#independence day jasmine

[namedafterflowerstournament]

Botanic Tournament : Jasmines Bracket !

Round 0

#botanic tournament #tournament polls #jasmines bracket #round 0 #independence day #independence day jasmine #jasmine independence day #jasmine dubrow #jasmine dubrow hiller #jasmine thomas #jasmine emmerdale #emmerdale jasmine #emmerdale

[starry-bi-sky]

Stuck in the middle of a forest made of

Flesh and bones and they're all scared of

A lost little boy who has lost his heart

Fear's not enough, they have to

Tear him apart —-------

There are two things Daniel Fenton knows that his family knows as well: 

He’s adopted.

He can’t remember anything else before that.  

‘Adoption’ is a loose term, implying that they went through the official legal processes and troubles of adopting a child into their home willingly, and with the full intention of doing so going into it. That is not what happened. What happened is that Jasmine Fenton found a half-dead child, in strange clothing, in the middle of the woods at her Aunt Alicia’s cabin, and then she went and got her parents. 

What happened is that a twelve year old Danny woke up in the same cabin, wearing clothes much too big on him that didn’t belong to him, and with very little memory of before that moment. He wakes up like a spring being set loose, sitting up so fast he scares the daylights out of Jasmine Fenton sitting next to him. He wakes up, reaching for his sleeve for something that isn’t there, and when it isn’t his mind stutters, like he’s tripped at the top of a steep hill. 

When they ask him for his name, he tells them, clearing muddled thoughts from his mind; Danny. He’s twelve.

(He thinks that’s his name, at least. It sounds right; it feels right. If he thinks really hard about it, he thinks he can remember someone calling him that, utter adoration in their voice. So it must be his name.) 

The Jasmine girl convinces her parents to take him home with them, and they give him the spare guest room upstairs. He has nothing to fill it with.

It’s… a strange experience, to go to a ‘new’ home when he doesn’t even remember his old one. 

The official adoption process… happens. He can’t say it’s easy, or difficult. He’s oblivious for the most of it, Jasmine intends on helping him settle in and Danny can’t say he enjoys the smothering. He learns that he is stubbornly self-independent, that’s one new thing he knows about himself. 

His adoption papers say ‘Daniel J. Fenton’. Danny remembers staring at the name ‘Daniel’ for a long, long moment, something curdling sour in his sternum. His name is Danny, that he knows. But it’s not Daniel. But he doesn’t know any other way of saying it, so he keeps his complaints to himself.

(Jack Fenton boisterously claps his hand on Danny’s shoulder and jerks him around, grinning wide as he welcomes him into the Fenton Family. Danny’s mind blanches at the touch on his shoulder, an instinct snapping like the maw of a snake, telling him to cut off the man’s fingers for daring to touch him.) 

(He keeps the thought to himself, tension rising up his shoulders the longer Jack Fenton’s heavy hand stays on him.) 

They found Danny in the summer. It’s a perfect coincidence, Maddie Fenton says before she goes back into her lab with Jack Fenton. She says it’s enough time to allow Danny to adjust; that they’ll enroll him into the school year in the fall. Then she stuffs a canister of ectoplasm onto the top shelf, and disappears like the ghosts she studies back down the stairs.  

(There’s something eerily familiar about the ectoplasm sitting in the fridge, something unsettlingly so. Danny knows what that stuff is, but he doesn’t know where. When the house is empty, he takes a can from the fridge and inspects it.)

Jazz wants him to leave the house. Danny doesn’t want to step foot outside of the FentonWorks building until he has something that quells the feeling of vulnerability he gets whenever he does. He tried to once, and he felt exposed. Unsafe. 

He turned back around and went inside.

—-------

Where do we go

When the river's running slow

Where do we run

When the cats kill one by one

—------

One day, when the house is empty — or, as empty as it can be; the Fenton parents down in the lab, and jazz out with friends. Danny is making a sandwich, and he caves into the urge to flip the knife in his hands between his fingers. A childish impulse, but one he falls for nonetheless. It comes to him easily, like second nature, in fact. The slip of the blade between his fingers is seamless, flowing with an ease like water running down the wall.  

He’s almost startled by it; his body holds memories that his mind does not. Muscles that know which way to move and twist, limbs that know how to hold and how to throw. He continues twirling it, fascinated, as if he were a scientist discovering a new species of animal. 

It’s not for a handful of minutes when a new thought hits him; an impulsive thought that pops in the back of his mind like a firecracker; Danny moves without thinking. 

He turns, and throws the knife. The pull of his shoulder, the flick of his elbow, is familiar like a hug. He knows when to let go, and the blade flies through the air in impressive speed, embedding itself into the wall with a hearty, loud thunk. Sinking into the drywall like butter. 

Danny stares at it in shock, he feels relieved — about what? — before he feels the guilt. He scrambles across the kitchen to pull it out, heart racing in his chest at being caught, and prays no one notices the hole it left behind. 

(He runs up the stairs before anyone can find him, food forgotten, and hides the knife beneath his mattress like a guilty murder weapon.)

After that, he leaves the house more. It’s more out of fear of being caught than the desire to leave. But Danny is quickly learning that among all things, he is someone who was dangerous, before he lost his memory. Even with his mind in fractures, he is still dangerous. 

He’s not sure how to feel about that — he thinks he should be scared. He feels a little proud, instead.

—------

Hazel beneath our claws

While we wait for cerulean to cry

Unsettled ticks run through time

Enough for the hunt to go awry

—-----

There’s another thing he learns about himself. That he knows about since he woke up. He knows that he left someone behind. He doesn’t know who, but he knows they must have been close; he’s always looking down and finding himself surprised when the only shadow he sees is his own. 

He thinks that he must have sung to them a lot; he finds himself humming familiar melodies when he’s lost in thought. Lullabies lingering at the tip of his tongue, an instinct to turn and sing them to someone beside him. He can’t remember the lyrics, but his mouth does, it tries to get him to say them when he’s not thinking. He can’t. 

Danny’s found himself humming under his breath more times than he can count, trying to recall whatever it is his mind is trying to claw forward. 

(“That’s a pretty song, Danny.” Jazz tells him at breakfast one day, Danny screws his mouth shut. He hadn’t realized he was humming. “What is it?”) 

(Something mean and possessive rears its head on instinct, uncoiling like a snake from its ball. His shoulders hunch defensively, he bites his cheek to prevent himself from baring his teeth. He doesn’t know what song it is, but it’s not for her. “I don’t know.”)  

He misses his person. Dearly. He knows, the longer he is without them, that they must have been close. Otherwise, he wouldn’t feel like he’s missing a chunk from himself. He wouldn’t be turning to someone who's not there; reaching for a hand that’s missing, birdsong on his tongue, a story to tell. 

A dream haunts him one night. Warm and familiar, he’s holding onto someone smaller than him, they’re tucked into his side like a puzzle piece. He’s humming one of his songs that is always playing in the back of his mind, an unfinished tale of a harpy and a hare. Danny can’t remember their face, not all of it. He remembers green eyes, hair dark like his own, skin brown like his. 

He loves them more than anything else in the world, a fact he knows down to his soul. He loves them so much it fills his heart with sunlight. Danny squeezes them tight, nuzzling into their hair; he makes them laugh. Then, he proudly boasts something. That when he takes something of their father’s, that his person — a sibling? That feels right — will be… the word fades from Danny’s mind before he can make sense of it. 

His person hugs him tight, his… brother? And their mother — a woman whose face he can’t remember either, but who he loves like a limb nonetheless — appears, smiling. Her hands reach for them both, voice calling them, ‘her sons’. There’s ticking in the distance, it sounds like the fastening of chains.

Danny wakes up cold, tears streaming down his face. The details of the dream already fading from his mind like the cold pull of a corpse.   

—-------

Harpy hare

Where have you buried all your children?

Tell me so I say

—-------

When school starts that Fall, Danny joins the sixth grade class, and quickly learns more things about himself. One of those things being that he’s smarter than the rest of his grade, whatever education he had before, it was better than the one he’s getting now. 

Everyone knows he’s adopted right off the bat. He tells them when the teacher forces himself to introduce himself, but it’s not like they needed him to tell them for them to know; he never existed in their little world before now, and the Fentons are pale as they come. Danny is not.

He befriends Sam Manson and Tucker Foley; they ask him about the scars fading up and down his arms, they ask him about the scar carved diagonal across his face.

Danny, as politely as he can, tells them he doesn’t remember. He thought kindness would come second nature to him, his dream burned into his mind where he hugged his brother so sweetly. Apparently, his sweetness is only second nature to people he considers his own. 

(It becomes even more apparent when Dash Baxter tries to bully him later that day, and Danny ruffles like an eagle threatened. His mind whispers, hissy and agitated, sinking like a shadow at his shoulder, several different ways Danny could kill him for talking to him like that, and fifteen more ways he could cripple him.)

(Danny ignores those thoughts, up until Dash Baxter tries to grab him. Then he breaks his nose on the wood of his desk. It’s easy how quickly the rest of his grade sinks him down to the status of social pariah.)

(At least Sam and Tucker still talk to him after that. When Danny goes to the principal’s office later, he wisely doesn’t mention the worse things he could’ve done than break Dash Baxter’s nose.)  

—--------------

It clicks and it clatters in corners and borders

And they will never

Hear me here listen to croons and a calling

I'll tell them all the

Story, the sun, and the swallow, her sorrow

Singing me the tale of the Harpy and the Hare

—-------

More dreams come, of course they do. Each one halfway to forgotten whenever he wakes up, ticking faint in his ears. He is many different ages. He is young, shorter than a table. He is older, holding onto his little brother. He is singing in almost every single one. He is singing to his brother. 

Danny can barely remember the lyrics, he’s begun leaving a journal by his bedside so that it’s the first thing he can write down when he wakes up. He’s a storyteller, he learns. He feels like a historian, trying to piece together a culture long dead and forgotten. 

His most vivid dream-like memory is not a happy one, and for once he’s almost relieved he barely recalls it. He is somewhere that isn’t home, but his mother and brother are there. He is dressed in black, blades keen in his hands. 

They are atop a moving train. They are fleeing something. His brother is struggling to keep up, he is small, and young. It’s beautifully sunny, they are somewhere green and lovely. 

It is a fast dream. 

His brother stumbles on something, and Danny, fast as a whip, snatches him by the back of his shirt and hoists him up to his feet before he can fall. “Watch your feet, habibi.” He murmurs low, a hand on his back. It’s hard to hear, there is wind in their ears.

His brother, face obscured in all but his eyes, which are green as emeralds, nods. 

The dream blurs, but Danny falls behind. His foot catches on air — impossible, it should’ve been, at least. He never trips. — and he lands against the roof with a thud and a grunt. His mother and brother stop, and turn for him. 

The train hits a turn before Danny can get up, and he shouldn’t have, something pulls on him, he swears, but he slips. He can’t find the purchase to pull himself up, cold fear hits him as his nails scrape against the metal. 

His mother and brother’s horrified faces are the last thing he sees before he disappears off the side of the train. 

(The ticking is at its loudest when he wakes up, pounding against his inner skull. He only manages to write down ‘train fall’ in his journal, before he’s flipping over to press his head into his pillow to get the pain to stop.) 

—---  

She can't keep them all safe

They will die and be afraid

Mother, tell me so I say

(Mother, tell me so I say)

—-------

When Danny is fourteen he is still humming songs he can’t remember, his mind still in a broken puzzle. But his room is now decorated with stars and plants in every corner. He has a guitar he keeps in the corner of his room, and he plays the lullabies in his head on the strings over and over again. 

The ectoplasm in the fridge still unsettles him, still reminds him of a past he can’t recall. The knife beneath his mattress has returned to the kitchen — he doesn’t need it. He found a box in the attic last year, it had his name on it, and inside he found familiar, strange clothes, and more weapons than he thought was possible to carry on one person. 

(Even without knowing that the Fentons prefer guns to blades, Danny knows, instinctively, that they were his weapons. He was — was? Is — a dangerous person. He takes the box down to his room to sort through. The weapons all fit into his callused hands almost perfectly — the grooves worn to fit his palm. They’re just a little small.) 

(He tentatively takes a small blade with him to school one day, and feels much more comfortable with it sheathed beneath his shirt. He’s kept it on him ever since, like he’s reunited a lost limb to himself.)   

Danny doesn’t have a name for his person, his little brother, nor does he have a name for his beloved mother. He’s haunted by dreams every few weeks, many of them repeating. He’s ingrained the words he can remember to memory, and the ones he doesn’t, he writes down in his journal. His little brother; Danny calls him a bird, he can’t figure out what kind. His little bird of some kind; when Danny takes something from their father — what, he can’t remember what — then his little brother will be a little bird. 

(He doesn’t have a name for his brother, yet, but he’s calling his birdie in his head. It’s better than nothing.)

—------

Seeker, do you ever come to wonder

If what you're looking for is within where you hold

Will you leave a trail for them to follow a path

You'll soon forget

Home

—---------

When he’s fourteen, Danny dies. It does nothing to fix his fractured memories, much to his consternation. It just confirms something he already knows; that he was someone dangerous, and that he still is. 

When the shock of death has worn off, Danny inspects his ghost in the metal reflection of the closest table. It’s blurry, hard to see, but shock green eyes pierce back at him, green like the portal. Lazarus, Danny’s mind whispers, and he blinks rapidly.

‘Lazarus,’ he mouths to himself. It’s familiar. Sam shows him with her phone what he looks like, joking that he looks like an assassin. Danny doesn’t think she’s that too far off. 

He doesn’t tell her that. He tucks the thought away with the rest of his secrets, and fiddles with the hood gathering at his neck, attached to a cape with torn edges swinging down to his ankles. He pulls it over his shock white hair. It shadows over his face impossibly so, until all you can see are his green-green eyes peering out like a wolf hiding in the brush.

He ends up calling himself Phantom. 

(Maybe now he can start putting lyrics to his lullabies; his memories may not have returned, locked away with the sound of a clock, but the dead can talk. One of them may just have answers.) 

----------

Home is where we are

Home is where you are

Home is where I am

-----------------

Dedicated to @gascansposts for being the one who introduced me to the band Yaelokre, and thus being the whole reason I was inspired to write this in the first place >:] Those lyrics at the line breaks are all from their album Hayfields.

#dpxdc #dp x dc #danny fenton is not the ghost king #dp x dc crossover #dpxdc crossover #dpdc #danyal al ghul au #amnesiac danyal al ghul au #songs in order of the album: the hartebeest / harpy hare / and the hound / neath the grove is a heart #musician danny has my heart and soul #yes this danyal IS an alternative danny from the other au. an au where things were a little better :) but still sucks #implied good mom talia al ghul #danyal is a momma's boy send tweet #dpxdc ficlet #dpxdc prompts #dp x dc au #dp x dc fanfic #danyal is sTILL five years older than damian in this au #no beta no edits we die like danny fenton #poc danny fentons #i didnt know where to end this :(( i was gonna go on but i blanked. i thought about going into his relationships with his rogues and so on. #but that felt too much like trying to just increase the word count rather than actually writing?? if that makes sense #ugh im gonna have forgotten to include things and im gonna be kicking myself later #morally ambiguous danny whoo! we love to see it #since this was just for fun it doesnt really go into it all that much other than like. it happens. and that danny realizes he's dangerous #phantom in a hazmat suit? nah phantom looking like an assassin >:]. #danyal al ghul with damian and his mom: 🥰🌸✨ #danyal al ghul with everyone else: 👹🔪 #am i heavily implying that clockwork had smth to do with Danyal’s amnesia and appearance by the cabin? 👀 maybe #not enough danyal al ghul aus where him being an assassin actually. has some kind of affect on him

[pixelnrd]

The triplets eventually grew up into toddlers. Gone were the challenging days of infanthood, but parenthood got a whole lot busier in a different way for Heather and Jenny as their children became their own independent little people.

Jasmine continued to be their sensitve girl, with a loving nature and a curious mind. She loved to read fairytales, to be held by her Moms, and hated being alone - always tagging along with one sibling or the other.

Ginger was a busy child, always pushing boundaries with what she could do. She was little miss independent, always off on her own adventure, fearless in the face of obstacles which she would always try to overcome.

Quincy was still their wild, adventurous boy - always getting up to no good and exploring things he shouldn't. He never stopped moving from the moment he woke up, but his easygoing attitude made it hard to discipline him.

The triplets kept everyone on their toes, and every evening was a march to the finish line of bedtime. But Heather and Jenny finally found themselves having time to be with one another and enjoy eachothers company outside of parenthood - to eat a home made meal, to watch tv alone, to share stories of their children and laugh the end of the day.

#sims 4 decades challenge #ts4 decades challenge #ts4 historical #sims 4 historical #ts4 legacy #sims 4 legacy #the langston legacy #gen 11 #1990s #heather lenowski #jenny prescott #quincy prescott jones #ginger prescott jones #jasmine prescott jones

[blueywrites]

turtle dove and the crow, part three

A 1940s Farm AU, featuring bsf!neighbor!eddie x fem!reader

story tags: 18+ (minors dni). smut; true love; unexpected pregnancy; angst, angst, angst; parental issues; corporal punishment; scheming, plotting, and betrayal; hurt/comfort; period-typical stigma regarding unwed pregnancy; angst with a happy ending.

chapter tags: 18+. p in v, unprotected sex, oral sex, angst, hurt/comfort.

masterlist | part one | part two | part three | interlude | part four | part five | epilogue | playlist

(I have not edited this yet, so please excuse any editing mistakes!)

PART THREE: WOLF LIKE ME (12.7K)

Feel me, completer

Down to my core

Open my heart

And let it bleed onto yours

Feedin' on fever

Down on all fours

Show you what all that howlin's for

Wolf Like Me - Lera Lynn ft. Shovels & Rope

Deep in the field, two roosts sit side by side. One is built of sturdy, weathered wood painted the color of bright red berries, with deep-set windows and a dark sloping roof that protects it from the elements. The other is made of wide symmetrical clapboards painted blue like the sky on a cloudless day, with knotted-oak shutters slightly worn from the sun and wind and bright white trim that shines in the eager summer light. They are separated only by a tall fence and a stump rotted through to the other side, through which the grasses of their yards mingle to become one. 

These roosts house different birds. One is a trio of turtle doves, a mated pair with a young hen still soft and brown-gray, though her iridescence is maturing now, subduing into adulthood. The other is a pair of long-bonded crows, though the younger spent its fledgling years in the care of another, who pecked and prodded and stole his sustenance until the young one fluttered finally away, seeking to shelter under the safe wing of his older kin. 

They may bear different feathers— one downy gray, one glossy black— but if one were to peep through the windows, one would see these young birds and note how similar they appear right now as they preen. Both turtle dove and crow are drawing their beaks along each feather to clear away the dust, fluttering out their wings in great stretches, and hopping about the expanse of their rooms, caught in restless preparation as the grandfather clock ticks its hand toward seven. 

The turtle dove adorns herself for the crow. She dresses in her Independence Day best, twisting to watch the ankle-length skirt swirl around her legs in swaths of dainty yellow gingham. She dances her fingertips along the hand-sewn embroidery that decorates the square neckline, feeling along the tiny white flowers and vines for the perfect spot. There, she pins two sprigs— one lavender, one jasmine— to nestle amongst the white threads she’d sewn with careful fingers, her first attempt at embellishing her clothing, ventured to celebrate the holiday in mid-July. With a careful hand, she ties a bow of white silk to the side of her head. Now smelling of flowers and gilded in homespun sunshine, she has finished her preparations.

The crow, meanwhile, focuses less on his adornments. He doesn’t possess his own Independence Day best; instead, he dresses in a collared, button-up shirt oft worn, paired with navy blue woolen slacks and a leather belt with a simple buckle. But he made sure to scrub his skin with soap 'til it shone pink over every inch of him— between his toes, behind his ears, on the backs of his knees and the nape of his neck. He has brushed out his hair and tamed the flyaways with pomade, twining the curls around his rough fingers to let them drop into careful coils, working with a delicacy that he feels near-embarrassed about despite not having been observed. Carefully, he picks the dirt from beneath his fingernails and trims them short and neat, though he’d been waylaid momentarily by regretful ruminations on the roughness of his palms. He swipes his thumbs impatiently along the callouses that cannot be softened with warm bathwater as if he might rub them away before giving up and brushing his teeth for the second time instead.

With one last ruffle of feathers and a careful appraisal in the mirror, crow and turtle dove descend their staircases in tandem at five to seven, filled with the flutterings of nervous, jittery excitement that precede such an occasion as this.

When you reach the bottom of the stairs, Mama and Pa are already loitering there; you hurry down the last few steps, swinging around with a hand on the banister to fling yourself toward the kitchen and avoid keeping them waiting too much longer. The pie you’d baked with apples from the tree out back is still wafting steam from its golden, flaky crust, but when you test the glass dish with a little pat of your fingertips, you find it’s cool enough to snatch up with a handtowel plucked from the towelbar beneath the sink. Carefully, you carry it back to your parents, stealing a quick glance at their faces as you group together with them. They’ve dressed nicely— though not quite as fussily as you— and their faces hold the same impassive pleasantness that had been there yesterday when the occasion had been proposed to them by the wild-haired boy next door. 

He’d stood in his muddy boots on the bristly mat, so adamant in his refusal to tell you what the matter was until your parents joined you that you’d had half a mind to think that something terribly grave had occurred. Your worry gave way to confusion once they arrived and Eddie, with uncharacteristic formality, extended an invitation to dinner at the Munson house for seven o’clock the following day. 

Though his delivery was strange, the whole thing was no cause for alarm because you and your family had dined with Wayne at least once each season since before you could remember. But when your parents accepted politely, and Eddie looked then to you, his eyes held a promise unspoken in their umber depths. They were lightened to honey in the sunshine, glossy yet still deep and dark like a pool of rippling water. You had an inkling of what might set this occasion apart from others previous, but you barely dared to think it lest you be disappointed. Still, even without that certainty, you’d taken the time to dress your best, to rouge your cheeks and lips, and set your hair more carefully than usual, just in case that inkling came to pass. And you’d insisted on baking an apple pie to bring over for dessert, prepared to fight had your mother put up any protest, which she had not.

The walk across the grass to the house side by side with yours has never felt so long as it does today. The August air is heavy but dry from the day's heat, wafting with woodsmoke and ablaze with the rhythmic chirping of crickets that are emerging, drawn by the deepening light. And it feels laden with something else, too, as you crunch along the gravel path that connects the front of your property with the Munsons’. Perhaps it’s the promise you think you saw in Eddie’s eyes that wisps along the breeze, ruffling the leaves of the oak trees that stand tall and proud behind that red house. Or perhaps it’s your own unspoken revelation, the one that bloomed in the goat pen those days ago, filling your lungs to swell anew behind your ribs. The heaviness of that unknowable quality makes the walk to Eddie’s house feel long, but it is, in fact, over with quite quickly.

He does live just next door, after all.

You carry your sweet offering up to his porch with eyes fixed on the sturdy, weather-beaten door. There you pause to wait for your parents, and when they join you, your mother raps the doorframe smartly with unhesitant knuckles. They flank you like sentinels as you wait, lips pursing at the faint ruckus you hear behind that thick wood. It’s Ed thumpin’ down the stairs, no doubt, you figure, and your supposition is proven correct when just a moment later the door flies open, quick at first before being slowed with a jerk to a more respectable speed.

You can’t pretend to have chosen the dress you’re wearing for any other reason than the fact he’d mentioned it that day at the creek, but the way Eddie’s face goes slack— the way his dark brows melt into softness and his plush lips part just slightly as he marvels at the sight of you— makes it difficult to keep your composure in front of your parents. As does the sight of Eddie himself. Mama and Pa fade at the sight of him, and you can’t help but pause a moment to take him in, your eyes fluttering over his features like a gentle brush of wings. 

Eddie’s curls, dark and rich like wood stain, look as soft and shiny as liquid silk where they spill over his shoulders, and your fingers twitch with longing as you imagine drawing them through those coils. His skin is radiant, scrubbed noticeably clean, and its paleness makes his freckles stand out stark in contrast, like a dusting of spicy cinnamon across the bridge of his nose. He’s rolled his buttoned shirt up to the elbow, revealing strong forearms and broad, rough-hewn hands that are scrambling now to unburden you from the dessert you’d prepared. 

You allow him to take it, offering a grateful smile. He returns it before ducking to the side to peer around you. “Evenin’, sir. Ma’am.” Eddie greets your Mama and your Pa almost reservedly, and the absence of his typical manic edge or teasing rasp feels odd but also makes a strange thrill thrum in your belly. He explains, “My uncle’s occupied there in the kitchen; dinner’s about finished. Just gotta set the table,” he adds, almost to himself, and you hasten to offer your assistance.

With just a hint of too much sweetness for comfort, you tell Eddie, “I can help you if you like.”

“Thank you.” Eddie’s cheek dimples in a soft, crooked smile. “And for the pie.”

You wave off his regard to keep your cheeks from pinking. “S’nothin.”

You’ve been inside Wayne Munson’s house on occasion since you were small, as have your parents, but Eddie still leads you along the wide worn floorboards and through the archway into the sitting room. This room is as it always is: green paint faded from the westward setting sun on the far wall, Wayne’s sagging armchair nestled in the corner, a hand-hewn coffee table and the striped couch with the crochet blanket draped over its back in a cascade of the merry yellows and oranges you know Wayne is partial to on account of the sunflowers. There’s a pair of eyeglasses on the side table near the armchair atop a magazine that is clearly Wayne’s, but the boot poking from half-beneath it, strewn carelessly as if it had been kicked off in a hurry, is clearly not. A faint smile crosses your face as you spot it, though your father’s loud clomping footsteps draw your attention soon enough. The sizzling of the stove is overtaken by your father’s friendly shout as forges ahead to the kitchen; the gruff warmth of two men greeting one another accompanies you as you cross the living room to join Eddie in the dining room. 

You become mindful of what you’d offered when you see him clearing the runner and the simple centerpiece from the dining table, which dominates the middle of the room despite the tall hutch standing broad against the far wall. You hasten to help him, hovering nearby as he pulls open the hutch drawer. You catch your mother eying the dust on the ridge lining the hutch and prepare yourself for some remark on the matter, but in the end, she doesn’t comment. Instead, she merely watches you and Eddie futz with the silverware for a moment before leaving you to your work to survey the goings-on in the kitchen. You hear the conversation between the two men stall when she enters before continuing, making room for the new addition.

Eddie squats to retrieve the plates as you set out the placemats, lining them with spoons and knives side-by-side and forks placed carefully across from them, with space to nestle the plates in-between. You circle the table methodically, dropping piece after piece on your path as Eddie rotates in the other direction, crossing your path almost as seamlessly as if this is a practiced dance. It’s not something you’ve ever done together— meals typically don’t stand on such ceremony as this, and Eddie certainly doesn’t usually fold the linen napkins into careful squares before dropping them onto the white ceramic. But as you watch him nudge the fabric with the tip of his finger to straighten its crooked lines, his tongue tip peeking pink between his lips as he does, the chore feels distinctly domestic to you, like something that has happened dozens of times before and will continue again for countless more. That sudden uncanny inkling mixes with the feeling that swells up sometimes behind your ribs, which resurges when Eddie sidles up next to you and bumps you lightly out of the way with his hip. 

“Watch it, you,” he pretends to grouse, lips quirking as he drops the napkin square onto the final plate with a flourish. “M’tryn’a set the table here.”

“Oh, and I’m not?” you retort hotly, but when he pinches your waist quick and playful, you can’t help the giggle that squeals its way from your throat. He dances back from your jabbing finger aimed at his side, curls bouncing as his face lights with a smile. Not to be deterred, you snatch up the napkin he’d just put down, and as it unravels from its square to prepare to strike him across the ribs, the familiar gravel of a throat being cleared— aged and croaky with years of tobacco use— has you spinning on your heel and hiding the evidence of your childishness behind your back.

The sight of Eddie’s uncle is wholly more welcome than your own Pa at the moment, though you still want to squirm as he regards you with a squint and a quirked brow. “Hello, Wayne!” you say brightly. You’re fooling no one; it’s an obvious attempt to distract him as you plop the napkin back onto the plate, letting it drop behind your back. 

“Hello, y/n. It’s nice to see you.” Wayne doesn’t react as Eddie reaches slowly around you to fiddle the napkin back into a semblance of orderliness, though you swear his blue eyes— so different from Eddie’s in color but so alike in their expressiveness— are twinkling now as he carries the plate of fried pork chops to the table, setting them carefully down.

“Thanks for having us over for dinner,” you say, clasping your hands demurely in front of your lap. “It’s very kind of you.”

Wayne rasps a chuckle as he straightens, clapping a heavy hand on Eddie’s shoulder briefly before moving with characteristic creakiness toward the kitchen. “No need to thank me; it was all Ed,” he offers offhandedly before disappearing, unaware of how the comment stirs the hope within you to sweet and tender life.

The meal shared with your neighbors is pleasant. More than pleasant, in fact. The pork chops are crispy but tender, yielding easily to your knife; the sweet juice of the fresh corn snaps between your teeth as you bite into the cob, and the sliced tomatoes are buttery smooth and perfectly ripe. Wayne is seated to your right at the head of the table with your father beside you on the left, and you spend the majority of the meal eating and listening rather than speaking, more than content to let them bookend you with their familiar voices made more fervent in the company of friendly company not often seen. Eddie is seated across from you, and when you aren’t listening to the patriarchs reminisce about the drought of ‘36 and lament the inconvenience they’re suffering as a bridge repair forces them to travel in some roundabout way, you’re watching Eddie eat. You’re staring at him with a level of fascination that is almost unnerving, made clear as his brow furrows slightly when he catches your eyes fixed so firmly on him.

But you’re staring because it’s strange, the way he’s eating. You’ve seen Eddie eat many times, and he always does it with a certain disregard for common manners: borderline too-ambitious bites, mouth open more than it’s closed, fingers sucked of grease, crumbs everywhere. Yet, not so tonight. Tonight, every slice is cut to a reasonable size; every bite is measured and chewed thoughtfully; every swallow occurs before he speaks again. And Eddie is even using his napkin. It’s laid across his lap and, miraculously, lifted to his mouth every once in a while to neaten the corners of those plush pink lips before being replaced just as carefully 

The empty space where that napkin is usually balled to the side of his empty plate is not the most uncanny thing, though. What is the most uncanny thing is the way your mother is actively engaging him in conversation about the 4H fair next month. Eddie tells her he plans to enter Merlin as a showhorse, and she nods across to you, donning a soft smile as she says, “Y/n’s really been makin’ strides with her embroidery ahead of the showin’. I think she’ll be ready.”

“She’s gettin’ real good, from what I’ve seen,” Eddie agrees eagerly, bobbing his head maybe a little too wildly. “Did she show you the hoop she’s makin’ for my uncle? The one with our family name in the middle?”

“I think so…” Mama’s head tips as she considers it. “That the one that has sunflowers on it?”

“And chicory flowers, too,” you pipe up, meeting Eddie’s umber eyes across the broad table, watching them soften to honey. Your Mama makes a sound of recognition and keeps talking, and while Eddie nods, replying politely, his gaze doesn’t stray from yours.

When bellies have been filled, and plates have been cleaned of all but the tiniest crumbs, you decide as a group to retire to the living room before indulging in dessert. Your hosts lead the way, and Wayne takes his customary place in his well-worn armchair, sinking down with a bone-weary sigh borne partly of creaking joints and partly of a belly swollen by overindulgence. 

Your mother hovers near the archway, surveying the seating options demurely until Wayne notices and waves her easily toward the couch. “Please, make yourselves comfortable. Ed’ll park his seat on the floor, won’t you, son?”

“Oh,” she protests politely, “I’m sure we don’t mind—”

But Eddie has already flopped himself down in front of the hearth, leaning back on the heels of his palms and stretching his lanky legs toward the coffee table, perfectly content. As his foot bobs back in an easy rhythm, Mama’s eyes dart to the hole in the bottom of his sock near the toes, the way the white thread is worn gray and threadbare on the balls and the heel. Quick as a flash, they dart away again as Pa encourages her forward with a hand at the small of her back. Together they take the couch, your mother perching on the edge with her ankles crossed and your father sinking back into the cushions, leaning one elbow comfortably against the arm and letting out his own sigh to match Wayne’s.

You’re about to join Eddie on the floor when you notice, peeking from the corner of the long hall leading toward the back of the house, curves of spruce that beckon your excitement. 

“Oh!” You make a sound not unlike your mother’s, though yours is borne of exuberance as you pick your way around Eddie’s legs. He grunts a light protest as you plant a palm atop his head to steady yourself while stepping over him, but you ignore it in favor of plucking the instrument from its hiding place, brandishing it in the air with wide eyes and a broad grin. “Look, Ed, it’s your guitar!” 

“Yes,” he says, half wry as you toddle towards him, awkward and unwieldy in your inexperience carrying it. “That’d be my guitar, all right. Why, aren’t you the clever one.” 

Your reply is quick and entirely cheerful. “You shush y’r mouth, Eddie Munson,” you say easily, depositing the guitar in his lap and taking a seat cross-legged beside him. In your peripheral, you can see Wayne leaning back in his chair, surveying you as his fingers stroke his grizzled beard, but your eyes are all for the man with wild curls and a teasing grin that stretches his plush pink lips as he glances over at you. “I was thinkin’ y’could play us some songs to pass the time before dessert.”

Eddie sighs beleagueredly, tipping his head back even while already lifting the guitar strap over his shoulders. “What next? Y’gonna ask me to sing too?” He slants another glance at you, chuckling as your eyes light up even further. You clutch his wrist, shaking lightly, only faltering slightly when you notice how hot and smooth his skin is underneath your fingers. The awareness tingles within you, and you snatch your hand back.

You play it off with characteristic banter. “D’you want some o’my apple pie?” you question him, quirking your eyebrows in challenge.

Eddie purses his lips, not quite pouting but close to it. “...Yes,” he replies, and you jerk your chin toward the guitar.

“Then get to singin’, mister,” you say hotly, though you can’t help but smile when Eddie pretends to clutch his heart and sway back as if wounded by your demands. A disapproving tut draws your eyes, and they widen when you see Mama’s narrow. She’s clucking her tongue in a way that means she is dissatisfied with your attitude and wants you to know it. 

Your spine straightens under her silent gaze, and a prickle of shame needles across your shoulders as you clasp your hands in your lap. You look back at her contritely until she finally glances away; if anyone else notices the nonverbal exchange, they don’t let on, and the shame fades as Eddie begins to pluck the first few notes of the song he’s chosen to begin with.

Your mother’s reproach is quickly forgotten as Eddie’s warm rasp fills the room to accompany the twang of the guitar’s strings. The sound is untrained, yet melodic and pleasant nonetheless as he sings, “Well, they tell me, my dear, that you’re going; I will miss your bright eyes and your smile. For with you, you are taking the sunshine that has brightened my life for a while.”

Red River Valley wouldn’t have been your first choice of song for the occasion, though you must admit that Eddie sounds quite nice singing it. And it’s pleasant to watch him play, too: his long lashes dust the pale of his cheeks as he looks down at his fingerwork, and your gaze slides down the slope of his nose to the soft end, then down to the valley between nose and lip, then finally to the pink of his full lips as they form the words. “I have waited a long time my darling for those words that you never would say” A lock of curls behind his ear slips to drape over his cheek, and though your fingers itch to tuck it back for him again, you force them still in your lap. “And alas now my poor heart is breaking for they tell me you’re going away.”

Eddie repeats the chorus one last time and ends with a flourish of strumming, a smile stretching his cheeks wide as your Mama claps politely and her eyes wrinkle pleasedly. Your father is less enthusiastic, though he does nod absently when he sees you looking at him imploringly. “S’pretty good,” he offers, and Eddie accepts it graciously, resetting his fingers on the frets to regale you with some improvised playing. 

He is quiet for a while as he plays, brow furrowed in concentration as he weaves chords and notes into a tapestry of story, not unlike the tales he’s long invented for you since you were merely children playing in the mud. You marvel for a moment at the fact that those broad hands, so rough and worn from labor, are able to create such sweet and delicate sound; you watch his long fingers dance along the frets, the way their strong calluses catch the strings and make them cry out in joyful feeling. His playing is unhurried and peaceful, but watching Eddie fills you with a thrumming sort of happiness that makes you want to join in— something you’ve never done before despite the many times you’ve heard him play. 

That feeling bubbles over as his song eases into a brief silence, and you take the opportunity to ask if you can make a request. Eddie’s brows jerk in surprise for only a moment before he’s nodding quickly, perhaps a little too wild in his effort to encourage you. And though he rolls his eyes lightly when you tell him what you want, a smile still tugs at the corner of his lips as he begins a tune more jaunty and sentimental than the one he’d been playing.

You watch as he plays the introduction, waiting for his eyes to flash to yours promptingly before you begin to sing. “You are my sunshine, my only sunshine. You make me happy when skies are gray.” Your voice is not as practiced as Eddie’s— though his is barely so— but it is clear of tone and gains steadiness as you continue, “You’ll never know, dear, how much I love you; please don’t take my sunshine away.”

It becomes clear as you begin to sing this song why people sing songs. Which may seem an odd revelation in and of itself, but it’s something that you’ve just… never really done before. You may hum a tune to yourself as you complete your chores, or warble along with the record player, but that’s not the same as letting your own voice be the one to take the place of silence, to fill a room so full that you cannot be ignored. There is something vulnerable about that choice, and you feel that vulnerability in the itch at the base of your throat, where your skin is heating with the awareness that everyone can hear every crack or falter in your pitch. But as you sing the words out, emboldened by Eddie’s confident playing, you realize there’s a kind of wild disregard for perfection in the act, an impulsive freedom that feels very much like joy. And you see that joy echoed on Eddie’s face when he accompanies you for the final verse, his warm brashness husking up the clearness of yours in a way that sounds, not just good, but right. 

Another smattering of applause follows your performance, and you bask in it; your knee seeks the side of Eddie’s thigh, resting there lightly, and though you don’t glance down at it for fear of drawing too much attention, just knowing that he is warm, and solid, and connected to a small part of you makes happiness perch high in your heart.

“If I could make a request.” 

All eyes turn to Mama, who has now sunk back against the couch, not quite leaning against your father’s side but close to it. “How about ‘John the Rabbit?’ Used to sing that t’you when you were little. D’you remember that?”

Mama’s voice is just the same as it always is— even when it’s calm, the urgency of ‘get this done, knock it off, do this, not that’ is never quite gone. But her expression is buttery soft now as she gazes at you, and as you relax under its comforting weight, your body sags subtly toward the man sitting at your side. “Sure I do,” you tell her, “used to sing it to me in the mornin’, and that’s how I knew we were gonna tend the garden that day.”

Mama hums, beckoning you gently with her chin. “Why don’t you lead us in a round, hm?” She casts glances around at the men, adding, “All you gotta do is say, ‘Yes, ma’am.’”

“‘Til the last line,” you pipe up, “then y’say, ‘No, ma’am.’”

Wayne chuckles, rubbing his palms along his worn blue jeans. “I reckon we can handle it,” he assures her in his slow way, and with that, Eddie strums a simple tune fitting of a nursery school rhyme. 

You sing sweetly, “Oh, John the rabbit—”

“Yes, ma’am,” the rest call, and you smile through the next line:

“Got a mighty habit—”

“Yes’ ma’am.” 

“Jumpin’ in my garden—” you pause for the others, who oblige you readily, before continuing, “Cuttin’ down my cabbage…” and yielding them the floor.

The leader is meant to draw out the next line, to twang the words at the end, and you sway in your seat as you faithfully follow. “My sweet potatoes,” you croon at Eddie, and he leans toward you as he answers louder than the rest,

“Yes ma’am!”

With each successive line, the delight inside you grows, and it echoes through the room, repeated on every face— man and woman, young and old.

“And if I live… to see next fall… I ain’t gonna have… no garden at all—” You heave a great breath, grinning as you throw your head back and chorus with the others,

“No… ma’am!” 

Eddie strums hard and quick to end the song, and your giggle is joined by Wayne’s thick chuckle, and your mother’s polite humming, and your father’s hoarse bark of amusement. And when Eddie throaty, husky chuckles swallow up them all beside you, you think if you could bottle up this sound and keep it forever, you would. You certainly would.

When you return to the dining room, taking your seat beside your father, the air that fills the red roost is thick with the sweetness of shared company, almost enough to rival the flaky pie you’re all indulging in. It’s not the finest you’ve ever tasted, but it’s with a sense of pride that you watch the others enjoy it. Pa is gesturing widely with his fork as he discusses autumn arrangements with Wayne, how they might coordinate their harvests of hay and corn for mutual benefit. Mama is scooping up each bite slowly and chewing thoroughly, which you know means she is stalling to keep herself from devouring the whole thing in one fell swoop. Wayne is already on his second slice despite protesting, when he’d initially been served, that he couldn’t eat another bite. And Eddie…

Well, Eddie has eaten half his pie already, but in the last handful of minutes he’s been pushing the remainder around on his fork— not disinterestedly, as if he doesn’t enjoy it, but with a sort of jerkiness to the motions that belys some tension within him. You have half a mind to ask him what’s bothering him, but you don’t want to embarrass him in front of company. You bury down the tinge of worry, which is what must be kicking up your heart, what must account for the sudden tightness in your own chest, though it feels more akin to anticipation. 

So you eat your pie, and listen to your father, and glance back and forth between Mama and Eddie until the latter finally sets his fork down with a clink that somehow, despite the lack of force, cuts straight through the conversation between Wayne and Pa. It lapses into silence, and your heart pounds harder as you watch a pink tongue swipe at plush lips and an adam’s apple bob in a pale throat before the brash voice of your best friend fills the void.

“Sir,” Eddie says, looking at your father, and a lump grows in your throat as the word wavers just slightly before recovering. “I hope it’s all right, me speaking out of turn, but… there’s something I need to say to you.”

There is a brief pause as all eyes turn to your Pa. He draws his napkin over his lips, and its drag smooths the severe lines around his mouth for just a moment before they spring back up again into place. “S’your house,” your father replies, not unkindly.

Eddie’s eyes dart to Wayne for just a second, and you follow them to see the older man gazing back calmly. When they return to your Pa, Eddie lifts his chin, keeping his gaze and voice steady. “We’ve lived next door to each other for just about ten years now. And in that time, I’ve gotten to know your family well, and you’ve gotten to know mine.” His throat bobs as he pauses. “Y/n and I grown up alongside each other, and maybe my opinion don’t matter all that much in the scheme of things, but I tell you humbly that, well, I think you both done a mighty fine job raisin’ her.”

Eddie looks at your mother beside him, who offers him a slight nod, but he doesn’t look at you. And good thing, too, because that feeling is swelling up to fill your throat so hot and thick, it’s all you can do to keep your chin from trembling. “I know y’don’t need me to tell you this,” Eddie huffs a breathless chuckle, “y’already know how good she is. But I think it warrants bein’ said that there’s somethin’ about y/n that’s special.” His chest expands with a bracing breath, and in that pause, you see it all in Eddie’s umber eyes. In the line of his brow, the gentle slope of his nose, the light flush of his cheeks, the strength of his jaw— all that he could ever say is there, written plain as day across his beloved face.

“Special to me, s’what I’m saying,” he clarifies, and the way his brow furrows just slightly in the middle— tugged up into an expression of sweet earnestness— has your heart beating so wild and fast you think it might leap out of your chest and into the cradle of his arms. 

“Sir,” Eddie says, “I really care about your daughter, and I would like to ask your permission to court her.”

It’s what you hadn’t allowed yourself to hope for when you’d taken out the Fourth of July dress and adorned yourself in sprigs of lavender and rosemary. It’s what shone through Eddie’s eager smile when he opened the door to his home with his face scrubbed clean, waiting there for you. It’s the promise of forever stretched out over the expanse of a wooden dining table, where napkins were carefully folded into squares and pies were baked with fresh apples from the tree outside. Small acts of service committed by two sets of hands, each trailing love like fairy dust in their wake.

Pa clears his throat— not a sharp sound, more of a rumble of consideration as he leans back in his chair, gazing at Mama across from him. He nods his head slowly, thoughtfully, a gradual bobbing that continues as his tongue runs over his teeth behind his lips. It ends with a jerking of his brows and the smack of his lips opening as he replies,

“I appreciate your words, Edward, they’re very kind. But, no.” His eyes hold Eddie’s steadily. “I do not give you permission to court my daughter.”

Your father doesn’t yell. He doesn’t even sound particularly bothered. And yet the pall that settles over the Munson’s dinner table is so oppressive that you feel your shoulders sink under the palpable weight of the silence following his denial. That heaviness drags like a rotten hand down the back of your neck; it melts to viscous ooze, seeping over your clavicle, sinking through your gingham dress and coating the swelling behind your ribs in suffocating shock. 

Distantly, you hear Wayne stiffly ask your parents to accompany him into the living room. You feel your father’s chair scrape out beside you; you want to glance at your Mama’s face, but your eyes are stuck to the flakes of crust and the crystals of sugar dotting the linen napkin laid beside your plate. 

It isn’t until you’re alone with Eddie that the heaviness sloughs off of you to slap like dead meat to the floor. Then you can raise your head and meet the umber eyes of the man who sits across from you, motionless and hollow.

As soon as you see the expression on his face, the feeling shifts in you; with an impatient jerk of your chair, you stand to crane over the table and take up his cheeks in your hands. His head is heavy, his neck loose and pliant, and you hold him steady as you speak quietly and intently. 

“Okay, look, Ed—” You take a shuddering breath, letting it out through your nose, and it ruffles the soft curls that frame his jaw as he looks back at you blankly. You continue in an urgent whisper, “Here’s what I’m gonna do. I’ll put up a bit of a fuss, of course, but if I fight ‘em too hard, they’ll look at me cross, and we won’t get nowhere. By all appearances, we should look like we accept their decision, all right? That’ll buy us time to figure out what to do.” 

Eddie doesn’t react, really; nothing much on his face changes. But you know him too well, so you can see the subtle shifting there, how the dullness in his umber eyes edges into mournfulness. Defeat.

Your heart cracks.

His name whispers through your quivering lips. “Eddie…” Your eyes prick for him, for all the effort he put into making this night so perfect, and how it now had gone all sideways on him. On you both. 

You don’t think much about what you do next. It’s instinct when you surge forward to kiss him hard, pressing your lips to his with all the fervency and yearning and love that swells within your body. Your heart thumps when you feel him respond, when his lips pucker and seek yours, when his trembling fingertips draw lightly down your cheek. 

There is urgency and danger here in the dining room, but you hold the kiss as long as you can before your lungs begin to burn. When you pull away, gasping for breath, Eddie now looks more dazed than sad, and it both reassures you and feeds your fire. 

“I don’t give a hoot what they say,” you whisper fiercely. “I wanna be with you, Ed. We been good at sneakin’ around before, and we can do it now, too.” You search his eyes, panging with hesitation for the first time as you scrape your teeth across your teeth before blurting, “I don’t wanna stop seein’ you. Do… do you wanna stop seein’ me, now that this’s happened?” 

Eddie huffs— a small warm puff of breath that ghosts across your lips— and it’s wry and unbelieving but so incredibly soft. “‘Y/n.” His voice is a gentle rumble in his chest, earnest and hoarse. “Now that I had a chance to know you the way we know each other, I think it’d kill me dead to go back to how it was before. I could barely keep it together then. Can’t imagine doin’ it now that I’ve had you underneath me.” You shiver at the hot promise in his eyes. “‘Sides,” he adds, “I—”

The merciful floorboards warn you of the imminent return of your parents, and you fall back into your chair just in time to appear innocent as they reenter the dining room.

“Well!” Your father sighs the word in that tone people only use when closing something out— a conversation, a get-together, an engagement. You think he will continue, that he will turn to Eddie and perhaps offer an explanation, but that single word just lingers in the pause until your mother jumps in.

“Thank you for dinner, Wayne. Eddie,” Mama says politely, and Eddie manages to bob his head in a single nod to acknowledge her. Wayne has far more composure, accepting her thanks and exchanging a polite word about the next dinner.

Your father shakes Wayne’s hand firmly and then beckons you with a jerk of his head. “C’mon, missy, let’s leave ‘em to their evenin’.” 

It would be odd if it weren’t that you understood what must have happened in the living room— that your father had explained his decision to Wayne, and that they’d managed to come out the other side maintaining, at the very least, a level of friendliness befitting neighbors. 

So you follow suit; with as much decorum as you can muster, you rise primly and thank Wayne, casting one last glance at Eddie before you depart the red roost of the crows.

You wait until you’re back inside your own roost and your front door has closed behind you to turn on them, brow knit tight with righteous indignation. “Why did you deny Eddie, Pa?” you demand. “What’s wrong with him courtin’ me?” You can’t quite keep the heat from your voice; the outrage bubbling beneath the surface is too fresh, too hot as you remember Eddie’s beloved umber eyes, how the light in them dimmed.

Your father does not quail at your display; if anything, he grows taller, raising his chin and regarding you down the bridge of his nose. “Y/n, I’ve been acquainted with Edward for damn near ten years now, and in that time, he has proved himself time after time to be frivolous and uncouth. That boy is entirely lacking in discipline.” In a rare display of restraint, your father does not raise his voice at you in the privacy of your home. Yet he is no less hardened for it; his words fall like heavy stones before your feet. “Edward is downright wild. Your mother and I have let you indulge in this little friendship with him, above all, on account of our respect for Wayne. But he is not the kind of young man I want courtin' my only unwed daughter.”

You could tell them that Eddie’s wildness is what fuels his heart, what makes him so passionate and imaginative and enchanting. You could tell them that he bought you a ribbon and scrubbed his nails clean, that he takes you to wildflower fields because he knows you like them and invents stories to make you happy. You could tell them that you love him, that you always have, that when you envision what your life will be like with your own house and garden, you can’t see anyone but Eddie Munson by your side. 

Yet you fear to voice these things, to breathe life into them and then have them butchered just as quickly at your father’s hand. You glance at your mother, but her face is an impassive mask; you know appealing to her will get you nowhere, so you latch to the only thing you can think of. Despite telling Eddie that you will not fight hard for him since that will only make things more difficult, you find yourself unable to resist.

“But Pa,” you try for earnestness, “Ed is disciplined, don’t you see? Think of all he’s done for us ‘round the house, and with the fence and the kid. I think he’s been tryin’ so hard this past week to show you how serious he is about m—”

A curled lip is all the warning you get before being interrupted. “Never trust a man who acts just because he wants somethin’.” Your father finally snaps; his voice booms in the space between you. “I don’t give a rat’s ass what he done or how he acted this week. It don’t erase a lifetime of evidence to the contrary.”

And you know by the way your Pa’s severe face has petrified into the hardest stone, echoed though less harshly in the wrinkles that line your mother’s eyes, that their decision cannot be budged.

Edward Munson cannot court you, and that is that.

But the fact is, you don’t need Eddie Munson to court you. You’re already his, and you give yourself to him as such.

When you wake the next morning, it appears to your parents as if your ire from the night before was nothing but a feverish dream. You slink around the house with your tail held high, coy as a barnyard cat as you dine with them at the breakfast table, making amiable conversation with your Pa and complimenting your Mama’s cooking without a hint of sourness. You complete your chores without complaining— well, without any more complaining than is typical of you. You sew the buttons on your Mama’s dress with the utmost considerateness and drop kisses on your father’s cheek each night before retiring to bed. This awards you certain freedoms, freedoms that you certainly wouldn’t be gifted had you carried on about their rejection of Eddie the way you truly wanted to deep in your heart.

You keep it buried— the indignance, the sorrow, the swelling you feel when you catch glimpses of him through the cracks in the fence. You cover it in pleasantness and obeisance so that they won’t suspect, and when you visit the stump rotted through to the middle and find the papers wedged inside, you exercise the privileges you’ve won through subterfuge. 

“Nancy asked me to walk with her into town. She wants me to come with her to the dressmakers, so it might take a little while if that’s all right?” You ask your Pa as he’s repairing the sagging barn door, and his hammering pauses only long enough to tell you not to spend any frivolous money there. 

It’s quite easy to agree when you have no real intention of setting foot in the dressmaker’s shop.

Instead, you dip off the road and trail across the far edge of the Wheelers’ field, picking through a copse of trees to access the adjacent clearing that grows wild and unkempt. There, you find a patch of clear earth, and now, you are dropping to your knees to gather your skirt up around your hips. You arch your back shamelessly to expose yourself, presenting your pussy like a cat in heat to the man behind you. When you feel his broad hands ruck your skirt up higher, you press your palms to the earth and dip your cheek to the ground, just waiting to be mounted. When Eddie notches his fat head against your entrance, you teethe the plush of your bottom lip. He presses steadily forward until he pops inside, stretching you tight around his girth, and when you mewl, he hisses in response. In one long stroke— a motion quick and trembling like the tautness of a bowstring, as if he can no longer hold himself back now that he has notched inside you— Eddie presses his hips up tight against your ass and groans out his relief at your joining. His relief echoes your own, manifest in the way your body goes lax: chin dipping to take its rest, shoulders sagging as your breasts mold to the unyielding ground, fingers drawing through strands of green as if yearning for dark coils of ink but settling for second best. Eddie sleeves himself within the wet warmth that welcomes him, and your muscles yawn a sigh of relief even as you flutter and squeeze around that which splits you open.

There, in the dirt and grass, you give yourself to Eddie on your hands and knees. Your face grazes the earth as you let him pound into you from behind, let him grip your hips and claim you with the little imprints of his fingers that he squeezes into your skin. You and Eddie have done gentle; you know what it is to lie with him on the creekbed or in the wildflowers, where time seemed to stretch and bend, and every moment could be savored. But not so now, when the only occasions you can see one another are in moments stolen through lies and trickery. Now, your need for Eddie is dirty and ravenous. You take what he gives you, and you give freely for him to take in return. Each whimper and grunt, each harsh slap of skin against skin, each wet shlick of his cock sheathing in your eager heat sounds to you like a triumphant cry of defiance.

A wicked seed within you relishes in the fantasy of your parents seeing what you are allowing frivolous, uncouth Eddie Munson to do to you. You know your Mama would be scandalized— her eyes would pop out of her head. You know your Pa would be furious— his face would go purple with rage. They refused to allow Eddie to court you, and yet here he is, fucking into you with abandon as you whimper and tremble for him. And you like it; you like the way he spears you roughly with his cock, the way your ass bounces lewdly against his hips, the way your belly tightens with sinful pleasure as he plunges deep and holds himself there, pressing hard to grind himself inside you. Your walls flutter and squeeze around him as you circle your hips, seeking for something more. You angle and work yourself on his length until you jolt, having suddenly found what you sought. That feeling sparks like wicked fire, burning low inside you each time he grazes against that elusive spot inside, and oh, how you like it.

"Please, harder, Eddie," you beg him, whimpering into the earth. "Please— you feel so good." 

“Fuuuck,” Eddie groans, and the hoarse husk makes you shiver with pleasure. "Your pussy’s so sweet. So fuckin' tight and sweet for me, turtle dove. Fuckin’ love being inside your little pussy." 

You moan, long and low, rocking back to meet him as he starts to thrust again, hard and fast. You've learned that Eddie has a filthy mouth, and each dirty word that drips from his sinful lips is both so mortifying and so arousing at the same time. As his fingers tighten on your hips, and his breath harshens into desperate pants, urgency fills you— an urgency to feel him reach the pinnacle he is approaching. You want Eddie to spill inside you, or on your flank, or into the grass, anywhere so long as you can hear the way he whines and moans from the pleasure you’re giving him. “That’s it, Ed,” you encourage him breathlessly, “just like that, just— oh— j-just like that, mmm—” 

You pinch off a whine, sinking your teeth into your bottom lip as his rhythm becomes stilted, uneven, desperate— 

And then Eddie gasps raggedly, pulling out and spilling onto the earth between your spread legs. His hands leave you, and you scramble up to your knees, hole mournfully empty but heart so full. You turn as Eddie squeezes the last few drops of his seed from his flushed head onto the ground before catching you in one strong arm as you fall against him, cradling your cheek and kissing you deeply. 

But like the kiss you shared in his dining room those few days ago, floorboards creak in the back of your mind, cutting this one short. They’re reminding you that you will soon need to return home and pretend not to know the taste of Eddie’s lips and the feeling of his arms around you.

And frankly, by the end of the first week, you are already growing tired of having to pretend.

It’s not that you give yourselves away because you don’t. Eddie waves at your Pa over the fence and skirts his eyes from you— never cruelly, only in the way you both had planned— and your father doesn’t suspect a thing. When Eddie brings over a pail of milk so you can churn it to make butter, Mama’s face is carefree when you pass it to her. But your desire is no longer contained to fields and creekbeds; it rises up in the night as your yearnings bid you dip your fingers beneath your nightgown. You draw them through sticky folds and dip them inside the well of your arousal, seeking the smoldering fire that burns within. But you can never make yourself feel the way Eddie does, no matter how hard you try. 

So when you wake again in the middle of the night, this time, you light a candle, scratching a hasty message onto a scrap of paper. And the next morning, you fold your message carefully, tuck it beneath the waistband of your apron, and reach your arm up to the elbow into that rotted stump, leaving it there for Eddie to find.

The night air is heavy with humidity and the chirping of crickets and cicadas, but you leave the window open. You’re laying in your bed, breathing slow and even, staring at a thin crack in your plaster ceiling to keep your nervousness from overwhelming you. Your parents had retired to bed some time ago; you heard the creaking of the floorboards then, and now, if you concentrate, you can hear the chainsaw snoring of your Pa through both closed doors. 

He is sleeping, and Ma is sleeping, and so should you be. But you are waiting— waiting for your best friend to climb through your open window and join you in your bed.

You are waiting for it, but your heart leaps nonetheless when you hear scuffling at the bedroom window. You sit up, and all at once, he’s there, dark eyes gleaming in the faint moonlight. Eddie’s form is near shapeless as he creeps toward your bed, but you would recognize him anywhere; his weight has never dipped the mattress beside you, but it feels exactly as you would expect when one knee sinks beside your calf, only to be joined by the other in the next second. Slowly, feeling around in the dark, Eddie settles his weight on top of you. He is heavy and hot as he presses you into the mattress with his belly and chest; his curls tickle across your clavicle, smelling overwhelmingly like his natural musk in the stagnant air of your bedroom. When he kisses you hello, his mouth tastes slightly sour, as if the heat of the long day and the exertion of scaling the side of your house has dehydrated him. 

Eddie is heavy, hot, musky, sour, and here, here in your bedroom with you. 

It’s everything you could want.

When he breaks your kiss, it’s all you can do to keep from pouncing on him. “Eddie—” you whine, nuzzling the firm bridge of your nose against the side of his as your hands seek the bottom of his thin shirt blindly, tugging insistently though ineffectually. 

He shushes you gently, dropping a peck on your pouting lips before dipping to your neck to murmur against the soft skin there. “Shh—” his breath hushes warm and damp against your skin, and your head tips back of its own accord, begging for more. “You gotta be real quiet, turtle dove,” he whispers. “Don’t want anyone to hear us.”

Your breath deepens as his lips trail down to your collarbone, grazing kisses as he mosies his way down to your chest. In the humid dark, you feel his callused fingers pull down the loose neckline of your nightgown. Eddie says something, and you feel the vibrations of his words against the swell of your breast, but your heart which thumps wildly in your chest and the wooshing of your breath in your ears have rendered you effectively deaf.

 “E—” You manage only the first soft sound of his name before his lips close over your nipple for the first time, sucking firmly. Your hand flies to his head as your body goes rigid; your mouth falls open in a ragged gasp as pleasure jolts straight down to throb between your legs. You squirm against him until he presses your hip down with one broad hand to keep you from rocking the bed, working the nub with his tongue and teeth until your gasping breaks into a faint but audible whimper.

You are dazed when he releases you with a wet pop, murmuring against your breast a little more loudly now, “I guess Harrington was right about that, after all. That bodes well.”

You wrinkle your nose as Eddie crawls back up your body to settle over you. Your legs open automatically to accommodate him, but you’re too preoccupied to fully appreciate the feeling of his hardness pressing against your inner thigh. Frowning lightly, you hiss in a whisper, “What’re you doin’ talkin’ to Steven Harrington, of all people?”

“Never you mind that,” Eddie whispers back, and he heads off your protest with a warm palm cupping the side of your neck, his fingers cradling your jaw. “The conversation is too delicate to discuss with a lady, so I’ll just tell you that… well, he told me to do what I just did, and you liked it, right?”

Though embarrassed heat rushes to your cheeks, you nod your head jerkily, enough so he can feel it even if he doesn’t see it in the dark. “Okay, so… he also said there’s a spot.” His hand leaves your cheek to graze down between your bodies, ghosting lightly against the loose fabric pooled between your legs. “Somewhere I can touch you, down here, that’ll make you have a fit if I do it good enough.”

Your bewilderment rushes up in a tangle of sputtered and furious whispers. “Have a fit?! Ed, what on God’s green Earth makes you think I wanna have a fit?” 

Eddie huffs. “It’s a good thing, y/n. He said girls really like it.” 

Your skepticism is plain as you retort, “Oh, did he now?” 

“Yes.” Eddie is uncharacteristically earnest and solemn, and that’s what finally gives you pause. When you’re quiet, he whispers, “I wanna make you feel so good, my sweet girl. If you let me. Will you let me?” 

In the humid dark of your bedroom, with only the moon to glaze the side of Eddie’s pale face in cool, subtle light, you look into the darkness of his eyes and feel so many stirrings inside… anticipation, nervousness, desire. But in the end, it’s the deepest stirring of all that convinces you, the one that’s been growing slow and steady over the last ten years.

Trust. 

You trust Eddie, more deeply than you’ve trusted any other person in your life, and that trust is what draws you forward into a tentative kiss. 

Your lips part briefly from his before meeting again more firmly. Eddie rumbles low in his throat, and when his lips open to deepen the kiss, yours follow. You allow him to lick into your mouth, to draw his tongue across your teeth, to press closer until the way he’s kissing you is hot, deep, wet, and urgent. 

When Eddie breaks away, his eagerness is plain in the panting of his breath, the quivering of his arms when you draw your fingertips down his biceps, feeling the hot skin there. “That’s my turtle dove,” he hushes against your mouth, and he sounds so proud and pleased with you that you can’t help but whimper. 

Despite his eagerness, Eddie is careful when he climbs off of you to settle at your side, pulling you against him and turning you in his grasp so your back is to his front. Your head falls to the soft down pillow as you feel him work your nightgown up your body, pulling the fabric from where it’s wedged between you. There is the slightest relief from the humidity as your legs, then your hip, then your intimate places are exposed to the air, but you rush even hotter when Eddie’s lips find the shell of your ear so he can murmur, “Spread your legs for me, y/n.” 

Trembling, you lift your knee, and his fingers catch against the plush of your thigh, pulling it back over his hip. He presses a tender kiss to the corner of your eye. “That’s it; good girl.” 

Your breath shudders in your chest as Eddie’s fingers leave your thigh; you throb with anticipation as they ghost over your hip and tummy before dragging through the soft curls covering your mound. “Tell me when it feels the best,” Eddie whispers, resting the side of his temple on top of yours. The weight of his head is grounding as he begins to explore you slowly with one finger, dragging up and down with no apparent pattern to his movements. 

As the moments pass, you relax in his grip, settling into the feeling of his finger dragging through your folds. He doesn’t seem to intend to put them inside you, and what he’s doing feels quite nice, pleasant, almost soothing. The crook of Eddie’s elbow rests against the curve of your ribs, and as your eyes slip closed, you seek his arm with your palm, stroking softly down to his wrist as it moves slowly between your legs—

You jolt as he grazes against something that makes pleasure fizz in a sudden burst, leaving your belly feeling hotter, tighter. As your hips jump, Eddie pauses, his breath catching as he tries to replicate what he’d just done. When it happens again— when pleasure sparks suddenly so might brighter than anywhere else— Eddie’s arm tightens excitedly around your side. 

“S’that it?” his voice is a little too loud in his excitement, and you tightly clutch his wrist. “Sorry, sorry,” he whispers, though the urgency hasn’t left his voice. “That’s it, though, isn’t it? Feels better when I touch you there?”

“Yeah,” you reply, voice small and needy. Eddie dips his hand to draw a sloppy circle briefly around your entrance before returning to the apex of your heat— that place that had tingled when he licked you on the creekbed, you now realize, though the thought hadn’t crossed your mind until you felt that pleasure again. When he presses against it again, his fingertip glides much more smoothly now; it felt good before, but now it feels even better. 

Eddie continues moving his finger slowly and lightly at first as he waits for your reaction, but when you don’t tense or pull away, his actions become more confident. Your pleasure builds under his careful ministrations; he works you slowly but steadily up into a frenzy of heaving breasts, muffled whines, and writhing hips. You begin to arch your ass back against him, grinding slowly, your tender skin dragging against the soft cotton of his pants until you find that stiffness like a brand against your cheek. You press hard against it, rolling your hips only a few times before Eddie grunts and pulls his hand from between your legs, shifting back away from you. 

You know what comes next as you hear the rustling of his clothing; you take the opportunity to catch your breath as he works himself out of his pants, but the wind leaves you just as quickly when he presses back up against you, hard and silky smooth as he guides himself blindly, bumping against your wet, puffy lips. Suddenly overwhelmed with need, you lift your leg higher, whimpering breathily as you reach down between your legs in an attempt to help him. “Fuck’n… c’mon,” Eddie hisses, nudging first too high, then too low, and then— 

Then he sinks right in.

It’s the easiest glide, the sweetest stretch, and simultaneously you and Eddie moan as he slides all the way home. “Oh, baby, baby,” he pants desperately against your cheek, “fuck, that’s… oh, my God—”

You reach up over your shoulder to bury your fingers in his curls, and when he pulses inside you, your breath hitches with the force of your desire, your overwhelming need to have him move. “Eddie, please…” you whine, nearly beside yourself, and his hand clamps to your hip like a vice, holding you still as he pulls out and pushes right back in.

You sag with relief as he wastes no time in beginning to fuck you, splitting you open so deliciously on his cock. Eddie pounds you over and over again like he had those times before, but what you don’t anticipate is how that hand on your hip slinks down between your legs again. 

You strangle your cry in your throat as he finds that spot so easily as if he’d been drawn to it. You whimper through clamped lips as quietly as you can as Eddie presses tight little circles to your bud, pumping into you from behind. Your fingers wrench from his curls to clamp instead around his forearm; the tendons roll under your fingers rhythmically, and your pleasure begins to build so rapidly it’s nearly frightening. 

"That's it, baby,” Eddie encourages you, “You feelin’ good?" 

You nod frantically; something is tightening inside you, growing more than it ever has. "Gonna keep goin' til I get you there," Eddie promises breathlessly, panting out the words between his thrusts. "Don't care how long it takes. I got you, sweetheart. Want you to have a fit." 

"Eddie," you whine quietly, dumbly; only his name can spill from your lips now. "Ed, E-Eddie, Eddie—" 

Your pathetic sounds drive him to fuck you faster, and as he does, your pleasure tightens further, burning hotter, throbbing more and more until the urge to cry out overwhelms you. 

Abruptly, you curl your shoulders forward away from him, snatching up the pillow and burying your face in the soft down to muffle the sound of your moans. 

 You’re still connected where it matters, though Eddie pauses in his movements when you draw away before he realizes what you’re doing. Your sweaty back is exposed to the air for only a moment before he’s following you, unwilling to tolerate any distance— his chin hooks around your shoulder as his hips rut against your ass and his fingers press circles into your clit. 

  "Bein' so good for me,” Eddie rasps in your ear, “using your pillow to keep yourself quiet so your parents don't hear the way I'm fuckin' you in your bed." 

Your moans turn to quiet cries now, rhythmic and constant as your legs squeeze closed around his wrist. And he doesn’t falter; through the plush of your thighs, Eddie fucks you determinedly, thrusting into your fluttering pussy as you gasp and cry raggedly into your pillow. "My girl,” he moans. “They can't take you from me. No one can." 

As that feeling builds and grows, instinct in your body takes over, guiding you where it wants to go. Mindlessly, you begin to grind back on Eddie’s cock, rolling your hips; he pulls his wrist from between your legs, holding onto your hip as he matches the rhythm of your movements. Almost desperately, Eddie drags his open mouth across your cheek, panting out his earnest desire for you. "Come on, turtle dove. That's it—" 

With a soft, hoarse cry, you finally spasm around him. 

The pleasure gapes like a yawn inside you before tightening and bursting outward in a tingling rush, flooding you with mindless euphoria. The intensity of the feeling would be truly frightening had Eddie not been right there behind you, holding you against the solid comfort of his body, whining into your hair. He pumps into you only a few more times before pulling out, and then you feel him spill against your flank. The warm spread of his spend paints your skin, the graze of his cockhead like a hot brand as he squeezes out every drop.

In the aftermath, there is a moment of dazed silence. The only sound that fills your humid bedroom is the chirp of the crickets and the rush of your breaths puffing in unison. When you’ve recovered enough, you break that silence to whisper emphatically, "Oh, Christ on a cracker, Ed, what in the hell was that?!" 

Eddie snorts before burying his face hastily into your neck, muffling his chuckles against your skin as your cheeks rush with embarrassment. “Well, don’t laugh at me,” you insist, heating more when he lifts his head and snatches you up by the chin, smacking a firm, playful kiss to your cheek. 

“You’re cute,” he murmurs, following up his kiss with two shorter ones before letting you go to wipe your hip off with the bottom of the shirt he’s still wearing. 

Your body thrums with contentment, but when the mattress shifts as Eddie climbs carefully down to pull his pants back on, the moment becomes tinged with melancholy. Your eyes track the vague shape of his body for a moment before you whisper, “I wish you could stay, Ed.”

For a moment, all you hear is a heavy sigh, one that leaks with the sadness you’re both beginning to feel. “Me too, sweetheart,” Eddie whispers back. “Can I lay with you, just for a little while?”

The question transforms your sadness into a sharp and poignant swelling— pleasant but painful all at once. “Of course.” You reach blind fingers in the direction of his neck, and Eddie ducks closer so you can draw them through his curls— no longer silky like they were the night of the dinner, yet beloved even more for their frizziness. “I’d really like you to.”

As you laze with Eddie above your bedcovers, tucking your cheek against the side of his chest, sleep begins to swallow the pain of knowing Eddie cannot stay. Only vaguely do you notice when the bed shifts and the warmth pressed to your side unsticks from your sweaty skin, both a relief and a loss; you feel the brush of lips against your forehead and your closed lids, featherlight and delicate; you hear the scuffle of Eddie climbing back out the window to scale the side of your blue roost and return to his red one next door.

Sleep swallows the pain of knowing Eddie cannot stay. But, though Eddie cannot stay, a part of him is always with you, and it has been for some time now. The evidence of your love is nestled safe inside your body; it is an inevitability ten years in the making, now ten days conceived.

You wake the following morning with an overwhelming desire to have Eddie in your mouth. 

Maybe it’s an odd urge to have so suddenly, but you suppose after your adventurousness last night, your curiosity to try new things must be piqued. You glance around your room, and the only evidence of Eddie’s visit is that your bedsheets more rumpled than usual, so you straighten them out before tying your housecoat around your body and wandering downstairs.

There you find Mama in the kitchen, who is busying herself with the stove until she notices you’re awake. “Morning!” Your greeting is chipper, and she returns your greeting with a smile. As you breakfast together, all feels usual aside from the absence of Pa at the table; she explains that he’s been speaking with a rancher some towns over about possibly purchasing a new horse. You flash with worry, but she soothes it with a pat of her hand atop yours. “Don’t fret. We’re not replacin’ Guinnie, silly girl,” she huffs with some amusement. “We all know that Pa might’ve bought her, but that’s your horse. I told him it’s high time to get one of his own.”

You sag with visible relief, and Mama’s huff turns to a chuckle. “I’m goin’ into town this morning to pick up some things,” she tells you. “You wanna tag along?”

You open your mouth to say yes, but falter as your belly burns with the sudden realization of this opportunity— Pa gone, Mama in town, Eddie just beyond the fence with the stump in between.

“I was actually thinkin’ I could work on my embroidery this morning,” you reply instead. “Finish the hoop for Mr. Munson, maybe.” You smile innocently. “Then I can start on my 4H hoop!”

There’s no reason for Mama to doubt your sincerity, so she doesn’t. And when, an hour later, you wave your embroidery hoop high in the air from your rocking chair as she sets off down the road, she doesn’t question the call of the turtle dove, nor the cackle of the crow that answers.

The hay in the barn loft is soft under your knees, providing a pleasant cushion while you satisfy your desire with kitten licks along the fat head of Eddie’s cock, kneeling between his spread legs. He tastes as you would expect, though you’d only been thinking about the taste for half a morning. It’s salty, a little musky from the heat, the same way his dark curls smell. Occasionally, beads of liquid shine at the tiny slit at the tip, and when you lick them up, they’re more bitter than the rest. Not pleasant, but not unpleasant either, and the sounds Eddie’s making for you right now more than compensate for it.

When you flick your tongue against that dribbling slit, his breath hitches; when you lick a fat stripe up the underside of his cock, he moans. And when you swallow him down, engulfing him in the wet heat of your eager mouth, he gasps some strangled sound that makes you giggle around him.

Eddie’s hips jolt and squirm when you do, and your eyes pop open to find him looking nearly pained. “F— oh, f— shit,” Eddie finally settles on, and you would smile if you weren’t so full of him right now. 

You’ve been exploring him in this new way for a little while, so your curiosity has nearly been sated. Nearly, because you have one thing yet to taste— his seed. And you really want to know what it will feel like to have him spill onto your tongue, to have that hot flesh jerk and pulse within you, to have him feeling just as good as he made you feel yesterday.

So you begin to bob your head, sloppily at first, uneven until you figure out the right angle that keeps your teeth from grazing him and making him hiss. You hum apologetically around him, and his plush lips fall open as you take him a little further while making that sound. Eddie’s cheeks are flushed prettily, his hair like dark ink spilled across the hay as he moans for you. “Shit, baby, that feels so fuckin’ good.”

You rush with satisfaction, growing more enthusiastic as you bob faster, grasping the base to hold him upright so he doesn’t flop around so much. “That’s it,” Eddie pants, “That’s— oh—”

His hand finds the side of your head— not moving you, just resting there as you work him with your mouth and tongue, like he wants to feel the way you’re doting on him. You ignore the soreness in your jaw when his panting gets heavier, and your gaze flashes up to lock on his face— eyes hazy, brow pinched, skin flushed down his neck as he gasps, “Don’t stop, I’m… I’m gonna—”

You moan when he moans, and as you do, Eddie’s cock kicks within the wet heat of your mouth, spilling his seed. It’s thick and tangy, warm but not hot as it spurts to coat your tongue, and you wait motionlessly until the jerking subsides and his fingers relax against your hair. 

Pulling off is a little sloppier than you anticipate, and you chuckle as some of his release leaks before you can fully close your mouth. You catch it with a hasty palm, meeting Eddie’s fond, dazed smile with one of your own, albeit closed-lipped on account of your mouth being occupied. 

As you swallow him down, using your other hand to wipe your bottom lip, you hear the subtle creak of wood below you.

Your only thought is that you don’t want to look. But whether you look or not, it does not change who waits for you beyond the ledge of the hayloft. It was with a perverse sense of satisfaction that you’d imagined Pa’s face would turn purple at the sight of you with Eddie, but you knew, were it to actually occur, that the horror you would feel would leave you reeling.

Instead, you’re greeted with the sight of Mama’s features. They are pallid, so contorted with the force of her seething rage as to be near unrecognizable, and somehow, that is worse.

#blueywrites #td&tc #eddie munson x y/n #eddie munson x you #eddie munson fanfic #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson #eddie munson fic #eddie x fem!reader #eddie munson x fem!reader #eddie munson smut #eddie munson fluff #eddie munson angst #eddie stranger things #eddie munson imagine #farmer!eddie #stranger things fic #stranger things fanfiction #eddie munson x fem!reader smut

[lwh-writing]

DC x DP Prompt: Maddie Kane

Disclaimer: I don't know a whole lot about the Kane family. This is mostly my own interpretation based on the wikis I hastily read.

Roderick and Betsy Kane had six children: Martha, Nathan, Philip, Jacob, Roderick Jr., and Madeline.

Now, Madeline was a surprise baby. Martha was already twenty-three and married to Thomas by the time her only sister was born, but that didn't stop her from showering the girl with love and affection. Thomas loved his little sister-in-law just as much, and the two practically raised her as their own. Under the undivided care and affection of Martha and Thomas, little Madeline grows up to be a willful, independent, free-thinking, intelligent girl who is very, very happy with her life at Wayne Manor.

Madeline and Martha's relationships with their brothers are... complicated, to say the least. Martha as a rule did not fully support the Kane Family's arms dealings, and so tried to distance herself (and subsequently Madeline) from them. The Kane boys didn't challenge this overmuch: they were, after all, hard military men and didn't have much interest in raising their sister who would surely just become another socialite married to one billionaire or another. (It's ironic, then, that Maddie would grow up to be the best weapons innovator the Kanes would ever produce, but such things happen.)

Madeline had just turned thirteen when Martha and Thomas had Bruce. Her little nephew was a long-awaited joy for the family, and she would sooner think of Bruce than the Kane boys when Maddie heard the word "brother".

This idea is only solidified when the Kanes, forced to acknowledge their sister after multiple high-society scandals, try to strong-arm her into attending a finishing school in England. (Maddie to this day does not regret hospitalizing Lionel Luthor. If he didn't want a broken fibula, then he shouldn't have gotten drunk at a Wayne Gala and tried to strike his son. The following press release was unfortunate, but the thank you card from Alexander was touching.) The Kanes are not successful in removing Madeline from Gotham, and after much back-and-forth, they give one final ultimatum: either go to England and return an "upstanding member of society," or Madeline would be officially cut off.

Madeline chooses the second option without much further thought, sure to tell her brothers to stuff it in as many ways as she can before she trashes the Kane Mansion for good measure.

Madeline, now almost exclusively going by "Maddie", thrives. She gets accepted into the University of Wisconsin, and so off she goes, with hugs and well-wishes from Martha, Thomas, and Bruce, who are staying in New Jersey.

Maddie is twenty-one when she gets the worst news of her life: Martha and Thomas are dead. She puts her studies on hold for a bit and flies back for the funeral, her research partner/best friend in the world/boyfriend Jack Fenton-Nightingale coming with her.

Not even a week after her sibling-parents are put in the ground, her brother Philip tries to swoop in and seize Wayne Industries for himself. Thankfully, though, Martha and Thomas's wills were very clear: Maddie is to manage the Waynes' estates until Bruce comes of age. So Maddie once more tells her brothers to fuck off, this time for good. Jack, muscled, glowering, and seven feet tall and still growing, makes good to stand silently in the background so the Kanes don't try to pull anything further.

As soon as she is able, Maddie sits Bruce down and they make arrangements. Maddie can't abandon her schooling forever, and Bruce's life has been upended enough; she doesn't want to make it worse by ripping him away from the only home he's ever known. So Maddie signs over custody to Alfred, and promises are made to visit every chance she gets.

Life moves on. Jack and Maddie get married and start Fenton Works. Bruce starts traveling abroad to "further his education of the world." Maddie and Jack have two kids. Jasmine Martha Fenton-Nightingale-Kane inherited the Kane signature fire-red hair, and Daniel James Fenton-Nightingale-Kane looks so much like Martha that it hurts. Bruce adopts a gaggle of children of his own. Bruce and Maddie like to send each other pictures to brag about their respective kids, and the Fenton-Nightingale-Kanes make sure to visit Gotham for at least one week every summer.

Maddie and Jack don't ask too many questions when Bruce hesitantly takes them aside and requests that they make a couple of custom-made, non-ghostly weapons for him. Of course they'd be happy to make him a few odds and ends every once in a while. Goodness knows how dangerous Gotham can be.

The Fenton-Nightingale-Kanes miss their summer trip for the first time ever when Danny comes to them and explains the whole "half-a-ghost-thing" and, well... Jack and Maddie spend the entire summer reeducating themselves about ghosts, working through years of biases, and ensuring that their son knows that they still love him of course we still love you, Danny, there isn't a thing in this world that could stop us from loving you. Dick Grayson is very understanding and assures them that Bruce wouldn't mind. (Dick is very happy to avoid telling Aunt Maddie and Uncle Jack about Bruce's death. Dick is even more happy when Tim finds proof that their dad was just lost in the timestream and not actually dead. That entire summer was very stressful for both sides of the family)

It isn't until Danny is seventeen and hesitantly makes contact with the Justice League that the Waynes learn about ghosts and the Fenton-Nightingale-Kanes learn about the vigilantism.

Maddie is so cross when she and the rest of the ghostly delegation walks into the Watchtower only to come face-to-face with her nephew/brother, and don't you try and deny that's you, Brucie, I have eyes. Who are you trying to fool, young man?

The rest of the Justice League has to awkwardly sit there as the Ghost King and his family have a full-on family reunion, with King Phantom taking the time to finally introduce his partners to his cousins, Princess Jasmine and Nightwing teaming up to try and talk Red Robin into dialing back on the caffeine intake, King Father Jack exchanging fudge recipes with Agent A, and Queen Mother Madeline chewing out Batman for being a reckless idiot and not telling her what he was using his gadgets for. ("If I knew that grappling hook would be actively used every night, I would have installed more safety features! We could've made it more durable! We would've had to put it through more rigorous testing before we deemed it field-ready!" "Why does that bother you now? Isn't your lab safety horrible?" "A private, indoor lab that less than ten people have access to is not the same as the streets of Gotham in every type of weather! Goddammit, Bruce, I swear--")

#dc x dp #dpxdc #dp x dc crossover #maddie kane au #my writing #feel free to continue this if it inspires the gremlin muse

[cowgurrrl]

Okay this is soooo very out there in actual probability of this being logical but the idea of a pool in Jackson or like people are allowed to go out to lake or something or they dig a lake like idek but something that involves reader in a swimsuit and Joel like 😳 in public so maybe a lil bit of jealous Joel in there, I just think it would be so cute and fun and spicy and idek if this makes sense hahaha, I’m so sorry for being awful at explaining ideassss🤦‍♀️🤣

The Snake River actually runs through Jackson so it’s entirely plausible (yes, I did do research for this)

Surprise

Pairing: Joel Miller x fem!reader

Author’s note: I didn’t go into this wanting to write smut but it happened and I don’t hate it?? Please be nice to me I’m just a girl

Summary: Joel has something planned for you [3.3k]

Warnings: language, murder jokes, Joel being a little insecure, Joel the Menace making a return, smut (18+ MINORS DNI), fingering, dirty talk, sex in a semi-public place??, almost getting caught, brief mention of a safe word

Joel Miller is not a spontaneous person. It was one of the first things you found out about him. He hates surprises almost as much as he hates planning them. He's someone who likes to know what's happening and when. He loves a plan. But he loves you more. 

Everyone has gone back to school, and the seasons are in a neverending battle of when one begins and the other ends. The hazy August heat permeates the windows of your house as you lie in bed, hiding from the sun and the rest of your responsibilities. This time of year makes you especially grateful for your early morning patrol shifts. You get to finish up your work before the world has the opportunity to finish preheating, and then the town is quiet after that, with people shuffling off to work or school. Maybe that's why Joel wanders into your shared bedroom with your backpacks in hand.

"Are you doin' anythin' for the rest of the day?" He asks, and you give him a confused look. 

"Besides waiting for our daughter to come home from school? No, I didn't have any major plans." You tease, and he rolls his eyes before tossing your bag at you. 

"Meet me downstairs in five minutes." He says.

"For what?"

"It's a surprise."

"Are you finally going to kill me?" You ask, and he scoffs.

"Honey, if I was gonna kill you, I woulda done it a long time ago."

"Fair point. Suspicion always points to the spouse first," you say, sitting up in bed. "Where are we going?"

"Does the word 'surprise' mean nothin' to you?" 

"Only when it's coming from your mouth."

"Downstairs. Five minutes." He says, effectively ending the conversation by turning on his heels and walking away. You groan in protest but get up anyways. If it's something he planned, it's probably worth getting out of bed for. Still, you shuffle your feet lazily as you put more distance between yourself and an afternoon nap. 

He's almost giddy as you walk out of the house and into the blaring sunshine. Ellie still has a few more hours of school left, and even then, she's gotten over you and Joel walking her to and from class. She's becoming more independent as she gets older, which is fine, but seeing her not need you as much hurts. You talk about it on the way to wherever you're going. Joel says he's noticed the same thing but doesn't want to pry too much and risk being labeled "uncool." You have to literally bite your tongue to keep from asking when he was ever cool. 

When you're far enough outside Jackson's walls, Joel grabs your hand and intertwines your fingers, swinging them a little as you walk through the fields. Rock jasmines and asters shake in the window around you, painting the world in shades of white, blue, pink, and yellow. Sometimes it's easy to forget just how beautiful Wyoming can be, but when vast meadows stretch out to the mountain slopes, and the sky is unbelievably clear, you remember. You look over at Joel with his long, graying hair and scruffy facial hair and smile. It's also easy to forget just how beautiful he can be with his gentle hands and crooked nose. He turns to meet your eyes, taking away your view of his side profile, and gives you a look.

"What?" He asks, and you shake your head. "You're starin'."

"I just like looking at you." You admit, making him scoff. Joel is probably the only person in this world who's unaware of how attractive he is. 

"Needa get your eyes checked." He mumbles under his breath. 

"Big talk coming from a man who refuses to wear his glasses even though he desperately needs them." 

"I don't desperately need 'em." 

"Really?" You ask, and he hums. You lift your free hand away from your body and hold up three fingers. "How many fingers am I holding up?" He tugs on the hand he's holding and pulls you against him until your chest collides with his. The wind gets knocked out of you, either because of the impact or because you can see all his freckles when you get this close to him. He smirks as he stares at you, glancing between your eyes and fingers.

"Three." He says easily, leaning in to kiss you. You move back enough to make him huff in annoyance.

"That's cheating." 

"Mm, I think it's called bein' resourceful."

"Is that right?" You ask, and he hums as he finally kisses you. You indulge him for a second or two before moving back again. "Could you really not see that far?" He sighs and mumbles your name, but you refuse to let it go. "Joel, if your vision's that bad, you need to be wearing them on patrol. I don't want you to make stupid mistakes because you can't see six feet in front of you."

"Look, I hear you. I do. I just..." he trails off, and you raise your eyebrows at him. "It's stupid." 

"Stupider than not wearing them at all?" You ask, and he rolls his eyes—the drama.

"They make me look old, okay? That's why I don't wanna wear 'em," he says. Once again, you have to bite your tongue to stop yourself from making a snide comment. "I'm already one of the oldest guys on patrol, and that's enough for the younger guys to make fun of me. If I start wearin' 'em on patrol, I'll never hear the end of it, especially from Tommy."

"You really care what they think about you?" You ask.

"No," he starts, but quickly shakes his head. "Yes. It didn't bother me, but then they started sayin' they didn't know what you see in an old buzzkill like me, and I just... I don't know." He says. You take a deep breath and wrap your arms around his neck. 

"Does this have anything to do with you suddenly planning surprises for me?" 

"I told you it was stupid." He avoids the question, but you still find an answer. He tries to hide his face in your shoulder, embarrassed, but your hands find his jaw and stop him.

"I don't think it's stupid. I think the other guys on patrol are stupid for saying that and making you think I'm anything but grossly in love with you. I think they don't know what the fuck they're talking about," you say, your thumb brushing against the patches in his beard. "And I think you don't realize just how hot you look wearing glasses," he scoffs, but you don't let him wiggle out of your grasp. "I'm being serious, Joel." You assert, and something behind his eyes shifts. 

"Really?" 

"Are you kidding me? It's, like, annoying how good they make you look," you say, and he smirks. "It's also sexy for you to try to stay alive. So, it's a win-win." He laughs, the sound making the sun shine a little brighter. 

"I mean, who am I to argue with my wife?" He asks, relenting, and you hum.

"Exactly," you say as you kiss him. It was supposed to be quick, a passing kiss to remind him you love him, but when you try to pull away, he's back on you. His big hands snake their way into your hair as he kisses you like he's drowning and trying to pull the air from you. The buzzing bees and chirping birds of the field disappear, and all you can do is hold him. His body is firm against yours, and the soft flannel of his shirt feels perfect beneath your palms. "Was my surprise making out in a meadow? That's pretty romantic, even for you, Joel." You ask as you break away to take a breath that's not his. He groans and rolls his head back to look at the cloudless sky.

"Almost forgot bout the surprise," he says, looking back at you. "You're distractin' me."

"What did I do?" You ask. He grabs your hand and starts leading you through the flowers.

"You were tryna use your woman powers on me."

"Please, explain to me what 'woman powers' you think I possess." 

"If you don't know, I can't tell you." He says like he's answering a riddle, and you laugh. The rest of the walk is spent hand-in-hand with his shoulder bumping yours occasionally as your feet walk over the summer grass. As soon as you hear water lapping over smooth rocks, you look at Joel, who pretends not to hear the same thing. He smiles when you hit the break in the trees, and the crystal water of the river sparkles in the sun. 

You've heard rumors about the water being safe to swim in, but you didn't trust it. Not that it mattered. You and Joel have swum in way dirtier water than the winding blue river in front of you. Still, you were sure that it was a set-up by Raiders. But now, with Joel by your side, in the daylight, it's taking everything in you to not jump in the water. "I thought it might be nice. Just the two of us." Joel says. You nod and rest your head on his shoulder, looping an arm under his and holding his bicep.

"It is nice," you agree. "But we don't own swimsuits," you say, immediately clocking the excited expression on his face. "You're a menace."

"What? I planned a very nice day for us, and I just... forgot we needed swimsuits."

"Oh, you forgot?" You ask, and he nods. 

"I told you, I'm an old man. I forget things easily." 

"Give me a break." You roll your eyes before letting go of his arm and walking over to a big tree. You bend down to take off your boots and socks, and Joel quickly follows suit. His eyes stick to you as you pull your shirt off your head, faded scars catching the sunlight. Once you're left in your bra and underwear, you pause and look at Joel. He's stripped down to just his underwear, too, and you have a full view of his broad frame. 

His muscular chest is littered with scars, some old and silver against his tan skin and others new and still raised and angry. Your favorite is from where he got caught under some fence a million years ago. It vaguely looks like a thunderbolt striking from his collarbone to his shoulder. You can see the goosebumps rising on his thick biceps from where you're standing. His hands are relaxed and open at his sides, visible veins thrumming blood through his body. His belly has rounded just a little since you've settled in Jackson, something he grew insecure about while you reminded him every day that you loved the softness of his body. His strong thighs are a little paler than the rest of him, considering his patrol schedule in the summer, but they're still freckled and scarred like the rest of him. Your breath catches in your throat when he pulls down his underwear and stands fully naked in front of you.

I guess we're actually doing this, you think as you unclasp your bra. You leave your clothes in a pile under the tree before darting into the cold water together. He ducks his entire head under while you tread, letting yourself get used to the temperature and laughing when Joel comes up with a sharp gasp. "Oh, you think that's funny?" He asks before shaking his head in your direction, frigid water droplets landing on your skin. You shriek and splash at him to get him to stop. He splashes back, making huge swells with his arms, and you have to dive under to swim away. 

Once you call a truce on the water fight, you just swim together. You alternate between floating on your back, watching the clouds float by, and diving deep under the water to see what might be down there. After a few minutes, your bodies adjust to the water, and you can actually enjoy the river currents working against you. It reminds you of all the summers you spent in pools, the ocean, rivers, and lakes before the Outbreak. The memory presses on a familiar bruise in your chest, but it doesn't hurt. At least, not as much. Not when you're here with Joel, making new memories in a new world.

You swim over to where Joel is standing, his long curls touching the water as he looks up at the sky. You wrap your arms around his shoulders and your legs around his waist once you're close enough, and he meets your eyes with a smile. His hands grip your thighs and trace patterns into your skin, the warmth of his touch a welcome relief in the cold. You play with the hair at the nape of his neck as you stare at him. "This a good surprise?" He asks, his voice low in his chest, and you nod. 

"I like doing things like this with you," you say. "But I also don't want you to worry about keeping me interested in you," he sighs at your words but doesn't break away from you. "We've been together for years now. We went halfway across the country together. We have Ellie. You're it for me. I don't care what the younger guys on patrol have to say about it."

"You don't think I'm an old buzzkill?"

"Not all the time."

"Alright, smart ass." 

"I mean, I don't know a lot of buzzkills who go skinny-dipping with their wives."

"See? Gimme a little credit here." He says, pinching your thigh, and you laugh. As the sound dies in your throat, his gaze hangs heavily on you. Suddenly, you're all too aware of his sturdy body under you and his hands on you. You get a little closer to him, and his stomach brushes against your core. A quiet, shaky breath leaves you, and Joel hears it. His lips ghost over yours as his hand dips down, a deft finger grazing your clit. 

"Joel," you cry softly, clinging to him tighter when he presses a little harder. He shushes you as his middle finger ventures lower and just barely pushes into you. More. You need more, and he knows it. Asshole, you think to yourself, but your brain shuts off when he inches a digit into you so fucking slowly. You can feel his smirk when he leans down to mouth at the column of your throat. 

"That good?" He rasps in your ear, and you nod as his hand adjusts to thumb at your clit. You jump a little at the molten pleasure pulsing through you. He chuckles lowly and nips at your earlobe. "I've barely touched you, honey, and I can already feel you squeezin' me." You can't even formulate a response once he starts moving. The slow drag of his finger against your walls is enough to drive any sane person insane. You whine when he pushes another into you and claw at his shoulders. 

Your heart is fast against his chest. Everything you breathe, hear, and feel is Joel. You can't think about anything other than the weight of his hand working you over in the broad fucking daylight. You're close enough to the shore that anyone would be able to see you, but you hope you just look like a clingy couple enjoying a mid-day swim. It's a long shot, especially since he's mumbling absolutely filthy things to you. "You always sound so damn pretty." "Gonna let me fuck you like this?" "You're so good for me, baby." Every syllable makes you feel like you're burning from the inside out. His fingers languidly move in and out of you like he has nothing better to do before stopping completely, and you whine in protest.

"You're f," your sentence breaks off when he quickens suddenly. 

"What was that, sweetheart? Where's that smart mouth now?" He asks. Your hips start moving in time with his ministrations, and he watches you like a man starved. You can feel yourself getting closer and closer as his fingers move faster inside you. You think your blood is thundering through your ears as bliss overtakes your senses, but you quickly realize it's hooves. You don't know if Joel hears it, but if he does, he doesn't stop. 

"Joel, I think, fuck," he rubs at your clit with more fervor, making you see stars. "Someone's coming." You breathe, and his teeth scrape under your jaw. It's all too much. You moan and drop your head to his shoulder, losing all motivation to get him to stop.

"You gonna come for me?" He asks, and you nod. "C'mon, I know you can do it. Come for me." He hooks his fingers, nudging that spongy part inside you, and that's all it takes. Your mouth falls open, and fuzziness takes over your senses. You hold Joel closer as he works you through your orgasm with encouraging words and gentle strokes. Finally, you have to reach for his wrist to stop because you're so overstimulated, and he would live between your thighs if he could.

"Y'all alright?" A voice comes out of nowhere, and you jump. You and Joel turn to see one of the patrolmen from Jackson, James, on his horse a few hundred yards away. He's far enough away that he wouldn't be able to see you're both naked, but he can clearly see your clothes and backpacks on the shoreline. 

"Yeah, we're alright. Just... havin' ourselves a date." Joel says, his voice annoyingly even. James looks confused, so you nod in agreement even though Joel still has two fingers knuckle-deep inside you. If he doesn't kill you, embarrassment just might.

"Well, then," James says awkwardly. "Y'all don't stay out too long. Maria'll have your ass if y'all come back hurt or somethin'." Joel shifts his hand as he nods, and you choke on a moan but try to play it off as a cough. Still, James gives you a look. "You good?"

"Yeah, are you alright, honey?" Joel asks in a mocking tone. You grit your teeth and dig your nails into his arm before nodding at James.

"All good. Just had a little tickle. We'll start heading back to town now. Thanks for checking on us." You quickly dismiss the patrolman, who is more than happy to get the hell out of Dodge. Even if he didn't suspect anything was happening, you know he's terrified of you and Joel. His ideal patrol is not having to deal with either of you and now he just got the whole package plus some. As soon as he's out of earshot, you smack Joel's arm. 

"Are you fucking insane? He could've heard us!"

"Us? I'm not the one who was screamin'!"

"Okay, first of all," you start, holding up one finger. "I was not screaming. Second of all, I told you someone was coming, and you kept going!" He doesn't exactly look apologetic, but then again, you're not really mad.

"You know the safe word just as well as I do, sweetheart. I woulda stopped if you said it," he says, and you sigh. He's right. You hate it, but he's right. You try to hide your smile and shake your head as he kisses you. Slowly, he pulls his fingers from you, swallowing your over-sensitive whines down with gentle licks. A stupid thought wiggles its way into your brain, and you laugh against Joel's lips. Once you start, you can't stop, and Joel looks at you like you're a crazy person. "Now, what is so goddamn funny?" He asks, and you compose yourself enough to look at him.

"Think they'll still tease you over being old after you just made your wife come faster than they ever could?" 

#can you tell I’m queer because all my smut is focused on female pleasure #mom June’s being a lesbian on the internet again #the last of us #the last of us fic #the last of request #joel miller requests #joel x reader #joel miller x reader #joel miller smut #joel miller the last of us #joel miller #joel miller fluff #joel miller fic #joel miller one shot #joel the last of us #the last of us fluff #the last of us smut #the last of us x reader #joel tlou

[our-lord-satanas]

LILITH

WHO IS SHE?

In Demonic and Jewish culture, Lilith is the first Eve or wife of Adam, she refused Adams’ advances and attempts to subvert her power, independence, and inherent equality. She is the Queen of Demons and and the wife of Samael, from whom came the succubi. She is the Infernal Moon and Queen of the Infernal Sabbat. She does have an angelic aspect as well, that of being a protectress of mothers and children (duality). Her nature is that of feminine fertility, seduction, and the cycles of the Moon, and perhaps one of the reasons she is considered “evil” being her ability to seduce, to take what she wishes, and disregard those who displease her. She is feminine strength and individualized focus. As Samael (the Serpent) is considered, according to gender, to be the Daemon of Wizards and Warlocks, Lilith is the Patroness and Queen of Witches.

Lilith is the great mother and is also associated with fertility. Food offerings to Lilith should be ritually consumed without delay. Any offerings that are not consumed should be disposed of in a way that shows respect for the spirit of Lilith. For example, the offered food could be left outside for the animals to feed on, or it could be buried in the earth.

BASIC INFO:

Appearance: Lilith's appearance can vary depending on the artistic depiction or interpretation. Generally, she is portrayed as a beautiful and seductive figure, with long dark hair, large expressive eyes, and a seductive and sensual presence. She is often depicted as being bare-chested or wearing revealing clothing, and is often shown as a powerful seducer or seductress. Lilith's appearance is often designed to portray her as an alluring and alluring female figure, who is confident and unapologetic in her sexuality and independence.

Personality: Lilith is typically portrayed as a powerful and dominant figure, who is unapologetic in her sexuality and self-expression. She defies the conventional conventions of society and proudly flaunts her individualism. She is often interpreted as a symbol of the dark feminine, and is therefore linked to concepts such as passion, sexuality, independence, and freedom. She is also associated with independence and strength, and she is not afraid to take risks or speak her mind. Lilith embraces her power and sexuality, and revels in the freedoms that come with it.

Symbols: sword, pentagram, scythe, moon, dragon, snake, crossroad, dark moon, and pentacle

Goddess of: love, demons, beauty, wisdom, life, rebirth, fertility, motherhood, inner-strength, illumination, mysteries, spiritual initiation, the night, and The Evening Star

Culture: Demonic and Jewish

Plants and trees: apple, poisonous plants (like belladonna, hemlock, and mugwort), sandalwood, rose, dandelion, red hibiscus, witch hazel, lilac, and patchouli

Crystals: amethyst, black onyx, rose quartz, garnet, obsidian, clear quartz, red jasper, jet, black moonstone, labradorite, red carnelian, tigers eye, amber, bloodstone, and black tourmaline

Animals: black cats, snakes, owls, dogs, spiders, bats, and goats

Incense: frankincense, dragons blood, jasmine, sandalwood, rose, and black amber

Colours: red, black, purple, blue, green, silver, and gold

Tarot: The Devil

Planets: Mars, Pluto, and Venus

Days: Saturday, Monday, Friday, Beltane, Samhain, Walpurgis, Halloween, and Winter Solstice

Parents: none known

Siblings: none known

Partner: Samael, Lucifer, and Adam (formally)

Children: unnamed succubus’ and incubus’

MISC:

• Venus: is associated with love, beauty, sexuality, fertility, and femininity, all of which are key aspects of Lilith's spheres of influence.

• Scorpio: the zodiac sign Scorpio is associated with intense energy, power, and transformation, which are all key aspects of Lilith's spheres of influence and her connection to the underworld and the occult.

• Shadows: Lilith is also associated with shadows and the darkness. In many traditions, the Underworld and the realm of the dead are associated with shadows and darkness. This is a reflection of Lilith's role as a Goddess of the Underworld and death, as well as her connection to the occult and the metaphysical realm.

• Feminism: Lilith is the patron Goddess of feminists and feminists organizations, because she is a symbol of strength, independence, and sexual empowerment.

• Stars and crescent: symbolizes her connection to female power and divinity.

• Her rebellious personality, fierce, and independent nature.

• Connections to the dark and mysterious forces of the night.

• Emotional disposition: Lilith's temperamental disposition and personality could also stem from her emotional temperament and internal feelings.

• Snake: she is sometimes depicted as half-woman, half-snake. This symbolizes her connection to the animal kingdom and her fierce and mysterious nature.

• Moon: often associated with Lilith's connection to femininity and the cyclical nature of the female body (menstruation, pregnancy, childbirth, menopause, etc).

• Purple: also a colour that often symbolizes Lilith's connection to her status as the great Goddess of femininity and female sexuality.

• Crown: Lilith is often depicted as a powerful and majestic Queen, clad in a crown and regalia. This symbolizes her status as a Goddess of power and leadership.

• Bow and Arrow: Lilith is sometimes depicted with a bow and arrow, symbolic of her power and strength and her ability to hunt and kill her enemies.

• Apple: a traditional symbol of knowledge and wisdom, which aligns with Lilith's connection to knowledge and learning.

• Goat: Lilith is also often associated with the goat, which represents her connection to the animal kingdom and her passion and fury.

• Rose: the rose motif is often used to represent Lilith's connection to beauty and her association with love.

FACTS ABOUT LILITH:

• Role: Lilith is the "mother" of demons in Jewish folklore and is said to be the first woman, created from the same dust as Adam but before Eve.

• Origin: she is said to have been banished from the Garden of Eden for not following Adam's commands, and was cast out for being unruly and unwilling to submit.

• Name: Lilith is named after a Hebrew word for "night" or "dark" and is often associated with the night and the Underworld.

• Symbolism: the demon Lilin (also written Lilith, Lilitu, or Lillit) was originally used as the personification of night and darkness.

• Association with night: Lilith is often associated with the night and the darkness, and is believed to be the source of nightmares and evil dreams.

• Connection to demons: she is also believed to be the mother of many demons, including the succubus and the incubus.

• Relationship with Lucifer: Lilith is often associated with the fallen angel, Lucifer and in some versions of the story, they are depicted as being lovers.

• Connections: she is connected to the night demon Pazuzu as his female counterpart, and also to the night demon Lam(a).

• Beliefs: in Jewish mythology, Lilith was originally seen as a demonic figure responsible for infant mortality and miscarriages. The story of Lilith was used to reinforce the patriarchy's view of women as inferior and powerless.

• Evolution: Lilith has gone through many different interpretations and versions, but her status as a symbol of women's empowerment and liberation has been a consistent theme in modern times.

HOW TO WORSHIP LILITH:

To worship Lilith respectfully, you should approach her with respect and humility. She is a powerful Goddess and has been known to punish those who do not treat her with proper respect. Offer prayers, libations, and offerings to her, and speak to her with respect, awe, and humility. She is a Goddess of darkness and femininity, so you can use the darkness or moonlight in your rituals to create a more intimate and sacred environment. You can also use black candles and other symbols of femininity to further connect with her.

HOW TO PRAY TO LILITH:

To begin, you can address her by name and say something like:

"Mother Lilith, Lady of the Night, I humbly come before you in search of wisdom and knowledge. I seek enlightenment and freedom, and I am ready to release my fear and self-limiting beliefs. Please guide me on my path, and open my heart to the love and power that you bring. Let me find strength, passion, and purpose in my life, as I strive to live more intentionally and truly.”

"And now I bid you farewell, Mother Lilith. I acknowledge the blessings you have given me, and I thank you for your guidance and teachings. Hail to you, and may we cross paths again in the future. So be it, Hail Lilith.”

WHAT ARE SIGNS THAT LILITH WANTS ME TO WORK WITH HER?

If your request to work with Lilith has been accepted, here are some signs that you can look for:

• Strong connection or attraction to Lilith.

• A desire to explore or study Lilith's teachings.

• Wanting to explore your own sexuality and find power and empowerment in your femininity.

• A desire to challenge the patriarchy and embrace your own unique identity.

• Desire to explore your own dark side or find strength in your shadows.

• A feeling of being guided by a force outside yourself.

• Feeling of being called to a higher purpose or feeling like there is more to your life than just everyday existence.

If your request to work with Lilith has not been accepted, you may notice the following signs:

• Your intuition may lead you in a different direction and away from their teachings.

• Signs in your life may not align with their teachings or you may feel uneasy or uncertain regarding their energies.

• Your dreams may have a different focus and may not involve them, or you may feel a lack of connection with them in your meditations.

Overall you need to be respectful of deities denying your request.

OFFERINGS:

• Black candles, black stones, or black crystals.

• Honey.

• Champagne.

• Seductive perfume.

• Fancy jewelry.

• Tea.

• Exercise. 

• Having sex and/or masterbating

• Swords and daggers.

• Pomegranates.

• Dark chocolate.

• Sex toys or other items related to sex and pleasure.

• Dragon’s blood.

• Flowers and herbs: lilies, red roses, sage, basil, mugwort, and rose.

• Dancing.

• Red wine.

• Clay.

• Depictions of owls, snakes, cats, dogs, bats, dragons, and spiders.

• Mirrors.

• Apples.

• Red or black silk.

• Poetry

DEVOTIONAL ACTS FOR LILITH:

• Respect the rights and autonomy of women and females.

• Honour your feminine side and your sexuality.

• Nurture your creativity.

• Embrace your dark side and your primal nature.

• Embrace your sexuality and your desires.

• Learn to balance your masculine and feminine energies.

• Be independent and strong.

• Do research on Lilith’s origins.

• Be unapologetic and free.

IS IT SAFE TO EAT OR DRINK AN OFFERING I GIVE TO HER?

It is risky to consume offerings given to Lilith. She is often considered a powerful and protective entity associated with the nighttime energy and feminine aspects. Her energies may not be conducive to human consumption. She is also a symbol of rebelliousness and independence, and consuming offerings that have been given to her may cause an imbalance in energy and a disruption in the connection. It is always better to err on the side of caution and avoid eating or drinking offerings that were given to Lilith.

#fyp #fypシ #fypシ゚viral #fypage #fyppage #tumblr fyp #satanism #satanist #witch #witchcraft #deity #deity work #deity worship #occult #lilith #goddess #demon #mythology #jewish mythology

[sashimiyas]

Snapshots

Summary: Osamu asks you during an interview where you see yourself in five years. It’s everything you’ve wanted and so much more.

Word count: 1.9k

Genre: fluff; coworkers to friends to lovers; Osamu is reader’s boss for a moment but there’s no power dynamics; self-indulgent

A/n: my midnight meltdown in just a little under 2k words; now i can hopefully study in peace; p.s. osamu i love you

“So where do ya see yaself in five years?”

The question comes by no surprise, and you pull down the sleeves of your blazer to cover the lower half of your palms, fearing the imprint of sweat you might leave on the table.

An apartment sounds nice. One with flowing curtains and a permanent scent of jasmine. You’d love to own a bike by then too so that you can ride around on your day off. Attach a basket and then you can do all your groceries and exercise at the same time. Hopefully you’d end up with a sound sleeping schedule independent of caffeine. If it’s not too much to ask.

“Content,” you surprise yourself and your interviewer it seems. It’s not the answer you rehearsed but it’s an honest one. You look at your hopeful new boss and there’s something about his gaze, an understanding that blooms solidarity, that brings you peace. His gray eyes soften when they meet yours, sure to assuage whatever nerves you’re revealing, but this is the most sure you’ve been in the span of the thirty minutes. “Content and hopefully paving my way to be happy.”

He smiles. You watch him jot a quick note. The pen scribbles with a final flourish and he looks back at you.

“I like that.”

Osamu’s an amazing boss, but he’s not perfect.

“Samu,” you whine into his office once the lunch rush dies down. He lifts his head up and at the sight of you, his hand immediately rushes to file through his unruly hair.

“What’s up?” he asks after a sigh, facing defeat as he places the Onigiri Miya hat on his head.

You display the schedule he just posted on his desk, “you have me working Friday night again. I requested the day off, remember?”

“Oh shit,” he says though it hardly sounds sorry.

“I have a date, remember?” You’re busy pointing at his calendar to witness the way he rolls his eyes, “I even wrote it down here.”

“What are ya doing writing down on my calendar with my pens?” He pulls one out to brandish it right at your face. You slap his hand away but he simply points at the sticker pasted on its edge, “says Samu right here. Means these pens are mine.”

“Oh congratulations, you can read your name but you can’t read my little note? What are you? Five?”

“Think the answer to that one is ya boss.” He looks a little too pleased with himself that you can’t help but laugh. It’s always been hard to stay mad at him, especially with the way he teases you whenever you ask him to get the backup takeout containers you can never reach and how he never says anything when you take an extra two minutes of break on your rough days. He’s even driven you home a couple of times when the rain gets bad. So what if he sometimes forgets a couple of things? You’re lucky enough to have a boss like him.

“Fine, I’ll reschedule.”

“I owe ya one.”

He happens to accumulate a lot of favors in your three years of working at Onigiri Miya. From staying a little extra to coming in when someone calls out sick but even then, you’re indebted to him.

You fold your apron up in a methodical practice one last time and you walk out the door with arms full of gifts and flowers to celebrate the new chapter in your life. Osamu locks the door while he holds your balloons and you laugh at the sight.

“You look silly,” you explain when he turns around. He eyes the bundle of goods overflowing in your hold, cards and bears and flowers and the leftovers of a shared cake.

“Ya do, too.”

“You’re just jealous they love me more than they love you.”

“Not jealous,” Osamu immediately says and you find yourself speechless. You expected the banter that’s become effortless, the mild flirting that’s harmless at its core. Teasing is just a sign of platonic affection and you’ve already agonized over it, analyzed how he interacts with you in comparison with the others, and you’ve found no difference.

“Ya deserve every bit of it,” he cocks his side to the side and unlocks his passenger door. Then he throws the balloon into the backseat before plucking some items from your hands. “Come on, I’ll drop ya home.”

It’s not a question but even if it was, you know your answer.

When he gets to your door, he places the car in park. You look over the console and find him ruffling his hair again. His palm frisks through, grabbing the longer pieces and then letting them fall in a wave.

The reflection of moonlight shines a silver gleam in his eyes. You go to grab your things. He helps.

“Thank you, Osamu,” you say but the words can’t seem to bear the weight you want them to. He’s given you so much, this job, this family, the bike you’d been saving up for. He’d been your boss and your friend and he’s taught you more than just knife skills or to always keep a towel in your back pocket. But with your things all piled into your arms, and his engine flipping over into an eager hum, your apartment light buzzes on, waiting for you. So you leave it at that because at the very core, it is still gratitude.

“Hey,” he calls once you get one foot out. You turn, albeit ungracefully. His head tilts, opens his mouth only to lick his lips, presses them between his teeth, and then he gathers a breath. “Are ya content?”

You smile because the question comes by no surprise.

“Yes.”

“On ya way to being happy?”

“Yes.”

He smiles back the same way he did then, “good. Keep in touch, will ya?”

The promise is easy with your new job only a couple blocks down. You bike your way to work so you have more time for lunch. You’re greeted with an uproar. The cashier hugs you over the counter and the busser bumps hips as he passes by. You’re busy talking about your first week at the new job that by the time Osamu ducks his way past the cloth partition, you still haven’t ordered.

“Look who missed us,” Osamu beams, “ya can’t stay away, can ya? I’ve got an extra apron in the back.”

“Yeah right. I’m ready to be treated with first class service.”

You sit at the bar right in front of him, cashier and busser out of your mind because he’s who you actually came for. His hands spread out on the wooden top and the sight before you, something so familiar, is novel from this point of view.

You get to witness the way his hands curl around the edge of the bar, the inner skin of his arms displayed in a way that’s enticing. You want to touch but before you can act, he starts making your order unprompted.

“They treating ya right over there?” He asks offhandedly, eyes on the ball he forms between his palms.

You sway in your seat, “yeah.”

“Ya happy?” He makes sure to meet your gaze when he asks the question. He even stalls his movements, focusing all his attention on you.

“Not as happy as I was here,” ducking your eyes low when his stare becomes too intense, you play with your straw, “but we’ll get there.”

“Good.”

He offers you a plate of your usual. One bite brings you home and with the sight of your smile, Osamu turns his back to you. He rustles around, probably packaging some to-go orders while still keeping you company. You’re halfway through your meal when he speaks up again.

“They give ya Friday nights off?”

You laugh, “yeah, unlike you.”

A breeze riles you up momentarily. You groan, clutching up the meager sheets within your reach and you curl into them. A palm lands on your shoulder familiar in warmth and in size. You hum even when it tries to shake you awake because comfort is all that you find.

“Time to get up,” a voice says in your ear, “I’ve got ya tea for ya.”

So you wake.

To the sound of rustling curtains, ones permanently scented by jasmine.

He rides over a pothole the same time you’re gulping water.

“Osamu!” you sputter. You whip your wrist to rid yourself of the excess liquid but little can be done to salvage your drenched shirt. “Look what you did!”

“Oh shit,” he says but he hardly sounds sorry. He takes a glance every couple of seconds, a muffled laughter escaping every time he does.

“It’s not funny. I could have died.”

“Would have saved ya. No worries.”

You roll your eyes and snatch the towel he likes to keep around his shoulders to clean up your mess, “doubt it.”

“Would have. Besides,” he taps at your chest, “I like the view.”

“You’re driving!”

“Maybe we should switch?”

“Osamu, smile!” He stares right at the camera, a blank expression on his face and holds up a peace sign in front of a backdrop of the Northern Mariana Islands.

You look at the end result, disappointed, “really? You don’t even look like you’re enjoying vacation.”

“Yeah I do,” he double taps your screen to zoom in on his face, “my eyes obviously look cheery.”

“Are you even happy?”

The question makes him serious. He takes your hand in his and pulls you in, “course I am.” Then with his other hand, he grabs your phone and flips to your front camera, “let’s take a shit ton of photos and make Tsumu jealous.”

He holds the circular button down and it bursts. As you rifle through, you notice that next to you, he is smiling.

Osamu picks up a stray stick. He breaks it in half, then in half again. Then he throws the pieces one by one over the hilltop. When he’s done, he slides over the plates and basket that keep you away from him until he can weasel his way into your lap. Hands fall to his hair. You ruffle the strands, pulling the long edges up so they can softly fall back.

“You know,” you start, now tracing the edge of his ear. He twitches so your finger retreats to his temple, swirling a circle then jotting a line down to his jaw, “I’ve never asked you. Where do you see yourself in five years?”

“Interviewing me?”

You respond coy as ever, “maybe.”

“What position?”

“Whatever’s open.”

He closes his eyes and envisions it. Snapshots of a future. A marriage sounds nice. So does a house near Ma’s. Family dinners no longer have to be so disjointed and he can actually have a spare room for Tsumu finally though sometimes his brother deserves the couch. Maybe a new car too that doesn’t struggle uphill and can hold the weight of more than two people. He likes the idea of another food truck but only if you’re willing. He’s not as greedy as he once was.

Osamu looks up at you and the answer is obvious.

“Happy,” the skyline view from the hilltop is beautiful, but the two of you are more entranced by each other’s gazes. “Always happy.”

You smile.

“I like that.”

#reina.writeshaikyuu!! #miya osamu x reader #haikyuu x reader #miya osamu fluff #haikyuu fluff #osamu x reader

[animezinglife]

More Elucien Concepts

I might have accidentally developed a minor obsession I never asked for. Have some lovely Elucien headcanons, concepts, scenarios, and what-ifs to think about.

It's a beautiful spring, autumn, or summer day, the windows are open, and Lucien is reading. He's aware of Elain--he always is aware of her--entering the room. He smiles slightly but doesn't turn as she makes her way over, tilts his head gently away from his book, and kisses him. Her skin is still warm from being out in her garden; her scent jasmine and honey and everything he's come to call home. He sets his book down and pulls her over him, running a hand through the waves of golden-brown that fall on either side of his face. He tucks one strand behind her ear and stares up at her, the longing never fading but the former sadness replaced by an easy warmth (and just a hint of mischief).

Elain has a quiet insistence on doing things herself, which Lucien fully respects. Sometimes, though, it amuses him when that independence takes a turn for stubbornness towards the littlest things. One such instance is reaching some pot or pan or baking utensil that's ended up on too high on a shelf, and he smirks as she climbs up onto the counter to reach it. He has a glimmer of suspicion it's on purpose though when she turns and asks that he help her down--an act that too often seems to end in a heated countertop makeout session or more and him carrying her to their room.

She's not subtle about playing coy, though, and puts a great deal of time into actions she knows catches and holds his attention. Slowly letting her hair all the way down, pin by pin. Lacing or loosening her corset or bodice. Letting the sleeve or strap of her dress or nightgown fall off her shoulder as she brushes the strands over her shoulder and gently detangles her golden-brown waves. She loves the fire that gleams in his eyes, though she still blushes when she catches him staring (even if it's her goal).

While she continues to grow her skills and self-control of her reaction to them, he never quite stops being protective of her where they're concerned. He always stays close when she has her visions, sometimes taking her hand to remind her they're still here, together, if one seems to be troubling her.

He fully embraces her eccentricities, and not just the ones that come with her odd riddles as a Seer. She seems to fully bloom in the sunlight just as her flowers do; full of life and light and sunlight. He swears the land itself loves her, and all the animals that frequent their garden and their home. Lucien has never seen anything quite like it, but he doesn't question it, either. It's like she unknowingly communicates to the earth itself.

While she still sometimes gets flustered with Lucien, she becomes increasingly confident and bold in letting him know what she wants from him. Yet she doesn't quite get over the occasional mortification she feels when she wants him badly and others--especially Feyre and Nesta--are around. She still prefers details about their relationship stay private. Or, at least, as private as possible. That lack of privacy is the one part of being Fae she never fully gets used to, but it's better when it's around other Fae who didn't know her before.

More like this:

Soft Elucien Concepts

Little, Tender Moments Scenarios

Sweet-and-Mildly-Spicy

“Dressed-Down” Lucien

Elain Appreciation

#acotar #elucien #elain archeron #lucien vanserra #elain x lucien #a court of thorns and roses #elucien scenarios #elucien headcanons #picks these off their stems and gently blows the petals into the wind

[rosanna-writer]

now i've read all of the books beside your bed

Summary: A Gwynlain drabble inspired by “source?” divine intuition, gut instinct, and cryptic symbolism from my dreams" Warnings: none Rating: T Word Count: ~600 Read on AO3

"Sweetheart," Gwyn said, trying and failing to sound patient, "how many times are we going to talk about this?"

Elain looked up from her novel, all doe-eyed innocence. "Talk about what?"

Gwyn never fell for that—from their first meeting, it had been abundantly clear to her that Elain Archeron wasn't nearly as sweet and naive as everyone assumed her to be.

It was one of the many reasons Elain had married her.

One of the other reasons had been Gwyn's enthusiastic support of Elain's efforts to create comprehensive taxonomies of the Night Court's native flora. It had been more than just words of encouragement—Gwyn had volunteered to fetch books, organize notes, and check facts.

That had been years ago, but Gwyn still proofread Elain's work. These days, she did it from the comfort of her desk in their home library, often with Elain curled up in the nearby armchair like she was now.

It had become a comfortable routine, which is why Gwyn merely narrowed her eyes at Elain and said, "Your citations."

"Did I get the numbering wrong again? I—"

"Elain. You can't cite prophetic visions in an academic treatise."

"You can if you're a seer," Elain said mildly, as if that settled it.

Gwyn set her pen down, rubbing her temples. "They can't really be independently verified, and scholarly work needs to be reproducible."

"There's not much point to seeing the future if I don't share what I know, now is there?"

"You should write something more than just a footnote that says 'This was once revealed to me in a dream.'"

They'd gone back and forth on this for years—it would be remiss to exclude relevant information Elain had gleaned from a vision, but in the bibliography, it couldn't quite be categorized as a firsthand account or an interview. Gwyn had asked the scholars in the library for advice, but seers were so rare that no one had ever given the issue much thought.

The argument could go on for hours if they let it, and Elain had no intention of ruining their evening. She closed her book and stood, crossing the room and wrapping her arms around Gwyn's shoulders.

"I appreciate your attention to detail all the same."

Gwyn smiled—even with her, Elain couldn't quite manage to stop being a bit prim and diplomatic. The sound of it was just as familiar as Elain's jasmine-and-honey scent. "I appreciate you all the same."

Elain pressed a kiss to Gwyn's cheek. "Appreciate you more."

Gwyn couldn't ignore a challenge like that. With all the strength and grace of a Valkyrie, she turned and slid both hands under Elain, lifting her wife as she rose to her feet. Elain let out a surprised laugh and locked her legs around Gwyn's waist.

"Do you have a source for that claim?" Gwyn said. It must have gotten on Elain's nerves just the way she'd hoped it would—Elain leaned down and kissed her, immediately parting Gwyn's lips with her tongue. Gwyn carried her without breaking the kiss, taking a few steps forward until Elain's back was pressed against the bookshelf.

Gwyn might have been the one who had Elain pinned, but Elain's hand drifted to her hair, fingers tangling in the strands to keep her right where Elain wanted her. Not that Gwyn wanted to be anywhere else—she'd stay there forever if she could, with Elain's mouth on hers and her hands splayed on Elain's ass.

Neither one of them was sure exactly how much time had passed when they finally broke apart, flushed and breathing a bit harder. But as intoxicating as Elain was, Gwyn was still lucid enough to remember that she'd never gotten an answer to her question. "Do you?" she said, pushing for a response. "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, Elain."

Elain let her head tip forward until their foreheads were touching. "Take me to the bedroom and allow me to demonstrate my appreciation, then."

The rest of the proofreading could wait until morning.

#gwynlain #gwyneth berdara #elain archeron

[namedafterflowerstournament]

Botanic Tournament : Jasmines Bracket !

Round 1 Poll 1

#botanic tournament #tournament polls #jasmines bracket #round 1 #jasmine independence day #jasmine dubrow #independence day jasmine #jasmine dubrow hiller #independence day #jessamy #the sandman #the sandman comics #sandman comics #sandman #sandman netflix #the sandman netflix #netflix sandman #sandman neil gaiman

[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

Kalim, Azul: Silver Spoon, Golden Boy

Kalim my beloved sun spot... 🥺 Also, gotta love that classic Azul ass-kissing to the wealthy/j ashdaisdbasfiba I DON'T KNOW IF THIS WAS JUST ME, but I wonder if Kalim not knowing where the cash register was is a subtle nod to Princess Jasmine not knowing she had to pay for fruit (during that scene where she snuck out of the palace and into the bazaar)?? Maybe I'm overthinking it!

A Boy in Bloom, and his Blossoming Future.

"How do you spend your days off?"

"I dunno!" Kalim replied cheerily, not a care in the world. "I do lots of stuff, it depends on the day!

“I'll throw a banquet if there's something to celebrate or if there's someone that's feeling down. Sometimes I'll play with the animals—Scarabia has a whole menagerie—or I'll take magic carpet out for a ride! Sometimes I'll chill with Cater and Lilia, or see what Silver's up to in Diasomnia."

"My, my, you're quite sociable, Kalim-san," Azul crooned, simpering and sweet. "It's good to keep oneself busy, but it’s even more important to build and maintain relationships, wouldn’t you say? You manage to keep abreast of them both so effortlessly.”

“Aw, thanks a bunch!! I love hanging out with my friends! I’ve actually been trying to go out more lately instead of bringing people back to Scarabia. It makes Jamil upset with me when I bring over unannounced guests, so…”

“He said that?” Azul pretended to look taken aback. “How rude! I would certainly never do such a thing.”

“No, he didn’t say it. I can just tell. His face turns into this mask you can’t read, or he sighs and tells me off a little. But even if he’s not happy with me, Jamil always does what I ask. Always. For so many years.” Kalim’s smile dimmed, a slight sadness creeping onto his lips. “I don’t want to cause him more trouble than I already have.”

Azul frowned, his flattery faltering. Something genuine pushed out instead. “… Kalim-san. Your compassion for others truly is remarkable. Jamil-san may not voice his true thoughts, however… there is a part of him that notices your efforts and appreciates them.”

“You think so?” Hope welled in the birthday boy’s voice.

“Fufufu, of course. I’m a businessman—and if nothing, I know of people’s hearts.” Azul pushed his glasses up, the sunlight momentarily catching them in pure white. “Now then, please continue to be hat you were saying before. You’ve been going out more as of late?”

“Yeah!” He perked. “The other day, I went shopping with my dorm.”

“Shopping?”

“Shopping!!” Kalim affirmed with a nod. “Usually I’d have people do it for me, but getting to do it myself was like a whole new world! I want to try and be more independent, so I thought this would be a good first step.”

“Well… yes, it is. Baby steps, I suppose.” His interviewer quirked a brow. “And how did that trip go?”

Surely he couldn’t have run into any excessive issues. He was still accompanied by dorm members, so they should have kept him in check.

“It was so cool seeing the places that sell things! I thought that stores would be more like the bazaars back home, with everyone mostly selling one thing. The fruit vendor, the fish monger! Like that!

“It turns out that stores sell lots of stuff all in one place. I got excited seeing it all, I had to grab a little of everything!! Um... then I stood around!"

"... What for?"

"I didn't know where the cash register was!!" Kalim easily laughed it off. "But my dorm mates were nice enough to help me out! They showed me the way and helped bring over the stuff I wanted to buy.

"It was a lot of work hauling it all, so I got them thank-you gifts for the trouble! Then I saw something really amazing while we were checking out!!"

"Oh? And what might that be?"

"Carpet cleaner!"

"... I beg your pardon? Carpet cleaner?" It certainly wasn't the first thing Azul would have imagined to capture the eye of such a wealthy boy.

"Magic carpet wasn't able to make the trip into town with us. I thought he'd feel sad if he didn't get a souvenir... so I hope 50 boxes of carpet cleaner make it up to him!

"Magic carpet loves taking baths! I know cuz Jamil's let me take over scrubbing magic carpet down. His fabric gets all covered in bubbles and he gets all relaxed. It's like he's getting a good massage!"

Azul patiently listened—and internally, he boggled at the mental arithmetic. “A little of everything” plus a thank-you gift for every Scarabia student and last-minute carpet cleaner quickly added up to a monstrous sum. He had no doubt that Kalim had fumbled at the cash register, trying to pay for a simple transaction in several thousand thaumark bills.

That’s one part of Kalim-san that won’t be changing anytime soon: his generosity.

If the octopus was lucky, he, too, would be graced with a smidgen of it. But Azul did not think himself a betting man. Every ounce of energy dedicated to the day was to up those odds.

"I see now. I'm glad to hear that the trip went off without any hitches!" Azul gushed. "You've learned so many new things this year--and I know you'll only continue to grow from here on out! I'm most honored to be your peer.

"You're broadening your horizons with each passing day. You're not the same Kalim-san from winter break. No--even back during the cultural festival, I sensed something different in you."

"Gahahah! You remember that." His garnet eyes softened with both fondness and sadness. "VDC was so much fun! It was also the first time I realized... all my life, I've been given everything I've ever wanted. I never really earned it, did I? I got it just for existing."

From the moment he had been born, there had been a silver spoon in his mouth, and he was golden. The future bright, a guarantee for him. Never questioned, never challenged.

His heart quivered.

"I got used to it, and I expected it. I never thought about what would happen if things changed. Then Jamil was picked as a lead vocalist--and I was so happy for him, but also so frustrated with myself. I knew... I couldn't stand at the same level as him. We didn't shine the same.

"Things can never be like they were ever again. Not until I earn that spot for myself! Not until I can stand on my own two feet at shopping and washing carpets and singing! That's my goal: to make my future golden myself."

"Kalim-san..." Azul pursed his lips. A second later, he let his words go. "Are you aware of how diamonds are formed?"

"Hmm? No, why do you ask?"

"Simply put, diamonds are the result of common carbon deposits being exposed to considerable heat and pressure. It takes billions and billions of years to form a single gem... and even then, a diamond is not always perfect. They can be too small, too rough, any number of things which may make it undesirable to consumers--but a diamond is only a diamond because of all the time and energy spent to form it."

Azul smiled, lowering into a bow. "Kalim-san, you are still in the process of becoming a diamond yourself. When that day should finally arrive, you will be a splendid one."

“Azul!!”

His hat and glasses were almost knocked off from the impact of Kalim colliding with him. Arms wrapped around the merman and squeezed, the embrace like a single drop of sun unfurling into a great spotlight.

“Thanks for believing in me!" Kalim cried through watery eyes. "I promise… I promise I’ll make you guys proud!!”

Azul chuckled. "I'll prepare my standing ovation when the time comes. Any plans to enter VDC as well next year?"

"Maybe when my singing's up to snuff! I've gotta cram in lots of practice until then!"

"Ah, yes. Best of luck then--but do let me know if you are ever in need of any musical accompaniment! I play piano quite well if I do say so myself, and I would be more than happy to lend a helping hand to your efforts."

"Gee, thanks, Azul!! You're so kind! I don't know why Jamil tells me to watch out for you. We should totally jam out sometime."

"Fufufu, why indeed..." Azul glanced up, shading his eyes against the sun, and smirked. "Speaking of Jamil-san, we wouldn't want to keep him waiting. I'm sure he has prepared a grand feast in honor of your special day."

"Oh crap, you're right! I gotta get going!!" Kalim scrambled for his broom, handling it like a hot potato. When he had, at last, clumsily mounted it, he cast a look at his classmate. "See you at the party, Azul?"

"I will be there to support you."

"Cool, see you there!"

With only one hand clutching onto the handle, Kalim took off on his broom. Gold and blue sparkles trailed behind him, white petals spiraling in the vortex of magic.

Even he rose higher and higher, Kalim didn't hesitate to look down. Filled with adrenaline--that oh-so-familiar rush, an indescribable feeling--he excitedly waved farewell to his friend.

He was off to see unbelievable sights, to visit dazzling places he never knew, to learn more of them.

#twst #twisted wonderland #Azul Ashengrotto #Kalim Al-Asim #twst imagines #twisted wonderland imagines #twst scenarios #twisted wonderland scenarios #disney twisted wonderland #spoilers #something no one asked for #Kalim birthday takeover

[cleolinda]

The funk effect

I’ll pull this out as a separate anecdote rather than cram it into a perfume review:

I was working at a video store, back in the days when we had such things, circa the two-tape Titanic release (1998ish) that took twice as long to manually rewind and rebox, and God help us all, it was Movie Gallery where the hits are here now guaranteed this is Cleo how can I help you, no we’re out of Titanic, no I know I just said, but, and on one particular Saturday afternoon, I was WEARY and I was PISSED.

My manager mentioned that Blah Blahblah, somebody, idk, was going to swing by to pick up his final paycheck. The video store was my weekend job, and he only worked weeknights, so I’d never actually met him before. I never even saw the guy’s face, I don’t think. Suddenly he was around on my side of the back counter; his check was under the computer I needed to scan in another godforsaken pile of double-decker fucking Titanics, and he was in my way.

He got the check, shut the drawer, and breezed past me without so much as a courtesy “hey.”

He had not showered in 10,000 years. Just the deepest, darkest bodily funk you can imagine. For a tenth of a second, I was pissed off that this jackass who smelled like death was in my way as the stench itself hit me in the thoughts. But it also hit me somewhere in the front of my nose, like the "floor" of my nose, if that makes sense—the odor fizzed and tingled there, musky and sharp, and—there is no polite way to say this. I was the most repressed little goody-two-shoes in all of Elbow, Alabama; I got one whiff of this walking armpit incarnate and, Reader, I was DTF.

Starry-eyed, I turned as he circled around me towards the exit, my mouth helplessly trying to form a

♡ Hey ♡

that didn't surface in time. And that was the guy's final paycheck, so he had no reason to come back, either.

I don't even remember what he looked like, I never even saw his face, but I remember what the smell of him did to my nose. And the thing is, if he'd turned around and he'd been really rude or Not My Type or whatever, his carnal funk was not going to mesmerize me into ignoring that. It got my attention, and it gave me some rather confused Blanche Devereaux flutters on a bad day when I needed a little excitement ("Who was that masked stank man??"). I don't know if "human sex pheromones" are a real thing, but when people talk about "pheromone perfume," what happened to me is the physiological effect they're shooting for: a reaction that may be completely independent of what the fragrance even smells like, because it's not like I thought he smelled good. Again, though—I would have been free to shake it off and go, "Never mind, that was weird." Astonishing, but not coercive.

(I don't know how this is or isn't complicated by personal sexuality—I'm bisexual and allosexual. If I'd been zero percent into men and/or ace, I don't know how I would have interpreted my reaction.)

What I'm getting around to is: when you read about a fragrance trying to conjure "sweat" or "body musk," or using civet, oud, or jasmine with indolic "fecal" tones, or Santal Blush using cumin, as I'm in the middle of drafting—this is why. There are some things that grab you on a different level, tingly beneath the surface.

Perfume discussion masterpost

#perfume discussion #gifs #note: musk #me for some reason #story time with cleo #long post

[vpalmersfootballgloves]

yellowjackets 205 thoughts

unlike javi, i dont know how to keep my thoughts to myself. spoilers below

first and foremost, HAPPY LESBIAN INDEPENDENCE DAY.

THE GAY ASS VHS STORE, THE DOUGHNUT SPRINKLES ALL OVER THE COUNTER, THE SKATEBOARD, THE IGNORED DUES, VAN BEING OFFICIAL GAY MENTOR OF OHIO. adult van cold open, i used to pray for you.

HAPPY WIFE HAPPY LIFE. taivan lives for another day!!!!! when they interlocked their fingers together, i whooped so loud my building collapsed

tai forever down bad and fucking whipped for van? just like me fr

the boob pen backstory?? TAIVAN SHENANIGANS AT SHAUNA'S WEDDING??? IM SERIOUSLY CONSIDERING FINANCIALLY BACKING AO3 USERS TO WRITE THIS PLOT RN....

tai being concerned over van's health..... tai admitting she's afraid she'll hurt van... van visibly hurting from tai admitting she loves her and moving past the hurt to be unbiasedly present for someone she cares so deeply for

tai in van's clothes !!!! tai sleeping on van's couch!!!! tai watching tv with van!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

"maybe you don't have to be dying to have regrets" on god taissa, you have a dead dog, a sleeping problem, a wife in the icu and a child probably in child protection services. like i understand you its van but on god bestie you need help.

van cute as HELL for arguing with POP CULTURE REFERENCES.

fugue tai kissing van and van not backing off - she's down horrendous too i fear

side note jasmin looked so fucking good in this episode. god. like GOD.

and now the rest of the episode

never gonna get the mari hate, she's on a mission to be a Bitch to Everyone and it's funny as fuck TO ME!!!

akilah's determination to live and all the ways she's trying to preserve her humanity (caring for a mouse, studying for the SATs) is going to make her death hurt so much.

randy goofy as hell trying to pass off hand lotion as semen. shauna goofier than him for not checking. MUST MISTY BE THE ONLY INSANE OVERTHINKER AROUND TO COVER UP EVERYONES CRIMES IN NEW JERSEY????

pedo cop broke the weirdo-meter when he breached every law of the land and law of decency when he entered without a warrant and sniffed someone's potentially used condom

once again, i hope the milf avengers (or at least shauna) kill pedo cop. like hands shaking, skin peeling and everything.

jeff showing clear displeasure over the inappropriateness of his teen daughter being manipulated by a Grown Adult in a Position of Power rather than the risk of shauna being caught.... dad of the Fucking Year. this is a jeff sadecki defense household.

also shauna only asking callie about the cop's age after jeff's display of concern is actually very concerning...

callie being so happy she pleased shauna... can everyone with mommy issues please stand up?

fuck travis. nobody treats nat like that

javi only speaking to coach ben because he didnt participate in the jackie fruit festival... the gay ally i didnt expect

personally, i believe that fugue tai is a prominent candidate for antler queen and unless jackie can summon both snowstorms and physical form, fugue tai is javi's friend.

RIP KRISTEN YOU WOULD'VE LOVED HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL. IM SO SORRY YOU DIED IN A CESSPOOL OF EVERYONE'S SHIT.

the lottiemistynat love triangle continues. natalie fucking ace for bagging two women who would do anything for her.

#i have Long Thoughts on the oxycodone - which i need time to process and figure out better words for. #yellowjackets spoilers #rambles #yellowjackets #yj #yellowjackets meta

[blueywrites]

turtle dove and the crow chapter three

will be released on Friday, April 14th at 7pm EST.

Get ready for the holy trifecta in this chapter: fluff, smut, and angst. Not necessarily in that order. 😉

Wanna take a gander at what our two love birds're up to? Aw, who'm I kiddin' - 'course you do. 😘 Check it out below!

Deep in the field, two roosts sit side by side. One is built of sturdy, weathered wood painted the color of bright red berries, with deep-set windows and a dark sloping roof that protects it from the elements. The other is made of wide symmetrical clapboards painted blue like the sky on a cloudless day, with knotted-oak shutters slightly worn from the sun and wind and bright white trim that shines in the eager summer light. These roosts are separated only by a tall fence and a stump rotted through to the other side, through which the grasses of their yards mingle to become one. 

These roosts house different birds. One is a trio of turtle doves, a mated pair with a young hen still soft and brown-gray, though her iridescence is maturing now, subduing into adulthood. The other is a pair of long-bonded crows, though the younger spent its fledgling years in the care of another, who pecked and prodded and stole his sustenance until the young one fluttered finally away, seeking to shelter under the safe wing of his older kin. 

They may bear different feathers— one downy gray, one glossy black— but if one were to peep through the windows, one would see these young birds and note how similar they appear right now as they preen. Both turtle dove and crow are drawing their beaks along each feather to clear away the dust, fluttering out their wings in great stretches, and hopping about the expanse of their rooms, caught in restless preparation as the grandfather clock ticks its hand toward seven. 

The turtle dove adorns herself for the crow. She dresses in her Independence Day best, twisting to watch the ankle-length skirt swirl around her legs in swaths of dainty yellow gingham. She dances her fingertips along the hand-sewn embroidery that decorates the square neckline, feeling along the tiny white flowers and vines for the perfect spot. There, she pins two sprigs— one lavender, one jasmine— to nestle amongst the white threads she’d sewn with careful fingers, her first attempt at embellishing her clothing, ventured to celebrate the holiday in mid-July. With a careful hand, she ties a bow of white silk tied to the side of her head. Now smelling of flowers and gilded in homespun sunshine, she has finished her preparations.

The crow, meanwhile, focuses less on his adornments. He doesn’t possess his own Independence Day best; instead, he dresses in a collared, button-up shirt oft worn, paired with navy blue woolen slacks and a leather belt with a simple buckle. But he made sure to scrub his skin with soap 'til it shone pink over every inch of him— between his toes, behind his ears, on the backs of his knees and the nape of his neck. He has brushed out his hair and tamed the flyaways with pomade, twining the curls around his rough fingers to let them drop into careful coils, working with a delicacy that he feels near-embarrassed about despite not having been observed. Carefully, he picks the dirt from beneath his fingernails and trims them short and neat, though he’d been waylaid momentarily by regretful ruminations on the roughness of his palms. He swipes his thumbs impatiently along the callouses that cannot be softened with warm bathwater as if he might rub them away before giving up and brushing his teeth for the second time instead.

With one last ruffle of feathers and a careful appraisal in the mirror, crow and turtle dove descend their staircases in tandem at five to seven, filled with the flutterings of nervous, jittery excitement that precede such an occasion as this.

#blueynews #td&tc #eddie munson x y/n #eddie munson x you #eddie munson fanfic #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson #eddie munson fic #eddie munson x fem!reader #eddie munson fluff #eddie munson smut #eddie munson angst

[vyntilador]

Your eyes tell

What kind of flowers do the boys represent?

—————————————————————

Genre: idrk can be fluff or angst

Headcanons btw

A/N: I saw a tiktok that showed a bunch of flowers n their meanings so I went with it lol

Artem Wing —Lavender Rose

Now first of all, Lavender Roses mean love at first sight which is pretty self explanatory tbh. The moment he laid his eyes on you when you walked into the lawfirm for the first time, something in him...bloomed (heh)

Suddenly, he notices how your hair shone from underneath the hues of the sun. He notices how you often smiled brightly whilst looking at animal videos during your break, he notices how your forehead creased as you desperately concentrated on a certain case.

Whenever you were within sight, everything around you just slowly fades into white, highlighting how you looked even more.

During a very difficult case, it bothers him how often you sighed as the echoes of your keyboard filled his ears so the very next day, you walk to your desk only to find a variety of Roses with Chocolates attached to them. As you lift the Roses, you see a note fall out with "Don't overwork yourself. Take breaks every now and then. I'll be rooting for you." written within it.

Vyn Richter —Snapdragons

Snapdragons are known to mean both deception and graciousness. And honestly, I think it fits him very well like, hes a red flag but a hot one at that EHEM but his deceptions usually have a reason behind them.

More importantly if he's in love with you, he'll probably try to protect you with deception like, we all know how the royal family customs(?) in Svart are like (talking about CN server card of VynRosa visiting Svart and having to sleep in different rooms) He'll try to keep you away from his family in fear of hurting you in some way, or just overall preventing your relationship turn into one like his parents'.

Yellow Jasmines are also an option me thinksss

At this point I'm just focusing on his graceful and formal etiquette as a member of the royal family but honestly, it's his grace that makes me fall for himmmm

But if he could describe you or his feelings for you as a flower, he'd pick Cosmos. It's meaning is Order, Harmony, Beauty, Self-reliance, Resilience, Kindness and infinity.

Order and Harmony describes how you always put his mind at ease or make him drop his shoulders and relax whenever you're within the vicinity. Beauty, Self-reliance and Resilience because he likes how independent you are and how you always push to do the right thing even if it might bring misfortune to you. Kindness is pretty self explanatory whilst Infinity represents how his love for you will remain everlasting.

(go give him a peach and/or light pink rose and watch him short-circuit right in front of you lol)

Seeing how much of a flower boy he is, he's probably the type to confess to you, or ask for your hand in marriage using flowers and we👏love👏him👏for👏that👏

Luke Pearce —Forget-me-not

Honestly, does anyone even think that there'd be pure Luke fluff here LMAOO SORRY

Forget-me-nots aren't like full on sad tho,,it also symbolizes true love and respect which fits him perfectly

He's loved you since you were children and always looked up to you. He loved how you always stood up to him against the kids who'd tease him for uhhh his family reasons and he loves u sm for that ! !

Omg I'm so sorry but I thought of this rlly angsty thing while writing this but Imagine Luke... Expiring close to death and while he laid unmoving on his hospital bed, you gave him a soft peck on the lips with those fairytale books in mind. About how a true loves kiss would always wake up your beautiful prince(ooh rhymes n shi).

Or for a more softer approach, Imagine getting awakened by Luke giving you a kiss on the lips and the moment you open your eyes, you see your beloved Luke's smile as he greets you good morning</3

Go give him blue and/or purple hyacinths too. Don't ask questions, it's better to not know<3

Marius von Hagen —Daisy

For starters, it means Innocence, Loyal love, and 'I'll never tell'. The last part can be interpreted in two ways; that he'll never tell his feelings towards you or that he'll always keep your secrets.

For the first one, we saw how he hesitated momentarily if he was going to confess to us in the 1st anniversary cards. He keeps in mind his uncle's warnings of how brutal the media can be. Marius always wanted to protect you so if his presence in your life brings you harm, he'd rather stray far away from you than bring a threat to your life.

For the second one, despite his annoying attitude, he's always someone that you can lean on. Someone that you can trust or tell your deepest secrets to. He appreciates how much trust you put in him which in turn would make him even more determined to be someone you trust so much that you'll give yourself over to him and vice versa.

A/N: Ik that the other 3 look so short and I SWEAR THAT ITS NOT VYN FAVORITISM, but i was rlly sleepy ok😭😭😭

#tears of themis #tears of themis vyn #tears of themis luke #tears of themis artem #tears of themis marius #artem wing #artem x mc #artem x you #luke pearce #luke pearce x mc #luke pearce x reader #marius von hagen #marius x mc #marius x reader #vyn richter #vyn x reader #vyn richter x reader #tot marius