#if the water starts disappearing really fast all the way to the horizon. run.

[nevada-wrytes]

Chapter 3 - When the Ocean Starts Retreating (And You Don't Run Away)

Content warnings: Underage drinking, alcohol, kissing

Here's the link to the previous chapter and here's the link to the next one!

Birds of a feather flock together- or however the saying goes- was entirely based on falsehoods. Raven could name many birds that would like to never see his face again— and it’s not like he didn’t mirror the same sentiment.

“What do you think of this dress?” Dahlia held out a thrifted nightgown with all the toppings: ruffles and lace and buttons where they do not need to be.

Raven, from where he was belly-flopped over a cushiony ottoman, craned his neck to look. You’d look like a pearl. “It’s too cold,” he huffed, collapsing limply back to his default pose.

“Well obviously I’d layer! But anyways, do you think this would match my Docs better than the green maxi dress..”

Raven turned off the part of him that could process speech. His mind felt stuffy after so long at the he-should-really-stop-calling-this-a-pep-rally-funeral. Not to mention his stomach was rumbling. Damn, when was the last time he ate?

Dahlia, having sensed his unwillingness to be of any fashion help, had gone to pester her siblings for advice, which left him the rest of the room to mope around.

He got up from the low ottoman with an intake of breath and a good stretch, enough to hear his spine snap and pop pleasantly. Then he gleefully jumped on to Dahlia’s bed and burrowed into the thick duvet and blankets. They still smelled like her, and for once he allowed himself to devour- taking deep, greedy breaths.

Once he had assembled himself a little nest, he poked his head out and almost knocked over a framed photo on the nightstand. He caught it with his fast reflexes (not bragging or anything) and gingerly set it back.

Something about the photo caught his attention. It wasn’t like he hadn’t seen it before, or like it was revolutionary photography skills- it was just a selfie of Dahlia in between an older frowning man with a bushy mustache and a tiny woman. He’d seen her parents before (kind of had to as her would-be sort of boyfriend) but- this time it felt different.

The people in the photo seemed so- genuine. Nice. They seem like the kind of family who would be upset if something happened to their own.

Raven thought about his own family. He hadn’t seen them in a while- did he miss them? Would they be upset if something happened to him- wait- no, what was he thinking?

Raven got up and shook those thoughts away as if he was putting a giant cotton swab in his brain and swishing it around.

“Raveeeen~” Dahlia’s voice floated through the hallway. She was already fully dressed in a cute outfit and braids that made her look like a Studio Ghibli character. She slung a tote bag over her arm. “Ready to go?”

Raven gave her his best bright smile. “Yup!”

He took her by the arm and together they walked out.

“I like your hair, did Aspen braid it?

“Yeah! He said two braids would look the best.”

“It frames your face nicely. I want to grow my hair out so I can braid it too..”

ˇ

There was no keg-standing at the party— and for that, Raven was immensely disappointed. He wanted to have a true American highschool experience. Dahlia told him he should’ve gone to a frat house rather than a quaint New England town.

Besides that, the party seemed alright. Some rich kid was hosting it at his ski lodge— which was just a revamped log cabin in the middle of the woods equipped with a tennis court and swimming pool. Oh, and a jacuzzi— although it was unfortunately being occupied by couples who forgot social distancing was a thing. They did not seem in a hurry— Raven was never getting a turn in that hot tub.

Dahlia steered him away. “Oh, I think I see my friend’s over there- I’m gonna go say hi-” She let go of his arm to wave, “-hey! Girlies!”

Raven felt a fond smile grow on his face as he watched her run off. He mosied on back to a snacks table— someone had put a framed photo of the dead girl from the funeral next to the red solo cups. What a harsh reminder of what they were all supposed to be doing there.

He took a cup, weighed the pros and cons of drinking tonight, and then deemed that all irrelevant. In went two full ladles of whatever hard liquor x everything else in your pantry concoction something had made. He was pretty sure he saw a gummy worm bobbing in his cup. It tasted like burnt sugar going down, but brought back a pleasant warmth in his fingers.

Idly, he milled over to the dance floor. Someone had hung up fairy lights and lanterns around the patio, and with the canopy of trees in the background, it almost looked like the fortune teller’s tent.

He was sick of those stupid fairy lights.

Before he could leave, Raven felt rather than saw the stranger come up to him. His body stiffened on its own accord, but he willed himself to chill.

"Hey." Raven turned around, all nonchalant, and his eyes widened.

The stranger— an absolute Beast of a man— was taller than him (and he was almost six foot) and had an impressive amount of piercings dotting his face. Dark shaggy hair fell into his eyes from his wolf cut. He wore jeans so ripped you could practically see his thighs- and so many chains- he must have spent years harvesting them from prisoners. It was agonizing looking at him— how could someone be cooler than Raven, the coolest guy ever??

"I like your shirt." He had a deep, smooth voice, too. He didn't fail to notice Raven's staring, in fact, the corner of his mouth curved upwards around his lip piercing. Raven felt his face grow hot. Any self-respect he had sank to the floor.

"My- my shirt?" He looked down to see what he was wearing. It was an old rock band t-shirt from a group long disbanded. "Oh- er- thank you?"

"It's vintage, right? Which thrift store did ya get it at? I work at one, you know, so if you ever wanted a discount-"

"What? Oh, no, I got this shirt while they were on tour."

"What?"

He spotted Dahlia in the crowd by herself. "'Scuse me-"

Raven surprised her from behind with a hug, "Guess who!"

Dahlia jumped, nearly spilling her drink. "Raven!" She settled back in his arms. He smiled and began to sway to the beat of the music. Dahlia said nothing.

Raven cursed himself for how awkward his next words were going to be. "Hey- ugh, what's wrong?"

Dahlia hummed. "It's nothing. My friends were just saying some mean shit about the girl who died. I mean- I didn't really care about her either but- it's not nice to spread rumors when she's gone and all that-" Dahlia turned to face him, "Raven, if something happened to me, would you be upset?"

"I- What?"

The music stopped. "Hey, hey, hey, party people!" Someone had commandeered the mic from the karaoke machine, "This is your host, Ronnie speaking! I know some of you've been rumbling about bad weather- but don't worry, Ron's got you all covered. If this place goes south we still have the whole basement- and there's a pool table!- So don't fret, just enjoy the music, alcohol, and party as if we're gonna die tomorrow!!" He chuckled. "I mean you never know, one of us could be next!" His eyes shot directly to Raven.

The music continued shortly after, seemingly no one had heard the last part of Ronnie's speech. Raven looked back at Dahlia but she wasn't there. Panic surged through him.

"Dahlia?" He looked over the heads on the dance floor but couldn't see the familiar brown locks.

"Dahlia?" He found a group of girls huddled by the drinks table, but they shot him a weird look.

"Dahlia?" His voice was a whisper. He had somehow made it to the edge of the backyard, right by the woods.

The overcast sky was pitch black at this hour, so the forest seemed even darker than usual. A cool wind rustled the dry branches. As he looked up, he saw dozens of beady eyes staring at him.

"Raven?" He willed himself to turn around. Dahlia stood on the last step of the deck, two drinks in her hands.

"What are you doing here?"

"I couldn't find you."

"I just went to get some drinks. Come on, these are hot."

ˇˇ

They found a quiet corner away from the noise of the central party. Raven cupped a steamy drink in his hand. He took a sip and was delighted to find out it tasted exactly like Autumn. And cinnamon.

"What is this?"

"Cider. There's alcohol in it too, so it'll warm you right up."

"Hmp. Nice."

They quietly drank. Dahlia was first to speak up.

"Do you want to go home?"

Raven took a second to answer. "I don't want to leave you here alone."

"I'd go with you."

"What? But you were the one who wanted to come here."

Dahlia shrugged. "Yeah, and now I'm here. I had a fun time, it's probably late, I wouldn't mind leaving. Besides-" She got closer, "I don't want to force you to do anything you're uncomfy with.

She was staring right at him. Raven felt lost in her large eyes. He swallowed and set down his drink. "You didn't force me- I don't do anything I don't want to do regardless-"

"Hmp." Dahlia smiled. She was getting really close. Her breath smelled like alcohol and fruit.

"So this is okay?" Her lips were right next to his ear. His face went red- and he wasn't sure if it was just from the alcohol or not.

"Yes, yes it's fine."

"And this?" She kissed his neck, right underneath his jaw.

"MHM! YUP!" He shut his eyes. Let her pull him close. Found where his hands slot around her waist. Where his lips fit around hers. Where their breaths merged into one.

It was drunken revelry at its finest. One last hoorah.

Tag list: (ask to be added/removed) @thebonecarver @victorfrankingstein @confused-as-all-hell @iambecomeyourvillain @brekkercookie @fallen-from-olympus @purpl-cryptid @reyyya @thecurlychameleon @naz-yalensky @thesexypanda-boo @kazoo-the-demjin @twelve-kinds-of-trouble @robbiinn

#nevada writes #raven nv #this chapter is entirely fan service for me btw. the calm before the storm #also for those who don't understand the reference in the title: it's a tsunami warning #if the water starts disappearing really fast all the way to the horizon. run.

[moonflower1605]

Chapter - 24

(Percy's POV)

I’d finally found something I was really good at.

The Queen Anne’s Revenge responded to my every command. I knew which ropes to hoist, which sails to raise, which direction to steer.

We plowed through the waves at what I figured was about ten knots.

I even understood how fast that was. For a sailing ship, pretty darn fast.

It all felt perfect-the wind in my face, the waves breaking over the prow.

But now that we were out of danger, all I could think about was how much I missed Tyson, & how worried I was about Grover.

I couldn’t get over how badly I’d messed up on Circe’s Island. If it hadn’t been for Annabeth, I’d still be a rodent, hiding in a hutch with a bunch of cute furry pirates. I thought about what Circe had said: See, Percy? You’ve unlocked your true self!

I still felt changed. Not just because I had a sudden desire to eat lettuce. I felt jumpy, like the instinct to be a scared little animal was now a part of me.

Or maybe it had always been there. That’s what really worried me.

We sailed through the night.

Annabeth tried to help me keep look out, but sailing didn’t agree with her.

After a few hours rocking back & forth, her face turned the color of guacamole & she went below to lie in a hammock, while Nora stayed sitting on the floor across from where I was, seemingly lost in thought.

I watched the horizon. More than once I spotted monsters. A plume of water as tall as a skyscraper spewed into the moonlight. A row of green spines slithered across the waves-something maybe a hundred feet long, reptilian.

I didn’t really want to know.

Once I saw Nereids, the glowing lady spirits of the sea. I tried to wave at them, but they disappeared into the depths, leaving me unsure whether they’d seen me or not.

Sometime after midnight, Annabeth came up on deck. We were passing a smoking volcano island.

The sea bubbled & steamed around the shore.

“One of the forges of Hephaestus,” Nora said suddenly. “Where he makes his metal monsters.”

“Like the bronze bulls?” I asked.

She nodded. “Go around. Far around.”

I didn’t need to be told twice. We steered clear of the island, & soon it was just a red patch of haze behind us.

I looked over at Annabeth. “The reason you hate Cyclopes so much...the story about how Thalia really died. What happened?”

It was hard to see her expression in the dark. I notice Nora looking over at us but she quickly looked away without saying anything.

“I guess you deserve to know,” Annabeth said finally. “The night Grover was escorting us to camp, he got confused, took some wrong turns. You remember he told you that once?”

I nodded.

“Well, the worst wrong turn was into a Cyclops’s lair in Brooklyn.”

“They’ve got Cyclopes in Brooklyn?” I asked.

“You wouldn’t believe how many, but that’s not the point. This Cyclops, he tricked us. He managed to split us up inside this maze of corridors in an old house in Flatbush. And he could sound like anyone, Percy. Just the way Tyson did aboard the Princess Andromeda. He lured us, one at a time. Thalia thought she was running to save Luke. Luke thought he heard me scream for help. And me...I was alone in the dark. I was seven years old. I couldn’t even find the exit.”

She brushed the hair out of her face.

“I remember finding the main room. There were bones all over the floor. And there were Thalia, Luke & Grover, tied up & gagged, hanging from the ceiling like smoked hams. The Cyclops was starting a fire in the middle of the floor. I drew my knife, but he heard me. He turned & smiled. He spoke, & somehow he knew my dad’s voice. I guess he just plucked it out of my mind. He said, ‘Now, Annabeth, don’t you worry. I love you. You can stay here with me. Forever.’”

I shivered. The way she told it-even now, six years later-freaked me out worse than any ghost story I’d ever heard.

“What did you do?”

“I stabbed him in the foot.”

I stared at her. “Are you kidding? You were seven years old and you stabbed a grown Cyclops in the foot?”

“Oh, he would’ve killed me. But I surprised him. It gave me just enough time to run to Thalia & cut the ropes on her hands. She took it from there.”

“Yeah, but still...that was pretty brave, Annabeth.”

She shook her head. “We barely got out alive. I still have nightmares, Percy. The way that Cyclops talked in my father’s voice. It was his fault we took so long getting to camp. All the monsters who’d been chasing us had time to catch up. That’s really why Thalia died. If it hadn’t been for that Cyclops, she’d still be alive today.”

We sat on the deck, watching the Hercules constellation rise in the night sky.

“Go below,” Annabeth told me at last. “You need some rest.”

I nodded. My eyes were heavy. But when I got below & found a hammock, it took me a long time to fall asleep.

I kept thinking about Annabeth’s story. I wondered, if I were her, would I have had enough courage to go on this quest, to sail straight toward the lair of another Cyclops?

I also wondered how horrible it must've been for Nora. Coming to camp a few months later only to find out that her sister was dead...

I didn’t dream about Grover.

Instead I found myself back in Luke’s stateroom aboard the Princess Andromeda. The curtains were open. It was nighttime outside.

The air swirled with shadows. Voices whispered all around me-spirits of the dead.

Beware, they whispered. Traps. Trickery.

Kronos’s golden sarcophagus glowed faintly-the only source of light in the room.

A cold laugh startled me. It seemed to come from miles below the ship. You don’t have the courage, young one. You can’t stop me.

I knew what I had to do. I had to open that coffin.

I uncapped Riptide. Ghosts whirled around me like a tornado. Beware!

My heart pounded. I couldn’t make my feet move, but I had to stop Kronos.

I had to destroy whatever was in that box.

Then a girl spoke right next to me: “Well, Seaweed Brain?”

I looked over, expecting to see Annabeth, but the girl wasn’t Annabeth.

She wore punk-style clothes with silver chains on her wrists. She had spiky black hair, dark eyeliner around her stormy blue eyes which looked strangely similar to Nora's & a spray of freckles across her nose. She looked familiar, but I wasn’t sure why.

“Well?” she asked. “Are we going to stop him or not?”

I couldn’t answer. I couldn’t move.

The girl rolled her eyes. “Fine. Leave it to me & Aegis.”

She tapped her wrist & her silver chains transformed-flattening & expanding into a huge shield.

It was silver & bronze, with the monstrous face of Medusa protruding from the center.

It looked like a death mask, as if the gorgon’s real head had been pressed into the metal.

I didn’t know if that was true, or if the shield could really petrify me, but I looked away. Just being near it made me cold with fear.

I got a feeling that in a real fight, the bearer of that shield would be almost impossible to beat.

Any sane enemy would turn & run.

The girl drew her sword & advanced on the sarcophagus. The shadowy ghosts parted for her, scattering before the terrible aura of her shield.

“No,” I tried to warn her.

But she didn’t listen. She marched straight up to the sarcophagus & pushed aside the golden lid.

For a moment she stood there, gazing down at whatever was in the box.

The coffin began to glow.

“No.” The girl’s voice trembled. “It can’t be.”

From the depths of the ocean, Kronos laughed so loudly the whole ship trembled.

“No!” The girl screamed as the sarcophagus engulfed her in a blast of a golden light.

🙂...no words needed here..

Link to the next chapter is here.

Link to the prev chapter is here.

Comment, like & share.

Take care my lovely readers.❤️

Alice signing off.

XOXO.

#percy jackson #percy jackson x oc #x oc #sea of monsters

[ficsilike-reblogged]

What’s in a Name? Pt. II

A/N: So I know I said that the first part was the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever done...but this takes the cake. The softest, cheesiest thing I’ve ever written and I will apologize for nothing. 

Pairing: Marcus Pike x F!Reader (no y/n)

Rating: PG for mention of guns??? A few smooches or two.

Word Count: 4.2k

Summary: The five times Marcus Pike tries to propose and the one time he actually does. 

(Beautiful art by my bb @bucketheadredacted​)

Read part one!

Marcus Pike was finally a man lucky in love.

Maybe. Hopefully. God, he really needed to be lucky. Just this once.

He had bought the diamond ring three months after she had moved in—that was him moving slowly! Honestly! He had felt the urge to look at rings only a month after she had kissed him in the park but had refrained, his past failed relationships whispering at the back of his mind. He didn’t want to push her away. Didn’t want to scare her by moving too fast. Didn’t want to break his own heart again. It had been a strange uphill battle to just learn her name—and now he wanted to give her his name, too.

But he loved her. Truly.

And he knew that within a month of stealing kisses and slipping into overpriced hotel rooms between briefings and meetings and auctions across the country. And Marcus hadn’t been able to stop himself from asking her if she wanted to move into his Washington D.C. apartment six months later.

The words had tumbled out of his mouth while they were still half asleep, his alarm blaring in the background, alerting them both that she needed to get up to fly back to New Orleans.

And she…giggled and rolled over to press a kiss to his lips, uncaring of his morning breath. “Yeah. That sounds perfect.”

And it had been perfect. It had been good to come home and see her jacket slung over the back of the chair, to smell her perfume lingering in the bathroom as she dashed out the door, to wake up next to her when they both had a reprieve from their chaotic jobs and not have to worry that they would have to separate again within a handful of hours. It was good even when she tried a new recipe and the entire apartment smelled like burnt noodles for two days.

But he wanted to call her his wife and he wanted to be her husband. He wanted to have a family with her and maybe buy a house a little further outside the city—she had mentioned that she wanted a dog and a cat. “With room for them to run around!” She said with a smile.

And that all circled back to the ring. The platinum ring with the princess cut diamond. The ring he had been hiding for ages. The ring he wanted to put on her finger—if she said yes. Or he would have to tuck his metaphorical tail between his legs (again) and nurse a broken heart (again) and listen to his coworkers well-meaning condolences (again).

“When are you gonna ask her, man?” One of his fellow agents asked as they parked the agency-assigned SUV in the underground lot. Marcus had made the mistake of mentioning how he had a ring waiting at the back of his sock drawer and this agent—and honestly? Marcus couldn’t even remember his name—latched onto that and had spent the last three hours trying to ‘help’ Marcus come up with a plan on how to propose.

Marcus had a plan already. Thank you very much.

“I am going to take her to see the fireworks over the river.”

“Romantic. Good choice.”

Marcus felt himself puff up a bit at that. It was romantic, wasn’t it? This would be fine.

                                                     **

It was not fine.

The spot Marcus had picked was already crowded by the time they arrived—he was still grumbling about the flat tire he had to fix on the way there but his mood shift when he heard her sigh. It was a happy sound that had a smile pushing at his own lips.

“This is a good spot. Good choice.” She leaned over and pressed a kiss to his warm cheek before turning and grabbing the cooler from the back of his car.

Marcus quickly patted his pocket and felt the ring safely in its confines. This could work, right? He just needed to wait for the fireworks. He set a checkered blanket on the warm grass and helped her unload their cooler, filled with her favorite picnic foods and maybe a bit of alcohol too, hidden away in two tumblers. The wind off the river was nice, keeping them from getting too overheated and someone further down the bank had set up a radio, letting music provide a backdrop to the quiet lapping water and the conversations from the strangers around them. He was not the best conversationalist, Marcus had to admit, he was busy rehearsing what he was going to say in his head over and over, trying to imagine if she would cry or smile—or just…say yes. But he made her laugh and earned a few more kisses when he managed to contribute to the conversation and fed her a few of the grapes from the cooler.

It was good…it was fine…until it wasn’t.

It started with her swatting at something on her arm just as the sun had disappeared beneath the horizon. That wasn’t uncommon; the East Coast was notoriously buggy during the summer. It was probably a mosquito.

But then it happened again and again and again until she was standing up with a shriek, wildly hitting at herself. “Marcus! Marcus!”

“Honey?”

“There’s ants everywhere!”

He glanced down and…yes, there were ants everywhere. And then he felt his first bite.

They quickly gained more than their fair share of attention as they both scrambled to get the hundreds of ants off of them, knocking over their food and cooler with unpleasant groans and gasps as they gained more ant bites.

In a rushed haze, still swatting at themselves, they gathered up their belongings and all but dumped them in the back of the car. When their tires hit highway, they heard the first boom of the fireworks.

                                       **

“How’re you feeling?” She whispered as she rubbed a bit more cream onto Marcus’s back. It had been almost a week since the ant incident and his body was still covered in small red bumps. A testament to his failure.

He reached back, a little awkwardly from his angle on his stomach, and grasped her hand. “I’m okay, honey.” He hummed when he felt her pressed a kiss to his shoulder. Marcus turned his head just a bit and looked at her hand. Her ring finger was still bare. The ring had been tucked away in his bedside drawer after they both scrubbed themselves clean and then all but bathed in calamine lotion. But Marcus was a man on a mission. Having brunch, just to the two of them, all calm and relaxed, was just as good as fireworks.

When she’d been showering earlier, he had called in a delivery from her favorite breakfast restaurant, the florist down the block, and snuck around the apartment to try to tidy up a bit. Not that the apartment needed much. He had set a new set of candles in two overly-priced candle holders and lit them…and then quickly snuffed them out, deeming it too early for candles. He had slipped back into bed just as she emerged in a puff of lavender steam from the bathroom, looking much more comfortable than she had in days.

He rolled over and sat up to steal a kiss against her smiling mouth before coaxing her down onto the bed to apply her share of the strangely scented lotion to her matching set of bumps and bites.

“You know,” she started, face squished in the pillow, “for what it’s worth, I did have a really good time.”

“Yeah?”

“You know I always like spending time with you.”

“Even if you get eaten alive by fire ants?” He asked, a smile pushing at his mouth as his fingers trailed down her back.

She laughed. “Even then.”

He leaned down to press a kiss behind her ear before finishing her layer of lotion and his smile only grew when he heard the familiar, satisfied hum rumble in her throat. A knock at the door had him rising. “I’ll be right back.” Marcus pulled on a shirt as he moved toward the door and opened it, happily seeing two delivery men. He paid them both quickly and moved to the kitchen to set everything up as he heard one of his least favorite sounds.

Her cellphone ringing.

Marcus placed the flowers in her favorite vase but didn’t even move to plate the food he’d had delivered. What was the point?

She came out of the bedroom, rubbing at her temples and her phone in her pocket. “I-”

“You have to go,” he said, finishing for her. “Where to this time?”

She grimaced. “Nowhere fun. But apparently a Pollock has surfaced at an auction set for tomorrow night.” Her eyes darted to the flowers and her grimace softened. “Are these for me?”

Marcus smiled and handed them to her, chuckling as she all but shoved her face into the blooms to inhale their scent. He tightened the knot on the top of the takeout and handed that to her, too. “Here, you can eat this on the road.” And when she opened her mouth to apologize, he kissed the words away. Marcus would never fault her for her job and its uneven schedule, just as she never held his strange hours against him. “Home by Wednesday?” He murmured against her lips.

“Home by Wednesday. I promise.”

When he closed the door to her taxi and waved as he watched the yellow car disappear around the corner, Marcus sighed. Strike two.  

                                                 **

Patrick Jane was not who Marcus wanted to see right now. And neither was Lisbon. But that was beside the point. The point was that Marcus hadn’t seen his Honey in almost three weeks because of a demanding client wanting more and more art work so she was flown all over Europe to different auctions and private sales.

He had remembered how he heard her sniffle over the phone when she told him that this client was asking her to pick up more art. “It is good money, really good. I can probably take a few months off after I do this but I…” she hiccupped and his heart broke. “But I just really miss you.”

And that was why he had booked a table at this beautiful and romantic restaurant after she had managed to sleep off her jet lag and rinse the grime of the plane from her skin.

Marcus ordered expensive wine that she knew she only ordered when she closed a big deal and asked the chef to place the ring on the top of the tiramisu he had scheduled to be brought out in exactly 47 minutes.

But that plan had been fantastically derailed when that obnoxious blond man spotted him from across the restaurant and then had the gall to ask the hostess to seat them near each other. (What were they even doing in DC?) For her part, Lisbon looked uncomfortable, too, as they made small talk.

With each passing word and each forced anecdote, Marcus felt himself deflate. There was no way he was going to propose to the love of his life in front of his ex-fiancée and her husband.

“You know,” Jane started and Marcus felt his teeth grind, “Marcus always struck me as a family man.”

She smiled and reached out to wrap her fingers around Marcus’ and squeezed. “He is.”

“Oh?” Jane continued, leaning forward in his seat. “Is a congratulations in order?”

Marcus could hear his teeth grinding but her grip tightened on his hand while her smile remained steady. “That is none of your business. I am sure you can fill your time poking and prodding into other people’s lives. Now, please, you have interrupted my long overdue date with the love of my life with your prattle. I’m sure you’re lovely, but I am done entertaining you.” She raised her other hand and asked for the check which was quickly given. The hostess, for her part, did glance to Marcus to make sure it was okay before he subtly nodded. The ring was slipped back into his hand by a sly waiter.

“Marcus,” Lisbon murmured, “we didn’t mean-”

Marcus stood and buttoned his jacket before helping his Honey into her coat. “Have a good night, Lisbon.”

And they left the restaurant, flagging down a taxi as thunder rolled overhead. Marcus made sure to open the taxi’s door for her and let her slide in before joining her in the backseat. The pair was quiet for a moment, and then two before she started to giggle. The giggle grew into a full-belly laugh that had tears gathering in her eyes and Marcus had to laugh, too. She always made him laugh.

“God!” She said. “He’s so full of himself. And truly, Marcus, I’m sure Teresa is lovely but she has terrible taste in men. Choosing that over you? I would never.”

Marcus felt a selfish bloom of pride swell in his chest. “Yeah?”

She leaned over to rest her head on his shoulder. “Yeah. I don’t plan on ever letting you go.”

And you know? That made Marcus smile just as much as putting a shiny ring on her finger. She wanted him forever.

He could propose tomorrow.

                                             **

He did not propose tomorrow.

Or any day after that for the next three months. There just…wasn’t the right time. The ring he now kept in his suit jacket pocket seemed heavier by the day. Even his fellow agents seemed to pick up on the fact that something was bothering him.

“Fighting with your lady, Pike?” One of them asked as they were huddled around a table in the art storage room, trying to devise a plan to catch a thief who had managed to disappear with fourteen million dollars’ worth of some blueblood’s family heirlooms which included an Artemisia Gentileschi original. It was a brazen heist and obviously a huge case that needed to be their sole focus.

But sometimes his group of agents were a little nosey.

“We don’t really fight,” Marcus muttered as he looked over the blueprints of the family’s home, trying to find a way that the thief had come in and out. The official police report said a downstairs window was open but he didn’t believe that. “We have our disagreements but she is the most levelheaded person I know. The most heated conversation we had was over which diner had the best waffles.”

Another agent gagged. “You two are disgusting.”

“The word you’re looking for is ‘perfect,’ actually.”

Marcus shook his head and bit back a laugh—they really needed to focus on this case. “We’re not perfect.” And they weren’t. No one was. But that didn’t mean he loved her any less.

“Still haven’t proposed, eh?”

“Shut up, man.” There was no heat to his tone as Marcus scrubbed a hand down his face before looking at his watch. It was almost eleven at night. “Go home. It’s late. We can pick this up in the morning.”

The rest of the group grumbled their thanks and disappeared to the upper levels of the building, probably in search of their forgotten dinners before going home. Marcus tapped his pencil on the blueprints, his eyes constantly moving to the door leading into the ‘piano room’ which then led down to the wine cellar. He wasn’t sure why, but something in his gut just told him the answer led to that set of rooms.

“Marcus?”

He jumped at the sudden noise but quickly righted himself as he saw her entering the fenced off storage area, carefully skirting around a prized Greco-Roman statue they had just recovered in Philadelphia. It was no longer a surprise to see her down here, the front desk guards knew her by face and name and all but gave her security clearance, easily letting her through when they knew Marcus was working late. He stood and walked over to her, pressing a kiss to her lips and then forehead in greeting, listening to her hum in contentment as her hands wound around his waist. “What are you doing here, Honey?”

She smiled as she looked at him and shrugged. “I knew you were working late. Couldn’t sleep. Thought I’d keep you company instead of tossing and turning.”

“You know I’m always happy to see you.” He led her over to the table and told her a little about the case, as much as he could without truly getting in trouble, and let her look over his notes.

She frowned as she turned the blueprints around and looked at them. “These people are like…billionaires, right?”

Marcus confirmed it with a frown but let her continue.

“Right. So, last time I was in LA, I was at that big, private auction at one of the gaudiest homes I’ve ever visited. Remember me telling you about that? The host got so drunk that he demanded he show everyone his three panic rooms and the private tunnel he had requested be dug behind his laundry room in the basement. Apparently he bribed the city inspector to keep it off the official blueprints so that a thief couldn’t use that tunnel.” She held up the blueprints and tapped at the wine cellar. “Ten bucks says there’s more to this wine cellar than just some ridiculous vintages.”

Marcus could feel his face lighting up. She was amazing.

They spoke a little longer, about possible suspects and how there was probably more than one thief—or at least a getaway driver—before their conversations shifted.

“The guys upstairs said something funny.”

“Hm?”

“They called me Mrs. Pike.”

His next breath nearly choked him. He was going to kill the guards upstairs. “O-oh? Really?”

“I think it sounds nice,” she said, her tone a little embarrassed. “Not that I haven’t thought about it before.” She smiled a bit, almost nervous. “We’ve talked about it, me and you, but to hear someone else say it…makes it sound…really nice.” She hid her embarrassment behind her hand and shook her head.

“I think it sounds nice, too.” He could do it. Right now. He could do it. They were surrounded by beautiful art. All by themselves. There was a light in her eyes that made his heart squeeze. His hand patted the pocket where he kept the ring and-

-it was gone.

“Marcus?” Her tone was filled with worry and she reached out to trail a finger over the crease that had erupted between his eyebrows, a gesture she did often when he brought work home with him. “Are you okay?”

“Y-yeah. I’m fine, honey.”

He most certainly was not but it wasn’t like he could tell her that or propose. ‘Yes, honey. I lost your engagement ring. Will you marry me?’ Fuck.

                                          **

The next day Marcus was stopped by the man at the front desk as he headed toward his office. “Everyone’s been telling me about your big plans. Can’t do it without this.” He handed over a small bag and inside…was the ring.

“Where’d you find it?” Marcus asked, stashing the ring in his briefcase this time. 

Apparently his pocket couldn’t be trusted.

“Parking lot.”

Marcus could only sigh.

                                       **

This was it. This had to be it.

If it wasn’t? He was sure the universe was telling him to just give up. They were happy, right? In love? Maybe they didn’t have to be married. Maybe…

No. No, he wanted to be her husband and he wanted her to be his wife. And that was why the ring was (safely and securely) stowed away in his wallet. He just needed the right time.

She was sitting across from him at their favorite diner, a stack of pancakes and a plateful of waffles between them and half-finished milkshakes abandoned near the saltshakers as they tried to guess which type of syrup was in each little carafe from a single bite. It was a game they played a few times before—one they had played on their first official date, actually. It had lasted well past the dinner and museum visit he had planned and into the morning where they had landed at the diner as the sun rose.

“This has to be strawberry,” she said as she finished her bite. “What do you think?” She asked, holding out the fork for him to take.

He took his bite and nodded. “Strawberry, definitely.”

She lifted the carafe and smiled as she read the tape on the bottom. “Point for us!” They high-fived across the table, laughing. The waitress who always served them shook her head with a smile from her place at the counter, knowing their game too well.

Marcus poured the syrup on their next bite and guessed its flavor before letting her take a guess.

“Um…blueberry?” She licked her lips, contemplating. “Maybe?” As Marcus lifted the carafe and confirmed that it was indeed blueberry, she continued. “Oh, a display of Alphonse Mucha is coming to Georgetown.”

Marcus smiled. Over an hour of their first date had been filled with soft whispers and shy smiles in front of a wall of Mucha sketches. They had been asked to leave by a polite but tired museum guard, not realizing they were there past closing. It was one of his fondest memories. One of the first times he realized she was truly special. He fell a little (more) in love with her that night. “We should go.”

“I’ll get tickets!”

This was the time. This was the moment. He pulled his wallet out under the table and curled his finger around the ring and watched as she smiled, wiping a bit of syrup from her chin. “I love you.”

She paused and looked at him, smile continuing to grow. “And you know I love you, too.”

“And I’ve loved you for a long time. You make my life better, make me better. I know our jobs are crazy. But they’re beautiful. Filled with art and excitement. But you’ve really…made my life a masterpiece.”

“Marcus?” Her voice was soft, eyes narrowing just slightly.

But Marcus pressed forward. “And I know that’s cheesy but I-”

And his phone was ringing. Why of all times was his phone ringing? And worst of all, it was the ringtone he had set for his boss. He had to answer. And she knew it, nodding just once with a fading smile. 

He stood from his seat and pressed a kiss to her forehead. “I’m sorry,” he murmured before slipping away with his phone pressed to his ear.

                                               **

Marcus was tired. Tired.

He had been to New York to Miami to Orlando to Atlanta and then finally to Rio. The band of thieves, making a run for it with millions of dollars of art—including a da Vinci sketch. But he and his team caught them before they disappeared into the wind and the art was lost to the black market.

But he was tired.

He yawned as he drove through the mostly-quiet streets, ready to slip back into his apartment and pull his honey into his arms and then…sleep for three days. 

That sounded wonderful.

But then his phone rang again.

And he had to answer it.

Thankfully, it was a short call. Someone had just broken in to one of the smaller museums in Georgetown and they wanted Pike to catch the thief in the act. Marcus sighed as he tossed his phone in the passenger seat. If this went well, it meant less paperwork. And then he could sleep.

The museum was dark when he arrived. There was only a faint bit of life coming from around of one the corners and he slunk around in the shadows, a hand on his gun. He was ready. He could stop a theft before it happened. He could-

Marcus stopped dead in his tracks as he realized what he was looking at.

Standing in the center of the hall, surrounded by (electronic) candles and priceless Mucha originals, was his Honey. His Venus.

“Hi Marcus.”

He took one step forward and then two and then three-

And she dropped to one knee and gently grasped his hands in hers, tears filling her beautiful eyes. “You make me smile every day. Even when I feel the need to hide all your socks after you make me mad. You have given me a new way of seeing art, appreciating it. You, Marcus Pike, have helped me grow, helped me breathe when I thought the world was just too much, helped me learn what strawberry syrup tastes like.”

Marcus had to laugh at that, feeling tears start to gather in his eyes. “And pecan, too.”

“And pecan syrup, too.” She squeezed his hands again with a growing smile. “I’ve never known love like this. And I never want to be without it. I never want to be without you. I just…” she hiccupped, a few tears falling down her cheeks. “I just love you. Will you marry me? Can I be Mrs. Pike?”

Marcus pulled his hands from hers and quickly pulled his wallet from his back pocket, pulling the ring (finally), from its depths. “Can I ask you, too?”

She all but tackled him to the sparkling marble floors and pressed kiss after kiss to his cheeks, chin, brow, and lips, a laugh on her tear-stained lips. “Ask me.”

“Will you marry me?” The words finally came out in a rush, his heart beating wildly behind his ribs as he watched her smile. Her beautiful smile.

“Yes.”

A/N: Please let me know what you think!

#marcus pike x reader #marcus pike imagine #marcus pike #the mentalist

[beeroses]

I’ll take the lot

FanFic Friday are starting to feel more like FanFic Mondays... sorry for the delays! Your picture inspired stuff @rebelwrites, and apparently, a lot of stuff..!! So here’s a whole lot of Bishop fluff thrown at all of you! If you wanna be added to the taglist, please holler, I’ll be glad to!

Warnings : Pet names are female (Querida, Reina) but no other descriptions made, slight language warning, Angel’s still a douchebag, sorry, it’s a theme I guess..!

Gif credits to gif maker, Mayans credit to Mayans makers

- So, Querida, what do you think?

- This is absolutely beautiful, Obispo, I just think it’s really funny that out of everywhere in the State you could’ve chosen, you went for San Luis Obispo County, you answered!

- Ahh come on Querida, I chose the Moonstone Beach not Obispo County, don’t laugh!!! I chose this place because I’ve heard you get to see the most beautiful sunsets in the country, here.

- Have you gotten soft, Presidente? you asked, smirking.

- No I haven’t, he coughed slightly and then you heard him mumble : it’s just really hard to find a place more beautiful than you…

You smiled to yourself, the man was pretty damn near perfect. You’ve had ups and downs, things had gotten crazy with the club then had calmed down, but whatever was going on around, your beautiful boyfriend made sure to spend time with you, to take you out and to go away with you. He never once put you aside deliberately and always included you in every aspect of his life. Crazy lives you two were living, but you wouldn’t have changed it for the world.

- I love you, Obispo, and I love this place, you smiled.

He took your hands in his and smiled, looking out in the distance. He looked deep in thought but when didn’t he? You enjoyed the breeze coming from the ocean as you kept looking at the horizon. He was right, this place was absolutely breathtaking. You knew he had something on his mind because he kept fidgeting with his fingers and yours, while holding hands. You never wanted to pry and sometimes, things were just better the less you knew, but after a while in absolute silence, you got a little bit nervous.

- Is everything ok, Cariño ?

He almost jumped out of his skin at the sound of your voice. Very, very deep in thoughts, indeed.

- I’m sorry Querida, I spaced out.

- Yeah, I noticed… Anything you wanna talk about? you tried.

- Actually, yeah, I think I should. Looks like the perfect time to…

His words trailed off when the both of you heard :

- HEY PREZ!

- You’ve GOT to be kidding me…

You looked over Bishop’s shoulder only to see the Reyes brothers coming your way, rapidly. Angel having cotton candy in his hands, EZ carrying his childish smile around like a trophy for the best brushed teeth in the entire universe. Bishop looked annoyed to no end.

- Hey Prez, what a pleasure! Out of everyplace you could’ve gone to for your day off, we come to the same one! Angel said, excited by the coincidence and clearly not reading the room.

- Out of Every. Goddamn. Places. Bishop mumbles.

The Reyes brothers invite the two of you to spend the rest of the evening together and you both accept, even though you feel like Bishop is long gone in his head again. Although you loved Abbott and Costello to absolutely no end, you were almost mad at the unexpected meet.

*****************************************************************************************************

It both always bothered you and never did, the fact that, as Presidente, Obispo rarely had time off. You managed with the time you had, the evenings when he left early, the lazy Sundays, he would allow himself, sometimes, the lunches he’d bring at your job so you could eat together. Therefore, it took a couple of weeks until he got a full weekend off. You had decided to go North a little and settle for a more deserted destination, near the Joshua Tree National Park. You knew, for a fact, that whatever Bishop wanted and felt ready to share with you hadn’t left his thoughts yet. You had seen the wrinkles on his forehead, the ones he only got when he was deeply worried about something. It stuck from the second he got interrupted by the impossible comedic duo up until you settled in your room, feet away from the park.

- Wow, you’re going all out, Obispo! you teased.

- Well, I try to make it right to mi Reina.

- You know you don’t have to pull all the stops, like this! I’m very happy at the littlest things, you know that!

- I do, he said, pulling you in his arms, but I really want this to be perfect, just like you, he whispered in you ear.

The day went on nicely, you brought yourself a picnic to enjoy while enjoying the beauty and peace of the park. Everything was going absolutely perfectly. Towards the evening, Bishop pushed an outfit towards you, something a little more fancy than you had thought but, what the hell, if your man wanted you wearing that outfit, you’d obliged, especially since the frown had seem to disappear along the day. You walked out of the bathroom and saw Obispo look at you, almost stunned, something very deer-in-the-middle-of-traffic, like. You could’ve almost sworn you saw the man blush. But he turned his head, making sure he had everything, mumbling how gorgeous you were, almost more to himself than to you. You saw him fumble with the hotel key, his keys, his wallet, and stumbled on his own feet. He looked like a baby animal just learning to deal with it’s legs. You laughed at his sudden awkwardness.

- You ok there, El Presidente? you asked, a smirk stapled on our face.

- I’m fine, of course, yes, I’m fine. You look stunning, Querida, did I tell you?

- Not directly, but the fact you don’t remember how to use your legs correctly said it for you… you laughed. Come here.

You pulled him towards you and made him face you.

- Will you finally tell me what’s going on with you? You’ve been so.. distant, in your head, lately.

- Yeah, I will, I promise.

- Tonight?

- Tonight, he agreed.

You left, hand in hand, and walked to a car Obispo had ordered to take you to a gorgeous restaurant, which had a beautiful terrace. You sat at your table and ordered drinks. Obispo kept your hand in his at all time. You could sense he was ready to talk about whatever’s been troubling him over the past couple of weeks.

- So, Querida, after everything we’ve been through, you know, it’s nice to be able to get away, like this, just us, he said, running his thumb on the top of your hand.

- It’s.. you started.

- PRIMO! Alvarez said, just walking in with his wife and coming towards you. What are the odds, my man?

- I’d say pretty good, lately… Bishop stated.

Alvarez and his wife took a seat at the table next to you and chatted you guys all night. You came back very late at the hotel and knew the moment was gone. Again. Early the next morning, Bishop received a phone call from Taza and you guys had to cut your trip short, putting an axe, once again, on that long overdue conversation.

*****************************************************************************************************

You got woken up by Obispo travelling back and forth across the room, grabbing clothes and throwing them in a duffle bag.

- You going on a run? you asked him, surprised as he hadn’t told you about it.

- No, we are, he answered.

- I’m sorry, who?

- You and me. We’re going away. Right now.

- But…

- No buts, Querida, let’s go!

The two of you left, at the crack of dawn, on his motorcycle, for somewhere only he knew. You drove for a while and stopped along the beach, where a beautiful boardwalk pushed into the ocean. Bishop took your hand in his and pulled you towards the furthest part of the walk, the one that pushed the furthest into the great Blue. You leaned on the railway to look further into the sea. The lightning of the morning sun making the water look like it was filled with diamonds. Everything about the scenery was absolutely breathtaking.

- Bish, what are we doing here? you asked, blown away.

- I wanted to find someplace special, since I think we’re long overdue to talk, you and me, he said.

- You didn’t have to kidnap me, you know, you said, smirk on display on your features.

- Pff, if I’d kidnapped you, you’d know, trust me, he winked.

You looked at the sea a little more and turned fully around to give your full attention to the man in front of you.

- So, Querida, I’ve been so lucky to have you stand by me through the years, you’ve been nothing but my…

- Bish, HEY, BISH!

- You’re FUCKING KIDDING ME. WHAT? Obispo asked, turning towards the voice. There stood half the Mayans. Gilly, Coco, Angel and EZ, on their motorcycles.

- What are you doing here, Prez, Gilly asked, isn’t there Templo in an hour?

- Yeah, I fell off that girl’s bed to be there in time, why are you here ? Angel asked.

- Do you even remember her name? EZ asked his brother.

- I don’t think she ever told me, Angel said smugly.

- WILL YOU JUST FUCKING SHUT UP? CAN’T A MAN ASK HIS GIRLFRIEND TO MARRY HIM, ROMANTICALLY, WITHOUT BEING INTERRUPTED EVERY SINGLE TIME? Bishop screamed at his brothers.

Then fell silence. The boys looked sheepishly at the pavement, gathering up excuses to run away as fast and far as they could. You looked absolutely stunned. Bishop looked enraged.

- Is that… Is it… It that what’s been bothering you, lately? you asked, wild eyed, tears welling up quickly to blur your vision.

Obispo just then realized your presence and how badly it went. He’d been trying to find a way, a place, a setting, everything to make sure it was the most romantic engagement, for his Reina and it ended being the worst possible way.

- It wasn’t bothering me… I just… he sighed deeply, I really wanted this to be perfect, you know.

- I didn’t choose you because you’re perfect, Obispo. I chose you because you’re you.

- Hopefully you also chose me because of my impatience and the fact I cannot, for the life of me, get rid of these punkasses.

- Like I said, I chose you because you’re you. And if you come with impatience, tantrums and those douchebags, then I’ll take the lot.

- Are you saying yes? Obispo asked, hopeful.

- Por supuesto, diciendo que si, mi Amor!!

Bishop took you in his strong arms and pulled you to his chest. The kiss you got was quite possibly the most passionate you’ve ever shared. The boys clapped and cheered, Gilly wolfwhistled and got a death stare from Bishop, therefore stopped immediately.

- Hey, just for the record, I never said I pulled tantrums, Bishop said, squinting at you.

- I said what I said, you winked as you felt him push the ring on your finger, squeezing your hand in his, lovingly.

@chibsytelford​ @yosoynicolexo @lovebishoplosamiguelgalindo​

#Bishop #bishop losa #bishop losa x reader #bishop losa fanfic #obispo losa #obispo bishop losa #Mayans MC #mayans x reader #mayans mc fanfiction #mayans fanfiction #Fanfic Friday #rebels writing challenge #beeroses writing #bishop losa one shot #mayans one shot #fluff

[shurelyasreverie]

Aphelios x Solari!Reader: Faith in the Traitor

Deemed a traitor for sympathising with the Lunari, you are alone as you aimlessly wander through Targon, only to catch the attention of one of the most dangerous assassins the Lunari has to offer...

Word Count: 2097

Warning: Violence and death

Aphelios found you leaning against a tree in the forests below Mount Targon. Your figure bound in blood red garments with golden armour that reflected only the light of the sun, it was clear as day who you were aligned with. It was all the information he needed to reach his decision to kill you. Calibrum in hand, he aimed down sights with his rifle, straight for the side of your head...

“Aphelios, wait.”

The voice of Alune rung in his head and his eyebrows furrowed in frustration but he lowered the rifle nonetheless, waiting for his sister's explanation.

“A true member of the Solari would never turn their back to Mount Targon.”

That reason seemed enough as Aphelios watched you in curiosity. There he noticed the inconsistencies. As of now, the Solari controlled most of Targon, so why did you look so dishevelled? Why was your armour so dented, the red clothing so frayed? Why did you desperately try to catch your breath like a prey on the run, constantly on the verge of death if they made the wrong decision? As repulsive as the fiery light of the Solari could be, the light you emanated was more tolerable... soothing, almost.

Your (E/C) orbs scanned the area. You noticed nothing except for the footprints on the ground, no doubt footprints from the Solari. Your fingers traced the tracks, sampling some dirt. Your nose scrunched. Fresh tracks. You took off in the opposite direction.

“Curious... I struggle to read their soul... but I sense goodness in their heart. I sense fear but determination. Follow them and we shall find answers.”

Sheathing his weapon, Aphelios nodded obediently and followed Alune's commands. Spying on you proved harder than expected though as you continuously looked over your shoulder, your blade always at the ready to slay anything that moved. You stayed in the shadows, hiding. However after a few hours of observing your moves, Aphelios managed to learn your body language and habits.

You had gotten too exhausted. Sheathing your weapon, you desperately tried to keep yourself awake by talking through your thoughts.

“Where am I even going?” you started to mutter. “Anyone I'm looking for... I don't know where to start, a map still would've felt nice, though. What if I run into the Lunari? I wonder if they'll accept me if I turn myself in...”

“A wanted Solari... but what was their crime? I don't sense any guilt in their soul,” Alune mused but Aphelios' blood boiled. It seemed typical of the Solari, to commit atrocities without guilt, all for their pride and supposed love of the sun. His mind was decided, he would waste no time slaying you when Alune gives the word.

As the sun disappeared over the horizon and the moon started to rise, you settled by a lake. Collapsing to your knees with a hefty exhale, you cupped the water in your hands to quench the insatiable thirst that made it hard to even breathe. You had left Mount Targon in such a hurry, you didn't have the time to bring any rations with you.

And Aphelios noticed your lack of resources. When he left to find sustenance of his own, he cursed himself for feeling pity for a Solari.

Returning to the edge of the clearing, hidden under the shadows of nightfall, Aphelios watched you as you sat by the lake. You idly let your fingertips swirl along the water, creating ripples that made slivers of moonlight dance among the small waves. You mystified him. The Solari never approved of the night or moon, believing the moon only leached off the true light of the sun. Hating the pale blue light, many Solari would create bonfires or torches, the amber light from the flame giving them solace amidst the white light of the moon. But not you. As you tilted your head up, looking to the large, full moon. Closing your eyes, you seemed to bask in the silver light, letting the spirit of the moon embrace you. Whereas the golden light of the Solari typically clashed with the moon, yours seemed to fuse with the moonlight, blending together. A symbol of peace. How was this possible? How was a Solari, so guiltless in their crimes, be so open to the moon?

“It's a beautiful sight, isn't it?”

Alune's voice interrupted Aphelios' thoughts and he looked up at the full moon, nodding in agreement. It was truly a sight to behold, it was not everyday the sky was so clear, with millions of stars – the many children of the moon – dancing as they twinkled in the darkness.

There was then an amused giggle from his sister.

“Remember that I see the world through your eyes, Phel. For you, the beautiful sight wasn't the moon, was it?”

Aphelios merely huffed as he settled himself down, preparing for a light slumber despite Alune continuing to tease.

“The Solari has awaken.”

Aphelios woke up to Alune's notice and the warm hues of sunrise. You were still by the lake, he assumed you slept under the moonlight. He watched as you knelt by the water, drinking from the lake. He unknowingly took a step forward and you halted your drinking. Eyes narrowed, you spoke with a low and commanding voice that reminded Aphelios you were truly a warrior of the sun.

“I know you're there.”

Aphelios froze. Was he really that conspicuous? He had never failed a mission. But you didn't look to the right where Aphelios hid, instead to the left. You stood to your full height, shoulders square and eyes burning with the fire of Solari. Another Solari stepped out of the shadows, attire similar to yours, albeit cleaner and reflecting the harsh, blinding light of the sun.

“(Y/N) (L/N), one of the most promising children of the sun... once a revered Ra'Horak, one of the highest ranking assassins of the Solari...” the Solari announced.

“Do I know you?” you frowned as you sized the Solari up. Even without the armour he has a hulking figure, at least a foot taller than you and with various weapons strapped to him. Whereas you... the days of being on the run had made your muscles almost nonexistent... you wouldn't even stand a chance of outrunning him.

“I am the newest Ra'Horak, sent off on my first mission.”

“And what is that?”

“The elders want your head and I intend to deliver it on a golden platter.”

Your blood ran cold. You unsheathed your weapon and so did he, just because you might lose doesn't mean you weren't going down without a fight.

“I did nothing wrong!” You argued.

“Then why did you flee?”

“Because you are the ones who consider me wrong.”

“Siding with the Lunari is blasphemy. A crime of the highest order, are you so ignorant that you cannot see that?”

“I just want us to live in peace,” you begged. “As equals. Does the night not last equally as long as the day?”

“Silence!” The Solari bellowed as he charged at you and you barely had the strength to move away. “I will not hear you slander the Solari like this! I will cut out your tongue so it will never be able to speak lies. The Lunari must die.”

“They do not!” You shouted as you parried another attack. You desperately tried to move away, take advantage of your smaller figure as you parried and dodged him but he was simply too fast and strong.

His blade collided with your armour, and although it didn't puncture you, it sent you tumbling face first to the ground. When you mustered the strength to flip onto your back, a blade was already pressed against your neck.

“What are your final words, traitor?” The Solari spat at your face.

“This war won’t end unless you change,” you stated.

The Solari growled, pulling his blade back to stab it into your neck. You closed your eyes, waiting for the numbness of death but it never came. Instead, your eyes opened when you heard an audible thud on the ground. The Solari's blade had fallen from their open palm. The warrior lay in a pool of their own blood, a bullet wound in their head.

A rustle in the bushes and you instinctively lifted your blade, despite the near impossible chances of stopping a bullet. Out of the bushes emerged a lanky, pale man, clad in moonstone armour and weapons, particularly a sniper rifle sitting on his back. Why would the Lunari save you? Nonetheless, knowing this Lunari could kill you just as he did the Solari, you knelt deeply in respect.

“Thank you for saving me,” you murmured earnestly, soft enough to show emotion but loud enough for your rescuer to hear.

Aphelios' eyes darted around nervously as he was unsure of what to do. Seeing such a pure (E/C) gaze up close, scrutinising his face made him realise how long it had been since he properly interacted with someone beyond his sister, let alone a Solari. Heat rose to his face as you watched him patiently, expecting a response. He never regretted giving up his voice for Alune but in that moment, he wished to say something – anything – to you.

You stood up and cleared your throat as the Lunari looked at you blankly.

“Uh... I'm (Y/N)...” you introduced as you raised your hand for a handshake. The air was tense. Two trained assassins from opposing sides, knowing nothing but murdering each other's comrades. To think that they'd be greeting each other so pleasantly.

Aphelios took your hand with a firm shake. Your hand held the sun's warmth but it didn't burn as he thought. He figured his own hand probably felt like ice to yours.

“What's your name?” You asked the Lunari and you watched intently as he traced letters in the air. So for whatever reason, he was unable to speak? Interesting... “A...phel...ios. Aphelios? Right. Thank you, Aphelios.”

You bowed in thanks. Despite your belief of peace, your lack of prior interaction with the Lunari meant there was a little voice of doubt in your mind, if you could ever find common ground with them. But now, your life indebted to a Lunari, that little voice was no longer there.

“Well... I'll be on my way,” you quickly bid goodbye, turning your back to him. But just as quickly as you turned you felt a cold grip on your wrist. Turning back to Aphelios, he cocked his head to the side like a curious puppy, as if asking, on your way to where, exactly?

“I... I don't know. I don't have anywhere to go,” you admitted. “I have abandoned the Solari and the Lunari...”

Aphelios sent a look your way, a look you couldn't read but you doubted it was good. Your voice diminished to a murmur.

“I didn't become a Ra'Horak by letting the Lunari run free.”

Aphelios froze for a few moments, searching your face. As much as he loathed the thought of the Solari, how he loathed the loss of his allies, would he not be a hypocrite? You deserved to kill him as much as he could kill you. However the mournful look on your face told him everything he needed.

Aphelios took your hand and tugged you towards him as he started to walk off. You frowned as you demanded where he was taking you. He traced the air yet again.

Camp.

“I couldn't possibly-”

Aphelios shushed you and you sighed in resignation. His cool skin made you conscious of just how warm you felt, and you were almost certain it wasn't just because you were a Solari.

Feeling your grip in his hand, Aphelios had never felt warmth so comforting before. Now, he understood your clear conscience. The crime that got you banished was the crime of peace, the repentance for your murders. The belief that the Solari and Lunari can stand together warranted your death. You were no traitor. He unconsciously squeezed your hand in reassurance as he thought of your struggles.

Meanwhile, Alune could be heard laughing joyfully in Aphelios' mind.

“Ever the gentleman, Phel. You were so bold to take their hand like that. Don't fret, brother. I approve of them.”

Aphelios prayed to the moon that you didn't notice how his face rivalled the heat of the sun.

#fanfic #fanfiction #imagine #oneshot #lol #league of legends #league of legends imagine #league of legends x reader #aphelios #league of legends aphelios #aphelios x reader #x reader #self insert #y/n #drama #shurelyasreverie

[frenchbreads-writing]

If you're not too busy with requests, could I ask for a Enji Todoroki x male reader where Enji adds on to the reader's bad day and he makes up for it somehow? Love your work 😁

Hi y’all it’s been a minute, sorry this took so long I’ve been h*ckin busy lately so I hope this can make up for it a bit<3

I hope you enjoy!

Pairing: Todoroki Enji x Male Reader

Words: 2.5k (2,548)

Warning(s): Suggestive themes at the end

Requests: Open

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Waking up, you gently wriggled out of Enji’s arms to get ready for your day of patrol. You quietly got dressed in your hero uniform and packed yours and Enji’s lunch.

You kissed Enji on the forehead before leaving the house, walking to your agency.

The day was nice, the sun was still rising and the light that shone over the horizon reflected beautifully off of shop windows.

There was also a chilling breeze that made you glad you wore extra layers underneath your costume.

The day was beautiful and you had a good feeling for the day ahead of you.

And that good feeling lasted about an hour.

Getting to the agency you were barely able to put your stuff in your locker before you were approached by a sidekick and ushered back out of the building being handed your pager which was buzzing nonstop.

A villain was wrecking a part of the city and you had the means to aid in capturing him.

After that, you were called again and again.

You could barely make it a block before getting a buzz in your pocket.

It was noon and you practically sprinted back to the agency for your lunch break.

You slumped down next to your locker and held your bag.

You couldn’t wait to eat the lunch that Fuyumi had made for you.

You opened your bag and saw your bento box was missing.

It took a moment for the confusion to set in after that you dug around and looking into your locker just to make sure.

You were sure you packed it.

You always triple checked before you left the house and you made sure to place it at the top of your bag this morning, so it guaranteed that it would be the first thing you saw when you opened your pack.

You sighed and closed your bag, hoping whoever took your food would enjoy what Fuyumi had prepared.

A growl from your stomach reminded you that you had a limited time to eat and you had already wasted a lot of time trying to make back to the building in time.

So you stood up and opted to just get a snack from a nearby vending machine.

Just as you finished your snack yet another buzz came from your pocket.

This was going to be a long few hours.

Constantly being pulled in several different directions now with civilians calling out to you in the street for your help you were run ragged.

Now you were sitting in the empty break room getting a much-needed moment of respite from your labor.

Pulling out your phone you thumbed through your contacts before pressing Enji’s number and calling him.

It rang a few times before Enji’s voice came from the other side.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Firefly! How’s it going?”

“(Y/n)? I haven’t heard from you all day are you okay?”

You chuckled.

“Yeah I’m good it’s just been really busy today.”

Even though you tried to hide it, Enji could still hear the tiredness seeping into your voice.

“You could have called and I would’ve come in.”

“Ah, no, today’s your day off I could handle it.”

He opened his mouth to say something when a voice interrupted from your end.

“U-um pardon the intrusion Mr.(H/N) but two sidekicks are physically fighting in the locker rooms and you’re the only hero here right now.”

You let out a sigh.

“Hey, I have to go now, love you.”

Enji didn’t get to respond before the line clicked and the call ended.

He already knew that your agency was being slammed with calls the entire day and if seeing you all day on the news meant anything, it was that you were taking the brunt of it all.

Enji looked down at his phone to see a message from you.

“I’ll be home later tonight to make dinner <3”

He decided that he was going to be a good husband and make dinner.

After all, you did it all the time so how hard can it be?

It was a disaster.

He usually had Fuyumi and more recently you to prepare his meals for him.

He was internally panicking when the sound of the front door slamming shut made him jump.

“Enji, I’m home.”

‘Shit shit shit.’

He didn’t know what to do.

The closer your footsteps got the more he panicked.

“Hey, what’s that—“

You dropped the bags you were holding.

The kitchen was a mess.

He had managed to burn a pot of rice, some meat on the stove were charred a pot of noodles somehow were also burning even though they had been in the water.

Enji expected you to yell at him and scold him for being an idiot.

But instead, you quietly walked over and ushered him out of the way, turning off the flame, and simply dumping all of the unusable food into the trash.

He felt guilty you haven’t even changed out of your hero uniform and you looked so exhausted yet here you are cleaning up his mess as he just stood there.

When the kitchen was left with no trace of Enji’s cooking disaster you wiped your brow and sighed.

“I’ll start dinner when I get out of the shower.”

You walked upstairs without another word leaving Enji alone in the kitchen.

He felt like an idiot.

Instead of helping you feel better he just made it worse.

He looked down at the bags you dropped on the floor.

He stepped closer and kneeled down, opening them revealed that they were full of ingredients for Enji’s favorite kuzumochi.

You came home from a rough day and we’re going to do something to make him happy?

You were the one who needed to be happy not him.

He placed the bags softly on the counter feeling dread in his chest.

After your shower you proceeded to make dinner, now the two of you sat silently at the dinner table.

Enji didn’t know what to say. He already knew how your day went and judging from your expression you didn’t feel like talking.

So he continued to eat glancing at you from time to time.

“I’m finished, I’m going to bed now.”

You stood up and started gathering your dishes.

Enji jumped up.

“I’ll do the dishes.”

You paused and looked at him. The look in his eye told you that he wasn’t taking no for an answer.

“Okay, goodnight.”

He watched you once again walk away dragging your feet as you went.

He cleaned up the area and washed the dishes before he followed you upstairs.

When he made it to the room you were already fast asleep.

He climbed into bed and held you close.

The next day, you woke up sore but pretty rested. Which was pretty suspicious.

You stretched your stiff limbs until you heard the satisfying crack.

Rolling over, you landed on Enji’s side of the bed.

It was cold.

Of course, he had patrol today.

Speaking of hero duties you looked over at the bedside clock and gasped.

It was 10:30 am.

You jumped up from the bed but your foot got caught on the blanket which sent you sprawling out on the floor.

Cursing, you jumped up and rushed to the restroom and rushed through your morning routine, skipping steps as you went.

You rushed out of the room with your hero costume halfway on and ran down the stairs but halted when you heard something from the kitchen.

Enji should be at his agency and Fuyumi didn’t say anything about coming over.

So you peeked around the corner to see Enji standing at the stove, staring very intently at some eggs cooking on the stove, lips in a pout, and a YouTube tutorial on pause on his phone next to him.

He was also wearing a pink apron that you bought for him that he said he would “Rather die than have to wear.”

You couldn’t help the snort that came out.

Enji turned his head to see you with your phone out and snapping a photo.

He growled but didn’t stop you.

“What’s all this Enji? Also, why aren’t you at the agency?”

He didn’t turn around as he answered you.

“I called in and took another day off. I also did the same for you so you can change out of your costume now.”

You stood there confused.

“Not that I’m not grateful but why did you do that?”

His brow twitched.

“You over-exerted yourself yesterday so it wouldn’t be practical to do that again.”

You went to retort but Enji cut you off.

“Even if you say that you’re fine—“ he narrowed his eyes at you. “—I know better.”

You closed your mouth.

“Now change out of your hero suit or you’re not getting any.”

You wanted to help Enji with finishing the food but he placed his entire hand over your face to silence you.

He ordered you to sit at the table and you refused.

Enji leaned down and whispered in a raspy voice to change and sit.

Now, here you were sitting at the table in your pajamas blushing with a pout.

He walked in and placed a plate in front of you with a hash brown, eggs, and bacon.

He stood there and watched you expectantly.

“It looks good.”

You picked up a fork and took a small piece putting it in your mouth and chewing.

Enji sighed in relief when your face lit up.

“It’s really good Enji!”

You took a larger bite and Enji served himself.

After breakfast, he helped you with chores around the house that he usually wouldn’t do.

You had to monitor him and show him how to do some stuff but he caught on quickly and soon enough he shooed you away and finished everything up himself.

At lunchtime, he helped you prepare the food but he wasn’t allowed near the stove at all.

He was fine with that.

He watched as the day progressed you began to relax more and more.

The crease in your brow disappeared and the tension in your shoulders lessened.

When all of the chores were done, the two of you went out to pick up more stuff for dinner. When you passed by stuff in shops that you liked Enji insisted on buying it.

Even if you refused Enji just said that if you wanted it. Get it.

When you hesitated he just proceeded to grab whatever you were looking at and some other stuff you’ve been eyeing and brought it to the counter and just bought it all.

“Enji, You don’t have to spend money on me!”

He looked at you as he placed the bag in your hand.

“But I want to.”

For the rest of the store trip, he bought anything you were interested in.

What was supposed to be a quick grocery trip turned into a shopping spree.

You knew Enji felt bad for what happened last night and you weren’t mad or anything but you knew he wouldn’t forgive himself if he didn’t do anything to make it up to you.

Now, the two of you were in bed, bags of stuff on the floor, surrounded by a whole bunch of soft pillows, and blankets. Enji sat behind you massaging your shoulders while watching your favorite show and eating some snacks.

You snuggled closer Enji pressing your back into his chest.

He stopped massaging and wrapped his arms around your waist, kissing the nape of your neck.

You giggled and turned around, leaned in, and pressed a kiss to his lips before turning back around and continuing to watch the show.

Enji pressed his face into the top of your head smelling the shampoo that you always used.

It was calming and seeing you enjoy yourself as you watched the tv made his guilt from last night go away.

Both of you are usually really busy, so days like this were rare.

“Hey, Enji?”

He lifted his head off of you and hummed.

“You know, if you still feel like making it up to me—“ you turned around to face him. “—I have an idea of what you could do.”

His eyes widened and he sat up straight, listening.

“Anything.”

Enji watched as you stood up from the bed and walk over to one of the bags on the floor.

You rummaged around and took something out holding it behind your back as you stood up.

“You said anything right?”

He nervously nodded wondering what you were planning.

You held up what was in your hands for him to see.

Enji choked on his saliva.

You held up a maid outfit.

His flames roared as his face contorted.

“What in the world is /that/?”

He said through gritted teeth.

You smirked.

“I think you know exactly what this is.”

“I am /not/ wearing that.”

You crossed your arms and pouted at him.

“But you said you would do anything.”

Enji silently cursed himself.

He did say that he would and seeing you pout so cutely he couldn’t resist.

He growled and stood up snatching the outfit and bag from your hands and stomped towards the bathroom.

“I love you!”

He grumbled as he opened the door.

“Be quiet.”

You grinned and sat on the bed.

This was gonna be great.

It’s been 30 minutes since he entered the bathroom.

Around the 15 minute mark, you flopped onto your back.

The sound of the bathroom opening made you perk up.

You let out an exaggerated sigh and sat up on your elbows.

“Finally Enji, what took you so lo—“ When you sat up, your jaw dropped.

Enji stood in the doorway, arms crossed, the maid outfit was nearly bursting at the seams.

The cloth over his chest was stretched taut. Going lower you see his thighs bulged through the thin fabric of the kitty thigh-highs he wore.

But what really caught your eye was the way his too short frilly skirt barely covered anything.

Enji swallowed the lump in his throat as your hungry gaze raked over him.

You motioned him over with your finger.

He walked until he stood right in front of you giving you the perfect view of the lace panties that barely contained what was hidden underneath.

You licked your lips and reached up wrapping your hands around his waist and pulling him on your lap.

The bed dipped from the weight of both of you on the edge.

He rested his weight on his knees as to not crush you and placed his hands on your shoulders to brace himself.

“You look even better than I imagined firefly.”

He looked away face burning brighter.

“Tch, are you happy now?”

You hummed.

“Very.”

Your hand went lower making him shiver.

But he yelped when the sting of your hand coming down on his ass with a loud smack.

He growled at you but you just gave him a sweet smile.

You began massaging his ass gently making him whimper.

“Y-you’re enjoying this too much.”

You chuckled.

“Well, the fun has only just begun.”

Enji shuddered at the look in your eyes and bit his lip.

This was going to be a long night.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

{Tag list} If you want to be added to the tag list, send an ask or look at my pinned post!

@lotsofrandom @your-strangelove @yumeneji @kaiwai @dumbass-calamari  @naonaocat @tamakiwithcrab @delightfulcupquakequeen @brithedemonspawn @chatnoirfangirl1624 @redsharksimp <- Sorry anyone who isn’t tagged properly but I wasn’t able to tag you!

#frenchbread's writing #endeavor x male reader #endeavor x reader #todoroki enji x male reader #todoroki enji x reader #todoroki enji #endeavor #x male reader #male!reader #male reader #bnha x male reader #bnha x reader #bnha #x reader #boku no hero academia #mha x reader #mha x male reader #mha #my hero academia

[hopeamarsu]

I just couldn’t get my mind to stop thinking of Beach Bum Pero and well, this is the result:

Word count 1,1k

Pero Tovar x female reader

Warnings: Sort of fluffy? Maybe a tiny bit of angst thrown in the mix

Written on my phone, not proofread much so please excuse all obvious mistakes. Be kind.

Pero Tovar was a free man.

No more war, no more fighting, no more orders and chain of command and most importantly, no more strict rhythm in his daily life.

He was free to choose his own time, his own rhythm and his own path. Which is why he’d chosen the beach he thought. The sand under his bare feet, the warmth seeping into him from where the sun had heated it. The same sun hitting his skin and the way waves lapped on his body as he went for a swim or a surf. He felt free, he felt light and he felt like there wasn’t anything burdening him.

The only schedule he had was with the local bar, meaning they would call him when they needed someone to help out, being it working behind the bar or at the door. The door gigs weren’t his favorites but according to the owner his looks deterred the worst of the worst. Maybe it was his scar, a memento of his past life, maybe it was his constant frown he wore when not on the beach, Pero didn’t know. But the owner paid good money and money put food on the table. And Pero never said no to food.

Thankfully the bar didn’t need him today and Pero was free to sit down, his board propped up behind him and just watch the sun set in the horizon. Quiet, calm and serene, just how he liked it. The sky was painted with orange, red and pink hues as the sun was disappearing under the cool blue sea and Pero felt calmness wash over him. This was his life, his salvation and he wouldn’t trade it for anything.

He ran his hand through his shaggy mane, absentmindedly thinking he was overdue for a cut but at the same time enjoying the idea that he could keep his hair long and shaggy if he wanted to. The sleeve of his worn striped shirt caught his eye and he studied it for a moment. It looked like it could use a little mending, but that could wait, he decided. There were moments to experience, a worn cuff hardly meant a thing in the universe.

He swept his gaze across the sandy planes, solitude and sea his usual companions, when suddenly something caught his eyes. A metallic object flew across the air, hitting the waterfront, followed by a piercing scream. Pero jumped to his feet in an instant, some of his old ways rooted deep into his subconscious, and started stalking towards the sound.

“Fucking hell!”

You stood near the can you’d thrown, shoes in hand as you stepped back and forth the sand.

“Fucking idiotic piece of shit! I hope you rot in hell!”

“Is something the matter, señorita?”

You whirled around, aiming your shoes towards him, which made Pero throw up his hands, trying to defuse the situation. “Hey, hey, hey! No need to throw away good shoes.”

“Shit, sorry!” You dropped your shoes, the alarm of someone sneaking up on you switching to concern. “I’m so sorry.”

“No problema. But still, is there something on your mind? I saw the can flying and…” Pero trailed off, gesturing at the can still half in water, waiting on an explanation. You sighed, bending down to pick up the object you’d thrown earlier in anger.

“Yeah, I’m… uh, it’s just...” You closed off, turning to look at the dimming sun, before continuing. The words weren’t easy, but the silence between you and him wasn’t uncomfortable as he patiently waited for you to continue.

“You ever feel like your not good enough? Like you are the one everyone uses to advance themselves further, the one that can be thrown under the bus in a moments notice and the one nobody will think twice of?” You asked, not really knowing if you wanted an answer or not.

Pero remained silent, waiting on you to continue if you wished so. He found it a good tactic; reading people and their body language had served him well in the past. He spend the moments studying you, the way your shoulders hunched forward a little, your body curling on itself either in sorrow or in anger. Which, he couldn’t yet tell but he recognized the symptoms he’d been through before choosing the lifestyle to ease up on his own demons.

“I’m literally this close to quitting my job. I’m just a cog in someone else’s wheel and I’m tired of it.”

You plopped down on the sand and brought your hand down next to you. Your voice was tired, your eyes sad you kept your gaze at the water. It was clear there was a lot going through your mind and none of them good thoughts.

Pero remained standing, unsure of how to proceed now. Should he sit down, should he return to his own spot and leave you alone or try to offer some words of advice?

In the end, he only knew one thing and that was that he was drawn to you and he wanted to ease your worries, even if it was only by doing something small. So he held out his hand, palm faced up and let you study it for a moment as you switched your gaze to him before crooking his fingers a little, almost a come here -motion but with all of his fingers instead of just the one.

Pero waited on you to make a decision. Take it or not to take it. Trust him or not to trust him. He watched your eyes flit between his face, his scar and his hand. Your face swept the beach, trying to see just how many people were left and if it was wise to trust a complete stranger.

Usually he wasn’t fast to trust people either, so he understood the hesitation well. But something magnetic drew him into you, kept him rooted to the spot and not withdraw his hand. The fact that you hadn’t thrown the shoes at his face yet and the look in your eyes clearly torn between logic and desire told him you felt the same.

So he took the leap. “I’m Pero. Would you like forget all this for a moment? I know a cheap bar close here where we can talk and laugh and drink. Sounds like you need it.”

A warm palm met the other and he pulled you up, twisting his other hand to rest low on your back. For a moment you just looked into each others eyes and he found himself unable to describe the feeling running rampant in his body, miles and miles more intense that the best wave he’d experienced or the first morning of freedom he had after leaving the service.

The sun dropped down low, under the horizon but still you stood on the beach, in the arms of a stranger, eyes locked to one another and the world had never felt more right.

Everything taglist @clydesducktape @wayward-rose @themuseic @miraclesabound @clydesfavoritegirl @a-true-janian-reply @10blurredsmoke10  @caillea @mind-p0llution

#Pero Tovar #pero tovar x f!reader #pero tovar x female reader #pero tovar fan fiction #fluff #tiny amount of angst #my writing

[actress4him]

In Irons 4 - Punishment

(Prompt #3 for Summer of Whump)

If a little bit of this seems familiar, it’s because I mixed what was originally Whumpay Day 9 in. I liked that drabble, and it’s what started this whole series, but it didn’t work perfectly as is and was super short. This chapter, on the other hand, ended up being really long!

Taglist: @darthsutrich , @a-series-of-whumpy-events , @ladydani101

Previous | Next | Masterlist

Warnings: lady whumpee (male whumper), imprisonment, restraints, starvation, dehydration, brief mention of noncon touch, brief emeto mention, hallucinations

.

. The sound of footsteps on the wooden steps wakes Adelaide from a restless, uncomfortable sleep. Lifting her head off the dirty floor, where she had finally resigned herself to settle when she couldn’t stay sitting up any longer, she blinks and squints at the figure coming into the brig. His face is obscured by the light from the lantern he’s holding. Adelaide quickly uses her manacled hands to shove herself upright, then decides even that’s not enough to make her feel safe and wobbles to her feet. 

The man comes closer, setting the lantern down just outside her cell so that she can finally make out his face. It’s Marshall. So far he’s never treated her unkindly, but that was before he knew her secret. Besides, he carries out the Captain’s orders, so he could very well be there to take her to her doom. 

For a moment they remain silent. He stares at her, as if trying to reconcile her outward appearance with the knowledge he now holds. Not that there’s much hiding it now, not with her shirt still gaping open. She hadn’t been able to twist her hands around to rebutton it.

“Thought you might need some food and water,” he says finally, holding out a flask and a sliver of bread between the bars of her cell.

She glances down at the offering, and back up at his face. “How...how long has it been?” She doesn’t bother to deepen her voice this time, but the way it rasps in her throat doesn’t sound the most feminine, anyway.

Marshall gives her a look that she might would call sympathetic if she didn’t know better. “About a day.”

Nodding slowly, she eyes the bread again, not sure if she should trust it. “And has the Captain reached a decision on what is to be done with me?”

“Not yet. I’ve mentioned to him that ‘twas Adams and me that brought you aboard, and that you probably continued the ruse for self-preservation.” He shrugs. “If you’re lucky it might sway him to be more lenient. Captain hates being lied to, though.”

He had...spoken up for her? That’s certainly unexpected. 

Adelaide runs her tongue over her dry bottom lip, listening to the water slosh in the flask as he speaks. He must notice, because he holds both it and the bread out once again. 

“Here, take this. You’re gonna need it. Captain...doesn’t exactly know I’m doing this, so don’t say anything to anyone about it.”

Finally she walks forward, still a bit unsteady on her feet but trying her best to hide it, and takes the food and water. She feels awkward, unsure what to do or say, but settles on nodding and whispering, “Thank you.”

Clearing his throat, Marshall steps back and nods once, as well. “Alright. Well. Just...just slide that flask over toward the stairs when you’re done with it, that way if anyone else comes down they won’t think it’s yours. I’ll pick it up whenever I come back.” Without waiting for a reply, he bends down, picks up the lantern, and turns to disappear back up the staircase.

He doesn’t end up coming down to see her again until her fate has been decided. Adelaide nibbles at the stale bread and makes the water last as long as she can, obediently disposing of the flask when it’s empty and sitting back down to wait some more in the endless silence and darkness. By her best guess, another day has passed when more footsteps traverse the stairs. But when Marshall returns, he brings another man with him, and that’s when she knows it’s time to really be afraid.

The bright sunlight is nearly blinding as she’s escorted up onto the deck, ankles free but wrists still bound. It’s a beautiful day, though. The sea is calm this afternoon. Gentle. The kind of sea that makes sailing easy, makes her feel like she’s out there for leisure, not being forced into laboring for filthy pirates.

Adelaide tries to enjoy it, even as Captain Payne sneers at her and orders the men to bring her toward the bow. There’s no telling if and when she’ll be able to enjoy a beautiful day like this again.

The edge of the ship and the water loom ever nearer, and she has half a mind to start struggling, to fight to get away from the rail, but she knows it would do her no good. She can’t even stop walking, the men on either side of her propelling her ever forward with their vice grips on her arms.

“There,” the Captain orders, pointing. “Make sure it’s good and tight.”

Suddenly she’s shoved back, away from the water. Her back collides with something hard. Before she can process what’s happening, Marshall and the other man are working together to wind rope round and round her torso, pinning her to what she’s realized is the frontmost mast of the ship.

So she’s not being thrown overboard. That doesn’t make her feel more than marginally better, not when she still doesn’t know what is being done to her.

The two men finish their job, tying the rope off in one of their expert knots, and Marshall produces a key to remove the shackles from her wrists. It’s a relief to have those gone, at least, though she wishes she could move her arms in order to massage the sore skin left behind. The rope is tight, just as ordered, only barely loose enough to not cut off her blood flow. The thick fabric of her coat keeping it from digging into her skin and rubbing it raw is the only thing making it bearable.

There’s nothing, however, to keep the Captain’s spittle from landing on her face when he leans in to sneer at her.

“You’ll learn quickly that I don’t tolerate deceit of any kind on my ship.” She’s smelled many foul things in her time aboard this ship, but his breath may win the top spot. “You’ll stay right here for three days. If you’re good and don’t put up a fuss, I might let Marshall give you some water once or twice.”

She won’t give him the satisfaction of speaking, but she does level a steady, defiant glare back at him. The punishment scares her. She can’t deny that. She’s already weak from the last two days in the cell with very little to eat and drink. But he won’t see her break.

He takes another step closer, and she refuses to flinch. “And if you think that seems brutal…” He chuckles darkly. “Try crossin’ me again. Then you’ll see brutal.”

She wants to protest that she didn’t cross him, it wasn’t him she was originally aiming to fool, and technically no one on this ship ever asked her if she was a female. Instead she presses her lips tighter together and keeps her gaze out on the horizon as he walks away.

The evening goes by slowly. Her face is quickly chapped by the ever present wind that she can hardly turn away from, her eyes dried out by the same. Her stomach rumbles with hunger. That small slice of bread is the only thing she’s eaten in two days, and while she’s had to get used to much sparser rations ever since coming onto the ship, this is far worse. 

Once the sun sinks below the horizon to her right, the temperature rapidly drops. The crew dwindles down to just the nighttime shift, leaving the ship in near silence. She can hear the slapping of the water against the hull. It gives her something to focus on, something other than the shivers that rack her body and the dryness of her lips. She even manages to be lulled into a kind of half-awake, unthinking state, though she doesn’t actually sleep until morning when the air starts to warm again. Then her sleep is fitful, frequently interrupted by the sounds of the morning crew going about their duties. 

If she thought the evening and night dragged on, the next day is much worse. Hunger gnaws at her stomach and her lips are even more chapped. Adelaide can feel herself growing weaker as time goes on, slumping further into the ropes, head lolling forward from time to time without her permission. It’s becoming harder, too, to distract herself from her misery. 

When Marshall appears in what must be the early afternoon, she nearly sobs with relief. The small flask he holds is quite possibly the most beautiful thing she’s ever seen. Without speaking, he unscrews the lid and holds it up to her lips, and glorious water washes across them and into her parched mouth. She doesn’t even care that it’s stale and luke-warm, it’s heavenly.

Marshall pulls the flask away after only a few seconds, and she’s so upset by the loss that she accidentally whines, though she quickly cuts off the embarrassing sound. He offers her a half-smile.

“Not too fast. We don’t want you vomiting it all back up.”

He’s right, that’s one of the most terrible things she can think of happening right now. Adelaide nods, regretting it when her head throbs, and keeps her eyes averted from his. He lifts the flask again, and she relishes every second she gets. All too soon, she’s having to turn her head to the side so that she can tip it further back, Marshall following the motion until the last drops are drained. 

Replacing the cap, he turns to leave as silently as he came. Before she fully knows what she’s doing, Adelaide calls out after him. “Stay!”

When he looks back over his shoulder at her, brow furrowed, she drops her voice to a near whisper, cutting her eyes away again. “Please? Can you...would you…? I…” Her chin drops down toward her chest. “I feel like I’m going to lose my mind.”

From the corner of her eye, she sees him lean to the side, probably looking over the rest of the ship, maybe even gauging the Captain’s position, before he steps back closer to her. He, too, speaks in a low voice. “I’m sorry. I cannot. Not without getting myself in trouble and you in even more trouble.”

With that, he’s gone, leaving her to the sun and the wind and her own thoughts again.

On the second night she manages to doze despite the chill in the air. The second day, however, is the most miserable thing she’s ever experienced in her young life. As they travel farther south the days had been growing ever warmer, but this is by far the warmest day yet. The sun bears down on them all, but while the men shed their coats - and some even their shirts - she has no such option. Her throat is impossibly dry, her lips crack painfully. Running her tongue across them does little to moisten them and leaves a bitter iron taste in her mouth. The brightness of the sun makes her head pound even harder than before, and from time to time strange colors dance in her vision.

She’d cry if she could, but her eyes feel as dry as the rest of her.

This time when Marshall approaches she can’t stop herself from begging, though her voice rasps horribly. “Please, please, I need...I...please…” It doesn’t even make any sense, but he garners the urgency, regardless, and brings the flask to her as quickly as possible. Calloused fingers slide under her chin, as if he’s unsure whether or not she can keep her head up on her own. She’s grateful. She’s unsure of just the same thing.

He forces her to take it slowly once again, and she squeezes her eyes shut in between gulps, trying to savor the water as much as trying to block out the sun’s rays. When the water is gone, though, and Marshall begins to screw the lid back on, she opens them, blearily, to look at him. His coat is missing and his shirt is unbuttoned. She’d blush if she had the energy.

“I don’t...I don’t think I can…”

He gives her that half-smile again. She thinks maybe it’s a sympathetic smile, but she’s really in no condition to judge such a thing. “It’s only one more day. You’ll make it.”

That night her mind is filled with nonsensical thoughts and imaginings of people she knows for certain aren’t there at the time. Her husband’s face morphs into the Captain’s and back again. Her parents stand to the side and tell her what a good match it is, Marshall tells her she’ll make it, all while the Captain gropes her and berates her for not having children and Charles pulls the rope around her tighter, tighter, until she can’t breathe and can’t feel her limbs. She’s not sure whether she’s awake or asleep for any of it, she just wants it to end.

The third day passes without her really being aware of it. One moment it’s nighttime, the next the sun is climbing up into the sky, burning at her skin once again, and the next she’s falling, ropes finally gone, body collapsing to the deck without anything to stop it.

“Permission to take her to her bunk and get her some food, sir?” she hears, barely, as if from a great distance away.

Perhaps the permission is granted, perhaps not. All she knows is that she’s picked up, hefted over a broad shoulder like a weightless sack of flour, and she groans with the change in position and altitude. Again, time passes without her knowing, and when she’s aware of the world again she’s lying in her hammock, in the blessed dimness of the bunk room, and Marshall is there, with another flask and a bowl of something that smells wonderful. 

“Hello there, Miss Gray.” His smile is a bit brighter this time. “You made it.”

#summerofwhump #summerofwhump3 #in irons #adelaide the pirate #dehydration #whump #whump writing #lady whump #lady whumpee #imprisonment tw #restraints tw #starvation tw #dehydration tw #rope #tied to a mast #nonconsensual touching tw #emeto tw #hallucinations tw #pirates #pirate ship #pirate oc #original fiction

[rory-for-short]

New Crossings New Horizons: Part 3

TELL ME WHY I DECIED TO MAKE PART THREE THE START OF A SLOW BURN PLOT WITH NOOK AND THE READER I HATE MYSELF BUT ALSO IM HAVING FUN. 

So the plan is to make a community out of this island over the span of one summer and a fall semester. Nook had explained that there were more generators arriving in the nest few days. It was up to you all to figure out how housing would work. The list went on and on from pod homes, tiny houses, campers, and prefab homes. Tiny homes won. With a stipulation. We would start with them, then upgrade to prefabs later on. It would be easier to run tiny homes with the starting generators until we could figure out an electricity grid, and work on a plumbing/ well system for now. Nook seemed happy with this decision, and in the meantime, you and Cherry went out to collect wood and supplies while Apollo and Bob offered to find food.

“Hey imma trap some bears maybe there will be a zoo eventually,” announced Timmy jokingly.

“You and what bear trap,” Tommy snickered.

“I have several yards of rope, that's all I need,” Timmy smirked, uncoiling some thick rope from a knot.

“You kids be careful and stay close to camp. Me and Y/N are going south to find some wood,” Cherry informed.

You had already gotten some rope and packs yourself so that you could tie up logs into a bunch for easier carrying.

“Me and Bob are setting up snares to the west. All for small game but still, watch your footing if you are going up our way,” Apollo warned before everyone parted ways. You and Cherry managed to not only find wood, but also collected a tote of wild strawberries. Soon evening was upon you. Cherry mentioned heading back now before it got too dark, so the two of you started heading back. You were walking in front of Cherry leading your way back to camp when you lost your footing and found yourself stepping in a snare. Apollo and Bob must have really covered their ground, because you two were nowhere near the west of camp. Yet here you were, dangling and suspended ten feet off the ground from a tree.

“Y?N! Are you alright?” Cherry exclaimed as she ran for you dropping strawberry filled tote and running towards your dangling form.

“Yeah, I think I’m good...Just hanging around,” you smirked half expecting a rim shot. “It looks like the guys had covered more area than we thought,” you reasoned. Your current position was impressive, and uncomfortable. There was currently a rope around your arms and torso that made moving your arms impossible. At least you weren’t hanging by the neck. You could deal with some rope across your chest and restraining your arms as long as you could breath. You counted that as a blessing.

“Do you see a place to cut me down?” you called to her. Cherry began to scurry around the base of the trunk and nearby trees.

“I don't see any rope down here. It’s like it's on you and the branch and just nothing. There should be some rope down here for easy release right?,” the small girl panicked as she darted to and fro, hurriedly searching for the end of the rope to cut you down. Yet nothing was found. Great. You sighed in frustration. As cool of a trap as it was, you could feel your arms being construed and knew you’d have bruising from the rough rope.

“Go get the guys at camp. They can get me down, they set the trap afterall. But be quick it's getting dark,” you warned. Cherry nodded and sped towards camp. Hopefully she could get to them fast and not leave you dangling all night. Not five minutes after she disappeared, you began hearing rustling in bushes. The hairs on your neck stood up.

“ah-Apollo? That you?” you asked meekly. No reply. To be fair it was a bit windy, and you reasoned that you being alone at night with visibility getting lower, you were starting to be on edge. However, that didn't keep your eyes from darting to every little sound. Ten minutes in and your arms really started to hurt. Not to mention it was getting dark-dark, not just late-evening-dark. Just then, you saw a flashlight coming from the direction of camp moving steadily towards you

“Y/N! Kid! Where are you?” called the voice of none other than Tom Nook. Well thank you for the backup, Cherry, but what luck would Nook have at figuring out an Apollo snare?

“Over here Mr. Nook!” you call meekly from the tree severely doubting Cherry’s judgment at the moment. His flashlight beam landed on you and you squinted at the sudden change of light.

“Oh thank god! I'll have you down in a minute kid, don't you worry,” he said voice dripping with concern. You weren’t really worried about being stuck up here all night, except for the fact you had no idea where the rope release was.

“Cherry couldn’t find the release. I doubt you'll have much luck in the dark Mr. Nook” you reasoned.

“Who do you think taught Timmy to set a trap? Don't worry, the end of the rope should be about shoulder height on one of these trees behind you.” he explained as he disappeared into the shadows behind you.

“Timmy?! I thought this had to be Apollo’s handy work,” you were slightly impressed and it was notable in your tone..

“Don’t tell Timmy that. I’ll go straight to his head. Okay Y/N, get ready and brace yourself,”

“Do wha-” and at that you were crashing down ten feet to the ground. You landed awkwardly on your heel at an angle and yelped a bit in both pain and surprise. Tom Nook was beside you in a blink.

A look of worry stained his features as he knelt near you. You were trying to shrug off the now significantly looser rope. Red marks and bruises were already forming on your upper arms and forearms.Pain surged through your foot. A look of horror washed over your face as you feared it might be sprained, rolled, or worse, broken.

“Sorry that landing sounded rough. Here, let me help you up. Your arms aren't looking too good either,” he noted as he scanned your bruised arms. He extended his hand to help you on your feet when pain shot through your leg, calf and foot. You winced and your step faltered. Tom noticed and held your arm a little tighter.

“You landed bad didn’t you? You think you can make it back to camp on that ankle?”

You hesitated a moment before answering.

“Uh, ye-yes I’ll be fine,” you said through gritted teeth as you tried to adjust your steps to be less painful. However, your attempted step caused another shrug of pain all the way from the heel of your foot up your calf. You suppressed a yelp. Your eyes, now watering from the injured muscles that betrayed you, met Nooks and you could tell he knew you weren’t actually all that fine.. You sheepishly looked down and away.

“You can’t walk back, can you?” he sighed. It was more of a statement than a question. A beat of silence fell between you and he finally resolved.

“Alright, I’m too old for bridal style so you’ll have to get on behind me,” he reasoned.

“What? No,- come on we can try walking-” but the ankle was already starting to swell and Nook gave you that Dadtm look that stopped you dead in the middle of your sentence.  A look he probably mastered by practicing it on Timmy and Tommy. The kind that said ‘I’m not arguing kid, do as I say’. You sighed as he crouched in front of you. You reached your arms around his shoulders and despite claiming to be an old man, he lifted you pretty effortlessly. Which should have taken more effort, you were a full grown woman after all. You, at this point, were red in the face and you knew it. It was a pretty embarrassing predicament, having the decider of your future employment carry you on his back through the woods like some kid that scraped their knee. How were you gonna hide the red face at camp? You didn’t know, but hoped everyone would be in bed already.

“Sorry Mr. Nook, I should have been more careful,” you muttered into his shoulder. You felt his chuckle resonate through his back and into your chest.

“You have nothing to be sorry about. I was the one who dropped you too suddenly after all… and everyone calls me Nook or Tom. You don't have to call me ‘mister nook’ you know,” he answered softly.

You nodded into his shoulder and you both approached the camp. You saw everyone waiting on the two of you sitting around the fire with cooked fish and rabbit.

“Oh great. Looks like he managed to break her further,” Timmy laughed, elbowing Tommy. Nook shot Timmy a glare.

“I got her out of the “bear trap” YOU set. Really Timmy, if you are going to set snares, annonce them to the general populace so no one gets hurt,” Nook scolded with you still on his back, as he walked over to where everyone was sitting and eating. Red face was a go, but you could probably blame it on the injury and fire light. Nook helped you to sit on the log seating as Bob handed a plate your way. AT\t that moment you realize just how hungry you were.

“Catch of the day, besides you of course,” Bob snickered and you gave a light laugh.

“First I gotta splint up this ankle,” you explained.

“Ill get the first aid kit,” Cherry offered and scampered towards the main tent. Out of the corner of your eye you saw Nook a few inches from Timmys face, looking like he was hardcore chewing him ou in a hushed tonet. Now it was Timmy's turn to be embarrassed.

#animal crossing #animal crossing x reader #animal crossing new horizons #animal crossing fanfiction #new horizons #fanfiction #fanfic #Timmy and Tommy #Tommy #Tom #tom nook #nook #reader insert #x reader #humanization #human nook x reader #apollo #cherry #bob

[hyuckssunchip]

Do You Believe In Fate?

Pairings: Jaemin x Reader

Words: 2.4K

Warnings: some angst, some fluff

Summary: 

Fate /fāt/ noun

                       “The development of events beyond a person’s control”

There’s a plan for every one out there, at least that’s what Jaemin wholeheartedly believes. What happens when fate takes a different path?

Because love is a little difficult, sometimes you have to say goodbye.

collab: for @rvse-hvvck​‘s Sometimes Letting Go

“사랑이 좀 어려워”

            ~Bye My First...

“Do you believe in fate?” You felt the soft rumble of his words vibrate through you as your head rested on your boyfriend’s chest.

“Hmmm?” 

“Fate? You know, like people that are destined to be together?”

You nodded in response, eyes still shut, sleep dragging them down. Jaemin tended to do this. It was always well into the night when he decided he wanted to get deep and profound. You enjoyed this side of him just as much as you enjoyed the goofy energizer bunny he was, but you preferred these discussions to happen when you weren’t trying to get well needed sleep. 

“Do you?” It came out as a murmur, but Jaemin was listening so intently that there was no way he could’ve missed it.

“Yeah, it brought me to you.” You smiled at his comment, he never failed to make your heart flutter. 

Your eyes wandered over the silhouette of your boyfriend, his body language telling you that what you dreaded was in fact reality. 

You hadn’t fought in months, but things weren’t right.

You wished you could remember the exact date, you wished you could pinpoint the day that things began to fall apart. Maybe then things wouldn’t be the way that they were now.

It didn’t happen overnight. It was slow, but at the same time it happened so quickly. It snuck up on you.

You could feel it, but you ignored it, for days, weeks, months. Far too long. 

It was at some point when there had become a defined line on each side of the bed, yours and his. It was a separation that had come gradually, and without noticing, you had found yourself spending countless nights huddled alone on your side of the bed. The small gap between the two of you had grown, it felt like a canyon, impossible to cross.

It didn’t used to be like this.

The date nights you had once adored, fizzled to an end. 

“That one’s Venus… I think.” You giggled at the face Jaemin made, utter concentration.  He had studied the constellations just for tonight, but it seemed that no matter how much he tried to focus, his mind was running circles around you.

He gave you a shy smile and peered under his lashes. Rubbing the back of his neck he was quick to admit that he forgot. 

“I’m gonna be honest, the only star I see right now is you.”

It should’ve made you cringe. But the smile that accompanied the line was more than enough to make you swoon.

You stared at his side profile, something you could never get used to. You felt the urge to reach out and touch him, to assure yourself that this was real.

Getting caught staring at him, you tore your eyes away, nervously searching the sky for a new constellation, something to get your mind off of him. You hummed to yourself, a nervous habit you had taken up.

He shuffled closer towards you, your heart falling to your stomach. There were no words that could explain how you felt. It was a nervous sickness that made you feel nauseous, but at the same time it was butterflies dancing in the pit of your stomach, dying to be let loose.

Your heart was beating so loudly you were sure that he would notice by now. It was in a matter of seconds that you realized that you were only inches apart now. The specks in his eyes visible, sucking you in.

You gripped the fabric of the blanket below you unknowingly, a way to keep you grounded. 

It happened in less than a second, but lasted for what felt like forever. It wasn’t until you felt the lingering faint breaths that you had realized he had kissed you.

He pulled back slightly, taking a glance at your reaction, timidly making eye contact. 

“Oh.”

“Oh?” He asked, a slight waver in his voice.

“That was fast.”

He sat back, rolling his head back up towards the sky, a grimace pulling taught over his features. You could see the beginnings of regret accumulating in his posture.

“I’m sorry.”

You bit your lip, trying to find a way to rephrase that.

“Could you do it again? It was too fast, I feel like I may have missed it.” You smiled shyly at the way his eyes popped open, eager to find yours.

Despite his reaction, he didn’t move and you frowned, becoming impatient. 

You leaned over and pecked his cheek, watching as a light blush raced across his face. 

That was the last time hesitated with you.

The wild nights that you thought would never end, midnight memories that made your heart swell. They left with the rising of dawn.

Your legs rocked in rhythm with his, the swing creaking under the constant movement.

“Do you think that there’s a plan for us?”

“A plan?” 

“Yeah, like we were supposed to meet … like do you think there’s someone up there watching us and smiling cause we made it? We found each other?”

“Maybe.” You giggled at the sudden thought, “Maybe they’re laughing at us right now.”

He turned to face you, “Why would they laugh at us?”

“We’re kind of boring aren’t we? Kind of dumb too.” You laughed, throwing your head back, almost falling off the swing set.

“So? We can be dumb and in love.” He pouted at you, head tilted as if waiting for you to argue.

“Yeah, you’re right.” There was a pause. You watched the breath of air condense and then disappear. 

“We’re pretty lucky aren’t we?” He was using that tone again, the one where you couldn’t quite tell if he realized he was speaking out loud.

“Yeah.” 

The two of sat in silence as he snaked his hand around the chain, grasping yours in his own tightly. 

“Let’s go to the beach.”

You couldn’t stop the smile that blossomed on your face.

“Now?” 

“Why not?” You laughed at the determined look in his eyes. 

“Alright.” Before you could even finish the word, you were dragged to his car, the warmth surrounding you for a moment.

His hand rested on yours throughout the drive, the soft music of the radio leaving a comfortable ambience.  

It wasn’t much later that you began to see the horizon fill with water, just the glow of the moon as light.

You felt the car slow to a stop, and the slight squeeze of his hand in yours indicated you arrived.

He gripped your wrist, tugging you to the trunk of his car, already set up from your last date. Together you fell against the pillows, tangling yourselves in the multitude of blankets.

Lingering in each other’s clutches you gazed into the scenery before you, the moon reflecting on the surface of the ocean. Only the sounds of your own breathing and crashing of the waves as background music.

It was some time later when the white glow began to pick up pigment.

The faded orange of the sun started to repress the once hollow black night. It was the only moment in the day that you could look directly at the sun, washing away any of the serene moments that hid in the night. Moments like these.

The comfort of insomniac nights, you would lay staring at the ceiling, talking about your future. They too disappeared with the moon. 

“What if we got a dog?” You laughed at his suggestion. 

“A dog? Why so sudden? Jaemin you can’t even take care of yourself, how on earth are you going to take care of a dog?”

He flopped backwards on the bed, “That’s what I have you for.” He winked at you, a sly attempt in winning you over. 

“Come on, Jeno and his girlfriend just got a dog, they go on cute dates with him all the time. I wanna go on cute dates with a dog.” He whined at you, tugging you into the bed alongside him.

“Then let’s borrow their dog. Taking care of a dog is a lot of work.” You poked his side, not willing to give in. As much as you adored the thought of getting a puppy with Jaemin, you knew how much work it would be.

“A cat then? They aren’t that hard to take care of.” He had turned to face you, trying to catch your attention.

“Jaemin, we’re not going to get a pet just for the sake of getting a pet.” You giggled, staring up at the ceiling and refusing to meet his stare.

“A goldfish?” 

“Jaemin.” 

“Fine. But a hamster would’ve been really cute.” He pouted beside you and you rolled your eyes at his antics. 

Seconds of silence later, you moved to get up, but before you could he wrapped his arms around you. 

“Don’t go.” He whispered, trapping you inbetween the sheets, his chest pressed tightly against your back.

You sighed at the sounds of his pleading, it broke your heart to hear him so vulnerable.

“Just for a moment.” You hushed back, not willing to break the mood.

A moment passed, but you couldn’t bring yourself to move.

You felt his hand trail up your back, tracing the line of your spine. 

Your eyes searched the night sky, staring past the window at the sparkle of the city below you. 

Jaemin’s hand had reached a steady rhythm, slowly lulling you to sleep. 

“Do you want to live with me?”

It was such a big step, such a heavy question to have in the middle of the night. But you didn’t doubt your answer for a moment.

“Of course.”

You didn’t need to look at him to see the huge grin overtake his face.

“I want to wake up everyday with you in my arms. I don’t want to have to say goodbye, I don’t want to have to wait a whole day to see you.”

You hummed, finding comfort in his arms that reached around you, only to grip tighter. 

“I’m not leaving.”

He rested his chin on your shoulder, following the movement of your eyes, only to land on the face of the moon, watching over the two of you.

The two of you bathed in the moonlight for a moment, it was gone when you woke up.

It was in the moments in which you did nothing in particular that you felt the most content.

You stared down at your boyfriend, his head laying in your lap, his bottom half sprawled across the couch. The TV was playing in the background, not garnering much attention from either of you.

Your fingers ran through Jaemin’s hair, watching his expression soften the longer you continued. He had been silent for a long time now.

It was comfortable, something that you knew was dangerous. 

You leaned your head against the back of the couch, closing your own eyes, a wave of relaxation washing over you.

He spoke up quietly, never opening his eyes. 

“I think I could stay here forever.” 

It wasn’t something uncommon for him to say. He let you know often how much he wanted you to be his eternity, how much he believed you were his forever.

“Me too.” There wasn’t doubt in your voice. You were sure of it, just like you were sure that no matter how many live’s you live, you would find him again.

He rolled onto his side, facing towards your stomach as he cuddle deeper into you. 

“Jeno broke up with his girlfriend.”

You opened your eyes, surprised at his sudden admission.

“Really? I thought things were going so well though? They were so cute together.”

He hummed back.

“Is he okay?” You bit your lip, not liking the feeling you got in your stomach.

“Yeah.” It came out raspy, as if he was struggling to say it. “I don’t ever want that to happen to us.”

You tensed underneath him. 

“Me neither.”

“Let’s never even think about it, okay?” He tilted his head up to meet your eyes with his. A promise in his gaze.

A loud bang from the TV startled you, and you faced the screen. He continued to stare at you, fighting the growing knot in his stomach.

Contentment isn’t love. Contentment is settling, you don’t settle for love, you fight for love. 

But there wasn’t much to fight for anymore.

“I think we’ve had enough.”

You froze, you knew this was coming. In fact it should’ve arrived months ago.

It took all the strength and energy in you to nod. He was right. 

You collapsed onto the couch, burying your head into your palms. It still hurt, no matter how much you had expected it. 

You felt the couch dip and his body warmth let you know of his presence. Without a word he pulled you towards his chest, engulfing you for what may be the last time.

“I still love you.”

“I know.”

You nuzzled into his neck. If you closed your eyes, it didn’t feel like it was the end.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“Not really.” Words didn’t need to be said or heard. You both knew why. 

It would be worse to stay here, struggling together, sucking the energy out of each other. It would be best to end things before you ended up resenting each other. At least you hoped that much.

He continued anyways, a brief silence not strong enough to hold him back. “I don’t know when it happened. It wasn’t something that you did, or didn’t do.”

Head still snuggled into his side, you refused to move. 

“I know, it wasn’t either of our faults.”

For a moment he stilled with fear, you could feel it in the way that his arms tensed around you.

“I’m being selfish aren’t I? Is this a mistake?”

You wanted to agree with him, you wanted to say with your whole chest that he was right. He was being selfish. This is a mistake. Why would he ever leave you?

But you couldn’t. It was the right thing to do.

“It’s okay to be selfish.” You forced the lump in the back of your throat down.

Whether he noticed the way your breath hitched in your throat or not, he didn’t care to show it.

“I don’t want to be.” He mumbled into the top of your head, and you savoured the feeling for the last time.

“Do you think they’re looking down at us laughing right now?”

He shook his head, a sad smile on his face. 

“You know, I think fate had a different plan for us.” 

© Copyright 2021. hyuckssunchip. All rights reserved.

#nct #nct dream #nctiy #ncty #ncitizen #nctzen #neos #seasonies #czennies #na jaemin #jaemin #nana #nct drabbles #nct shorts #nct one shots #nct imagines #nct scenerios #nct angst #nct fluff #jaemin angst #jaemin fluff #nct jaemin angst #fool sun

[shootybangbang]

[Talking Bird] Ch 16: In which the plot finally makes an appearance

[Ao3 Link]

[Content Warning]: suicidal ideation, mild gore

[Note]: this fic has gone through some serious revisions — mostly expanded scenes/dialogue. The chapters most heavily affected are 1, 2, 3, and 7, but I’ve added a changelog to the end notes of each previous chapter detailing the edits that have been made. To save you some time though, here are the three main things to note:

The reader character does not have the bonds

The reader character refers to Arthur by his last name due to unfamiliarity

The horniness from last chapter has been moved to a future chapter. sorry!

This chapter is also pretty long in comparison to the others. From here on out, the chapters will probably be 2000+ words.

———

You look out into the plains, at the last pale band of light disappearing beneath a horizon of prairie grass and dark, looming buttes. The shadows of the scant trees stretch long and thin, their branches like a thousand spindly fingers grasping, searching. The landscape is dimmed to a tableau of reds and blacks, anything not illuminated by the fire slowly sinking into the featureless canvas of night. All of it blurred and indistinct behind a curtain of rain.

It’s a prettier sight by far than any you’ve had in St Denis. Or San Francisco. Or anywhere else you’ve lived, really.

And yet it hangs like featureless gauze behind the endless reel playing out over and over behind your eyes, spinning round like the printed images on a zoetrope.

The O’Driscoll’s hands wet with blood and mud. His eyes wide and uncomprehending. Trying to put himself back together the way one might a broken toy, sieving his viscera between his fingers and scooping it into the cavity of his chest. That initial, stunned bemusement giving way at last to the dawning horror of his own end.

And accompanying it, the numb realization that what bothered you more was the bare abstraction of the act. The burden of this sin weighing heavy with all the others, its addition tipping some moral scale, and —

“Hey.”

Morgan’s voice, jarringly brusque against the murmurings of your own private judge and jury, is almost mercifully irritating.

“What do you want?” you snap.

“Get up,” he says. “Start strippin’ the wet bark off the firewood.”

“For chrissakes, at least give me a second to catch my breath.”

“Why, so you can keep sittin’ there feeling sorry for yourself?” He leans one hand against the stone wall of the outcrop and drags himself back to his feet. The barest shadow of a grimace flits across his face as he straightens his back. “C’mon. Sooner we get set up proper, the sooner we can get back to ignorin’ each other. Then you can sulk all night in peace.”

The cottonwood branches are covered in cracked, ash brown bark that scrapes rough against your palms and fingers, rasping the skin raw as you hold the wood firm for carving. One of the downsides of living easy for so many years, you suppose — all the protective calluses atrophy to nothing, and what remains becomes susceptible to old and familiar hurts. But habits run deeper than skin, and what the mind forgets the body keeps.

As you work your way through the firewood, Boadicea nickers and paws impatiently at the dirt.

“I’m sorry girl,” you hear Morgan say. “Been a hard day for us both.”

You snort contemptuously. Out of the corner of your eye, you watch as he unhooks the horse’s bridle and lifts away the saddle, then starts grooming her with a battered looking brush, brushing with quick, circular motions, going against the grain and fluffing up her coat to dry out her fur with a solicitous measure of care that seems wholly unfitting of a man of his temperament and occupation.

Boadicea makes a low, rumbly noise in the back of her throat that sounds almost like a purr. She dips her head down and chomps at the yellowed prairie grass lining the floor of the outcrop, tearing up mouthfuls with a sedate contentedness that makes you sorely wish you could share in her circumstances.

A sense of fatigue more complete than any you’ve ever felt before settles over you like heavy snow. For the moment, you feel blank and washed out, stripped bare of all pretense.

“Morgan,” you admit. “I don’t have the bonds.”

“Yeah,” he replies. “I know.” He unpacks his canvas roll and yanks free from it the saddle blanket of coarse, undyed wool, then unfurls it over the horse’s back, pulling it over her flank and adjusting the fit. “Figured as much before we left Strawberry.”

“Oh.” At this point, you haven’t even the energy to be surprised. “Huh.”

For a long while, the only sound is that of the knife scraping against bark and the intensifying patter of rain, fat droplets coming down hard and fast.

In a small voice, you ask him, “You’re not really gonna sell me to a brothel, are you?”

He scoffs. “What makes y’think that ?”

“Thought you seemed too… too decent to do something like that.”

“Me? Decent?” Morgan lets out a low, disbelieving whistle. “Thought you’d know better by now.”

He turns partway to face you. In the dim light of the fire only half of him is lit bright enough to see, the rest tapering sharp into dark silhouette. For the lapse of a heartbeat it’s as if all the irreverence and bravado has been ripped away like a sheet of paper, and underneath a viciousness, a suppressed violence that you’ve been too blind to see.

This whole time you’ve been treating him like a dog, when the teeth at your throat are those of a wolf.

Your mouth goes dry and your fingers tighten around the knife in your hand. You stare up at him like a deer caught in his sights — blind panic rising up in your chest and throat like cold water. You swallow hard and try to force it down so you can maintain at least a semblance of control.

“Mr. Morgan…?”

“You ain’t been half as scared of me as you should be,” he says. “holed up with a wanted man, nobody around for miles. Some of the men I’ve run with, they…”

He lets the sentence trail off, the implications clear enough without him saying so. Then he shakes his head, and there is a weariness in him, a kind of cynical exhaustion that ages him far beyond his years. “Girl,” he says. “You keep at this line of work, I guarantee you’ll be dead in a year.”

Morgan slicks his fingers through his wet hair to keep rainwater from dripping into his eyes, and you can see that the hangdog look is back on his face, all his suggested cruelty vanished like smoke. He shifts his attention back to the saddlebags. “No, I ain’t decent,” he continues. He pulls out a tin cup and the individual components of what looks to be a collapsible grill. “But I ain’t so far gone that I’d hurt a woman. Or sell one.”

“But you’d ransom one.”

“Figured it out, did you?” he says. “Thought you might.”

He sits back beside the fire and pieces the grill together, twists its winch tight and positions it over the fire. Then he fills the tin cup with water from the canteen and sets it atop to heat.

“If you don’t hurt women,” you say slowly, your right hand still holding the knife tight as a vise. “Then what’re you going to do to me when you find out I’m not worth ransoming?”

“Doubt that’s gonna be a problem.”

“Why not?”

“Had a brand new Mauser on ya. You know how much those things cost?”

Mentally, you kick yourself. Looks like begging the gunsmith to lend you the best pistol he had in stock has come back to bite you in the ass.

“The gun’s not mine,” you say quickly. “It’s a loan.”

“Those bloomers in your room were real silk. You gonna tell me those were a loan too?”

“You — my bloomers?! Why were you going through my bloomers, you fucking degen—”

Of all the things you’ve accused him of today, somehow this is the one that actually rankles him. “You think I like rummaging through women’s underwear? Had to go through ‘em to get to your billfold.”

You flush hard enough that even the tips of your ears feel hot. “I… I saved up for those bloomers. Not that I’d expect you to understand the importance of—

“That shirt’s custom tailored, ain’t it? Those boots, too. And that’s good leather right there. Far too good for your typical drug mule. Either you come from money, or you got rich friends.”

There’s not much you can rebut here. All you can manage is a lame, “You don’t even know who I am .”

“Got a friend not too far from here who’s plenty familiar with St Denis. He’ll know.” Morgan holds his hand out towards you. “Gimme that knife a second.”

The knife is the only scrap of protection you’ve managed to grab hold of through this entire ordeal. You squeeze its handle tight.

He lets out a short, impatient sigh. “If I wanted to hurt you, I’d have done it by now. So c’mere and hand it over.”

You’ve known men who take a certain vicious pleasure in abusing women. Merchants with cringing wives. Clients with kind faces who’d leave working girls battered and bruised. There’s usually a certain mien about them that sets you on edge and that Morgan, brusque as he is, thoroughly lacks.

You brush the wood shavings off your lap and approach him. When you reach his place beside the fire, he tilts his head upwards to meet your eyes, the look on his face calm and expectant. A self-assured confidence that you’ve seen many times before, in the guises of many different men. It sends a familiar shiver of resentment down your spine.

You could cut out his eye right now. You could sink the blade into the thick cord of his neck. And he’d shoot you dead just for trying it — oh, you’ve no doubt of that — but it’d be quick and it’d be painless, and here comes that pathetic urge again, that little whisper coaxing you deeper, deeper towards the welcoming dark —

But equally pathetic is the nagging insistence that always stays your hand, that strident, desperate plea born from bodily instinct. The shared fear of all life from the inevitable. Cowardice — that’s what it is. A cowardice you’ve never been able to shake, a resentful, stubborn tether that you’ve bitten and clawed at over the years, but that still stays looped firm around your neck.

( And what about Mei? What about her son? )

You hand him the knife, and he receives it without incident.

The water in the tin cup is boiling. Morgan slips the point of the knife through the cup’s metal handle, and delicately removes it from the grate to cool. As you stand there, wet and cold and resentful, but not sure what else to do, he saws the top off a can of beans and sets it on the grill to warm, then pulls something out of his satchel and tosses it in your direction.

Somehow, you manage to not fumble the catch. It’s a can of peaches.

“Don’t eat ‘em yet,” he says. “I wanna take a look at your arm first. Roll up your sleeve for me.”

You grimace. One of the pros of tailored shirts is having sleeves that actually fit. “It doesn’t roll up that far.”

“Then I’ll cut it off for you,” he says, putting the knife to the shoulder seam.

“Like hell you will. This is my last decent shirt.”

Morgan shrugs. “No way around it, unless you wanna take it off.”

A shirt nice enough to present a veneer of respectability costs at least $4. Your usual tailor’s fee runs about $2, plus tip. That’s $6 total: the equivalent of two week’s worth of food for Mei and her son. Good food — white rice and cabbage, maybe even a bit of pork belly. Not the bits of offal scrounged from the butcher and wilted produce she’d resort to otherwise.

You hold out your hand and say, “Give me something to cover myself with.”

Your time spent reading Ovid in college would have probably been better served learning to dress like him, you think to yourself as you try and try again to wrap Morgan’s blanket around yourself like a toga.

“I said I’d give you a minute to yourself,” he says. “It’s been more than three now. I’m gonna turn around.”

“Just ten more seconds,” you respond, hastily tucking the corner of the blanket into the horizontal swathe pulled taut across your torso.

The sheer amount of irritation he manages to convey in the sigh he lets out is really quite impressive. In it, you can somehow hear him rolling his eyes.

When you finally let him know you’re ready, he takes one look at you and has to stifle a laugh. “You could’ve just wrapped it around your chest. Woulda been more practical.”

“Oh, excuse me for wanting to preserve what’s left of my dignity,” you snap, keeping one arm pressed against your chest to keep the whole improvised garment from falling apart.

“Alright Caesar, c’mere. Let me see.”

The cut looks like an angry red furrow ploughed through the field of your skin. Its edges are ragged and torn, separated like poorly cut cloth. In between, the wound itself gleams red and raw, with particles and fibers mixed in with blood and indeterminate tissue.

Earlier, when you’d gingerly untied the makeshift bandage and taken off your shirt, you’d taken a silent moment to survey the damage, wondering with horrified fascination if it was perhaps your own muscle you were glimpsing, that particular facet of your body surfacing through its dermal barrier for the first time.

“I’m gonna hold your arm,” Morgan says. “That ok with you?”

You nod, a little dumbfounded that he of all people would have the foresight to ask for permission.

He lifts your arm towards the firelight so he can better examine the wound, and in doing so handles you with more care than you can remember any lover ever giving you. You tell yourself that it’s a rebuke of your own terrible taste than an indication of any extraordinary kindness on his part, then forcibly dredge up the memory of his gun at your back for good measure.

“You’re gonna have a hell of a scar after this,” he says, running his thumb along the unbroken skin below the cut. “No inflammation, which is good. I’ll patch you up the best I can, but we’re still gonna want to check on it every couple hours to make sure it doesn’t get infected.”

He gets up to rummage through his saddlebags and returns holding a roll of gauze and a bottle of clear liquid. “You’ll be wanting this,” he says, handing over the latter. “This’ll hurt.”

You take a swig and nearly choke on it. “What the hell is this?”

“Grain alcohol.”

Grimacing, you bring it to your lips again and take in two more mouthfuls of the stuff before handing it back, gulping it down quick to get the burn of it down your throat and off of your tongue.

Morgan hovers his hand over the tin cup to test its temperature. “This needs to cool down first. Gives you some time for that liquor to set in too.”

“I think it’s going to my head already,” you admit.

Heat is spreading from the warm pit of your stomach to your neck and face, branching through your veins as sure as blood. The thud of your heart, previously an imperceptible thing, now asserts itself like a metronome.

He glances over at you and whistles low. “Not much of a drinker, are you?”

“Not usually.” You press your palm against your cheek. “Am I turning red?”

“Gettin’ there.”

It’s strange, settling into this oddly comfortable limbo between cordiality and aggression. Your sustained caution of him is beginning to wane so steadily that you have to consciously remind yourself the only reason he hasn’t shot you dead or at least seriously injured you is due to the fact that you’re worth more intact than otherwise.

“So,” Morgan says. “What’s someone with silk bloomers doin’ all the way out here runnin’ opium to Strawberry?”

“It’s a very long and stupid story.”

“Then give me the short version.”

You stare at the ground as though it’ll offer you some way to condense the sordid affair of your life into a couple easy sentences. He’d asked the question with what sounded like genuine curiosity instead of interrogation, and for once you feel inclined to blurt out the whole of it, like a girl in confession.

You want to tell him about how small the missionaries had seemed when you’d waved at them through the train’s grime-smudged window, not knowing it’d be the last time. The tweed jacket tossed carelessly onto the floor, and the cool, smooth sheen of mahogany against your skin. Feng fishing you out from the dark water lapping at the docks. The money, the opium, the blood.

The sight of the Heartlands for the first time, its blue horizon impossibly vast.

“I owe someone a lot of money,” you say finally, fiddling with a piece of grass between your fingers, tearing into halves and halves and halves. “He said it was either this or the brothel.”

“And you chose this. Runnin’ dope to those poor bastards working the railroads.”

It’s not the first time you’ve heard this particular tone of voice. The kind that implies its speaker’s higher moral ground as it categorically condemns you. But coming from him makes its sting especially hard.

“I don’t force them to buy it,” you say hotly. “It’s not just me that’s at fault here.”

“You ever seen a dope addict? They ain’t got a goddamn choice —”

“Well, d’you know what the average lifespan of a Chinatown whore is?” You don’t bother waiting for a response before plummeting to the answer. “Two years. After that she’s either dead from syphilis or suicide. At least with the opium I’ll die out here in the open and not in some squalid closet of a room that smells like piss and men.”

The liquor is starting to hit hard , and a part of you is fiercely grateful for it. It’s been a long time since you’ve been given an excuse to scream out the inequities of your life to someone, and a man who’s holding you for ransom seems as good a target for your vitriol as any.

“You think that just ‘cause it’d be better for the greater good or some shit, they should get to fuck me over? Is that what you think?”

Morgan seems a little taken aback. “I didn’t say th—”

“I don’t give a shit about the addicts. I don’t give a shit who’s life I’m ruining, as long as it isn’t mine. I don’t… I don’t care about anyone else because I’m a terrible excuse for a human being. That’s what you want to hear me say, right?” At this point, you realize that you’ve transitioned into a hysterical rant, that you don’t properly mean half the things you’re saying, but saying it out loud feels good nonetheless, like sucking venom from a festering wound. “But people like you don’t get to tell me so. Because at least I don’t hold people at fucking gunpoint . I don’t rob banks or kidnap women or beat debtors. I’m not a fucking murderer like you—”

The last statement barely clears the air before the image of the dead O’Driscoll, sprawled across the ground with his belly torn open, flashes through your head. You immediately clap your hand over your mouth, as if doing so will let you swallow back your words.

“No,” Morgan says, “You ain’t a murderer. And that’s why you won’t last long.”

“Good,” you seethe. The hot sting of tears begins prickling again at the corners of your eyes. “I don’t want to.”

He raises his eyebrows and regards you with a vague, detached kind of pity that makes you almost wish he’d just outright condemn you instead, then touches his fingers to the tin cup. “Water’s cool enough now, I think.”

You feel like a petulant child who’s just thrown an ineffectual tantrum. Rendered self-conscious and obedient for the time being, you allow him to secure your elbow with his hand and begin irrigating the wound with warm water.

“Jesus fucking god,” you hiss. You reflexively try and jerk away, but he holds you still and tells you to stop squirming, his grip firm as iron.

It’s the worst pain you’ve felt in years. Like a lick of flame passing over your skin, echoing its progenitor again and again as he washes the cut with a series of short, measured trickles of water, flushing away the combined grime of dried blood, dust, and lint.

“You think this is bad,” he says, unscrewing the bottle of grain alcohol. “Wait’ll I sterilize it.”

If the water was flame, then the alcohol is a streak of molten lava, wet fire soaking through the wound in a rush of white-hot burning pain. You don’t scream — you let out a weak, choking sob so pathetic that you cover your mouth again in an attempt to stifle it.

But you’re a little drunk and your subconscious recognizes this as an excellent excuse to cry, and so it lets flood the tears you’ve kept stoppered up for hours now. You whimper, meet his eyes briefly, then start bawling.

Your crying before hadn’t seemed to bother him, but now he looks almost comically alarmed. He must think it’s the physical pain sending you into hysterics, because he starts trying to comfort you the same way he did Boadicea when he’d led her into the river.

“You’re doin’ good,” he says, cajoling you in a soft, affectionate voice. He sets the bottle of alcohol on the ground and pats you awkwardly on the shoulder. “Just a little more to go, and we’ll be done.”

Another agonizing, scorching splash of fire. He doesn’t chide you this time when you try to pull away.

“Shhhh… I know, I know. Hurts like a bitch, don’t it? I’m gonna give it one more rinse, and — yeah, there we go. You’re alright.”

Morgan wraps the bandage over your arm with deft, practiced fingers, and you wonder briefly how many times he’s had to do this for himself, with no one to soothe him. Though better that than the shoddy job you’d done on him six weeks ago, frantically patching him up with just the barest idea of what you were doing.

He ties off the bandage, then picks the can of peaches off the ground, pops open its metal lid with the tip of his knife and proffers it to you like a peace offering. “Here. You’re hungry, right?”

It’s very hard to cry and eat at the same time. You decide to concentrate on the latter.

After tapering your sobs down to a series of quiet, resentful sniffles, you begin gulping down mouthful after messy mouthful of sliced peach. It’s the first morsel of food you’ve had in over ten hours, and you wolf it down so quickly you hardly taste it. Just an impression of cloying sweetness mixed with something faintly aromatic (cinnamon, you think) lingering as an aftertaste.

The old instincts of hunger are hard to shake off. All decorum thoroughly discarded, you raise the can to your lips and drink down what syrup remains, tilting it nearly perpendicular to the ground to get at the last few drops.

“My god,” Morgan says. “I seen dogs with better manners.”

“If you’d fed me earlier, then I— what’re you doing.”

“What’s it look like I’m doing?” he asks. He holds his bandolier in one hand. The other is working at his shirtcollar. “I’m gettin’ the hell outta these wet clothes.”

You clutch at the empty can of peaches as his union suit reveals itself in a revelation of blue. A blue which, you admit to yourself with an uncomfortable surge of appreciation, suits the shade of his eyes extremely well. But when he begins unbuckling his belt, you quickly avert your eyes. “Really?” you ask. The scandalization you probably ought to have felt from the very moment he’d begun undressing finally begins to surface. “Your pants, too?”

“Don’t get your knickers in a twist. I’m keepin’ the union suit on.”

“Are you usually this brazen with the women you kidnap?”

“D’you usually sit around half-naked with the men who kidnap you?” he asks, jabbing his thumb towards your own discarded shirt, which you’d spread out neatly beside the fire to dry.

“That’s different,” you hiss, knowing very well that it isn’t. “I had a medical reason.”

“Yeah, and so do I. I don’t wanna get pneumonia.”

He has a point. You look down at your own sodden trousers, which cling to your skin in a cold, wet embrace, and your internal scale of comfort versus propriety tips decidedly towards the former.

“Turn your back again,” you tell him.

“What for?”

“I’m gonna take my pants off too, and I don’t want you trying to sneak a peek at my bloomers.”

He laughs, then winces and gingerly splays his fingers across his ribs. It’s the first sign of real levity you’ve seen from him. “Oh, that is the last thing on my mind right now, girl.” There’s a tired grin on his face, and were it not for the events of the day, you might have almost found it endearing. “Besides, you ain’t hardly my type.”

“Well that’s good to hear,” you reply, a little offended. “Because I’m not interested in men with terrible taste.”

But he does as he’s told, and when you’re satisfied with the oblique angle of his range of sight, you let the borrowed blanket fall from your shoulders and pull the ribbon securing your braid free. You rake your fingers through your hair until it hangs loose, then gather the ends of it in one hand and twist it tight to wring out the rainwater. Only then do you pull the blanket back over your shoulders and begin to undress.

First, your boots. Then the knee-length woolen socks, which have left their cable-knit weave as an imprint on your skin. After glancing at him one more time to make sure his face is turned discreetly away, you unbuckle your belt and wriggle your way out of your trousers. It takes some maneuvering, and some thoroughly indecent posturing, to finally get them off. You leave your cotton bloomers on, figuring that the warmth of the fire will dry the thin material soon enough.

When you look back at Morgan, you find that he’s since turned back towards you. Not to gawk, but to get a better look at his own wounds in the firelight.

His union suit is half-unbuttoned. Most of his bare chest is visible, and along with it, the bruises from the ricocheted bullet. A mottle of blue and violet, like a spill of ink that radiates from the negative imprint of the flask that took the impact in his place. And right below it, a glimpse of your own handiwork.

When you’d first found him, the cut had spanned diagonal across his torso, trailing shallow from his chest and biting deep near the ridge of his hip. Most of it’s healed over since, but the edges are angry and inflamed still, and you can see the fading marks of your inexpert stitches laid like railroad tracks over the land of his skin.

“Don’t worry, I ain’t looked at you,” Morgan says. He probes gently at an indigo patch and inhales sharply. “Too busy lickin’ my own wounds.”

If you look closer, you can see the remnants of multiple scuffs and scratches. A history of violence storied across his body, told in the pale lettering of scars, many of them recent. An unwelcome pang of guilt settles itself low in your belly. It looks like he’s been on the road for a while, healing sporadically through long stretches of hard journeying. Hard journeying made worse, no doubt, by your theft of his bonds.

“You… uh. You want me to keep carving off wet bark?”

“Nah,” he says distractedly, still trying to determine the depth of the damage left behind. “Should be fine leavin’ the rest of it to dry out by the fire.”

You draw the blanket tighter around your shoulders, then root around your head for something, anything to talk about. Anything to get this burgeoning sympathy for Arthur Morgan out of your head.

“Your friend in St Denis,” you say finally. “He’s not gonna know much about me if he doesn’t speak Chinese.”

Morgan absentmindedly scratches his chin as he begins buttoning his union suit back up. “Wouldn’t put it past him. I know he’s had dealings with ‘em in the past.”

Something clicks in the back of your head. Long overdue recognition like puzzle pieces fitting together. “What’s his name?”

“Josiah,” he says.

“Josiah,” you echo. The spark of some fit of emotion is beginning to rise in your throat. “Josiah… Trelawney?”

His bewildered face is enough to confirm your suspicions. Relief, anger, confusion — all of them flood you at once with such intensity that you have to take a moment to squeeze your eyes shut. When you open them, you take a deep breath and swallow hard. “Josiah Trelawney’s the son of a bitch I sold your bonds to.”

———

Massive thanks to @reddeaddufus for editing not only this chapter, but the entirety of this fic. This whole thing would be a lot more disjointed if it weren't for her.

Definitely give her fic Red Dead Pursuit a look. The main character is extremely compelling, the plot is fast-paced, and the porn is A+. Her writing style is also a delight to read.

#arthur morgan #arthur morgan/reader #arthur morgan/oc #fic #red dead redemption #rdr2 #my work #talking bird

[cellard0ors]

Ficlet: Beneath The Blue

Mermay isn't over and people enjoyed Part 1, so here's some more...

Rhett has a bit of a gambling problem.

No, that's not quite right. More like a gaming problem. He likes games. He likes the rush of winning and it's not so much about money as the thrill of nailing a dart on a bullseye or getting a hole in one or - well - being right.

He really loves that one. Trivia, guessing games, riddles - lucking out on the right answer or just knowing it, always makes him feel fantastic. He's had marginal luck in his life. With basketball, with singing, and now - with his new current career - fishing, but games?

Rhett's always mastered those, rarely ever a loser. But the thing is, to do those things, he tends to have to use cash as an entry to play, thus - a sort-of-not-really gambling problem.

And winning in those kind of situations is also a problem, because, after some time - it tends to attract...attention. And usually the bad kind. Recently it was very much the bad kind, because he was at The 101, engaging in his normal play only to be snatched up by some very rough looking characters.

Ones who took him into a backroom and decided to skip right over the 'broken knuckles' threat and jump right into the 'you're going to go sleep with the fishes' threat.

To be fair, they probably went quickly into the decision once he started fighting back. Rhett's not much of a brawler, but he's a big guy and that in and of itself can create...issues. Especially if his temper is up.

Long story short - Rhett's bit of a gambling problem led him to being clonked over the head (more than once, matter of fact) and taken out to sea. His last real memory before hitting the water was that he'd been amazed at the boulder they'd found to attach him to - where had they gotten such a huge rock from? A landfill?

Not that it mattered - rock, rope, and Rhett all went overboard and into the deep. Rhett tried not to hold his breath, to struggle enough just to get loose, but, in the end - he'd been lost.

Except he hadn't been.

He'd awoken to find the setting sun bathing him in golden light and, above him, an angel. Because only an angel could have such eyes. Eyes as blue and deep and mysterious as the sea he was supposed to have died in.

His throat ached from damn near drowning but he'd still managed to ask the angel for his name. And he'd gotten it.

Link.

But then the angel had turned, vanished, and Rhett had seen that - while he was right about his mythical savior - he was not at all right about what kind.

Because Link had a tail.

A fish tail.

One as sparkling blue and captivating as his eyes and he'd disappeared into the surf so fast, Rhett began to question his sanity.

Had he imagined it all? The entire experience had been traumatic as heck - maybe it was just a coping mechanism for his mind? But then, far out, he'd seen a head appear above the waters.

Seen it and a shy wave and he'd waved back, because what else could he do? He wasn't dead and he wasn't crazy. He'd been saved. Saved...by a mermaid (merman?) named Link.

Which leads to now and his camping out full time on this small rocky stretch of lonely beach. Rhett made sure to check in with the local marina, see if it was okay for him to dock his tiny fishing boat, The Bluegrass, nearby. And 'nearby' was about a mile or so away, because this bit of land is pretty unoccupied and small.

...the perfect place for a merman (mermaid?) to drop off someone they saved. And, hopefully, return to? Rhett's not sure - honestly, this whole thing might be a fool's errand, but either way - he has a tent pitched and is waiting.

Waiting to see if Link returns.

Night after night seems like a failure. Still, Rhett doesn't mind. He can be patient. His last haul (fish-wise, not gambling-wise) earned him a considerable amount, so there's no harm in waiting.

Still, as he sits here now, the sky a lovely lilac as the sun dips low beneath the horizon, he can't help but feel like time's running out. Honestly, what did he expect? For Link to return and want to...what? Be best friends?

The person...creature...per-creature? Did what he could and Rhett should just be grateful and move on. But there was something about him...and those eyes...and that voice...

Rhett cracks open another can of soda, takes a deep sip when he hears it. The water's waves have become almost a white noise at this point, so consistent, but this...this is different. Just a little splish. Or splash. Or whatever.

And it's close. He puts the can down and quickly surges to his feet, looking out intently over the water and then he sees it. Just the top of someone's head. His head. Dark wet hair and blue eyes behind...are those glasses? And Rhett can't see his nose or anything else, but he can see enough to cry out, "Hey!"

The head rears back, sinks some, and Rhett feels a surge of panic, not wanting to lose this opportunity, "No! Wait, wait! Link! I-!"

The head stops, goes still. Rhett continues on, desperate for this to continue, "Please...don't go."

He doesn't.

Bolstered, Rhett continues, hoping he's heard, understood, "I...I just-? You saved me."

Link simply blinks.

"Thank you."

There's a bobbing in the water around him and Rhett's pretty sure Link nodded. Rhett edges just that little bit closer, "I...I'd hoped you'd come back. Not only so I could thank you, but so...um...maybe-? Maybe we could-? Could talk-?"

Link sinks a little more again, but Rhett can still see his eyes and, as long as he can see those, he feels okay, "I mean...you-you came back. Right? So-so maybe you'd-? You'd like to talk too?"

Link's head disappears.

Rhett feels his heart break. But then he notices that the water is moving. There's a rippling, the kind he sees when fish swim close to the surface. As if to punctuate that thought, the broad tip of a blue tail rises up and out, pushing against the waves.

He's swimming closer!

Rhett resists the urge to hoot in delight, to pumping his arms in victory, as Link pushes forward and, on the next movement of water, he surges upwards - his whole head visible now.

Link's entire face is nice.

A strong jaw, a good nose, a very fine mouth and yeaaaah, Rhett doesn't want Link to swim off, so he's going to do his very best not to focus on that mouth too much as he says, "I'm-I'm Rhett."

Link licks his lips, dips his head shyly, "I'm Link."

"Y-Yeah, you-you said..."

They both just sort of eyeball one another, both clearly unsure of what to make of the other. Of how to proceed. Eventually Rhett does, "So, ah, you're-? You're a mermaid?"

Link's eyebrows rise.

"Merman?"

"Just Mer," Link clarifies, "Our kind doesn't really attach those bits on the end there."

"Really?"

Link nods, "Humans came up with that one."

"Oh? We-we did?"

Another nod, "Back when we first used to come across one another."

"...take it that doesn't really happen now?"

"Not really. No."

Another awkward silence falls. Rhett scratches at one cheek, struggling for something else to say when Link blurts, "You're hairy."

Rhett lowers his hand and - much to his own surprise - he bursts out laughing. Link colors some and he gives a bashful smile and okay, Rhett said he wasn't going to pay too much attention to that mouth, but it's hard when it's so danged cute, "Yeah, yeah I am, brother."

"Bro-ther?" Link repeats and it's clearly a word he's unfamiliar with. Rhett beams, "'Brother'. We use it for family members. Y'know, the boys born from the same Momma and such. Can be a term of endearment too."

"Oh..." Link seems pleased with this and Rhett grins, "You got one?"

Link's eyebrows knit together and Rhett explains, "A brother? Or-or some other family or-?"

"I was spawned from another Mer. She came to shore to give birth to me."

Rhett's eyes grow wide, "You-? You were born on land?"

Link nods, "Most of us are. Mers walk between both worlds more often than not."

Rhett lets that one wash over him even as Link comes closer. Rhett can see his tail better now. It's amazing. Glossy and sparkling blue, the scales tightly knit. Rhett's first reaction is wanting to touch it but he quickly shutters that idea - recognizing it as beyond rude. They've just started talking to one another, for goodness sake!

Still, seeing it rest against the wet sand of the shoreline is tempting and seeing it move, more so. It slides and slithers, but in such an enticing way. Rhett moves a little closer, foam teasing at his toes as Link looks up (and up) at him, "Hard to talk at this level..."

Rhett realizes he probably looks like a giant at Link's angle, the Mer practically lying at his feet, so he lowers himself down until his butt hits the sand, crossing his legs at the ankles, "Better?"

Link nods and Rhett does a bit of a wiggle backward to avoid getting his khaki cargo shorts wet. There's an amused smirk around Link that says he recognizes that action. But of course he does - Mers, apparently, can traverse between land and sea.

So, Link is probably aware of how clothing works. Has he ever worn clothing? Come to the shore? Rhett wants to ask so many questions, but isn't sure what's appropriate and what isn't, but Link beats him to the questioning, "Are you a fisherman?"

Rhett lets out a strained 'Ah-?' as he immediately realizes that the true answer will no doubt insult his new acquaintance, but, again, Link beats him to the punch, "You've got the attire for it. Flannel shirt, baseball cap..."

Rhett frowns, "You think fisherman have a particular attire?"

"To my recollection..." The remark makes Rhett chuckle again, unable to help himself, "'Recollection' - you sound so danged southern. Just like me. I was born and raised in North Carolina."

Link beams, "That's where I was spawned! My sire came from the same location. Not all Mers are from the sea. Some reside in lakes, rivers - any water deep enough to conceal us, but a lot of us return to the ocean, considering its the biggest body of water."

Rhett lets that sink in even as Link again asks, "So, you are a fisherman, right?"

"Um-?"

"It's okay if you are," Link assures him, folding his arms and resting his chin there, "It's not really a proud profession amongst my kind, but it's understandable."

Rhett's lips twitch from side to side, "So I'm not, like, catching up your friends or something?"

Link snorts, "What - you think we talk to them?"

"Heck, man - I don't know how it works," Rhett lets out a peal of nervous giggles, getting the idea that Link is teasing him. Link returns the laugh and Rhett relaxes as a realization settles in.

Whether or not Rhett wants to admit it, he did want Link to return. He wanted him to return and be his friend and it appears that that is indeed what is happening.

It's happening and Rhett couldn't be any happier.

#rhink #mermay #mermaid!au #my writing #randl

[matbarzyy]

From the soulmate alphabet, letter r? (Red string)

A/N: I’ve had this in my inbox for such a long time!! I loved the idea but never really got the time to write anything down for it, so here I am now, and I wrote it for Tito. This is just a quick one-shot, it could have been the start of something but I honestly don’t feel like jumping into another series when I already have so many WIPs lol.

Word count: 2091

.

Montreal was loud.

The view from the rooftop of your new building was incredible, but you couldn’t get over the noise of cars driving past constantly in the streets below. It would take more than a week to get used to, so you didn’t lose hope that you would eventually get a peaceful night of sleep in this apartment. Shutting your windows tight helped drown out the cacophony of the city below you, it made you terribly regret the lulling sounds of the waves where you came from.

Up on the roof, however, you almost felt like you were looking at some sort of ocean. The buildings rose at different heights, shaping the city with grey concrete and windows that reflected the blue of the sky as well as water would have. There was a beauty to it, something that tied you to this place and made you feel like you belonged.

Your long sigh disappeared into the wind, carried off before you could even hear it yourself. You imagined it going as far as the red string that was tied to your heart and extended all the way to the horizon. You had always promised yourself that you wouldn’t give up your life and goals to pursue your soulmate, but you remembered the way the string extended west over the ocean back home, and you couldn’t say your relocation to Canada had nothing to do with the fact that you were supposed to find your soulmate in this direction.

Now that you were as far west as you had been able to go, the string pointed south. It gave you hope that you were on the right continent this time. Maybe your string was simply tangled with other people’s south of here, it was common, and it made finding your soulmate much harder than one could have expected considering you were literally tied to each other.

You could have stared at the view for hours and wondered who was at the end of this string, but the wind was colder than what you were used to and your hands were beginning to feel numb. You found the small trap door that had led you up here and climbed down the ladder, thankful for the protection of the walls and the warmth you immediately felt. You closed the trap as quietly as possible, unsure of whether you were actually allowed to go onto the roof.

It wasn’t like anyone would find out unless they were coming up to knock on your door, being alone on the top floor had its perks. You sighed again as you shut your front door behind you, reminded by your bare living space that you desperately needed to go out to get furniture and at least a bouquet of flowers to brighten up your apartment.

A few hours in stores to find the perfect couch and an iced coffee later, you crashed into your bed for what you hoped would be a restful sleep.

It was past midnight when your eyes shot open. You weren’t sure of why, maybe it was instinct, or maybe it was a particularly loud noise from the street, but with a flicker of light from outside you realised that this wasn’t just a normal night. You scrambled to turn the light on, still unfamiliar with the position of your light switch, and your eyes widened when you realised it wasn’t an illusion. The pretty red string that extended from your heart now pointed to the ceiling.

You cursed loudly as you bumped your toe in your bedroom’s door when you rushed out, barely grabbing your keys before pulling the trap door open and climbing onto the roof. The string still extended upwards towards the sky, which didn’t make any sense to you until you caught a flicker of lights in the darkness of the night. A plane. Your string led to a plane, and a particularly low one at that. Your soulmate was about to land in Montreal.

.

“Wake up Beau, we’ve landed,” Mathew shook his friend’s shoulder, earning an annoyed grunt as the other man got pulled out of his sleep.

“Fucking hate late night flights,” Anthony grumbled and rubbed the sleep out of his eyes.

The rest of the passengers were quiet too, but as soon as the plane came to a stop they were scrambling to get up and grab their bags. Anthony sighed, staying seated with Mat next to him to let everyone else out first. Neither of them wanted to push people around to grab their things and they knew they’d have to wait for their bags afterwards anyway. The further back they stayed the less likely they were to be recognised. Both men were always patient and friendly with fans, but there was something about being in the middle of the night that made them despise just the thought of running into one now.

That gave Anthony time to look out of the small window, he couldn’t see much but he was excited to be home for a few weeks. He wouldn’t rest much with Mathew around, but he’d at least be away from the busy streets of New York. It was only then that he noticed the red string that had steadily pointed east for his whole life now pointed north.

A rush of excitement flooded him, and he was suddenly ready to push through the whole crowd to get out of this airport as fast as possible and find his soulmate. He turned to Mathew to tell him, but got cut off by his best friend yawning in his face.

“What?” He asked, sensing Beau was much more awake than he had been moments ago.

“Nothing,” he ducked his head down and hid his smile. He wanted to keep this to himself, partly because his soulmate could still be far from him, but also because this was his moment, and he wanted to enjoy every part of it alone.

The two men eventually stepped into the cold air of the night to find a taxi, and Anthony watched the way his red string pointed, tempted to follow it immediately but knowing the middle of the night was not the time for it.

.

You almost got ran over about ten times the next morning, out for a walk before you even considered breakfast to hopefully find your soulmate. It was so early that the entire city was quiet, the light was dim and golden as the sun took its place in the sky, and you tried your best not to get too distracted by following the string so that you wouldn’t forget to look around before crossing the street.

Your red string was angled up, which you could only assume meant that your soulmate was somewhere in a building. Your cheeks warmed with embarrassment as you realised you were out looking for them before it was a decent hour to knock on anyone’s door, but you could always wait once you knew where they were.

And wait you did when you found yourself in front of a very nice building with restricted access. There was no way you could get in to knock on anyone’s door, you’d just have to hope they’d wake up soon and come out to meet you. The urge to get a warm coffee ran through you, but you were worried that just going a few streets down from here to grab a drink could make you miss your soulmate. This was a once in a lifetime moment. Coffee could wait.

Luckily for you, there was a bench on the street across from the entrance and you took a seat there to wait, your eyes trained on the entrance so that you wouldn’t miss anyone coming out. You would have been sleepy if the excitement of meeting your soulmate wasn’t making you so nervous your hands shook.

.

Anthony blinked several times to make sure he was seeing things right when he woke up. The red string attached to his heart was guiding him down and a little bit south. He rushed to his bedroom window and looked around for someone that might be passing by. He noticed you then, sitting on a bench across the street, bundled up in a warm coat and waiting with your eyes set on the entrance of his building.

In the heat of the moment Anthony almost forgot to get dressed, and he hurried to pull on the gym clothes he had prepared the previous night.

“Ah, ready to go?” Mat grinned when he saw his friend step out of his bedroom. He had been ready for a while himself, waiting on Anthony to get up so that they could go for a morning run and then hit the gym to start the day right.

“Yeah,” his friend answered mechanically, grabbing his keys by the door and stepping out while Mat was already beginning to ramble.

He nodded without ever talking through the short elevator ride while Mat talked his ear off, and he found himself stepping outside a few more seconds later.

“And anyway, I thought maybe we could-” Mathew’s ramble stopped when he bumped into his friend who had abruptly stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. “Beau?”

You practically shot up from the bench when you saw him, your eyes wide with bewilderment. You knew he had to be there, but seeing him, the same red string tied to his heart, made you feel something completely new.

He looked down at himself and then back at you, making sure he was getting it right while your heart hammered in your chest. Should you cross the street or would he? It was a stupid thing to wonder about but it was the most your brain was capable of putting out in that moment. Deciding that standing there wasn’t helping your nerves at all, you quickly glanced left and right and got across the street in a few strides.

“Oh,” things finally clicked in Mat’s head when you approached, and he cleared his throat awkwardly. “Uh, you know what, I’m gonna go find myself a coffee,” he patted his friend’s shoulder, not expecting a response as he walked away.

“Hello,” you breathed out, taking in the man in front of you as well as you could while internally screaming.

“How did you get here?” Anthony was barely capable of forming a sentence, and this was all he could think of as he tried to process he was truly meeting his soulmate.

“Excuse me?” You frowned, unsure of what he meant.

“Montreal,” he clarified. “I’ve lived in Montreal for years, you weren’t here,” Anthony couldn’t get over the shock of finally finding you. His eyes were shining, open a little bit wider than normal as he took in every little detail of your face.

“Yeah, uh, I just moved here, I-I work in communication and marketing for a sports team,” you ran a hand through your hair, shifting your weight from one leg to the other.

“I play hockey,” he replied and internally cringed. Could he have sounded any weirder?

“Cool,” you nodded, trying to figure out what you were supposed to say after that.

“Shit, I’m sorry I’m so awkward,” Anthony realised he had put an end to the conversation and his cheeks flushed a deep shade of red as he glanced down at his feet. “I’m Anthony Beauvillier, a lot of my friends call me Beau,” he held his hand out for you to shake and you took it. It was much warmer than yours, and you almost didn’t want to let go.

“I- uh, kinda got that from the clothes,” you pointed out the blue and orange outfit. It was your turn to feel your cheeks warm in embarrassment. It wasn’t that you had anything to be embarrassed about, but thinking that this man was the perfect match for you made you nervous beyond reason. Maybe it would have been easier if he hadn’t been so damn gorgeous. “I guess I kinda just got a job working for your team,”

“That’s fucking crazy,” Anthony laughed, unable to contain the bubbly happiness in his heart any longer. “Do you want to go get a coffee somewhere?” His smile was wide as he asked, his emotions hadn’t settled much but he seemed to have control over them now. Seeing that he was more confident helped you relax too, and you took a deep breath before you smiled back and replied.

“I would love that.”

.

Please reblog and let me know what you thought <3

taglist (add yourself here): @itrocksmysocks @kerwritesthings @pupsandpucks @barzysreputation​ @whythough1319 @smit41 @glassdanse @fiveholegoal @brokeninsidebutnobodyknows @thefootballfaithfull (strikethrough means tumblr was being a little bitch and I couldn’t tag you, sorry)

#tito beauvillier #anthony beauvillier #anthony beauvillier fic #tito beauvillier fic #hockey fic #nhl fic #hockey imagine #nhl imagine #tito beauvillier imagine #anthony beauvillier imagine #soulmate AU #writing #request #New York Islanders #ny islanders #18 #soulmate fic

[hammeredalcoholic]

wicked game

josuke higashikata/reader

this is a birthday commission for a special person, @big–gulp! i hope you enjoy it sis, and have a wonderful birthday!!!

the world was on fire and no one could save me but you it’s strange what desire will make foolish people do

rated: 18+/nsfw

Smears of red and orange painted the sky across Morioh. The sun had started to set, leaving the ocean glimmering a mixture of green. It was enticing to look at– to study, to take pictures of. The waves crashing softly against the sandy beaches, rolling back and forth in a steady motion. It was so beautiful. Although, it always has been. 

Dusty white clouds swirled around overhead, passing in front of the sun’s bright gaze. Josuke had practically memorized this scene, seeing it over and over again from his youth until now. No matter how many years had passed, it always managed to take his breath away. 

Except tonight. 

His head was fuzzy. His thoughts were unfocused, and he simply couldn’t be brought to the same familiar feeling. Josuke didn’t know what had happened to him, or why he simply couldn’t take in the wonderful sight along Morioh’s coast. Deep down, it scared him. 

Despite this, he continued to make his rounds. A police officer couldn’t be spotted slacking off, after all. Even if the sunset was outstanding tonight. His feet trudged forward, and with each step he took, his mind got lost. 

You were there. In the frontlines. Your eyes, your face, your beautiful smile. All there, all for him. It made his heart warm, his blood pumping fast in his veins. How had he managed to get this way? How could just the thought of you be corrupting him like this?

Josuke was a strong man. He prided himself on that, being the top of his class when he entered the task force, making sure he took everything in stride. He wanted to be the best of the best, and he wanted to make everyone proud of him. 

At least, that’s what he thought. That was before you showed up.

He can barely remember the details of it. It was foggy, a distant memory that he had to reach deep for. But then again, it felt clear as day. Something he could not possibly forget. 

You had recently moved to Morioh. He wasn’t sure where you had come from– but he knew that it was States. He just didn’t recall which one. It was his job to keep the city in line, and make sure he knew of all the people who lived there, so meeting you didn’t take a whole lot of time. 

It was at the beach, actually. The sun had been at high noon, baring down hotly against the shoreline. You were there. Your feet in the water, looking down at the waves licking at your ankles. To him, it seemed like you hadn’t truly experienced the ocean before. 

Josuke approached you, careful not to scare you in the process, despite how funny it may be. He introduced himself, telling you that he was the local police officer, and just wondered why you decided to move to Morioh. 

The smile he got in response almost knocked him off his feet. It was so kind, so tooth-rottingly sweet. “I just wanted a change of pace. Experience the world a little bit, y’know?” He actually didn’t know. Josuke had never once ventured out of Japan. He had heard stories about his father’s trips, Italy, Egypt– they sounded fun, yes, but he just couldn’t see himself leaving Morioh. 

Although he just agreed, wanting to see your face contort in happiness again. 

Back then, things were simple. You were a kind face, with a wonderful personality. It was nothing more, nothing less. But, things tended to change, didn’t they?

Josuke wasn’t sure what had happened from there. The details were a mess, full of inexcusable thoughts and actions. He didn’t even know how you managed to get his phone number– but it’s not like it mattered anymore anyways.

He had your contact saved, and that’s what mattered. 

The sun had now passed over the horizon. A deep blue coated the sky, the moon rising and shining gently, illuminating the waves in a way the sun never could. The street lights had clicked on, covering his path in a muted yellow. The sounds of bustling cars and people had calmed, giving Josuke a sigh of relief. 

It was finally time to head home. 

As his footsteps echoed against the concrete sidewalks, his mind drifted again. You were there once more– like when he had first met you. Pants rolled up to your lower calves, shoes discarded and hair whipping around your face from the salty breeze. 

The image alone sent warmth ripping through his body. Josuke quickly shoved his hands in his jacket pockets, balling them up until his knuckles turned white. Is this what it felt like? He’d heard stories, far-fetched tales from his friends and relatives, but he’d never really believed in them.

He needed to feel it for himself. 

And yet, with the way his heart pounded in his chest, he couldn’t be brought to disregard it. He’s never truly felt this way before– occasional girlfriends, and yes maybe a boyfriend, but the feelings were never like this. They never managed to fog his mind like this, so much to the point of becoming nearly sick. 

What did make him sick was the fact that he didn’t know how you felt. It was like a pit in his stomach, all dark and encompassing, reminding him that he could be the only one feeling like this. It didn’t matter how kind and caring you might be– you have never once told him how you felt, in any of this. 

It terrified him to think that only he felt this way. That it was all one-sided. That you could be using him, of all things. 

That thought sent a cold sweat across his brow. How could he manage this much longer? He wanted to tell you how he felt, really he did– but yet he was scared. Josuke was scared that you would reject him. Turn your nose up, and tell him that he wasn’t worth your time anymore. 

He felt his hands shake in his pockets, and the air around him grew cold. Suffocating, even. 

Was this what it was like?

Dizziness flooded his system, and he quickly grabbed onto a near-by lamp post. 

It couldn’t be. He couldn’t believe it. But still– the thought lingered. 

Was this love? 

The sound of his phone ringing cut through his thoughts like a sharp knife. It seared in his mind, and he quickly moved to pull the device out of his pocket. Looking down at it, his eyes grew wide. No, not now. Why now? 

It was your name that flashed on the screen. 

Your face appeared in his mind once more, so beautiful and gorgeous– 

“Josuke?” 

His heart stopped beating. Your voice was quiet, hushed tones with a touch of need. He knew what that voice meant. It was always the same thing, the same request. The pit in his gut felt like it was getting deeper and darker by the second. 

“Hey.” Was that all he could say? Josuke mentally slapped himself, bringing his other hand up to rub at his eyes. “What’s up?” 

Your voice was so sweet in the receiver. 

“Oh, I just got home. Thought I’d give you a call.” Yeah, that’s all it was, huh? Josuke doubted it. You were always innocent, never once giving away the true intentions behind your sudden interruptions. 

“Oh. I’m headed home myself.” He replied quickly, deciding that the best course of action would be to follow through with his statement. He moved off the lamp post and headed back in the direction of his house. His footsteps were slow and steady, not wanting to cover up your voice. 

“I see. In that case, why don’t you take a detour?” 

“A detour?” Josuke simply asked, his fingers clutching at his phone for dear life. His heart was hyperactive again, and he swore that if the ocean wasn’t so damn loud, you’d be able to hear it. 

“Yeah. I’d like to talk.” He heard a shift from your end, and then your voice dropped low, almost a growl. “I want to talk until you can’t walk anymore.”

Josuke practically started running in your direction then and there, but he stopped himself. He couldn’t seem eager– no, that would give something away. Huffing out a small breath, he pulled his phone closer to his ear. 

“Alright, well. I’m thinking about taking that detour.” He simply stated, bringing his footsteps to a stop. Your voice was back to sweet, caressing his ear and making a shiver run down his spine. “Great. I’ll see you soon, Officer Higashikata.”

Josuke almost dropped his phone when you hung up. Your words bounced around in his head, sultry tones making his thoughts foggy. He didn’t even realize that his feet had started to lead him in the direction of your house, until it soon came into view. 

What the hell? How could he have walked this far without consciously knowing?

Well. It’s not like it mattered much anyways. Slowly making his way to the door, he hesitated. Did he really want to continue this? Was this really something he wanted? His heart was practically pounding in his chest.

Should he turn away?

Forget that you even called him, and make the trek to his house. It would avoid the feelings that plagued his mind– maybe it was for the best that you didn’t know. Josuke let out a shaky breath that he didn’t know he was holding.

The air had cooled tremendously since the sun had gone down, and small touches of vapor expelled from his lips. He wishes that he could disappear. Just completely vanish– not a trace of him left, just so he doesn’t have to deal with the heart break. 

How could you be doing this to him? What changed him? 

It was just sex. It’s always been just sex. 

But your eyes– your words, your sweet touches– everything about you was alluring to him. Soft sighs and mewls, the way your body was practically made for him. It was too much. Too much for his brain, too much for his heart.

And now, it was too much for his dick. 

Pushing all of his thoughts into the back of his mind, Josuke lifted his hand and swiftly knocked on your door. The wood creaked under his fingers, and it was a sound that he was all too familiar with. It was almost torture– waiting for you to get up and answer him.

It almost made him turn around and leave.

But then there you were. The door opened with a creak, and you stood there. Beautiful– dressed in a white gown, your hair framing your face, your eyes piercing into his soul. It made his heart skip a beat, and dread began to crawl up his back. 

“Good evening, Officer Higashikata. Would you like to come in?” 

God, what was he getting himself into? 

“Yes, please.” Was that all he could say? Jesus Christ, Josuke– get it together. Your smile almost knocked him down, but you opened the door to let him in. Your house was quaint, full of little knick-knacks and blankets, along with the smell of burning candles. It felt like home to him. 

“I have some wine if you’d like a glass. It’s always good for loosening up after a long shift.” You looked over at him, picking up said bottle of red wine. Josuke couldn’t tell what brand it was– not that he cared, he wasn’t much of a wine guy– but just nodded. 

Your small giggle hit his ears, and he was starting to deeply regret coming. Why couldn’t he just say it? Why couldn’t he just drop to his knees and tell you his feelings? What was so different about this situation? 

A small wine glass was held out to him, and he gladly took it. Any alcohol at this point would do– anything to dull the feelings that would arise when you finally took him to bed. Josuke took a seat on your couch, pulling his hat off and setting it to the side. 

“Did you have a rough day at work?” You asked him, your voice laced with nothing but kindness. It made his legs shake and his stomach go up in knots. 

“No, nothing much ever happens in Morioh. The most I have to deal with is bratty kids.” 

Your laugh was so amazing. It always managed to lift his spirits, and make his heart pound in his chest. Josuke couldn’t help but stare at your amused face, but he tried to busy himself with the wine. 

“I mean, that’s good at least! I’m glad to know that Morioh is so safe.” Your eyes got a shade darker, a small glint shown in your pupils. “Especially with you around, officer.” 

Josuke couldn’t help the spikes of arousal that clawed through his guts. You were going to be the death of him– he was absolutely positive. Deciding that now would be a great time to finish his wine, he did so, trying his hardest not to look too rushed. 

You casually sipped on your own, but your eyes were sizing him up. Carefully dragging along his figure, stopping to stare at particular places that any normal person wouldn’t. It took everything in his power not to revert back to the 16-year-old boy who would get an erection at basically anything. 

“Hm, Josuke. I think we should take this party elsewhere.” 

Oh god. The way you said his first name was practically delicious. 

“I’d have to agree.” 

As soon as the words left his mouth, you were tugging on his wrist to stand up. He did so, not without a bit of misfooting– and let you drag him in the direction of your bedroom. That’s when the thought hit him. 

We’re not going to fuck tonight.

Your bedroom door was open and you tugged him inside.

We’re going to make love.

Within seconds, Josuke had you pinned back up against the door. His hands were hot against your skin, holding onto your hips carefully. His mind was made up– he was going to show you his feelings. 

Your lips crashed together in a heated kiss. It was slow and full of passion, his hands trying their hardest to pull you as close as possible to him. Lips moving softly against the other’s, hands caressing and memorizing each other’s bodies. 

It was everything he’d ever wanted.

Everything he’d ever needed. 

His heart clenched in his chest when your tongue dragged across his bottom lip. God, was this heaven? Josuke truly thought it was. He accepted your advances and opened his mouth, kissing you with more fever. His hands were clutching at your dress, feeling the fabric and admiring the smooth silk. 

He’s never seen you in something like this, and he never wants to forget it. 

Josuke doesn’t know what happens next. It’s all a blur in his mind, distinctive arousal sparking every little movement. 

His back hits the bed and you’re in his lap, your lips still desperately attached to his. It was so hot, so unbelievably sexy– and he didn’t want it to end. You were feeling him up, soft fingers molding their way along his chest, poking at the buttons that kept his uniform intact. 

“Just– Just take it off.” Josuke’s voice was absolutely drenched in lust, and the way your eyes shined at his statement was no help. Your fingers moved swiftly– popping open the offending buttons and pulling it off his shoulders. Sweat was practically dripping from every pore of his body– and he just couldn’t bring himself to care.

Not when you looked at him like that.

Your dress was gone. Holy shit, when did you take it off? Why didn’t he do it?

His hands moved to caress your body, running down your delicate curves, memorizing everything. He needed to– he didn’t want to forget it. Josuke gasped when your lips met his neck, squeezing harshly at your hips. “God, fuck–!” He choked out, your lips smoothing over the rough bite you’d delivered to his collarbone. 

“I need you, Officer Higashikata.” Those words were going to be the fucking death of him. Josuke’s head was spinning, clouded with lust and pure want. No, no– He needed this. 

“You have me, babe.” Is all he could muster, flipping your positions. He straddled your hips, grinding against your core gently. The moan you let escape was purely sinful– it made his arousal spike, and his heartbeat jump in his ears. 

Your legs locked around his waist like a vice, pulling him as close as possible. He let a smile cross his lips before leaning down and kissing along your chest. Smooth and passionate, leaving wet marks and small bruises. You looked so good covered in his love bites. 

Mewls and gasps filled his ears, and he knew he wouldn’t be able to take much more of this. He was beyond desperate– his fingers trailed down, sliding in between your folds, feeling the slick that gathered there. It was so hot, you had gotten this wet from him. Pride bloomed in his chest, and continued to rub slowly at your entrance. 

Legs were shaking around his waist, pleasured moans slipping from your lips. It was driving him absolutely mad. Josuke couldn’t take it anymore. 

“Are you ready for me?” His voice was rough, borderline needy. 

“God– Yes, Josuke!” 

His hands have never fumbled with his belt more in his life. Taking a deep breath, he finally managed to undo it, and pulled off his pants. They fell around his ankles with a dull thud, and your hands were on him instantly. 

Simple touches to his clothed cock, soft rubbing at the head. You knew exactly what he liked, and what drove him up the wall. It was so– addictive. Everything about you was addictive. So very intoxicating– he couldn’t get enough, even if he tried. 

A harsh tug of his boxers pulled him out of his thoughts, and he was met with your lips kissing the tip of his cock. He almost came right then and there. Josuke gasped and threw his head back, his hands going down to lace through your hair. 

Your mouth was fantastic, warm and inviting– but it wasn’t what he wanted. No, he wanted to be inside you. He needed to be inside you. So that’s what he said. 

“God, baby, please��� I need to be inside you right now.” He felt you shiver at his words, rolling down your spine. You had to be absolutely soaked. 

“Take me, then.” 

That’s all he needed. Josuke had you against the bed, your arms tight around his neck. He was peppering sweet kisses to your skin, his hands going to hold your hips steady. He lined himself up without a second thought, and pressed in. 

God, you were so tight. 

It felt unimaginably good, like every other time before. The slick sounds, the warmth of your surrounding his cock and his mind was so much. It made his heart clench, and his eyes lidded. Your gasps filled his ears, your hips desperately trying to get him to move, thrust– anything.

But no. He was dead set on truly loving you. 

His hips moved slowly, grinding gently against you with each thrust. His kisses continued to be placed, on your cheeks, neck, lips– anywhere he could reach. You were truly a gift, and he wasn’t sure what he’d do without you. 

Although even with his determination, you were still too much for him. His thrusts gained traction, and the harsh sounds of your bed frame hitting the wall clouded his mind. You felt amazing, and it was something he dare never forget. 

Your moans picked up pitch, crying out with every particular movement. Just like how you knew his weak spots, so did he. It wasn’t long before your eyes were screwed shut in pleasure, your mouth barely able to stay shut. Josuke loved this– loved looking at your pleasure-stricken face, flushed pink and wanting.

All because of him. 

That thought made his heart jump in his throat. And his hips smack against yours with more force. 

He couldn’t keep this secret anymore. Not with how good you looked underneath him– how your eyes shined with every sweet praise, your lips coated in his spit– he needed to tell you. 

Now.

The pleasure was too much– you were so tight and warm, your hips recoiling against his in the most perfect of ways. Josuke was panting hard, leaving desperate bruises along your sides, gripping at anything and everything. 

It was too hot. 

It was too good. 

It was absolutely perfect.

“Oh fuck– Babe, please–” His hips became erratic, and your noises became choked and silent. You were so close, he knew you were. His fingers came down, rubbing lovingly along your clit to bring your orgasm closer. 

He was going to cum. 

“Babe! I love you– Fuck, I love you so much!” 

Your eyes were wide– brimmed with tears of pleasure. You all but screamed, your head thrown back against the pillows as your undoing washed over you. It shook him to his core, how you tightened around him. Josuke came with a final thrust, spilling everything he had inside you. 

Sweat dripped from his temples, and he stared at your complexion. Josuke couldn’t believe he just said that. Why did he say that? It was over. He just knew it. The pit in his stomach grew, and a sense of guilt and sadness rained through his body.

He fucked up. 

“Officer Higashikata.” He looked down at you again, and your eyes sparkled. Your mouth was curled into a pleasant smile, and your hands came up to cup his cheeks. 

“Don’t look so sad. It doesn’t suit you.” Your lips pressed against his in the sweetest way possible. It was like tasting his favorite candy for the first time in ages. 

“I love you too, dummy.”

#josuke higashitaka #josuke x reader #josuke higashikata x reader #josuke higashikata imagine #josuke imagine #jjba x reader #jojo x reader #jjba imagine #jojo imagine #jjba reader insert #jojo reader insert #jjba self insert #jojo self insert #jojo part 4 #jjba part 4 #diamond is unbreakable #diu #jojos bizarre adventure #jojo no kimyou na bouken #jojo no kimyō na bōken #jjba #jojo #n/sfw text #n/sfw #commission #AHHHH! I LOVE HOW IT CAME OUT!!! #big--gulp

[goldenvoicedminstrel]

realised after posting it’s actually @feanorianweek and even day 2, so have some Maglor

The sun was hidden from the sea that day, the rough waves turned murky grey in a perfect mirror image of the dull clouds overhead, both divided only by an endless pale horizon. All around, the colours had disappeared from the earth and Maglor wondered, if perhaps this was what the void looked like. An endless space devoid of colour, sound and feel. 

An endless nothingness to isolate one from one’s own existence and drive one mad. 

It was a far more frightening thought than any darkness or torture. 

Is that what my brothers feel? he asked the only person still listening. 

Does it matter? he answered his own question. He would never join them now, it had been much too long since he had failed to follow his brother’s example and throw the Silmaril into the waves with his body still attached to it. Too many years of wandering and suffering had passed, that had made his next step and the next note of his lament as unescapable as the passing of the hours and years. He had woven the mourning resonance of the Noldolantë into the music of Arda itself and himself with it. 

Even if he did not care if he lived, he had been surviving for so long he thought he might not know how to die anymore.

The coarse sand and stones were biting into the soles of his bare feet as he walked, having long since discarded his worn through boots. Now the quiet crunch of his steps in the sand formed an imperfect metronome for his song. 

“I fixed it.”

Curufinwë stands before him, hands outstretched and in them a little box, ticking away with the steadiness of his own heart beat.

“It was easy, Atar did not even have to show me how. Now you must not be cross with me anymore.”

 Again his feet lost their rhythm, one sinking a little deeper into a puddle of water that had been hidden under the wet sand. Around his foot he could feel the pull of the waves towards the sea, dragging the sand with them and hollowing out the ground he stood upon. He stepped aside instinctively, onto a sharp shell that cut through his skin.

“Careful, Laurë!” Maitimo calls and the white towers of Alqualondë glitter behind him, shining with the colours of the Mother of Pearl fragments inlaid in their walls. 

“Let me see that. Where was that head of yours again?”

He picked up the shell. Its hard, curved form was broken and the white edges ragged, now tinted pink with his blood.

“Káno, look what I found!” A smudge of silver races towards him, so fast, that his light hair whipping behind him in the wind blends into the pale morning light around him. When Tyelkormo opens his small hands they reveal a cone shell and, emerging from it, the scarlet claws of a hermit crab. “Can we please take him home with us?”

He thought his hair might be turning pale too. Grey, like that of the Edain, when their spirits and bodies started to wane after long years of sorrow and grief. His skin seemed grey as well, and sometimes he thought it was because he could see the grey sky through it. Perhaps he was just becoming a part of that greyness around him, fading into a lament on the waves, his song lost under the cry of the gulls and raging of the sea. Another gull flew over his head, so close this time that he could feel the gust of wind from its wings in his hair. 

A shrill scream comes from the other side of the beach, followed by a bought of laughter.

“You sound like the gulls, Moryo!”

A dark haired elfling’s face is turning an impressive shade of red as he scowls at his brother.      

“I do not!” he cries and crosses his thin arms, but when his indignation shows no effect, he quickly ducks down and picks up a handful of wet sand, hurling it towards his still laughing brother. 

“Stop laughing at me, Tyelko!” he insists and the blonde’s face immediately turns grave, as he bends down in an exaggeratedly somber manner to pick up his own lump of sand. 

“If this is how you want to play…” he says, and the scene quickly dissolves into childish screams of laughter.

Little wet droplets were running down Maglor’s cheeks. Ah, he thought, it must be raining.

There was an opening in the high basalt cliffs, nothing more than a crack in the dark structure looming over him, a comfortable shelter for a child perhaps, but not enough to hide a grown adult. He walked past and let his scarred hand trace the stone. It was as rough and blackened as his own scorched skin and its sharp edges seemed detached from under his unfeeling finger. 

The wind blew sharper now and the dark strands of his dirty hair tangled before his eyes, obscuring his sight. He listened instead to the desperate howling of the wind trapped in the small cracks and hollows of unmoving stone.

Two red-haired children cling to him, the vibrant colour of their hair burning with the curb’s fire behind them and their identical faces are flushed with excitement and the only recently abandoned heat of the flames.

“Tell us a story Káno! About why the wind howls so. Does it sing like you do? What does it sing about?”

His hair was whipped away from his eyes again by another violent gust of wind, but the darkness stubbornly remained. Was it night already? There were no stars he could distinguish, not even in the West was his father’s creation visible to the hopeful eye. He clenched his hand and walked on, the howl of the wind lost beneath his own.

He walked until the path before him rose away from the soft sand and up on uneven stone, crumbling away under his feet as he climbed, the small pebbles falling endlessly into the abyss beside him. He would not sleep, only make one step after the other until he would drop from exertion, too exhausted for even dreams to find him, may they be horrible- or worse- good.

He stumbled.

There was a bird at his feet, the white feathers making it visible to him even in the night- no, that was the dawn breaking over the horizon.

One of the creature’s wings was twisted and its neck broken, overstretched into an unnatural position on the ground, his honey coloured beak turned away from its body as if pointing out the way ahead.

Did the storm do this to you? he asked, but the dark eyes gave no answer.

He touches the impossibly soft feathers with a trembling hand and suddenly, for the first time since he has been born into these immortal lands of Aman, he understands that even here nothing lasts forever. He thinks of his grandmother, lying as beautiful and lifeless as this little bird while his father strokes her soft hair. The bird must have a mother too, or little nestlings screaming for it, and if it doesn’t, how lonely it must have been.  Perhaps it is a silly thing to anguish about, but he has a vivid imagination and a soft heart and has never seen death before.

Through his tears he sees his father hurrying from his forge, alarmed by his young son’s despairing wails.

“What is it, Makalaurë? What has happened? Are you hurt?” his father’s face is tight and pale and his hands are running over his child’s small form, trying to find the cause of his hurt, to fix it as he always does. “Please, tell me why you are weeping,” he asks again and spots the lifeless bird in the same moment. His shoulders drop in relief and his features relax into a sad smile as he pulls his sobbing son into a tight embrace. “It is alright ‘Laurë,” he whispers to him. “Everything has its time.”

He turned away from the bird and walked on as the sun rose higher into the clear, blue sky.

His father, who then had been so much younger than he must be by now, and so anxious about any sadness befalling his newly formed family. 

Maitimo had been an easy child in that regard, and really in any other regard as well. Happy and content, with the sure confidence of someone who had grown up with all of his parent’s praise and attention and who, deep down, believed he deserved it. Kind and courteous to everyone and widely loved- and later admired- in return. When he had been quiet, it had been with thoughtful consideration or the comfort that needed no words. Maitimo had never been despairing.

He himself however, befitting the poet he would become, had been much more volatile. His joy had been delightfully loud but his sorrow even louder. How unsettling these first fits of despair must have been for his father, who had always lived under the shadow of his mother’s fate.

His brothers had shed tears too, of course, but they were easily quietened. Tyelko had cried in pain after falling out of a tree and Moryo often in anger. Curvo had sometimes teared up in frustration and the Ambarussa had sobbed in fear the first time they had heard the tale of their father’s mother and discovered that there might be a force in this world that could separate them after all. But Maitimo…

The hard stone under his feet had softened into dry earth and the narrow path was being overtaken by yellow and green patches of grass and finally a thick carpet of heather, the sea of small green leaves parted by spots of rose and purple flowers. A twig snapped underneath his weary feet.

The air is filled with the fragrance of blooming petals as he wanders through the labyrinth of thick green hedges and thorny bushes heavy with blossoms of every colour. Even now, thirsty and irritated as he is, he marvels at the beauty of it all, his parched throat aching to burst into a verse of song in celebration. Yet first he needs to find his brother, as his father had sent him out to do hours ago. But today Maitimo seems to have disappeared from the face of Arda entirely and his grandfather’s rose garden is his last hope. There is a spot there his brother had shown him when he had been but a little boy- his secret hiding place he had called it. 

He ducks under the low branches of a young tree and carefully pushes away some of the dense shrubbery before he stills.

He hears their laughter before he sees them, sitting in the grass, a bottle of what must be grandfather’s good wine lying forgotten next to them.  They are leaning against each other and speaking in hushed, excited tones, and suddenly his brother is throwing his head back and is laughing, laughing until there are tears running down his cheeks and he has to gasp for breath. He is still holding onto Findekáno’s arm as his giggling cousin wipes away his tears of mirth. 

Quietly he turns away and leaves, reporting to their father that Maitimo is nowhere to be found.

 The sun was high in the deep blue sky and the sea glittered faintly beneath it. 

Maglor’s path lead him down again, away from the heather, towards the waves where the smell of salt perpetuated the air he still breathed. He did not hear the gulls anymore and the light breeze that seemed to caress his cheek was too weak to drown out his lament.

When his feet sank into soft sand again, the sun was already setting and suddenly the sky was set aflame in the same shade of red he had loved and hated and grieved more than anything else.

And again he walked on. Was it raining again?

And when Maglor walks the shore alone, his brothers walk with him, and on the wind his father’s voice whispers: “Why are you weeping, Makalaurë?”

#today on making myself sad at 1:30 am #maglor #i love you bby i'm sorry #makalaure #maedhros #celegorm #caranthir #curufin #ambarussa #feanor #feanorians #silmarillion #just realised it's #feanorianweek #and maglor day as well here #tis fate #golden writes

[vihola]

Apodyopis - The act of mentally undressing someone, for Merkara and Relu

Suggestive stuff ahead, the prompt demands it.

Merkara wasn’t a morning person, but she liked watching Relu’s lightsaber training ― it was quite a sight to behold. And it was a good way to start her day. 

Relu quietly sneaked out of their bed when the sun had barely appeared above the horizon. He probably thought that his disappearance would go unnoticed because Merkara didn’t usually wake up before afternoon. But she was a light sleeper. She heard him walk out of the room even as she stayed under the soft covers for a few minutes of drowsy contemplation. Was it better to fall asleep again or to watch her gloriously shirtless husband swing his lightsaber? 

Ugh, the things I do for love, she thought to herself, pushing the covers aside.

Shuddering to think how cold it would be outside, she huddled in a thick long robe that wasn’t fancy enough for her preferred style. She didn’t really mind it. It seemed that the longer people called her “Alliance Commander” instead of “Dark Lord”, the more accepting she became of simpler practical garments. 

She hurried with the rest of her preparations. Being fashionably late in this situation wasn’t in her best interest, she didn’t want to miss anything. Finally, she smoothed her hair in front of a mirror before leaving with a mug of hot tea in her hands and a satchel bag that contained a blanket, her datapad, and a bottle of water for Relu. 

When Merkara reached the small clearing right outside of the base, Relu was already too busy to acknowledge her presence. She watched him spar with the training droids as she settled on her small blanket, holding her mug in one hand and the datapad in the other. She was going to read the reports that she had forgotten to check yesterday. Yes, she was going to do it a little bit later. All she wanted at the moment was to observe. 

The only thing that Relu disliked more than combat was short-range combat. But he had spent more than a third of his life in the midst of one war or another, so he had learned to push himself. He would not usually ignite his lightsaber if he could avoid it, but now he wielded a blade of pure white energy that hissed as he swirled it to deflect an attack. 

He was surrounded by four droids, each with a different weapon ― blaster, vibrosword, energy pike, and electric polearm. He had to move fast. His hair, gathered away from his face into a long braid, spun with him. Even though it was so chilly that his breath made little white puffs of air, he was only wearing his pants. Sometimes Merkara envied the natural cold resistance of his species, especially now that she could barely keep herself warm while covered almost from head to toe and sipping her tea. But she was glad that Relu always trained topless. It was one of her favorite sources of entertainment, after all. 

He shifted from a low defensive stance to redirect an incoming blaster bolt that ricocheted from his blade into one of the droids. He moved with flowing grace that reminded Merkara of a mountain river ― a swift and smooth current on the surface, dangerously sharp rocks hidden underneath. 

She watched his every move over the rim of her mug with a sense of fluttery excitement. When Relu struck with a full swing, bisecting another droid, the muscles of his arms flexed and rippled. He strengthened his grip on the hilt of the lightsaber, and she imagined his hands pulling her against his hard body with the same determined firmness. His skin glistened with perspiration in the pale morning sunlight, and she thought about running her fingers over his abdomen to the top of his pants, undoing his belt and sliding her hand down. He swung his lightsaber with deadly precision, calculating every turn, every leap, every breath. Merkara contemplated what it would take to unravel the tightly-controlled tension of his body until he would forget his own name. To make him beg in that desperate whimpering voice that she knew so well. Oh, she didn’t need to fight him to bring him to his knees. 

She didn’t notice when she had stopped feeling the chill in the air. Nor did she pay attention to how exactly Relu disposed of the last two droids. But then he stopped, surrounded by the remains of his metallic opponents and their discarded weapons. His chest expanded on a long inhale. When he deactivated his lightsaber and turned to Merkara, she sprang to her feet. 

She was already holding the bottle of water for him when walked up to her. He stopped one step away, so near, and her blood buzzed in close proximity to him. 

“You must be thirsty.” She extended the bottle to him with a wide pleased smile. 

“Thank you,” he said, nodding. Their fingers brushed when he accepted her offering, and a flush of heat blossomed on Merkara’s skin even at such a small insignificant touch. Of course, she had indulged her imagination to the point of becoming hot and bothered, it was nothing new. 

Unexpectedly, Relu covered her hand with his and leaned forward. He smelled of soap and sweat, she could feel the warmth of his breath on her face. The air between them heated to a simmering pitch. 

“Did you forget how strongly I can sense your emotions?” His question sounded a bit like an accusation, his voice was low. “I felt everything you were thinking throughout my training session.” 

Merkara looked him in the eye and arched one impertinent eyebrow. “And what of it?”

“It's distracting.”

“You're distracting.” 

Relu smiled sheepishly. He wouldn’t admit it, but Merkara knew how much he enjoyed her attention. Craved it, really. And she was always more than happy to give it to him. 

He moved away slowly, so slowly that it felt like torture while Merkara wanted to have his hands all over her so badly. 

“Were you doing something important?” he asked before throwing his head back and drinking from the bottle in gulps. The column of his throat contracted as he swallowed. 

Merkara waited until he was done, staring at him with hunger in her eyes. Her skin still tingled where they had touched. 

“As a matter of fact, I was trying to read some reports,” she replied, only now remembering about her datapad. Would she ever get to those reports? Was she supposed to feel guilty about not reading them? She didn’t dwell on it as her lips curved with subtle mischief. “Now I have something else entirely in mind.” 

She could tell that Relu got her hint because of how his breath hitched in response.

“I need a shower,” he said. Before Merkara could feel a twinge of disappointment, he added, “But you're welcome to join me.”

He walked away while she lingered to gather her things and pack her bag. And then she followed him to their quarters with a spring in her step, not even trying to conceal her eagerness.

#swtor #swtor fanfiction #sith inquisitor #jedi consular #swtor fic #star wars the old republic #some things never change #such as Merkara being anapologetically thirsty #I could explain why she is this way but there's not enough space in the tags #swtor oc #merkara #relu #relu/merkara #my writing #stuff #Anonymous