a boundary that keeps getting pushed and I’m ranting about it. You could have even asking me to just tone down the rant. But the summary is fine, and maybe the rants in the notes was a bit much. I’m not apologizing for using an actual writing technique to denote the tone of the main characters pov.
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hi hi hi love !!! like a rabid dog snippet please xx succhh sick & cool & sexy name btw !!
hello you!! it is such a pretty name i wont lie... if only i knew how to write to do something about it!
a snippet as you wish:
Now consider: the same boy, subject to the horrors of truth, headstrong like his mother, but, sometimes, stubborn to a fault. His displeasure is loud like his father’s, but merciful when it matters. There are many things to learn before your sixteenth birthday, things your parents have taught you but chose to overlook, things like ambivalence and composure and the complexity of the strange phenomenon that is life.
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I know Javier (the crab guy) is technically for a futuristic/sci-fi thing but I was wondering if you've ever thought about repurposing him into a setting like Duffy's, or Look Into Her Many Eyes.
Also, a broader version of that question is, how do you know when a character isn't meshing well into a story/setting and whether you should scrap them entirely or find another way to repurpose them?
What helps you determine if a character is necessary or can be replaced by someone or something else? Especially if you're attached to the character and/or something the character does in a scene or in the story.
These are REALLY good questions!
RE: Javi. I have TOTALLY considered dropping him into Duffy’s world. I think the biggest clash would be that he and Duffy are very similar characters and her universe might not have the room for two egos if that magnitude. That said, if I ever think of a brief enough plot for them, I’ve thought about how that would go. Look Into Her Many Eyes is gonna be far too low tech and contained for someone like him tho lol.
Character meshing: There’s a lot of factors for this. The biggest time it ever happened to me was with Harriet - in draft one, Harriet was a man. Her character really wasn’t working out for me, because i felt like he was repeating a lot of the same themes found in Marlowe and Arvin. I had to take a step back and think about exactly what you’re asking - what’s not working here? Is it something I can change? Would it be better to remove it entirely?
For Harriet, the answer was No, I can’t take her out. To divvy her lines to Marlowe and Arvin would completely change their relationships with Quincy, and to remove her entirely would be to remove a neccesary part of the narrative - that not everyone is willing to open themselves to change, not everyone CAN be redeemed. So, i needed to change it. But how? What wasn’t working? I think i had two options - change his personality, or change something else. And idk when exactly it hit me, but i realized the tone of Quincy and Harriet’s relationship would change DRASTICALLY if Harriet was a woman. Like, the tension became less predatory (Male!Harriet came off like a sex pest in some scenes), and there was a sense of wry amusement and mutual respect that hadn’t been there before. Also, her relationship with marlowe became less brotherly and suddenly I had a whole new relationship - Marlowe and Harriet have a mother/son bond without me changing almost anything other than the pronouns in those scenes.
Idk if that answered the question. I wasn’t particularly attached to Harriet as a character, more to what she accomplished in the story.
There ARE characters I’ve been attached to that don’t work perfectly. Usually I can just feel that they don’t work before I even get past drafting. Eyes, for instance - I Knew I had to have a priest character for the story to work, but every version of a priest i tried to slot in mentally just didn’t work. that happens a lot - it’s never the character that’s the problem, it’s the Way That They Are. I more often find a hole where i need a new character to move things forward than i find one just taking up space that needs removed. Idk why that is, maybe I’m more efficient than i give myself credit for. I get pretty brutal about what I feel does/doesn’t work before I even start writing (see: my post on headcanons where i talk about axing Quinlowe as a concept)
Anyways! sorry for the ramble and thank you for the question!
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