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onlyswan · 1 year

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summary: in which alcohol plus k-drama is equals to your and jungkook’s tears.

> fluff / wc: 4k

> warnings: oc’s first attempt at becoming a pro bartender lmao they both drink alcohol!!, alchemy of souls spoilers!! (they watch the ending of part 2), mention of a stab and blood, they cry over character deaths together >:( (sike?) maybeee a little surprise bc jk is so in love y’all idk what else to say </3 💍

note: welcome to the result of my jungkook + aos brainrot. you can read more of inwhich!jk in glasses in this drabble. :D thank you anonie who sent this ask! + as always i’d appreciate it a lot if you lmk if you enjoyed mwamwa <3

—

“i miss my boyfriend.” you sigh dramatically as you slump over the dining table, popping a vodka-soaked cherry in your mouth.

despite being hopelessly in love, you and jungkook don’t necessarily feel obliged to spend every second of every day with each other. of course, it was different at the early stages of your relationship, when you had to cross oceans and move mountains to spend time together, even if it meant hugging for only ten minutes and parting ways again.

however, things changed when you started living under one roof. the burning passion of your love isn’t dying down, no. in fact, you would go as far as saying that it is growing more gracefully ardent. after all, there is no greater peace than knowing that at the end of the day, wherever the street signs and the unmarked paths may lead you to, you and jungkook choose to come home to each other’s arms. is this not the real honeymoon phase, as they like to call it?

he left early this sunday morning to attend a small reunion with his childhood friends in busan, while you spent the day reading a book and painting the numbers one to ten of the little paint by numbers kit you stumbled upon at the book store last week.

it’s a sunny day on an abundant island, with a lighthouse standing close to the edge. and maybe, just maybe, you regret ignoring the simple flower bouquet beside it because the details drawn on this canvas are the literal definition of tiny. you ended up feeling dizzy by afternoon because of the strain it caused to your fucked up vision.

to make matters worse, the doorbell rung at around 5pm, and a minute later you were already unboxing the basics cocktail set you ordered two days ago. it includes a 18- and 28-ounce shaker set, jigger that has a dual-side (ounce and two-ounce) pourers, strainer, muddler, and bar spoon.

to summarize what you’ve been doing with your life lately: you’re trying to explore the random things you’ve always been curious about, in hopes that they’ll help you find new hobbies and interests.

you thought about baking, but jungkook already does that, and quite frankly, you’re not at a place in your life where you have a high capacity for the patience it requires. mixing drinks, on the other hand, takes a relatively shorter time to do. and what makes it even more enticing is that you can take a shot whenever you mess up, as if you’re playing a drinking game.

there’s no better way to spend your sunday evening, right?

“baby, why the hell are all the alcohol outside of the cabinets?”

right… except you’re already intoxicated… and the world is spinning. you’re desperately yearning to hug jungkook, so he can make it stop, but you’re not even sure if he’s coming home or he’s staying over at his parent’s house for the night.

you react belatedly to the confused voice, lifting your head to squint at the man who grabbed a bottle of white wine from the cluttered countertop.

“hey, who are you? the bar is closed. put that down.”

he laughs lightheartedly when he realizes how drunk you’ve gotten. as he places it back down, the bottle clinks against the cold white stone. your heavy head collapses on top of your outstretched arm as he walks towards the opposite side of the dining table.

you open your eyes, one before the other, when you feel a presence hogging your space. a sheepish smile curves your lips as the beautiful face of your dear beloved greets you.

jungkook’s prescription glasses moves with his scrunched up nose as he grins at you playfully. “it’s the boyfriend you said you were missing.”

you reach out for him as soon as he finishes saying the sentence, silently asking to be embraced. slaves to your touch — his hands, which are resting on the sharp edge of the table and the top rail of your chair, eagerly slip down to encircle your waist.

you lazily lean your cheek on his shoulder, revelling in his welcoming body warmth. “why are you back early? aren’t you tired? you should’ve just rested at your house.”

“mhmm, i had to.” he hums, deep and raspy voice making his chest vibrate against yours. “we talked about marriage and all that jazz. i couldn’t stop thinking about you.”

with an airy huff, you pull away to glare up at him childishly. “i sure hope you’re not thinking about anybody else.”

he runs his tongue across his lips, unconsciously tugging at the silver lip ring with his teeth, but his loving smile stays. “you know that you’re the only one for me.”

“still! i like to hear it from you sometimes.” you giggle before taking a sip from a cold glass of cherry limeade, a refreshing treat you’ve been enjoying since before he arrived.

“vodka?”

“vodka.”

you swallow once more before handing him the glass, swaying your feet under the table as the delicious mixture of sweet and tart permeates your tongue.

“mhmm, wow!” he exclaims after taking a sip, tilting the glass a little bit to the side to look at the light red beverage with knitted eyebrows. “wait a minute- why is this so good?!”

you excitedly tug at the hem of his sweatshirt, begging for more pats on the head. “i had a lot of fun using the shaker.”

he lightly kicks out the chair to your right so he can take a seat, shrugging off the backpack full of clean clothes you packed for him last night incase he wanted to stay longer in busan.

“i did well with this one, right?”

he enthusiastically nods in response as he takes another gulp, chewing on the block of ice that also managed to slip inside his mouth. you melt into his affectionate touch when he cups your cheek with his delicate palm.

“maybe making drinks has been your specialty all along.”

you frown in disagreement. “i’m not sure. i made bloody mary before that one and i don’t know if i did something horribly wrong or it’s just supposed to taste that disgusting.”

amused laughter racks his body as he takes in the endearing sight of your genuinely downcast expression. you jut out your bottom lip in annoyance.

“it really tasted like poison! i got goosebumps!”

“shit, now i’m scared of you actually getting alcohol poisoning.” the back of your hand is rewarded with a sweet kiss by jungkook’s vodka-stained lips. the wide doe eyes behind his glasses meet yours curiously. “your hand smells like coffee.”

“oh- oh! the dalgona martini!” you rip your hand away from his to point at the martini glass standing at the very center of the dining table. “i just finished that. it should still be cold.”

he carefully slides the glass towards him to avoid spillage, fascinated lips forming a pout as he observes the thick portion of dalgona sitting on top of the mixed baileys and vodka. he didn’t even notice it at all because it’s almost the same color as the wood. has his vision gotten that bad?

“this looks yummy. you haven’t tried it yet?”

you shake your head, which you instantly regret because your vision blacks out momentarily. you swallow thickly as you attempt to blink away the shiny, swirly shapes dancing infront of your eyes.

“fuck, no. i already had classic martini, and mule. i’ll throw up.”

“jesus christ, baby. how many drinks did you try making?” jungkook finds himself so worried that he harshly takes off his glasses without reason, putting it aside on the table.

you giggle loudly at his reaction, using your folded arms as a pillow. “that’s all! i promise! besides, didn’t you drink with your friends, too?”

his face glows with uncontainable fondness at the mention of his friends.

“i was talking and laughing the whole time that i didn’t even finish half of my beer.”

your hazy eyes study his jovial and carefree features, and just like magic, they make your heart feel lighter inside your chest. heavens know that you wish for nothing more in the world than to see him this happy everyday.

“i’m so glad you had a great time, my love.”

“me too. i’ll tell you all about it when you’re sober and capable of memory retention.” he pokes fun at your drunken state as he picks up the glass of dalgona martini.

you roll your eyes before impatiently guiding the drink to his mouth. “just drink it already.”

“oing?” he blinks in disbelief, sipping on the glass again as if his tongue could’ve possibly fooled him the first time. ”i actually like this one more. i didn’t expect that.”

you abruptly perk up in your seat upon witnessing his candid review. “what? you’re joking!”

of course… you’re cursed. it had to be the one you hated making the most.

truth be told, you impulsively made the dalgona martini simply because it’s the only drink in the last online blog you found that you had the complete ingredients for.

you were obviously not prepared enough for this activity. but baileys, vodka, sugar, coffee, and water? yeah, any house would definitely have those.

then came your ridiculous dilemma: despite being intoxicated, you’re still terrified of using the electric whisker. and so, you had to do the whisking the hard way. to put it lightly, it was absolute hell. your arms and wrists are sore after shaking and whisking vigorously for the past three hours.

“it’s exactly what i needed after a long trip.” he moans. his shoulders spring up in delight as he licks off the foam around his lips, and you use your thumb to brush it away from the spots he missed.

jungkook grabs your hand before you could pull away, making you audibly gasp when he sucks at your thumb in his cold mouth. his insatiable tongue pokes the inside of his cheek after.

“uh- i think i tasted a hint of soap.”

“‘course you did. i just washed the dishes, you dummy.”

his pink lips part open as he processes your words, but he quickly brushes it off with a shrug. he noisily takes another sip from the glass.

“i can just clean it off my tongue with more martini.” he argues with a dimpled grin.

he grants you with a quick kiss, smudging the foam on his lips and transferring some of it to yours.

“ugh, you’re so sloppy!”

his laughter echoes in your home as he walks away. “i’m taking this with me to the bathtub!”

“don’t take an hour in there again.” you grumble out a complaint. “we need to watch alchemy of souls!”

—

“even if you decide to seal that door, i know how heartbreaking it will be for you, so it does not upset me so much.”

the flashback from four episodes ago confirms that it was foreshadowing this moment — park jin had sealed the door of jinyowon, a deep cave where relics are protected so they won’t unleash life-threatening dangers upon the world outside. lady jin and maidservant kim are stuck inside the collapsing sanctuary, holding back said relics from escaping… and the latter is none other than his wife-to-be.

jungkook anxiously bites the nails of his thumb and pinky finger, switching back and forth. the television screen reflects on the lens of his glasses as his eyes become shiny with tears.

“is this really the final episode? there’s no season three?”

“no, it ends tonight.” you reply in between embarrassing loud sobs, attention trained to the man mournfully calling out his lover’s name over and over again as he clutches her engagement ring to his chest.

the hot tears you fail to catch stream down to your temples, and then your boyfriend’s naked stomach. you’ve comfortably settled on the bed after finishing your nightly routines. your head is lying by the bottom of his ribcage, and that’s where the other edge of the cozy blanket enveloping the two of you rests. you grabbed a small portion of the cotton in a loose fist, and you’ve been keeping it close to wipe your tears with.

“oh my god, i can’t fucking do this. my head is being split open.”

you toss aside the remote control after pausing the episode, crawling to the nightstand to pop the painkiller in your mouth, which you prepared to be supposedly taken tomorrow morning. maybe you’ve sobered up a little, but the combination of the alcohol and the woeful crying have resulted to an agonizing migraine.

with his long and slender fingers, your boyfriend removes the hair that stuck to your tear-stained face before tenderly wiping your cheeks with the pads of his thumbs.

“making my baby fucking cry, too. i need that son of a bitch jin mu to burn in hell.” he curses to release his pent-up anger from the past 29 episodes, referring to the main antagonist of the series. the harshness of his tone contrasts the gentle kiss that lingers at the corner of your lips.

after drinking water, you wipe away jungkook’s tears with tissue paper, gingerly dabbing at the sides of his nose as well. he has a very sensitive skin, and because tears do contain salt, they can cause slight irritation and stinging when he cries. it’s something he once quietly complained about in passing, but somehow, it stuck with you throughout the years.

“does it hurt a lot?” he worriedly caresses the back of your head.

you meekly nod in response.

“should we just watch the rest of it tomorrow then?”

“noooo.” you drag out the word, shifting on the bed to return to your previous position. “my pain is nothing to compared park jin’s pain. i must persevere.”

and just like that, your tired eyes begin to water again. jungkook chuckles, affectionately holding your face in his hands. he isn’t surprised to find your skin to be warmer than normal.

“aigoo, your eyes are so red. at least put your glasses back on.”

“fine.” you mumble in defeat as you pat around the mattress, looking for the glasses you haphazardly threw aside when your intense emotions started to take control over you.

his rosy cheeks rise like buns in an oven as he smiles. “i love it when we match.”

—

park jin stands before the greedy individuals who conspired to steal the foundation of jinyowon, the fire bird, which dries up the world when it is awakened. it will be used in a rain ritual to create another ice stone, a ball of energy similar to that of the sun or a star. and to point out the obvious, having it in your possession would mean becoming the most powerful being there is.

“evil always does what it wants without ever stopping. but why is it that virtue always needs to prove itself over and over again?”

“…yes. i do wish to save her. i would do anything to save her, even if it meant i would lose my sanity. but even so, i will stop you from getting what you want. not a single one of you has the right to laugh at me… and call me… a hypocrite.”

you feel jungkook shiver below you. he is immensely engrossed with the actor’s phenomenal performance, flawlessly depicting what ‘seething’ anger means. he puts his tattooed arm underneath his head to get a closer view of the subtitles. these have to be some of the best written lines he’s heard from this show so far, and he hopes to remember them by heart.

the two of you watched with bated breath when he starts fighting against several warriors, and then it happens… jin mu removes the barrier of the fire bird as a threat.

“oh, fuck you!” you kick your feet in annoyance.

park jin is forced to focus his energy on re-sealing the fire bird, leaving him vulnerable to the attacks of his merciless opponents.

“no, no, no.” jungkook chants under his breath, heart thundering with fear. “this can’t be happening.”

you know what is bound to happen. they did show three coffins at the end of episode nine. but denial denial denial is a stage of grief after all, and so, with a broken sob, you squeeze your eyes shut.

when your eyelids flutter open, a sword has already been driven through the center of his chest, and dark red blood uncontrollably spills from his mouth. jin mu spitefully pulls it out from behind before he weakly falls on the ground. jungkook stays quiet, it happens so fast but he feels suspended in time, while your horrified crying carries on.

you unwillingly remove your head from his chest before you can cry a river over his shirtless torso, opting to sit up beside him.

“bunch of cowards.” he couldn’t resist mocking as the group scrambles to leave the place before it completely burns down, jin mu taking re-sealed fire bird along with them.

park jin jolts awakes coughing up blood. he painfully forces himself to lie on his back, and the camera reveals that he’s been holding maidservant kim’s ring all along. with trembling hands, he puts the ring on himself. you cover your own mouth as you listen to his worn out sobs.

a look of love and admiration shines on his dull eyes, and you swear that he smiles softly, before his arms fall limp on the dusty ground.

is the moon watching? and the stars? have they ever witnessed something so gutwrenchingly tragic?

“he wore the ring on his pinky! and it didn’t even fit halfway!” your glasses is left abandoned beside you again as you finally allow yourself to weep freely.

seeing that you clearly need a break after that heartbreaking scene, jungkook pauses the episode.

“that’s so cute, but-” you hiccup. “this is so unfair. they were supposed to get married and have babies!”

“oh, baby. i know.” he coos softly, hugging your side and peppering your cheek with kisses. his own tears drip from his chin and he brushes them away with the back of his hand. “their souls will be together in after life though, don’t you think?”

you gradually grow quiet and calm at the thought he proposed, but- “i don’t think they can make babies there.”

“shit.” he chuckles as his forehead lands over your shoulder, glasses slightly sliding down his nosebridge. “you’re right.”

“this is too much. i can’t-” you blow your nose in sheets of tissue paper before throwing them in the bin you dragged next to the bed earlier. “it hurts so much. they just wanted a peaceful life together.”

the two of you grieve for the what if’s and what could’ve been’s. he can’t possibly think of anything more tragic than being forced in a position to choose between the love of your life and the humanity; only to end up perishing at the hands of the evil who made you do it.

and what did he have left? a lifetime’s worth of love to take with him to the grave, and whatever’s left of his pride and dignity? jungkook wouldn’t want any of those. he only wants you.

he lifts up his head, a small smile playing on his lips, swollen and cherry-colored from the nervous nibbles of his bunny teeth. “we’re crying like this and they’re not even the main characters.”

“need to sue the writers for emotional damages.” you groan, tense muscles slowly relaxing in your boyfriend’s embrace. “how many minutes left?”

“40 minutes.”

“i can’t even open my eyes anymore. sorry, babe. my head-”

it’s almost as if it’s been dunked underwater. the throbbing pain spreads numbing pressure from your temples to the back of your head.

“i told you we can finish it tomorrow. it’s fine.”

jungkook briefly leaves your side. the television screen turns black after he pulls out the plug. he throws away the crumpled tissue papers, and then he places your glasses on the safety of the nightstand.

“how cute… don’t fall asleep on me yet.” he fondly coos at your half-asleep figure. “you’re dehydrated. drink some water first.”

a straw pokes your lips. with your eyes shut closed, you hold onto his wrist to steady the tumbler as you take a long sip. by the time you let go, the water has reached the line indicating that there’s only three quarters of it left.

you softly fall back on your pillow with a ‘thump’, turning your back on him to face his empty side of the bed. he also drinks his share of the water before filling in the blank beside you.

he hums in acknowledgement when you pull at his arm to make it your personal pillow, leaving his own glasses on the nightstand as well before facing you.

you give him a small hazy smile, threading your fingers through his soft and luscious hair. “love your pretty and healthy hair.”

“i love you.” he whispers like a confession as he strokes the back of your head. “close your eyes now.”

“i love you, too.” with a peaceful sigh, you nuzzle your face against his chest. “jungkook?”

“hmmm?”

“were you happy today?”

a lump grows in his throat, bigger than the one he felt when he was browsing through engagement rings online. emerald cut, cushion cut, round cut. sapphire, ruby, diamond. size 4, 4.5, 5, 5.5, 6, 6.5… he was hanging on the thin line that separated excitement and anxiety. the two-hour train ride passed by like a radio song he didn’t pay attention to. but you don’t need to know about that. not right now.

he swallows it down, embracing you tighter. “i still am… happy. if i delete those scenes from my memory.”

“me too.” you mumble before succumbing to the void of darkness beneath your heavy eyelids.

—

between the alcohol and the coffee that he simultaneously drank, it looks like the latter won the upper hand. more than twenty minutes later, jungkook is still wide awake, overcome by his clamorous thoughts. the conversations he had with his friends echo in his mind, and he paces back and forth between your shared past and future. the future… there is no future if there is no you.

he closes his eyes, instructing himself to focus on the steady rise and fall of your chest instead of the things he cannot control.

he kisses the top of your head. “i love you so much.”

however, he won’t be able to sleep peacefully until he learns what happens next. he needs the closure because he would truly despise having a bad dream about them. after all, they didn’t show maidservant kim dying. there is a glowing firefly of hope he’s been enchanted to follow into the abyss of the night.

with careful movements, he wears his glasses and his wireless earbuds. he holds his phone using the arm you’re lying on, while his hand under the blanket absentmindedly rubs your back, palm smoothly running up and down the expanse of your skin.

his jaw slacks open only three minutes after he picked up where you left off. jang uk, the male lead of the show, reveals to those grieving infront of the three empty coffins that their loved ones did not pass away.

the following scene unveils park jin, alive yet unconscious on a bed, and maidservant kim who is holding his ring-clad hand, weeping for the traumatic night the two of them suffered.

jungkook chuckles in great relief, blinking away the tears from his glassy eyes.

“fuck, they’re alive.”

—

“fuck, they’re alive!” you almost choke on the haejangguk, a hangover soup, that you started to heartily eat not even two minutes ago. “i almost died crying last night and it turns out that they lied to me?!”

jungkook chooses to feign ignorance. he innocently watches the screen with his wide doe eyes, bunny teeth biting at the rim of his glass of white milk.

“wow, i’m speechless.“ he squeaks out. “how did they even get rescued?”

—

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cuckoo-on-a-string · 2 years

Text

Younger Gods: III

Younger Gods Master List Dream x fem!reader

Chapter 2

Dangerous magic and old friends lay the foundation of a fate foretold, and Morpheus spends too much time in the library.

Warnings: language, briefly referenced suicidal ideation, self-neglect/harm, extreme sleep deprivation, Dream is still his own damn warning

A/N: First - THANK YOU ALL. Seriously. You're amazing, I love you, and I'm working on catching up on comments. Now for the bad news. Ya'll broke chapter 2. Like, literally. I went to edit the tags list and Tumblr said nope. Imagine a small, family car with dozens of people stacked inside and hanging off the roof. It just won't go. The chapter also didn't show up in the story tags, at least whenever I checked. So...

*The taglist is officially discontinued*

I am making that up with something special, though, so make sure to read the A/N at the end!

Chapter 3: Darker Fates

“Gracious, darling, you look dreadful.”

She collapsed into the rickety café chair. Across the laminate table sat her oldest friend. Her one friend. And she immediately wondered how much to tell him. Only two days stood between her and her involuntary trip down memory lane, between her and the Sandman. She’d seen dark birds from the corner of her eye once or twice, but they always turned out to be crows and magpies. That didn’t mean Matthew wasn’t following her, of course.

She hadn’t escaped the consequences of her actions yet, and she didn’t want to drag one of the precious few people she cared about into the muck.

“What happened to your courtly manners?”

“What happened to your face?” He shuddered delicately, burying the real concern she caught in his sharp grey eyes with dramatics. Signaling the waitress behind the counter, he added, “We’ll need another pot of tea, please.”

The woman blushed and hurried off to fill the order. Doubtless, he’d been flirting while he waited. Damn silver fox. Although he was over one thousand years old, he wore it well. His greying curls and tidy beard looked playful rather than unkempt.

“Do you have what I need?”

He nodded. “Tea’s on it’s way.”

“Not the damn tea, Taliesin.”

The twice-born bard sucked on his teeth, glancing from the front windows to the back counter. Only spilled coffee stains and a sticky smear of jam occupied the other tables. He acted like this kind of deal might draw attention, and he had good reason to think twice about handling magical items in public, but no one cared what two people meeting up at two in the afternoon in a cheap café shared over a cup of tea.

He slipped his hand into his coat pocket and retrieved a small, stoppered bottle. The liquid inside moved like tar, oozing up the side of the glass as Taliesin angled it in the light. Even caution couldn’t banish his instincts as a showman.

“Understand.” He looked her in the eye, his scintillating smile packed away for a stone glower. “This is a cruelty, not a blessing. Now, I won’t ask why you need it. I wouldn’t insult you like that. But it’s my responsibility to tell you this is a bad idea.”

She could think of worse.

Before she could explain herself, the waitress pranced over with the tea. She set the pot between them and provided a fresh cup and saucer. Taliesin grinned, winked, and sent her on her way again with a word of thanks.

“One day your philandering will get you into trouble, old man.”

He sniffed and poured the tea, adding the slightest splash of milk, just the way she liked it. “I never begin something from which I cannot safely extricate myself. And, besides, a little teasing will make her day.”

He slid the cup across the table, and she wrapped her hands around the porcelain to drink in the heat through her chilly palms. She couldn’t seem to stay warm these past few weeks. Anyway, tea wasn’t what she’d come to drink.

“Will it keep me awake forever?”

“Nothing is forever. Nothing you can taste, touch, or smell.” He sounded both chiding and nostalgic. “But this will last seven years and seven days.”

“Good enough. What do you want in exchange?”

Tutting, he tucked the potion back in his jacket, and she sagged in her seat. “Tea first. I have grand and patronizing cautions to give.”

She lifted the cup, maintaining eye contact as she took the biggest, loudest slurp she could manage. It tasted nice, and its warmth felt even better in her stomach and throat than it had on her skin. Why did the bastard have to be right about everything?

The twinkle in his eye suggested he knew what station the train of her thoughts had left, and he slurped from his own cup in merry retaliation.

“First,” he licked a drip from his mustache, “and foremost: this is vile magic. It doesn’t gift wakefulness – it steals rest. The fae designed it with little prisoners like you in mind, to be taken in spaces where time melts and enchanted food will cheat the body’s need for sleep. Since – I dare presume – you do not have those safeguards, this could kill you.”

He left the words to sink in, trying to scare her off the purchase. When she reached out to see if he knew someone willing to make this potion, he’d leapt at the opportunity himself. It was his way of protecting her, and it gave him a chance to interfere with what he clearly saw as self-harm.

Since she wasn’t sure she could survive another nightmare like the one Dream hauled her through, she’d take her chances with death by her own hand.

“Consider me warned, but it doesn’t change anything.”

Taliesin bowed his head over his teacup, groaning. Any fantasies that he could talk her off her current path finally cracked. “You really are stubborn, rain cloud.”

“I learned from the best.”

“Oh, no. That you found all your own.” His smile grew back, wan but alive. His hand settled on the table, palm up, and she abandoned her tea to settle her hand over his.

“Just promise,” he said with a gentle squeeze, “that if you feel anything going off, if you even suspect something’s wrong, you’ll call your old friend Taliesin. Okay?”

She squeezed back, trying to smile for him, but she was too tired to make the expression stick. “Okay.”

Nodding to himself, he echoed the agreement again, “Okay,” and reached into his pocket. He slipped the bottle between their joined hands, and she pulled away to put it in her sweater.

“What do you want in return?”

“Well!” He smacked the table with both hands, grinning in a way that promised trouble. “I thought long and hard about it, but rather than jewels, or secrets, or power, I think what I would most like from a lovely young storm god is…” He paused, glancing meaningfully out the window at the dreary, grey-yellow afternoon. “A walk in the rain with my favorite little cloud.”

He sounded so damn happy about it he infected her with the feeling. It was nice to be needed. Wanted. Even if she’d just lied to his face.

A friendly rain gathered and fell as Taliesin got up to pay the bill. He left the waitress looking pleased with herself – and probably a generous tip. Then he came to meet his rain cloud at the door. An umbrella appeared from some hidden pocket and he grinned, holding out his elbow for her to link arms with him.

“I always come prepared,” he bragged as they stepped out into the shower.

“You say that like you don’t live in Wales.”

“I never said you were the only thing I came prepared for.”

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

Given the mother’s name to track, Lucienne did eventually find the record of the little storm god’s dreams, but they were useless to Morpheus. He studied the handful of pages warped by the curse she wore around her neck with mounting frustration. Apart from reports of which nightmares feasted on her pain during her brief, forced rests, they gave him nothing.

Her mother’s dreams proved more illuminating. They, at least, gave him a line of inquiry to follow.

The woman dreamed about her child from the moment it was born, from the minute the father tore her away to trade. The mother wandered endless rooms, following a crying child’s voice while she slept. She dreamed of little coffins and wailing infants she couldn’t find in nurseries dripping with gore.

Arcane shapes and dead languages shadowed her sleeping hours as she learned magic. In the waking world, she became a capable witch. There, as in the Dreaming, every hope and wish bent to finding her baby.

She never gave up her pursuit.

But in the end, it was the daughter who found the mother.

Her favorite dream grew out of a memory. A rainy afternoon, a crack of lightning, and a knock on the door. A painfully thin teenager stood on the steps, dripping in a thunderstorm, looking up with wondering eyes. If Morpheus had any doubts as to the girl’s identity, the scars around her neck put them to rest. She still had blood in her hair, rusty smudges caught in the grooves of old scars, fresh hurts and healed wounds calling to the mother’s instinct to protect and care for.

Although she had plenty of nightmares about losing her daughter again – finding her bed empty, losing her in a crowd – the nature of her somnolescent musings shifted. Softened.

And a familiar face came to call. The Welsh bard, Taliesin, whom the demi-god child kept safe at the cost of her hands, brought little gifts to the old woman and her young daughter. His winks brought warm flushes to the mother’s dreams, and she rested easier at night knowing that her little girl would not be entirely alone in the end.

She had sacrificed ten years of her life to a fairy bargain that won her nothing but a hand-sized portrait of her baby girl during her long search. By the time the child returned, her mother had grown old. They only had twelve years together before the lost child lost her mother.

The woman died. The record ended. But Dream knew where to look next.

Abandoning his throne for the library, he wrestled against a growing sense that he was running out of time. Time for what? Time for whom?

He was still Dream of the Endless. He still had a realm and billions of dreamers to manage. The puzzle of the storm god who brought home his raven lingered like a toothache, but he could not abandon his responsibilities. Determined as he may be to remove the golden collar from both the Dreaming and the dreamer, the curse had lingered for decades without disturbing anything significant.

It had been months since he picked through her dreaming mind to discover more about her – more about the curse. Only now, as the things settled back into a comfortable kind of order, could he indulge his curiosity, his side-quest as Death mockingly called his interests. And he was more than interested. The longer the questions lingered, the more of his attention they consumed.

Perhaps it was the crossroads. The Fates said he’d already pushed the storm god towards a darker fate, but they never said it was too late to change that course, and the three often left the most important truths unsaid.

If only he knew what to look for. Perhaps that was why he spent so much time and energy researching the collar. It gave him a target. Without it, he felt like a dreamer caught in a pitch-black nightmare, groping blindly for anything with which to reclaim the light.

But he did not have to search alone.

“Lucienne.”

His librarian looked up from a stack of new, peering over the rim of her spectacles. “Did the mother’s dreams help you find what you needed, my lord?”

“In part. Though I need another volume.” He handed over the two records, the mother’s dreams and the storm god’s. Lucienne set down her tower of work and went to shelve the two immediately. They slotted beside each other, the mother’s name in curling script, the daughter’s blank.

“You know,” Lucienne said, “I only found the nameless one’s record because the mother’s kept reshelving itself with the daughter’s book. I fixed it twice before I realized. It’s rather sweet.” She sighed. “If vexing. What volume do you require, my lord?”

Morpheus spared the books another glance, wondering how much of the mother’s arcane studies had influenced her history of dreams. But she’d given him all she could, and now he must turn to the living for answers. “The bard Taliesin’s records, and anything else we have on his history.”

“That is more a section than a collection, lord.”

“Yes.” It wasn’t his first time encountering the bard. “I may need to speak with him, but he will be loathe to leave a story once he is introduced. I’d prefer to find answers in the records. Will you help me?”

“Of course. Give me a moment.” Lucienne paused. “Give me several moments, please, my lord.”

On Lucienne’s first trip, she retrieved the official record of Taliesin’s dreams. He’d lived a long life, and he dreamed vibrantly. The tome was several feet thick, and the library echoed when the librarian set it on the table.

“Thank you, Lucienne.”

“I’ll fetch the rest, sir.”

Taliesin’s early works, recorded on parchment and scrolls, sat between books published under a dozen nom de plumes in later centuries. When the librarian returned with a cart stacked high with history books referencing and theorizing over the man and his myth, Morpheus excused her.

“These should suffice, Lucienne. I will let you know if I do not find my answers here.”

“Of course, sir.” She brushed dust from her immaculate coat, checking the sleeves, before folding her hands neatly behind her back. “Is there anything else I can do for you?”

Already buried in the works of Taliesin’s unconscious mind, he shook his head. “Not at this time.”

She bowed and left. The library would be chaos without her. He could remember when it was. It was no mean feat, organizing a universe of stories. It made her wise in ways he had only just begun to appreciate.

The man whose dreams he searched enjoyed other kinds of wisdom. He’d gained a third of the world’s knowledge by accident, but he’d spent the better part of his life learning the other two thirds by choice. Advisor to kings, story-weaver, and a natural mage, he had the wisdom and craft to recognize some of the magic wrought into the storm god’s collar. He’d tried to take it off when they first met, and he studied for a means to free her after his escape.

Morpheus wanted to know what the bard found.

However, though his dreams in the past few decades often welcomed a shade of the storm god to play out adventures and tragedies as part of a colorful cast, Taliesin’s attention did not linger on the curse. It was little more than a bright shadow that pricked his conscience.

He sat back in the chair, glowering at the books that had failed him.

It seemed every whisper of progress led to more questions in this riddle, and not for the first time, he wished the library could offer more insight to the happenings of the waking world. He should not need to ask for help so often.

At least, unlike the storm god, the bard embraced his dreams. Like all great storytellers, he had explored his fantasies and fears ravenously. When he next slept, Morpheus would pry loose some answers. It shouldn’t be difficult. The bard dearly loved the sound of his own voice.

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Taliesin presided over a court of housecats.

He was aware enough to know the royal courtiers of Edward II did not, originally, have literal claws, but it made perfect sense in the moment. Edward and Gaveston were in the corner, playfully wrestling – maybe – while Isabella stalked closer with murder in her vertical pupils.

“This is not the way,” he huffed, plucking a kitten from the mob joining ranks behind Isabella, a gorgeous tortoise-shell with no interest in his opinion. The kitten sprang spread-eagle back to the floor.

Chaos. Absolute chaos.

His favorite idiot, his little rain cloud, curled under the steps to the dais. She’d found herself, once again, where she did not belong, and if her eyes didn’t reflect the torches set around the room, he never would’ve known she was there. It was the wrong court altogether, but she had a talent for trouble and a gift for surprises.

Dropping to his knees, he reached under the wooden platform to coax her out. She’d become a fetching little half munchkin, half Norwegian forest cat caught in the lanky middle ground between kitten and grown cat. A menace, to be sure, but too cute to ignore.

“Come out and play with your friends,” he said as she wriggled even farther out of reach. “It isn’t good to hide all the time. You need to do some seeking, too, lovee.”

But she was very determined and his arms just weren’t long enough, so he manifested a trail of nibbles to catch her attention. He could be patient. He could be tricksy. Good friends, he firmly believed, should be both, because sometimes people were just too stupid or too stubborn to accept the help they obviously needed.

He sat up to kneel below the empty thrones and clapped his hands on his thighs.

Well. He’d done what he could for now. Across the room, poor Gaveston was learning the price of being a king’s favorite. The yowls and cries almost distracted him to the point he didn’t see the massive black Maine Coon stalk into the throne room. The cat’s eyes glowed, both literally and metaphorically. In his kneeling position, Taliesin actually had to look up to see those eyes, and he gulped, wondering if he was about to be eaten.

“I have questions for you, bard.” The cat spoke with authority in a voice like honeyed night.

Taliesin recognized it, though it hadn’t come from a cat before, and he dismissed all thought of stupid whot, why, what, how demands.

It may be his imagination at work, but it was not his realm.

“Dream King.” He bowed. Then he remembered he was dreaming and squinted at the cacophonous mess of the long-dead king’s feline transformation. “Ah. This makes so much more sense.”

The cats blinked out of existence, or at least out of his dream, and he sat back on his heels. The stone chamber grew quiet. A plaintive meow from beside the stops, however, proved not all the cats had gone. The junior cat approached and let him sweep her into his arms, even purring when he scratched under her chin.

Still aware of the Endless – no longer in cat-form – Taliesin allowed himself a moment to enjoy this imagined pleasure. The little storm god made an adorable ball of fur. “You’d never make this so easy in the waking world, would you?”

She sized his finger with claws and teeth to prove she wasn’t easy in any world.

“There is unwelcome magic in the Dreaming.” The Nightmare King didn’t wait for Taliesin’s focus, confident as any monarch that his words would be heard, that the listener would take note and action. “You have studied it.”

Taliesin nodded, taking his word for it and stroking his friend the kitten as he picked through his long memory for anything of interest to the King of Dreams. “I have studied many shapes of magic, lord.”

“This one is close to you.”

Some darker note in the Dream King’s voice snagged Taliesin’s ear, and he looked away from the cat to study his face. Lips bent in a frown, brows pinched, the king had his starry eyes pinned to the creature in the bard’s arms. Taliesin looked back down to see a phantom of the collar growing around the kitten’s neck. She writhed against it, mewling in pain, staring up at him like he could do anything to help her.

He’d tried, and he’d tried again. He still hadn’t given up entirely.

Couldn’t the poor thing’s shade at least find relief in his dream?

She scratched him in her fit, and he bundled her closer, pinning her fast and safe as he’d failed to do when she was small and alone and willing to suffer in his stead. Even if he couldn’t free her, he’d never abandon her.

The truth of the matter struck him. He felt the cat shudder against his heart when she’d been so calm and accepting a moment ago, and he knew.

“So, you’ve met my favorite idiot.”

“Yes.”

The word betrayed nothing, not how they met, not how he felt. But he wanted to banish the collar once and for all, and Taliesin could get on board with that.

“It’s fairy-make,” he said. “Broken in the waking world, but still manifests in the Dreaming.”

“I know. What I do not know is why. What terms closed the circle around her neck? It appeared to suppress her godly half in life.”

Taliesin tried to cradle the cat even closer without suffocating her. “If you do not mind my asking, lord, how do you know even that much?”

“I saw it,” the king said, casually, like it wasn’t one of the worst things the bard had ever heard, “in her dreams, in her recollection of the past.”

Closing his eyes, the bard took a deep, deep breath in through his nose. He had to hold it for a minute, because it desperately wanted to leave his throat with a string of curses Dream of the Endless would not enjoy. When he was sure he could exhale without heaping abuse on the dolt’s head, he let the breath go. He did it all one more time, and then he said, “I think I understand why she wanted to stay awake.”

Eyes still shut, he murmured to himself, “Why didn’t she tell me? Self-destructive little –”

When he finally looked, the world had changed. Gone was the castle, the throne, and the sweet little cat from his arms. He’d imagined a cheap bedsit in Cardiff, the kind of place the little storm god may stay on the run – and she was definitely on the run, from nightmares if nothing else.

The young woman lay sprawled in a puddle of moonlight, half dead, and fading fast. Her skin clung to her bones, eyes sunken, old wounds open and bleeding from malnutrition and scurvy.

The empty potion bottle sat on the windowsill.

Dream of the Endless studied the scene with clear interest, and Taliesin beat down his protective urges in the name of pragmatism. If she was running from Lord Morpheus, she wouldn’t turn to Taliesin for help when the potion dragged her to the brink of death. It wouldn’t be a life lesson she could grow through. It would be a life ended.

“She came to me a few months ago,” he said, hoping the Endless would care enough about the woman shackled to the curse to consider her in his grand schemes. “She wanted a potion to stave off sleep. I told her it was dangerous, and I thought she’d come to me for help soon, that I could teach her something, but –”

The body on the floor laid so still. How many months had it been? How close was this nightmare to reality?

“I said her dreams would be kinder when she next slept,” the king murmured.

He didn’t have to say he didn’t understand.

Taliesin crossed his arms and cleared his throat. Someone, at least, would learn something this night. “Well, she’s a storm, isn’t she? She isn’t capable of moderation. When she’s happy, she’s ecstatic. When she’s angry she’s electric. When she’s afraid she is very, very afraid. And she’s terrified of you.”

Dream looked over his shoulder at the bard, still looming beside the dying phantom.

“I neither wish nor intend her harm.”

“You don’t have to intend harm to hurt her.”

The Endless fully turned to him, and the bard spoke with all the confidence of being truly heard. Just as the king did upon entering this dream. “You, I presume, dug very deep in a very dark place. That hurt her. Frightened her. If you push her far enough she’ll chew off her own leg to get away, or didn’t you see the part where she nearly decapitated herself to escape the damn collar?”

Silence filled the room. An ugly, cheap place to die. Taliesin wondered how long it would take to find her if she really had gone to ground. He couldn’t trust the King of Dreams to care about anything beyond the Dreaming’s borders, and he wouldn’t trust her health with the one who pushed her to ruin in.

He had spells to find her, but he wasn’t sure he could hold her if she went into a panic.

In the stillness, they could hear her death rattle.

“What will your potion do to her?”

His potion. Yes, he supposed it was his fault. The girl really was like a stray cat, hiding under porches to die quietly rather than let someone help. He should’ve known.

“It keeps her awake. Eventually, she’ll feel too ill to eat. She may hallucinate. Her heart will fall out of rhythm and she’ll waste away until her body doesn’t remember how to function.” He smacked his head back into the wall, wanting punishment, hoping to jog some inspired idea free. “I warned her.”

Of all the Endless, and he’d met quite a few, Dream was the most inscrutable. Cold and detached, but prone to dangerous spikes of interest that spiraled into nearly obsessive passion. His vengeance came swiftly and his affection grew slow. But Dream was, usually, just. He didn’t enjoy undeserved suffering, and Taliesin had to hope that after walking through the little storm god’s dreams, he’d understand she’d earned none of her pain.

It wasn’t too late. He’d lost track of time, but a tableau this desperate wouldn’t come to pass for at least a year.

“If you are of a mind to assist, Dream Lord…” He pushed off the wall, suddenly and entirely desperate to move. “I have an idea.”

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Her fear grew bitter as her strength waned. She could taste it when she struggled to eat, and when she gave up meals, it poisoned the water she drank. Terror tasted like blood from bitten lips and dust on her dry tongue. Her hands shook, and her throat burned from stomach acid, but it wasn’t bad enough to call on Taliesin again. She knew what he’d say.

Whatever happened, she would not fall asleep.

Besides, she wasn’t dying yet. She was only sick. If the Dream Lord pulled through her bloody history again, she wouldn’t survive. If she had a choice, she’d pick a death in the waking world, free of the collar and safe from the Dream Lord who dragged her through horrors so callously.

She wasn’t convinced he believed in her innocence, either. If he knew he’d threatened someone trying to rescue his damn raven, surely he would’ve apologized.

Better to stay awake and ignore the cramps in her belly.

The rain soothed her. Fitful storms plagued the town she’d chosen as a hiding place, and the old folks grumbled to each other at the grocery store about the weather. Maybe they’d gotten used to it in the past few months. She hadn’t been out in a while.

She didn’t sleep, but she still rested. Her eyelids didn’t grow heavy when she sat by the window and watched the drops racing down the pane. She remained awake, aware, and as close to peace as her racing thoughts allowed.

The window became her favorite pastime, and she spent days studying the changing clouds as angry squalls rolled up the coast, how the grey sky trapped the light during gentler showers.

And she grew weaker. Quietly flirting with the line between sick and deathly ill.

She saw impossible things beyond the glass. It took her a few days to realize they were hallucinations, not a fae spell or some petty apocalypse.

When his reflection appeared behind her in the window, she thought she was seeing things again. And then he spoke.

“You are killing yourself.”

She jerked around, stumbling on numb feet to face the monster. The Nightmare King. Her hand wandered her neck, looking for the collar to prove this was a dream, but she found her scarf instead.

“You are in the waking world,” he confirmed. “You hid yourself well.”

He took a step towards her, and she lunged back. The same game in the wrong realm.

“You still think I’m some kind of threat?”

Another step towards her, another step back – she nearly tripped on the leg of a chair, but she refused to look away for an instant, even to save the scraps of her dignity.

“No.”

He moved the way he spoke, aware of every nuance, every shift, slowly drawing closer. Sure and smooth as a stormfront.

What did he want? She abandoned her home, gave up the precious little sleep she could tolerate, and he still pressed her. He didn’t look angry and cold, like he did on the beach. Something sharp glittered in his eyes, though, a keen edge ready to cut her.

They passed through the living room, through the kitchen, and she only had a few more steps before this slow chase met an abrupt end.

“I’m running out of ground to give, Dream Lord.”

“Good.”

A final step, and her heel met the wall. He closed the distance, keeping the same predator’s pace as she pressed herself flat against the peeling wallpaper.

“Do you want me to fight?” Her growing storm raged. Lightning sheered over the sleepy town, turning the evening bright as noon. Thunder rattled the windows, but the Dream Lord didn’t so much as flinch. “Do you want an excuse to hurt me?”

He stood inches away, eating up her personal space until she felt his shadow had already swallowed her.

“No.”

“Then what do you want?” A whisper with the desperation of a scream.

His razor eyes cut deep, and she quaked in place, afraid to move but wishing she could shrink, become so small he wouldn’t notice her.

“To turn you from a darker fate.”

He raised a hand, and she cowered from the expected blow. When none fell, she peeped at him sidelong. His palm hovered between them, like he was holding up a gift.

“Sleep.”

Stooping ever so slightly, he blew over his hand, sending a gust of sand into her face. She bucked against him, flinging one arm up to cover her face, the other to shove at his chest. But it was no good. By the time he curled his fingers back, she could feel her grip on the world slipping away.

“Poor little storm god.”

Her knees buckled, and she slid down the wall, losing herself by inches to the inescapable lure of the Dreaming and its master.

She slept.

Chapter 4 A/N: I've never done prompt requests, but I've never had 500 FOLLOWERS EITHER (holy shit). I'm celebrating, and you're invited. The rules are a little convoluted, I won't be able to do ALL the things, but you'll all get a say in what makes the cut by voting. To join the fun and check out the rules, go here. Even if you don't join in, there will be one-shots aplenty for you to browse.

I'll be working on a chapter each for my other two active fics while I wait for replies, so you may not see another Younger Gods chapter til next week. For those clamoring for more interaction between the reader and Morpheus, it will be well worth the wait.

#morpheus x reader #dream x reader #sandman x reader #morpheus fanfiction #YoungerGods

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miamierre · 7 months

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okay so i wrote this for kinktober, which you can find on ao3 here, but i really lit my lizard brain on fire with this one so i have to post it here too.

au where pierre is a deity banished to earth for being self-absorbed and charles is an artist that comes to find him.

Pierre has been doing this for hundreds of years—literally. Cursed to live among mortals until he learns to see past the glisten of his own reflection, he’s been trapped in a human body in the southernmost tip of Italy for five hundred and twelve years, now, learning no lessons and choosing instead to work at his craft: sculpture.

It’s a difficult time, these days, to recreate the world how it’s meant to be. Pierre has watched societies form and collapse around him. He’s been famous, he’s been reviled, he’s been forgotten entirely by the human race from his island just off the coast of Sicily. There is nothing he hasn’t witnessed. He has all the perspectives, from all sides.

Yet even with all that knowledge, it is still a lonely existence, even if Pierre can never admit to it. His brothers visit every so often: Alex and George sometimes, Yuki more often than he’d ever admit to, but it’s mostly to beg him to leave his thickheadedness behind and atone so that he can return home, where the rest of their godlike people are. (Yuki will sometimes spend longer with him. It feels like when they were young, before the world had formed and they were at the seat of creation. The nights where he departs Pierre’s company are some of the worst.) No mortal has ever piqued his interest long enough to matter, and he’s sworn himself off of human lovers after the last one went so south—a young man with dark hair and dark eyes, a smile that looked foolish but hid sharp intellect that Pierre had wanted nothing more than to devour.

But that was long ago. Pierre was young, then, and still hopeful that his punishment would end, and he’d lost everything he’d built to that point as the young man…disappeared, the way all mortals do.

He’d retreated into carving stone shortly after that, and it’s carried him through his miserable, endless existence for all this time since. A statue cannot cure loneliness, but it can at least mask some of the abysmal despair that comes with not being known. Every creation Pierre has ever carved carries a piece of him, somehow—when he looks at them, he feels a glimmer of what he does when Yuki returns to him, bright eyed and sharp-tongued and infinite.

It's a solitary life. Pierre hates it, but it’s a hate that’s grown old and brittle. There’s more acceptance in his heart than ever that this will be where he spends the rest of eternity: a small, solitary island, a house full of statues, and a heart so empty that the sea breeze whistles through it at night.

At least.

It’s solitary until he hears a loud banging at his front door one indistinguishable afternoon, from the knockers he’d built shortly after first arriving. They’re grandiose: heavy, bronze, polished perfectly the way all godly metals shine. It’s…been a very long time since anyone has touched them. He lurches from the couch he’s curled up on, torn from slumber at the loud, heavy noise that rings through his cavernous hall. There’s no way it’s an accident—the wind is not strong enough to shake them, and no traveler would even be able to seek out his home for refuge from a storm from the enchantment cast upon it. You must live in the world, Pierre, to come home to us. A cruel sort of thing. He’d never quite understood it.

Begrudgingly, he shuffles to the doors and swings one open—

—only to find a young man, surely no older than twenty-five, staring up at him with wide green eyes and a mess of dark hair. He’s…picturesque.

Pierre has no idea how he’s found his way here. “What do you want,” he says flatly, crossing his arms out of instinct.

But the young man doesn’t respond—at least not at first. His face lights up when he hears Pierre speak, like he’s never heard a sound in his life before. “You are…” the boy is Italian, or has been here long enough to let it flow into him. “I did not know you were from here.” He sounds awed. A small, small part of Pierre preens at the tone of it—at how good it feels to be admired, even just for a moment. But it doesn’t last, as the reminder that this boy should not have been able to find him sinks back in. Any breath of amusement in his heart is gone.

“What do you want,” he repeats. There’s no godly tone in him anymore, not after losing the last of his will to return ages ago, but this is the closest he’s felt to it in a long time.

The boy cowers for a moment but doesn’t look away. “I want to learn,” he says after a long moment of thought, and then…sticks his hand out, as if trying to greet him. “My name is Charles Leclerc, and I came here to be your apprentice.” He sounds remarkably confident for a human. Pierre looks at him, then glances down at his hand, and then back to his face, which is still blindingly earnest…and then erupts in laughter. Apprentice? Pierre has lived alone on this island for centuries and he’d never once thought he would want an apprentice with him to keep him company. There is no room for a human in this house, no matter how large it is.

The boy—Charles—scowls at his amusement and drops his hand, but stands resolutely in his doorstep. “I’m serious,” he insists, “I have learned from the best my whole life and I was told to find you to further my teachings.”

Pierre stops laughing, perhaps the first kind thing he’s done in decades, and leans in his doorframe. “You think you can learn from me,” he says slowly. “Charles Leclerc, you would not last an evening in my palace, let alone an entire apprenticeship.”

Charles doesn’t flinch, though. “I think you underestimate me,” he retorts, and then crosses his arms in an amusing mirror of Pierre’s own stance. “If you have such little faith in me, Pierre Gasly, where is the harm in letting me try?”

Truth be told, Pierre has been getting a little bit bored of his latest sculpting project—a triad of angels, fingers twined as they stand in a circle—and had been contemplating returning to land for a few days, whether to fuck or to fight still to be determined. This could be entertainment, at the very least. He won’t even have to leave his own home.

“Okay,” he concedes, then grins as the boy’s expression brightens immeasurably. “Charles Leclerc, be careful what you wish for. This island does not release people back into the world once they step foot in here.”

Pierre would never admit this to his face, but Charles is…good. For a human, anyway. He’s got a light touch and an expansive mind, and the pictures of his work that he’d brought in his portfolio are beautiful. Elegant, painstakingly detailed, all full of sorrow. He’s got a keen eye for detail, too—the first three nights Charles spends, he wanders Pierre’s seemingly endless hallways of sculptures, past and present, complimenting and analyzing each with a remarkable amount of skill.

Art school, or whatever. That’s what he says. Pierre thinks he’s being humble, but that’s neither here nor there.

“Pierre,” Charles says as they walk by the first installment of his mourning collection—a woman, knelt under her veil with her hands outstretched. He stills in front of it. “This is beautiful. I cannot—the veil looks so real, you can make out her facial expression as if she were living and breathing now.” He’s awed again.

Pierre needs to stop enjoying that so much. “I have been doing this for a long time,” is his answer, which is certainly more modest than he’d thought he’d want to be.

Charles laughs, a quiet little sound. “I can see,” he murmurs. Then, turning to face Pierre: “how long did this take you?”

It takes a moment for his memory to reach that far back—to the time he spent pouring his heart over this woman, to being her, to wanting to make love to her and then wanting her to swallow him up in her arms. He’d lavished each of this first group of creations with the same grieving attention, but her…

“Oh, a hundred years or so, give or take.” A rough estimate, really. He’s not in the business of exactness anymore. Time has forgotten him, so he simply returns the favor.

Charles just stares at him for a long beat, then dissolves into laughter that’s…sweet, almost. Disbelieving, as if he thinks Pierre’s just tried to tell a joke. Mortals always struggle with the concept of immortality, anyway. So he goes with it: chuckles along with Charles, nods and gestures for them to move to the next sculpture that the boy will undoubtedly devour with the same intensity that kept Pierre up the first night.

He'd journeyed to find Pierre in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea. He’d gotten onto the island without help, he’d stood on Pierre’s doorstep without fear, and he’s got the mind of a scholar with the face of a child. Pierre doesn’t understand him.

He’s never understood humans, so he shouldn’t be surprised, but something about this one in particular is getting the better of him in a way he can’t express.

Perhaps his brothers are right. Maybe he’s spent too long away from the world he belongs in. Maybe it’s time to try and come home.

Twenty days in—because somehow, Charles Leclerc has survived ten whole days twice being Pierre Gasly’s apprentice—he asks it.

“Are you ever lonely?” He’s perched in front of the block of marble Pierre had retrieved from deep in his cellar, playing absentmindedly with the chisel tool in his hand as he stares at the barely-chipped surface he’s been working at.

Pierre, who’s watching him work with half-interest and half-annoyance, blinks at the question. It is strange, to have someone else here. “What?”

“Are you, you know.” Charles gestures vaguely with the pick, shrugs. “There is no one else here, and you seem very…introverted.”

Pierre snorts. “So you noticed,” he deadpans, and Charles squeaks a laugh. Even from the distance between them, Pierre knows his apprentice is flush with embarrassment. “How can I be lonely, when there are all these people here with me?” Charles turns back with a raised brow only to watch as Pierre gestures to the array of art surrounding them, hundreds of men and women and children, strangers and yet more familiar than almost any relationship Pierre has had in five hundred years.

Charles laughs, then turns back to the sculpture at hand. He taps once at the sleek pale stone. “I guess that makes sense,” he muses, and then delivers another neat tap, angling his wrist carefully like he’s seeing the finished product here and now. There’s another long stretch of silence as he works. Pierre just watches him. It’s a first, really: for all the time he’s spent here, all the art he’s created, he’s never sat down and just observed. His earliest sculptures, born out of rage and inhibitions, had been crass and ugly, and he’d bought work after work to learn the planes and lines and curls of a human face. He’d once even brought a teacher into his home to observe him creating, although that engagement had been short-lived.

Sitting here, watching Charles, Pierre finds himself caught up in it—in the beauty of what they’re doing, in the elegance. Somewhere at the back of his mind, he knows Charles is here to learn from him, but right now…right now, Pierre just wants to see what happens next. They can work through the night later.

“I don’t know how you do it,” Charles murmurs after a while. He’s made a little progress, but it’s nothing substantial. From his seat, he swivels around to face Pierre, face so painted with raw emotion it almost makes the god recoil. “Spend so much time here and not feel lonely.” He sighs. “Even when I sculpt at home, I feel it. I—” he falters, then carefully sets down the tools in his hands and stands up, too-quick, clearly more moved than he’d realized. “I’m going to run to the bathroom,” he says quickly, and then scurries off, leaving Pierre alone once again in the expanse of his studio.

He can never admit to the loneliness, lest of all to a human. But it’s there—it’s always there, it…

Funny. It’s not where he left it last.

Three months in, Charles breaks into the wine cabinet Pierre’s left in the dust for the last two hundred years.

Admittedly, it’s not like Pierre was ever planning to drink it, but when he returns from his evening walk on the rocks, he returns to Charles, red-faced and clutching a bottle of what has to be two hundred- and fifty-year-old wine and giggling as he stumbles across the floor, the epitome of delight.

“I see you’ve been enjoying yourself,” Pierre says—he’d been aiming for a sharper tone but it’s come out all wrong, too soft in places he’s kept hardened for ages. For all the accusations of possessiveness that his brothers and sisters once cast upon him, he can’t seem to will any of it up now. Instead, he laughs as Charles hiccups while trying to formulate an answer.

“I…finished the butt.” His expression, which had twisted up in focus trying to string his sentence together, dissolves into giggles once again. He takes a step towards Pierre, reaching to likely drag him to the studio to see, but he loses his footing and almost lands on his ass in the process.

Pierre catches him—sort of. He’s never been the fastest of his siblings, but he’s faster than a human, which means he’s at Charles’ side in a moment to steady him and his unbelievably old bottle of wine before anything gets on the floor. Charles is too drunk to do anything but continue laughing. The heat of his body is steady against Pierre’s side, firm in a way that makes him remember what life used to be like at the very beginning, when he wasn’t afraid to offer pieces of his heart in exchange for pleasure.

“You finished the butt,” he murmurs in Charles’ ear, and Charles squeaks another laugh before turning to press his face in Pierre’s shoulder, clearly out of his own head from the drink. His giggling continues, a pleasant vibration against Pierre’s body, and Pierre…finds himself relishing it unexpectedly. He loops an arm around Charles’ waist, presses a hand to his back for a moment before helping him untangle himself from their startlingly-intimate embrace. Charles has touched him maybe twice before this. Does now make it three times, if their bodies never quite stop touching as Charles leads him to the studio? Pierre’s not certain.

Charles finished the butt of his sculpture, and has passed out on the couch that Pierre used to spend days wallowing on, and the inexplicable thing lodged in his throat practically doubles in size. He’s been alone for three hundred years, yet the feeling settled deep in the pit of his stomach seems ancient.

Things come to a head a few weeks later. Charles shouts for him in the studio from across the house, clearly aware that Pierre has trained his ears to reach every corner of this place—when Pierre comes running, concerned that something has happened, he finds Charles standing with his arms crossed in front of the stone he’s working at. It’s partially formed, an ass and the start of defined thighs, but it’s still woefully blockish at the front.

Where it matters.

“Pierre,” he says, “I need your help.” There’s a tone in his voice that makes Pierre light up, somehow—like he's settled here. Like he believes he belongs here, too. Pierre can’t disagree with the sentiment.

“Ah,” he answers instead, “so we’re no longer using formality, Mr. Leclerc?”

Charles rolls his eyes, although Pierre doesn’t miss the blush that starts to build on his cheeks. “Maestro,” he corrects, “I need your help.” A huff. “Please?” It’s ridiculous that he even tries to use his sweet doe eyes to get anything, since Pierre has more of an upper hand than he’ll ever know, but…

Pierre still acquiesces, because somehow it feels like the thing he needs to do. “What do you need, Charles,” he hums, wandering over to observe what his apprentice is working with. He's sure he could assist with rethinking the angle that Charles is going with, and if they need to start from scratch with a new block, Pierre has no qualms helping him get back to this point—

"Will you pose for me?" There's that confidence again. Pierre admires it, even if it's misplaced in his ask here. He chuckles at the question, waves a hand dismissively.

"I will bring you to the mainland," he answers, "and you can find your subject there, Charles." There are plenty of humans who would pose naked for him, especially him: he's beautiful in an innocent way, a way that makes Pierre want to raze him to the ground with his tongue and teeth. There's no shortage of men who would throw themselves at him.

"No," Charles says flatly, and that makes Pierre glance up from where he'd been half-admiring the work. Pierre raises a brow. "No, I—" he stops for a moment to take a shaky breath, but again here he is, standing in Pierre's face, fearless. "I want you," he finally says, firm and resolute in the same way he'd been on the doorstep on his very first day.

And, truthfully, it's not hard to see through his intentions. Pierre knows his gaze has flickered down to the crotch of his sweatpants several times—couldn't miss it for anything, the way Charles looks so determined to see Pierre, as he is, beneath the man he's been for all this time.

His master. Charles is his apprentice, and Pierre is his master, and yet the proposition has gone completely over its heels. Charles wants to have sex with him.

Pierre is surprised to find that his resistance to human lovers is nowhere to be found as he takes a few cautionary steps forward into Charles' space. "You want me," he repeats back, and Charles nods weakly. The admission makes Pierre laugh, although there's not an ounce of cruelty in it to be found. "Charles," he warns quietly, voice barely a whisper as they come face-to-face, almost chest-to-chest. "Nothing good will come of this." It's the truth, one that Pierre knows deep down. Somehow, he feels that he owes Charles that.

"Don't care," Charles answers back. His voice is shredded already. He leans forward to try and catch Pierre in a kiss but Pierre leans back, avoiding him easily.

"This will only damage your work, ma belle," he hums. It's a wonder as to why he's dragging this out, because this is pleasure in a way he hasn't had in ages…and then it hits him, all of a sudden, that Charles matters. He matters in ways that no human ever has before. "It will ruin the integrity of this place, and of your apprenticeship—"

"I do not care," Charles interrupts, voice pitched. "It is—Pierre, it is all about you anyway, it has—it has always been about you, the work cannot be ruined now if it already has been." He's devastatingly earnest. Pierre knows this look, this voice, would spear a thousand men back home. No lover he's ever taken has given him this, whatever it is: Charles is gripping the hem of his ratty work tee, and he's leaning close again, and Pierre…Pierre can't deny him.

Pierre is a god. To this mortal, he is a god, and yet he is helpless to him entirely. Something about his apprentice has wormed its way into his heart, filled the carved-out space that's hollowed him out for half a millennium. It's barely been six months. A blink of an eye to him, utterly unfathomable.

Pierre crushes their mouths together, forceful yet cautious despite the trembling need that he can feel building in the young man pressed up against him. He's almost shaking. If Pierre had seen this at the start, when Charles had first found him, maybe he'd laugh: call him a dog, remind him that humans do not belong in the presence of such godly beings like this. But here and now, he's only caught up in feelings of…affection. One arm slides around his waist to tuck him close to Pierre's body, the other gently angling his head for another deep kiss.

"If we do this," Pierre whispers, voice barely-there, "it will be by my rules. You will follow my lead." Charles moans against him. His whole body shivers as he shifts even closer, the trembling of desire wholly unmistakable. It moves through Pierre enough to make him wonder if this is what all humans feel when swallowed in bliss. "Say you understand, petit."

"I follow you," he repeats back faintly after a long, breathless pause. "Always." There's a flicker of something like devotion in his eyes. Pierre hasn't seen that for almost five hundred years. He doesn't know, and yet he does.

I will bed him, he promises to himself, and then does. Charles lands easily on his too-large mattress, a statuesque tangle of pale limbs and freckles and soft lines that drive Pierre, for perhaps the first time in his immortal life, utterly speechless. The way his legs fall open so easily feels like glory. Pierre is between them immediately, two spit-slick fingers tucking inside him effortlessly as Charles sobs from the pleasure. His sheets, silken and pristine and untouched for so long, tangle between the human's fingertips with each flex and stretch.

l will ruin him, Pierre thinks, and a cruel streak of pleasure ricochets through him at that. He will never take another lover after me. To be loved by a god is the pinnacle of human existence, after all, he knows. Charles will never want to leave. He crooks his fingers and Charles makes a sound Pierre hasn't heard for what feels like a lifetime.

"Please, Pierre," he sobs, body curling as Pierre works his fingers deep once again. "Please, please, I—"

"What did I say, Charles," he interrupts softly, brushing his lips to Charles' jaw and then biting his bottom lip softly, then sinking into it more. "You will do as I tell you, nothing more, nothing less."

Charles, trembling, just nods. Then, as his lips part: "Y-yes, maestro." It's breathy, faint, and yet it sounds like thunder in Pierre's now-hungry mind. Maestro. Master. Charles doing as he's told always, even here as he's practically bent in half from lust under Pierre's body.

There has not been a mortal in his bed for a very long time. And as Charles shudders and moans when Pierre breaches him, languorously slow and steady, there's a small part of him that believes that he may be the last. Even as he sniffles and gasps from the stretch of Pierre in his wound-tight body, he reaches for him—eyes ablaze through tears, body arching, whimpering between sobs. He wants this.

Pierre fucks him mercilessly, until he's weeping with sensation, and thinks: if my brothers do not come for me, I could learn to live like this.

#piarles #10 x 16 #fic #AU tag #ive been thinking about this all day on GOD

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ronearoundblindly · 2 years

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The First Eighty-Three Hours (1)

Signature (see previous or series)

Summary: Your appointment as co-CEO of American Capsules and Steve Rogers' girlfriend starts out rocky.

Warnings for drinking, wtf cute behavior (yeah, it needs a warning), atypical escalation of a relationship (we going in all the wrong order), and insecurities of reader (vague). WC 3135

Your palms sweat as HR goes over the specifics, a Stark tablet set before each of you in Mr. Rogers’ office.

Here are your duties.

Here is your salary—holy shit.

Here are the other non-disclosures and waivers and legal details.

Initial. Initial. Sign. Initial. Initial. Date. Sign. Date. Sign. Date.

The tip of the stylus must be getting hot at this point.

Steve—Mr. Rogers until that last ‘enter’—hasn’t looked up at you once. He’s been the epitome of professional, and more distant than the last six months total, since the charity gala, the same night he offered you a ride home and you two shared what could be described as a ‘chaste kiss.’

Though your lips barely touched, the effect was anything but innocent. He’d moved across the plush leather seat, palm on your cheek and fingers resting along the thundering pulse of your neck. You swallowed thickly and watched his eyes follow the descent to your cleavage. Combined with his soft lips and the prickle of beard, chaste or not, tongue or no, you were ready to take him right on the not-quite-spacious-enough town car floor.

The only touch he’s given you since: a graze of fingers when exchanging file papers and a lead out of the elevator first with a precariously light push at the small of your back.

Somehow his restraint just makes you ache for him that much more.

Then that last keystroke pops, and the deal is sealed.

Mr. Rogers asks for the rest of the staff to leave you and him to ‘the mountain of work ahead,’ and it’s difficult to describe the difference between the man who politely ushers a half dozen people out and the one who turns around once the door is shut behind them.

The difference is Mr. Rogers versus Steve.

Specifically, the man who turns around is the Steve that has professed that he is in love with you, and his body language finally morphs to showing it.

He moves toward you like a tidal wave, tall as the skyscraper you’re standing in before, suddenly, he stops short. His momentum—or your anticipation—slaps you right between your thighs, forceful as if he’d kept going. You almost whine when he doesn’t touch you.

In the late afternoon light, Steve holds you perfectly still with his gaze only, his breath hot across your face.

“This okay?”

Your body temperature just shot up ten degrees. It’s not enough, you want to say, but instead, you nod.

Finally, his huge hand slithers around your waist, his fingertips oh-so-gently coaxing you forward. Steve’s whole job is to make moves, and your whole job was to take orders. You can make any moves you want now. It’s encouraged. To be a leader, you have to set an example, right?

You lean forward, tilting your head, watching him mirror you. Steve’s eyes fall heavy, prepared to accept your touch, but you stop short, too. He seems confused—and a little frustrated—by your hesitation, so he erases the distance between you.

Steve Rogers tastes like minty chapstick with a hint of black coffee. He is quite literally bittersweet. It’s glorious. His fingers cradle your head, and his body molds to yours. You’re pinned against the solid wood of his desk, but while the energy feels frantic, his lips remain supple, gently caressing yours. They’re still simple kisses but powerful in meaning. Steve’s eyes are still shut as he speaks, not moving even an inch from you.

“I wanna take you out for a drink. To celebrate. What’d’ya say?”

Your hands find their way beneath his suit jacket, nails raking over his clothed shoulder blades, and Steve growls, latching onto your neck. It’s been an emotional and ego-boosting day, so you’d like nothing more than to collapse to the floor with Steve between your legs. It’s impossible to tell if his chivalry is the eye of the storm or a cover for the devastation that lies beneath. You want to find out though. You want to know him.

“Precious. Answer please.”

You punctuate your ‘yes’ with a squeeze of his firm ass.

That’s brought him back to reality, and Steve pulls away, licking his bottom lip and petting down his beard to compose himself. He rattles off which bar he’s thinking would be appropriate for the occasion, something very upscale and exclusive. He says it’ll be more private.

As soon as his office door opens, Mr. Rogers is back, albeit with a warmer smile.

You go home to get changed and meet him at the rooftop bar, trying not to second guess every bit of your outfit or makeup or accessories or hair. It’s hard not to overthink something so new even though Steve’s seen you in all states of composure for years, but it never mattered before.

He didn’t call you precious before either, and that does things to you.

The bar may be exclusive and fancy but it’s busy on a Friday night, so Steve leans in close to talk to you, the same hot breath dancing across your decolleté. You get a close-up and unimpeded view of his bare forearms in his rolled-up sleeves. You can now map the evenness of his beard and the few thinner patches unique to Steve. You noticed the first grey in his hair two years ago, and its’ slowly grown into its own tiny frosted forest on each side of his chin. For a half-hour and one drink, you have your own little bubble universe to chat and laugh in. He’s…okay at keeping work out of the conversation, but you’re not excellent either, probably because work is about 90% of both of your lives.

His hand over the back of your seat allows his thumb to sweep over your uncovered arm. Even though the spot makes you self-conscious, he relishes the softness and repeatedly returns to the spot. When he has to turn on his stool, he pointedly presses a hand to your knee or thigh then reaches over to open a tab or slide your drink to you.

Right when he orders another round, a woman drags her hand down Steve’s arm and whispers something in his ear. She has to lean directly over your knees to do this, but that doesn’t stop her. Steve’s brow furrows even as his cheeks bloom rosy. In your opinion, he’s not quite rude enough when he dismisses her attention, but he picks up his story about his friend you’ve never met in person but spoken to on the phone, Bucky Barnes, easily.

However, she’s just the beginning.

Steve Rogers is both handsome and well known. Women, and men, approach him frequently, for pleasure and business, and that same shift in demeanor happens over and over again. Mr. Rogers is polite to anyone speaking to him, gingerly saying ‘no, thank you’ and ‘some other time perhaps’ when they talk shop or ask leading conversational questions. Steve looks at you with an apology radiating from his soul.

You’re not mad. You can’t be. He’s not doing it on purpose. He even evokes your new title whenever AmCaps is mentioned. It’s a nice gesture to show your importance, but it does nothing to soothe the awkward flare of butterflies bouncing around your insides.

When conversation flowed in that magical space of just you two, you nursed your drink. Now he’s stopped, so you have nothing else to occupy your mouth and hands. You keep drinking because they just keep coming. Not enough of the glasses are filled with water.

The bar gets busier, and you two move to a set of tufted benches around a tiny circular table. It acts like an invitation to imposers to sit on Steve’s other side and get comfortable. Just when he seems as annoyed as you and might be getting up to have you both leave, Steve is planted back in the chair by a heavy hand.

A tall black man with an eye patch leers down at him, but Steve exclaims in joy.

He hugs the man he calls Fury (someone you don’t know by reputation, meaning the acquaintance is old and a longtime dormant or possibly very personal), introduces you (briefly), and greets the redhead with Fury.

Natasha Romanoff, who you have spoken with but only twice and have never seen in person, is a partner for capsule transport across Russia and Eastern Europe. She settles in the seat beside you which gives the distinct impression that Steve is now occupied and Natasha knows it.

Your disappointment must be obvious, but the absolutely gorgeous redhead says nothing. Instead, she keeps up a decent conversation—a perfectly interesting one actually—about…something, but you hit a wall; you’ve tipped the scales from tipsy to drunk, and it doesn’t feel good.

“I’m so sorry, Ms. Romanoff—“ you blurt, standing and grabbing your purse.

“Call me Nat. Please.”

“Nat,” you sigh, “it was very nice speaking with you—“ what the hell are you doing out here? This isn’t a date. If it were, chalk it up as one of the worst dates you’ve ever been on because you’ve gotten more time in with the really hot foreigner than Steve himself “—but I really should be getting home.”

The redhead frowns and then snaps her fingers loudly.

Steve jumps and turns like he’s heard a dog whistle, eyes huge and attentive. That’s a fucking skill. How did she do that and where can you learn it?

You’re pulling your coat on while Nat mutters none-too-softly for him to “get his shit together and get his lady home safely.”

You want to protest, to say you don’t belong to him and you can take care of yourself, but your head aches and the room is starting to spin a few degrees before it settles. You feel stupid and exposed.

Fury calls out that he’ll be in touch, but Steve doesn’t turn around. His arm holds you up as his thumb pets the thick felt of your coat along your waist, pressing you into his hard side. His stride shortens to keep your pace, not his.

He profusely apologizes for how the evening has gone.

Steve’s apartment is within walking distance, safer than riding alone in a cab after midnight while your head swims, and the fresh air helps settle some of your anxiety but only the surface layers. The darker ones creep forward with the tears behind your eyes.

“What if I can’t do this?”

“Nonsense,” Steve whispers, his arm steady and warm.

“I don’t have the experience for it, Steve, and then there’s you…” A bubble gets lodged in your throat. The thoughts are going everywhere at once. “You don’t know me. You couldn’t possibly—“

“Evening, sir,” Steve’s doorman, Pietro, greets, rushing to assist your entrance.

You can’t even imagine how you must look right now. Glistening cheeks from falling tears. Stumbling in heels and wearing a date dress. You were barely on a date.

Pietro still smiles kindly. “Miss,” he nods. “You two have a nice night.”

You turn into Steve’s chest, unable to hide your embarrassment. The boy knows who you are and that this is not your normal way of entering the building.

“Thanks, Pete, oh. Can you have a ‘home away’ kit sent up?”

“Right away, Mr. Rogers.” In your mind, you imagine Pietro is thinking up the word in Sokovian for…well, it isn’t a nice term.

You flit back and forth between composure and melodrama. One second you’re moaning about making a fool of yourself and the next you’re convinced you’ve handled this better than anyone can expect. It’s all very confusing.

A small victory is won when the elevator’s mirrored walls show that you at least look far better than expected.

“How you feeling,” Steve mutters as the upswing wobbles you a bit.

You cover a giggle-sob because it’s tragic and funny, and this is who you are but not who you want to be. The first thing you can think of is a comparison. “I’m not hugging your legs and sniffing your crotch, so that’s…an improvement.”

It takes him a second to understand. “I didn’t.” Steve’s horrified. “No. I didn’t?!”

You don’t say it out loud but toss an admission into your gaze at his reflection. The doors open on his floor, and Steve gets out his keys. Keys you also have. As his assistant, you frequently came by this very apartment to gather things or drop them off. Should you give the key back now?

Steve starts sliding the collar of your coat open, offering to take it.

“Ok, well, if I did that,” he chuckles, dumbfounded, “I feel like I’ve earned being barfed on, so chuck away.”

“Don’t—“ It’s too soon to joke, especially after the elevator ride.

“Sorry.” He tosses your coat onto the hall table and gently holds your bare arms, thumbs brushing back and forth again, on your skin again and then gone. “I’ll get you some water.”

“This isn’t sexy,” you whine. “You shouldn’t see me like this. Not now.”

He’s laughing from the kitchen, calling “now what?”

You can’t bring yourself to say it, and after a whole glass of water, you can’t look him in the eye when you finally do. “Not after you said you’re in love with me.”

You expect him to walk it back, to tell you you’re getting ahead of yourself or you misunderstood, but Steve smiles, taking the empty cup back.

“Correct me if I’m wrong, all-knowing precious, but I believe that implies I’d like to see you, this or any other way.”

Still doesn’t make this sexy, you think.

There’s a knock at the door, and when Steve returns he holds what looks like a swag bag.

“Some essentials. Bathroom’s all yours. I’ll make sure the spare room is all set.”

He kisses your forehead and walks on by. The small bits of heat from his touch leave you colder than the room really is.

Inside the beautiful, spacious bathroom—the master bathroom, the one attached to Steve’s bedroom because he’s pretty sure there are no towels in the other one—you try desperately to sober up. The black bag with a satin ribbon handle holds face wash and lotion, hand cream, toothbrush and paste, and even a pack of lavender wipes. You scrub yourself almost all over with those by the time you realize…you have no change of clothes. So much for emerging without shame of your predicament.

Weakly, you call for Steve through the bathroom door.

“I brought some comfy stuff if that’s what you’re after,” he calls, hesitant and soothing from the other side. He puts the garments in the hand you shove out through a crack in the door. His footsteps get softer but don’t go very far.

You assume he’s sitting on his own bed, just waiting. Waiting for his precious to need something. That brings a whole other feeling churning through your gut.

When you emerge in a huge baseball t-shirt and a pair of very soft and very stretchy boxer briefs as your only underwear, Steve smiles.

“Spare room is ready.” He leads you down the hall as if you haven’t been in his apartment dozens of times, but that was when you were his assistant. That was before. You brought up dry-cleaning and watered plants. You let in repairmen and facilitated deliveries and renovations. You know the spare room is called ‘the away office’ because most of it is a computer and desk in the center pointed toward one wall. During video conferences, no one can tell there is even a bed in there, or closets, or an exit. Only artwork and shelving are visible.

Your feet just stop working in the middle of the hall, twisting along the cold hardwood while you guiltily look around but not at him.

Steve lets go of the door handle to return to your side.

“You ok? You feeling sick? There’s another bathroom right—“

“No.” You’re struggling for the words, gnawing on your bottom lip at the memory of minty balm. “I…”

He’s patient, hands sweeping up and down your arms, testing if your skin is too cold, but that’s not what the goosebumps are from. The hall is too dark to see the blue of his eyes, but his posture leans more intensely toward you than at the gala. He looks like he adores you in his t-shirt as much as he adored you in a fancy, formal gown.

You stare at your hands and run fingernails beneath each other.

“I don’t want to be alone.”

A microphone shoved in your mouth would not have heard it, you’re sure. You even mumbled it as much as possible, just so you can tell your brain that it was said and to leave it now. Somehow, he still caught it.

“Hey—” Steve tucks a finger below your chin and lifts “—what do you want?”

The alcohol is what answers next. Two words and a prayer.

“Hold me?”

He ticks his head as if you struck him. “Yeah? That’s what you want?” The corner of his mouth twitches as Steve holds back a grin. “I’d like that.” Once again, he leans in to kiss your forehead, but this time he lingers, whispering into your hair, “I want that, too. Come on, doll.”

He tucks you in and finally gets out of his own date clothes. He asks if it’s okay that he sleeps normally, which you find out means only boxer briefs. He even warns you when he’s turning out the light, slowly crawling under the covers and waiting for your lead.

You turn over to face him—what you can see of him as your eyes adjust to the dark—and hear him slide his hand across the silky sheets.

“Hey.”

“Hey,” Steve responds as your fingers find his hand. After a beat, he shifts a few inches closer. “I’m sorry about tonight.” His voice is quiet like he’s confessing a secret. “I thought we could just…have a nice time out.”

You sniffle, but even as the headache starts settling behind your eyes, you can’t stop one last jab from falling out of your mouth. “Should have let me make the reservation, sir.”

Steve grunts out a reluctant laugh and maneuvers you both together in the middle of the bed. Your cheek rests against his smooth chest, and his arm drapes over your side, pinning the puffy blanket across your hip and shoulder. His skin is warm, very warm, and smells like comfort. Your buzzed brain finds no other label for the scent. Steve just smells comfortable, and you snuggle into him as flush as possible.

“Next time, precious,” he mutters, words now thick with sleep. “I’m all yours.”

[Next Part]

[Main Masterlist; Ko-Fi]

@bucky-fricking-barnes-reads @whiskeytangofoxtrot555 @fallinallinmendes @deandreamernp @rach2602

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heartyfruitsalad · 3 months

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Legend's Anecdotes #1 | Fuse/Bloodhound

Finally, some peace and quiet. Walter's been so relentlessly loud these days, and my ravens knew no silence for almost a week now. It seems he's finally calmed down. But... I can't help but wonder what exactly made him calm down.

My curiosity gets the better of me, leading me out of the balcony from where I said my goodbyes to my birds and back inside. It's unusual how loud my footsteps were despite being quiet without footwear; they echoed through the room almost deafeningly.

"Walter?" I spoke aloud. Where is he?

It didn't take me long, however - As I step deeper into the living room, I could hear a growing sound coming from our bedroom. It sounded like... chattering? Did he bring visitors over while I was busy? And how many? Did anything happen? No -- All that matters is he should be safe, and I must check for myself.

Quietly still, I approached the bedroom's doorstep, a hand held out as I press it against its wooden frame. My eyes squint instinctively, bracing myself for whatever might appear on the other end.

(Creak...)

It's open. And... nothing?

Then where's the sound of people talking coming from? I mean, Walter's sitting there on the floor, his head's against the foot of the bed. Is he... unconscious?

My legs carry me down to the place he laid, quick in its pace. "Walter." I shook his body, unsure what had happened to him. It's only the afternoon, why would he be sleeping now of all times?

I graze my hand against his, checking for a pulse by the end of his wrist with two fingers. But it proved futile; I was too caught up in my thoughts to focus. Come on... Say something--

Walter groaned. A sign of life. Thank the Gods....

"Wha's... goin' on...?" he spoke, his eyes still closed yet his speech was slurred heavily.

My eyes divert their focus to his right side. I finally notice the bottles of alcohol he'd supposedly consumed to have even reached this state in the first place.

Oh. Well... that explains things.

With the same befuddled expression, I turn to look behind me. A TV hangs from the wall, playing a sort of talk show on its screen. It was fairly loud... No wonder I could hear it from all the way in the living room.

"No..." I chuckled quietly, feeling the utmost embarrassment cloak my skin as I begin to flush with heat. "It's nothing, my love."

Walter hummed a low sound. "Then... why'd you wake me up...? I'm... hmm.."

Quickly, I tried finding an excuse to quell the drunk man's concerns. My lips find themselves planted on his forehead with a gentle kiss. He reeked of alcohol. My nose stings a little...

"I just think you should sleep in a... much better spot, no?" I wrap my hands around his torso, underneath his shoulders. "You're literally right in front of the bed."

His facial expression morphs into a frown as I carried him effortlessly with a grunt, pouting childishly after I'd spoken. "Ugh, Houndy... You're no fun."

My lips betray their previously firm position, a giggle as my cheeks creased. "I'll be here with you. Don't worry a thing."

I place Walter down onto the bed gently, yet despite my efforts, his body collapses like a corpse onto the soft mattress. He scratches the lining of his chin, a satisfied sound emitting from his throat. My head beckons down to join him, and so does the rest of my body.

I wrap my right arm around his torso, my left arm caressing his hair as I hold him close. He returns the gesture, albeit slower and with less accuracy.

"Get some rest," my voice said in a stern tone despite knowing this time of hour is no time to be resting. Maybe it's a different case for Walter; he's nothing like me, after all.

In his half-conscious state, his lips met mine for a brief moment, curling into a cute little smile. "I... I luh you, Houndy..."

A beat passes. My eyes close softly.

"As do I, my Walter."

#legend's anecdotes #fuse #bloodhound #apex legends #fusehound

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emberedroses · 4 months

Text

Hands that Heal [Bucky x Reader]: Prologue

Masterlist

Warning: 18+; Minors DNI

Holy Shit, You're Iron Man

Your vision blurred under the white office lights. You wrist and hand strained as you held the pen you were working with. You had been sitting down for so many hours you felt that you would buckle under your weight if you decided to stand up.

'What time is it?'

Your tired eyes darted toward your phone that was turned over next to you. You reach to turn it over and lazily tap on the screen twice. The blue light illuminates over your glossy eyes and you forced a painful breath out at the sight of the hour.

'11:12 p.m.'

You sighed and returned your attention back to the mountain of charts and forms in front of you. You have been in your office since seven in the morning and you hadn't had a break since one that afternoon. You were used to staying an hour or two after closing, but because of a bad hiring decision, you were stuck doing the paperwork of the five new staff hires. You were close to finishing, but what really got to you is that, no what what time you finish, you were still expected to show up at seven a.m. to open tomorrow.

'I told them it was a bad idea to hire so many interns! But no, it's 'good business',' You felt the heat go to your face as you chugged the rest of your (favorite flavor) energy drink. You shook you head and resumed your internal argument. 'They get paid peanuts so of course I'm not going to let them stay any overtime no matter how much the boss pressures them into doing so. Even if they did, it's not like it would be any good for our patients. They don't have enough experience to be giving complicated treatments to these people, why does he insist of letting them be in charge of doing anything other than paper work?'

If it were any other day, the senior therapist, Liliana, would be here with you, but she had stayed up with you for the past two weeks and you say how badly it was starting to effect her. You managed to convince the boss to have her leave early. It was a miracle within itself that he said 'yes' at all.

'Thirty more minutes. I can hold out for another thirty minutes.'

Your eyelids might as well have been bricks as you struggled to keep them open. You eyes fixated on the white page in front of you, but your vision began to blur and your mind was cloudy from exhaustion. You couldn't even make out the words in front of you.

'Just thirty more minutes.'

"Dr. Delmar?"

You yelped and your body literally jolted itself into awareness. You turned your head towards the source of the robotic voice calling you. Your skin grew cold as your recognized who was at your door.

"Holy shit!" You quickly cover you mouth, mortified that you dared to utter profanity at the man in front of you. "I am so sorry, Mr. Iron Man, sir!"

You wanted to sink down to your knees before the man in the glistening crimson and gold suit. It wouldn't erase what you said to him, but you thought the gesture would have at least made him go easy on you.

'Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck, what did I do to get IRON MAN's attention?'

Deciding against embarrassing yourself further, you removed your hand from your mouth and shakily place your hands on your desk.

"Well, Dr. (y/n), you have no idea how many of my resources I've exhausted into finding you, my dear."

"O-oh, re-really? Me? Wow," You didn't know whether to be flattered or deathly afraid. You knew the type of people Iron Man and his team of Avengers hunted. No matter what, if they were looking for you, it meant nothing good. "He-hey, I'm not in any trouble, am I?"

A robotic laugh echoed through the room. Your shoulders raised slightly, unsure of how to interrupt it. He tapped on the side of his head, and the armored mask he was wearing disappeared and collapsed into the metal hem of his suit. Out of you own exhaustion you gasped seeing the man hiding in the 'iron' suit.

'Fuck, it's him.'

Before you knew it, the myth himself smiled at you. Your cheeks grew warm at the sight of his pearly white teeth. The effect Tony Stark had on others astounded you since you first day you ever saw him on TV. You never thought that the same man who had you starstruck as a teenager would be standing in front of you.

"Trouble? No, no, no, don't get this twisted. It wasn't 'that' kind of looking for. No, you see, you've peaked my interest for quite some time. In fact, ever since I first saw your picture in the paper," Tony raised his wrist toward his chin and began typing something onto it. A blue holographic image projected a newspaper article with your picture in it along with the headline, 'NEW YORK NATIVE BECOMES DOCTOR AT 23.' "You have quite the resume too. You were a high school graduate at fifteen, yet you still went to a community college and was a licensed physiotherapist at nineteen. I'm sure it didn't surprise anyone when you received your doctorates at twenty-three. That's the average age of a medical student in the United States, I assume you know that, right?"

"Y-yeah, it took a lot of hard work to get to where I am."

You tried not to sound too arrogant in front of Tony Stark. The last thing you wanted was to bite the hand that served you so many nice compliments. At the same time, you couldn't stop stuttering as your words dragged themselves out because of your own exhaustion.

"I'm sure," He chuckled lightly. "I read your thesis on the healing properties of water and cold therapy. Quite interesting."

"That is a huge compliment coming from you, sir," His eyebrow raised as you sputtered out the sentence. You've always wanted to talk to the one and only Tony Stark, but never thought he would be handing you so many compliments at once. Which begged the question, 'What is it that he wants?' "I-I did want to thank you for something though. My major didn't qualify for a grant under Stark Industries, but I still used the open textbook resources from your foundation that saved me hundreds of dollars. If it weren't for you, I don't know how much debt I would be in."

"Funny you bring that up. You're a doctor, yet, you're almost four-hundred thousand dollars in debt, nearly twice the national average for someone at your level."

Your felt something in your chest twist. A shiver prodded at your spine. No one, not even your own dad, knew about your loan debt. How was it that Tony Stark, Iron Man himself, knew?

"H-how did you-?"

"Likely, it's because you hold employment here. Hell, you're basically volunteering your time since you get paid pennies a week compared to what you could be making opening a private practice or working through insurance."

"I-I," You stood up quietly, the room filing with the sound of your own joints popping from how long you have been sitting down. You cringed slightly. You wanted to defend yourself and the people you work for. But you find that hard to do when you own patients tell you that you work too hard or your co-workers try to convince you that you are far too overqualified for this place. You eyes dart to a framed photo at the corner of the desk, and you remembered why you could never part from this place. "I can't leave."

"Can't?" You gulped. He shook his head and gave you a look that said 'you have to be kidding me'. The corners of your mouth formed an uncomfortable frown as he continued to speak. "From testimony from your boss and co-workers, you do a pretty damn good job given the shitty pay."

'The boss said that? About me?' You refrained yourself from bursting out laughing. 'Well, I'd sing praises too if Iron Man was in front of me.'

"Hence why I'm here. Look, Dr. Delmar, I would like to give a job opportunity you can't refuse."

"What?"

"I tend to scout only the best of the best. Which is why I employ the people that I do. The best spies, the best scientists, the best medics. We at the Avengers only want the BEST so we can do the BEST work for the world," Your eyes felt shaky. You never knew they could vibrate against your skull like they did. Then again, you've never felt an emotion like this before. A brew of excitement and guilt. You clung onto his pausing breath like a nervous child latched onto their parents legs. You and this child had something in common: you both fear what come next if you let go. "Which is why I want you to work for my team."

"You-you have to be joking?"

'Right?'

"Our employee benefits are amazing too, may I add. Having a billionaire philanthropist for a boss has its unspoken perks," He seemed to be proud of that sentence as place a hand over his right collarbone. "You get all the basic stuff, medical and mental health services, and amazing retirement plans," He looked up, seemingly lost in his own words. "Oh, dental, that one is important nowadays!"

'He's not joking.'

"We offer generous maternity leave, paid leave, paid vacation time, paid overtime!"

'Paid overtime? I-I could get out of debt with that!'

You looked over at the picture again. His face haunted you. You sighed in defeat.

"T-this is a great honor to be offered a position like this from you of all people," You shook your head. Your chest felt heavy, as you looked over at Tony's patient face. "But I'm sorry, I can't go through with it."

"There is one more benefit that I haven't mentioned. Under Stark Industries, and working for the Avengers, you access to top-tier lawyers in case of any-" Tony paused to look at you. You averted his gaze for the first time in you two talking. Law talk always made you uncomfortable. "Mishaps that happen in and out of Avengers Headquarters. You know how damaging it could be to a reputation if something where to come out about you and your practices."

"What are you saying, Mr. Stark?"

"See, I didn't just find out about you through the paper. It was through an underground investigation done by a private investigator employed by me. From what I was able to gather, you've been busy in places outside of the Veteran's Center,"

'What?'

"I have hundreds of pages of evidence that you have the unique ability to heal using water."

"No, wh-what are you talking about?"

"For instance, the Gabrielle Salazar case."

It was a name you knew well. A name you associate with your greatest feat: healing what cannot be healed.

Gabrielle's father, Moses, was an active-duty Marine and a friend of your dad's. His daughter is nearly eight years younger than you and only a toddler when you first met her. As you both grew up, you were always too busy with school to get to know her well, except when you would overhear a conversation between Moses and your dad about Gabrielle's muscle condition that was slowly killing the girl. When you began to first use your abilities to heal, your parents ensured that they kept their circle small and only allowed you to heal people within the family. Even that came with its restrictions, as they only let you cure minor injuries like the occasional scrap or minor burn. You were only months away from receiving your license when your dad came to you asking if you could attempt to heal Gabrielle as her condition was on the verge of worsening. It took a week of small and straining sessions, but you got her to walk again.

'What does he know about Gabbie?'

"She was diagnosed with minor form muscle dystrophy that effected her ability to walk. She was wheelchair bound and because of lack of money from her parents, her condition was worsening. In the matter of one week, to the surprise of her doctors, she walked into their office for a general check up. She hasn't had any complication since,"

'How does he know about her story?'

"They cited physical therapy as the cure to their daughters condition, but failed to say who they went to go see. Here," It was a video of you helping Gabrielle walk. Your breath hitched as you heard your dad laughing at the miracle that was happening before everyone's eyes. "That's you, isn't it?"

You stared at Tony, who was still watching the video. You didn't know what to do, nor say, nor think. You're mind was foggy. So many emotions were rising within you, that all you could do was stare.

'What is he planning to do with that video? With Gabrielle?'

"H-hey, look, I'm licensed, you can't put anything on me."

"Not at the time. You were given your license in July of XX15. The Gabrielle case took place two months prior. You can go to jail for upwards of sixty years for practicing without a license as well as medical malpractice. Or worse, get you licensed suspended indefinitely."

"How did you-?"

"We like to keep track of those with special abilities in the area. It's a precautions we have to take to ensure there is no abuse done by those with said powers,"

'Abuse? I don't abuse my abilities?' You thought back for a moment, thinking of every patient you have healed. You shook you head softly and held back an annoyed huff. 'I would rather die than abuse my powers.'

"Your powers caught my attention. The ability to heal with water? Why would I not want that on my team?"

"Mr. Stark, is this-?"

"What, blackmail? No, my dear, I wouldn't dream of such a thing!" His empty chuckles rattled your core. You hated being this powerless. But you knew better than try to pick any argument with an Avenger. You had to measure out your words, especially since you were so exhausted, you couldn't afford to ruin your life over a couple of petty words. "But I am saying that I am a technical mandated reporter. Being one of the heads of the Avengers after all. I can't condone crimes as serious as this one. I know you heard the government isn't too kind with those with special powers."

You paused. Weighing your options.

Option One: You refuse, and lose your license and possibly go to jail for the crime of treating someone without a medical license. Not only that, since you also have 'crazy' abilities. You know more than anyone that the American Government doesn't take kindly to that sort of thing. You'd be put away in a special holding facility for the rest of your days.

Option Two: You go into an environment where you are free to openly use your power of healing for the Avengers.

It seemed so simple to you, but there was still another thing holding you back.

'Apa,' A smiling face beamed at you from the frame. You can see your own waist in the reflection. 'Your eyes hold so much life in this shot. Why can't you be here to tell me what to do?'

"Um," You hesitated voice broke the silence. "The folks at this center need me. I can't abandon them like this."

"Oh, not to worry. I'm ensuring that there are qualified therapists to take your place and make sure the quality for care is improved for every veteran who walks in here to seek care. As of now, I donated a sum of money for this center to add a new mental health wing."

"What?" You squeaked. "Are you serious? That's amazing!" If it weren't for your own body aching with sleep depravation, you would have been jumping for joy at the news. For years, you and the other staff that would come and go would advocate for a mental health center to be added to the center, and hearing that it would finally be a reality nearly brought a tear to your eye. "Mr. Stark, you didn't have to do that, but thank you! I know that everyone here appreciates what you're doing!"

"I'm aware. It pleases me to know that you deeply care about the patients at this facility. I could tell you care a lot about this place."

"More than you'll know, Mr. Stark."

"I'm going to do everything in my power to ensure this place is improved when you leave."

'I'm really going through with this, aren't I?'

"So," Tony stuck out his hand and the armor over it recoiled and stopped just above his elbow. "What do you say?"

'There is no reason in me staying if there are going to better staff,' You eyed the picture again. A soft smile appeared on you lips at the sight of it. 'It's not like I'll be gone forever. No one can pull me away from this place.'

You approached Tony who was still near the door with his hand out. You felt him flinch underneath you as you shook his hand. The warmth soothed your whole being, making you more tired. You were so sure you would collapse, but the excitement of a new path kept your still.

"You have a deal," He smiled again. "Just give me two weeks to put in my notice."

"Perfect, that gives me ample time to set up your office,"

'An office? Of my own?'

"We can schedule a time for you to come by and have some input on the interior design of it, but for now, you can choose some staff to help you run the place. Just forward their information to me so they can properly be vetted out by my team,"

'My own staff? That I can choose on my own? It's like I'm a real doctor!' You nearly collapsed within yourself at the painful revelation appearing in your own thoughts. 'I am a real doctor. I hadn't realized how restricted I've been for the three years I've been in practice.'

"Other than that, leave me your contact information and we can schedule a meeting with the Capitan and I. That way we can properly go over your duties at Avengers Tower, as well as get your contract and base pay sorted out."

"Of course," You went back to your desk and opened a drawer. You pulled out three business cards and almost tripped over your own feet when walking back over to him. "Here's my information. I gave you three just in case."

"I look forward to speaking to you in the future, Doctor."

"As do I, Mr. Stark."

He smiled and pressed a button on his suit that secured his mask back on. You could nearly see your own reflection in the golden face plate.

"Have a good night."

"You too!"

You waved your new boss goodbye, and as soon as you saw his silhouette disappear, you nearly lunged yourself towards your phone. You pressed the green 'telephone' icon and quickly dialed a number you knew by heart.

"Cristóbal? Are you busy?"

'Eh, um, es que estoy con mis jefes ahorita, porque?*

"I have an offer for you."

~~ ~~

The past two weeks were a blur. You already signed a contract with Mr. Stark, your office at Avengers Tower was ready to be used, and you already had your assistant nurse ready for when you begin on Monday.

For now, you were relishing the last time you would come into the Veteran's Center as an employee.

You stood in the center of a room a room full of former and current patients as well as your co-workers and boss. Everyone had already had time to pull you aside and say their goodbyes. You held back tears hearing some of the stories your former patients have told you because of what you did for them. Even better, your usually bitter boss unexpectantly gave you a nice bottle of wine to celebrate your new job venture.

You kept saying to yourself that things would be okay, but you still felt a sense of guilt by leaving this place.

'This was his place too. And it will always be apart of me,' You took a sip of sparking apple cider. Due to there being a presence of veterans, alcoholic beverages were prohibited on the property. Not that it mattered. No one could turn down a crisp sip of sparkling cider. 'I could never leave forever.'

One of the newer interns, Asia, got up on a white folding chair and banged a spoon against a plastic champagne cup.

"I propose a toast, to our favorite doctor," Another intern, Jackson, handed her a glass of sparkling cider. "So cheers, to Dr. (y/n) Delmar!"

"FOR DR. (Y/N) DELMAR!"

"Yay!"

"Don't go!"

A collective laugh erupted in the office. You couldn't help but speak up at the sentiment.

"You all act like I'm leaving forever, you know I'll be back in no time to visit and volunteer when I can."

A blonde woman still decked out in her fuchsia scrubs approached you, crying. Liliana was a good friend to you, as well as your mentor. You've known her since you were a child sitting by yourself in the waiting room and she took you under her wing when you began your career as in intern at the Veteran's Center. Seeing her pale face flushed red because of her crying made some tears prick in the corners of your eye.

"We know, but it won't be the same!" A blonde woman still decked out in her nurse uniform approached you, crying. Liliana was a good friend to you, sticking by you since the moment you were an intern. Seeing her crying made some tears prick in the corners of your eye. "Let us have this moment, (y/n)!"

You laughed at some tears rolled down your warm cheeks. She place the ginger ale she had been sipping on atop of one of the party table. She made you take a few steps back as she threw her arms around you. You, instinctively, wrapped your arms around her waist.

"Okay, Liliana," She buried her wet face in the crook of your neck. If it weren't for the navy blue turtleneck you were wearing, she would have gotten slobber all over your skin. Your face warmed as you patted her back. "Whatever you want."

Memories of the endless days and nights you would spend in the office together poured over you. You gripped her tighter and whispered some faint 'thank yous' into the air between you.

"Me llamas, y no te olvides de nosotros, okay?"*

"Ya se, nunca olvidaré de todo este lugar me ha dado,"* You whispered into her ear. "Thank you for getting me here."

"Stop!" She stepped back to face you. Her black mascara and some of her blue eyeshadow was smudged around her tired, aging eyes. Still, her beauty shined through her wide smile. "You'll ruin my make up again!"

"Sorry!"

"I forgive you," She pulled you again, even tighter this time. You felt her love illuminating through each beat of her heart. You sunk, limp in her presence. "Just visit us soon, okay?"

You breathed out a breath you've been holding in all night. Finally, you felt at peace in her warm embrace.

'A new start.'

===

Translations (in order of appearance)***:

1. 'Well, um, I'm with my parents right now, what's up?'

2. "Call me, and don't forget about us okay?"

3. "I know, I could never forget what this place has given to me."

#avengers au #bucky barnes #bucky x you #james bucky buchanan barnes #bucky fanfic #winter soldier #steve rogers #tony stark #superfamily #stony #spiderpool #wade wilson #deadpool #spiderman #the avengers

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waifu-napoleon · 1 year

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Luise, about her and Frederick's get-together with Alexander in Memel 1802 (excerpts from a letter and diary entries)

"Our meeting in Memel was amazing. The two monarchs (Frederick William III. and Alexander I.) love each other dearly and sincerely, they are similar in their moralities of justice, love in humanity and support of anything good and pure. They also have similar tastes. Adoration for simplicity, hate for étiquette and the pageantry of royalty. Everything went how we wanted it to and it was good and that's how it will always be. My dear king sends you his regards, he behaved like an angel and was spreading enthusiasm, but the tsar did so as well. Oh how much I value this acquaintance!"

~ Letter written by Queen Luise to her brother Georg about the meeting with Alexander in Memel

It is noteworthy that this is one of, if not *the* only time that Luise actually compares her husband to literally anyone. She also wrote in her diary that they "had fun like children and jumped around and danced like happy little lambs" during a ball in Memel. Which is incredibly unlikely behavior for Frederick under any other circumstances. Her diary also read that "the Tsar did not enjoy forced étiquette. And that he preferred being alone with us and to have as many pleasant moments with me and the king as possible."

"He left, with big tears in his eyes, just like the king... [...] I could tell how much melancholy he had to endure when it was time for him to leave us."

~ diary entry by Luise detailing Alexander's departure

Their undeniable love for each other was also on full display when Luise suddenly suffered from pain in her lungs and difficulty breathing (speculated to be an early sign of her fatal illness) during a conversation with Alexander and Frederick. Alexander called for a doctor while Frederick lay her down on a sofa. Needless to say they were insanely worried about her and decided to have their afternoon tea right next to her instead of in the garden when Luise felt too weak to wander around the building even hours after she almost collapsed, something Luise was very thankful for and made her feel a lot better. After Alexander had left he actually sent her a letter asking her if her health was improving and wishing her a quick recovery.

I've also seen a source claim that after Frederick and Alexander had a private conversation alone in a room, Fred took Alex by the hand and walked over to Luise, proudly proclaiming that "this is a man of righteous moralities, who I am willingly bound to for the rest of my life." The spoken words have been confirmed but the hand-holding was only ever mentioned once. But my soft little heart wants to believe it happened just like that. Plus Alex and Luise were teasing Fred a lot because they enjoyed how shy he was. Relationship goals (if you ignore the political aspects because hoo boy, these three shouldn't work together as a job if they want to stay together)

Tl;dr: Alexander went to Memel with the intention of forming an alliance against Napoleon and went home crying over falling in love with the royal couple.

#History post #Napoleonic wars #Alexander I.#Queen Luise #Frederick William III.#Ship-feels #I think #This is for all my fellow Fred/Lui/Alex shippers out there

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streamsofstardust · 1 year

Note

You don't have to say but uhhh what happened with Sam

man oh man okay story time i suppose:

so basically saturday afternoon me, lexi, devvie, buffy, and katie were in the room i booked at the hard rock getting ready. earlier in the day we heard sams voice and opened the door right when him and danny were turning to go downstairs thru the staff exit. i saw the backs of their heads and being that close to danny in a casual setting made me freak lol my heart rate got up to 153 bpm

anyway, we kept getting ready and whatever and after i was fully dressed like hair, makeup, and outfit i was standing by the door bc i was using the closet mirror to put on rhinestones. now mind u i was dressed head to toe like danny including wearing one of his necklaces. a very recognizable necklace okay that's important. i heard a woman's voice and thought it was a few of our other friends coming down so i was gonna just open the door and let them in. spoiler alert, the voice i heard was not from any of our friends

well i open the door, peak my head out around the corner where this wall was and was face to face with sam and hannah. they were quite literally like a foot away from me (with rose and a security guard) and my eyes went wide for a quick second, i said "hi😊" with a little wave, they both said hi back and smiled and sam like actually looked at me and saw the whole fit and smiled and then they kept walking to their room and i went back into mine

I'm not quite sure i didn't completely imagine the entire encounter so you'll have to ask @shutupdevvie @tlexx @loverleavers bc they witnessed my immediate reaction. all i know is that i collapsed onto the floor

#gvf ac 2022

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khalixascorner · 1 year

Text

Foundations Pt 3

Summary: After agreeing to let Tony take care of him, they have to establish the foundations of this strange new dynamic. Peter stumbles a bit along the way, but Tony's there to catch him. Part 2 of the Priorities Series.

Tags: Slow Burn, Like so slow it's glacial, Still technically pre slash here, Platonic BDSM, for now, Dom Tony Stark, Sub Peter Parker, Friday and Karen gossip

Read on AO3 Part 1 Part 2

The first week in Tony’s care passed quickly as his classes piled more and more on as finals got closer. His morning texts to Tony were often short and done as he literally ran out the door with whatever he had grabbed for breakfast in his mouth. Their night time calls had been casual so far, with Tony just asking how his day went and letting Peter ramble about his classes.

When Friday afternoon finally came around, he stumbled out of his last class ready to collapse. If he were honest with himself, he wasn’t even sure how he got back to his apartment, but once he did, he stumbled to the couch and collapsed across it. Peter knew he should get some food but a mental review of his kitchen left him disheartened. Everything he had left would need to be cooked and he just… couldn’t.

May had always joked about him needing life skills so that he wouldn’t starve at college, but it really felt like he needed two of himself. How was he supposed to find the time to cook and clean while drowning in homework? He hadn’t been out as Spider-man in over a week and he still felt like he’d gone four rounds with the rhino.

He groaned and buried his face in the pillow, ignoring the familiar gnawing in his gut to sleep instead.

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

His phone woke him, and he groaned, wanting to ignore it but also knowing that only a few people used it and none of them were people he could ignore.

“-lo?” Peter mumbled, yawning again.

“Hey kid, didn’t realize you were going to sleep early,” Tony said with a chuckle. “Though your bed may be more comfortable.”

Peter looked confused until he realized his phone was still on 3-d video mode, and Tony was getting a stream courtesy of Friday.

“Wa-wasn’t going to bed,” Peter said with a yawn. “Just needed a nap.”

“Did you eat dinner yet?” Tony asked and Peter flushed.

“Not yet, sir, but that’s next on the list,” Peter said, and even as he did, he knew he’d have to get something because he didn’t want to lie to Tony. The guilt would eat away at him even more than it already did.

“Alright, well just eat and then text me when you’re heading to bed,” Tony said, and Peter nodded, his head already dropping back to the couch. “Food first, Spiderling.”

With that, Tony closed the stream and Peter groaned but stood. He managed to find a large chocolate chip muffin and a string cheese and decided that was good enough. He was so hungry but so tired too that it was hard to choke it down before brushing his teeth and heading to bed properly.

Hey just letting you know I ate, and I’m going back to sleep. Have a good night sir.

He was asleep before he could even read Tony’s reply.

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

Tony had been mildly concerned when his nightly chat with Peter had started with the younger man collapsed on the couch. It had multiplied when Peter said he hadn’t eaten and Tony could easily read the evasive look he got after that. He wasn’t sure why the kid was lying but his gut told him something was wrong. Of course, Pepper always said that was just his anxiety and PTSD talking, but what did that one shrink know anyway?

“Fri, be a dear and check in with Karen,” Tony said without hesitation. “How’s our little spiderling doing?”

There was a moment of delay and then screens began popping up around him. As he took them in, he frowned.

“Karen states that while Peter is sleeping more, he is still not consistently getting the 6 hours you requested of him,” Friday said. “She also noted that he is definitely still not getting enough calories.”

Tony frowned, his mind already jumping to a million solutions though without knowing the cause, he couldn’t be sure which solution would work. The one thing he could do was gather data.

“Fri, run me up a Stark fit but let’s figure out how to get Karen on it,” Tony said with a sigh.

“Anything else you’d like on it?” Friday asked and Tony thought about it before programming a ton of specific variables to track Peter’s vitals as well as key statistics.

It took most of the night, but Tony was pleased with the final result.

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

Peter woke to the smell of bacon cooking and eggs sizzling. It was a little concerning that he hadn’t woken to any of the other noises that must have preceded the smell, but he was too hungry to care as he followed his nose to the kitchen.

It felt a little like deja vu to see Tony in his apartment again but he just shook his head and took a seat at the table. The man would tell him why he was there soon enough, and in the meantime, it was too early to be worrying about anything else.

“Good morning to you too, kid,” Tony teased as he dropped a full plate of food in front of Peter.

“Sorry, sir, still not quite awake yet,” Peter mumbled as he started eating.

“Don’t worry, I remember Finals week,” Tony said, waving it off with a chuckle. “Don’t think I managed more than a few words before my third cup of coffee.”

Peter wasn’t listening at that point though. He had tasted the first few bites, then couldn’t help it as he practically inhaled the rest.

“Easy there, kid, don’t want you to choke,” Tony said as he refilled Peter’s plate before sitting down with one of his own.

Peter grunted in response as he kept eating, only sitting back to look at the older man when he was finally done.

“Sorry, I didn’t realize how hungry I was,” Peter said with a flush. “Thank you for cooking breakfast for me, Mr. Stark.”

“Not a problem, kid,” Tony said, waving it off. Then the older man sat back and just looked at Peter.

“I didn’t know you’d be stopping by this weekend,” Peter said after the silence became too much.

“Thought I would surprise you,” Tony replied dryly. “Because despite your assurances that things have been going okay, Karen expressed some concerns to Friday about whether you were sticking to the rules.”

“What? But I’ve been eating and sleeping,” Peter said, hurrying to defend himself. “I swear it, Mr. Stark, I didn’t lie to you, sir.”

“The way you attacked breakfast says otherwise,” Tony said pointedly and Peter flushed. “How much did you actually eat yesterday?”

Peter couldn’t bring himself to answer, because he knew Tony wouldn’t think it was enough.

“Kid, you have to eat,” Tony said patiently. “You’re going to get sick or worse if you keep not taking care of yourself.”

Peter flushed, guilt making his stomach clench and his eyes water even as Tony himself offered no judgment for his mistake. He’d only been given three things to do and he couldn’t even do that right.

“Why aren’t you eating more, Pete?” Tony pressed when Peter didn’t-couldn’t- respond. “Did you not like what I had delivered?”

“I- no, I’m not picky, sir, I promise, I just-” Peter went an even brighter shade of red as the embarrassment built. He didn’t want to tell Tony the real reason he hadn’t been eating more, because it wasn’t a reason at all but an excuse and he knew it. Before he could spiral too far, he felt a hand land on his thigh and squeeze firmly.

“Come back to me, kid,” Tony said softly. “Deep breaths. You’re not in trouble, whatever the reason is ok. I just need to know what went wrong so I can fix it. This isn’t working, you’re not eating enough still clearly. Just- Let. Me. Fix. It.”

The words were firm, and rule #1 floated through Peter’s head now. He let out a shuddery breath then steeled himself for Tony’s disapproval.

“I don’t- I haven’t been making time to cook it,” Peter said. “I grabbed all the things that didn’t need cooking at the beginning of the week but after that ran out-”

Peter waited silently as Tony said nothing. His stomach clenched and the food he had been so quick to eat now sat heavily in his gut.

“Ok kid, I’m not happy that you didn’t tell me that it was an issue, but that’s an easy fix,” Tony finally said, and Peter’s head shot up as he looked at the man. The older man gave him a gentle smile, and the tension slid right off of him. “You know, I do remember what it’s like, being a crazy busy college student. I wouldn’t have given you crap about saying that you needed easier to grab food in the next grocery order or something.”

“I just-everyone keeps saying how I have to be an adult now and I just, I feel like I’m failing,” Peter replied softly. “I can barely keep up with my classes and Spider-Man.”

“Look, some people are just good at having their shit together,” Tony said with a sigh. “And some of us have better things to spend our brain power on. Do you think that I cook all of my meals? Cooking for you is literally the only time I’ve cooked in months.”

“Some of us aren’t genius billionaires though,” Peter pointed out. He meant it to be light, a joke to ease the tension, but it came out exhausted. Because it was true, he wasn’t Tony, and he doubted his ability to be like Tony.

“Peter, I need you to listen very closely right now. Engrave it on your soul even,” Tony said, grabbing both of Peter’s shoulders as Peter looked at him wide eyed. “You are brilliant, but you don’t owe anyone that brilliance. Even if the only thing you ever do with your life is what you’ve already done, you helped save the damn world. Retire if you want. Never be Spider-Man again, quit college, and let me take care of you until you’re old and grey, for all I care. You don’t have to be anyone but Peter Parker, and whoever that ends up being is good enough.”

Peter felt like his foundations had been completely shattered and the warm firm weight of Tony’s hands were the only anchors he had.

For all of his life, it had been expectation after expectation. Be smart, be good, you have a responsibility to do something. Those mantras had been carved into who he was for so long that the idea that he would be anything but was anathema, so much so that even when he threatened to crumble beneath their weight, the idea of just discarding those words never even crossed his mind.

The more he thought about it, though, the more it bothered him too.

“I don’t want to just be good enough,” he finally mumbled. “I want to do more and help people.”

“That’s good too, and I’ll support you the whole way, however I can,” Tony promised. “But you can’t compare yourself to me or anyone else while you do it. Don’t be the next Tony Stark, be the first Peter Parker. Because Peter Parker is an amazing person.”

“You’re the only one that thinks so,” Peter whispered, his mind immediately going to all of the people that had left him behind. If he was so amazing, they would have cared, would have stayed.

“Then that’s their loss,” Tony said firmly. Peter couldn’t help but snort a bit.

“Aren’t you supposed to tell me that they do care or something?” Peter asked.

“Kid, I don’t pretend to know everything that goes on in everyone’s lives, so I honestly don’t know,” Tony said, his voice steady and calm. “That happens, you know. The people you thought had your back no matter what only have your back sometimes, and you just gotta accept the limitation of the relationship. But I’m telling you right now that the people who matter? The ones who stand by your side? They’ll have your back no matter what and time will make it clear where everyone falls.”

“Do you?” Peter asked, his voice wavered despite his efforts to keep it steady. “Do you have my back no matter what?”

“Yeah, kid,” Tony said with a heavy sigh. “For better or for worse, I’m here now and I’m not going anywhere.”

“Thank you, Mr. Stark,” Peter whispered, leaning forward so that his forehead rested on the man’s shoulders. Tony wasted no time drawing him in for a proper hug, the older man’s hands running up and down his back gently.

“I got you, Pete,” Tony murmured. “It’s going to be ok now.”

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

Tony didn’t know how long they stood there, but eventually, he led them over to the couch so he could hold Peter more comfortably. The kid made no move to pull away, only confirming Tony’s concerns about the touch starvation. Even the slightest bit of touch seemed to affect the younger man, and there wasn’t an easy way to fix that when Tony lived hours away.

Eventually, Tony pushed Peter gently upright, giving the Bambi eyed college student an encouraging smile.

“As much as I love a good cuddle, there’s something else I came here for,” Tony said as he reached into his pocket and pulled out the box with the custom StarkFit. “This is for you, to help Karen keep an eye on you and also remind you to eat and do all of those things.”

Peter took the box and opened it, his eyes going wide at the plain silver band with a discreet screen.

“What- what is it?” the kid asked.

“This is a modified StarkFit,” Tony said, lifting it out and showing Peter how to get it on and off. “Karen is linked in, there’s a microphone and speaker in case she needs to get your attention, as well as a miniature scanner to ensure she can keep track of your vitals. I want you to wear it anytime you’re not in the apartment, and preferably while you’re here too but I understand if you want to take it off.”

“You said it has a scanner?” Peter asked, eyeing the band. “Who monitors it?”

“Karen will watch the day to day and send summaries to Friday, though I’ll check in from time to time too, or if the girls alert me to anything off,” Tony said matter of factly.

Peter once again wondered if something wasn’t wrong with him. Normal people would balk at such scrutiny, and maybe Peter should too but the only thing he felt was a warm feeling in his chest. Tony was willing to devote his time and resources to ensuring that Peter was well. He was the only one willing to do so it seemed, and Peter put the tracker on reverently.

“Thank you,” Peter whispered, hoping Tony would understand because he didn’t think he could explain with words everything the tracker made him feel. It was a weird mix of safe, cared for, special, and the beginnings of something else. Something that was more and scary and something Peter wasn’t ready to face yet.

“You don’t have to thank me, Pete,” Tony said, giving Peter a gentle smile. “I’ve got you now.”

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

Later that night as he lay in bed, Peter couldn’t stop running his fingers over the Starkfit. It was odd feeling the small sensors as they took continuous readings when not wearing the spider suit, but Peter had no intention of saying anything to Tony. The gentle vibrations reminded him that Tony was there on the other end. Not even a phone call away now, just a single voice command.

“Karen, text Mr. Stark, please,” Peter said. “Let him know I’m heading to bed, and thank you again for today. Then tell him good night.”

“Message sent,” the AI informed him. Peter nearly jumped when his wrist vibrated a second later. “We’ve received a response. Would you like me to read it for you?”

“Yeah, sure,” Peter said with a snort. Of course Tony would link all of his devices.

“Mr. Stark says ‘Goodnight, kid. Stay out of trouble and expect a food delivery from the chef sometime tomorrow afternoon.’ Would you like to respond?” Karen asked.

“Yeah, tell him will do and thank you again,” Peter said, curling up under his blanket. He was asleep before Mr. Stark could respond again.

#khalixa writes #starker #tony stark x peter parker #tony stark #peter parker

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boiling-potato · 1 year

Text

Warning: possible stalking

Characters: Y/n, Madison Cortwell and Salem Whitlock

---

Creator's note: huh it's been a while since I've written something. This also had been sitting in my draft for a while now and it's just now I tried to finish it... I just gave up in the last part but anyway hope you guys still like it!! ^^

Also here Ace! Come get your man! (⁠ ⁠ꈍ^ꈍ⁠)🫴✨

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Salem Whitlock (my oc) x Y/n

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Late night study session

"Jesus... h... Christ.."

You mumbled, starring at the stack of papers that your supposed to finish overnight. Being in a private school can really be a pain in the ass since you have to live up in everyone's expectations being in a school full of destined to success people, not to mention you also really need to join the student council because your parents are pressuring you thinking that it will higher the chance of you being the top and the most respectable student in your class. 'why can't they just give you a break?' you thought to yourself sighing.

"Is this all of it?" You ask. "No, it's just the half. I don't want to give it all to you and expect to finish it overnight so I'll just give the rest to you tomorrow afternoon. You are dismiss." Said the blonde girl in front of you. Madison Cortwell, the student council president and the daughter of the man who owns this school. Though she's very smart and had a great skill in leadership, she wasn't really the easiest person to get along with. She always points out unnecessary mistakes and gives you unwanted advice and opinions, not to mention the fact that she's very demanding and sassy whenever you're talking to her. 'God help these entitled narcissist' you thought while putting the papers in your bag standing up and heading to door. You walk through the hallway passing classrooms heading towards the front of the school.

You collapse on your bed after a long relaxing hot/cold shower, just what you needed before you pull an all nighter. Finally After preparing yourself for it you grabbed your bag and pull out the paperworks.

Finally! After 4 hours you finally finished, stretching you looked at the clock on your nightstand at the side on your bed. 1:00 am, you sigh relief that you still have time to do your homeworks. You then grabbed your bag and reach in to grab your homeworks. 'Oh no, no, no, no, no, no no..' you frantically rummage through your bad trying to find it. "Fuck.." you said out loud. Trying so hard not to slap yourself for being so forgetful.. You sat there for a few minutes thinking..... which one would you rather do: go back in school and do your homeworks on the school library or be humiliated tomorrow by your strict professor........

You grumbled walking on the sidewalk while trying to warm your hands by rubbing your hands together. Yeah you hate that professor, he will not take any excuse when a student didn't do their homework and will literally spend half of the class's time to lecture them... Ugh that's a private school for you... Yeah no you'd rather loose sleep rather than dealing with that. Luckily (not really) though, the gates of the school are not always locked because is full of all nighter teacher and maybe even students.... ok maybe not full but there's always three-five teachers or students who's always stays at school to do homework and paperworks and unfortunately you have to be one of them..

Finally reaching the school you showed your ID to the nightguard and explain them your situation and finally send you on your way. You entered the library sitting down on the nearest desk and setting down your homeworks and start suffering. After a while you looked at the clock in the wall, 2:00 am, yeah your pretty exhausted and you're definitely not going to get back home anytime soon... But maybe you could just take a nap here? You're still not finished but it feels like you're going to collapse at any moment now. You need a rest.. you then close your eyes and started dozing off....

"Your answer to number 17 is wrong."

"Fuck!" You hissed, jumping at the sudden voice behind you, you then turn around looking at the tall stranger in front of you.

"Oops..."

You looked at him, too shocked to reply. He looked like his about your age, maybe even older? And judging by the uniform he was wearing you assume that he's one of the few students who stays in the school for reasons like what you have right now. He has a shaggy pink hair, yellow piercing eyes that looks like he could see right through your soul and looks... Incredibly pale, he also has bags under his eyes supporting your theory. He was hovering over you like a wolf ready to have his meal. Even though he wears a small smile and looks like he has no bad intentions, you still got the creeps and can't help but feel... Unease...

"U-umm what..?" You ask, trying not to sound scared or shaky. "..... The answer to number 17, it's wrong, the great depression didn't start around that time, it's too early. It started around 1929 and ended around 1939.." he said eyeing your homeworks. You looked at your homeworks looking at the thing he's pointing out. "Oh.." you said "umm.. thanks...?" You said looking back at him, not knowing what to say next. "Are you ok? You look like your really tired.... Do you want me to help you?" "Umm.." if you're being honest.. you really don't need (want) this guy's help since he gives you the creeps and you really just want to get this over with and go home, you immediately brainstorm of an excuse on why you don't need it but you don't have to worry! it doesn't matter! Since he already took a sit next to you...

You sighed

'this is going to be a long night..'

It's been 30 minutes since he's been helping you with your homeworks.... well you didn't really do much since he was the only one answering the questions and explaining to you why that's the right answer so throughout the time you literally just nod and agree while trying so hard not to doze off. You don't even know why he's doing this.. Is it really just the fact that he wants to help you or is it the fact that he's bored and just wants to play teacher with a lonely student who's in the library at 2 in the morning.. Not to mention you don't even know his name.. yeah.. who is this guy anyway?

"Umm Would you mind if I ask you a few questions?" You asked ".. Not at all, ask away." He said not looking up from your homework. "... What's your name?" He stopped and looked at you confused "oh.. I.. haven't told you my name yet?" "Umm no? I don't think so.." you said. "Oh.. sorry about that I.. forgot.. my name's Salem, Salem Whitlock." "Oh I see well my name is- " before you can even say your name he interrupted you "y/n, y/n l/n. I know.." you looked at him stunned, he must've noticed it because he lift your textbook were you saw your full name there.

"Oh.."

He smiled and got back on finishing your homework. You looked at him thinking of what you can ask him next... then it clicked "what are you even doing here so late?" He pause, he looks like he's thinking of something to say and after that he looks at you and smiled "same reason as you, I have homeworks to do.. I just finished early." "Oh I see, but why do it here? Can't you just do it in your house?" You asked. "Ah yeah... I could but..." He paused "Umm.. I just... Really like the school when it's night.. it's.. quiet... And very empty.. Unlike the daytime.... it's perfect.." he said without breaking eye contact while smiling. You looked back at him unsure of what to say back. What he said does make sense, a lot of people enjoy the creepy environment that the school gives during nighttime but.. there's something about how he said it made you unease.... maybe it's the fact that the way he pause whenever he says a word? Or the fact that he didn't break eye contact while telling you this.

"Does anyone have ever told you that you look very pleasant to look at?" He then said out of the blue. You looked at him confused. "Umm... thank you?" You said Also not breaking eye contact. You then hear a loud thud-like sound that made you flinch and looked at Salem's hand, the sound is coming from your textbook being slammed shut "anyway, I'm finished! Here." He said handing you your homework. You took it from his hand and examined it. They all seemed correct and the explanation throughout the whole question sounds like it's really coming from an encyclopedia down to every single detail. You looked at the clock in the wall 2:56 am which means this random guy just finished most of your homework in the span of almost an hour. 'ok maybe he's not so bad after all..' you thought looking at him

"thank you. This is a really big help for me." You said giving him a small smile "your welcome.. so does this means we're friends?" He said standing up "sure!" you said putting your homework in your bag "Hmm good, well I better get going then." He said walking towards the library door, but before he leaves he stopped and turned around looking at you "oh right, one last thing before I go. Be careful on your way to (Street name) I heard there's a lot of crimes being committed there so be sure to carry something to defend yourself while walking there."

You smiled pulling out your pocket knife from your bag showing him. "Don't worry I always have something to defend myself whenever I'm out." He smiled nodding and finally leaving. You put your knife on your pockets and finally headed out.

You got home at 3:20 am so you still have 4 hours to sleep. You dropped your bag on the floor and threw yourself on your bed thinking about your encounter with Salem. You started dozing off while recalling your conversation with him but then stood up remembering something that made your heart dropped.

How... How did he know your street address?

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silverhallow · 2 years

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Hi, I hope you have a good day. I have a story request, only if you’ll have time, Sophie is a maid at the Bridgerton’s and Ben is following her around when she is trying to work, just to annoy her :)

Okay so we’ve not really gone with the annoying angle but I hope you like this little Drabble 🧡

Sophie had been followed around her place of employment before. When she worked for the Cavender’s whenever Phillip was at home he would practically stalk her around the house, attempting to grab her and molest her at any given moment but this… this was something entirely different.

Benedict Bridgerton just followed her around like a puppy following his mother. Sophie had found it amusing and disconcerting the first morning when he appeared as she was going to breakfast and then again following her breakfast. She had foolishly thought it was a one off, but every day for the last week he had been there.

Literally in her shadow.

The only time he hadn’t been there was when Sophie was aiding his sisters in their morning and evening ablutions.

She has assumed that today, as the family were visiting the Viscount and then where going to visit the Duchess that afternoon so she thought she had time to get her chores done and she would get to do so uninterrupted.

Mrs Wilson had gone out and some of the other maids had their day off but Sophie had some mending to do and she was in the process of tidying Hyacinths dressing room when she felt a tingling sensation in the back of her neck.

She knew that sensation and she didn’t even bother to turn around as she heard the tell tale footsteps coming closer to her.

“Don’t you have somewhere else to be?” She asked, as she did not even bother to turn around to face him.

Benedict chuckled, as Sophie knew he would, “no need to be so hostile” he said with a smiles

“Well considering I know your family is gathering with your brother and then visiting your sister, there is no reason for you to be here, other than for your own nefarious interests and I’m working so…” she said as she turned to walk past him.

Benedict’s hand shot out and grabbed the skirts of her gown and pulled her into him. “My intentions were strictly honourable” he said jauntily as Sophie snorted “or they were until I saw how fetching you look today”

Sophie sighed “please don’t”

Benedict held her close to him “I can’t… you know I can’t” he whispered.

His hands clutched at hers and her heart broke as his blue eyes met hers. She saw the pain and the desire in them, the want and longing that she knew would be reflecting back at him.

“Please Benedict” Sophie whispered, her voice catching as she looked at his lips, her own tongue darting out to wet her now very dry lips.

“Tell me to stop, tell me to leave and I’ll go” he whispered back at her, his hand snaking around her waist holding her closer. He meant it, he didn’t want to be that Man. He felt his honour hanging by a thread and he wanted her. He wanted her more than he had wanted anything in his life.

He needed her and she needed him. He hated the rules, he hated that she would not come home with him but at this moment, he needed her lips on his or he was going to combust.

Sophie didn’t say anything. She just tilted her head ever so slightly, her eyes on his lips and Benedict knew what they meant and so he leaned down the extra inch and captured her lips with his.

The tenderness of the action nearly caused Sophie’s legs to give way, if she had not been in his arms she would have collapsed at the motion.

Their lips moved together as their hearts beat as one, lost in the moment, this one perfect moment where there was no social differences. The moment when they were just Benedict and Sophie.

They were a couple who loved one another but it ended quicker than it had started as another pair of footsteps came up the hallway and Sophie jumped backwards from Benedict.

Her heart hammering in her chest as the butler walked up and the moment was lost.

Sophie ran up the stairs to her room, her heart thumping wildly in her chest at how close they had come.

She had to be careful, she had to leave… she vowed from that moment she would leave if Benedict came into the room.

And that worked well for a few days until he found her in the garden and they kissed again, this time not realising that someone has indeed seen them…

#benedict bridgerton #sophie beckett #bridgerton #benophie #Benophie Drabble #ask ash

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waitingforwinterwinds · 1 year

Text

Game of Thrones - 69 TYRION IX (pages 737-746)

Tywin's council gets to hear about how cool Robb's battle plan at Riverrun was, then Tywin updates Tyrion on the new plan.

Chapter 69, heh, nice

His father set a grueling pace, and it had taken its toll. Men wounded in the battle kept up as best they could or were abandoned to fend for themselves. every morning they left a few more by the roadside, men who went to sleep never to wake.Every afternoon a few more collapsed along the way. And every evening a few more deserted, stealing off into the dusk.

More stuff about war that D&D happily trimmed. I get that it can be hard to translate that sort of thing to screen, but I feel like they didn't even try, always focused on war in terms of 'how many liters of blood spray would make this shot look really cool' and not 'war isn't just the moment you swing a sword at your enemy, it's the moments in between, it's the travel and the slog, the rationing and the wounded.'

The slow and steady loss of hope in the face of unrelenting violence that seems so much bigger than you are and all of it for the ego of a few in power.

Ser Flement Brax wore a silver-and-purple tabard and the look of a man who cannot comprehend what he has just heard. "My lord father-" "Sorry, my lord," the messenger said. "Lord Brax was clad in plate-and-mail when his raft overturned. He was very gallant." He was a fool, Tyrion thought, swirling his cup and staring down into the winy depths. Crossing a river at night on a crude raft, wearing armor, with an enemy waiting on the other side - if that was gallantry, he would take cowardice every time.

"Discretion is the better part of valor."

Not to speak ill of the dead, but Lord Brax was a dipshit. In what universe did that seem like a sound strategy???

"Unless they trade three-for-one, we still come out light on those scales," Tyrion said acidly. "And what are we to offer for my brother? Lord Eddard's rotting head?" "I had heard that Queen Cersei has the Hand's daughters, "Lefford said hopefully. "If we give the lad back his sisters..." Ser Addam snorted disdainfully. "He would have to be an utter ass to trade Jaime Lannister's life for two girls."

Why? Why would that make him an ass? Because it's one-for-two? So the trade's not fair? Because you think Jaime's life is worth more than two young girls? Hostages are people, not numbers, hostage exchanges don't have to be number ratio fair, those are lives.

"- My grandson still sits on the Iron Throne, but the eunuch had heard whispers from the south. Renly Baratheon wed Margaery Tyrell at Highgarden this fortnight past, and now he has claimed the crown. The bride's father and brothers have bent the knee and sworn him their swords."

Oh? like he swore his to Ned?

"As you say my lord, but... why Harrenhal? That is a grim, unlucky place. Some call it cursed." "Let them," Lord Tywin said. "Unleash Ser Gregor and send him before us with his reavers. Send forth Vargo Hoat and his freeriders as well, and Ser Armory Lorch. Each is to have three hundred horse. Tell them I want to see the riverlands afire from the God's Eye to the Red Fork." "They will burn, my lord." Ser Kevan said, rising. "I shall give the commands." He bowed and made for the door. When they were alone, Lord Twin glanced at tyrion. "Your savages might relish a bit of raping. Tell them they may ride with Vargo Hoat and plunder as they like - goods, stock, women, they may take what they want and burn the rest."

piece of shit piece of shit piece of shit!!!!!

Deep breath... and out... and remember: they don't even have a Geneva. (Or respect for human life, or basic decency....)

Lord Tywin rose abruptly. "You are my son." That was when he knew. You have given him up for lost, he thought. You bloody bastard, you think Jaime's as good as dead, so I'm all you have left. Tyrion wanted to slap him, to spit in his face, to draw his dagger and cut the heart out of him to see if it was made of old hard gold, the way the smallfolks said. Yet he sat there, silent and still.

Shame it took a few seasons/books for that to change. Imagine the trouble that could have been saved.

Tywin really isn't making things better, he is a petty and vindictive piece of shit who cares about nothing but his own image and legacy. ... Ahhhhhh, that's where Cersei and Joffrey get it from, it's so obvious now that I've said it aloud.

Well, Tyrion's on his way to King's Landing so that's... something.

#a song of ice and fire #asoiaf #game of thrones #tyrion lannister #a chapter a day reading #got

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buckttommy · 2 years

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jack. jack you killed me. but like you said everyone knows buck's gonna die, he already did, they know it's coming because they already had a glimpse of it when eddie was shot. and bobby is having a hard time trying to keep it a bit more together, not relapsing because he knows he'll lose buck soon, and maddie is just trying to hold on a few more memories of her brother and you legit made me cry

bobby would practically LIVE in aa after eddie's death. i mean, every meeting he can go to, he's there front row literally just trying and failing to hold it together. aa is the only place he's allowed to go where he can just FEEL it; feel the pain, feel the loss, feel the fear. when he steps out of those doors, he has to be a rock for hen and chim. he has to try to keep buck tethered to reality. he has to help the diazes plan a fucking funeral (and isn't that brutal. he doesn't think he'll ever get over having to look into ramon's face watching him pick out a coffin for his son when they only just recently started trying to piece their relationship together. the day they pick out the coffins is the first time bobby has ever had cause to really sit and talk with this man and the afternoon ends with him falling apart in bobby's arms. it's not a good day.). so yeah, outside of aa, bobby has to be Bobby, capital b. but in aa? oh man, in aa he's a MESS. and he breaks the hearts of everyone there. cause they all know his story, they all know how much he's lost. they all know how much the jonah thing nearly took him out and how much he's poured into buck and eddie. those are nash's boys. no one in aa has ever met buck or eddie, but they know them. from bobby's stories, they know them. so there's not a dry fucking eye when he tells them that eddie's dead. there's not a dry eye when the aa coordinator goes up to the front and helps bobby sit down cause he's crying so hard he's likely to just collapse under the weight of it all. and from the moment bobby reveals that eddie's dead, everyone knows. everyone knows it's just a matter of time until bobby comes back completely broken and agonized, with nothing but wells of grief and his eyes and says that buck followed the love of his life to the great beyond. so they always hug him extra hard every time they see him. they pray with him, those that pray. and those that don't, they give him self help books and offer to have him over for dinner. they leave his favorite cookies on the table after meeting. they make sure his favorite creamer is stocked so they don't run out. i just have a lot of feelings about all the little acts of love poured out on bobby as everyone in his life watches him prepare to lose another son. ouch

#mcd au #major character death //#jack answers mail

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miamierre · 2 years

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hello it’s me, area fool who misinterprets media content and accidentally puts out 1500 words about it

Pierre wakes up to an empty bed.

Which, to be fair, is normal for race weekends—he and Charles both are running around with the rest of the team personnel from Wednesday afternoon all the way through Sunday, so even when they do have the opportunity to spend a night together in the same hotel room, it always happens like this one way or another.

Pierre is just never used to it, is all, because more often than not, he’s the one that leaves first—always kisses Charles on the forehead so lightly that it barely touches him, always leaves some article of clothing to get returned to him later in the afternoon, when they meet again where cameras can find them, but he’s usually out the door before Charles has stirred awake.

So it’s a little disorienting, to be on the other end of things. “Mmmghm,” he grumbles a little to himself, rolling over under the comforter. Without Charles being a blanket hog, he’s almost too swaddled in the hotel blankets.

“Pierrot,” Charles’ voice calls from across the room, and Pierre’s eyes fly up to where Charles is now standing, white towel gracefully tucked around his waist, hair matted to his forehead. “How does it feel to be me?”

Pierre is confused for a beat before he realizes Charles was thinking the same thing he just was. “I hope this means I’m qualifying on pole on Saturday,” he chuckles, pushing himself upright against the mountain of pillows behind them. “You have an early day?”

Charles nods. Pierre can see the sleep still in his eyes. “Being a TikTok star is hard.” The sentiment makes Pierre laugh, stirring more seriously from sleep. “I’m serious! I don’t understand how teenagers do it. We have to film everything like, fifty times. And still it comes out wrong.”

Pierre snorts. “Okay, old man,” he teases, and Charles gasps, mock-offended. “You can make time for me to clean you up, no?”

“No, Pierre, I just got out of—” Realization dawns on him. “You are impossible,” Charles murmurs, face pink. “No, Pierre, I don’t—we literally have to be down in the garage in like, ten minutes.”

Pierre smirks. “I can work with ten minutes.” He rolls out of bed, adjusting his sleep shorts, from where they’ve started to ride up his thighs. Charles’ face is dark red, now, but he doesn’t move from his spot as Pierre backs him into the nearest wall, grinning devilishly. When he leans in for a kiss, Charles doesn’t protest—just makes a soft noise, barely audible, and melts upon contact, mouth opening to allow Pierre full access.

“Your toothpaste is nice,” Pierre mumbles between exchanges, drawing a soft chuckle from Charles. “Maybe I should stop chewing gum and just start getting you early in the morning like this.”

“You would like that, wouldn’t you,” Charles laughs, looping his arm more firmly around Pierre’s waist, keeping him locked in. (Like he would leave.) Pierre nods. “Mmm, I will consider it. Although you still taste like morning breath, so maybe don’t get rid of your gum just yet.”

“But you’re kissing me anyway.”

A sigh, soft. Charles’ eyes look less sleepy, now, just the warmth of their bed remaining in them. Pierre can’t stop looking at him—drinking him in, the way he’s so effortless in drawing Pierre in when he hasn’t even done anything. “I am, aren’t I,” he admits, shaking his head a little. “Pierrot, I am serious, I have to get dressed and you are going to make it very difficult to put my sweatpants on.”

For a moment—the briefest of moments—Pierre presses closer, feeling the way Charles is starting to get hard against him. “You like a challenge,” he mumbles, planting a wet kiss against his jaw and scraping at the skin a little with his teeth. The whine he gets in return is victory enough. “Fine, fine, I will be good. For now.” The next kiss is much sweeter, less intent on ruining his morning and more about the actual affection curling in Pierre’s chest. He steps away and collapses back into bed, chuckling as Charles whines again at the absence of pressure.

“You are the worst,” he groans, dragging both his hands over his face. “Now I—shit, I’m going to get dressed in the bathroom. You cannot torment me in there.” Reluctantly, he grabs the folded-up Ferrari clothes on the chair beside the bed and clutches them to his chest, acting just the littlest bit scandalized. Pierre finds him ridiculous. (He is very, very in love.) “Don’t move, please.”

Pierre laughs. “I am not going to race you to the bathroom.” He pauses. “Unless…” With a quick launch from the mattress, he strides towards the swung-open bathroom door. Charles yelps, clutching the clothes in his hands tighter and scrambling to get inside first, all but slamming the door in his face as he giggles nervously from the other side of the door.

“I win!” He exclaims, muffled and breathless and bubbly with laughter. Pierre rolls his eyes, although he can’t swallow his own amusement. “Now please. Let me get dressed in peace so I don’t have a boner on the track walk.”

Pierre wanders back to bed, flopping on his stomach so he can reach where his phone is charging beside his pillow. The idea of Charles thinking about him like this out there is…definitely something he’s going to save for later. Instead, he gives Charles the little victory, thumbing through his phone for his own calendar updates. The team is meeting in a couple hours—no TikTok for him, fortunately—so he’s got a little more time to spare than the man he’s currently bullied into getting dressed behind a closed door.

“Charlito?”

Pierre hears a dull thud, which he can only assume is Charles using the door as a support so he can pull his pants on properly. After a beat: “Mmm?”

“We should get breakfast.”

There’s a flurry of motion behind the door and Charles pokes his head out, still a little wet from the shower. “You really think we’ll be able to get away from the garage long enough to?” It’s not sarcasm, not really, but Charles is right. It’s been so good, lately, all this time the two of them have gotten to spend together between races and meetings and everything. Reality has to set in eventually. They’re not going to get unstructured time like this until summer break, which is far too far away for Pierre’s liking.

“You’re right,” he groans, dropping his phone on his chest and wincing as the corner happens to strike him just right. He rubs at it absentmindedly. Charles just looks at him, still so handsome and inviting. “Maybe—maybe coffee, then.” Charles raises an eyebrow. “Or really—whatever you want, Cha. I just want to see you before tonight.”

Charles laughs softly, stepping out fully from behind the door. He’s dressed in the usual garish red outfit he walks the track in, still handsome but definitely no longer the definition of subtle beauty. “You must miss me a lot,” he hums teasingly, padding over to where Pierre is perched on the bed. When he runs his hand through Pierre’s mess of bedhead, the teasing façade dies down. “Coffee sounds nice.”

Pierre hums, feeling particularly catlike as Charles tugs a little at him. “You don’t even like coffee,” he mumbles, leaning into the touch.

“But I like you,” he murmurs. “And you like coffee.” With another soft noise, Charles dips down to kiss Pierre chastely, their noses bumping a little from the angle. It feels…settled. For a moment, he flashes to some parallel life of theirs—Charles leaving for work and kissing Pierre goodbye in their kitchen over a mug of something warm. It’s a little flash, something far too complicated for Pierre to even think about working out right now, but…

“I do like coffee,” he answers, quiet like he’s admitting something Charles doesn’t actually know. “I—Charles.”

“I’ll bring you coffee when I see you later, yes?”

“Charles, you don’t have to—”

“I want to.” He grins, the force of it hitting Pierre like the blinds of their room being torn open all at once. “Besides—you’ll owe me for it, which means I can make you do anything I want later.”

Pierre chokes on a laugh, disbelieving, as Charles backs away from him with a shit-eating grin on his face. “I hope you don’t mean what I think you mean,” he says. His red streak of a boyfriend just shrugs, still grinning like a maniac. “You are the impossible one, calamar.”

Charles bows a little in the doorframe, shoulders shaking from the laughter he’s clearly struggling to hold in. “And yet you love me anyway.” Before Pierre can give him a disgruntled response, he yelps. “Oh, fuck, I’m going to be late.” With a hastily blown kiss across the room, Charles all but stumbles out of their hotel room, shouting an I’ll see you later, mon petit! as he does so.

Pierre chuckles, rolls his eyes, and then returns to his phone. He’d been serious about breakfast, at least—maybe Yuki is around.

#10 x 16 #fic #i think my brain is gonna explode one of these days BUT today is NOT that day

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hauntent · 2 years

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Friendship Grows Like a Flower (1/?)

After returning home from what was definitely not a fun weekend camping trip, you try to adjust to your new reality.

You might not be as alone as you think you are.

(aka I wrote fanfiction for the “you made a friend” ending in TPOF so this contains heavyyyyyyyy spoilers)

rating: mature

you can read it here or on ao3!!

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The stairs up to your apartment loom ahead of you, twisting up to where you know your apartment door lies. Thirty nine steps between you and what you have to tell yourself is the end of your journey. It has felt like the end for a while: when you stepped foot into that cabin, when you pulled a trigger and watched a man die, when you stumbled out of the forest (bleeding, and numb from the cold, but alive.)

Then there had been the matter of finding civilization, finding a place to stay for the night, and finding a way home. All of it had felt like the final step, like the final hurdle, before you could finally be done with whatever the hell that experience was. And now, there were the stairs.

You live on the third floor of the apartment complex. The building is old, with no elevators. You know from experience that the wooden stairs creak when you step on them. You also know that there’s thirty nine of them because you used to always count them on the way up, a little tic you picked up somewhere along the way. Three sets of thirteen, and then you’re done. Your thigh, still red and raw on account of being fucking shot with a crossbow, aches at the thought.

You grit your teeth and get on with it. True to memory, the woods groans under your weight, and you fight the panic rising like bile in the back of your throat. You have to remind yourself that it’s alright to make noise here: there’s no consequences in the form of arrows piercing your skin. Just you and the next step. You know you’ve survived worse, because you quite literally just did, and it shouldn’t be this hard. Still, you hesitate.

Three sets of thirteen later, and your chest is heaving with more than just physical exertion. Your thigh burns, and every muscle feels like it’s going to give out, wobbly and fatigued. You try to tell yourself ‘You made it. You’re home now. You’re safe.’

The words don’t reach you, not in the way you want them to. You shove your key into the lock and open the door.

You’re not entirely sure what you expected to see when the door swings open. Maybe someplace else, maybe more trees. Maybe him standing there, eyes wide as red spreads over his chest, the sound of a shotgun still ringing in your ears.

Instead, everything is exactly as you left it. There’s the pile of mail left on the kitchen counter, a blanket thrown haphazardly over the back of your couch. The warm afternoon light filters in from the window, casting everything in a warm glow. The scene is saccharine, something straight out of a movie where the hero returns home to live out their happy ending, their reward for enduring the trials of their story. It doesn’t seem real, doesn’t seem like it’s yours. You blink, and the image stays.

Stepping through the door frame feels like an intrusion, like breaking some fourth wall you weren’t aware of. You do it anyways and lock the door behind you. The first thing that registers in your brain is that you’re still wearing the clothes he gave you, complete with dried mud and blood stains. Distantly, you think that you must look like hell. You feel like hell too, exhaustion weighing every limb down. You trudge to your bedroom and shrug off the dirty clothes, wincing as you peel your pants from your injured thigh, sticky from all the dried blood. Briefly, you entertain the idea of slipping into something more comfortable, an old pair of pajamas. But putting clean clothes on would just feel wrong: staining something simple and good and pure with whatever it is you’re enveloped in now.

So instead, you collapse backwards on your bed in your underwear. It feels nice to lay on something that isn’t the cold hard ground. You close your eyes, and try to process where you are. You are home, in your bed. You are safe. Deep breath in, deep breath out.

You shift. You thought it would feel better. Like your bedsheets could absorb all the hurt and stress that had been instilled in you and swap it out for relief. They can’t, though.

You want to feel more relieved than you do. Instead, you find that you can’t feel much of anything at all.

Despite the exhaustion, you sit back up, foot tapping against the floor. There’s still leftover adrenaline coursing through you, telling you to keep moving. It feels wrong to lay down. Maybe it’s the layers of sweat and dirt caked onto your skin from your time spent in the woods. Maybe it’s nothing a good shower can’t fix.

(You know that’s not true. Water and soap can’t fix the fact that you were abducted and sold to a man so he could hunt you for sport.)

(You try anyways, though, and come out clean, blood rinsed off your hands— at least, in the literal sense).

Cleaning your leg takes more time and effort. You try to be gentle as you wash around the wound, but it still throbs with pain. The thought of going to a hospital crosses your mind, but the idea of a nurse asking you how you got the wound only for you to respond “Well you see, a giant fucking man bought me at an auction and decided to shoot me full of arrows for fun” made you reconsider. You decide to patch it up yourself, wrapping your thigh with gauze and hoping for the best. Feeling clean enough, you decide to bite the bullet and pull on an old t-shirt and some shorts, trying to feel a little bit more like yourself and less like a wild animal licking its wounds.

Your next step is decided for you when the sound of your stomach growling startles you. It’s jarring how quiet your little apartment is. When you were out in the woods, there was always the sound of birds chirping, squirrels scuttling up and down trees— unless, of course, he was around. Then things went deathly quiet. Kinda like they were now.

You bite the inside of your cheek, tell yourself that you’re somewhere different (somewhere safe), and go to the kitchen. The sight of bananas lying blackened and rotten on your counter pulls you from your thoughts. You hadn’t bought them that long ago, though you suppose you were gone for longer than intended. The swarm of fruit flies seem to enjoy it more than you, as you crinkle up your nose at the smell. Sickeningly sweet. You toss them in the trash, and reach for a box of cereal instead. With the milk in your fridge in a similar state as the bananas, you resign yourself to eating dry handfuls of cereal on the floor.

As you sit in the quiet kitchen, you try to tell yourself that you’re alone, well and truly. For the past few days, you had to be on high alert constantly, always looking and listening for any sign of him ( ‘Mason’ you think. ‘He told you his name was Mason’, though the distinction feels weird, too personal. It makes him more real, in a way that makes your stomach flip when you imagine him laying still on the floor of his cabin, body bloated and discolored in a pool of congealed blood).

You suppose it makes sense that even now, in the relative safety of your own apartment, you feel hairs sticking up on the back of your neck, as though you’re being watched.

You’re not, obviously. You shove a handful of cereal in your mouth and chew, trying to internalize that fact. It almost works. You watch as the kitchen darkens around you as the sun sets, and chalk up any uneasy feelings to the PTSD you’re sure to have after whatever the hell it was you just went through.

Still, the feeling of being watched persists.

“What a week, am I right?” You sound exhausted, even to your own ears. The sentiment isn’t meant for anyone in particular, just the empty space staring back at you, but it feels better somehow, to joke about it, to say your thoughts out loud. If anything, it breaks up the tense silence. You hold out your box of cereal, as if offering it to someone sitting across from you. Of course, no one is. You think, though, it might’ve been nice, if you’d had an ally of some sort during that whole ordeal. Someone to share things with, to strategize with. A friend.

‘You did have a friend though.’

Your mind conjures up an image of still water, black as ink, and bones shrouded in a strange blue light. You’re pretty sure that was just a hallucination induced by those berries you ate and the stress and the cold and whatever else. Pretty sure. Though how your mind supplied you with the knowledge of where the shotgun was, you have no idea. Maybe it was a lucky guess, maybe a prophetic dream. Maybe that thing was real, and was kind enough to help you.

(It feels mean to call it a “thing”, so the name you’ve settled on in your head is “Mr. Bone Man.”)

(Even if Mr. Bone Man isn’t real and can’t have hurt feelings.)

Your hand is still stretched out, offering cereal to your imaginary friend. Unsurprisingly, nothing happens. You sigh, and stand up, shoving the box back into the cabinet it came from. On your way back to the bedroom, you notice your plant, wilting in its spot on the windowsill. You frown, and limp over to it, trying to ignore the way your leg screams in protest.

“Yeah, I guess you’ve been without water for a few days, haven’t you,” you mutter, grabbing the spray bottle and giving it a generous spritz. You’d like to imagine that it perks up at the attention, and you give it a small smile. The expression feels weird, foreign to your face. Almost as if you forgot how to do anything that wasn't crying or cringing. The leaves of the fern are a brownish-yellow, and you have to remind yourself that a majority of plants you’ve killed were done in by overwatering after you forgot about them, and stop yourself before you do more damage. This one’s been a real trooper, sticking with you through the cold season.

If there are parallels between you and your houseplant, you decide that getting all sentimental over it won’t do you any good, and move on.

The pain radiating from your leg brings you back to the moment, and you decide you really should do something about it. You stumble to the bathroom, trying to keep your weight balanced on one side, while you dig around your medicine cabinet, looking for anything that might help. You find two pill bottles, some antibiotics and some codeine left over from a surgery you had a while back. You think that you heard somewhere once that you’re not supposed to take either pill for anything other than what they were prescribed for, but you’ve already ruled out going to the hospital, and it's the only thing you can think of that will help.

It’s hard to swallow the pills, even while chugging a glass of water, half of which ends up on your shirt. After that, it’s a matter of waiting. You drag yourself back to bed and pull the covers over you. Eventually, you feel the familiar lull of pharmaceutically induced sleep tugging at you, the world going fuzzy and soft around the edges. For the first time since you woke up in shackles in an unfamiliar room, you allow yourself to relax.

And as you lay there, staring up into the dark, you feel the familiar sensation of the world giving way beneath you, as though you could fall up.

— — —

There is static in your ears, an endless stream of white noise. Around you, the world is gray, all shadows and contrast, shifting in and out of focus. You take a step forward, and the sound gets louder, hissing in your ears. There’s dirt beneath your feet, leaves and branches scratching at your skin, as if to say hello.

It’s warm here. Welcoming, perhaps in a way it shouldn’t be.

Another step forward, and you break past the dark trees. You realize that it wasn’t static that you heard, but the sound of running water, a low and gentle rush. The river stretches on endlessly, flowing somewhere you can’t see. Another step forward and you’re on the bank. You kneel down, a few inches from where the shore meets the water. You stretch your hand out, as if to touch it, to feel the current softly pushing against you. Somewhere in the back of your mind, a voice is screaming to stop, that you’re not ready, not for this.

You’re not sure what it is you’re not ready for.

Another voice, one you’ve heard before, whispers as if leaning down next to you, lips pressed against your ear.

“You’ll come home soon.”

Your eyes fly open as you jerk forward. The voice had sounded like it was right in your ear. You reach a hand blindly out into the bedsheets next to you, feeling around for the source of the voice. They’re empty, and cool to the touch. Letting out a breath you didn’t know you were holding, you sink back into your sheets. Your eyes remain open though, trained on the empty space next to you.

“I am home.” Your voice is small, even to your own ears. You wonder if the silence believes it as little as you do.

#the price of flesh #tpof #boyfriend to death #the lich tpof #hiiiii ive already posted like 3 chapters on ao3 but i figured i'd cross-post it here too for funsies #since im trying to b more active on this blog #i am...a little tipsy so i apologize if theres any errors #also i havent posted fanfic on tumblr yet so if i did any faux pas PLS let me know i do not want to be a fool

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