#lest your aching bones give way to all the pressure | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

senju-sekhmet · 3 years

Text

'Hot’ is just a matter of definition

Summary: It felt like any other morning - you surely felt like every other morning - except for a certain kind of warmth. Perhaps some soreness that made your muscles ache? Of course you wouldn't slow down simply for feeling a bit hot - Tobirama strongly disagrees. 5600 words I really wanted to do a funny comfort piece, so this is a little self-indulgent! It sat on my shelf for a while before I was happy with it, smh. Thanks for all the help, @avversiera-writes 🥺 Warnings! Illness, fever talks, and slightly suggestive undertones (SFW though!) Read on AO3!

The first sign should’ve been this awful chill that ran through your bones the moment you opened your eyes. It was an early rise, like usual, but something was different. Blinking slowly, your lazy gaze found the window and the brilliant, red sunrise that was hinted at by how the crimson hues were hitting the buildings you could peek at.

And unsurprisingly, the man whose arms were wrapped around you, legs intertwined with yours gave a rather disgruntled huff as he registered your movement. Tobirama would fiercely deny being clingy (That’s ridiculous!) but despite the two of you usually falling asleep on each side of the bed (that is, if you went there at the same time or haven’t been down to friskier activities before), he’d always find his way around your body during the night somehow to completely enclose it with his. No, he wasn’t just a bit clingy, he was a real cuddler. One time you dared to make a small tease about such being the case, but you were only met with fierce denial, a bright red face and incoherent mumbling (Childish… I do not cuddle…). It was adorable, really.

Honestly though, you wouldn’t deny loving it, either. To know that in the privacy of your bedroom, one might argue the most private room of a house, he’d become this relaxed was endearing - charming, even - especially considering in public, he was vastly different about physical affection.

Except when you wanted to really rise up; then the complaints started. Unless Tobirama got up before you did, his limbs would tangle yours more and he’d make miffed grunts. All within the time limit the two of you had for the morning, of course.

This morning, though?

You shifted a little bit from your position to lay more on your back, to which Tobirama gave yet another unamused sound. Your muscles ached slightly. Maybe you needed to stretch a bit today.

“Nnnghn…”, he mumbled, and the arm that was wrapped around your chest to hold your shoulder tightly snuck a little higher to caress your neck.

“Tobi…”, you sweetly began, a whisper.

“Hm,” came the answer, but this time a lot more conscious - and ponderous. One scarlet eye blinked open and Tobirama’s forehead was worried by fine wrinkles. “Hmmm,” he hummed again, the hand on your neck trailing up even higher, to your cheek.

You chuckled a little bit at the comical embrace he was giving you. “What’s up?”

His other eye opened and out of nowhere - “You’re hot.”

You blinked. “Why, I wasn’t expecting such unabashed, eloquent flattery in the early morning.”

He rolled his eyes and sighed exasperatedly. “Your body temperature is above average. Quite a lot, in fact.” You let your eyebrows tilt up in a rather hurt pout. “That is the least sexy way I’ve ever heard someone say ‘You’re hot’.”

Tobirama gave a low growl then suddenly and you only felt the bed shift - then he was above you, steading himself with an arm on each side of your chest, legs still tangled. If it wasn’t for the deep frown etched into his mien, you’d find this, in fact, hot . “That is because I am in no way referring to your looks, Y/n!” Although momentarily - momentarily - his gaze flickered down your body, covered in nothing but a light nightgown.

You raised an eyebrow expectantly.

His scarlet stare was right back at you, burning in intensity - and yet there was a glint of something in them. “I am, of course, not saying you could not be considered metaphorically ‘hot’,” he began then, his baritone voice low and sultry, clinging to something. Something that was wiped away in the blink of an eye when it became stern only. “But right now you are also hot literally.”

You wanted to roll your eyes at him and tell him that has got to be the second worst way of being told you’re hot, but before you could get a word out, the man had plastered his hand on your forehead and you felt his chakra connecting to your network; smoothing over it gently in an inward caress you reciprocate swiftly, tenderly. You’d never grow tired of this. Of course, it lasted only a moment - he intensified the connection to gain a closer look at your body, his presence inside of you growing stronger as he took to examine you briefly in order to ascertain the origin of the ‘hotness’ you chose to flippantly call it.

Except you were not having any of it. “Tobirama, I’m fine, honestly.” Your hand moved to grasp the wrist of his arm to gently remove it from your forehead.

His presence inside you instantly flickered - bristled. “Y/n,” came the prompt, stern answer and you could swear the pressure on your forehead, hips and legs increased slightly.

This was getting ridiculous. “This is absurd. I feel good, so what if I’m extra hot? Might be getting a cold, there is no need to fuss.”

His eyes flew open again to spare you a furious glare. “For a common cold it’d be very unusual to be burning up as you are,” he began firmly and you had to forcibly bite back on commentary or another eye roll lest his lecture would grow. “Now if you’ll keep your smart mouth closed for a few more moments, I could finish this.”

You jutted your lower jaw forward. “You love my smart mouth.”

His eyebrows rose slowly and for a few seconds, he seemed entirely impassive. Suddenly, you felt his chakra inside of you jolt, zigzagging through your network so abruptly you gasped. It wasn’t unpleasant so much as it was unexpected - and intense. Momentarily his presence within you was so strong, so potent, you felt you could nearly grasp his thoughts and emotions with your own chakra - and yet at the same time, he was so active, so seizing - it felt quite possessive.

“You’re-”, you huffed, ready to retaliate letting your chakra swell to retort.

“Quiet, let me work,” he grunted, closing his eyes again, focusing on the connection you two shared. The smirk in his voice had been unmistakeable, though, as was the slight tilt of the corner of his mouth.

Unfair. He was being unfair. However you weren’t swayed, either. “There’s no need for this. And you need to relax.” Again you felt the connection swell though, much more gentle as he continued the examination and you were given just a low, warning rumble to let him get it done. Only a moment later he gave another disgruntled hum, his scarlet gaze now mustering you now.

You crossed your arms in front of your chest. “Well? Happy now?” you snapped, perfectly miffed. On the one hand the concern was endearing, on the other hand...

His face was scrunched in deep ponder. “I’m unsure. I can’t pinpoint anything for sure, but perhaps there was something about your lungs-”

You felt yourself bristle. “I’m not staying here on some cryptic ‘perhaps’ from my very overprotective husband. May I, now?” Already, you wriggled beneath him to free yourself and get up. Your muscles really did ache a bit - you definitely needed a stretch.

Tobirama’s gaze narrowed again. “I don’t think you should be moving around today, Y/n.”

That did it. Darkly, you articulated every word perfectly clear: “Tobirama, I’m not joking. Move.”

Reluctantly - as you could tell by his stiff body - he shifted to the side to release you. His intense gaze never left you, though you couldn’t spare him more than another roll of your eyes at this point.“This might only be the tip of the iceberg," he warned, you could hear the frown in his baritone voice still.

However, you had already gotten up and were standing, staring down at Tobirama with equal sternness. “Or you need to rein it in again.” You shrugged as though that’d ease the soreness in your muscles - it didn’t - and then tilted your head a little. “I feel a bit cold, in fact, so how about that.”

His scarlet eyes widened slightly at that statement. Promptly he scrambled to get out of bed himself. “Y/n-”, he began, downright chastising - but you had already spun around and were heading for the bathroom of your house.

“Enough fussing, dear husband, we have a lot of work to do,” you reminded him in a playful tone. Talking of work was bound to get his focus elsewhere than your imaginary symptoms.

_______

Or so you thought.

Once you finished in the bathroom (admittedly, you did feel a little bit lightheaded) you headed to join him in the living area for a small breakfast (and maybe, just maybe also a bit shaky?). The heady smell of tea hung in the air; you couldn’t help but smile lightly. However the room felt quite cold - had he opened the windows? Tobirama already was sitting cross-legged at the low table, reading documents he had strewn over it last night. When you entered the room, his head snapped up and the scarlet gaze had you pinned, eyes narrowing again.

“Don’t,” you sternly cut him off before he could even say anything like ‘Get back into bed’, shaking your head before sitting down across from him, pouring yourself a cup of tea for yourself.

Tobirama rested his chin on his balled fist. The frown must be etched into his face at this point. “You look pale.” His baritone voice was deceptively smooth.

Your hand clenched around your cup of tea, eyebrows furrowing. “You know, I could say the same about you.”

A single white eyebrow arched up. “Unsurprising, as my complexion is rather pale.” The fine smirk tugged at the corners of his mouth again.

You crossed your arms defensively. A shiver ran down your spine. Since when was the room so cold? “I am very well capable of judging myself to see if I am fit for work. Which I am.”

The smirk faded and he dropped his hand to the table, straightening himself. You had to drag your hand over your face in order to keep yourself from rolling your eyes at him again. As you did so you couldn’t help but notice - your face did feel a bit warmer.

“Why are you being so stubborn about this, Y/n?”, Tobirama began, his deep voice stern again. You blinked to find his scarlet eyes staring at you intensely again, his facial features hard as ever. Maybe it was your imagination, but there might have been a tinge of worry to his tone. “I’m not imagining anything. If I had to take a guess, you’re actually not telling me everything.” He tilted his head. “Are you feeling dizzy?”

An exasperated groan escaped your mouth before you could help it, but this time you did roll your eyes. Your hand slapped down on the table. “For the last time, Tobirama - I’m fine. It’s just a little fever - did you open a window or something? It’s so cold in here, I’m shivering.” You ran your palms over your arms, feeling the chill creep into you.

You didn’t think this was possible, but the wrinkles of Tobirama’s frown became even deeper. “I did not, Y/n.”

You blinked in surprise. “Huh.” As much as you hated to admit it, Tobirama’s fever theory might hold more merit than you wanted to give him credit for. Worse yet, you had to tell him.

Tobirama’s intense stare was wrought with worry at this point, bereft of any of the smugness you might’ve been expecting from him. “Are you ready to believe me now?” he inquired drily, his voice carrying a caustic note.

You sighed and crossed your arms in front of your chest, leaning back slightly. Momentarily you dared to close your eyes - when you did, your eyelids felt weird against your eyes, the ache in your muscles seemed worse - you couldn’t help but sigh. “Maybe.”

Tobirama was rubbing his temples with his thumb and index finger when you were eyeing him again, the fingers of his other palm were drumming impatiently against the table. “A monumental progress, compared to earlier, I’d say,” he commented, still rather drily.

“I’ll just work on what paperwork I’ve left at home, then.”

His palm slammed so swiftly on the table you jolted in shock, concerned for the paper under his cup of tea. Luckily though, he had drunk enough of it already. However his gaze - the scarlet stare was burning from intensity again. He didn’t just look pissed - he was furious. “What is it going to take to make you rest? Lie in bed? Sleep?”

Your mouth hung slightly open at his sudden outburst. Of course, you had guessed he wasn’t pleased with your negligence of your symptoms, but this right now seemed rather over the top. “I can… read in bed?”

Tobirama continued to stare as though you had just suggested to strip naked and run through the village.

“It’s just reading, Tobi.”

“What’s so difficult about staying in bed and recovering?” he snapped, perfectly exasperated now. Suddenly he sucked in a sharp breath through his nose, ran a hand through his white, spiky hair and rose to his feet swiftly. “Alright. Let’s get you to bed first.” The tension in his tone was tangible and briefly, you contemplated just… humoring him. For a bit?

He rounded the table to offer you his hand in order to get up, which you gingerly took. With a courageous tug he helped you to your feet - and your vision blackened momentarily. You swayed forward; Tobirama already seized your waist with his free arm pulled you flush against his body to steady you. His deep voice was next to your ear when he spoke; your hand grasped his black shirt for support. “Y/n?”, he was done veiling the concern in his tone with fury.

You shook your head. “Just a brief dizziness.” Already, your vision cleared; though your heart still pounded in your ears. “I’m - I’m okay.”

Tobirama didn’t take time to comment that but rather started guiding you towards your shared bedroom. His frown was etched into his forehead again, his lips a tight line. All the time he’d glance over to you with his sharp glance, but the tension never left the taut muscle of his jaws. His arm remained tight around your waist for the whole way back to bed too; he wasn’t letting go at all. Not that you minded. You did feel a little bit wobbly, and even if it just was to humor him, you wouldn’t take any chances now. Once in the bedroom his grip turned utterly tender; carefully he helped you lie down and pulled the blanket up to your chin.

You gave a wistful sigh as your sore muscles finally got their rest again and the blanket was warming you. “Maybe… this isn’t such a bad idea, after all,” you mumbled, hopefully quiet enough Tobirama wouldn’t hear you.

He did, of course. With a dry chuckle he was already turning towards the window. “You’d be astonished how many good ideas I have, Y/n,” he quipped, closing the blends of the bedroom to render it a lot darker.

“How am I going to read like this?”, you promptly inquired, propping yourself up on your elbows again to rise in protest.

Tobirama cast a dark glare your way and instantly stalked over to your side again; sitting down on the bedside to push you back down onto the mattress with a certain kind of stern finality that still held a marvellous amount of gentleness to his touch. “You aren’t. Sleep now. I’ll leave you water and tea here and get you your documents later.”

With a sigh and yet another roll of your eyes you allowed him to pull the blanket up again once you were back on your back. “Are you, now.”

Tobirama rose to his feet again and simply regarded you with one quirked up eyebrow. “You are correct. We should wait and see how you are feeling later, actually.”

“You’re impossible. As if you’d be lying in bed just because of a little fever rather than work,” you bit back, perfectly miffed again.

Tobirama was unimpressed, though. “I’m being realistic. And unluckily for you, I’m not the one running a fever. Now, I have to drop off some documents for elder brother and check some other things at the office, then I’ll make sure to stick around,” he announced, but before you had any chance to tell him how truly, utterly, lucky you felt to have him hound your recovery, he was out of the door - which he closed, of course.

He had all but ignored your notion that he, in fact, would never stay in bed.

Well, maybe some sleep really would help you.

________

Tobirama’s steps were spurred on by the same urgency that he had coaxed you into bed with earlier in the morning. He despised that out of all the days at the Hokage’s office, today seemed to be tedious and slow going. Naturally, everyone around him was subject to his mood, but right now his patience was thinner than usual. As a result, everyone kept out of his way - which was good, because then he’d work quicker - but also bad, because some of these things he couldn’t finish alone. Did he feel bad for snapping at someone for a simple slip up in the inbox? Absolutely not. Order was vital. Or shouting that some instructions for the training regimens at the academy still had not been finished? Please, these things had been due for one day already.

If everyone just worked a tad faster -

It was futile.

He had to blame himself in part, really - he had been foolish enough to think he’d be done here swiftly and therefore had not left a shadow clone with you. Better yet, sent a shadow clone here to deal with these menial tasks as he had dubbed them by now.

But that admission of guilt didn’t exactly do anything to improve his mood. Right now, he was standing in front of his elder brother’s broad desk while he was signing off permits for the growing commercial district of the village. Once that was done - Tobirama could finally use his hiraishin seal to get out of here.

That also most likely was the reason he was staring Hashirama down like a hawk, arms crossed in front of his chest, muscles tense. The scarlet glare was dark enough, bystanders might think he’d go for his brother’s throat any time.

Hashirama wasn’t fazed in the slightest, though. Tobirama’s moods have long since stopped to really impress him. Now, he didn’t make a point of being extra slow, but he made sure to keep track of all these things he was supposed to sign.

Even so - “You seem extra sour today, Tobirama.”

“Really? Whatever made you notice, elder brother?”, he answered drily, physically restraining himself from barking at his brother to just keep reading and not talk to him.

Hashirama raised an eyebrow. “Are you going to tell me, or will you keep spewing sarcasm?”

Tobirama rolled his eyes and gazed at the ceiling momentarily - was there any point in delaying proceedings to tell him? But then again, maybe his brother could help. His gaze swept back to Hashirama. “Y/n is sick. I want to get back home quickly.”

Hashirama sat down the paper he’d been holding and furrowed his eyebrows. “Sick? What’s wrong?”

“She’s running a fever. Now, the quicker we finish, the quicker I’ll be back to check on her.” Tobirama’s grip on his arms tightened. While his brother’s concern was charming - it was just delaying his return to you. He was late anyway. What if you were worse off now? Inadvertently his mien darkened a fair deal, and the glare he regarded Hashirama with was nothing short of lethal now.

Hashirama’s concern wasn’t subsiding, either. “Then go. I can finish this alone. If I have any questions, I’ll ask you later. Do you want me to come by in the evening?”

Tobirama blinked. The suggestion was convenient - too convenient for his liking, almost. His duty towards the village came first. Hashirama’s even more so. You, on the other hand…

He pinched the bridge of his nose, clenching his teeth. Why was nothing ever easy? He hated himself for it right now, he didn’t want to say this - no, he wanted to say, ‘Very well, yes, thank you’ - but no. “The village comes first.”

Hashirama sighed - and then smiled. “Very well. Then I order you to get back home.”

Tobirama’s eyes widened slightly. His brother couldn't seriously be ordering him to - but no, actually he could. He opened his mouth to protest - but with a wave of his hand he dismissed himself. He’d take this gift for what it was. “Thank you, elder brother. It would be good if you visited later.”

He simply nodded. “Give Y/n my well wishes.”

Already, the world lurched around Tobirama as he invoked his hiraishin seal in your shared living room. And in the blink of a second, he was standing in it - heading straight for the bedroom. Finally. He should have been here much sooner.

Before he entered, he could hear it - wheezing sounds. Quiet, but laboured breaths from the room you should be resting in. And by the sounds of it, you had been - a miracle. He frowned. Or, a very bad sign. Your adherence to medical orders was almost as bad as Tobirama’s. He quickened his steps, his heartbeat uncomfortably fast now. “Curses,” he muttered under his breath - why, why had he not left a shadow clone with you?

With more force than intended he slid open the bedroom’s door. You still were in the bed, tucked in - and a fine sheen of sweat glistened on your skin. Your breaths were sounding rattled.

“Y/n,” Tobirama called, chastised almost, as though somehow it was your fault it had gotten this bad. The truth was he was shocked - utterly shocked - and worried. This wasn’t just a fever anymore; he didn’t need to examine you to know his hunch had been correct this morning: Pneumonia.

“Tobi…?”, came your slurred reply, the sheets rustled as you were sitting up.

Instantly he crossed the room to sit down at your side on the bed, his forehead drawn into a deep frown. You were glancing at him through glazed eyes, blinking a few times just before a coughing fit wrecked your entire body.

“M’sorry… Tobi…,” you whimpered after you were suitably recovered.

He had to blink at that. Were you apologizing? “What?” Tobirama’s hands grasped around your upper arms, he shook his head. “Lie down again, alright?” Your skin was scorching now. You whined uneasily again, tilting your head a little. “Y’sounded so mad right now… you were so mad this morning, too…”, you murmured, but you allowed Tobirama to coax you into lying down again, pulling the blanket over you. If the paleness was anything to go by, your blood pressure was low.

This wasn’t looking good.

“I’m - I’m not mad, love,” he churned out as his hand moved to your forehead to assess your condition again. What nonsense-

But before he could place it there, you had seized it with both palms and pressed it to your chest, your eyes comically wide now. “You’re… not mad? But… you were right… I think… I am a little sick, Tobi. Maybe?”

Tobirama couldn’t have prevented the coarse grunt he gave even if he had wanted to. “Not just a little, Y/n.” Gently, he tried to move his hand out of your grasp, but it only served to tighten it around it.

Your gaze was trained on him, and for a moment, you did nothing but stare. Tobirama’s frown deeped - then suddenly, you shook your head so slowly, he wondered if you even registered the movement. “Nah… You’re right… but I’m not that sick. You can be so… smug when you’re right…”, you mumbled - no, you … giggled?

Tobirama’s gaze widened slightly as you spoke. Had you taken any medicine that didn’t agree with you? Was the focus of your infection perhaps not the lung, but the brain? “... Y/n? May I examine you?”

Your lower lip quivered. “Tobi,” you wantonly moaned now. “I don’t… want you to be mad ‘cause I didn’t… believe you, though,” you gave a sigh - at least that’s what Tobirama thought you wanted to do - but it ended in more coughs.

With a cocked eyebrow he continued to observe the theater that unfolded before him, your grip on his hand was steely. At least your strength seemed to be faring well. The same couldn’t be said for your mind.

“You get so… snappy when you’re pissed,” you continued suddenly, your gaze sweeping down to the hand you clutched like a stuffed animal. Your thumbs started caressing it and your lips formed a small pout. “That’s kinda… exhausting… but also funny sometimes, you know? … your sarcasm, mhm…,” you continued, trailing off into more incoherent mumbling.

Tobirama restrained himself from rolling his eyes at your nonsense and simply opted for using his other hand if you weren’t going to relinquish the one you were cuddling now. Softly, he placed it on your cheek and closed his eyes. Already, his chakra began to graze over your network -

Except then you nuzzled into his touch, throwing off his focus. His eyes flew open. “Y/n,” he reprimanded sternly, “Let me focus for a moment here, alright?”

You hummed contently, though. “You’re always so… focused, Tobi… Super focused...”

Tobirama really fought to say his next words in the nicest way possible - “Y/n, you aren’t just hot right now, you are burning up, please let me-”

You giggled then suddenly, your face turning so the tip of your nose would brush over his palm. “You said it again.”

Tobirama huffed exasperatedly. “What?”

“I’m hot. You said I’m hot.” More giggles followed - which were interrupted by another coughing fit of yours. Surprisingly, you had the decorum to turn your face to the side Tobirama’s hand wasn’t facing.

However, Tobirama’s patience was running seriously thin - and the last thing he wanted to do was snapping at you of all people. Not to mention in your current state, you probably would not take it well. He didn’t think he could stomach you crying on top of all this.

But then you were nuzzling into his hand again as your hands kept coddling his other to your chest and Tobirama seriously wondered if there was no way to just… gently knock you off whatever trip you were on.

“Y/n,” he began sternly, “You’re seriously ill. I need to examine you now, alright? Will you please let me do that? And stop doing… that?”, he tried to keep his voice even, calm - pleading - but what came out was annoyed.

Your eyes widened instantly. “T-Tobi,” you stuttered, “I’m… s-sorry… you don’t think I’m hot…?”, you asked, as if that was the most important thing in the world right now.

With those doe eyes you were giving him, Tobirama was sure you were convinced it was.

He gritted his teeth.

His dignity didn't want to do this. His logic considered this a stellar idea, though.

“My love, you are the single, hottest being in the world. Nothing, not even a volcano, compares to your hotness. I see you, I feel you, and every time I’m in awe because of said hotness. I’d never, ever question just how hot you are,” he retorted instantly, with ground teeth, comically tilted up eyebrows and sheer desperation made him fall in line with your utter nonsense if this was what it took to make this work, somehow.

It did the trick. Your eyes lit up as though he’d just recited a love poem he’d carefully written, no, crafted just for you - in fact, he was surprised you weren’t reaching up to try and kiss him or something like that. Tobirama on the other hand was proud he hadn’t choked on the sheer idiocy he had just uttered.

“Tobirama,” you sobbed happily, grinning broadly. “I knew you do think so…”, you continued, nodding fiercely, “You sometimes give me these… stares… and when we-”

Tobirama’s eyes flew wide open. “Y/n?”

You stopped mid-sentence, your mouth open, eyes wide. “Yes?”

“Can my very hot wife keep still for a moment?”, he inquired, mustering all the pitiful shreds of his patience - and pride - that were left to make his baritone voice sugar-sweet.

Luckily, it worked. You smiled broadly and nodded before stilling completely.

Finally. His hand rested on your cheek more firmly now and once more he closed his eyes. Usually he’d let his chakra caress yours first, but right now he was convinced that’d just do all kinds of funny things to you, and before this could get any more embarrassing, he increasing the connection right away to begin examining you. His chakra pelted your network as the workings of your body were revealed to his inner eye: what had been subtle, and easy to miss this morning was a roaring fire now. Undoubtedly the source of your ‘hotness’ - your left lung’s upper lobe was ridden with infection. The whole area was stuffed with mucus. Your heart beat with an elevated frequency, and your blood pressure had dropped.

Surprisingly your brain showed no abnormality at all. It must be the fever talking, literally.

Providing serious medical support in cases of infection went beyond his combat medicine skills. All he could do was support your lung a little by clearing the alveoles a bit - letting his chakra chop away at the stuffed airways that were supposed to be free. Tedious, straining work that wouldn’t help permanently unless the root of the problem was tackled effectively, but it should make breathing easier and lower the burden of infection.

You on the other hand were making satisfied hums that barely reached his ears as he was sunken in his concentration, entirely wrapped up in the microscopic surgery he was performing, basically.

When he was finished - rather, when the labyrinth of your lungs’ smallest airways was beginning to drive him insane for how his chakra always seeped into yet another corner that was ridden with disease - he retreated.

By the time he opened his eyes, you were sleeping soundly - a fact he was thankful for. He needed to organise some antibiotic medicine for you, and somehow he had a distinct notion you wouldn’t take well to him leaving.

________

Luckily, medicine was easily available as was his brother’s aid - Hashirama came swiftly when a shadow clone of Tobirama’s informed him of your state. With his brother’s medical jutsu and the medicine, your recovery was fast. Around evening, your fever had gone down substantially.

By the next morning, the fever’s haze had cleared. Tobirama was sitting on the edge of the bed with a scroll in his lap as you were blinking slowly at him, wiping sleep out of your eyes. You felt uncomfortably warm - too warm. With a sweep of your arm, the pushed the blanket aside.

Tobirama looked up and his scarlet eyes mustered you intently. He raised an eyebrow, but the smirk that was plastered on his lips was reaching his glance. “How’s your hotness feeling?”

You rolled your eyes and groaned. “Too hot.”

The smirk became a sly grin as he bit back on laughter. You could tell by the way the corners of his mouth wrinkled. Already, he began to sit up, setting his scroll aside. “To think such a thing was possible - I’m in awe,” he supplied ironically, heading for the door.

Your eyebrows shot up. Time to strike back - it was one thing to quip about your silly remarks during your high fever, but he'd get his share, too. "And to think I made the very eloquent Tobirama Senju say things like not even a volcano compares to my hotness." The smirk on your lips grew as you watched the blood rush to your husbands cheeks.

It did the job. Instantly, his jaw was taut. "Y/n you are well aware I only said so because-"

"Everyday you are in awe because of my hotness. How lewd, Tobi," you continued, licking your lips.

He balled his fists, his expression darkened. "You were seriously ill and all you were concerned with was cuddling my hand and being complimented on your looks." Slowly, his arms crossed in front of his chest, his own smirk returning to his lips as he raised one eyebrow. "What does that say about your priorities?"

You turn up your palms and grinned boldly. "I'd say my priorities are damn fine. Just like my looks, as you testified," you winked and raised your hand to blow over a kiss at Tobirama.

Who caught it, entirely unfazed. The fine eyebrow arched even higher. "I'm glad at least one of us is thinking of the important things then," his tone was perfectly sarcastic now. He turned to leave again. "I'll still see what I can do to tame that incredible amount of hotness."

You whistled to call him back quickly. "Can't you come and lie here, use your calm and cool body for that?"

His head tilted to give you a glance from the side again, an eyebrow rising slowly. "You'd like that, wouldn't you?"

You flashed a grin. "I'd love it."

For a moment, Tobirama was silent. A fine, sly grin spread over his lips as he dipped his head towards you - his baritone voice soft. "Well, too bad for you. A couple of wet towels will do a lot better to lower your temperature than my body, which, by the way, is just a few degrees less, ah, hot than yours." With a wink of his own he was out of the bedroom’s door.

With a dissatisfied grunt, you slumped back into the bed.

Did he just call himself hot?

#tobirama #tobirama senju #tobirama x reader #tobirama senju x reader #sekhmet writes

128 notes · View notes

annaraebananawriter · 3 years

Text

1: Just a Bad Dream; Dying in LA

PLEASE READ NOTE BEFORE STORY:

Yellow everyone! I just wanted to warn you that I’m still kind of recovering from burning myself out, so don’t expect anything too awesome this week. I think Day 1 is actually the best that I’ve written for it, so far, so...It’s really just for me to stretch my muscles out again and get back into the flow.

With that said, this is Dy 1 of Dark Cream Week by @zu-is-here

Fandom: Undertale, but specifically UTMV

Characters: Shattered Dream (Who belongs to Galacii), Cross (Who belongs to Jakei) and mentioned Nightmare (who belongs to Joku)

Pairings: For now, implied Cream/Dark Cream

Warnings: I can’t remember, so let me know!

Word Count: 2096

~oOo~

The moment you arrived

They built you up

The sun was in your eyes

You couldn't believe it

~oOo~

They say that fate determines how you end up in life.

They say that destiny determines what you do in life.

These two things work in harmony with each other, one influencing the other around and around in a never-ending circle. Everyone was touched by them before they were born, the seed for skills necessary to succeed planted in them, waiting to be grown. No matter what happens, nothing pushes you away from what fate and destiny have determined for you.

It does not matter if your actions are good. If you give everything away and help everyone you come across. If you love your friends and family and strangers unconditionally. If you ignore yourself in favor of others.

It does not matter if your actions are bad. If you spit and sneer at everyone around you. If you yell and hit in anger and hate. If you hold your needs in front of everyone else and ignore those who should have just a little bit of attention too.

It simply does not matter.

Your fate and destiny have been determined already.

Why bother changing it?

~oOo~

Riches all around

You're walking

Stars are on the ground

You start to believe it

~oOo~

Cross was familiar with loss and guilt. When you kill your family and friends, try to delete other worlds, you tend to do so out of pain, driven only by a desperate hope that you can fix what you’ve done. But you can’t. Actions have consequences and the world will not let you go without them. He knows this well, almost too well.

Nothing stops the hurt, though. He’s tried. It was still there, stinging through every bandage and healing balm. If it shrunk, it only grew stronger. Other people tried to help as well, but their efforts were also in vain. Guilt comes from the loss that his actions have caused and that guilt causes this pain that will always be there, no matter how small and weak it eventually becomes.

This was his consequence. He’s learned to accept that now.

He’s learned to walk through the hurt and try and be better.

It was hard, yes. Stumbling and tripping over his feet, hesitant to make any decision lest it be the wrong one and reset his progress. There were many times where he thought that he’d stepped over the line and that they were going to quit on him, leaving him alone again. But they didn’t. They stayed, and the stumbling smoothed out to captiousness, the hesitance smoothed into nervousness. He would not be as confident as he once was, not for a while yet, but it was a start.

He was trying. That’s all that mattered.

And now he can stand on a hill, look into the blue sky and see the colours surrounding him and he can smile. A small, serene smile made of pure content, pride for himself. He can relax his shoulders and just breathe for a moment or two.

Everything was getting better.

Until he looks to his left and see yet another consequence to his newer actions, what his pained words snarled in a patient yet hurt smiling face.

Until Dream takes that step off the edge.

~oOo~

Every face along the boulevard

Is a dreamer just like you

~oOo~

“Don’t touch me! Just…just stop trying to help!”

“I lost my entire family, my home, and he gave me the hope that I could get it back. Why should I believe that you’re not just giving me the exact same false hope?”

“Some guardian you are…”

“You don’t know anything about what I’ve been through!”

But Dream did, Cross realized it now.

Dream had lost his family, his home, too, in the blink of an eye. Not only that, but he was put in a position to fight his brother, whom had changed so much he might as well’ve been a stranger, over and over again. The pressure to do that and still be happy, or at least act like it, must’ve been immense. Cross couldn’t begin to imagine it.

They had both lost their family and been hurt in very similar ways.

Cross just wished he realized this sooner.

~oOo~

You looked at death in a tarot card

And you saw what you had to do

~oOo~

Cross didn’t try to stop Nightmare as he ran away.

He was focused on the skeleton in pain in front of them. The one who was crying, black sludge spilling down and covering his bones, tinted gold as if in reminder of what it used to be. The one who reached a hand up, to try and stop his brother from leaving, but didn’t get far before dropping it to the ground, another pained noise escaping him.

Cross was frozen. He willed his legs to move, instinct in his mind saying to turn and run away too, away from danger, away from him. But he didn’t. He stayed put, legs not listening and just watched.

Underneath the instinct was a different kind of pain. It burned instead of stinging and left his soul aching in a way he had never felt before. He was suddenly all too aware of the ring he kept in his pocket, one the skeleton in front of him had turned down. It made a lump grow in his throat and he swallowed, clenching his hands.

Dream hunched over, arms wrapped around himself.

And all at once, Cross realized something.

If his words had had any part in leading up to this…

His legs finally moved and he rushed forward, reaching for Dream, for the one he held so close to his heart, wrapping his arms around him, even though he could not shield him from something within.

If his actions had this consequence, if his consequence had given up on himself, then he would have to be the one that stayed, that brought him back.

He’ll do it, or die in the process.

~oOo~

But nobody knows you now

When you're dying in LA

And nobody owes you now

When you're dying in LA

~oOo~

If fate and destiny have predetermined your story, then what does it matter how you act? If your good or bad, what does it matter? What does it matter if all your actions just bring you back to the path, no matter how far you try and stray from it?

What does anything matter?

~oOo~

When you're dying in LA

~oOo~

Good can be bad and bad can be good.

This is a fact.

But does it change anything?

What does it matter?

~oOo~

When you're dying in LA

~oOo~

“I’m tired.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Why can’t you see that I’m just like you?”

“Why do we have to be enemies?”

“I don’t understand.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry”

“Please…don’t leave me alone again…”

“I love you.”

~oOo~

The power, the power, the power

Oh the power, the power, the power

Of LA

~oOo~

Good is bad and bad is good.

What will change because of this?

~oOo~

Nights at the chateau

Trapped in your sunset bungalow

You couldn't escape it

~oOo~

Dream is familiar with emptiness and betrayal. He’s watched his home burn, his mother cut in half and his brother metaphorically die. All of these were caused by the villagers, people Dream once believed to be his friend, no matter how harsh they might’ve been at times. When you see everyone you care about die by the hands of someone you also care about, that is what causes the emptiness.

This emptiness did not mean he didn’t feel, no. He felt quite a lot actually. Happiness, grief, calmness, anger…love…he felt them all, some more so than others. They weren’t smothered or dulled in anyway by the emptiness. No, the emptiness was rather just a numbness he’s gained to certain situations. He can’t change it.

It was his consequence. He accepts this.

He hasn’t accepted fighting his brother nonstop until one of them is dead.

It was disorienting when he started, almost like he was trying to wake on quicksand and every step he took only dragged him further down. Everything was new. He had to learn fast how to shoot a bow, how to dodge, how to block, how to run. How to survive. All while his brother watched and laughed in amusement.

That was what hurt most of all. The amusement. Brothers were supposed to care for each other, help each other stay safe and heal from injuries. They weren’t supposed to laugh at you while you barely dodged the tentacle aiming for your soul. They aren’t supposed to be trying to kill you at all.

He hated it.

~oOo~

Yeah

~oOo~

Apples are dangerous. They’re enticing. You want to take a bite of it, regardless of the effects it’ll do to your body and soul, in what ways it’ll warp your mind. They beckon you and lure you in, until all you can think about is what it’ll taste like, that savoury bite.

Nightmare wasn’t able to resist this temptation.

And if the saying goes that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree…

Then it should only make sense Dream would follow in his footsteps.

~oOo~

Drink of paradise

They told you put your blood on ice

You're not gonna make it

~oOo~

Nightmare ran away from him.

The coward.

Dream doesn’t understand why. Brothers should support brothers when they decide to become better, to change how the world sees them, to try and prove they can’t be all good. They shouldn’t run, horror etched on their face as if this wasn’t supposed to happen, that he’d made such a terrible mistake.

“You can’t make mistakes, you’re positivity! You have to be perfect all the time.”

He runs his hands over each other, taking in the new coating of sludge while he waits for Cross, his lov—subordinate to wake up. It was just like Nightmare’s, the same consistency and everything, though his had a golden tint to it, rather than turquoise.

Of course.

Even corrupted, he was still positivity.

~oOo~

Every face along the boulevard

Is a dreamer just like you

~oOo~

He felt stronger. But weaker at the same time.

Was that a thing?

He felt like he could bend people to his will, make them listen just like he wants the entire multiverse to. He can’t stop thinking about people crying as he plays out illusion upon illusion in front of them, slowly dwindling their hope and love and any other positivity until it was completely shattered.

And yet, he can’t help but get the feeling that there’s a shakiness within him. Something is unbalanced, wobbling in his soul. It feels poisoned. He has no clue what it could be. He did everything the right way, he’s proven his worth, so everything should be fine now, right?

Everything was fine.

It had to be.

~oOo~

You looked at death in a tarot card

And you saw what you had to do

~oOo~

Cross groaned behind him, making Dream perk up. “…Night…mare?”

Were they really that similar now? Interesting. The thought that his brother and him can never stop being twins makes Dream giggle under his breath as he turns, smiling as Cross’s eyes widen.

“Not quite.”

~oOo~

But nobody knows you now

When you're dying in LA

And nobody owes you now

When you're dying in LA

~oOo~

Fate and destiny are predetermined things…but they are not a gift, no.

They are a curse.

Bad gets jealous of good and tries to prove he can be just the same as his counterpart, but only succeeds in cursing himself farther. Good is hurt by this and centuries go by.

Good gets desperate, nothing enough anymore, so he tries to prove tat he can be just the same as his counterpart, both succeeding and failing. He’s cursed himself, too.

Bad runs away, leaving good.

And now they’ve both strayed from their path.

~oOo~

When you're dying in LA

~oOo~

Good is bad and bad is good.

Or are they?

How can we tell? Who are we to say?

They will determine that for themselves, who is who.

~oOo~

When you're dying in LA

~oOo~

“…are you crying?”

“Don’t stop.”

“It feels amazing!”

~oOo~

The power, the power, the power

Oh, the power, the power, the power

~oOo~

Fate has bended and destiny is broken.

How will this change things?

~oOo~

Of LA

#my writing #my fanfiction #oneshot #utmv #dream sans #shattered dream sans #shattered dream #cross #implied cream/dark cream #dark cream #mentioned nightmare sans #dark cream week

53 notes · View notes

darkblueboxs · 3 years

Text

Bond, Break and Breath

Demon Jean/Kevin AU

Read here or on AO3 The Raven Prince, barely older than Jean is but with a confident set to his shoulders that speaks to something far older, looks him up and down with the unhurried confidence of someone who is used to schedules bending to his whims. His lips curl upwards, exposing his teeth, but Jean would not describe the expression as a smile. It’s too hungry by far.

“This one. I’ll take him,” says Riko Moriyama, and Jean’s fate is sealed.

There’s a strained sob from behind Jean that sounds like his mother as hands clamp down on him, pulling him from the line of offered children and towards the inner palace. He tries to wrench his head back for one last look at his mother and father, the sister who will be too young to really remember him, but the hands are all but choking him as his head is forced to bend lest his neck break under the pressure. He can see Riko’s boots as he strides ahead of them, expensive leather striking a rigid rhythm into the flagstones. There’s a matching pair which follows a measured beat behind, but it isn’t until they reach the inner sanctum that Jean can get a proper look at Riko’s adopted brother. He has the build of a fighter but none of the vitality; his eyes sit too deep in his face, darkly ringed as though sunlight is a mere memory to them. His eyes are hungry too, but it’s a curious kind of hunger, more like Jean is a book he wants to pour over, proof of a world beyond the palace walls. Jean doesn’t have time to study him further, not when he’s being dragged to the dais in the centre of the room by hands that clamp around his wrists like cuffs.

The sanctum is walled by ruby tiles that scatter the light from the oil lamps across its inhabitants in crimson pinpricks. Jean doesn’t bother to struggle as they lash him to the glistening block at its centre, but his captors grant him no lenience in return, their hands biting bruises into him as they tie him firmly enough that Jean’s fingertips begin to tingle from lack of circulation.

“Such a shame to ruin a pretty face.” The prince’s face eclipses his vision suddenly, the ruby light haloing his dark hair. “Don’t you think, Kevin?”

A non-committal sound comes from beyond Jean’s field of vision. The doors open and suddenly the chamber is filled with the molten burn of liquid metal. Jean twitches. Riko’s eyes track the movement with bright fascination.

“I’m sure you’ve heard a lot about the bonding,” Riko addresses him for the first time. Jean tries to nod, but the ties holding his head in place are too tight.

“Would you like to hear a secret?” Riko bends over him, lips at Jean’s ear. “It hurts even worse than they say.”

Any hope that Jean still held for his miserable future flickers and dies as he looks into Riko’s eyes and sees the delight dancing within. Riko keeps his eyes on Jean while the priest stands over him, mumbling in a language Jean doesn’t recognise. He keeps his eyes on Jean when they take out the knives and begin to carve matching sigils into his face and bared chest, and he keeps his eyes on Jean as the ruts in his skin are filled with molten gold that scorches him as it cools.

Then a golden chalice is held to his lips, and Jean doesn’t need to smell the hot stench to know what it holds. With merciless hands pinching his nose shut, Jean has no choice but to open his mouth and accept Riko’s blood as it fills his mouth and coats his insides black.

He’s pulled back from choking on blood and spit by the hand that presses suddenly into his chest. It isn’t the pressure so much as it is the response from his body, something in his ribcage rising to the point of contact. Riko’s hand is ice-cold against his feverish skin, the rings that adorn each finger biting into his chest.

“Jean Moreau. Do you give your body and soul that you may serve your Prince?”

Jean thinks of his family left in the courtyard, who will not be let free until the bonding is complete. “I do,” he says, his voice thickened beyond recognition.

“Riko Moriyama. Do you accept this soul to take as your own?”

“I do.”

The shifting thing in Jean’s ribcage rises like smoke, and oh¸ he had been naïve to believe he knew what pain was before this moment. His soul ripples and shifts as it wrenches itself from Jean’s chest and flows like meltwater to Riko’s waiting hands, and Jean screams and screams and screams, no, no, give it back, I need it, I need it-

And then his voice is abruptly cut out, his body silenced as bones and muscles crack and shift, adjusting and rearranging around the missing pieces. His teeth are suddenly too big for his mouth, his fingernails curling into something longer, sharper, and white-hot pinpricks of pain blossom and burst through his scalp in the shape of-

The last thing Jean sees is the hungry flash of Riko’s teeth.

The demon formerly known as Jean Moreau spends a day recovering in a sparse chamber before his newly-settled body is dragged out into the courtyard to begin training. He can feel Riko waiting for him before he sees him, a sense of the boy carrying his soul pulsing at the base of his skull like a heartbeat. The brother is there too, and he does nothing to hide the shock from his expression when he sees the changes that have come over Jean since the previous night’s ceremony.

Riko laughs. “That’s right! You’ve never seen one up close before, have you?” He summons Jean with a crook of his finger, and Jean’s legs jerk clumsily in his direction before his mind has a chance to catch up with them. Riko catches him by one of the freshly-grown horns protruding from his head and drags him down for Kevin’s inspection. “I did say it would be a shame to ruin that face.”

Jean hisses at Riko’s grip on his horn, still tender and new. There was no mirror in his chamber, and Jean would have lacked the energy to get up and inspect himself even if there had been one. He has seen the rivulets of gold branded into his chest, the sharp points at the ends of his hands where nails turned to claws, can feel the awkward new shape of the elongated canines that catch at his bottom lip. He isn’t sure he needs to see any more.

Kevin stares, transfixed, and for a moment Jean catches sight of his reflection in Kevin’s eyes. His eyes are a solid black, the bonding sigil shining painfully bright on his cheek.

Almost unthinkingly, Kevin reaches out to him. Before Jean can think to flinch away, Riko is yanking him back by the horn.

“Ah, ah. No touching my things, Kevin.” His tone is playful, but Jean can feel the surge of anger beneath. “We’ll get you your own soon enough, won’t we?” He turns to Jean. “Maybe a matching pair. How old was that girl he came here with?”

Jean’s fist is an inch from Riko’s face when the pain hits. He falls to his knees, choking on air as Riko stands over him, smirking like Jean just passed some sort of test, which he probably did. The bonding is like an iron cuff around Jean’s throat, choking him out until the impulse to harm his Prince subsides.

Training is simple. Riko is a boy with many enemies, and it is Jean’s duty to tear them down before they can lay a finger on him. He may be young and inexperienced in combat, but the changes that have taken over him still give him advantage over the grown men tasked with beating him into shape. His reflexes are faster, his sight and hearing sharper, his already considerable strength almost doubled, his stamina virtually endless. For most of the morning any wounds he takes stitch themselves back together before he has a chance to examine them: it’s only as the day wears on that the cuts and bruises start to linger. He glances to where Riko and Kevin are watching from the shade of the trees, but no reprieve comes. Riko waves his men on with a flick of his wrist, and they continue until Jean’s legs will no longer support him.

When the fighting is over, Riko pokes at Jean’s wounds with interest. Kevin keeps his eyes fixed on the blood-flecked cobblestones, and Jean can hardly blame him.

“He does have limits,” Riko says. “Interesting.”

Kevin doesn’t say anything, but Jean doesn’t miss the way his fingers twitch.

When Jean wakes the next morning, there’s a pot of salve on his bedside table. It smells like the lavender fields of home, the sense memory so strong that Jean’s eyes sting. He tests it out, unsure if he’s about to become the victim of another of Riko’s “tests”, but finds the cream soothes yesterday’s aches as it sinks into his skin like butter.

Down in the courtyard, it’s no longer the pulse of his soulholder that calls to him, but someone else instead.

Ten years do nothing to soften Riko’s edges. As he grows, so do his enemies, and time after time Jean steps in, biting and tearing and cutting until there is nothing left of the foolish assailants. He grows accustomed to being the shadow at Riko’s shoulder, to the terrified looks ordinary people shoot him as he passes, to the hollow in his chest where his soul once lived.

“Why do you hate me?” Kevin murmurs as he sews one of Jean’s unhealed wounds back together. Riko had been experimenting with silver knives lately, fascinated by how Jean’s healing abilities were seemingly defeated by the precious metal. It’s the dead of night, and while Jean’s eyes no longer struggle to penetrate the darkness he has no idea how Kevin is able to sew him up with so little difficulty.

“Did I say I hated you?”

“It’s obvious.” There’s a click as Kevin bites through the thread and begins to tie it off with blood-slick fingers. It’s the kind of wound that would have brought Jean to tears during his early days in the palace walls. Now, his voice barely wavers as Kevin pulls him back together.

“I hate that you’re here when you don’t have to be.”

Kevin’s fingers stall. “Riko is asleep. He never has to know.”

“I don’t mean this,” Jean replies scornfully. He turns and plucks the thread from Kevin’s loose hands. “I mean here with him. You have no bond. You have a working body, a soul of your own, a family beyond the palace walls who would welcome you with open arms. You could be free, but you choose to fester in the shadows with us. You choose him.”

Kevin reaches as if to take the thread back, but his hands halt inches away, hovering in the space between them. “You want me to leave?”

“More than anything,” Jean bites. He thanks a God he never believed in that Kevin can’t see in the dark. He doesn’t know what his face is doing, but he knows it’s revealing something Jean has been keeping hidden for years alongside the pots of salve and sewing things under his mattress.

Kevin’s response, when it comes, is quiet, strained. “Who would sew you back together?”

Jean has no answer to give.

“Hold him, Jean. Hold him!”

The order courses through Jean’s arms like blood, tightening his grip on Kevin’s thrashing arms. Kevin stares up at him with watery, pleading eyes. As though Jean has any choice in the matter. After all this time there’s still a part of Kevin that doesn’t quite understand.

Jean pins Kevin’s hand in place, and Riko strikes.

“Jean? What the hell are you doing here?!”

Jean had grown used to living with one hole in his chest. Two is unbearable, and he only understands how unbearable it was when Kevin’s voice settles back into place within him.

“Kevin,” Jean says. He doesn’t have the strength for much else, every inch of his body at war with itself. Riko’s orders burn like wildfire through every cell in his body, but some impossible gem of resistance at his core holds out. “Kevin, I’m sorry.”

“Jean-?!” Kevin’s voice is cut off as Jean strikes, a harsh strike to the sternum that has Kevin bending over double. Jean catches his arms before he can react, forcing them behind his back until the choice is between breaking an arm or submitting. He can feel the ridges of Kevin’s scars under his grip as he forces him to the ground, much improved after his months away but still there.

“He ordered me to bring you back,” Jean grits out through his teeth. “I can’t…. I can’t stop.”

He feels Kevin’s body go lax beneath him. Kevin’s voice comes out hollow, and if Jean still had a soul it would be torn in half by the surrender in his words. “I understand.”

Jean turns Kevin over slowly, allowing himself to meet Kevin’s gaze at last. His new life is treating him well, his skin having lost the unnatural ashy tint of the palace, his cheeks filled out and sun-bitten. Jean soaks it in, trying to memorise the image before he tears Kevin away from it forever. Kevin’s eyes flicker to Jean’s sigil, then down to his lips, and he looks like he’s about to say something when he catches sight of something over Jean’s shoulder. His eyes widen.

“Look out!”

Something hits the back of Jean’s head, hard. If he were human, it would have shattered his skull. He rolls to the side before springing back to his feet, placing himself between Kevin and the attacker. His breath catches in his throat as he catches sight of the other assailant: he has never met another demon before. He’s shorter than Jean, but more muscular by far, his all-black eyes contrasting sharply with his blonde hair. The sigil on his cheek is a deep amber and silver knives flash in the palms of his hands.

“You touched something that isn’t yours,” he says lowly.

“Isn’t-” Jean starts, stops, and all the air leaves his body in a sudden, sharp shock. He turns to Kevin, denial giving way to deep, burning anger as he sees Kevin’s panic.

“Jean. It isn’t what it looks like,” Kevin begins frantically.

Jean clenches his teeth, turns, and swings for Kevin’s demon’s face. The punch doesn’t even connect, nor did Jean expect it to. Regardless, his bond urges him on, swinging blow after blow which the demon dodges with ease, his bored expression never cracking. Eventually, he grows tired of Jean’s efforts catching him by the neck and throwing him to the ground.

“Andrew,” says Kevin as the demon steps forwards. “Please, don’t.”

“What did I tell you about that word?”

Kevin’s mouth snaps shut, his lips pressing into a tense line. The demon – Andrew – turns back to Jean, eyes narrowed. “If we let him go, he’ll keep coming back. His bond won’t allow him to give up.”

“Don’t kill him. Andrew, I know him, he’s not like Riko, he doesn’t…”

Andrew sighs. “You are a pain, Kevin Day.”

Jean doesn’t feel the hit: one moment Andrew is standing over him, and the next, everything has gone black.

Jean feels Riko’s death pulse through him like a hot iron poker pressed through his chest. He screams, clawing at his chest as he rolls from his bunk in the cell he has spent the last – days, weeks, months? – trapped in, and by the time he hits the floor Riko is gone.

But Jean, somehow, doesn’t follow. A hundred miles away, he feels his soul flicker, seep into the air and begin curling its way into the beyond- and then something catches it.

Something warm. Something safe.

For the first time in over a decade, Jean can breathe again.

The Kevin that unlocks his door at last has a deep gash where his tattoo used to be. He stands taller than Jean has ever seen him, but it’s on the inside that the real change has taken place. His heartbeat pulses in the back of Jean’s mind as the heat of a fresh bond hums between them.

“It can’t be possible,” Jean says. “Andrew-”

“Andrew is a freed demon. He was never bonded to me,” Kevin says in a rush, like the words have been weighing on him ever since their initial reunion. “I wanted to explain, but he wouldn’t let me come near you in case you tried to take me away again.”

Jean swallows. “He was right. I would have dragged you away kicking and screaming the first chance I had.” He reaches out to Kevin, pressing fingers to his chest to feel the flutter of his own soul resting beneath the skin. “How…?”

“I don’t know,” Kevin says, swallowing. “I saw your soul leave him, and I thought it would just evaporate, but then it kind of…” He gestures wordlessly to his chest. “Settled. What does it mean?”

Jean thinks he knows, but there’s only one way to be sure. He surges forward, and Kevin doesn’t flinch, doesn’t blink, maybe the only person who has never looked at Jean with an inkling of fear, and when their lips meet it’s like two halves of a whole coming together.

Kevin gasps into his mouth as though Jean is a breath of air after years drowning at sea, and gasps again as Jean’s claws rake lightly across his scalp. They’re pressed together so tightly they no longer feel like two different beings, and for a moment Jean wonders if this is part of the bond or if this is just them, because he feels like he’s holding Kevin’s soul in his chest as much as Kevin is holding his.

“Oh,” Kevin says against his lips. “That’s why.”

And then he kisses him again, and again, and again.

They break the bond on a bright day that is full of birdsong and sunlight. The agony of a world-worn soul settling back into his chest is an acute one, but Jean survives it with Kevin’s arms tight around him. Jean’s chest heaves with his first breath as a freed demon, and it’s Kevin’s green eyes that welcome him back to the world. *

#all for the game #aftg #the foxhole court #tfc #kevjean #check ao3 for content warnings bc there's a Lot #kevin day #jean moreau #my fic

14 notes · View notes

iatethepomegranate · 3 years

Text

We are not alone in the dark with our demons, Chapter 13

In which Caleb buys a house in Rexxentrum with Beau and Yasha, becomes a professor, and learns to be a person. And, amid all of that, confronts his past by helping others like him.

Content warnings: traumatised child, starvation (referenced), very brief hint of lifespan angst

Chapter summary: Caleb is good with kids. Clerics are good with Calebs.

Chapter notes: Chapter title is from An Act of Kindness by Bastille. Pardon the comma splice; it gave me a better vibe than anything else.

***

Chapter 13: Kindness is what you showed to me, it holds me 'til I ache

Much later, Caleb tucked Luc into bed. The boy had been dozing for some time now, and Caleb himself was exhausted. He and Essek retreated to the spare bedroom. The room wasn’t large, and therefore the bed took up most of the space, but it wasn’t the most cramped quarters the two of them had shared. It was warm, lived-in, and belonged to one of Caleb’s dearest friends in the world.

Caleb flung off his coat, tossing it onto the chair crammed in the corner of the bedroom. Essek hovered closer, deftly plucking the buttons of Caleb’s shirt until it opened. Essek kissed Caleb’s collarbone, and slid the shirt down his arms, tossing it onto the coat.

“Did I make you uncomfortable earlier?” Essek asked, slowly running his fingers across the reddish-brown hair on Caleb’s chest.

“No. I was surprised, is all.” And very tired, but he knew Essek was aware of that.

Essek kissed Caleb’s sternum, just below the meeting of his collar bones. “We can discuss this another time. I just want you to know I am not trying to… discard you.”

“I know.”

“Good.”

They undressed. If they had been alone, they probably would have just collapsed naked on the bed, but there was a child in the house who had no boundaries, so they drew on the last dregs of their energy to pull on nightshirts and climb under the covers.

Essek wanted to be the big spoon tonight, and Caleb indulged him. It was adorable, really, given Essek was significantly smaller than him and wound up looking like a humanoid backpack. But the soft, warm pressure of Essek’s body was soothing as always, and Caleb drifted asleep.

For a while.

Then, there was a soft tapping on the door. And then the hinges creaked. Essek was already sitting up, so Caleb lay there a moment longer.

“Luc,” said Essek. “Are you all right?”

The boy didn’t speak, but he did sniffle. Caleb dragged his pants off the chair and stepped into them. Then, even in the dark, he found Luc’s small form and knelt before him.

“What happened, liebling?”

In the light from the moon, and the permanent driftglobe in the hallway Caleb had Pumat make for the Brenattos as a housewarming gift, he could see Luc swipe tears from his cheeks. Then he held up his arms in the universal signal for carry me.

Caleb scooped Luc into his arms and stood, settling the boy’s weight on his hip. Luc buried his face in Caleb’s shirt.

“Is there anything I can do?” Essek asked, halfway out of bed.

“Nein. I’ll step into the hallway. You rest.”

Essek huffed at him, but climbed back into bed. Caleb took Luc into the hallway and shut the bedroom door. Out here, it was easier to see the tension through Luc’s tiny body. He had Caleb’s shirt tightly gripped in his fists.

“Did you have a nightmare?” Caleb asked softly. Luc nodded. “All right. Would you like to talk about it?” Luc shook his head. “All right. I will hang onto you for a while, until you can sleep again. Does that sound good?” Luc nodded.

Caleb normally tried not to dwell too much on the memories of his childhood in Blumenthal, especially when he was out of sorts, but he could recall a conversation his mother had with a woman who had asked her advice on putting her newborn to sleep. He could hear his mother’s voice, sweet and gentle towards the woman who was on the verge of exhausted tears. Una had told her to hold the baby and walk up and down the house, slowly, until he fell asleep. It was not a sure thing, but it could help.

So Caleb slowly paced up and down the hallway, rubbing Luc’s back. He swayed a little as he walked, like his mother had once done for him. Even when he was just old enough to remember. Just a little younger than Luc was now, as Caleb had started to remember things very young. Not with the same clarity as he did as an adult, but more than most children at that age.

After some time of wearing a path into the wooden floor, Luc’s grip on his shirt loosened a little. The boy settled into Caleb’s arms more comfortably.

“Uncle Caleb?” His voice was still thick with years.

“Ja, liebling?”

“Can you tell me the story of the cat prince again?”

“Ja, of course.” Caleb had the story memorised in Zemnian and Common by now. For a long time, he had only known it in Zemnian because of the nights his mother and father had read it to him, over and over. Since reading it to Jester, however, he could tell it in Common almost as well. And he had told it to Luc several times before.

He continued to slowly pace as he told the tale, quietly into Luc’s ear. Luc relaxed by inches. Yeza poked his head out of his bedroom door and watched quietly. They barely made it through the reveal of the cat in his crown of golden leaves, before Luc had relaxed fully, asleep against Caleb’s chest.

Yeza, who had been tense himself, also relaxed. “Thank you,” he whispered.

Caleb smiled at him, not daring to speak lest he wake Luc. He slowly carried the boy to bed, tucking him in with a kiss on the forehead he decided to give at the last second. He crept out, closing the door. He and Yeza leaned their ears against the wood, listening for a moment. When it seemed that Luc was properly asleep, they stepped away.

“He’s been like this a lot,” Yeza whispered. “At first, when we were in the hideout, I thought he was gonna be okay. And he was for a while, until we came back home. Veth’s been good with him, but it’s wearing on her. On both of us.”

“These things often don’t hit right away,” Caleb replied quietly.

“Yeah, Veth said that, too.” Yeza sighed. “You’re good with him. Where’d you learn that?”

Caleb shrugged. “My mother, and I remember the things Veth has done to help me. I am not a little boy, but the principles are similar.”

“We need to have you over more often.” The exhaustion was all too evident in Yeza’s voice. “Your students will be lucky to have you.”

Caleb managed a smile through his own exhaustion, and that personal brand of self-loathing that rarely went away. “We will see. Gute nacht, Yeza.”

“Goodnight, Caleb.”

They separated. Caleb went back to the guest room, where Essek was sitting cross-legged on the bed in his trance. As soon as Caleb slipped under the covers, Essek shifted.

“Is everything all right?”

“Ja, Luc’s asleep.” Caleb buried his face in the pillow with a sigh.

“You are good with children. Have you ever considered…” Essek laughed softly. “Hm. I feel that is a loaded question, given our relationship.”

Caleb put the meaning together. “Ja, I don’t know. I used to see myself raising a family when I was younger, but… things got complicated. Maybe in time. For now, let’s see how I go as a teacher.”

Essek hummed softly, and did not continue the discussion. This required both of them to be more energised. Given the difference in their lifespans, and the fact Essek was a wanted criminal and Caleb a likely target for members of the Assembly looking to cover their tracks, it would not be an easy decision. It could wait. It needed to.

Caleb reached out blindly until he found Essek’s knee. “Cuddle me.”

Essek chuckled. “All right.” He lay down, manhandling Caleb until they were both in a more comfortable position, Essek’s head tucked under Caleb’s chin.

***

The morning was warm and bright, and Essek was soft in Caleb’s arms. Back home, Caleb would have held Essek close, slowly rubbing the heat of Essek’s back through his shirt until they were both too distracted to make it to breakfast. Here, however, he had to make do with several deep, promising kisses. And Essek grazing his collarbone with his teeth, one hand between Caleb’s thighs, until they both took a deep breath and, regrettably, stopped.

Maybe they would take the tower tonight, or a room at the Chateau. Veth would Send to them if she needed help with Luc. She had begged Essek to teach her so she could keep up the ruse that Yasha could communicate with her across distances. Caleb was fairly certain Yasha was fucking with her by this point, but he always enjoyed watching Essek teach.

Regretfully, Caleb forced himself out of bed and away from Essek’s wandering hands. He was definitely grumbling under his breath as he dressed, while Essek reclined in bed and watched with warm amusement.

“What’s so funny?” Caleb muttered, stumbling into his trousers.

“Caleb Widogast.” Essek smiled sweetly. “You’re cute when you’re grumpy.”

“I am pretending I didn't hear that,” Caleb said weakly. Because he was this close to jumping back into bed with this man.

Essek took pity on him and climbed out of bed to dress, though the way he pressed up against Caleb’s back to kiss his neck was pure evil. Nevertheless, the two of them managed to get dressed and out of the bedroom without further incident.

Luc seemed more like himself at breakfast, fiddling with his crossbow once again. Veth kissed Caleb on the cheek in a silent thank you for the previous night. Essek, as usual, braided Caleb’s hair after breakfast.

“Where’d you learn how to do that?” Veth asked, as Yeza brushed her hair and braided it as well.

“My brother,” Essek said, with a professional tone that sometimes came out when he wasn’t prepared to express a particular emotion. He tied off one braid at the side of Caleb’s head, starting on the other side. “Verin was always a handful. I learned to fix the mess he made of his hair when he was off climbing trees or chasing animals, or people. It was important we both presented ourselves well, and that included grooming.” His fingernails lightly grazed Caleb’s scalp. “Verin… well. Someone had to fix his hair, preferably before our mother found out.”

There was something a little steely in Essek’s voice. A defense mechanism probably. Essek rarely spoke of his family, especially now that he probably wouldn’t see them again. Caleb got the impression Essek wouldn’t miss most of them, but he may have been closer to Verin.

Essek finished the second braid and pulled them into a half-ponytail at the back of Caleb’s head. He sighed, and ran his fingers through the rest of Caleb’s hair far longer than strictly necessary. Caleb caught his wrist and squeezed, just for a moment.

***

After breakfast, Caleb and Essek headed to the Chateau following a message from Caduceus requesting Caleb’s presence. Essek peeled off to trade novels with Marion, leaving the three of them alone in Jester’s childhood bedroom. Here, Caduceus and Jester had set up a scrying ritual. The materials were mostly floral in nature, indicating this was for Caduceus.

Caleb caught on immediately, though he didn’t get the words out before Jester shoved him onto her bed. Then, it was irrelevant, as Caduceus had already begun the ritual to scry on Nico. Caleb appreciated they had asked him to be here for it.

Jester sat with Caleb, nuzzling his shoulder and very nearly stabbing his eye out with her horns. And, of course, squeezing him so hard he was afraid of cracking a rib. It felt good, though. The anxiety coiling in his gut struggled to keep its foothold.

He had been afraid to ask Caduceus or Jester to scry on Nico again. What if the thing he feared most had come true? Nico’s fireball had knocked Caleb out cold. That really should not have been possible, even if Caleb had the constitution of wet tissue paper. He was still much tougher than he used to be.

Unlike Caleb, Nico didn’t have clerics on hand to pull him from the jaws of death. Nico could have curled up to sleep one night, out in the cold, and not had the strength to wake up again. Even when he hadn’t been injured, Caleb had come close to freezing to death many times in the years between Vergesson and Veth. The eleven years of no magic, and his long-discarded outright fear of fire, had almost spelled his doom.

Maybe Caleb’s messages never received a reply because the recipient was no longer alive. He was not experienced with the Sending spell; maybe he was misreading the lack of response. Maybe there was a pattern in the magic that should have told him whether the message met its mark. Caleb knew he was smart. He knew he was methodical. But he was also emotional. Maybe he had missed something.

Jester squeezed him tighter. He was spiralling. He had to breathe. He had to think. Panicking was of no use. If Nico was dead, they needed to find his body. It had only been a few days, and Caleb had created a new Transmuter’s Stone--focusing on that had helped steel his nerves these past few days. And he was sure Jester and Caduceus had the right quality of diamonds. Even if Nico was dead, he could still be saved.

And if he was alive, they needed to know. They needed to keep trying to talk to him, try to get him to safety in whatever way they could. And even though Caleb had never had a proper conversation with the boy, he knew he would do anything to keep him safe. Anything.

What Nico was going through now, Caleb had suffered alone. He would never wish that on anyone.

Being held by Jester always brought up complicated feelings, but he was grateful she was there to physically hold him together. She was babbling about something, and Caleb genuinely tried to listen, but most of his focus was split between his whirling thoughts and watching Caduceus.

He did catch the end of her babble.

“And then King said, ‘Were you gonna tell me I had magic blood or was I supposed to find that out when I cut myself shaving?’” Her voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper. “He found out because he cut himself shaving.”

Caduceus jolted, and then he was back with them. “Nope.”

The words fell out of Caleb’s mouth before he had fully considered them. “Can you tell the difference between resisting the scry and…” His brain caught up with his mouth, and choked him.

Caduceus stepped in before Caleb could spiral further. “Yeah, we can tell the difference. He resisted.” Caduceus began to collect the flowers, bundled herbs, ashes, and bone fragments. A piece of petrified wood Caleb had found him during their travels. A few botanical drawings made by Jester. Fresh seaweed from Fjord. He carefully scooped up each piece of the ritual and put them away.

Okay. Nico was alive. That was something. But they couldn’t see him. He could have been anywhere within a few days of Rexxentrum, and each of those places was freezing cold. Nico had fire, but did he have the capacity to use it? Had he found shelter? Water? Where the fuck was he?

And it was possible to be alive and conscious and on death’s door. He wasn’t dead. Yet. That could change at any moment. Caleb needed to know. He couldn’t take this uncertainty anymore.

“Jester.” His voice was little more than a scratchy whisper. “Please.” Talking hurt.

She gave him one last squeeze and let go. “Of course, Cayleb. I’ll try. Caduceus gave me a picture.” She slid onto the floor and began to set out little dick statues. A tiny figurine of the Traveller. A little collection of unicorn statues, many of which were new to Caleb. “Hey, Artie. We really need to see what Nico’s doing, okay?”

Caleb no longer had Truesight, but Artagan never bothered to hide his presence in Sprinkle anymore. Or when his cloak would appear and sweep over Jester. He only hid from the Nein to fuck with them these days. So, the green flash of Sprinkle’s eyes and the sweep of a green cloak were a familiar sight by now.

Caduceus took Jester’s place on the bed beside him. Neither Caduceus nor Caleb were given to filling empty space with sound unless they genuinely had something to say, so they sat quietly. Shoulders barely touching, but that was enough of an anchor for Caleb to stay calm.

Time crawled by as Jester worked through the ritual, until, finally, she looked into the distance. And she wasn’t seeing the room. Hope bloomed, sharp and painful, in Caleb’s chest.

“I see him,” she said. “It’s hard to see anything else. I think I can see green but I can’t make out shapes. Nico’s sitting on… grass, I think? There’s a campfire. Bandages. He found bandages somewhere! He looks pale, but… focused. I think? He’s bandaging his arm.”

She spent the next ten minutes describing everything Nico did. Aside from bandaging, he spent most of the time staring into the campfire. He’d found a coat somewhere, but no shoes. Shivering a bit, but nothing that would indicate a threat of hypothermia. Best she could tell, he was surviving.

Until they could get him to come back, that would have to be enough.

Once Jester had finished scrying, she squeezed onto the bed on Caleb’s other side. “Are you okay, Caleb?”

“Ja.” Knowing Nico was more or less in one piece, and did not seem to be in immediate danger, had lifted a great weight from Caleb’s ribcage. “Thank you. I was afraid to ask. Caduceus, I hate to ask that you spend another spell, but...”

Caduceus waited patiently, smiling faintly as he often did. He would say yes. Caleb knew he would.

So, despite feeling weird about asking for things like this, he did anyway. “Would you mind asking the Wildmother a few questions?”

“Give me three questions and one minute,” was all Caduceus said in response.

Caleb had spent so long worrying about this kid that coming up with three questions was easy. “First, is he in the Pearlbow Wilderness? Second, has he found clean water in the last twenty-four hours? Third, has he eaten since Rexxentrum?”

Caduceus slid to the floor once again and began setting up the ritual. “Good questions to ask, with simple answers.”

The wait was easier this time, knowing that Nico wasn’t dead, or close to it. The burning incense curled through the air, reminding Caleb fondly of his time with Frumpkin. He hoped his little friend was having a good time, wherever he was.

“Is Nicolaus Baumann in the Pearlbow Wilderness?” Caduceus asked quietly, eyes closed. Caleb could not sense the Wildmother’s response, but Caduceus nodded to himself. “Has the boy found clean drinking water in the last twenty-four hours?” A moment, and Caduceus nodded again. “Has he eaten since the meal I fed him in Rexxentrum?” This moment stretched longer, and the corner of Cad’s mouth tightened. He released the ritual, blinking his eyes clear until he could focus on them. “Nico’s in the Pearlbow Wilderness and has found clean drinking water in the last day. He has not eaten since Rexxentrum.”

Caleb swallowed around the lump in his throat. “Thank you, Caduceus.” Those words could not adequately express his gratitude; how much lighter he felt knowing that Nico was surviving. They could get him back to Rexxentrum. Caleb would keep talking to him, as would Felix. It was doable. “And, Jester. Thank you.”

The two clerics exchanged a look, laced with meaning that Caleb could not read. But he suspected they had discussed this whole thing in detail long before they had invited Caleb here. He wasn’t sure he would ever get used to having friends who would literally team up to take care of him like that. It frightened him a little, but he knew the fear was irrational. They loved him as much as he loved them. Not always in the same way, especially when it came to Jester, but it was love all the same.

Then Jester’s mood shifted, and she was grinning. “Hey, Cay-leb.”

“...ja?”

“Did Essek bring his parasol?”

“Ja, of course. It’s Nicodranas.”

“Cool! I got you guys a huge beach umbrella. Meet us downstairs in an hour.” She kissed his cheek, and tore out of her room. “BEACH TRIP!!”

Caduceus chuckled softly, unfolding himself from the floor. “She has been planning this all day.”

“Ja, I figured.” Caleb had missed the beach. So different from his old life that it was easier to let go of things there. “Are you coming?”

Caduceus laughed openly at that. Of course he was coming. Nobody said no to Jester Lavorre.

This was probably the last time the two of them would be alone in a while. There were things Caleb wanted to say. Needed to.

“Caduceus,” said Caleb. “Thank you. For all of this.”

“Caleb.” Caduceus smiled, but he allowed the sadness of it to break through. “You were alone for a long time. So was I. So were… all of us. We’ve all grown together. And you… I always knew you were being shaped into something. What that something was… that was your choice. Reaching out to people who went through what you have, taking your pain and what you have learned to protect them from the worst of your experiences… that’s growth, Caleb. You’re healing. I’m proud of you. We all are.”

The words hit hard, drawing tears from the corners of Caleb’s eyes. But they were good tears. It felt like a poison was leaving his body.

“You helped,” Caleb said, standing to face Caduceus properly. “All of you. And I know I didn’t always listen to you, but I remember everything. Your words mean a lot to me. Thank you.” He felt a surge of affection and a sob escaped his throat. “Can I hug you?”

“Of course.”

It had never occurred to Caleb that firbolgs would give great hugs. They had giant heritage and were stronger than they looked. Caleb had come to prefer hugs that crushed his soul back into his body, so this was perfect. He let Caduceus squish him, tucking his face into the folds of his robe. Caduceus always smelled of herbs and earth. A grounding, calming scent to match a grounding, calming man.

Caduceus had been exactly what the Nein, and Caleb himself, had needed after they lost Molly. And he continued to fill that role, gladly, even when it caused him personal pain. Caleb loved him dearly.

They were still hugging when Jester came to grab a few things from her room, and she gladly jumped in, babbling about the beach trip and all the plans she had made for it.

Caleb breathed easier than he had in days.

#shadowgast #caleb widogast #essek thelyss #critical role #cr2 #i sometimes am tempted to tag other major members of the nein who are prominent in various chapters but i also don't want to annoy people #fanfiction #my fics #the pomegranate's professor widogast fic #mighty nein #ao3

7 notes · View notes

janekfan · 4 years

Note

trying to think of a good prompt bc um. i love ur writing so much and looove some good angst/beating up jarchivist... do u have a take on the classic ‘i really loved you, you know’ possible misunderstanding (jon thinks martin doesn’t love him like that anymore, beats himself up about it & tries his hardest to respect what he perceives as martin’s boundaries/to not make him uncomfortable w the love he doesn’t think he wants from him anymore for reasons he can only guess at, tries to hide the toll everything is taking on him, martin thinks jon just saved him from the lonely bc he’s Jon, still thinks jon doesn’t feel that way about him, doesn’t let himself reach out for the comfort/contact he still needs & maybe has another scary brush with the lonely? cue self deprication mutual pining angst misunderstanding awkwardness distance maybe some tears! but then like. communication and realization and comfort and love love love?)???!

@transcendentalbf Thank you so much! It’s missing some detail but I hope it’s okay!

https://archiveofourown.org/works/26803027

He doesn’t want to see you.

Jon looked down at their hands, clasped tightly together in his lap as Martin slept against his bony shoulder. It couldn’t possibly be comfortable. It couldn’t. That was never a descriptor applied to Jonathan Sims. He worried at Martin’s fingers with his own, rubbing warmth back into them though he had none to spare. They were headed to Scotland. To a safe house, if anything could be called safe these days with eyes all around and everywhere and watching, watching, watching.

He doesn’t want to see you.

That’s alright. He wouldn’t have to. Jon would deliver him, protect him, do whatever he needed as long as it kept Martin here with him. He didn’t need anything more than that and while Jon was quite possibly the worst liar in the whole of the population, he would make sure he didn’t take anything more than that. Selfish and monstrous and Martin had to suffer his company. He couldn’t ask for more. He couldn’t ask for more because he was too late.

I really loved you, you know?

And he hadn’t, he really, really hadn’t. Not until it was too late. And now.

Loved.

Loved

He'd taken too long, and maybe that foolish part of him always thought Martin would wait until--

Until when?

It was too late to love him because there wasn't much left of him to love. He wasn't worth it. Not anymore. Maybe not ever. Jon pressed a secret, trembling kiss to the top of his head. He’d committed so many crimes, what more harm could it cause to add one more to the list?

But he wouldn't abandon him again. Not for anything. And he would keep his own love a secret so Martin wasn't burdened with guilt. He could do so little for him, but he could do that.

“Up you come, Martin.” The train lurched to a stop.

“...Jon?” Exhausted and cold, wisps of fog clung to his hair, escaped his mouth with a sigh. It was like an infection, the Lonely. It would take time to recover. Lucky that. They didn’t have much more than time at the moment.

“Hm.” Jon hummed his assent, staggering under Martin’s taller, heavier bulk until he managed to get his feet under him. “Good, good. You’re doing so well.” The praise was clumsy, foriegn on his tongue and ill fitting in his mouth. Martin didn’t seem to notice, just shivered where they stood, and it was a relief. Cajoling, tugging, Jon got him off the train, bad leg beginning to buckle under their combined weight and he grit his teeth against the pain and pressure. “I know the way.” Voice light, Jon trudged forward, limp agonizing, slow, and they were a pair of ants scuttling up the hill under cover of darkness.

Finally, Martin was tucked up in bed, every spare blanket Jon could find piled on top of him, and he even got a glimpse of tired eyes before he lost him to sleep. Sinking to the floor, Jon tugged at his curls, distracting himself from the ache in his hip with a different sort of pain but with nothing else to focus on save for the slow inhale, exhale of Martin’s peaceful breathing, Jon couldn’t do much else other than endure. An exhausted sentinel trapped with his own spiraling thoughts.

He’d meant it. In that moment surrounded by fog and mist and menace, he meant it. He wanted more than to just survive. He'd known nothing but raw survival for what seemed like an eternity. He wanted so much more for the first time.

And he'd thrown away his chance.

Too hot, Martin shoved at the covers, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes and staring up into unfamiliar rafters. The last thing he remembered was the smell of salt and the sound of the sea, wrapped up in a cloud’s soft, cloying embrace. It had been gentle there and he’d been there long enough that being so present, here and now, was overwhelming. There was an echo of a hand in his, smaller, fine boned and familiar. Pulling. Dragging. Leading. Him out of that place.

Jon.

Where was Jon?

Martin sat up, swinging his legs out of the bed and finding clean clothes laid out on the end of it. The scent of strong tea lingered in the pleasantly warm air and he followed it to the small kitchen, the familiar figure doing the washing up loosening the knot tied around his heart. He was here. He was safe. They were safe. At least for a little while.

“Jon.” The naked relief flooding through his veins was embarrassing, the little jump of surprise he’d caused endearing

“M’Martin!” Turning swiftly, Jon almost lost his footing, catching it quickly, mouth quirked in a half smile. “You, you look so much better.”

“I feel better.” Surprised when he found it was really true. A beat of silence passed between them, Jon growing more and more uncomfortable if the caginess about him said anything.

“Oh! Uh! Th’there’s tea. It, I’m sure it’s not as good as yours, it couldn’t possibly be.” He made room for Martin to pass by, jittery and shaking. “I’m sorry, I. Wasn’t sure what you’d want to eat but there’s some--”

“Jon.”

“--Nothing in the fridge of course but--”

“Jon.” With a little more force, punctuated by a step forward, and Martin heard his teeth click when his jaw snapped shut. “I’m sure whatever we have is fine.”

“Ah. Alright. Yes. Of course.” He wrung his scarred hands, something unidentifiable in his expression. “I’ll. I. Of course.” Jon practically fled the room, skirting Martin as if his touch might hurt him, and the ache it left in his wake was debilitating. But Martin had pulled away from him for a whole year; it was no wonder Jon didn’t want anything to do with him. He was altruistic. He saved people because that's what he did and he’d be the first to deny it.

So of course he’d saved Martin.

It wouldn’t do to attribute it to reciprocated feelings. Martin could barely remember what he’d said in the Lonely, what he’d said to Jon. But it felt like a confession. Was that the problem?

Did he Know his infatuation? Was he disgusted that someone like Martin dared love him?

Martin poured his tea, savoring it because of whose hands made it and found Jon in the sitting room, curled up with a book in an overstuffed chair.

“It’s good.” Jon chuffed, laughter like music.

“You’re too kind.” And the wry tone was so familiar and so Jon Martin chuckled along with him. They fell into a comfortable silence, at a comfortable distance.

And this was enough. Martin would make sure it was enough.

When Jon insisted on taking the couch because it wasn’t like he slept much anyway, that was enough too.

Days passed.

Jon withdrew.

Skittish and wan. A ghost skirting the edges of Martin’s periphery, and he wanted so badly to hold him close, ease his trembling, help him find even a measure of peace if there was any left to be found.

Jon thought he could do this. Thought he was strong enough to at least give Martin this one, small thing but the profound ache of what he’d lost without even knowing he’d had it in the first place carved him out and he hugged himself tighter lest his useless heart fall from the gaping wound that was his ribcage. Raw and empty, he wasn't strong enough to hold himself together against the sheer amount of love in him with nowhere to go and it was tearing him apart.

It’s only you. It’s only you. It’s only you.

When it overcame his childish sand castle walls, eating through them like the hungry surf in all directions, from all sides, Jon let the tears come. Quiet. Be quiet. Shh, shh, shh.

But I love him. I love him. I love him.

It wasn’t fair.

“Jon?” You idiot, he needs to rest and look what you’ve done. Selfish. Stupid. Please. “Please what, Jon? How can I help?”

“N’no, no. Go, go back to bed, y’y’you need to--” a sob choked him and he couldn’t finish speaking, could barely breathe, drowning in an unfamiliar want. Fingertips touched his jaw, applied pressure to lift his face and the look in Martin’s eyes stole the rest of the air in his lungs. “I love you.” He slammed his palms over his traitorous mouth, curling forward and inadvertently into Martin’s waiting arms and he was too weak to resist, instead babbling, crying, words night unintelligible. “I love you! And I, I know. I know y’you don't feel the same and I'm too late but. But I want in a way, in, it's frightening how much and I'm afraid I'll do s’something foolish when, when all I, I, I want to d’do is keep you safe.”

“Breathe, Jon. Breathe, it’s alright.”

“I've. I've t’tried to give you space. And. A’and not. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I've. I shouldn't have said anything and I'm so, s’so sorry.”

“Hush now, hush and look at me. Look at me, Jon.” Demanding carefully, and Jon turned to him like a worn and weathered bloom seeking out the sun. Martin immediately, desperately wanted to fold him back up again, touch him softly, kindly, because no one has done that for him in so long. Gently, Martin swept his thumbs beneath red eyes wrung with dark shadows, brushing away tears even when they showed no sign of stopping. “It’s alright, shh. It’s alright.” It’s not. It wasn’t alright and Jon shook his head, stiffening in his arms when Martin pressed him into his shoulder.

“M’sorry, m’sorry, M’Martin.” Greedy, never content with what was offered, always had to take. To take and take and take and he took more now, leaning heavily into Martin, pressing as close as possible, winding his arms around his waist and clutching his jumper.

“Okay, okay. Why did you think I needed space?” Soothing, his broad palm weighed heavy on his back, up, down, repeated. “Why so sorry?”

“I. I--you. Loved me.” Saying it like this was torture, a knife twisting in his gut. he never wanted to hear it again. He could. He could pretend. If he never heard it again. “And I. I never knew. Not until it was too l’late.”

I really loved you, you know?

You know?

Jon was exhausted. Upset and aching. Completely limp in his arms and so confused. Why hadn’t he pushed him away? He wasn’t obligated to keep holding Jon together. Especially not after he’d fallen into so many pieces.

“Jon. I think.” Martin hummed, lips close to his ear, breath a slow warmth against the shell of it. “I need to make something clear.”

“You don’t need to do anything.” Jon closed his eyes, stray tears slipped between damp lashes. “I understand.”

“I’m not sure you do.” Sweetly, Martin cupped the back of his head, brushed a kiss to his pulsepoint. “Because I do love you.”

“You don’t, you don’t have to say that.” Shaky, small.

“I do.” Martin pushed him back by the shoulders only to press their foreheads together. “I do. I love you, Jon. In the Lonely, I. It’s not important. Not right now.” Martin leaned back, bringing Jon with him, tucking him under his chin. “I love you. I’m excited that you love me too.” Muffled in a tight throat still choked with too much emotion.

“I think I’ve loved you for a long time, Martin.” Chaste, gentle, he pressed a kiss to the corner of Jon’s mouth, smiling when his lips turned up beneath his own.

“And I’m so glad for it.”

#TMA #The magnus archives #jmart #jonmartin #mutual pining #unrequited love #kinda #they're foolish #tmafanfic #love #first kisses #jon sims #martin blackwood

79 notes · View notes

embyrinitalics · 3 years

Text

Calamiversary: Link’s POV II

Here’s some more scenes from Link’s POV—about 2.4k worth! (I rly hope this makes up a little bit for the fact that I haven’t updated in two months omg)

But you know how I said that reading through my old stuff makes me cringe? Yeah this is like, way worse. It’s all unedited, and I wrote these in December 2018, so it’s all old. It’s all embarrassing. 😬 But with that disclaimer, I’m going to put my personal feelings aside and let you guys read it if you want 😂

Also now that I’m looking at this I feel like they’re not in chronological order, like that scene with Revali stabbing him should have come after these ones with Mipha, but o h w e l l

Here u go!

Drowning

At first, all that registers is the pain, white and hot across my throat, and the numb realization that I’m going to die.

Of course, it’s not that simple for me.

The half of me that I’m always suppressing senses my weakness, slamming frantically against my defenses in the span of a heartbeat. I have to choose between saving myself and containing it. So I pour everything I am into holding him in, dragging him down with me in a white-knuckled grip. But he fights back.

The pain is agony, a thousand heated needles covering my entire body and then being driven down to the bone in nauseating synchrony. He thrashes in my hold, tendrils of his hate whipping out in places, and my vision blotches white. I feel the deathstroke across my throat heal; the earth quaking beneath my feet; the malice seeping out of me like blood oozing out of a wound.

I can hear myself screaming beyond the war, part agony and part fury. Part man and part beast. It’s slowly tearing me in two, ripping ligaments and shredding flesh as it claws deliriously towards escape. I grapple with him, desperately trying to hold on even as he starts pulling my limbs apart. But I know it’s only a matter of time.

Then I see her. Her light cuts through the pain, through the fear and the hate, brilliant and pure as the sun. I can’t speak; I can only stare, imploring her with my eyes to end me quickly.

She takes my face in her hands and I suck a sudden breath. Her glowing touch is warm and soft, comforting, and not the violent end I had been expecting—the touch of a goddess, and for a moment I can breathe.

Then her light engulfs everything—the woods, my body, and soon my mind. The relief from the pain and the peace of it is so indescribably jarring that I don’t resist, falling headlong into it.

And then I’m drowning. Drowning in the sensation of her between my hands, of the softness of her lips under mine, of the closeness of her. Drowning in sensations that are brand new and millennia old at once. I’m drowning, burning from the inside out, and even though it aches I don’t want it to end.

I remember myself, haltingly, and muster the will to let her go. I drop my forehead against hers, grappling with how much I want her—and with how far I’ve let myself fall. There’s no amount of leniency on her part that could possibly excuse this. But I’m not concerned with the consequences for myself; only with how my lack of self-control must have affected her.

“Forgive me,” I breathe. “That was—”

But she silences me, her soft, delicate fingers brushing my mouth with a feather-light touch that sends another pang of want rippling through my middle. Her eyes pierce into me, unendingly blue and so powerful I can’t help but wonder if it’s her magic. Then she exhales, drifting closer, her eyes falling heavy-lidded to my mouth just before they close completely. And the feeling of her lips meeting mine, electric, breathless, so warm, sends me diving under the surge of sensation again.

I draw her close, losing myself in her. There’s nothing even close to this—her touch, her taste, the sound she makes when I angle her head to deepen the kiss.

And I don’t know why I’ve denied myself for so long. I’ve always wanted her. And now that I’ve tasted this, tasted her—even all the armies in Hyrule couldn’t keep me from her now.

I smile against her mouth. Slaughtering them would be easy.

Through the intoxicated cloud swirling in my brain, the thought snags unpleasantly, like a potent flicker of light in a comfortable darkness. It’s enough to slow me down, enough to make me think.

Enough to make me realize this can’t possibly be real.

I stop, pulling away slowly to search her eyes. So familiar. So beautiful it makes my heart ache.

But she’s been dead for 10,000 years.

I want to ignore it, dive headlong into the illusion of her. But I can’t unsee it. I murmur, breaking the spell, “This isn’t real.”

She blinks, and suddenly she’s different. Still familiar. Still beautiful. Still alive. And then the pieces are snapping into place, and the woman in my hands isn’t the one I loved so many millennia ago. It’s the Zelda of this era, the one who only knows me as I am—as the Calamity. And we’re reliving one of her memories—one of my memories—

And it’s agony. All at once the peace is gone, the gentle, tremulous bit of happiness the memory had lent me and I had been nursing in my heart like a single spark in an endless night, and the hatred is flooding in. The anger. Everything the illusion had been strong enough to veil.

And I remember what I am. I feel the evil pouring through my veins like a poison. I feel it making my heart pound stronger. I feel it coloring my vision and filling me with desires I must never obey.

And it’s agony.

I’m quaking on the inside, partly from fury and partly from shock. And then I erupt.

“What are you doing here?”

She looks as lost as I feel, green eyes glittering with shock and fright. “I—I don’t know—”

“Is this some kind of a joke to you? You think that just because you have her memories that they’re yours to do with as you please?”

“No! I didn’t mean to do this—”

Oh, I want to break her. I want to hold her down and force her to taste some of the pain I have. I want to hear her scream. But I push her away instead, unwilling to give the monster the edge.

“Well undo it!”

She stumbles into the mantel, turning back with that pretty face covered in tears. And the satisfaction and the guilt churning together in my stomach makes me feel sick.

“I don’t know how!” she tries to reason. “It was an accident!”

I turn away and try to breathe. That glimmer of humanity, after 10,000 years without—and then to have it just wrested away—

“This how you operate when you don’t get your way, then?” I bite out before I can rein it in. “Prick the Calamity, see if he bleeds?”

“I told you it was an accident,” she says again, more quietly.

She sounds so miserable. A very small part of me wants to comfort her. But I’m so furious I can hardly see straight. Forcing me to relive this moment—with her—

What was she thinking? What in the name of the gods made her think she had the right? Hadn’t I been through enough? Hadn’t I endured enough torture over the last eon? Did she really have to reach down into my most private, most intimate moments and drag them into the daylight, too? The last, precious fragments of who I was, that I hold onto so fiercely, lest I lose myself completely—

Why?

“Magic doesn’t just materialize out of nothing,” I growl, closing the distance again, propelled by a fresh wave of anger. “What did you want to know? If it would hurt me to relive this? If I could even tell the difference between you?”

She winces like my words had been a slap. “No!”

“Then what?” I grab ahold of her, desperate for this to be over. Desperate to just—just feel nothing. “Do you want me to admit that you remind me of her? That I’m in agony every time I look at you? Is that it?”

“I don’t want anything! Let me go!”

“Would it please you to know that I am?” I murmur, my voice dangerously quiet, and she goes still. “Every time.”

And now, I realize numbly, it will be worse.

Because now she doesn’t just remind me of what I had with my Zelda.

Now I’ve tasted her, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to again.

Frightening

“I’m sorry about what happened with the Champions,” she says quietly, catching me off guard. “I imagine it was… frightening, losing control like that.”

Yes. Yes, it was. I don’t think I’ve ever been so afraid of anything in my life as I was in that moment, so close to rupturing, so close to tearing her apart with a thought, so close to losing myself completely and destroying everything I love in the aftermath. I want so badly to tell her, to unburden myself. I know she’s hoping I will. And that just… makes the temptation worse. She’s staring through me with unseeing eyes, full of the desire to understand, to heal even a little bit of the damage. I want to pull her closer, taste her again, thread my fingers in her hair and indulge in the warmth of her. I want to lose myself in her touch, in her lips, lose myself to her instead of to the monster working to claw its way out of me. I want to—

Gods!

“You were right,” I manage, finally. “They weren’t to know.”

“How have you been since?” she asks. So eager. So earnest. So gentle. It’s infuriating. “Any lingering effects? Urges to explode?”

“I always feel the urge to explode,” I scoff, grateful for the levity. “But no. The seal is as strong as it ever was.”

The Zora Princess

We stop to rest and I quietly remove myself. So I can breathe. So they can breathe.

The air tastes clearer once I put some distance between us, like grass and wind and the malice in my mouth instead of the honeyed flavor of their adrenaline. The pressure in the back of my mind eases somewhat without the constant temptation, but the hollow gnaw of the hunger is just as strong as it ever was. I lower myself into the prairie grass, beating back a groan.

The Gerudo and that bird creature are arguing about something. It makes Zelda laugh.

That’s good.

Then the wind shifts and the air tastes of sugar and salt, and I turn towards it slowly. It’s the Zora girl. She’s so short the grass is up to her knees, and her trident has become more of a walking stick than a weapon. She’s so quiet it’s easy to forget she’s there—but she’s one of the Champions, and royalty, if the headdress is any indication. I’m sure she’s stronger than she looks. The fact that she’s confronting me on her own is evidence enough.

I tilt my head at her as she draws close, feeling after that gentle spike in her heart rate as I fix her in my stare. It makes my spine burn.

“Princess,” I greet her quietly. “To what do I owe this honor?”

She leans on her staff, remarkably calm, and I can feel the tendrils of power wafting off her.

“You’re in a great deal of pain,” she says.

My lips move towards a frown as I draw the inevitable conclusion. Just my luck. “You’re a healer.”

“Yes.”

And her magic is a peculiar brand. Very strong, almost magnetized in the way it drifts towards injury. It’s what brought her to me. I wouldn’t be surprised if she could bring someone back from the brink of death.

I contemplate her usefulness for a moment; but I need to go much further than the brink, and that’s well beyond even her abilities.

Dreamcraft

I carry her up to the campsite, lay her near the fire and rouse it a bit so she isn’t freezing, and then grudgingly lift the sleepweb from the Zora girl. Her eyes open and then drift upwards, like she’s watching the spell float away.

Her eyes settle on me, finally, all golden and rippling, and she says, “You seem better.”

She’s a strange one. No demanding what I’d done, or where I’d gone, or what had happened. But she’s also sharp. Sharp enough that her bold-faced concern makes me feel manipulated. But she’s not wrong. I had been caught up in feeling terrified to notice, but the hunger had faded into background noise. Throbbing, like something swollen. I frown, trying to puzzle out how that had happened.

I finally admit, because it’s too easy to admit things when I’m with her, “We shared a dream.”

“And that helps?”

I can’t be sure if it’s the emotional implosion that follows one of her illusions merely drowning the hunger out, or an actual, measurable, residual effect of her dreamcraft. Either way, it’s worth studying. Which is horrifying.

“Maybe.”

We sit by the fire in silence for a while. That’s easy, too. Almost like we had been friends once, in another life. I’m watching the flames, and she’s watching Zelda, and then so am I.

“Could you enter her dreams now? While she sleeps?”

The idea of sauntering into her mind uninvited worms unpleasantly in whatever scrap of my conscience is left, vaguely reminiscent of guilt. But she’s plowed headlong into mine more than once, so it seems only fair. For some reason that reasoning doesn’t make the worming stop. I still haven’t answered, and her eyes glide to the side of my head. I call up the fire more, loosing a taut, tired sigh at her persistence.

“Possibly.”

It’s noncommittal and non-revealing, which I assume will grind her advance to a halt. But she slips around it like water in that infuriating way she does.

“You should try it sometime,” she says.

I tilt my head at her. “You don’t find the idea of trespassing on her mind morally objectionable?”

She shrugs. “Not as objectionable as you tearing a swathe of Hyrule up by the roots.”

And that’s logic I can hardly argue with. Her eyes say she knows. And suddenly I find the image of her pretty crimson skull smashed against the stone and its contents spattered everywhere very appealing.

“You need her,” she adds, too simply, too condemningly, and I have to swallow down fury and terror.

Because she’s right.

The night drags and drags and drags, dread and disgust whipping me into a tumble of disquiet and every quiet tremble of fear or pleasure from her tempting me into her head.

#Legend of Zelda #Zelink #Fanfic #Calamiversary #Calamitous #Link's POV #Calamity!Link #snippet

18 notes · View notes

shapeshiftersandfire · 3 years

Text

The Osprey and the Barn Owl, pt. ii

Emma plots her escape from Sinister’s lab. Without knowing what’s around every corner, she has to take her best guess and hope she can escape before the Marauders catch her.

for @amonthofwhump’s bracket challenge!

Bracket One; Trope: escape attempt

taglist: @whumpinggrounds

cw: lady whump, wing whump, lab whump, collar mention, blood mention, stress position, threats to break bones, hair pulling, starvation mention, implied sleep deprivation, emma gets punched in the face, wing clipping

With no sunlight and no way to tell time, Emma tries to measure her stay in visits from Sinister and his lackeys. But the visits are so irregular, sometimes with long stretches of time between them and others with only a few breaths, that Emma can’t properly deduce whether it’s night or day or how long she’s been there.

She’s left with the perpetual ache in her shoulders and her wings, strung up in three directions with no relief. Only once so far have they let her down to relax her joints and finally fold her tormented wings.

They creak and smart and sting as she folds them, the places where her feathers have been ripped out throb; sharp pain runs through her wings when she moves them the right way. She sits for a moment, leaning up against the wall as the feeling comes back into her legs, trying to survey the damage done. But her arms are too sore to do much more than hang them at her sides and let the blood and feeling flow back into her fingers.

She doesn’t even have the strength to try to comb the blood from her feathers. The most she can do is wipe the tears from her face--and Sinister’s lackeys watch her do it. They stand in the doorway and watch her wipe the salty tear tracks from her face. Some watch with a smirk, others watch with indifference. Emma doesn’t know which she prefers more.

The Marauders give her a moment to compose herself, to catch her breath and clean her face of dried salt, before Multiple Man and one of his copies hauls her up and drags her out the door. Emma stumbles along at the center of a loose ring of Marauders. She can’t quite get her feet underneath her; her legs cramp and tingle and being in heels doesn’t help her cause. More than once she nearly twists her ankle, and fans her wings in an effort to keep herself upright.

But the action earns her a pair of hands clamped around the base of her already sore wings and her face slammed into the nearest wall. Emma cries out in pain and distress, the hands tighten around her wings, pulling at the tender joints, sending bolts of pain up her back.

“Wait--wait--” she tries to gasp out in between yanks on her wings. Any other words she tries to say come out as thin wails. She claws at the wall, desperate for some relief from the grip on her wings, but there’s none to be found.

“Try that again--” Arclight, it’s Arclight that has her pinned against the wall, Arclight whose hands are tight around her wings, whose fingers dig into her back, who twists just the right way and Emma screams, her knees buckling, even as Arclight holds her up-- “and I’ll snap your wings in two.”

Emma stiffens, hardly daring to breathe, and closes her eyes. She can’t close her wings, she’s not even sure she should move them, lest Arclight make good on his promise to break them in two. But after a moment the kite releases his hold on her and she drops to her knees, wings drooping to the floor.

Still, Emma manages to find her voice. “I assure you,” she says hoarsely, hoping her voice doesn’t waver with fear, “I have no intentions of trying anything of any kind.” Her arms shake with the effort to support her weight; her head spins.

“Good.” Arclight hauls her up again, this time by her hair, and drags her down the rest of the way down the hall.

“Let go of me!” Emma’s hands fly to her head, all at once trying to dislodge the iron grip Arclight has and trying to keep her wings still. Every instinct screams at her to flap them in desperation, anything to get him to let go and he won’t, and every jerk brings tears to Emma’s eyes. No matter how she protests, he doesn’t let go, not until they reach the end of the hall.

Someone opens a door wide enough for Arclight to throw Emma in. She hits the floor with a hard thump as the door is slammed shut behind her. The sound of the door slamming reverberates through her skull, making the radiating pain worse. Her hair aches down to the roots, and no amount of rubbing makes it go away immediately. Emma lays on the floor for a moment, clutching at the back of her head as though Arclight’s fingers are going to dig into her scalp at any moment.

But she’s alone, and when the ache finally fades as much as it will, Emma sits up and looks around. She’s in another gray room, smaller than her original one, with nothing more than a toilet and a sink.

Emma sighs. “Must everything in this facility be gray?” The design choices are less than appealing to her--and she wears white day in and day out.

The first thing she does is sit back against the wall, white on gray, the only color in this small bland landscape her pale hair and brown speckled wings. She shudders against the cold seeping through her wings. The cold does some good against the muscle aches in her back.

How much longer is she going to be here? How long is Sinister going to keep her strung up like that? It’s not a sustainable position, it’s not something he can leave her in for extended periods of time. She’s growing tired already, and it can’t have been more than a day. Every inch of her aches already, and she’d like nothing more than to curl up on the floor and sleep for a few hours. But she doesn’t have a guarantee they’ll grant her that.

Another few minutes and Emma finally hauls herself up off the floor with a sigh. She goes to the counter and looks into the mirror, finally seeing the dark circles lining her eyes, the dried salt still clinging to her cheeks, the smudged eyeshadow across the bridge of her nose. Only a day, and she’s already a mess.

And it’s only going to get worse.

She pulls her gloves off and sets them beside the sink. Her arms shake as she leans on the counter. She’s worn and exhausted, her body aches with the strain of being strung up for so long, her wings are sore and swollen, bloodied and ruffled. Sinister’s attempt to look for a decent feather has left her feathers mussed and out of place. With whatever time she has to herself, she’ll have to clean up her wings and get them looking presentable again for however long they’ll last.

A wet paper towel is decent enough to get the blood off, but it's a tedious process that means scrubbing at her feathers a little harder than she’d like. The slightest bit of pressure near the missing feathers, now red and swollen and clotted with dried blood, sends bolts of pain through her wings. The most Emma can do is lay cold towels over the sites in the hopes of relieving the irritation and swelling as best she can.

Someone knocks on the door. “Five minutes.”

Emma sighs. A limited amount of time. She has to make the most of it.

With her last few minutes, she takes the time to relieve herself and drink as much water from the faucet as she thinks is safe--she doesn’t know when she’ll be let out again and she can’t take any risks.

She takes another moment to splash cold water on her face, washing away the dried tears and smudged eyeshadow. It does little to help her exhaustion, but she can’t deny she feels the slightest bit refreshed by such a simple thing. The cold water clears her head. And that’s when the thought finally crosses her mind: she needs an escape plan.

The X-Men haven’t yet come to break her out, and she can’t rely on them to get to her before things get worse. She’s seen some of the things Sinister has sitting around the lab. She’s seen what he’s done to Warren. She’s not eager to see what he has in store for her. But, if she plays her cards right, she’ll be out before he could even think about taking a knife to her wings.

With a plan in mind, and much to the disappointment of the Marauders--no doubt looking for another excuse to swing her around by the wings--Emma emerges from the restroom with time to spare.

Arclight’s displeasure is clear, but Emma offers no resistance. She quietly shuffles along, wings low, and uses this time to get a look at her prison.

Everything is gray, for starters, rather drab, really, though she doesn’t know what other color she’d expect a laboratory to be. Certainly not red. Red in a laboratory is never a good color to see, if her wings are any indication.

Every hallway, every door, every room she catches the briefest glimpse of is gray, and there’s hardly a distinguishing feature between them. What Emma can tell from the few hallways she can see down is that they don’t lead anywhere, only to more rooms and things she knows she doesn’t want to see--even as part of her wonders if she’s going to see them anyway--when Sinister inevitably cuts more from her than just small bits of her wings.

Her wings fluff up at the very thought.

She spots a few avenues she thinks could be promising, but of course without properly exploring them, she won’t know until she’s on her way out. There won’t be nearly enough time for her to test every single one of them; once the Marauders find her out of her cell, the hunt will be on, and she’ll have a finite amount of time before they catch her.

If only she had her telepathy…

But no, they took that from her the moment she came through the door. They made damn sure she’d never be able to use her powers against them. No one wants to worry about a telepath that could render them unconscious without even being in the same room.

Well… She’ll make due with what she has.

(And the moment she gets home, she’ll have Logan hack the damn collar off her neck and grind it into the floor with her heel.)

“Eyes to yourself,” Harpoon snaps, raising his wings to her.

Emma mantles her own, even when she knows she has no chance against the hulking eagle. But she’d rather have her wings broken in a fight than have them broken by a madman in the name of “science.”

“That’s enough.” Arclight steps between them, wings flared. “I won’t have any fights breaking out here.” To Harpoon, ignoring Emma entirely, he says, “Sinister needs her in one piece. You can break her wings when he’s finished with her. If there’s anything left." He shoots Emma a knowing glance. It only fuels her need to escape as soon as possible.

With that, they finish leading her back to her cell. Arclight simply guides her in, but makes no move to chain her. “Sinister has decided to hold on the restraints for now.” He scowls at her. “I don’t agree with it, but he seems to think you’ll be well enough behaved.”

Emma scoffs. “Of course. I have no intentions of running--”

She has every intention of running--

“--therefore I would hate to take advantage of Sinister’s hospitality.” She opens her bloodied wings for emphasis. Arclight says nothing.

When they leave, Emma slumps down against the back wall of the cell and tries to get some sleep. It’s all she can do.

[***]

When she’s next retrieved for a break, Emma doesn’t know if she’ll be able to pull off her escape. She’s weaker this time around; Sinister has started taking more from her than just a handful of feathers. Blood, tissue--Emma’s screams had echoed off the walls of the small cell and been loud enough even Arclight had petitioned Sinister to gag her the next time he wanted to cut into her wings--and she suspects he’ll be coming for bone next.

All the while, she’s been hanging by her arms with her wings splayed out behind her. The toothed clamps have been irritating her wings, rubbing little bald spots where they bite her. Her arms and wrists have begun to go numb and she’s lost all feeling in her legs. There’s no way for her to move to get comfortable without aggravating something else.

The pain in her body doesn’t give her much opportunity to refine the details of her escape plan, of which she doesn’t have many. She knows, at least, that when she’s taken out for another break she’s going to make a run for it and hope for the best. If she can find a way out before the Marauders catch her, she’s golden, if not...She doesn’t want to think about that.

Part of her wonders if Sinister knows she’s plotting something. He’s given her a look every so often as he works on her, as though he has an idea there’s something stirring in her head. She’s tried to keep the thought buried deep in her mind where he won’t find it; she doesn’t need her telepathy to know how to guard her thoughts, although it certainly helps.

On the other hand, she hasn’t felt Sinister trying to probe her mind for any thoughts of escape. So either he has his suspicions and says nothing, content to let Emma hang herself; or he doesn’t have the slightest inkling, thinking her too weak to attempt anything.

Well. She’s about to surprise him, isn’t she?

She’s barely got the energy to shuffle along with the Marauders. It’s only Arclight and Harpoon this time; the kite had called off the other three when they’d pulled Emma from the cell and decided she was in no state to be making trouble.

She’s about to surprise them, too.

Emma musters enough energy to look around without getting Harpoon’s attention. She’s committed her possible avenues of escape to memory, counted the halls and held on to the ones she thinks will be her ticket out. All that’s left for her to do is make a break for it.

She’s already decided she’s going to run after her break. She needs to get water on her face, the back of her neck; take a drink, clean her wings. There’s no sense in running with a sluggish mind.

Or an empty stomach, she thinks regretfully. Water is the only thing she’s had in her stomach for days, though it feels like longer. Oh, how she wishes they would give her something to eat. She can’t remember the last time she had anything.

Emma groans as she leans on the counter. The circles under her eyes have darkened. She’s grown pale. Her hair is mussed and greasy; her wings are bloodied, her feathers unruly; she’s gone bald in some places, between the yanking and cutting and the clamps. Every inch of her hurts.

What she really needs is a warm shower and something warm in her stomach. And what she wouldn’t give to have either of those.

She can’t decide which one she looks forward to more.

“Three minutes.”

Emma lets out a strained groan. “Please,” she tries to say, her voice tired and thin. They don’t hear her.

She uses every second of her time this time, to where they practically drag her out. She goes willingly, doesn’t fight them, doesn’t even so much as give a hint that she’s planning on running. It’s not hard, either. Emma is genuinely exhausted and nothing about her current condition says she has it in her to attempt escape.

But she does it anyway.

As they pass one of the few hallways Emma made a mental note of, she feels a slight breeze come down the hall. It smells fresh, not yet tainted by the stale lab air, and it’s comfortably cold against her wings. Arclight grumbles, something about someone leaving the door opened again, but for Emma, it’s an opportunity. And she takes it.

With as much energy as Emma can muster, she makes a break. She slips behind Harpoon and bolts down the hallway, following the breeze as it combs through her wings. There’s a commotion behind her as Harpoon and Arclight realize she’s taken off, momentarily shocked that she’s even able to take off at all, and the sound of Arclight radioing for the other Marauders echoes down the hall.

The footsteps aren’t long to follow. Emma is out of sight by then, or so she hopes; she doesn’t see anyone when she looks over her shoulder but that doesn’t mean they aren’t going to catch up with her soon. She rounds the corner. Two gray doors lay at the end of the hall, and Emma knows--she knows--that on the other side of those doors is the freedom she craves.

And she knows, no matter how sore and abused her wings are, she’s going to have to fly--and hope she can carry herself all the way home.

The Marauders aren’t far behind her. She can hear them getting closer with each step she takes. She pushes herself towards the doors, even as her body protests, unused to such activity after being chained in one position for so long. But she pushes, she runs faster, and then she’s out--warm air brushes her face, real air, not the stale, recycled air of the lab.

Real air, and trees, and the sun is warm on her face and her wings, it’s been so long since she’s seen the outside and she doesn’t want to go back in, not to Sinister--

The door flies open behind her, the Marauders are on her, if she doesn’t go now, she never will.

Emma unfurls her wings, even as they ache and smart and fiercely protest, and flaps once, twice, and then she’s off, she can just barely make out the horizon over the tree line. The city dosn’t seem so far away, and the Xavier Institute is just beyond that, she can get there no problem, it won’t take her long--and if she has to stop in the city she can take a cab if she needs to--

The trees begin to warp in front of her eyes. Her head spins severely, uncomfortably. Her stomach churns. She loses control of her wings; she can’t fly straight, she can’t fly at all, she needs to land--she needs to get away--and she can’t--she’s going down, and she’s going down fast.

No, no, no--

And then there’s a hand around her ankle and she’s not just falling she’s being yanked out of the sky. She hits the ground hard enough to see stars; the ground never stops spinning, it just spins differently. Black tinges the edges of her vision.

Emma rolls over, watching the clouds swirl above her head and thinking with tears in her eyes that it will be the last time she ever sees them. They’ve caught her, the Marauders caught her, and she’s never going to see the sky or the sun or the trees again.

Her last view of the sky is blocked by Harpoon. The eagle draws his fist back, Emma’s head clears as she realizes what’s coming.

“No, no--”

Harpoon’s face is the last thing she sees.

[***]

Thick, heavy pain pulses through Emma’s face. She can barely open her eyes. Black outlines her vision. Warm blood runs down her face, drips onto the floor. The sound is deafening. It echoes off the walls. It grates in her ears.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

Emma can’t raise her head. Trying to makes her head pound and her stomach turn. She groans.

She’s chained up again. The soreness in her arms and her wings is painfully familiar. This time, she doesn’t have the strength to sit with the restraints, and instead she leans against them, straining her limbs further.

The door opens. Emma’s heart races.

She whimpers.

“I must say,” Sinister’s smooth voice rattles her head, “I didn’t expect you to run.” He tilts her head up to look at him. She can’t see much through her swollen eye, and her good eye is filled with tears. Sinister’s face is blurred.

“I must commend you,” he says, “for having that kind of audacity. You made it farther than any of us had anticipated.” He lets her head drop. “But I can’t let such a thing go unpunished, can I?”

Emma finds the strength to raise her head, blinking tears down her face. She should have known he would find some way to keep her from running again. She thinks somewhere in the back of her mind she knew there would be consequences to face for her attempted escape if she was caught, but she’d been so sure she’d get away that she hadn’t taken the time to consider it. Sh whines.

Sinister moves away from her and toward something at the front of the room.

She hadn’t noticed it before, the metal tray sitting across from her. On it are two instruments she can barely make out. Both of them are long and silver and look like blades of some kind. Her heart catches in her throat as she realizes what Sinister plans on doing with her. She lets out a strangled whine.

“Please…”

Sinister ignores her, turning away to look over the instruments on the table. “Be grateful I have no intentions of breaking your legs,” he says, glowering at her. “As for your wings...I have two options.” He lifts the first instrument, something Emma can barely make out as being a large pair of sheers. She lets out a thin wail.

“No, no, please…”

“Your wings will serve me better while they’re still attached.” He sets the sheers down. “But,” he says slowly, thoughtfully, hovering his hand over the second instrument on the tray, “I can’t risk you flying off again, can I?”

He picks up the second instrument. Nothing but a simple pair of scissors.

Emma pulls weakly at her restraints. “Please,” she begs, her voice heavy with tears, as she realizes what Sinister plans on doing. “Please, please don’t, please don’t.”

He ignores her pleas. “And that, Miss Frost, is why I’ve chosen to spare you the pain of a permanent grounding. A simple cut is all I’m going to give you. Quick and painless.”

“Please!” She struggles in her chains to no avail.

Still Sinister ignores her. He reaches down and grabs a handful of her feathers; the overwhelming wave of discomfort and nausea-inducing feeling of wrong makes Emma’s head spin. She can’t look, can’t bring herself to look at her feathers in Sinister’s hand, or the scissors he’s about to use on her.

“No,” she whimpers, finding her voice, harsh and ragged, “no, please, don’t--don’t take them from me!”

The cut doesn’t hurt, but Emma screams all the same.

15 notes · View notes

agent-cupcake · 4 years

Text

Anon asked for prompt 22 with Hubert

the read more isn’t working so here we are. thanks Tumblr, you’re Gucci af

22. “I’d never hurt you. Not unless you forced me to.”

The dark parted, pain slipping through in an agonizing stream. Thunderous hooves pounding against the ground, inside your head. Skin sliced apart, all of the insides slopping out onto the outsides. But then the rain engulfed you, ice freezing so cold it burned. You wanted to scream, but when you opened your mouth, water filled your lungs. And it was too much. You drowned.

Life had taught you to be mischievous and curious, to smile through the gloom if only to prove you could. You were the weird one, the strange one. Even at the academy, you never truly became a fighter. It simply wasn’t your nature. But that didn’t matter in the end. Survival became more important than living the day the Empire declared a terrible and bloody war against the Church of Seiros. And so you became something else, someone else. And now that person was broken, shattered into tiny shards of porcelain and scattered far and wide across the Tailtean Plains.

Goddess save you, it hurt. Everything, everywhere it hurt. Punishment, surely, because living through calamity was grotesque, unnatural. You should have died, but you had not. Consciousness wavered in and out. At some point, you opened your eyes to the smeary world around you. Faces flashed across your vision, voices echoed and rang in your ears. You tried to speak, but your tongue was swollen and numb and there was no air. Each labored breath was a stab of pain. There was movement beneath you, around you. Jolting, jostling. Onward, forward. The nauseating scent of the battlefield stuck in your nose, the movement of your world twisting your insides. Vomit choked you. The rain washed over you anew.

Clouds broke to give a reprieve from the oppressive rain, but there was no clarity. You couldn’t understand. The pain was less intense now, but you couldn’t help but whimper, uncomfortable to the very marrow of your bones. A new face appeared. An awful, bitter liquid filled your mouth, giving you no choice but to swallow. In turn, you were swallowed by the sharp maw of darkness.

The world had stopped moving. Your surroundings had changed. The world had finally settled. And through the daze of the drugs they forced you to swallow, you remembered. Your friends were dead. Lost to you. The strength and bravery you had so desperately clung to were lost. In a ragged and hoarse voice, you begged for death. It filled the small, stone cell. You thrashed about so violently that you had to be tied down to the bed lest you injure yourself further. And still, they forced medicine, food, water, and treatment upon you.

Swimming in the daze of herbs administered for pain management and to keep you docile, you wept. Drowning in your tears, hours and hours spent mourning for the country you’d lost and the friends who died while you inexplicably were kept alive.

You couldn’t understand.

But, eventually, when you could cry no more, you realized that you had to try.

So you fought the dark and the monsters that lived there, refusing to give in to the sleep you knew would bring nightmares. The tears had gone, your hitching sobs faded into painful hiccups. The pain was the ache of healing ribs, as it turned out. The crying and thrashing had done little to help.

There, in the dark, you focused. Glazed eyes fixed upon the stone ceiling, sluggish mind moving through memories and thoughts, testing each one to check for value. The sandstone above you was marked with a map of cracks. Your lips moved with whispered words as you attempted to compile some understanding of all that had happened. The whole room was cold stone, indifferent to your pain. Your head ached, but you forced yourself to think.

“I heard them say it,” you muttered, your voice quiet to avoid putting too much pressure on your ribs. “The battle at the Tailtean Plains was a complete loss for the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus. For us. King Dimitri is... He’s dead. They’re all dead.” The lack of passion in your voice scared you, but it wasn’t unearned. You had tried to verbalize the reality of everyone’s death a dozen or so times now, each attempt ending in tears.

“But I’m not dead.” Not for a lack of trying, though. Towards the very end, a sword had slashed a gaping wound into your side. You could recall fragments of that moment. Shock, terror. The fall was missing from your memory, but you remembered the agony of hitting the ground. As the dark invited you, the rain cutting beneath your skin and running your blood pink, there was a voice, a set of hands. Someone you clung onto in those final moments. And the call of the abyss.

“The Imperial army spared me,” you said. “I… Don’t know why. The cut was fixed, but there were too many other wounded soldiers to heal me completely.” It wasn’t worth mentioning that your captors probably didn’t want you to be healed, either. An injured, drugged prisoner was a bit more convenient. “Now we’re in Enbarr,” you continued. “I’ve never been to Enbarr. I always hoped I’d get to come and see the opera, Professor Manuela made it sound so...” Your whispers died off with that thought, chapped lips relaxing into a part to make way for your wheezing breaths. It was too much to think of things like that, lost memories from when your life was normal and made sense.

You didn’t want to sleep, but the sudden exhaustion was too much to bear and the sound of rain was pulsing, pounding, undeniable, inescapable.

It was light again, the sun shining outside the tiny slit window of your cell. The priest who visited you on what you assumed to be a daily basis was a stern man with exhausted eyes. He gave you no name and did not as for yours, all the while stoically ignoring all of your questions. Each day he checked on you, he reapplied the Silence that kept your only weapon unusable. There was a servant who managed the lamps, gave you food, and switched out the chamberpot, but she did so without so much as a single word to you. She had never so much as given you a glance. With such intense isolation, it was no wonder you’d begun speaking to yourself so frequently. You worried that if you didn’t, you’d forget how to.

Light, then dark. Another visit from the taciturn Priest. With treatment, your wounds were healing nicely. They no longer plied you with sleeping powders or potions. As badly as you had wished for it before, recovery and control over your own mind was a double edge sword. On the one hand, you were glad. On the other, you feared what would happen now that you were more or less whole. Any day now, your captives would make their intentions for your rescue clear and you didn’t hold out much hope that it was altruistic in nature. They’d question you, maybe. Possibly torture you. You knew many things you shouldn’t, after all. If you were being completely honest, you knew that you would break quite easily under the threat of pain. Your life had never taught you to be strong, and even small pains made your eyes well up with tears. After the questioning, they would kill you. That was the only logical conclusion. There was nothing they could ever do to make you accept Edelgard as your ruler. You could never, ever forgive any of them for what they had done. You’d be a loose end.

Cowardice struck deep and icy into your spine whenever your thoughts began to spiral in that direction. Not tears of mourning, but of self-pity. Pathetically, all you could linger on was that you didn’t want this to happen, any of it. All you had ever wanted was to be with your friends. See the opera in Enbarr, visit the Alliance’s famed capital, and help King Dimitri rebuild Faerghus with all your friends. It wasn’t fair. Why weren’t you dead? Why you and not them? Why did Emperor Edelgard declare war? You knew so many things but understood so little.

But the world didn’t stop for your ignorance.

Minutes. Hours. Days. You had no idea how much time passed between the Priest’s visits. The sound of the door to your cell being unlocked yanked you from a hazy half-sleep. It was expected, and you weren’t entirely awake as you turned on your thin bed to sit up –a motion that still brought alarming amounts of pain to your damaged midsection– and smoothed your hair as a nod to manners you to whom you owed no tribute. You considered what you might say to the Priest, if you would try jokes or threats or anything to distract you from reality and make you feel more human. He had never responded, but you tried anyway. To remind yourself, maybe, of what you were. Or for some easy entertainment. Today you’d go with a joke, you could think of a really good joke, surely-

Those thoughts dissipated like mist burned away by the sun when you recognized the man who entered your cell. Hubert had changed, but not so much that you could be confused as to his identity. The shock of change was the first thing you noticed once the jarring jolt of seeing him enter your cell abated somewhat, the thing your mind grasped onto dearly to keep from panicking. Hubert von Vestra, Emperor Edelgard’s intimidating shadow. Not much of a shadow now, towering over your sitting form with an unreadable look of consideration on his face.

Fear and anxiety threatened to overtake you when you met his stare, but you combatted it with sheer disbelief. You knew quite a bit about Hubert. As far as particular points of intrigue, he was practically a gold mine of secrets and mystery. If that weren’t enough, Hubert was also tied to many of the most fascinating secrets you’d uncovered. You made it a point to keep up with spies and informants that dealt in information about the man in specific. A hobby of yours.

Unfortunately, you knew very little about who had become as a person. None of the reports spoke of the things you couldn’t help but notice now. Hubert retained that aura of malice you remembered, but his manner of presentation had changed dramatically. Not merely the hair and the clothes, or the whetstone of time that sharpened his cutting bone structure into something lethal, but some fundamental piece of his identity. Gone was the borderline awkward line of his stiff shoulders and self-important smirk, replaced by something more natural. Hubert’s posture and expression now belonged to him entirely, worn with all the comfort of a favored coat. Although he had been technically an adult even during the academy days, the person you saw now was a man. Odd how that distinction mattered. Odd how it made your skin crawl, want to scramble off the bed to ease the height disparity and attempt to gain some sort of upper hand.

Five years ago you hadn’t felt afraid of Hubert in the least. But, five years ago you hadn’t been a prisoner of war facing the victor from a position of battered powerlessness. Five years ago you had been an awkward teenage girl who chased secrets without knowing the inherent danger of finding things people would prefer to keep hidden. Five years ago you hadn’t been overpoweringly aware that you were helpless beneath his imposing, masculine presence. Now you understood, and so it was only rational for you to feel afraid.

“I’m glad to see you looking so well, I feared you wouldn’t make it the last time we parted,” Hubert said with a poisonous warmth, sitting on the only other piece of furniture in the cell beside the bed –a chair that the surgeon usually occupied. Like the bed, it was bolted to the floor. As if you were any great combatant. Even if you weren’t injured, the permanent state of Silence imposed on you would have rendered any and all of your combat strength null.

Words jumped to your tongue, but you tempered them. This interaction was not to be taken lightly. So you measured Hubert. The immediate response was to ask him if he was the one to save you, given that the last time you remembered meeting him was five years ago. You couldn’t remember anything following the battle on the plains, especially not him, but after a second you decided that was redundant as the affirmative was the only logical conclusion. Then you considered demanding to know why he had saved you and why you were here, but feared that your fear and weakness would leak through those words.

In your most intimate mind, past the uneasy calm you clung to, you longed to express fire hot rage and claw his eyes out, to damn the consequences and attack him with all your meager strength for what he had done. It wasn’t like you to do that, but maybe just this once you could be that person. It was what he deserved, what your friends deserved.

But you didn’t. Worse, you feared you couldn’t, that your strength would fail you and you’d only be reminded once more of the weakness you had never been able to kick. Instead, you found yourself without a single word to greet a man you hadn’t seen in over five years, your eyes glassy as wrath turned to despairing slush in your veins. Seeing him reminded you of all you had lost. Reminded you of the last time you had seen him, standing against his Imperial troops in defending the monastery. That battle had been the last with all of your friends. They were all dead or traitors now. Thinking of it was like tugging open the ragged skin of an open wound, making you physically recoil away. Weakness, too weak. You did your best to shove those thoughts from your mind, to steady your breathing.

Hubert studied you a moment longer, continuing to wait for you to respond. Finally, he scoffed, a sound at odds with the slight smirk on his face. “Not even a thanks?” he asked. “Well, you always were unforgivably rude. Constantly watching Lady Edelgard and asking questions about things you had no business knowing. I considered killing you a dozen times, you know.”

“How flattering,” you responded, or tried to. The words were meant to be cheeky, to show you weren’t afraid, but your voice was shaking and hoarse from disuse and got garbled up before they even left your mouth. Instead, they set you coughing, a reaction that struck your bandaged ribs and stomach with about as much tenderness as a hammer and stole away any of the power you’d tried to claim. Either the pain or the coughing set your eyes to watering and face flushing red hot, head and chest aching fiercely when you pulled in a final wheezing gasp. The cup of water on the floor at the side of your bed was stale, but welcome in the way it soothed your ragged throat. “How flattering,” you tried again when you had a grip on yourself, grinding the words out to keep them steady.

“Flattering? Hardly. You were an annoyance, nothing more than a pest I considered for extermination,” Hubert said, doing one of the last things you’d expect and passing you a plain white handkerchief with a look of half-concealed disdain. You accepted after only a second of considering your options and, deciding that it was more embarrassing to look a mess than to take his charity, used it to mop up your face. Whatever the small act of kindness meant, you were in no position to turn it down.

That justification didn’t ease the discomfort of the way he smirked at your easy acceptance, watching you in a way you found nearly unbearable. Hubert was smart, smarter than you, maybe. Where you were a hobbyist, he was a professional. Not with people, but with the deconstruction of them.

“Unfortunately, it seems that inviting the ire of those more powerful than yourself wasn’t a habit you managed to rid yourself of,” Hubert continued. He spoke in a tantalizing way, inviting you to ask questions, to give into the blunt shock factor he was trying to encourage. Part of you wanted to give in –those words really did pique your curiosity. You had always been interested in knowing the things you shouldn’t. It was probably the most valuable attribute you’d brought to the war. But you weren’t quite so reckless as you had once been and the other part of your mind just wanted to ask him to say what he wanted outright, annoyed with the pointless posturing.

Unfortunately, you were too afraid of your voice cracking to do either. Hubert waited for you, but it was a fruitless pause, each ticking second wearing away at your raw nerves. He sighed in annoyance when you didn’t rise to the bait which was, in its own way, a bit of a victory.

“You see, before the battle, I was asked to ensure your death. A request on behalf of someone quite important,” Hubert began to explain. “Doesn’t that strike you as odd? You’re laughably unimportant, even among those defending the Church. I understand it as necessary to see to the death of all the kingdom patriots, but why name you in particular?” Hubert waited again as if for an answer, but the gleam in his eyes indicated that it was merely a pause to watch your reaction. His smile was sharp, eyes flashing. “So I began looking into you, wondering if you were the same annoyingly meddlesome girl I remembered from the academy who stuck her nose into things she really ought to have left alone. You’re smarter than you were, but I managed to find evidence of your nosing in the most… Unwanted of places.”

Your heart sank, stomach twisting and sloshing with the water you’d just downed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” you said flatly, despondently.

“You can’t lie to me. I’ve been keeping an eye on you for a while. Once we reclaimed the Kingdom capital, it wasn’t difficult to find your notes.” You tensed up, thinking of all the information you’d compiled. So caught up your own tragedy, you’d nearly forgotten. “You needn’t worry, I managed to keep them away from any prying eyes. Although, after studying them for a bit, I think I can understand why they would want you dead. The shadowy cabal you write about, that you’ve taken so much effort to document and study. Those Who Slither in the Dark.”

Your breath caught. The name made you flinch away, such a stupid reaction. Words couldn’t hurt you and yet these ones… They laid heavy in their air. Those Who Slither in the Dark. You had known they were working with the Empire, but hadn’t believed they’d be entrenched in the very heart of the Imperial crown. It made sense, in a way. A sickly, horrifying sort of sense. Hubert was working through them, for them, and they wouldn’t spare you. That was all you could think. Compared to their other crimes, the torture of a single individual wasn’t even that bad. All things being equal, it was practically a mercy. Hubert’s eyes didn’t stop gleaming, flashing, devouring your expressions as they flittered across your face.

“Your friends didn’t believe you about them. Nobody did. They never so much as attempted to understand you, let alone believe what you were saying,” Hubert sounded gleeful in reminding you of that fact. You had no idea how he could have possibly known that, but it hurt too badly to ask. Of course your friends hadn’t believed you, there were far more pressing issues to be dealt with. Only Rhea had given any indication that she knew of who you spoke. But her warpath was waging in one direction, and she didn’t care to consider your conspiracy. Of course, of course-

“They didn’t know,” you said, hating the weak tremor of your voice. You had to be stronger, to redirect the conversation. “But you… Your emperor… You’re are working with them.” Emotion bled into your tone, and you didn’t bother trying to hide it. It was a stronger feeling, anger. His emperor was the one who had lead the deadly assault on your country and kinsmen. Your king, your friends, dead at her orders. Commands supported by those shadowy fiends and their horrifying tactics. Your friends had no reason to believe you about Those Who Slither in the Dark, but there was no way Hubert didn’t know fully what they were and what they had done.

“Using them,” Hubert clarified lightly, clearly unphased by your accusation.

“You used them to destroy Arianrhod?” you asked Hubert. “No survivors. Civilians, soldiers, women, and children all taken out in fell swoop… Emperor Edelgard can only rule when the land has been scorched into submission, is that it?”

A controlled flash of dangerous anger, purified violent intent, crossed his face. “You forget your place,” Hubert said, his voice curling with deadly promise. “Speak of Her Majesty in such a disrespectful manner again and I’ll have your tongue.”

You shied away from him on instinct, flushing with fear. You really had forgotten your place, your circumstances. There was nothing in Hubert’s expression or voice to indicate that he wasn’t willing to follow through with that threat, and you could do nothing to stop him. Defiance was so easy until you remembered the consequences.

“I’m sorry,” you said, speaking without even thinking about it, anything to spare yourself, to soothe the familiar flare of hot tempers.

Hubert looked somewhat surprised by the apology, but that quickly became a smile. “It’s difficult to believe you are the woman he was worried about, so easily giving in to such an inconsequential threat. Truthfully, I expected a bit more fight,” he said. Your shoulders curled inwards as you avoided Hubert’s eyes out of embarrassment, scorning yourself a hundred times over and hoping you never found out what he would consider a consequential threat. Seemingly bored of your silence, he moved on with a more business-like tone, “To answer your question, allow me to ask you this. Did you approve of everything the church did? Or did you see their help merely as a means to an end, a way to defeat the Empire and potentially use in rebuilding Faerghus.”

The question threw you off once more, making you frown. Hubert would understand that type of thinking, you’d seen him employ it a dozen times over with the dubious types he would hire to enact some of his missions. It was practical. Then you thought of Lady Rhea, her rage. Her terrifying, unholy rage. You couldn’t help but shiver. And then there was the matter of their sin, a well-documented lie they hid from the world, banning innovation and information. The Church was corrupt in a deep-seated way, rotten down to its roots. You could understand the argument Hubert was making, it was only logical.

You shook your head in denial of that understanding. “That’s a false equivalence,” you protested. “The Church might have been bad, but the people you’re working with are… Malice incarnate. How could you even think to use them? The pain they caused, the unspeakable things they’ve done.” You let out a breath, focusing on the pain of your ribs to try and avoid getting emotional again. “I just don’t understand.”

“Fortunately, I don’t require your comprehension of such decisions,” Hubert said dismissively, doing nothing to hide his patronizing tone. “Now that the Empire has taken out the corrupt Church of Seiros, it is my duty to wage the shadowy war on Those Who Slither in the Dark. Due to their extreme reach and power, I cannot trust many to join me in this cause. Consider this a professional venture. Help me destroy Those Who Slither in the Dark. In return, I’ll allow you to live.”

“If I don’t?” you asked, an instinctual question. You knew the answer, of course you did.

“I’ll kill you,” Hubert said without pause. His posture was relaxed into the chair, his arms folded and head tilted slightly with a small twist of a smile on his face. Confidence radiated from the man. Curiosity, maybe, to see which path you would take.

You stared at him with parted lips and wide eyes, realizing once again that you were a coward. After waking up, bound and undergoing treatment sustained from trying to take on the Imperial Army, knowing you had lost the battle and everything you held dear, you had begged to be killed. That was the only honorable way of it, to die with your king and country. It’s what Hubert would do, what any of your friends would do.

And yet now that he offered it, death did not sound so appetizing after all.

“Does allowing me to live mean I’ll be free?” you asked, a hedging point for negotiation. You had no leg to stand on in the matter, but you felt as if you had to at least try.

“It means I won’t kill you,” Hubert reiterated bluntly. Meeting his eyes, shadowed by the poor lighting of the room yet soaking up every drop of the yellow spectrum light, you realized once more that you had no power here. He was asking for your aid, but you were not necessary. Convenient, if anything.

And you were a coward. An awful, terrible coward.

“Fine,” you said. For the greater good, you told yourself desperately. For the sake of those who died. For the sake of those who yet lived. To take down the biggest evil, the one King Dimitri was too blind to even consider might exist. Because you could escape, you could liberate Faerghus just as your friends wanted, as Loog did.

Because you didn’t want to die.

Hubert smiled. The smile of the grim reaper himself.

“I suspect you’re ready to be freed of this cage, then? We have an unimaginable amount of work ahead of us. Your wounds seem to be healing nicely.” Without warning, Hubert reached out, taking your chin in hand to tilt your face into the light. It must have been awful, a faded watercolor of bruises, but Hubert looked more intrigued than disgusted. The feeling of his gloved hand on your skin sent a shock through you, your muscles becoming tense and breath catching in fear. He noticed this, too. And it made him smile. “Are you scared of me?” Hubert asked, amused by the idea. “You shouldn’t worry. I’d never hurt you. Not unless you forced me to.”

#hubert von vestra #hubert von vestra x reader #fe hubert #fe hubert x reader #yandere #fire emblem three houses spoilers #FE3H #my writing

104 notes · View notes

keelywolfe · 4 years

Text

Drabble: The Code (baon)

Summary: Grocery shopping can be an unexpected adventure, as Edge is about to find out.

Notes: This one is a little longer than the others, so I am posting it separately.

Tags: Spicyhoney, Established Relationship, Domestic Fluff

Part of the ‘by any other name’ series.

~~*~~

Read it on AO3

Read it here!

~~*~~

When it came to grocery shopping, Edge usually did it on his own. Stretch did enjoy some shopping and still occasionally tagged along whenever Edge went to the Farmer’s Market, but when it came to a plain old grocery store, his attention waned quickly. Aisle of baking supplies and paper towels did not hold his interest and the cereal aisle was an exercise in patience as Edge calmly refused to buy a dozen boxes of sugary nightmares simply because Stretch wanted the toy surprise inside.

After his injury, he was forced to allow Stretch to take over the shopping duties and gave him a very carefully curated list, making sure not to include anything that would be too difficult to take on the bus. His love did an admirable job at following the list precisely and Edge made a point of ignoring the single box of frosted sugary disgustingness with its promise of a decoder ring inside.

It was still a relief to be able to return to at least a few of his normal tasks and once Edge was more or less back on his feet and able to drive again, he resumed his duty as the family grocer. But he didn’t protest when Stretch tagged along, made no comment on his fidgeting as they made their way slowly through the store and in turn, his love didn’t offer a single complaint at how long they were taking and did not pressure Edge to take one of the motorized carts at the front of the store, although he did give them a longing look as Edge determinedly walked past.

He managed to keep the trip to only an hour and there was only the beginning ghost of an ache in his leg as they made their way to the registers.

Edge stopped before the entered the line and let out a sigh, “I forgot to pick up tamarind paste.”

Before he could turn the cart back into the store, Stretch piped up, “i’ll get it, you wait here.” He was gone before Edge could protest or even suggest a brand name.

Ah, well, he could make do with whatever Stretch found.

He started to reach for his phone to check his email while he waited when a tug on the back of his shirt caught his attention. Edge craned his head around, absently assuming he’d somehow gotten hooked on a shelf. Instead, he found a Human child looking up at him with rounded eyes. He wasn’t particularly good at judging Human ages; at a guess, he’d say this child was no more than five or six.

“Can I help you?” Edge asked cautiously.

The child nodded slowly and lisped out, “Are you a ninja?”

“Am I…” Edge trailed off.

The child nodded earnestly. “ ‘cause you’re wearing all black and ninjas wear black!”

Edge looked down at himself, his t-shirt, gloves, trousers, shoes, even the brace on his leg were all in black. He’d chosen his clothing this morning for comfort more than anything. It seemed that going forward, he might consider adding a splash of color, lest he be mistaken for an assassin anywhere else.

“I see.” No wonder Stretch got along so well with children; they had a very similar thought process. Edge crouched down to the child’s level and told him, “I’m sorry, I’m not a ninja. I don’t believe there are any ninjas in Ebott.”

“Oh.” He sounded terribly disappointed, then, hopefully. “Are you a cyborg?”

“Timothy!” From a nearby aisle, a woman came sweeping up, likely the child’s mother, and her expression was one of utter horror. Edge stood and took a wary step back, but no angry words came, only an embarrassed blurt. “I am so sorry!” She looked down at her unrepentant child and scolded, “Timothy, that is very rude, we’ve talked about this! This gentleman is a Monster, remember the book we read?”

“It’s no trouble,” Edge said, bemused. The child, Timothy, seemed to be attempting to look repentant, and that was a familiar sight, one often seen on Stretch, Red, and Sans on any given day, as a solo act or a trio, depending on circumstances, with Jeff thrown in occasionally as added seasoning. But the mother’s mention of a book piqued his curiosity. “There’s a book about Monsters?”

“Yeah, ‘My Neighbor the Monster’!” Timothy said enthusiastically, then, with lingering hope. “You sure you’re not a cyborg? Cause you got a robot leg.”

“I’m very sure.” Edge said solemnly. “I’m only a Monster, nothing more.” It was on the tip of his tongue to apologize for being such a letdown as the boy deflated, sadly rejoining his mother in the checkout line.

And so when the child happened to glance back at him, Edge summoned a very small bone, glowing blue, letting it twirl briefly above his gloved hand before clenching his fingers and letting it vanish from sight. Timothy’s mouth dropped open, his already huge eyes going saucer wide. Edge held a single long finger to his mouth and the boy nodded, even as his mother jostled him forward to the register.

“hey, babe, i found it!” Stretch panted as he jogged back, holding up a tube that was twice the size that Edge would have purchased on his own. It seemed he’d have to research a few new recipes this week.

He led the way to the registers and began unloading their cart. “Do you mind if we make a stop at the bookstore on our way home?”

Nothing about that question should have made Stretch look so immediately suspicious, “you’re already pushing your limit on standing.”

“I’ll be sitting when I’m driving,” Edge told him reassuringly. “And I can sit while you look around.”

That suspicious look eased, but not entirely. “okay, sure. what brought this on?”

“There’s a book I need to find.” And an author, who might very well appreciate an endorsement from the Monster community along with a thank you of the monetary kind, if the book turned out to be one they approved of.

“uh huh. not going to tell me what?”

“A ninja never reveals his secrets,” Edge told him solemnly. He stepped forward to pay for the groceries, serenely ignoring his husband’s confusion. Stretch would hear the story soon enough and until then, he had a code to adhere to.

He suspected Timothy would approve.

-finis-

#spicyhoney #papcest #keelywolfe #underfell #underswap #underfell papyrus #underswap papyrus #by any other name

29 notes · View notes

nais-nook · 4 years

Text

Sawyer - Pt 1

(Hey there! You may be liking/reblogging something without links to new pieces I may have written for this character, just letting you know in case you’re interested in reading more!)

Hey, I’m not dead, but uni is dragging my ass to hell and back. Anyhow, here's Sawyer, who belongs to the lovely @yandere-flower. He looks like this, and I drew a reference for his tattoos here since I don’t describe them much. I think I might make this story a little more interactive - as in you can make choices and it’ll change the outcome, but I’ll see what you all think before I try something like that!

~***~

Part 2, Part 3

Summary: Who knew helping a random stranger would lead to you being dragged into unsavoury business?

Pairing: Male x Female Reader.

Words:4458.

Warnings: Mentions of death, Swearing, Suggestive themes (because it’s Sawyer, but it’s still pretty mild).

Normally, navigating through the twists and turns of the barely lit roads was a cinch. You knew your area like the back of your hand - what buses were the best to take, which seats on those buses had the most room, which roads were off-limits lest you wanted to get mugged.

Yet today felt different. Weird.

The air felt thicker. The shadows were gloomier. The lights seemed to flicker.

Every breath you took was held a little longer than usual and every small sound made you tense up. You stuffed your hands deeper into your pockets, even pushing off your hood so you could see better. Just in case.

You turned the corner, spotting the familiar graffitied wall and almost sagged in relief. A couple of alleyways and one more corner, then you would have been in the safety of your home. You picked up the pace. Would have made it too, if you hadn’t heard the muffled groan echo from the alleyway just shy of the corner you were supposed to turn.

Just keep walking, you urged yourself, your footsteps already faltering at the sound of yet another moan. Don’t get involved in things you can’t handle.

And despite every nerve in your body screaming at you to ignore whatever it was, you turned back and called into the darkness.

“Hey!” Your grip on your phone was vice-like. “Is, uh, is anyone there?”

“Don’t worry about it, just go.”

The sudden voice startled you. It sounded masculine and croaky, like a thirsty man. Immediately you fumbled with your phone to switch on the flashlight. When it flicked to life it revealed the owner of the voice.

Lying in the filth of the alleyway was a man draped in a dark jacket. You would have been able to at least guess his age if it weren’t for the blood caking his face and clothes. A swamp of murky red. Whoever he was, you could tell he had been here for a while.

“Are you okay?” You inched closer, hands up and voice soothing as you picked your way past broken glass and cigarette butts. Kneeling in the grime you methodically checked his pulse and breathing. “Listen, I’m going to call an ambulance. You’ll be at a hospital soon, alright?”

“No. No, no, no. Don’t - don’t do that. I can’t go to a hospital.”

“What do you mean you can’t go to a hospital?” You peeled off his jacket, already surveying for anything that required your immediate attention. He hissed at your touch, then cursed loudly when you propped up against an abandoned skip.

“Listen, if I get sent to a hospital, fuck,” his grip on you was stronger than you expected for someone in such a state, “if I get sent to a hospital, I will definitely die. Trust me on that.”

“The hospital is where you go when you’re hurt, and I’m not sure if you’re completely aware of the fact that you’ve been hurt, but you have. Badly.” You applied pressure to the angry gash you found on his forehead. With your free hand you unlocked your phone, paying no mind to his protests.

You remained calm and collected. Thankfully, this sort of stuff didn’t bother you much anymore. Not like it did at the beginning of your training.

“What, you’re telling me you don’t get a little rowdy when you’re invited to an alleyway party?” He chuckled dryly, coughed, then groaned.

“I can’t say I have. I would also suggest not moving until help arrives. If you don’t you might -” you hesitated. Telling someone they might die if they didn’t listen wasn’t really something you were supposed to say.

“I might what? Die?”

“I didn’t -”

“I know that.” He closed his eyes, tilting his head up towards the sky. His hand hung off your wrist, as if it would stop you from calling the emergency services. “Please don’t call an ambulance. It’ll make more trouble than it’s worth, for both of us.”

Your fingers ached from the grip on your phone. His blood was slick between your fingertips. You knew he needed help. He wouldn’t last long without it.

With the smell of booze and sweat and trash filling your lungs, you made your decision.

***

“I should have just sent him to a hospital,” you scolded yourself as you flipped the final piece of French toast in the pan. “He could have acquired brain injury, or internal bleeding or something.”

The sizzle of the toast was your only response. You nodded, “You’re right, I am stupid. This is what I get for listening to him. What if someone has reported him as missing?”

You nudged the toast onto the already piled plate, then leaned in uncomfortably close and stared at it. The warmth of the food wafted over your face. “Can you even do that? I’m sure you have to wait a few days before you report someone as missing.”

The next few minutes of you preparing a cup of tea went the exact same way. You interrogated the kettle, tea bags, the sugar and then the milk. Unfortunately, none of them held the answers that you so desperately seeked.

After arranging the drink, plate and a couple of pieces of fruit on a tray you made your way up to the guest room housing your newest patient. You stood in front of the cream door, balancing the tray on your hip as you muttered, “I swear to god, if he’s dead, I'm going to scream.”

The knock resonated in the hall, yet there was no response.

“Hey, you awake in there?”

Nothing.

You cracked open the door, the light from the hallway spilling in, and peeked through the opening. There the man lay, in the exact same position you put him in last night. Gritting your teeth, you nudged the door open, hoping with all your heart you could just slip in and out. Your hopes were shattered when he sat up, all whilst wincing.

“Morning.” His voice still sounded a little hoarse. Better, but not quite.

“Hi,” you responded absentmindedly, paying more attention to what revealed itself as the blankets fell away.

At the very least he was clean - that you made sure of. The dull ache in your lower back served as a reminder of the effort it took to strip him to his boxers and scrub him clean. However, you weren’t really paying much attention to him last night. Not while you were so desperately trying to make sure he didn’t die. Yet here, bathing in the light from the hallway, you had to admit - he looked awful.

Handsome, but awful. With white hair and a face that made him look like a prince from a children's book. The only thing that would break the illusion of him appearing in the happily ever after of a princess being the piercings and tattoos adorning him.

That and the bruising. All over his neck and collar bone. Stretching across his stomach and side, like someone had tried to knock the wind out of him. He had scars too, though small and none were due to the state you found him in last night.

“Admiring me, are you?” The man cracked a smile. It still managed to look dazzling regardless of the purple and reds smothering his jaw and the slight swelling of his face.

“No, actually.” You pressed your lips together. “Just assessing how badly you’ve been hurt.”

“What can I say, I bruise like a peach.” He quickly ran his tongue over a canine, and you could have sworn you saw the flash of a tongue piercing. “Taste like one too, if you ever fancy giving me a try.”

“I - what?” Your face twisted in confusion as you tried to process what he had just said.

“You heard me.”

“See, I don’t know if this is how you genuinely act, or if this is you being out of it, so I’m not gonna react at all. Deal?”

“Fine by me.” He shuffled, harshly blowing air out of his nose before inclining his head towards you. “That for me?”

You suddenly remembered the tray you were holding and set it down on the drawers next to the bed. “Yeah, here you go.”

“Aw, you care.”

“No offence, but who saves someone just to starve them?”

“A sadist.” He huffed stretching ever so slowly over to the tray.

“Do I look like a sadist to you?”

His attention flicked to you for a second before focusing on the tray again. “You could be. You'd be surprised what looks can cover up.”

“If I’m a sadist you’re a masochist.”

“What makes you say that?” He winced as his fingers grazed the edge of the tray.

You swept a hand in front of you, knowing full well that he would understand you were talking about the position he was in - clearly pained and yet still stretching out.

“Okay, you got me there. Can I have the tray now?”

“You aren't allergic or lactose intolerant or anything? I didn't get to ask last night before you practically passed out on me and I forgot to even consider it when I was making you food.”

“Nah, you're good.”

You nodded, gently positioning the tray in his lap before skirting around the bed to pry open the curtain. “The light not hurting you or anything?”

“If it was hurting me, you'd know by now.” He held up the plate, his hands trembling, you noted. “Want some?”

“I’m fine, it’s for you.”

He raised a brow, tilting the plate this way and that, as he teased you. “You didn’t poison it did you? Is that why you’re refusing to take one?”

“Oh, I definitely poisoned it,” you joked, arms crossed as you leaned against the window. “A little Snow White situation.”

He gasped playfully and batted his dark lashes at you. “Will I get a kiss?”

“If you get one of your buddies to come ‘round, sure.”

He shrugged, gave you a massive grin and brought the cup of tea to his lips carefully. “I’d rather not. But anyway, thank you for the breakfast. Even if I do end up dead.”

“No worries.”

You perched on the window sill and stretched your arms above your head, the movement bringing temporary relief to your back. Your patient observed every move you made with big brown eyes.

“Name’s Sawyer by the way,” he said around a mouth full of toast, and you had to give him a withering look.

“I’m (Y/n). Please swallow your food before you speak, I don’t think performing the Heimlich manoeuvre on you with those bruises will be a good idea.”

One big gulp later he was smiling from ear to ear, something cheeky hidden behind it. “(Y/n), huh? Nice name for an even nicer face.”

“Thank you, I guess?”

“(Y/n), I have a question for you.”

“Okay?”

“I am naked.”

“...That’s - that’s not a question, you know that right?”

… Maybe he wasn’t going to walk away from this as unscathed as you originally thought.

“The question was going to be why.”

“Not sure if you noticed but you’ve been cleaned up - your clothes have been fixed and washed too, thanks to me.” You patted your bicep and gave him what you hoped was a friendly, not tired smile. Sure, you weren’t a body builder in the slightest, but you were able to lug around people much bigger than yourself, Sawyer being a prime example of that.

“I mean, yeah, that makes sense, but-”

“Besides, you aren’t even fully naked, I left your boxers… on…” Your eyes widened in horror as Sawyer set the tray aside to peek under the blankets. “Please tell me you can feel the lower half of your body.”

“I mean, it’s warm?”

“Sawyer, this is serious, tell me you can feel the lower half of your body.” You had made it to the bedpost when he slid a hand underneath the blankets and nodded, an apologetic look plastered onto his face.

“Nope, yeah, I still have feeling down there, sorry.” His demeanour changed almost instantly as he wiggled his brows at you. “Seeing as you're here now, wanna cop a feel?”

“No! Are you normally like this? Should I be concerned?”

He completely ignored your question. “You know I’m pretty surprised you didn’t take my boxers off.”

You scrubbed your face in an attempt to quell your irritation, then placed your hands on your hips and sighed. “And why would I need to do that?”

“Oh, c’mon, you weren’t even the least bit curious?”

“I’ve seen so many naked bodies, nothing is interesting anymore.”

“Wow, look at you, pulling in people,” he whistled low and smooth before giving you a wolfish grin.

“It’s because I’m a nurse, Sawyer, no other reason. Or at least I will be soon,” you sighed, slumped onto the edge of the bed.

“A nurse, huh? Fancy. I know a doctor, and a psychiatrist, but not a nurse. Makes sense though, you were super calm and collected when you found me in the alley. Probably deal with a lot of cases like this.”

“Yeah, but I don’t usually bring patients home. You done eating?”

“Yup, thanks.”

“Alrighty,” you mumbled, allowing him to snatch a tangerine from the tray before you took it off him, “how you feeling?”

“I’ve got a headache that hurts like a bitch and my body is stiffer than a hormonal boys dick.”

“Medicine it is then. I’ll be back. Don’t die.” Your glare didn't have much of an effect on him as he just leaned back and chuckled stiffly.

You dumped the tray in the kitchen, promising to get to the dishes later, then rummaged around the medicine cupboard. When you’d found the painkillers, you grabbed a glass of water and picked up Sawyer’s clothes which you’d tossed over a radiator last night.

“Ah,” you breathed in the smell of the conditioner, the warmth of the clothes pleasantly seeping into your skin, “I’m so smart.”

What you had found once you had gotten back to the guest room intrigued you. Sawyer hadn’t moved, but his attention definitely had. The pale blue sheets were crinkled under his clenched fingers, the way a mourning woman would a handkerchief. Golden flowers that were cast upon his skin by the sunlight pouring through the net curtains wavered in the breeze. The vulnerability of his expression was so raw, it astonished you. The rap of your knuckles against the door melted all of it away, and in its place was the lopsided grin you had gotten so used to in such a small amount of time.

You couldn’t complain. Joking and flirting may have made up his walls, but professional friendliness made up yours.

“Here, they’re warm,” you murmured, laying the jeans on the bed and gently draping the shirt over his shoulders.

“Shit, this smells good.” Sawyer practically melted back into the bed, draping the shirt over his face.

“It’s called conditioner,” you laughed, placing the glass of water down on the drawers.

“Hey, (Y/n), where’s my jacket at?”

“It’s downstairs, I’ll get it for you after you’re dressed.”

“Nah, nah, I don’t need the jacket, just want what’s inside the pockets,” he pulled off the shirt and crinkled his nose, looking childishly innocent, oddly enough, “that’s assuming they didn’t mug me when they dragged to the alley way to rough me up.”

Ah, so that’s what happened. “You talking about the cigarettes or your phone?”

“They didn’t rob me? What a miracle. Good thing too, I think I might need a cigarette right now.”

“Not in my damn house you ain’t.”

“Thank y- wait. Why?”

“I don’t really like the idea of getting lung cancer thanks.” You pulled out a packet of tablets and popped a few into his outstretched hand.

“Not even one?”

“You even attempt to smoke something in my house I’ll throw you out with the cigarettes, do you understand?” Your hard stare seemed to sink in this time around.

“You know,” his eyes flicked up and down your body, if only for a second, “you’re kinda hot when you get all authoritative like that.”

“Do you understand?”

“Yes Ma’am.” The words were spoken slowly, paired with hooded eyes that forced you to suppress the shiver that threatened to run down your spine.

“Take these, I’m kicking you out after.”

“Wait, I thought I was only getting kicked out if I smoked?”

“You can stay until lunch, I’ll feed you, but after that you’re out.” You handed him the glass. Sawyer swallowed the painkillers with no hesitation, chugging the entire glass down in one go.

“I can’t leave.”

“Not on your own. I get that you’re hurting and all but I’m sure someone can come pick you up. A family member, maybe a friend?”

“I’m not joking,” he placed a hand on your forearm, touch gentle but deathly serious, “I can’t be seen leaving your house.”

“And why is that?” The warmth of his fingers was fleeting as you pulled away. There was a strange heaviness Sawyers solemnity brought, and you didn’t much appreciate it.

“You still haven’t figured it out yet?” He tilted his head, though his expression didn’t change in its intensity.

“Figured out what?”

A hum from him, then a smile and the weirdness in the room dissipated. Sawyer turned, slowly, fists clenched and breath shaking as he did so. And then he waited, his back on display. You couldn’t stop the knitting of your brows when you saw the bruising again - you’d seen worse, much worse, but it still felt like a punch to the gut knowing just how fragile the human body could be.

“You see it yet?”

“How damaged you are?” you asked gently.

“Nope. Look again.”

“Sawyer, I don’t -”

Suddenly everything clicked into place.

“Judging by that reaction you saw it, right?”

You folded your arms, trying to stop them from shaking. It didn’t help.

“What, you not gonna answer me?” He turned to face you again, and from the way his lips were drawn tight you could tell he was trying to control whatever he was feeling at that moment. “No offence but I thought nurses were supposed to be smart, how the hell did you miss it?”

“Okay, you know what, I was more concerned with making sure you didn’t die to admire your tattoos,” you snapped, paying little attention to Sawyer himself but what you had just seen.

Nestled right between his shoulder blades, almost completely blended into the bruises was a tattoo of a snake, its head resting on the nape of Sawyer’s neck. It was a beautiful, even tasteful tattoo; however, the implications were bad enough to send your mind spiralling.

“You okay?” Your head snapped in his direction, the sickly feeling still making its way through your body. Sawyer had pulled the covers away, one foot on the ground as if he was going to get out of bed.

“Just… stay over there. I’m still processing this.”

He nodded, made no move as you ran over everything you knew about the gangs in the area.

Kidnappings. The circulation of drugs. Theft in the dead of night. Riots over territory.

You couldn’t care less about the actions themselves, no, what really made your blood boil was the sheer number of people who ended up as collateral damage. You had personally tended to some of those people who were at the mercy of death, watched as the light faded from their eyes and their loved ones wept. It always stuck with you. Made your skin crawl when you walked past some of the wards.

How easily it could have been you.

“Vipers, right? I don’t know how many gangs are in this area, but I know they’re one of the main ones.”

“Yeah, Vipers.”

You laughed. It held no humour. “That’s why you didn’t want to go to the hospital. Scared you’d get arrested for murder or something?”

“Excuse me,” his lips twisted to the side, “I haven’t murdered anyone.”

“Then why were you avoiding the hospital?”

“The Vipers have people in different places, but we ain’t the only ones. If I wound up at a hospital, I can absolutely fucking guarantee you I would have been kidnapped, or one of the doctors would have offed me. I don’t think you realise that there are groups other than the one I’m in. Even if you don’t do anything you could still be a target.”

“Sawyer -”

“I’m not telling you to believe me, but at the very least I hope you take my thanks sincerely. I mean it. You could have ignored me and sent me on my way, but you didn’t. You even brought me to your house. Thank you.”

You ran your hands through your hair, the tension seeping away the more you looked at him. He seemed to be serious, and surprisingly that sincerity was putting you at ease. “Fine, that’s the hospital thing out the way, why can’t you leave my house?”

“It’s day,” he spoke slowly, like he was saying the most obvious thing in the world.

“Okay, so your eyes work, congratulations. What does that mean?”

“If anyone saw me leaving your house, not only would I be in for shit, you would probably end up on someone’s watch list. Whether that ends in a friendly chat, or you being wiped off the face of the earth is up to the person holding that list.”

“So, what do we do now.”

You felt tired. Oh, so tired.

“We wait until night rolls around, and then I go. Or rather, people come to pick me up because there is no way I’m leaving this bed without some serious help,” Sawyer grimaced, “I’m just glad I haven’t had to sneeze yet. I think I would die if that happened.”

“That’s assuming you aren’t already on your way to dying. I may have stitched your head up and fixed you as best as I could, but I don’t have any medical equipment like the stuff at the hospital. For all I know you could be bleeding internally as we speak.”

His face paled a tad at that. “Well, uh… Am I?”

“Not that I can tell, but like I said.”

You stood there awkwardly for a minute, not knowing where to look or put your hands. He hadn't done anything to you - hadn’t raised his voice, hadn’t threatened you, he listened when you gave instructions. And you most certainly were happy to help him before you figured out, rather belatedly, that he was part of a gang. Warily, you sat down on the edge of the bed, noting how pleased Sawyer looked when you did so.

“Look, I’m sorry, I just - I don’t know how to feel about all of this.”

“I get it,” he raised his pierced brow, “but don’t go around accusing me of things either.”

You barley nodded before you lay back, closing your eyes and letting the sunlight warm your face. You enjoyed the quiet for a moment. The whisper of the blankets as you pulled your legs up and the low hum of cars outside. A peek at Sawyer let you know he was also lounging, arms behind his head and eyes closed too. The painkillers most certainly hadn’t kicked in, so you knew he must have been in immense pain, and even when they did start working, it probably wouldn’t help much. Yet he looked so peaceful there, the flowery light making his hair glow like a halo.

He looked like he belonged there.

Despite your reluctance to disturb him, you had to ask, “So, who you calling? To pick you up, I mean.”

“Oh yeah,” his eyes fluttered open, “friends.”

“Friends? Like actual friends or people from your gang friends?”

“Why can’t they be people from the gang and friends at the same time?”

You shrugged, then sucked in a quick breath when you recalled the state of his phone. “I hope you’re not planning on using your phone.”

“They stole my phone?!” He shot up in bed, the action followed by a pained shout and a few choice swear words you'd rather not hear in that order ever again.

“No, no, down,” you pushed his shoulders until he was lying flat. Sawyer just stared at your hands until you lifted them from his skin, the contact feeling a little weird and awkward, “ah, sorry. Did I hurt you?”

“You're warm,” he smiled, and it was so soft and genuine you had to take a moment to remember what you were doing.

“You know you're going to have to start actually answering my questions, Sawyer. They are kind of important for your health.”

“I'm fine. So, what happened to my phone?”

“It wasn’t stolen, it's just - you know what it might be best you didn't know.” Just remembering the way the screen was hanging onto the case by a couple of wires was enough to give you anxiety.

“Fuck me, man, phones are expensive.”

“Here.” You fished your phone out of your hoodie pocket, untangling it from the headphones, then handed it to Sawyer.

He looked vaguely bewildered as he reached out for it. “You sure?”

“Not like you can run away with it, not in that state.”

While Sawyer was pressing digits your eyes kept flicking between your hands and the one resting in his lap. The phone looked so small in his grip, despite being the perfect size for you. Sawyer caught you staring.

He held out his hand, wiggling his fingers and teasing in a singsong voice, “If you wanna hold my hand, all you have to do is ask.”

You refused politely, folding your hands in your lap as he shrugged. Somebody must have picked up on the other side because his face perked up almost immediately, and then dropped when whoever it was started yelling.

“I’m just gonna leave now,” you whispered, patting his blanket-covered leg.

“You aren't even going to stay for moral support?” He pouted, then rolled his eyes when the yelling on the phone picked up again. “No, not you, shut up for a second.”

“Whoever is on the other side sounds terrifying, and you're just about all the excitement I can take at the moment, so no thank you.”

“Fine,” he sighed, then got back to his call with a sour face, “dude, can you stop shouting at me for one second, for fucks sake.”

Even when the door clicked shut you could still hear his frustrated argument on the phone.

“I think I’ll give him ten minutes…”

#yandere-flower #sawyer #yandere flower sawyer #reader insert #Part 1 #sawyer pt 1 #gangs #???#I guess???#Guys im so bad at tagging its unreal #but hes a babe #nais nook

36 notes · View notes

just-horrible-things · 5 years

Text

Psychic powers are a curse, and no one knows that better than a psyker. And if he had to have this curse, Morrow would rather have had anything but telepathy. He wouldn’t mind the battlefield, he thinks. At least that’s straightforward. Follow orders, blow the other guy’s head up before they blow yours off, and die a nice straightforward death in the line of duty. A black and white existence.

Telepathy is always murky grey. What’s worse than knowing a person right down to the core as you destroy their life? Every hope that you are snuffing out, every loved one that will probably never get closure.... Well. Morrow does know what’s worse. Daemons are worse. And that’s what it’s all for, in the end, isn’t it? Keeping the daemons out, and the xenos, and the traitors, and anything else horrible that turns out to be lurking amongst the stars. Deciding what’s right and wrong isn’t his job.

Still, no one said he has to enjoy it. And laying eyes on his next victim, he knows instantly that he really, really isn’t going to enjoy this one.

The man is broken. Some one’s clearly been trying the old-fashioned way for a while, and aren’t those memories going to be fun to dig through. Broken bones, broken skin, and sightless, unfocused eyes that suggest a broken mind within. Fun, fun, fun. If the man were recently injured he’d ask for him to be dosed with painkillers so that Morrow doesn’t have to dig through that agony.... But if he’s going memory-diving there’s little point.

The poor sot doesn’t even look at Morrow as he rolls up his sleeves and tries to brace himself for the task ahead. He’s clearly a long way gone inside his own head. Pity that there’s nowhere in there to hide from a telepath. Still, at least once Morrow’s done, this will be over for him one way or another. Sometimes they find it’s a relief, to have the pressure of holding out taken away. Not their fault, if Morrow rips it out of them. More often it’s just horrifying.

He’s not sure what to expect when he lays hands on the man’s fever-hot skin and reaches out with his mind. Agony, certainly. Madness, probably. A hard kernel of resistance in the middle of a worn-down mind, or the evidence of psychic tampering. He certainly isn’t expecting the man’s mind to push back. He’s startled enough that he could cuss, if stoic silence weren’t well drilled into him. Any display of surprise or uncertainty during manifestation risks a bullet in the brain.

He pushes again, more carefully, thoughts enveloping the unexpected defences and feeling out their bounds. It has the feel of a patterned response, a routine so well-practised that it rises to the fore without the need for conscious effort. This one’s trained to resist telepathy. But there’s give in those mental walls. He doesn’t have much will left in him to hold an intruder out. And Morrow doesn’t have to guess what tools to use against him. Pain, bones breaking, flesh burning. Fear. The dark of a bare cell. The horror of knowing he will never be free again. And on top of it pain and pain and pain.

The victim’s mind flinches from the sharp jabs of thought, and his defences buckle. It barely takes effort.

The thin body under his hands bucks against the restraints as the mind tries to recoil from the invasion. Morrow is used to the rush of fear and horror and loathing that accompanies brute force telepathy, but every individual’s reaction is a little different, and worth pausing to examine. It can lead directly to what they are most trying to hide. This one feels very little shame at the intimate violation, only mind-blanking panic. And - that’s interesting - he isn’t afraid of having his secrets unearthed, he’s afraid of... daemonic possession. Ah, well, it’s not the first time Morrow’s been taken for a daemon. People jump to conclusions when there’s something wrong and not-self in their heads.

There are more defences, too. The panicked thoughts are not wholly disordered, and they are full of litanies against the daemon, recitations of faith to drown out all other thoughts. Interesting. It might baffle a lesser psyker, but Morrow is very, very good at what he does. He ignores the frantic abjurations, dismisses the conscious train of thought, and pins down the underlying panic like a bug beneath a lamp for closer examination. And it’s not the wild accusation of a confused mind, not the simple child who sees a shape in the darkness and thinks monster. This is the panic of a mind that expects daemons, that has fought them off before, that knows what such an assault feels like.

And faster than Morrow can sift through the meaning of that, this mind is reacting to his presence, feeling the contours of his mind in turn and starting to realise not daemon? It’s always odd, feeling another mind feeling his, and it’s even stranger this time. There are layers of perception that he doesn’t understand, alien-shaped, worrying thoughts that set alarm bells ringing. And at the same time, he is still chasing that thread of expectation and history. Why has this mind so much experience with daemons? Where did he learn these defences?

And then everything comes together at once, and Morrow has several revelations in short succession.

One: this man is a Navigator. And as if that weren’t shocking enough alone, that means --

Two: he sees the Warp directly and --

Three: his memories must be full of the unfiltered percept of the Warp which means --

Four: it is very very unsafe for Morrow to be rooting around recklessly in his thoughts.

In the same span of scant instants, the Navigator is having his own revelation that this invasion of his mind is not daemonic after all, but Morrow doesn’t stick around to watch the relief and surprise develop. He is pulling back from that mind as if burned, because he doesn’t want to stick around to get burned.

In the physical, their eyes meet. The prisoner’s are wild, bloodshot, too wide from the wave of fear and relief and confusion that just broke over him. Morrow’s must be wide too, stunned and apprehensive. Why the hell did no one warn him before setting him on a Navigator? He keeps his breath steady. No need to alert the watching soldiers that this isn’t going as planned. His hands are still on the man’s ribcage, and he can feel a broken bone shifting with each panting breath. And it’s not even the worst injury. It’s the sort of thing that might once have made Morrow feel sick.

He breathes steadily, in and out, and gathers his will. The Navigator is a minefield of incomprehensible, warp-drenched thoughts. But Morrow didn’t earn his position through cowardice, or through not doing his job. Cautiously, he presses back into the prisoner’s thoughts, taking far more care this time to guard his own, and to be careful what he focuses on.

He doesn’t have to push against mental walls this time. They are lowered readily to let him in. And the panic has been replaced entirely with urgent, desperate relief and eagerness to let the psyker in. It’s unnerving. Morrow’s never been welcomed into someone’s mind like this. And it’s not a warm or a healthy feeling. Please, clamour his thoughts, jumbled from pain and exhaustion and shock. Please, look everywhere! Here, I’ll show you, anything you want to see. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I won’t think about Sight. I’ll help, tell me what you want me to think and I’ll find it, I’ll show you. Please I want to help! Here, look at my memories. Here, deep as you like. I won’t think of the Warp please I won’t I’ll keep it out of mind. Thank you thank you thank you. Please, show her. Please! I’m so glad I’m so grateful I’m so glad. Let me comply I want to help please I want to give you whatever you want to know.

Morrow brushes away those irrelevant thoughts, and tries to ignore the awful, hollow ache in his own heart. He’s been in the heads of people who genuinely aren’t hiding anything. But they’ve never been quite so broken before. Not the innocent ones. All too often the only mercy he can get them is a quick kill, but at least that’s something.

He’s never been inside a mind quite so compliant, either. There’s no revulsion here, no instinctual struggling, no shame or anger at the loss of privacy. There’s no concept of privacy in here at all - that notion is a tattered rag lost in the depths of memory. The instant Morrow starts to examine a memory, the prisoner - Tacitus, there’s a name - brings it willingly into focus, readies other related memories for perusal. It’s dreadfully convenient, so much so that part of Morrow suspects he may be somehow being duped.

The only things Tacitus tries to hide are those elements of his memories that are not sight or sound or touch but Warpsight, that eldritch sense that Morrow’s mind would struggle to interpret. And Morrow is deliberately avoiding those thoughts too, trying not to look too closely lest he start to understand. To an extent he is forced to trust Tacitus to flag up and suppress those thoughts, and to interpret them for him. He can’t understand the raw sensory information, but he can understand the concept of seeing a soul, or of sensing peril in the thinning of the Veil.

Tacitus is good at rearranging his thoughts, focusing on certain aspects, staying on track. There are very few stray lines of distraction that Morrow has to rein in. He rarely flinches reflexively from a thought that Morrow brings into focus. There’s little extraneous noise. It’s suspicious. But Morrow can’t find any evidence of deceit. And here, memories of childhood as a Navigator-in-training, learning these tricks, learning to keep order inside his own head. And here, sorrow and guilt that he is not better at it, that he cannot be more helpful. Torture has scrambled his mind and shattered his will, and he is apologetic that he can’t be more help to Morrow.

He pushes reassurance into Tacitus’ head to quiet the clamour a little. I hear you, he projects, and You are helpful. Relax, I will find the truth. Thank you, think Tacitus’ own thoughts, overlaid. Thank you thank you thank you please, here are my memories, here are my crimes, please, every detail is yours.

Trawling through those memories is traumatic for both of them. Months of torture that feel longer still - and perhaps Morrow can help a little by imposing some order on those memories, dividing them by day, making them finite. Before that, the fear and guilt of anticipation. Morrow leafs through Tacitus’ capture, back further through the work he did.... nothing suspicious, not by the Inquisition’s standards, though he was lying to a lot of clients.

Back a little further and here, the summoning, the great crime, the worst mistake of his life. The last part, the appearance of the daemon, is hard to view without risk of Morrow perceiving the daemon in too much truth, but they work around it carefully. Neither of them want to draw its attention here. And the majority of the ritual is easy to observe, because Tacitus was without his Warpsight. Darkness, isolation, cold corpse bodies, helplessness. Morrow can’t help but understand why he did it, feeling Tacitus’ desperation as if it were his own. But he’s not here to empathise. He’s here for facts. Tacitus pushes the knowledge of the summoning diagram and the incantation at Morrow pleading here, you want this? Morrow pushes it away. He doesn’t want to know that. It’s enough to know that Tacitus knows it.

And back further they go, freedom, poverty, desperate yearning. A few short years of darkness and independence, and then, skipping faster, deeper and deeper, the wounding of his soul, the betrayal, years of training, childhood... Morrow doesn’t press too deeply. There’s nothing of relevance here. As far back as Tacitus is able to remember, there is nothing suspicious.

I’m going deeper, Morrow thinks at Tacitus, because this will be easier if Tacitus doesn’t start resisting. The warning is met with more affirmation and more sickeningly submissive gratitude. Everything that Tacitus is is open to Morrow’s search.

Below memory, below conscious thought, Tacitus is a maelstrom of pain and terror and despair. He only wants mercy, only mercy. The relentless pain has broken down everything that he knew how to be and he is grieving for his lost self. He fears desperately that the torture will never stop, because he’s hiding nothing, only lying occasionally and out of desperation - and badly at that. He fears an end to torture, too, because he expects nothing but death, and he expects death to deliver him into the claws of the daemonic. Morrow understands too well.

Deeper still, peeling back the layers of the subconscious. There is a little resistance now - it’s instinct. It doesn’t trouble Morrow. It’s still weaker than it should be, and he’s forced his way into plenty of unwilling minds. Here is guilt, a thick layer of self-loathing. On some level Tacitus believes that he deserves this. Here are the discarded parts of a self-concept that hasn’t survived this ordeal. Altruism, honour, humour, yearning, love. A will to survive, a quick, manipulative mind, curiosity, restlessness... things that should not be buried so deep. Here, deeper still - deliberately so, far out of reach of the conscious mind - here is anger and hatred and outrage at the way he’s been treated. Morrow feels that outrage, that horrified fury at the injustice and the inhumanity. It’s hard to tell if it belongs to Tacitus or to Morrow. Always hard, once he’s this deep.

What else? Here is the part that watches and learns. Higher thought has given up on learning, has concluded that there is nothing to be done. But something deeper is still watching. Learning dreadful lessons, like which patterns of screaming and gasping are most likely to cause his tormentors to let up. Which of the soldiers take satisfaction in his pain and double down when he is desperate, and which find it difficult and might hit a little less hard if he is crying and wailing just so. Subtleties of expression that suggest it might be worth pleading, or that the Interrogator might let up if he seems sufficiently broken. Other signs that today there will be no mercy and he should just retreat as far inside himself as he can.

These are not things Morrow wanted to know. They are not relevant his objective. He wrenches himself away from it with effort. Distantly, he can feel the prickle of sweat breaking out across his body, and the sharp jolts of pain in Tacitus’ broken bones as he convulses against the restraints.

Further, deeper. Looking for psychic scars, for hidden things, for evidence of meddling or thoughts erased. It is painfully obvious that Tacitus isn’t hiding anything purposefully, but there’s always the possibility that another telepath has been in here, has tampered until the victim doesn’t know that they are holding back...

But there’s nothing.

Morrow pulls back from the depths. Back through the desperate self-loathing. Back through pain and fear and despair. Through not-quite-conscious thoughts that are begging him please stop please it hurts it feels bad please stop. The fully conscious ones are louder. They run: thank you thank you I’m so grateful I’m so glad thank you, and I’m sorry I struggled I’m sorry I tried my best I’m sorry no excuses my fault I’m sorry, and please please tell her please will you tell her please I’m not hiding anything you saw you saw please make her believe.

Breathing is difficult. Thinking his own thoughts is difficult. Peeling himself away from Tacitus’ agony so that he doesn’t feel it as his own is difficult.

He’s not here to do anything to Tacitus’ head. He’s just here to observe. He doesn’t have permission to tamper. But Tacitus is overflowing with desperation and agony, and Morrow has the power to help. He’s been very deep indeed and he’s losing track of the boundaries between Morrow and Tacitus. This will help with that too, he tells himself. He’s bending protocol, not breaking it. Help me? Tacitus thinks, the barest shred of hope overlaid on doubt and despair. And the fact that he’s picked up on that thought is further proof that their minds are too entangled.

So Morrow pushes his will onto Tacitus’ mind, quieting thought, quieting sensation, quieting emotion. A gentle force pushing him down and down until all the jabbering psychic noise is finally still and silent. The shaking body goes limp beneath Morrow’s hands. And finally Morrow can tell where he ends and Tacitus begins.

But even when he severs the link, his mind is still saturated with Tacitus’ thoughts, dripping with Tacitus’ emotions. He knows from experience that it will fade with time. But that doesn’t make it any easier in the moment.

“Have you killed him?” the Interrogator asks, seeing Morrow lift his hands and step away from the limp body. He draws in a sharp breath. He knows her now, in a way that he really wishes he did not. “No,” he answers promptly. “No, he’s j-just unc-conscious.” Throne, he’s shaking and he can’t stop. “C-can, can I h-have ten minutes before I report? That was... I’m a b-bit drained.”

#my writing #my ocs #tacitus #telepathy #torture #broken ribs #interrogation #tw futile interrogation #invasive telepathy #mind reading #mention of execution #begging #tw mental illness #???#idk what else to tag #this is an extensive look inside the head of someone very broken #also it is long

96 notes · View notes

abbacchiosbelt · 5 years

Text

Still Breathing | Cioccolata x F!Reader

This is a commissioned piece for @jashin-priestess! Please heed the warnings on this one before you read it - it is very dark.

CW: Non-Con, Extreme Violence, Mutilation, Amputation, Blood, Knives, Mind Break Elements, Guro, Broken Bones, Bondage/Restraint

The building located at the address you were given, had you been a regular citizen strolling down the streets in the pleasant warmth of the evening, wouldn’t have been worth giving a second glance. It looked to be rather old and desolate, vines crawling up the crumbling brick and debris scattered on the cracking steps leading to the entrance. When you look at the building, though, a chill wracks your body so violently that you almost decide to abandon your mission in favor of fleeing.

The potential rewards that would come from your visit convinced you to stay and carry out your personal desires.

Every single thing about your target, Cioccolata, made your skin crawl – from the way he always smelled like rotten flesh to the cold and spindly fingers he always tried to touch you with whenever you were unlucky enough to deliver a package to him. Not to mention his strange assistant, always crouched on the floor in a full-body suit, eying you with noticeable interest that made you uncomfortable.

The building in front of you was a different location than usual – the packages you’d delivered previously had been exchanged on neutral ground. There would have been no reason for your mission, had you not been subjected to rumors from other members of Passione that left you horrified and insatiably curious. If they were true, though, there was potential for extorting the doctor.

(If only you’d know then, you thought – as cold metal sliced into your skin unforgivingly – how wrong you’d been.)

Eyeing the street to make sure it was empty; you approach the house cautiously and glance at the windows – boarded shut and covered by dark curtains. Your plan had been to approach directly, but an escape route would be necessary for back up. It wasn’t exactly smart, to take on another member of Passione, but your greed for knowledge left you to make a decision you’d come to regret.

It was now or never, then. Smoothing down your skirt – pausing to ensure your gun was holstered and in reach – you lean forward and knock on the door in a symbol that he’d recognize as another member of Passione. You only hoped that a visit from someone else wasn’t a rarity, lest you make a spectacle of yourself immediately.

The beat that passes between the time it takes you to remove your hand from the door and how fast it opens startles you – you’re immediately met by Cioccolata’s assistant at the door, panting and staring at you with what you hope is recognition.

“Hello?” You try, pulling your lips up into the best smile you could muster. The man in front of you smells so rotten that you want to retch, but that wouldn’t exactly gain you any favors. The man in the suit tilts his head and grunts, moving to a frog-like position and sitting as still as a statue.

“Secco?” Cioccolata’s deep voice rings out from the darkness of the house (ah, so Secco was his assistant’s name) before you hear heavy footsteps approach the front door. When he appears, almost melting in from the darkness like some otherworldly creature, he’s wearing a crooked grin. Secco grunts at Cioccolata and his eyes slide to your thighs for the briefest moment before he turns his intense gaze back to you.

“Oh! A guest, this late?” His smile doesn’t falter, but his eyes widen after he looks at you for a moment longer. “Ah, I haven’t seen you in quite some time, cara. You’ve come at the perfect time, come in, come in!”

Cioccolata almost sounds manic in the way he speaks to you, his eyes shining brightly as he waves an emphatic arm to welcome you inside. Secco scampers away and you’re left to stand on the doorstep, the burn in your gut telling you to run and never look back.

“Well?” He continues to grin at you, still waving his arm. With a nervous chuckle, you take slow steps forward until you’re inside the dimly lit house – suddenly aware of how unlived and dusty it looks. Grimly, you realize that perhaps you’ve bitten off more than you can chew. The door shuts behind you and you’re shrouded in complete darkness. A hand comes to rest on your lower back and the hair on the nape of your neck stands up, a chill wracking your body like it had outside the house.

A dim light appears from low on the floor, along with a blinking red light. The room is lit up enough that the bloodstains marring the floor stick out to you like a beacon, making your heart pound uncomfortably fast. Cioccolata hums, deep and low, and starts to trail his hand down your body.

Attack him. Run. Do anything – but the screaming in your mind can’t overcome to fear running through your veins and gluing you to the rickety floor, directly in line of that flashing red light. Your breath hitches when Cioccolata’s hand dips beneath the hem of your skirt and cold fingertips trail your exposed thigh – and then it dawns on you that he’s inches away from touching the gun you had snug on your thigh.

It’s too late though – he senses the change in your breathing and the way your heartrate increases even faster. His fingers close the gap and you wince when they close around the handle of the gun, sliding it gingerly out of its holster, cold metal trailing against your skin as it pulls it above your skirt and presses it to your temple.

“That’s curious. You don’t have a Stand, do you?” Cioccolata digs the metal into your temple when you hesitate to answer. The red light doesn’t stop blinking, but the light travels slowly up your body until its resting on your face.

“N-no,” you whisper. Your voice betrays you by cracking and Cioccolata lowers the gun, trailing it against your jaw before he fits it in his own pants.

“Ooh, you’re getting all of this on camera, Secco?” The sudden shift of Cioccolata’s voice makes your stomach drop – he could so easily switch from menacing to a sadistic glee in seconds. Secco grunts and nods eagerly, holding the camera steady. Cioccolata’s hand comes to cup your jaw, fingers pressing hard into the thin skin. “Good, good! This is the best part, when they lose hope… Oh, you have lots more to go through, so this is just a taste. How long can your pretty little face hold up?”

– And then everything is a rush of white-hot pain, wood floor biting into your skin and splinters tearing at your hands scrambling for purchase, warm liquid trickling down your aching head. There’s a searing pressure digging into your right leg and you want to cry out as it melts into your flesh – god, it’s bubbling, and you have no idea what it is, but it burns, like your flesh is being flayed into a million little hot pieces – and then everything is black. The last thing you see is the blinking of the red light and the glint of excitement in Secco’s eyes, dimly lit from the camera.

There’s darkness, when you pry your heavy eyes open. It stings – there’s something sticky stuck to the insides of your eyelids – you grit your teeth and hiss through the uncomfortable sensation. It takes a moment for your vision to adjust, darkness ebbing away to a dimly lit room, too poorly lit to see beyond your own body.

Your whole body aches horribly, head throbbing so insistently that you want to throw up. It’s nothing compared to the ache in your back and lower body – and then you look down and your vision goes white and you thrash your head to the side, and whatever was left in your stomach is heaved onto the floor as you realize your entire right leg below your knee is gone. The skin looks like it’s melting off your body, sinewy red flesh dangling from the jagged tear.

There’s a horrific searing pain gnawing at the stump that’s been left behind, a strange dull ache pulsing behind it, and you want to scream but it comes out hollow. It’s almost enough to send you back into darkness – you have to stay awake if you want to live, though, so you do your best to even out your rapid breathing and try to focus on anything but the unbearable pain blooming from what’s left of your leg and the ache afflicting the rest of your body.

Looking down, you see that you’ve been stripped naked, the dim lighting making your skin look sallow. Metal scraping against something draws your attention to the far corner of the room and you realize the door is being opened. Panicked, you try to move but realize your arms and legs are strapped to the table you’re laid out on. A wheeze escapes from your throat, fear coursing through your veins.

“Awake already? Hm, you’ve exceeded my expectations.” Your eyes dart wildly as you try to find Cioccolata’s location, but an insistent press on the knee of your right leg makes you cry out.

“Secco, leave that alone for now, you’ll have your fun later.”

You flail in the restraints hopelessly, not wanting to find out what later meant. Secco grunts near your leg, hot breath fanning over the raw flesh and making you shudder. Footsteps echo across the room until you realize they’ve stopped and there’s a presence looming behind you. Cioccolata grabs your jaw and holds your head in place, staring intently at you with bright green eyes. The smile he had earlier is replaced with the curl of his lip, smug.

“You’re quite energetic. The human body is tenacious, isn’t it?” His fingers clench around your jaw harder, like he’s trying to dig through the skull under your flesh. You wince and try to bite back the cry of pain that leaves your lips. Cioccolata tuts. “Don’t hold anything back, now.”

Whimpering, you avert your eyes and try to look for an exit – it appears that the one door is your only way out. Cioccolata follows your eyes and chuckles.

“Looking to leave already? I am curious as to what your plans were.” The fingers around your jaw unclench and instead stroke at your cheek, making you grimace. “Actually…” Cioccolata trails off and moves around your body, unfastening the restraints that tied you to the table. The skin is red and rubbed raw from pulling, but the lack of pressure gives you the slightest bit of relief – though the relief is short lived when you see Cioccolata’s smile. “Go on, then, coniglietta. Try to escape or attack me, whatever you were going to do. I’ll give you a head start since you’ve got that pesky leg problem.”

It’s a trap, you already know by the look on his face (and the state of your body, already broken) but the irrational part of your brain has you heaving yourself off of the table and trying to balance on your left leg – it’s numb, though, and you immediately topple over. Pain shoots through your entire body, right leg throbbing so hard that you cry out, but you manage to drag yourself forward, chest heaving from exertion.

You only get a few feet from the table before you see that little red light start blinking from the darkest corner of the room, and your heart constricts in your chest. There’s not time to think before a crushing pain assaults your left side, loud crack resounding in the air as you wail pitifully and try to crawl away – the next breath you take is followed by an unbearable pain in your ribcage. Still, you desperately claw at the floor and try to crawl forward.

There’s an impact against your left side again and you grunt loudly when you’re flipped onto your back, chest painfully contracting as you try to draw in a full breath. Cioccolata is staring down at you with that same smirk, eyes hungrily trailing over the purple and black bruises rising under your skin.

“Surely you had more in mind than that? Though bringing a gun…” Cioccolata brings his foot down on your right shoulder and presses in with his full weight, excruciating pain flaring under his impact. A sob escapes from your throat and you writhe under his foot. “It’s a good thing Passione won’t miss someone as worthless as you.” Another press of his foot to your shoulder and you wail. Cioccolata drags his heel down your chest, the pass of it over your ribcage unbearable as your body seizes under him.

“I’m not,” you pant, dredging up the last will you had to fight. Cioccolata tilts his head and watches you struggle to speak, amused. “—not worthless.” It’s merely a strained whisper. Cioccolata’s face falls into a frown and his shoe slides back up your chest, heel dragging slowly, until it’s resting square on your face.

“Speak up or it’s no fun.” Cioccolata’s foot lifts up and slams down directly on your nose, loud crack as the cartilage is crushed under the heavy weight of his heel. The impact has you screaming as blood gushes from your nose, dribbling into your mouth and down the sides of your face. “That’s what I like to hear!” Cioccolata lifts the bloodied heel of his shoe from your face to look at the aftermath.

The stinging pain in your nose is nothing compared to the brutal pain biting at your severed leg – you never thought you’d be crying out for mercy so early, hoping for Cioccolata to end your suffering.

“Please,” you manage to choke out. The blood in your mouth tastes bitter, and you spit weakly before catching your breath. “Please stop.”

“Oh?” Cioccolata kneels down beside you, close enough that you can smell the mix of his cologne among the rotten smell in the basement, making your aching stomach twist unpleasantly. “But we’ve barely started! I suppose there’s other things we can do.”

From the corner, Secco shuffles closer and keeps the camera obediently trained on your body. With a muted horror, you realized he’s been filming the entire encounter – it was a rumor you had hoped was true due to it’s potential for blackmail, but now, you just felt ill.

The hope that he’d end your suffering early was snuffed out like a flame. Cioccolata stands from your side and briefly disappears into the darkness, only to come back moments later with a large butcher knife. You finally find your voice and scream again, wiggling on the ground helplessly and trying to pull yourself with your good arm and leg.

“Don’t throw a fit, I’m not using this yet.” Cioccolata places the knife to the side of the table you were strapped to earlier before he turns back and lifts you off the ground with ease. Weakly you claw at his back, but the thick material of his white shirt leaves your efforts fruitless. With a resounding crack, Cioccolata drops you onto the table and lets your head bounce from the impact, leaving your vision starry as you try t to get your bearings.

You weakly protest when you feel your arms being tugged at roughly until they’re snug in the straps again, ropes rubbing at the already torn skin around your wrists. There’s pressure near your wounded leg again and you expect to look down to see Secco nudging at it, but instead it’s Cioccolata attending to it with a wet cloth and bandages.

“Why?” You grumble. Cioccolata lifts his head at your question, but he continues working on your leg. The pain radiating from there doesn’t lessen, but the cool washcloth gives you the barest reprieve as the wound is cleaned.

“I can’t have you giving out on me yet. You practically gifted yourself to me, it’d be a waste to throw you in the trash so quickly.” His response makes you whimper weakly – you shouldn’t have expected anything else. The time that passes is lost to you as you fade in and out of consciousness, called back by the feel of his fingers digging into your wound, until you’re made aware of his face inches from yours, bright green eyes looking hungrily at you.

The camera that Secco’s been handling is shoved into the other side of your face and you cough weakly, a mix of saliva and your own blood running in a thin line down your chin. Cioccolata leans forward and licks a stripe up your bloodied face. Any struggle you’d had left is long gone so you’re forced to whine in discomfort as his hot tongue swipes across your bottom lip.

Cioccolata’s tongue forces its way into your mouth with no resistance, trailing against your teeth and exploring the wet cavern thoroughly, your stomach rolling in disgust. He pulls back, leaving a trail of bloodied saliva connecting your lips – and then you hear the sound of a belt buckle being undone.

You know what’s coming and you don’t want to look, don’t want to think about it, but your eyes fall to the side and find Cioccolata’s erect cock freed from his white pants. It’s thick and veiny, coarse green public hair at the base with heavy balls. His free hand darts out to grip your sore jaw when he catches you staring.

He pulls his foreskin back and steps forward until his cock is resting on your face – you feel sick when he slides his heavy member under your still bloodied nose and slicks it with blood before trailing it to your mouth, swollen purple head nudging insistently at your lips.

“Surely you don’t need to be told what to do?” Numbly, you open your mouth, gagging at the strong musky smell that invades your senses despite your stuffed nose.

“Good, good,” Cioccolata muses, sliding his cock inch by inch into your mouth. “Secco, you’re still filming?” There’s a series of grunts from behind you, and you hear rustling followed by the sound of heavy chomping. “So obedient today, very good.”

All you want to do is cry out for him to stop, or fade out from consciousness again, but your body is clinging to every painful and uncomfortable sensation it can find – the burning pain of your broken nose, every sharp breath rattling your broken ribs, the almost unbearable pain of your mutilated leg – and now the feeling of gagging on Cioccolata’s cock, slowly pushing in and out of your mouth.

You groan around his cock in protest, but it only pulls a moan from Cioccolata and he pushes his cock in even deeper, drawing tears from the corners of your eyes.

“Make sure you’re recording her face, Secco. We’re nearly at the best part!”

Cioccolata’s thrusts start to grow erratic, the sensation of his cock repeatedly slamming into your throat drawing pained whines from your mouth – the vibrations have Cioccolata growling from above you, staring at you in sadistic glee as tears roll down your face. Without warning he rams his cock all the way in, hot and bitter ropes of cum shooting directly down your throat. You gag around his cock and try to roll away, but it only causes your good leg to dangle off the table.

He milks himself fully in your mouth, keeping his cock snug in your throat until every last drop has been released. With a wet pop, he pulls out and a mixture of saliva and cum bubble over your swollen lips.

“If you keep that up, maybe we’ll have a use for you here after all.” Cioccolata swipes his thumb along your dirtied cheek and holds his thumb out to Secco, who eagerly leans over you and sucks at the taller man’s thumb. Secco drools on you when he pulls back and grunts, staring at you with wide violet eyes. “Yes, Secco, you might have a new playmate if she holds up. Don’t put that camera down, now.” Cioccolata fondly rubs at Secco’s covered head before trailing his eyes down your naked body.

One of his wide hands comes to rest on the center of your tender chest, purple and black splotches blooming under the injured skin – his hand almost spans the entire width of your chest. A quiet moan leaves your mouth and you don’t know if it’s because this is the first gentle touch you’ve felt, but you feel sick when you just push your body into his hand. Anything would be better than pain; the delirious haze in your mind was growing worse by the minute.

“So sensitive, just from that?” Cioccolata moves his hand to brush over one of your nipples, the bud already hardened from the cold air. You cry out again and he rolls the nub between his fingers until it’s red and sensitive. “Do you want more? Are you going to give in so easy?” You want to squeeze your eyes shut but you look at him, eyes half lidded, and nod against your better judgment.

His hand moves and tends to your other nipple in the same way – the arousal building in your stomach is fighting with the burning disgust you feel for him, but his warm mouth coming down around one of your nipples distracts you. He sucks at your nipple hard enough to hurt and you cry out in pain. The harsh sucking fades to a gentle pull of his mouth while his tongue rolls over your nipple – it’s enough to pull a real moan from you, enough to have tears of shame pricking in the corners of your eyes and rolling down your already wet cheeks.

One of Cioccolata’s hands snakes down your lower body and you startle, thrashing in the restraints.

“N-no,” you whisper, throat too sore to shout. “Not there, please—”

“Are you sure about that?” Cioccolata slides a finger down until it makes contact with your already slick center, giving him no resistance when he pushes in the tip of his long finger. The shame in your gut isn’t enough to push back the arousal and you instinctively push into his finger, biting back the moan you want to let out. Cioccolata tilts his head up from your chest and meets your gaze, blood-smeared lips pulled up in a smile. “Weak little girls like you are easy to read.” He sinks another finger inside of you and curls them up, drawing a muffled moan from you. “You were already all spread out for me anyways. Secco, you saw her throw her leg over the table, didn’t you?”

Secco makes a loud affirmative sound, earning a cube from Cioccolata’s pocket, thrown as he lifts himself away from your body. Your eyes widen in fear when you look down and see that he’s fully hard again, thick member still dripping with his release and a mixture of your blood.

He shrugs his pants off before he adjusts the table you’re laid on, sliding in-between your legs and leering down at you. Helplessly, you tug at your arm restraints and try to move your legs, but your mangled leg is useless, and your good leg barely has enough strength left to try and push him away.

“Stop, stop,” you whine – you desperately want to pass out, or just have him end it all, but there’s a tiny part of your body that’s aching and begging for friction. Cioccolata responds to your pleas by rubbing his thick cock head against your entrance, smearing your juices onto himself with a pleased groan. His hands dig into your hips to pull your lower half towards himself, leaving you hanging off the edge by the slightest bit.

“Secco, make sure you get her face for this part. The despair in their eyes�� It’s always exquisite.”

There’s only a brief pause before he sinks himself into you with a deep thrust – and you scream. You’ve never been with anyone this big and his thick cock stretches you apart with no mercy, walls burning from the violation. “It’s too big,” you whimper, willing your body to adjust before he tears you apart.

Cioccolata doesn’t heed your complaint and starts rocking into you, cock pulling painfully against your walls as he draws all the way back before pushing back in again. Tears roll down your face as he continues pumping into you, but eventually the burn begins to turn pleasant – the pleasure clouding your mind has you focusing on the way his cock rubs against your inner walls.

“Good, good, keep taking it.” Cioccolata lilts. He continues his slow pace for another minute until he pauses to throw your good leg up over his shoulder. When he pumps back in, the burning stretch return as his cock pushes inside your pussy even deeper than before. It feels like your guts are being pushed to the side, if it were possible – when he bottoms out, he pauses, looking at your stomach with an expression of surprise. Your eyes follow his to find a noticeable distention in your stomach – when he pulls back and thrusts, the bulge follows his motions.

“What a good little whore you’re turning out to be.” The admonishment sends a shameful jolt of arousal through your body – it makes you feel disgusted at how eagerly you’re responding to his cock, at how your body aches with every movement, yet you still find yourself feeling sated from the friction being granted by Cioccolata’s cock. You clench around him involuntarily and draw forth a pleased growl.

Every thrust is punctuated by throbbing pain in the rest of your body, each pained breath you’re taking contracting achingly in your chest. And yet when Cioccolata starts pounding into you harder, heavy balls slapping against you with a wet smack, you feel whatever was left of your rational mind fade away as you weakly rock your hips in time with his movements and moan shamelessly.

“I knew you’d be easy to break the moment I saw you,” Cioccolata pants. His hand slides under what’s left of your mangled thigh and squeezes at the flesh before trailing down to the bandaged stump, gripping it tight.

A sob rips from your throat at the overwhelming pain from his fingers digging into the still-fresh wound, almost certainly raw and festering underneath the bandages. Your agonized cry has Cioccolata thrusting into you erratically as he fondles the stump, his eyes darting between his cock pumping inside of you, distending your stomach with every thrust, and the way your face contorts under his ministrations.

Cioccolata chases his release with a final set of frenzied thrusts, burying his thick cock deep inside of you with a final push to fill you with his hot cum. Despite his earlier release into your mouth, his load is sizable and oozes out from you when he withdraws, his cock covered with a disgusting mixture of juices and your blood.

Your body contracts around nothing – the aching in your core was practically pulsing, begging for release just to have something else to focus on besides the pain assaulting the rest of your body.

Secco appears next to Cioccolata to get a close-up of your swollen and dripping pussy, pushing in close enough that you can feel the cold lens nudge against your clit, and you whine quietly.

“What’s that?” Cioccolata pushes Secco away and puts the heel of his hand on your clit, feather light pressure making you squirm. “What a fun little subject you are.” He presses down again, harder this time, and you try to rut against him. “I think you should use your words.”

“Please,” you whine – you want nothing else right now and the disgust you felt for his touch earlier has ebbed into desperation. “Please let me cum.”

The words feel wrong in your mouth, almost as if you’re not there (and maybe you aren’t – your mind is in a hazy and delirious cloud from all the pain throughout your body), but you repeat them until you’re sobbing, until Cioccolata is moving his hand in a steady rhythm over your clit.

“Good, good. I may have use for you yet.” Cioccolata’s praise, even just the tiniest bit of it, sends you over the edge with a strained moan, leaving your body shaking as your orgasm washes over you. He works his hand over your clit until you’re whimpering from overstimulation, pulling away when the table rattles from how hard you tug at your wrist restraints.

You roll your head to the side and stare blankly at the wall, completely and utterly defeated in both body and mind. For a few minutes you’re left to yourself while Cioccolata and Secco exit the room – only to feel panic rise in your chest when you hear the door opening again. The fear of what could come next still sends adrenaline shooting through your veins, yet you couldn’t find it in yourself to pull at your restraints as you lay there drying in a puddle of semen and blood.

“So obedient already. She’ll be a good pet, Secco.” A moment later you feel your lower half being pulled around, and your left ankle is strapped back into the restraint. Another restraint is soon tied taut to your left leg, so tight that it makes you groan in discomfort. “Now stay still like a good pet and this will hurt less.” You want to scream and cry, but there’s nothing left – whatever hope you had of escape is slipping away by the second.

You finally roll your head up to look at Cioccolata, manic grin on his face as he brandishes the massive butcher knife you saw him put down earlier.

“God, no” you plead, your voice finally coming back to you, but Cioccolata tuts in response.

“Shh, now.”

Before you can protest any further, you watch with horror as the butcher knife slices through the air and begins its assault on your leg – all you’re doing is screaming, screaming so loud that it’s all you can hear and whatever pain you had felt earlier is nothing compared to the blade tearing and slicing at your skin. You’re fading in and out of consciousness and when you look down – oh god, you wish you hadn’t and you wish you were dead – there’s deep red blood gushing from the wound, spilling over your leg and onto the table and floor below. The last thing you see is the blade slicing through the air again before your body mercifully gives out in what you hope is the final time.

It’s dark, when you wake up – there’s a heavy sensation around your neck. For a moment, and you hope so badly that it’s true, you wonder if this is just part of death, a weird in-between place that you’re stuck in. The agonizing ache of your body, though, has silent tears rolling down your dirtied face as you realize you’re still alive. You’re positioned on the floor, against a wall, but you’re unsure if you’re in the same room as you were earlier.

When you twist your head to look, there’s a clinking noise and suddenly you’re pulled back violently – your body flops awkwardly and you try to right yourself. The pain, despite how all-consuming it is, isn’t as prominent as it was before you passed out, and you blearily wonder how much time has passed.

When you look down, you see that your other leg is gone – but the shock you had felt when you looked down the first time is gone. It was expected, now. Both stumps have bandages on them, clearly more carefully wrapped and well-tended to. You’re still naked, too, and each shallow breath you take is sending a shooting pain through your chest.

A door opens and you hear footsteps scampering along the floor, followed by heavy footsteps you recognize as Cioccolata’s. You blink in pain when low light floods the room, not daring to look down at yourself. Secco sits on the floor beside you and grunts, leaning over to nudge at you.

“Careful, Secco, she’s still fresh. You can play later.” Cioccolata stands over you, kneeling down to pull your chin up with his hand. “You were very good for me, pet. You’ve done better than I expected.” You try to turn your head, but his grip is too strong.

“Why didn’t you kill me?” You murmur – your voice doesn’t sound like your own anymore. Cioccolata clicks his tongue at you and squeezes your jaw between his fingers painfully tight until you whimper.

“Behave. That’s no way to talk to your master.” With a final squeeze, he releases you jaw and instead slides his hand down to press on your chest, making you wheeze and cough up bloodied spit. “Are you going to listen to me?”

There’s nothing left to do but nod your head, resigning yourself to your fate. When you meet his gaze, he quirks an eyebrow. Taking a shaky breath, wincing at the pain, you reply. “Yes, master.”

“Very good.” He removes his hand and stands back up, Secco following suit to perch next to Cioccolata on the floor. He gives you a sick smile before he leans forward, towering over your helpless body.

“If you keep behaving, perhaps I’ll grant you that wish of yours. Good pets get rewarded.”

#commission #jjba fanfic #cioccolata #cioccolata x reader #non con cw #non con #extreme violence #not sfw #mutilation #amputation #blood #knives #guro #vento aureo #my writing

176 notes · View notes

fanaticwritings · 5 years

Text

smoke and mirrors [chapter 1]

The Streetcar named desire

pairing: tom holland x fem!reader

word count: 2k

warnings: smut, profanity

updates: saturdays!

a/n: i am reuploading this fic cause tumblr messed up big time the first time. anyway, i didn't plan on writing a lot of smut but my hand slipped (oops) so please don't read after the warning if you're underage. also, others, let me know if I should include more of it! happy reading!

___

You hummed sleepily as you felt warmth encompass you; the warmth undoubtedly being Tom's body. You felt his chest press against your back, felt his arm slide under your stomach and pull you close.

"Mornin' love," you mumbled into the pillow.

You didn't really want to wake up. Tom's touch, the covers, his room were all too warm and far too comforting. For a moment you could pretend you didn't have responsibilities and expectations to live up to. It was just you and him. Him and you. A perfect forever.

You were almost drifting off again when you felt Tom's fingers push one of your bra straps aside and then, a moment later, his plump lips kiss your shoulder.

"Morning," he whispered hoarsely, kissing a trail towards your neck, before turning you towards himself.

You blinked open one eye, gazing at his hazy form sleepily. "I don't want to be awake yet."

Tom reached over to run his hand down your back. It was a soft gesture but you knew what he was up to. You blinked a couple of more times, albeit reluctantly as Tom's face cleared before you. His curls were in complete disarray, eyes crusty from sleeping in and lips puckered in a funny way. And yet, there were fewer things in the world, more adorable than him in this moment.

Completely disregarding your comment, Tom decided to slide on top of you.

You groaned in mock dismay as he settled down on you because you had to admit, the pressure felt wonderful.

"Tom, what in the-," you began but were cut off by his lips gently pressing against your own.

Morning cuddles were a daily ritual with Tom. You never got enough of them.

"I'm so lucky," he murmured once you broke apart. He was now half on top of you and half on the bed, one arm propping his head up beside your own.

He looked at you fondly then, trailing a lazy finger down the length of your arm.

You brushed a curl of his hair aside, smiling.

"Oh, so we're in that mood today."

"What mood?"

"The I'm-going-to-melt-Y/N-with-my-words mood."

He smiled. "I'm always in the mood for that, love," he retorted, squeezing your waist, which was where his hand now rested.

"As much as I'd love to stay and hear everything you have to say about me, I- we- have work to do," you sighed, caressing his cheek gently.

The reluctance with which you said it was even more evident when you didn't move to shift from under him. Not your fault, he was mesmerizing. God he looked beautiful above you; freckles and curls galore.

"I hear ya," he whispered, nodding as his fingers slipped inside your underwear.

You gasped. The nerve.

You slapped his arm gently, almost wanting to give in to his obvious desire but, but, work.

He pouted at you, clearly disappointed.

"You could spare two minutes. I promise I won't take long," he mused, suppressing a grin. You noticed that his fingers were still resting on your hip bone.

Why, o' heaven's above, did this man have to make everything so difficult?

"You wish," you said, biting down your lip to stop yourself from blushing at his cheekiness. You shifted a little under him, trying to find wriggle room to escape.

"Get off!," you huffed, when he didn't budge.

Tom looked at you for a long moment and then sighed, lifting himself off of you and sliding onto the bed.

"When will I see you next?" he asked, as you rose from the bed and headed towards the shower.

"Tonight."

"That's a," he glanced at the tiny alarm clock on the bedside table, "- whole fourteen fucking hours."

You looked at him for a moment, his puppy eyes almost getting the better of you. But two years was good practice enough and you shook your head. Besides, it was fun to watch him suffer.

"Patience, Holland."

Some days at the Corp were just plain boring. Nothing of consequence happened on such days, you had to merely sit through the whole day, attending meeting after meeting to discuss short plans. These meetings you could easily avoid but you were a dedicated worker.

The Corp was where it was today because you had never slackened.

After finishing the third meeting for the day, you settled back into your office, scanning through your mail to reply to some of the pending ones.

Just as you hit send on one of the replies, there was a knock on the door.

"Hey," Lucas Valdez, your PA, entered holding a large number of envelopes. You smiled at him as he placed them on your desk.

"Thanks. How'd the date go yesterday?"

"He was a total bore," he said, shaking his head in disappointment and his curls flopped on his head.

"Aw, I'm sorry! Don't worry, you'll find someone nice soon," you said, handing him a few files. "Also could you please send these to Lopez, Sharma and Phil for me? I need them to meet me."

Lucas nodded in confirmation and politely left.

You decided to go through the post as well because it was a boring day anyway and nothing could possibly bore you more.

You quickly leafed through them; a couple of advertisements, a few job applications (you kept those aside) and one small, plain envelope. There was no name on it, no stamp.

Huh. Strange.

You grabbed the letter opener and sliced the envelope open. A smaller piece of paper slid out of it.

The material looked quite expensive and vaguely familiar. Your eyebrows furrowed as you picked it up. It felt like it was an office paper but you couldn't be sure.

You turned it over. Written in a perfect, cursive handwriting and neon red ink were the words:

"Nothing is as it seems."

Something you know too well with the secrets you keep,

As you sow, so shall you reap,

Learn, lest you fall,

Beware, take from you, I will all.

You read it once, twice.

Now, you were a pretty famous public figure. Getting hate mail was a part of the job description but that didn't make it any easier.

The poem left you feeling just as uncomfortable as others had before. Nevertheless, this was still new. People were rarely this poetic in them.

What secrets were they talking about? If they meant you and Tom..

As if on cue, your personal phone chimed with an incoming notification.

Tom <3

I'm at your place.

Fourteen hours. I'm counting.

You smiled in spite of yourself and clicked the phone off, deciding to leave him on read. More the suffering, the better.

You glanced back at the note, the uneasiness settling over you once again. What could they be possibly talking about? If it was a hate mail it was unnervingly vague. And if it was someone's idea of a cruel joke, it was working.

Just then someone knocked at your door again and you hastily pocketed the note. It was Lopez, Phil and Sharma.

You blinked at them, struggling for a split second to remember why they were here.

Get a hold of yourself.

You smiled, recalling that you were the one who had asked for them. As they say down and began talking, you did your best to push the words to a far corner of your mind, the left side of your pants feeling strangely heavy.

[smut warning]

You found Tom in the living room that was attached to the kitchen, talking to someone on the phone. He motioned to you that he'd take a couple of minutes and you nodded, slipping inside the kitchen.

Your cook had, as always, laid out a scrumptious meal for you and Tom to down. You had barely opened the lid to the first bowl when Tom called from behind you.

"Your fourteen hours are up, Miss."

You turned to him, holding the bowl of pasta in hand. He was dressed in a plain white tee and your favorite grey sweatpants.

"I've still got half an hour left," you said nonchalantly, picking one piece of pasta and popping it into your mouth.

Tom watched you chew it slowly. It was completely involuntary that you let out a moan at the warmth that spread through your chest; you were actually famished.

"That's it, you little shit," Tom muttered under his breath and the next thing you knew you were being pushed against the counter, Tom's hands working down your body in a frenzy. He unbuttoned your shirt faster than you could process and chucked it to the floor. In another swift motion, he pulled off his own shirt as well before pulling you close again. His lips slammed against your own and then you couldn't really think at all. You moaned as he ground his hips into you, his hardening length pressing against your abdomen. You let your hands wander to his hair as he continued to grind into you, your knees already giving way under you. Warmth filled the base of your stomach as you slackened against him, mouth hanging open and eyes fluttering shut.

Just as your hands moved to his neck, he stopped, dragging his lips to your ear.

"I'm going to finish what I started and you're not going to say a thing," he grunted, his voice dropping low.

Before you could respond however, he'd turned you around and pushed you further up against the counter. You could feel him press against you, your shoulder blades digging into the hard muscle of his chest.

He thrust one hand into your pants and under your panties, fingers finding your wetness immediately.

His lips attached themselves to your neck and then he began to work you.

You moaned loudly as his middle and index finger dipped inside your already aching core and began to scissor their way through. His lean fingers knew exactly how and what to do and you immediately collapsed against him, groaning. He twisted and squeezed at your clit as his lips sucked hard on the skin of your shoulder. A flick of his wrist made you buck against him and you heard a deep chuckle rumble behind you.

Fuck.

Tom loved marking you. It wasn't good sex until you'd woken up with a few hickeys all over your back and chest.

Meanwhile, his other hand had unhooked one half of your bra and cupped your breast, thumb playing with your nipple. Your senses were in overdrive. You could smell his cologne; hear him panting in your ear as he pushed against you; feel his touch inside you. And God, nothing had ever felt this good.

You groaned as his fingers worked their magic, sliding further up and towards the spot he knew would tear you down. He moved faster now, the friction pushing you closer and closer towards the edge just as he started grinding against you again.

The sensation was a bit too much and you weren't even aware of the moans that tumbled out of your mouth as you gripped the back of his head and fucked his fingers. You bit down on your lip, to stop yourself from screaming his name.

"Come for me, darling," he whispered, his voice dripping with lust, fingers moving with a pace you couldn't keep up with.

And just like that, the ground slipped from beneath you, the world erupting in colors before your eyes.

"Fuck," you moaned as pleasure rattled through your body. You spasmed as Tom's fingers slowed their movement; stopping all together as you came down from your high, panting heavily.

"I had to wait fourteen hours to do that. Told you you were missing out," he said as you leaned against the sink, still breathless. You watched him saunter back to the living room and plop onto the couch casually, as if he hadn't just fucked you senseless.

You adjusted your pants and shirt, discarding your bra altogether. You reckoned you wouldn't really need it now. Legs still wobbly, you walked over to him and sat down on his lap, straddling him.

He looked up at you, eyes still dark and hair an absolute mess.

"I'm sorry you had to wait, baby. Let me make it up to you," you murmured locking your lips with his, the tiny note inside your left pant pocket, long forgotten.

___

Tagging:

@lil-writes @captiveties @imaginingthefandoms @fangirlingonrhys @killbillls @miklsnvengers @bunnie-kookie @silverreading @skz-in-ncity @estate-euphoric @tragicluver @aestheticgaybish @rororo06 @forever-stuck-in--neverland @sholland4 @sabrinaaa056 @winterierwriter @annathesillyfriend @libbyloos @vintageroses1014516 @isletsoflou-gerhans @maryosprinkle @colored-confetti @fallingfortom @prettylittlekitty97 @peter-spider-parker-man @waiting-to-be-myself @justnatys @itssolyn @dah-knee-cuh

[Want to be tagged? send an ask/ comment!]

Please, please keysmash in the comments if you liked the fic!

#tom holland x reader #tom holland oneshot #tom holland reader insert #tom holland imagine #tom holland x y/n #tom holland x you #tom hollan smut #tom holland fluff #peter parker x reader #ceo!tom holland #s&m

116 notes · View notes

starsoared · 6 years

Note

"Astrid.... are you okay?" -eodwuif

toTAL WORD COUNT: 1158 / accepting. @eodwuif

she remembers the cold wind against her skin. the snow hadn’t let up, and trent had insisted she practice outside regardless. astrid didn’t mind, at the time – her magics always worked better when there was a sky to work with. the sky could not contain her, never threatened her, could not betray her. it is a matter of trust with herself and the magic she uses, she knows. the fragile trust she has in herself cannot be broken, lest she herself follow suit quickly. a delicate balance required a delicate hand.

trent, however, was not that hand.

astrid was already running low on spells for the day. a short rest could only recover so much, and she hadn’t been allotted one that day. she was running herself ragged, she could feel it – but trent refused to let up on her, and so she must continue. such is the way of it. she stood in the clearing, wrapped in a wool cloak ( it was doing its best to keep out the cold, she knew ) and with her hands outstretched. she has only one spell left, and it isn’t supposed to be there, technically; all of her usable spells are gone, be they of lightning nature or cleric. it mattered not.

but there’s still something left, and astrid has to give it to trent. there’s a cleric nearby. she isn’t sure why. she’s the cleric. they don’t need one.

her partially gloved hands are shaking, and astrid pretends not to know why. she tries to concentrate, eyes trained on the rock in front of her. it’ll move, she knows it has to – it hasn’t yet, but it will. it has to. she imprints the memory of it in her mind, and her eyes close tight as she throws what little she has left at it.

it’s too much, she quickly realises.

the rock moves, practically smashes against a tree – but astrid feels a part of her chest jerk, as if ripped apart, and she stops breathing. there’s a trickle of blood leaking from between her lips. she doesn’t feel her knees hit the ground, doesn’t hear her own scream. it’s all oddly silent, before it goes black. not an oppressive darkness, but almost – relieving, in the way astrid feels as though she is no longer burdened by something. she can’t remember what.

she can’t remember anything, the more she thinks about it. her body feels light, as if it is floating. but then it shifts, and there is solid ground beneath her. she can move her fingers, feel a slight breeze on her skin. it’s nowhere near as cold, and her cloak is gone.

astrid opens her eyes.

there’s – a forest. unlike the one near … near where? her home? does she have one of those? she can’t remember clearly. there are faint memories of pine trees, but these are maple and spruce and willow trees. different, she knows. the sky is grey, almost as if dusk has just fallen; but there are no purples or blues, just grey and black. it does not scare her, oddly enough.

she sits up, slowly. her skin is pristine, new. there is not a single blemish in sight, save for one she notices lying horizontal against her forearm. it seems – odd. astrid thinks there might be something missing, but she isn’t sure. she can’t be. nothing here seems sure, but she doesn’t feel unsafe. doesn’t feel alone. it makes sense when she hears footsteps behind her, and a voice along with it.

‘ – i didn’t think you would wake up so soon. ‘ the man’s voice is kind, of a different stock than any astrid’s heard before. she turns to look at him, only to find him crouched down next to her. he’s tall, pale white face framed by draped black hair and leather armor. she thinks she sees feathers, too. it’s all a bit much. ‘ do you know where you are, astrid? ‘

she looks away. there’s a sneaking suspicion in her gut that leads to a sharp pain in her chest, and she instinctively presses a hand to it – but no spell comes out, only fizzles of energy she can only assume represents the last of what she has. she remembers the snow, the dizzy pressure put on her by something she unconsciously refuses to name. ‘ i don’t think i’m … supposed to be here. ‘

and, much to her surprise, the man laughs. he sits next to her, and leaves one of his hands open, palm up, on his knee for her to take if she wishes. astrid leaves it for now. ‘ you are right. this place is not for you, not yet. ‘ his voice is lilting, soothing. she could listen to it for hours, she imagines. ‘ this is the path between the curtain and the beyond. you just came through the curtain, astrid – i’d like to send you back out in one piece. ‘

astrid takes his hand.

he seems – genuinely surprised by her willingness to trust, despite how little control he has over the situation. ‘ they’re already trying to call you back, astrid. ‘

she doesn’t know how to react. perhaps there isn’t a right way, here. ‘ i – should go, shouldn’t i? ‘ her hand nearly slips from his, but he holds tighter.

‘ that is up to you. you answer to no one but Her and yourself. ‘ it is not meant to be blunt, but it is simple truth. he does not wish to pressure her, but she has a small window of time to return if she wishes. ‘ and She does answer, if you call. She always will. ‘

astrid seems to think another moment before standing, brushing herself off. ‘ and – what about you? i don’t even know your name. ‘ her voice is quiet, but she does not feel sad. not yet.

the last thing she remembers is a hand on her cheek, tilting her head forward, and a kiss on her forehead. ‘ that doesn’t mean i’m not watching. ‘ there’s a smile with it, too, she thinks. maybe she imagined it.

when she next wakes, she’s not alone. there’s a fire crackling in the hearth and she thinks she must be in her own bed. her bones ache, and there’s a pounding hurt in her skull that astrid thinks must be the worst of her life. her eyes open, albeit slowly, and she searches the room with bleary gaze before recognising the figure next to her.

‘ ‘wulf? ‘ comes her quiet voice, hand already outstretched to take his.

he takes it immediately with both of his, and leans forward to kiss her forehead. there’s a small smile on his face, but there’s poorly veiled concern behind it that astrid takes note of almost immediately. ‘ astrid … are you alright? ‘

astrid remembers the man, with the long black hair and the feather that she has a strong confidence now exists in the book she was carrying with her – and she smiles, sadly.

she shakes her head.

#YOU #Anonymous

1 note · View note

kuriquinn · 6 years

Text

Telanadas [10/19]

Cover Page & Disclaimer

first chapter

By some miracle, Sasuke does not give in to temptation and shoot Naruto in the back as they wander, which is just as well. After another turn of the corner, they end up walking into a larger chamber with two new paths. One leads down a set of stairs while the other—

“You two realise that sound carries around here, right?” Kakashi muses as he and Sakura materialise in the hallway opposite them. “We have been listening to you two griping at each other for at least ten minutes.”

Sasuke scowls.

“Aw, come on! You mean this place meets back around again in the middle?” Naruto complains.

“Looks like,” Sakura says, glancing at the new hallway that branches downward. “I guess this passage leads to another lower level, and the grand door we’re trying to open will bring us to the mountain.” Her eyes rove over Naruto. “What happened to you? Looks like you went three rounds with an ogre.”

“Something like that. It was awesome, Sakura, you should have seen it!” Naruto boasts. “There was this thing, sort of like a…hm, a druffalo but a lot meaner, and with horns and scales and—”

“Sounds like a bronto,” Sakura says, giving Naruto an admiring look. “We used them to move heavy loads back home. They can be gentle, but the Carta and the nobles bred them to be savages. They’ll trample any stranger they encounter, so you two are lucky to be alive.”

Naruto rubs his nose. “Well, I’m that impressive.”

“You still reek,” Sasuke interjects. “Did you two find anything in your search?”

“Sort of,” Sakura suggests, holding up a faded, ripped piece of vellum. “We found a storage room with a lot of useless junk, but I nicked this off a skeleton. Based on where we’ve been, looks to be a map, and I think this—” She indicates a square-shape, “—might be an armoury or vault. Maybe barracks? I bet we’ll find something more useful soon.”

“And if not?”

“If not, we go back to that door, I open it, and you three go on,” Kakashi says.

“We’ll find something,” Sakura insists, and the others know better than to argue with her.

Their group reunited once more, they descend the stone staircase and meander through more underground passages and rooms.

Sakura was not wrong about there being all manner of items down here. Satchels of rations and healing herbs, as well as a plethora of keys which appear to open every door but the one they need. It is an exercise in frustration that has even Sakura’s optimistic demeanour wavering.

Then come the rooms with the traps.

Flames shoot up at them through pressure panels in the floor, and tripwires send projectiles flying at them. Twice Kakashi must yank Naruto back from iron vices hidden beneath false debris, which snap shut with the force to break bone. Sakura also nearly ends up prey to a sleeping poison before Sasuke pulls her out of the way, catching her around the shoulders when she wavers.

Their eyes seek each other out, and she telegraphs a silent thanks to him before he releases her.

It is slow going after that, as between Sakura and Kakashi they try to decide how to navigate or disarm the blighted traps. There is no opportunity to rest once they escape that chamber, because almost the moment they enter the next corridor, they are assaulted by more cultists. Wave upon wave hurry forward to deal with the interlopers, forcing the small outfit to pause in their progression and deal with them. They barely have time to recover before another drove arrives.

Every new corridor brings more of the same until Sasuke wonders if they might not be fighting the unkillable dead. It is a monotonous, exhausting pattern: enter a new hallway or chamber, give a cursory examination that no one has mortal wounds, and prepare to fight the next wave of cultists.

Hours go by like that.

And then there’s the drake.

A swooping scaled dragonkin monstrosity that attacks them from above the minute they enter the chamber Sakura pointed out on her map. The creature cannot fly like a female dragon can, but still leaps over great distances and scales the walls with its tensile claws. Blasts of fire bathe them from all directions.

Like the bronto, this animal’s hide also appears resistant to forged blades. The party of four is forced to whittle away at it hoping something will eventually penetrate its hide.

Sakura was right about needing Kakashi to save his strength because the beast nearly kills them all. Right when all of them seem about to collapse from exhaustion and the shredding wounds from the creature’s claws, the mage casts a revitalising spell to recoup their strength. He staggers to his knees, ashen-faced, but the other three can now battle the beast with renewed vigour. Despite his spell taking so much out of him, Kakashi continues to set a barrage of hexes and curses upon the beast.

Sasuke knows that he will continue to fight until he drops dead.

It is a joint effort that kills it: Kakashi’s magic, Sasuke blinding it with his arrows, and Naruto drawing its attention by facing it head-on. Sakura deals the final blow from behind, vaulting aboard its back and using her considerable strength to snap its neck.

When the beast lies dead at their feet, Sasuke notices something trapped beneath one of the larger scales behind its head. It takes a bit of wheedling, but eventually he pulls out a round, hexagonal bit of iron.

“That looks like the lock on the door,” Sakura says in surprise when he hands it to her.

“They hid it on the drake?” Naruto demands. “These people really are insane!”

“I do not envy the man who had to put this here to begin with,” Kakashi wheezes. “Even a mage would have trouble with that.”

“Whatever the circumstance for it being here, we can get out of this place now,” Sasuke points out. “Let us go.”

Sakura tilts her head to one side, considering him and then glancing at Kakashi. There is a frown tugging at her lips—her calculating face—before she decides.

“According to the map, there are no other passages leading here, and this place is well-fortified. Since we’ve already taken care of everything that could attack us, I think we should stop and rest,” Sakura says. “Whatever waits beyond us may not know we’re here. But once we go through the door in the large hall, we’ll have more challenges to face. And I have a bad feeling there won’t be any more chances to rest.”

Naruto looks grim, and nods. Apparently, he feels the same unnameable suspicion. Sasuke suspects this is more of the Warden curse they share.

“Normally I would argue we don’t have the time,” Kakashi says. “But…I think I will need a moment. Or several.”

“So, it’s settled,” Naruto says. “We take a break—and then we go kick more ass.”

It is not what Sasuke might have chosen, but he cannot argue with the need for respite. His skin burns and his muscles ache from their exertions that day. If they are to make the rest of the journey up the mountain in the damned snow, he needs to be able to walk.

Kakashi goes to the edge of the room as far as possible from them but still within the wards. He has explained before, that to centre himself, he cannot be influenced by any of their energy. Sitting cross-legged, he puts himself into a deep trance, meant to help him restore his magic. Naruto, in the meantime, catches an hour or two of sleep. Sakura busies herself with sharpening her axe, trying to mend the dents in it from their encounter with the drake. Every so often she will wince and check her side—the one that Sasuke treated—before going back to work.

After the third instance of this, Sasuke goes to sit beside her.

“You should get some sleep, too,” he says, lest Naruto or Kakashi be eavesdropping, but his chin juts toward the place where her hand rests.

“No, I’m fine,” she replies, answering both his suggestion and unspoken question. “Besides, I found something while Kakashi and I scouted that other tunnel earlier. It will help much more than sleep.”

She holds up a pewter flask. Based on the grin on her face, he can guess what the contents.

“Is that really the best idea right now?” he wonders. “We are already on a quest that makes me question your judgement. I do not think alcohol would be an added benefit.”

“Please,” she scoffs. “You think this is enough to get your drunk?” Her eyes flick over him judgementally. “Well, maybe it would knock an elf on his ass.”

He scowls at her and snatches the flash from her, flipping open the top. He has had enough taunting from Naruto today, he refuses to take it from her too.

“I wouldn’t—” she begins, but he has already taken a huge gulp.

And promptly grips his throat in agony.

“Fenedhis!” he chokes, tossing the flask away. She catches it before it hits the ground. “What foul creature defecated into this poison?”

Sakura sniggers and takes a sip without even a grimace. “Dwarven ale. If it doesn’t kill you…you’ll wish it did.”

“Why would you drink that?” he spits, digging through his pack for a water skin or noxious herb to take away the taste. “You would be better served throwing it at an enemy and hoping it melts his face off.”

“It’s not so bad after the first sip. After that, all the nerves in your throat are too numb to notice.”

She takes another sip, only a slight twitch betraying the effect of the alcohol on her. Then she passes it back to him. Sasuke hesitates a moment before accepting and taking the second swig.

It still tastes the way he imagines burning halla droppings and sylvan blood might taste, but she was right about it being less painful this time. There is a distinct lack of feeling in his throat this time. Luckily, her promise of the other thing is also correct: warmth spreads down his oesophagus to his gut and then beyond.

At his noise of surprise, she grins, and then the expression morphs into something gentler. Sasuke finds his own mouth pulling into an unfamiliar upward direction, and for some reason this makes her eyes sparkle. Her cheeks turn rosy and she quickly looks away, reaching for the flask again.

Over the next hour, time stretches between them as they sit in a companionable, comfortable silence. Somewhere in the midst of it, he forgets that they are in a frozen mountain, surrounded by blood-crazed lunatics, ancient beasts and whatever else lies ahead. Hands linger on each other as they pass the flask back and forth, and when she makes a particularly bad joke, he groans with something between amusement and disgust. His shoulders, so used to bearing the weight of his past, seem less burdened just then, and though he knows it is a false reprieve, he does not mind.

Still, the next time she passes him the ale, he shakes his head. “No. Any more, and neither of us will be battle ready.”

“Speak for yourself! It’s colder than an apostate’s tit in here, even if we’re out of the wind. We’ll burn off the booze in no-time just trying to keep warm.” A mischievous look enters her eyes then, tinged with something darker as she leans forward. “Of course, there are better ways of getting warm.”

The air between them is heavy with implication. Perhaps the alcohol is affecting him more than expected, because he replies slyly, “I should have known a dwarf would be an exhibitionist.”

She blinks in confusion.

“Exi…? Oh!” Sakura goes red and looks away from him, abruptly embarrassed and shy. “I’m not. At least I don’t think I am, I’ve never…” Her gaze flicks back to their resting companions and then her back stiffens. She casts her eyes about their surroundings as if she too has forgotten where they are sitting. When her gaze lands on him again, she offers a tight smile. “I guess you have a point. I suppose it’s too much to hope this place has a room with a plush bed and a roaring fire?”

She offers it to him as a lighthearted, flirtatious joke, but there is a false note in it. He knows that whatever spell settled over them before is broken now. He is more disappointed than he expected to be but understands the necessity of maintaining boundaries. Now is not the time for…ill-advised liaisons.

Whatever arguments certain parts of his anatomy would like to make to the contrary.

“We should save some of this for Naruto and Kakashi,” she goes on, “if only to see their faces after that first sip.”

Her eyes crinkle as she watches the other two. There is a fondness there, soft and protective, and far beyond how a person looks at mere travel companions.

“You care for them,” he says, and does not understand the stiffness in his voice.

“I do. We’re friends.”

“No. It is beyond that,” he says, trying to think of a way to articulate properly. “You love them in a way that is beyond friendship.”

And what is that needling, sour sensation he gets in his gut at that notion?

Sakura does not even bother thinking about it. “They’re also my family.”

“You have not known them long,” he points out.

“That doesn’t make it any less true. They were both at Kannabi Bridge,” she explains. “Kakashi looked out for me while I was wandering around the camp. I was this silly little dwarf who’d never seen the sky before, trying not to get trampled by all the cloud-heads at the camp. And Naruto was there when I woke up after…after becoming a Warden.” She clenches her fist at the memory here. “They saved my life. They lived the same betrayal in battle as I did. And neither of them has family left, either. I guess…I guess we sort of adopted each other.”

He frowns at this.

“And you’re part of it, too, you know,” she goes on, making him look up sharply. “We’d be your family, if you let us.”

There is an earnestness in her words, and he knows she is being truthful. She, and the others in their outfit, would accept him without question if he wanted it.

There is something in this moment which hangs, heavy and expectant. He finds that, inexplicably, a part of him wants to confront it.

Damned alcohol, he tells himself.

But gazing into Sakura’s earnest eyes, he knows that he is lying to himself.

And in that moment, Sasuke chooses to go another avenue.

Translations:

Fenedhis – a common curse word; literal translation is something like ‘wolf cock’, but used in this sense it’s similar to ‘fuck’ or ‘goddamn’

Sylvan – giant, walking trees which frequent forests near the elves

Comments and concrit are much appreciated, and very motivating! For information about supporting my original, non-fandom related works, you’re welcome to check out my ko-fi tip jar, or my patreon page.

栗

Next chapter

#naruto fanfiction #dragon age fusion #sasusaku #slow build romance #dwarf!sakura #elf!sakura #mage!kakashi #human!naruto #adventure #au #drama #romanc #humor #warden!sakura #sfw #for now #urn of sacred ashes #character development #relationship growth

85 notes · View notes