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writefightandflightclub · 1 month

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Ride or Die (Santiago “Pope” Garcia x fem!reader): Chapter Eight (of 11 - COMPLETED SERIES)

Series summary: Together, you and Santiago have been “soldiers” then “friends” then “lovers”; but will you ever figure out what comes next, especially when Santiago can’t (or won’t) stop running?

Genre: a LOT of angst, (some) smut, best friends to… lovers?

Warnings: see collated series warnings, here. Please note, this series is 18+. Minors / ageless blocks interacting will be blocked.

Series info: this is a COMPLETED SERIES. All chapters are written and queued. Posting schedule is here (includes series master list).

Author’s note: Oh my goshhhhh, I hope you're ready for chapter eight??!!! We've been on such a journey with these two, and I can't wait for you to see where they go next. As always, I would be super grateful for any comments / reblogs / asks you may wish to send my way. ILY :-*

Word count: 8.6k for this part.

Tag list info: will reblog separately tagging those on taglist. You can request to be added to taglist if you are 18+. Send me an ask, please, so I can keep track :)

In your ensuite, you shower the residue of the day away from your flushed skin, rinsing the sand and sunscreen and sweat away beneath the warm, sluicing water. You’re alone, and yet your thoughts are consumed by another. By Santiago specifically; of course.

He had promised you something -to give you what you want, need- and you’re trembling already in anticipation of it. You feel butterflies unfurling in the pit of you at the thought of laying down with him. Of baring yourself to him. Of surrendering. Having him hold you. Not urgently or desperately this time - no. Intentionally. Deliberately. Gently.

You unhook the shower head to rinse the soapy suds away from the contours of you and you think of him - because how can you think of anything else? Indeed, your want is so barreling that even your own hands smoothing over your skin - your breasts, your stomach, your thighs - arouse you, your own touch the precursor to the path his warm, rough fingers might travel.

You are about to merge with him, but he already feels so much a part of you.

You belong to Santiago.

It’s Santiago who is indelibly written onto your body, the map of scars telling the story and you and him. The scar on your shoulder from a bullet wound, the scar on your calf from an off-road collision, the lines and marks all over you where Santiago has been there for you, taken fire for you, pressed his lethal hands to you to keep your lifeforce from ebbing away.

There’s that, but also, there are the more invisible markers which your life with him - alongside him- has left on your skin. There’s the scrape of his stubble against your neck. The grip of his broad hands on your hips. The pulse between your legs which your body remembers. You have catalogued and cartographed the soft and harsh parts of his body - and his soul. But, you still do not have the map to his heart. He is yet to show you the way; but even so…

He is your ride or die, and your body knows it. Always has.

Your body knows that you are about to collide with him. To be subsumed by the surge and undertow of him, and you throb for it. You expel a sugared moan into the steamy air as the jet of water provides pressure against your wanting clit, and for a moment you wonder how you can be so gone for him. You have been waiting for him to choose you; but, in truth, for you it was never a choice.

One of you can not hope to be read -to be understood- without the other. Your bodies are forever moving through the world as a team, as a pair, even if you leave each other’s side. You didn’t choose it so much as it just happened. A lifetime, wearing familiar dirt tracks into clear waymarked paths with every step forward.

Still, the map has always remained incomplete. You could never quite see where this path with him ended. How far it could take you. Whether he would walk alongside you some or all of the way.

You are grateful for him. So grateful. But you always want more. More of him. How could you not?

Santiago has already made your life beautiful in so many ways. Can he give you something beautiful tonight, too, like he had promised? Something that feels different to those waves which break, over and over, self-defeating. Something that feels different to an ending?

You startle as there is a soft rap at the door, and Santiago’s voice bleeds through the panelled wood, sounding as warm and grainy as sun-heated sand. Like summer. Like sunlight through a clearing in dense, gnarled woods. “Are you ready, querida?”

Are you?

Are you ready for what he has promised? Because you are suddenly all too aware that what he has offered -in not so many words- is to make love to you tonight. To give himself to you. To let you bask in him.

Are you ready for that? To see him in more than fragments. Not only snatching the haphazard pieces of him he offers - so jagged that they cut the palm you grasped them tightly in. Are you ready to feel whole?

Can you take his love if it doesn’t hurt?

Your heart thuds in your neck; from the hot, billowing steam, and from him. The mere idea of him. You step carefully out of the cubicle, steam venting into the room. Your skin is hot and wet and dripping, and you feel that same way too.

“Two minutes.”

You towel off, your hands lightly trembling.

You think of him, because how can you do anything else?

You think of the water, sluicing down his sturdy body as he showered off in the main bathroom. Of him getting himself ready for you. You wonder if he aches for you as you do for him. You wonder if he grew rigid beneath his hand as you were becoming liquid for him. You wonder, if his heart ever once felt like it had a choice.

You think about him waiting for you right now in the bedroom. Maybe shirtless, black-grey curls wet and tight, his golden brown skin lit with the soft orange glow of the lamp. Of him poised there in the quiet and stillness waiting to collide with you, just like the sea washing over this frayed edge of land in this endless dance - consuming, taking, giving, repeating. Working as a team.

You wonder if he feels this flutter in him too. This movement in him. This undeniable, slow drag which has always pulled you two to one another. Always.

And so, he asks you. Are you ready? And you do what you can to prepare yourself for this collision. So eager to merge with him, but basking in the fact that, for once, you get to take your time. That you don’t have to fear or brace, thinking about whether, when you crack the door to the bedroom, he will already be gone.

Taking your time then, and with subtly jittering hands, discombobulated breath, you smooth sweet-smelling lotion all over your body. Of course, you think of his hands and where they might travel too when they get their chance. Of how Santiago can touch you better than you could ever touch yourself. How he knows your body, seemingly, as well as he knows his own.

And so, you think of him. You think of him and of the ocean and the rocks. Of valleys and summits. Of dense jungles and sunlit clearings. Of the frayed edges of the land and the frayed edges of yourself. Of all the places where things collide and all the places where they merge, and how those places are so often one and the same.

So then, when you think that you are finally ready? When you have smoothed lotion into your skin and smoothed your pleasant, buzzing nerves, you step out into the bedroom.

And that is the very moment you realise. Realise that you’re not at all ready. That you could never be. How could you be? How could he fail to take your breath away, even once?

Just look at him.

You enter the bedroom, your silk robe draped appealingly over the contours of your body and Santiago stands, surging up from where he had perched himself so impermanently on the edge of the mattress. He’s been waiting for you and he looks; immediately. Drinking you in. His jaw falling slack. He looks like he might’ve smiled at first - or greeted you in words. But he can’t do so now. The words are swallowed, perhaps, as a gulp trails down his corded neck. Santiago looks serious, his brows weighted. He looks as though he knows how much this matters. Like he finally knows how much you matter.

You look at him too, and you find you can’t smile either. After all, Santiago fills you with a joy so heavy that sometimes, it is hard to recognise it as such.

You simply take him in, then. All at once. The contours and ridges of him, and the paths your hands might travel over his smooth brown skin. You see him. Your lust-ridden and love-sparked eyes dance over his wetted, grizzled curls, scrunched-up but with errant strands coiling across his forehead. You take in his bare, sculpted chest. His toned arms and his soft, inviting stomach. You drink in the way his brushed cotton joggers cling to his ample hips. To his sturdy thighs and to the clear outline of the bulge at his crotch as he swells with anticipation from the sight of you alone.

His hands hang loose yet primed at his sides as he looks at you from beneath his thick, fanning lashes. The pace of his breathing is slightly quickened, his gilded shoulders rise and fall with greater vigour as he scoops a hand over his flecked stubble and you hear it rasp. Feel it as though his fingers were your own. As though there is no difference or distance between you at all. Not the distance between here and Colombia. Not the distance he runs from you whenever you get too close.

Your chest tightens with the sheer familiarity of him. Because of the fact you already know how he feels and how he tastes. How the vibration of his moans in his corded throat feel against your skin. Your chest tightens, because even in the mellow light of the room he still looks sharp and sure. Formidable. But he looks like home too. You remember all the ways you already know he is tender, and you want to learn every other way too.

You take a deep, steadying breath as you sway towards him, from one steamy room to another, Santiago’s warmth every bit as enclosing. You are grateful that the window is cracked open, cool air kissing your heating skin. The sound of the swollen waves mirroring the surge within you.

In this moment, Santiago is not a man to you at all. Rather, he is a landscape. He is your whole life laid out before you. He is everywhere you have been, and he is everywhere you may go. His lands are your topography, and you know that you will walk his paths forever hoping to find a way to his heart. Hoping that, one day, he will let you call him home, even though you’ve already been here learning him for as long as you can remember.

He is everything. And you’re not ready. And it’s all too much.

Finally though, Santiago looks certain. He looks ready. He looks at you as though you are the moon and he is the tide, and that within moments he will move oceans for you. That he will flood your frayed edges, smooth and overcoming and inevitable.

He closes the distance, his warm palm slipping up to gingerly cup your face and his lips slanting to capture yours. His fingertips tugging at the bow of your robe, about to release it.

But you? You hesitate. You turn, almost impercebtibly, but it is enough for Santiago to notice.

You hesitate because, by now, you are so used to breaking. And you’re not sure you can do it again.

For so long, he has viewed you in pieces, and you have started to wonder whether he was the one who broke you apart in the first place.

Now though? His gentle, earnest eyes reading your face and your body so carefully? His hand reaching out for you in a way that promises healing? That shows his palm holds nothing jagged - nothing but love?

To your utter surprise, your skin flushes hot with embarrassment and you blink, your lashes fluttering towards your cheek. A modest, bashful smile is primed on your mouth. An apology readying itself on your tongue. It seems silly, you think. Silly to be hesitant now, after everything. Seems silly that after all of the times you have given in when he would promise you nothing, that you would shrink back when he offers you something more. Most of all, you think, it seems silly to be hesitant with him, after all the ways and places and times he has touched you.

You don’t quite understand it, but to his credit, Santiago seems to. When he senses your apprehension, his eyes narrow a little. His brow furrows, and his mouth slants up into a gentle, reassuring smile.

“Come here,” he says instead, before your garbled, unnecessary apology can free itself from your throat. His voice is as soft as the shushing waves and the mellow light and he takes you by the hand, his fingers twined delicately with yours. He leads you, but not forcefully. He leads you the way the sun leads the moon into the night sky as it chases its warm light - you gladly follow, his palm bleeding heat. His eyes full of sunlight. He leads you then to your bed and he peels the covers back, inviting you to lie with him through a subtle nod of his head. The way this all started the first time he undid you - except tonight, you know, is so very different.

Santiago climbs in first, never letting go of your hand, and he pats the spot on the mattress exposed by the turned-back comforter. Your fingers tug on your robe and you finally slip out of it, exposing the contours of your body to the pooling lamplight. Santiago’s tongue traces along his lower lip as he drinks you in, watching awestruck as the fabric shimmies to floor, pooling at your feet and leaving you bare. For a moment, you even feel self-conscious as Santiago regards you; for once not frenzied and desperate, but with time to study you. You feel on display and yet he makes you feel nothing but beautiful. Makes it seem natural as you allow the caress of the smooth fabric to be replaced by the warm embrace of him. You slip in beside him, shuffling under the covers. Both of you lying on your side to face each other, but still with some distance between you.

You breath hitches as Santiago’s arm folds over your bare middle, his lithe fingers applying smooth caresses to your skin, the pads of him dancing up the notches of your spine, tracing the line of your shoulder blade. You are happy for him to touch you. You want it. But you do not reach for him just yet. Your arms remain bunched in the space between you, your forearms guarding your chest.

“You still want this?” he asks, voice as soft as dissolving sugar.

You can’t bring yourself to meet his gaze, for you know it will be an irresistible, sweet, moreish thing. You can’t allow him to gaze into the depths of your own eyes just yet. After all, it is not only your body which is laid bare for him. Your feelings are too, you fear. Every single want and dream and desire and insecurity. He can read you. Knows you.

“Yes,” you attempt to state levelly, and yet your voice cracks wide open. “I want this more than anything.”

With a soft, perhaps relieved, exhale, Santiago shimmies forward then, closing some of the distance between your bodies. Tangles his thighs up with yours. Shifts his head so you are almost nose to nose on the pillow, dipping briefly to plant a fleeting kiss to the tip of your nose. All the while, too, his hand continues to wander over your body. Stroking you, caressing you, asking for nothing in return, and you bask in these slow, stretched, careful moments.

“Then… what is it?”

You finally look up at him then and, try as you might, you can’t disguise the way your eyes shimmer with emotion as you note the way concern has etched its way into his brow. For reassurance, your arms tug tighter into your chest.

His eyes become liquid too, the earthy mirror to your own. They shine with a deep well of friendship, of care, of love. And you realise exactly “what”.

Part of you is afraid, sure. Part of you has been hurt too much to accept that you could share something truly joyful with the man. But a larger part of you is keen to relish in this waiting and restraint for other reasons.

Why, though? Why on earth would you wait? Hesitate? Well - it’s quite simple, really. Because if it doesn’t begin, it can’t ever be over. If you don’t have him like this - whole, fully - then you can never lose all of him. Losing pieces of him was hard enough, wasn’t it? And you don’t know that you could bear to lose a scrap more than that.

Santiago’s gaze dips to your mouth and you can tell he’s eager. Good to go when and only if you should give him the green light. You want that. You do. Still, upon examining his expression more closely, something tells you that there is one more wall to fall. You’ve encountered so many of his walls already, that you’re not sure you have the strength to tear this one down.

In the end, you are grateful that you don’t have to. That he does it for you.

“You were wrong, you know,” Santiago’s voice sounds out, a gentle tone but full of subtle cracks. His hand slides up, gingerly capturing your cheek in his palm, holding your gaze with his. You don’t know what’s coming, but your chest tightens with some unknown thing, even as Santiago’s thumb tenderly strokes back and forth over your cheek to soothe you. Your brows knot, and you shake your head lightly, exhibiting your confusion.

Pursing his lips, preparing himself, Santiago tugs the covers up to your shoulders, keeping you warm. “That night in Philadelphia,” he continues, a divot carving itself into his brow at first, and yet a mere moment later, his face lilts into a soft, wistful smile. “That was it. That was the night.”

His smile widens, ever so subtly, and his eyes shine with enough adoration that you wonder if you’re meant to be here. If he can really be looking at you like that, or if you’ve momentarily stolen someone else’s life. “The night that… what?”

“The night my dumb ass first realised that I was in love with you. And… the night I first realised you didn’t love me back.”

You face scrunches with even deeper confusion now.

What?! But, that couldn’t possibly…

That night was years before you even hooked-up. Years and years and years before all of this. Before you even felt….

Oh.

Your breath stalls in your chest then as comprehension floods you.

He loved you first.

Your chest constricts, and your heartbeat pushes the rhythm of his name into your mouth, in lieu of any words.

Santiago.

All this time?

He crooks his finger under your chin, his gaze level and calm - no blame in it. “You were wrong, see? You didn’t get there first, querida. I was waiting a long time for you. I guess I got scared you’d never catch me up, and so I…” His eyes swim briefly then, clouding over with something like regret. “...I started running. And I guess I just…” His shoulders hunch up towards his ears. “I didn’t know how to stop.”

Santiago.

Your heart thuds his name, and you are overcome with too many emotions to name. Emotions which bend you from the inside out, mobilising you to unfurl yourself, to move towards him. But you don’t; not just yet.

You do see it plainly now, as you look into his earnest, regretful eyes. You’d spent so long acting as though he had something to prove to you, but you already know who he is, don’t you? Know that he’d never hurt you if he could help it. You see plainly how it has hurt him to love you. That it still hurts him to love you.

You don’t want that for him. You never wanted that. In fact, all you’ve ever wanted is for him to feel safe. To feel loved. And so, if Santiago can’t run freely into your safe hands? If he doesn’t believe he’s brave enough to do so? If your arms were closed to him for so long that he forgot what it felt to be open? If all of that is true, then you will reach for him instead.

“Santiago.” You breathe his name, finally pushing the syllables from out of your chest. Finally squeezing errant tears from the corners of your eyes as you realise all of this time you’ve loved each other alone instead of together like you should have. As you mourn all the missed moments. As you lament all of the things which got in the way.

That doesn’t matter now though. All of that feels inconsequential. It all feels like bullshit now that your paths have finally converged.

And so, you do reach for him with your careful, killing hands. It is your turn to gingerly cup his cheek with your palm now, his stubble rasping beneath your hand, and his long-lashed eyes fanning closed as he leans gratefully into your touch.

There’s so much that you want to tell him. So much that you want to say.

That you’re here now. That you love him. That he doesn’t need to run.

But… you don’t want to say it with words. After all, that was never the language you two shared most fluently. You want to tell him with touch. You need to. Want to tell him plainly and hear those sentiments returned in the writhing conflux of your bodies. In the moment, with your love for him spilling out of you, it seems no other way you could tell him - show him - could be enough.

You reach out then, and with a stuttered inhale, your chest a butterfly house, you press your palm to his warm, bare chest. You feel his heartbeat thudding under your hand. Faster, Faster, Faster, as you touch him.

You love the man. You will keep his heart safe in the roll cage of your ribs if he’ll let you. You will. You promise. You’ll be gentle with it. No more bracing. No more collisions.

“Santiago,” you breathe as you move closer. As close as you can get, in fact, your form pressed up against his, skin to skin. “What do you want, right now?” You speak the words into the junction of his neck, his pulse point throbbing against your wanton lips. “What would make you happy in this moment?”

You feel the deep vibration in his throat as he hums, moans, begs - dumbly - and you know intuitively that he cannot rely on words in this moment either - only on his touch. Can only tell you -show you - what he wants, craves, in the act of reaching for you, his hands finding familiar paths on your skin but walking them in a new way tonight. He reaches for you. Rolls you beneath him in a fluid motion because you yield, already a boneless, molten thing under him.

He touches you. Caresses you. Kisses you. You return it. For a moment you are a mess of ragged breath and sweat and clashing teeth and tangled tongues. Of pads of fingers and brushed cotton and soft heaving moans. And then, his strong arms bracing him over you, Santiago pauses - amidst a breath snatched from your mouth. Pauses just to look at you there beneath him. His eyes flit all over your face, and he huffs out a disbelieving puff of air.

”Holy shit, hermosa.” He looks at you as though you’re the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen. Perhaps you are. His molten, lust-dark eyes certainly make you believe it.

Still, just before your greedy fingers can wind up and over, brushing over the prickle of short, buzzed hairs at the nape of his neck to drag his mouth back over yours, Santiago shifts, his kiss eluding you.

Santiago has always had the map to your heart, and as his fingers trail so confidently down your skin, his lips working down the column of your throat, your breasts, your puffy nipples, stubble grazing you, you think that maybe, finally, he is following it home. Your bodies always were symbiotic; moving, fighting, then fucking as a team. He already knows as well as you do that your bodies, the cartography of your love, is a terrain which can be best understood by traversing it. That touch is the language you share. That you were always fluent in. This time, it is not a touch borne out of jealously or frustration or anger. It is not half-hearted or contingent. It is beautiful and joyful and giving. It is soft and attentive and God he’s never felt so good.

You expel a breathy, silent moan - a plea really - as Santiago presses his body up against yours, his knee nudging to kick open your thighs. His hips dipped to grind his clothed erection into your heat. Your skin heats, desire curling in the pit of you and you kick away the covers, his warmth more than enough now. With a gust of air, a show of restraint - you swear he’s so desperate for you he could have dry-humped you through his clothes - Santiago manoeuvres his sweat pants off of him, and when he settles in position again he is bare and warm and hard against your slick.

“Are you-? Do we need-?”

“-I’m protected,” you answer as his muscled form braces over you, his strong arms boxing you in, the tip of his nose nudging yours, his thighs between your parted legs as the straining mass of his arousal glides over your folds. You wrap your legs and arms around him, holding him tightly, your nails tracing lovingly up and down the canopy of his broad shoulders. Twining into the mess of damp curls on top of his head. You feel the press of his soft stomach against yours. The heat of him everywhere.

His lips meet yours desperately then, his mouth so needy for yours you could swear his lower lip is trembling as he opens up to shove his tongue over yours. “Baby,” he asks, wracked by need already, his brow burdened with the weight of it and his words barely intelligible. “Are you ready for me? I need you, querida.”

“You’ve got me,” you soothe. “But I… I want you like this.” He looks surprised for a moment as gently, you guide him on to his back, rolling yourself on top of him until you’re straddling his meaty thighs. You take control away from him and for a moment, you can see he feels the loss of it. That he seems vulnerable, unsure. That while he had clearly intended to give into you, fully, that doesn’t mean it’s at all easy for him to surrender. “Just lie back and let me take care of you, okay?”

His eyes lock on to yours, soft and uncertain, and it occurs to you again that you’ve never taken him like this. That he has always tacitly taken control. That he has always focussed on your pleasure as paramount. His words, whispered against your skin, into the shell of your ear - that’s it, princesa, right there, huh? - still echo in the depths of you. And now, you want to focus on him. Tonight, things are different.

You feel desire twist in the pit of you as you look at him all spread out beneath you like this. Evidently needy for you, his cock rock hard and nestled against his stomach. You want to keep him on the edge for hours. Want to hear gruff moans unspooling from deep in his chest. Want to see his fingers rake through the sheets and his jaw tipping to the sky as he writhes his curls back into the pillow, eyes rolling to oblivion.

You want to kiss him, everywhere. Want to smooth your hands over his brown skin until he melts into the mattress. You want to cover him with your body until he feels safe.

You want him to feel safe.

As you examine his form, already near boneless on top of the mattress but reaching for you - reaching with his fingers, with a jut of his chin to raise his pretty mouth, with a buck of his hips to chase your friction - you settle for a compromise. A balance of your urges to demolish and exalt him.

For a moment then, you even entertain the idea that you can exhibit restraint enough for foreplay. To tease him. To drag this out. Indeed, Santiago whimpers, an uncharacteristic sound from a man too stubborn to ever admit defeat, and with the sound, your stomach lurches with want. He grows entirely needy as you suckle at his neck, leaving purple love bites in your wake.

You shuffle your hips down his sturdy thighs so that you can fold to slide your tongue over his pecs, circling his pebbled nipple, beginning to trail your warm, wet mouth down his abdomen in a way that makes his glistening cock -wet with your juices- twitch on air.

“Please. Goddamn,” he begs already, his thighs shaking beneath you, and you don’t need to be told twice. You want the thick, needy, ruddy length of him inside of you as badly as he appears to want that too.

You’ve waited long enough for this. To hold him so completely and to love him with your whole body.

And so, you shift up until your slick arousal settles over the hot, straining mass of him. It’s slippy - you’re so wet already, and the contact earns a deep, guttural noise from him.

Then, as you settle in position, automatically - more than automatically, like it’s preordained - Santiago’s hands settle at your hips the moment you are on top of him. They rest in that familiar place he loves to hold, fingers splaying, pads digging into your supple flesh. He grips you in his broad, lethal hands.

Hands that were trained to kill but made to hold you tenderly; just like this, you think.

He holds you, and ever so suddenly everything falls into place. As though you were lost all of this time and you have finally found where you were supposed to be. Like someone just handed you a map and assured you you can never lose your way again - not now that you’ve found him. Not as long as you hold on and don’t let go.

You look down at him, your whole world beneath you and Christ, he’s usually beautiful - luminescent even - but you’ve never seen him look quite like this before. He looks… undone. Unguarded. Needy. Dishevelled. Vulnerable. His lust-blown eyes are blackened with desire yet shining too with adoration. His lids are heavy. Screwing shut as you glide yourself along his shaft. Gusts of breath coming from the circle of his soft, plush lips. That stubbled jaw raising, tipping up as his crown of lustrous curls beds down into the pillow. Light and shadow pooling and dancing and swimming in the contours of him - his sharp nose and heavy brows and sculpted chest. All that and more; but the true beauty?

The true beauty is when his eyes flutter open once more; and you clearly see the eyes of your best friend looking back at you.

You see him all at once, rather than the parts of him he’s attempted to compartmentalise.

Emotion and desire twist in your gut and all you want in that moment is to show him. To show him that he’s loved.

He’s so, so loved.

And so are you.

You hinge at the hips, your head falling to the side of his, temple to temple, cheek to cheek, his stubble rough against you. His familiar scent, woody and citrus, fills your lungs. You feel his brow against yours is already slick with a sheen of sweat as you dip your mouth towards the shell of his ear. “Are you ready?”

His voice is hoarse. He is levelled by his want, but his face still cracks with a smile, the muscles in his cheek shifting against yours and the rake of his stubble conveying heat all the way to your core. “Are you kidding? I know you didn’t miss this.”

He plants his feet and bucks his needy shaft against you with greater pressure, the head of him pressing at your swollen clit, gliding over it. You moan at the unexpected zip of pleasure, blooming out from your centre to every extremity, and you feel Santiago’s dirty, satisfied chuckle vibrate through you, chest to chest.

His chuckle quickly digresses to a moan as you return the favour just as suddenly. As you rise slightly on your thighs, until you are able to grip his aching shaft in your hand and notch him in position, your folds caressing the blunt head of him. His grip on your hips tightens as you lower yourself on to him, feeling how he spreads you open as his girth pushes past your entrance with a thick, hot glide.

Santiago chokes as he bottoms out, and you can feel him throb and pulse in your centre as he adjusts to the sensations.

You feel full of him. Full in every sense.

Fuck. You didn’t know. You didn’t know it could feel like this with him. Light. Playful. Delicate. Joyful. Beautiful.

“Fuck, hermosa,” Santiago keens as you begin to move, folding over him once again, covering him with your body, your thighs enclosing his ample hips and your forearms planted, bracing yourself against the cushioning either side of his head.

It feels soft and syrupy as you enclose him in your wetness. Sweat beads and gathers between your bodies as you undulate and rise and fall on him, the slow, sensuous drag of you causing him to bite down into the meat of your shoulder, his breath hot as it billows into the hollow of your collarbone.

Santiago clings to your hips for a moment, an admirable attempt to guide your motions - until it all becomes too much. Until he surrenders fully and lets you lead. His hands first fist into the sheets at his side, and then they wrap around your back, coming to rest there, his fingers intermittently dancing over your skin. For once, his embrace is not a desperate thing. He’s not attempting to pull you closer or to push you away. He simply wants you exactly where you are. Exactly like this.

It’s tender, the way he’s touching you. The way he’s trusting you and letting you set the pace. The way he kisses a string of pearls along your skin, the wet, percussive sounds filtering down to your bones. It makes you feel some kind of way, so you try desperately to focus on the sensations his friction is stoking in your centre. In the way the glide and drag and pressure of him inside of you is causing a steady, building, eddying ball of light to hover in the core of you, getting ready to burst out and fill your whole body with sunshine.

It has felt dark, sometimes, to love him. But right now? It feels like dawn.

You screw your eyes shut against the dam of emotion breaking within you. Against the tears threatening to spill over. You distract yourself from feeling too much all at once, planting kisses along the length of his beautiful, sculpted jaw. By devouring his mouth the way one would savour a feast. Slowly. Intentionally. Your tongue, ever so deliberate against his.

“Fuck,” Santiago curses, his voice trembling. “You’re dripping all over me. Jesus fucking Christ.”

You are. You can hear it. Feel it. This pooling slick between your legs being worked out of you. Coating him. Making everything smooth and fluid and easy, after so long with such friction between you.

You ride him like this, communing with grunts and moans. Communing with his body, which you read so well. So automatically. You know what each shift and expression passing over his face means. You understand the tightening of his thighs beneath you. You can read his breath, his touch, his sounds, his movements, and you relish in the ways that you know him. All the ways you know how to make him feel good.

You kiss a bead of sweat from his temple, the salt flooding your tongue as you rise up on him, lifting your body away from his to let the cool air soothe your heat-pricked skin. Relishing the look and feel of him beneath you. Relishing the way he drinks the sight of you in too with a slack-jaw, watching the way your hips work over him. The way your breasts bounce and sway lightly with the motion. You shift your angle slightly, until a long, gritted exhale unspools from Santiago’s plush mouth, his pretty eyes fluttering shut and his grip on your hips unwavering but weakening.

“That’s it. Right there? Just like that?”

“Uh. Uh huh,” he replies through gritted teeth, his expression looking pained as he tries to work through it. “Holy shit, baby.”

You beam a devilish smile down at him until his eyes spark with mischief, and your core clenches on his dick as you watch him swipe the pad of his thumb over his pink, supple tongue, liberally gathering spit. He reaches for you, rubbing the pad of him gently against your clit.

“Good?”

Good? Yeah. Good enough to make your toes curl and your legs weaken beneath you. Good enough that you can scarcely continue your ministrations, your body sagging forward again, slumped almost boneless over him.

“Tired?” Santiago asks you, and you stubbornly answer no despite the burn and tremble in your spent thighs. He sees right through it. “Let me flip you over?”

Reluctantly you concede and he rolls you, carefully, staying inside of you and never breaking contact. Settling your back against the mattress and his sweat-sheened body over you like a canopy. Like safety.

He kisses you - deeply.

He thrusts himself inside of you, the noises between your bodies obscenely wet by now, his grunts and groans percussive as he continues to stoke that white hot ball of light in your middle.

He has never rocked you like this. So tenderly. So reverently. Slow and sure. Not racing towards any ending. He makes love to you as though he’s not afraid of any kind of ending at all. Like this perfect moment can just stretch on forever. Like he can always be buried inside you.

You, though? You are still afraid of that ending.

It feels good. God. It feels impossibly good to be held by him like this; but it’s bittersweet. Bittersweet enough that you still have to screw your eyes shut against the flood of emotion you are continuing to hold back behind that dam.

Santiago’s lips graze your cheek, a softly planted, lingering kiss. “Hermosa,” he encourages. “Look at me.”

“I can’t,” you admit, and you feel a sting of prickled heat beneath your eyelids. You feel vulnerable, exposed, in a way you’re not used to either. You feel like you want to run, but you know now. That never did very much good.

“Look at me,” he insists, his voice soft and smooth, no sand left in his throat. So you do. You trust him. You follow him. Walk with him, like you’ve been on the same road all along, each without a map.

You don’t know what you expect to see when you open your eyes, but all you do see is his gaze fall softly on yours, even as he fills you. You see him as a friend and a lover. You see him as everywhere you’ve been and everywhere you’re going. He’s a landscape, and his whole being is expansive and opened up to you.

He fucks into you, his pace consistent and steady, and he plants intermittent kisses over your cheeks, scattering them into your hairline, your neck, the corner of your mouth. That ball of light inside you tightens, shrinking down, and you know it’s getting ready to burst. To radiate out into every extremity.

You feel like you’re heavy and weightless at the same time. Like you’ve sunk so far into the mattress that you’re inches below it. Like you’re floating up to the ceiling. “It f-feels too g-good,” you stutter, your voice mere breath.

It does - feel too good. Not just the sensations, but him. The familiarity and safety of him feels too perfect to risk never having this again.

Your eyes roll back into your head as Santiago keeps hitting that spot deep inside of you over and over, pleasure sparking and sizzling, white hot. “It’s okay, querida. I got you. Just keep looking at me. I got you.”

You wrap him up like the gift he is, your legs folding around him, the tender soles of your feet settling on to his plush ass cheeks. Your arms winding around his middle, tightening, drawing him to you. Drawing him so close to you that you can’t look at him anymore, his head buried into the junction of your shoulder, his curls tickling your cheek. You draw him close enough that there is no space between your writhing bodies. So close that you don’t know where he ends and you begin, a mess of breath and sweat and limbs like twined dense jungle.

I love you.

I love you is what you want to say. I love you too is what you want to hear back from him - but your mouth makes the shape of some different words instead. “I don’t want to lose you.”

It’s a broken, laid-bare plea. It’s what all this comes down to, isn’t it? You can’t fathom losing him. Can’t fathom being without him.

“Cariño,” Santiago speaks against your neck, his lips sliding hot and wet down the column of your throat. “I’m never lost when I’m touching you.”

It’s not what you wanted to say. It’s not what you wanted to hear. But you realise, in that moment, as Santiago moves his mouth to meld desperately with yours. As a lone tear sluices over the bridge of his strong nose. You realise that the words each of you spoke mean the same damn thing anyway.

His tongue shoves unceremoniously over yours then, Santiago coming undone now, ragged and frayed like an edge of land as you wash over him, flooding him with liquid. He opens you up, everywhere. The cave of your mouth, your weeping cunt, your heart breaking open like dawn.

You moan and he punches your name from his lungs as his hips stutter into you. His thrusts become sloppy but he keeps consistent pace long enough to tip your pleasure over the brink. For you to come undone, a star bursting from your middle, light pulsing out to every extremity and sending jittering aftershocks through your body. You clamp down on him, hold him close to you as you ride it out, your head buried in the crook of his shoulder, his creamy load pumping into you, deep and urgent, and his disbelieving, wracked moans sounding in the shell of your ear.

You convulse on him, squeezing every last drop from him, your legs quivering.

You cling to him. Cling to him for dear life as your pleasure swells and breaks and ebbs and flows.

In turn, Santiago comes down with a shudder, his chest rising and falling in ragged breaths above you. Eventually, he slips out of you, wordlessly, his eyes shining still with unwaning, transparent adoration. He kisses you, everywhere. Puts his hands on you. He laves his tongue over you in gratitude. He kisses every crook and peak and contour and valley of you. He kisses your scars, his mouth curved with a smile the whole while. He applies love across the cartography of you, of your life together. He presses his lethal hands to you and he kills you; softly. Gathers you up to him.

It is then, in this moment of impossible tenderness, that your tears find their release.

It floods you. All the times you’ve almost lost him. All the times you should have been holding each other close instead of pushing each other away. All the times you should have been cherishing this beautiful, fragile thing between you instead of fearing it.

You let the tears eke out; but then Santiago kisses them away too, concern shimmying in his molten eyes.

In this moment, you feel that he’s loving you how he’s always wanted to love you. Showing you what he’s always wanted to show you.

And then, something else slips out of you. “I love you.” Your voice is small. Afraid. Even now.

But this time, Santiago does not hesitate. “I love you too.”

A few more tears fall. You would like to believe they are happy tears, but you still somehow feel that they are bittersweet.

Wordlessly, Santiago shifts you, gently, bundling you up against his warm, sturdy chest.

You listen to his heartbeat thudding in the shell of your ear, noticing it gradually slow.

You let him trace idle shapes into your skin.

Let him hold you close, until he stills. Until his breathing is so soporific that you wonder if he has succumbed to sleep.

“You still awake?” You venture.

“Yeah.”

“We made a mess.”

“I know. But it’s okay. I put you in the wet patch.”

The laugh that escapes you is unexpected. Shifts some of the heaviness in your chest. You bat him playfully in the pec, tweaking his nipple for good measure. “You’re a bastard, Garcia.”

You think his throaty, reciprocal laughter is the most beautiful sound you’ve ever heard. “I’m kidding! I’m kidding!”

You shift back just a little, enough to look up at his face. His teasing grin slips effortlessly into something far softer and more earnest when he’s looking at you.

“Come here,” he proposes softly, guiding you up. Leading you back into the shower. You follow him. You follow him though he never would seem to follow you anywhere.

Still, you push all that away, in favour of the here and now. With him looking at you like that, what else is there?

And so, you let yourself enjoy it. You enjoy it as he playfully tweaks your nipple in return and you giggle. As he wraps his arms around you from behind and your fingertip draws a tentative heart in the steamed-up mirror. As he leads you into the cubicle with him, beneath the spray of warm water.

As you step beneath the stream with him, his fingers twined with yours, you realise that he’s taking you all over again. Making you his, but not by fucking - no. This time, he’s taking you with his soft eyes. With the way his soaped hands move with reverence over your slick body, reluctantly washing the traces of him away from your skin. With the way his mouth moves languidly against yours - and he tastes of soap but you don’t care. He’s taking you. Piece by piece. Taking you until there’s nothing left. Until your heart has migrated little by little, bit by bit, into the roll cage of his chest. Gently, this time - as though for once he might even keep it safe.

You dry off together, and you settle back on to the bed.

Already, you can feel Santiago packing this away.

Putting his heart back inside his chest like a folded map.

You drag his lips to yours and you kiss him. You’re not sure if you’re trying to kiss him to death or kiss him to life; but you know that you have to kiss him with everything you’ve got regardless.

You know that you have to beg him, without words. With touch. The language you two have always shared, your bodies moving symbiotically through this world, as a team - no matter the distance between you. One of you incapable of being read without the other.

You know that you have to beg him.

Stay.

Stay; ‘til the sun comes up.

Stay; forever.

For every new day.

He could never run towards you, he insists. Not yet. So, instead, you reach for him, your arms wide open. You soften your lethal hands. You relax that killing grip. You make him feel safe. Feel loved. It’s all you’ve ever wanted, if only he would let you try.

“Turn over,” you whisper, with a soft curl of your lips, and he does so. He lets you wrap him in your arms, chest to his back, and he hums - a low, resonant sound - as you plant a lingering kiss to the back of his neck. You stay like that, until the both of you fall asleep.

It turned out to be a beautiful night. The most beautiful night of your life, in fact, with the person you love most in all the world. You held him all night. Kept him safe and warm.

But, when you wake up, you feel only cold air at your back. Cold sheets under your palm as you reach for him.

Maybe he did stay, at least until the sun came up. But now, he is gone.

In truth though, you’re not even upset. At least, maybe… you’re not even surprised.

He’d promised you something that didn’t feel like an ending. He’d given you that, but in many ways it had still felt like a goodbye.

At least this time, you had said the kind of goodbye you would have wished for. Not an angry, bitter thing. At least this time, you did all you could to let him know how you feel, in all the ways you know how.

You sit up on the edge of the bed, and you tug in a long slow breath, releasing it into the quiet solitude of the room.

Is it true that there are some people who you can only ever love in fragments?

You don’t know, honestly. For now, you only know that you feel broken into pieces too.

It always hurts when you say goodbye to him, doesn’t it?

At least this time, it was a more beautiful thing; just like he’d promised, right?

And, as you stand and move to begin your day, you remind yourself that he hadn’t promised you any more than that.

#santiago pope garcia x reader #triple frontier #oscar isaac #ride or die series #santiago pope garcia

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peterkothe · 6 months

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Inktober 2023 Day-22 HECATONCHEIRES, THE HUNDRED ARMED GIANT

Another lesser known figure of Greek myth, the Hecatoncheires were multi armed giants that were offspring of the Uranus and Gaia. Though some myths have them having multiple heads, minds has only one, but still, is none the less intimidating!!

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shadez-art · 1 year

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I forgot to post this Bella drawing I did a few days ago! I was playing around with blending my markers again. I'm really happy with it!

#bella swan #bella cullen #twilight #twilight art #twilight saga #the twilight saga #book characters #my fanart #fanart #marker art #sketchbook #traditional art #ohuhu markers #tanmit markers #masters touch markers #artists on tumblr

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johnwickb1tsch · 1 month

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The Night Nurse ~ Chapter 10

A John Wick x Helen Fic

Masterlist / Chapter Map

Author's note: It's been a minute since I posted on this fic, I'm so sorry!! I lost a good chunk of this chapter to an untimely computer update (fuck you very much Windows) and I was so frustrated I just had to let it sit for a while. BUT I finally managed to re-write it, so here we are! I hope you enjoy! 💗💗💗 (Oh and the illustrations here are from the turn of the century version of Afanasyev's Russian Fairy Tales, the book John hid his marker in, in JW3...you'll see why.😉)

Times gets tough

Oh, they get tougher

Hold on to me

I got you, darling…

-I’ll be your man, The Black Keys

The walls of his library were lined with built-in bookshelves, filled to the brim with antique and vintage books. A single leather reading chair sat in the corner with a lamp and a small table. A larger table took up the center of the room with a proper book cradle. Helen breathed in, reveling in the magical smell of old books. She realized that this must be where John gets some of that intoxicating scent of his, bottom notes of leather and parchment paper. The chair in the corner looked well-worn, and she imagined him spending hours of his downtime just sitting and reading away the day.

For the umpteenth time, it squeezed her heart to the point of pain.

Throughout the course of the tour, they did not let go of each other once. John didn’t seem to mind handling books with one mitt of a hand, the fingers of his left laced tightly with Helen’s.

“Do you still have your book of Russian fairy tales?”

“Yes.” Gingerly he pulled it from a shelf, resting it in the cradle on the table.

They perused the book together, Helen leaning against his shoulder. He was warm, and solid as a tree, and for a heady moment it was difficult to concentrate on the antique tome, no matter how beautiful. The illustrations were utterly gorgeous, and she mentally kicked herself into focusing. She thought about a young John toting this beloved book around the world with him like a Lost Boy with his teddy bear, and the thought succeeded in tying her up in inextricable knots.

John turned to a page of an illustration of a lovely peasant woman in the woods, holding a torch made of a glowing human skull. “Oh, who’s that?” asked Helen.

“That’s Vasilisa the Beautiful,” answered John.

She hovered her finger over the first line of Cyrillic, careful not to touch the paper. “What does it say?”

John read it aloud, his voice low and all for her, and she sighed a little, not understanding a syllable. For some reason hearing him speak another language so easily, and something about the lilting cadence of the language in his deep voice, the soft shh and musical ya sounds of the Russian words inspired a curl of lust in her belly, a small thrill zipping down her spine. She shuddered lightly, and prayed he hadn’t noticed.

He absolutely noticed, his pupils blowing wide with desire. Doggedly, he kept them fixed upon the page below.

“Is that, ‘Once upon a time’…in Russian?”

“Something like that. This is a Cinderella story about a young woman who outsmarts her wicked stepmother and the Baba Yaga with her determination and the help of her magical doll. It’s one of my favorites.”

He’d seen a bit of himself in Vasilisa as a young man, straining under the yoke of his unforgiving masters. He turned the page to reveal a witchy old woman riding in what looked like an upright log. Helen couldn’t suppress a grin. “Oh look, it’s you, Baba Yaga.”

John snorted at that. “I still don’t know what idiot started that damned nickname,” he groused.

Actually, he suspected it was Marcus, but he’d never found out for certain.

“It sounds fierce, at least.”

His lips twisted in a smirk, and he couldn’t help himself from turning to look at her, then. Their faces were torturously close. “Think I should get some flaming skull torches for out front?”

“Yes, I think the neighbors would love that,” she deadpanned, and more felt than heard John’s responding chuckle.

He turned the page to a new illustration of a strapping knight on a black horse. “Oh hello, handsome. Who’s this guy?”

John narrowly resisted the urge to ask if she had a thing for men in black, even as that telling warmth clouded his brain.

“That’s…Night.”

“The night Knight?”

“Yeah.”

“Hmm.” Her lips twisted in a cheeky smile. “Nice. I like him.”

“You would.”

“I have excellent taste, John.”

He found himself looking at her mouth again, thinking her taste would be excellent. For the umpteenth time, he managed not to kiss her by the skin of his teeth. By the way she was looking at him...maybe he didn't need to be exercising such restraint. But maybe that was the excellent wine talking

Maybe he really was an idiot.

“So...in reward for being clever Baba Yaga gives Vasilisa one of the skull torches. She takes it back to her house, and when she lights the candles her wicked step mother and awful step sisters burn up.”

“Oooh. And she lives happily ever after?”

“Well...she marries the tsar, for what that's worth.”

Helen wrinkled up her nose, communicating her opinion on that. “Overall, I give it a nine out of ten.”

John couldn’t help it then. He actually grinned, showing teeth. “Glad you liked it.”

“Thanks for sharing with me.”

“My pleasure.”

She was still leaning on his shoulder, and was it him, or had she somehow sidled even closer, her body pressed to his side? Her eyes traveled leisurely from him to the book to the chair in the corner. It was then that she noticed that the bookmarked novel on the side table was a mass-market paperback she recognized quite well.

He’d taken her recommendation on the Codename Villanelle spy thrillers, despite teasing her about her taste in books, what felt like a lifetime ago that fateful night in the subway. The fact that he was on the second one touched her to no end, and she squeezed his arm.

“Aww, you’re reading about Eve and Villanelle,” she purred. “You like them?”

“Yes. You were right, they are fun.”

“Taking notes from Villanelle?” The Russian spy was wickedly clever at finding ways to kill her targets.

“Maybe. That poison hair stick was something. Think I could pull it off?” Helen reached up to curl a lock of his dark hair around her finger with a smile, and John couldn’t stop himself from closing his eyes, overwhelmed by the sensation of her touching his hair.

He was hopeless.

“Oh, definitely. You could so rock the man-bun.”

John rolled his eyes at that, reluctant to admit that he often did when training.

Helen looked back to the book, now with what John was learning to recognize as a sly glint in her eye. “I’m on practically the same spot in that book,” she noted. “Want to read me a chapter?”

John looked at his reading chair, the comfortable old soldier that it was. It was also the only place to sit in the room, and he went a little cross-eyed at the thought of Helen curled up in his lap in it.

There would be zero reading done, of that he was certain. He would debauch her for the first time in that chair, and maybe again on the table for good measure.

A virulent heat licked at his collar as he imagined it. Fuck him, but she was making him blush.

“Sure. Let’s take it to the living room,” he proposed, ignoring her lips pursed in a theatrical pout.

Minx. She knew exactly what she was doing to him—and he was increasingly unsure why he wasn’t just letting her have her way.

He scooped up the paperback book, her hand still firmly clasped in his other while he led them back to the recessed living room. He set the book down on the couch. “Want another glass of wine? I’m going to clear these dishes.”

He needed to clear his head, and he felt Helen look at him with some disappointment that felt a little bit like being stabbed.

“Can I help you?”

“No, this is your night off. Sit, relax. I’ll be right back.”

“Okay.” She seated herself on the couch with only the book for company.

She watched John practically flee into the kitchen, and wondered if she’d done something wrong.

Regaled by the sound of clinking dishes and the faucet running, Helen looked around at John’s shelves. They were rather bare, though she noticed he had a bit of a CD collection on display. It plucked at her nostalgia for the days before everything could be so easily accessed via the hand-held computers known as phones but so rarely used for actually talking.

Standing, she decided to be nosy and thumb through them. He seemed to favor classics, from classical music, to rock and blues. There was very little on the shelf dating from past the 90s, and that made her smile for some reason.

“See anything you like?”

She turned to find John with two freshly-filled wine glasses in tow. He set them on the coffee table, before joining her at the built-in cd tower.

“Some good stuff here,” she agreed with a Chili Peppers cd in her hand. The fiery pool with the ocean in the background on the cover tickled the nostalgia center in her brain for sure. “Who are these guys?” She pulled out a black and white album with a high contrast photo of a guy with glasses, and a bearded dude.

“Never heard of the Black Keys?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Oh, honey.”

She chuckled. “Ok, do not pull the my taste in music is better than yours card. I will leave.”

“I wouldn’t do that,” he defended with a sly close-lipped smile. “I reserve that card only for books.”

She snorted in answer, and found herself gravitating closer to him, even just standing there looking at his music. She just couldn’t help it.

That really was some good wine he served with dinner.

She watched as he popped open the jewel case, feeding the CD into the slot of his player. He hit a couple buttons, and the speakers erupted with a very bluesy distorted guitar riff. It was loud, and John laughed a little as she jumped—conveniently, into his arms.

“Sorry.” He turned down the volume slightly, his arms circling her waist almost of their own volition. It felt so easy, being with her. Maybe from the very moment they’d met, it just felt like she should be in his arms, and acting on it made something loud and uneasy always clamoring in the back of his brain to go quiet. She swayed her head and shoulders a little to the beat; it was impossible not to.

“John?” she asked from beneath his chin, brushing the soft scruff of his beard with her nose. It filled him with a tingling warmth, in the very marrow of his bones, a pleasure in this closeness that just seemed too good to be true. It was like a drug, better than cocaine or heroin or anything else he’d ever tried, and he didn’t know how he would ever let her go.

“Yeah?”

“They made you learn ballet at your…school, but do you like to dance?”

He’d spent so much time in night clubs, hunting, and acting as backup muscle for Tarasov while he closed business deals, but it wasn’t a setting he really enjoyed. He wasn’t sure he really classified the writhing and arm waving one engaged in at the club as dancing. He was familiar with other dance forms, but they didn’t come up often in his life.

“I feel like you’re actually asking me a different question,” he teased, leaning into her to reach out to skip to a different track.

“I am?”

“You’re asking if I want to dance with you?”

The first metallic notes of Dan Auerbach’s guitar rang out, and John swayed to the beat, a hand on her svelte waist pinning her close. With a smile she moved with him, her other hand finding his.

“Do you?”

He looked down at her with a glint of mischief in those shining dark eyes, and so much warmth that a flood of heat washed through her from her hair follicles all the way to her toes. This man. She really would follow him anywhere. Maybe the wine they’d drank lubricated this thought process, but she knew that didn’t make it any less true.

John knew that his answer to any question that involved an activity with her would be a resounding yes. Groceries? Yes. The dentist? Fine. Just hold his hand. He was broken for her.

“Of course I do.” He lifted his arm to guide her in a turn before pulling her close again, and she simply couldn’t help it. The joy in her heart soared.

Then the vocals in the song began, and Helen couldn’t help the fuzzy warmth that spread in her chest. Need a new love? I’m ready. Want my time? I’m willing.

There wasn’t a huge amount of open space in the living room, but John was very good at making do, leading her in steps to the beat, throwing in fun checks and turns and behind-the-back maneuvers that made her giggle. She knew she sounded drunk. It was on him though, far more than the wine. He made her happier than any one had in a very long time. Maybe ever, if she was being honest with herself.

To make things even worse, the chorus of the song rang loud in her ears with the infectious guitar riff: I’ll be your man. Mmm, I’ll be your man. She didn’t know if he picked this song on purpose for the lyrics, or the intoxicating rhythm, but she felt it in her bones, and in her heart, and every cell of her being; she was so attuned to this man.

She almost tripped when he attempted to twist her up like a pretzel in a figure-eight step, but he caught her, laughing with her as he held her close.

“I’m not that good,” she apologized, clinging to him more than she really needed to. He was just…so solid, and if she was being honest all she really wanted to do was climb him like a fucking tree.

His arm around her waist was like a warm band of iron, and he smiled gently down at her. She felt herself melting like chocolate in the sun, her knees gone weak beneath her.

“That’s ok. I’ve got you.”

She couldn’t stop the sigh that escaped from her throat. Because, she knew it was true, and not just here being silly dancing in his living room. She realized she trusted him not to drop her no matter what they were doing, or what they were facing. That kind of faith in another person, much less a man, was a rare and precious thing.

“John…” she said softly, looking up into his warm dark eyes from so very close. She wasn’t sure if she was asking a question, or if she just needed to cite his name like a prayer, invoke him like a saint in her personal pantheon. Maybe it was madness, but wrapped up in his arms like this, he felt like something to believe in.

Her eyes drifted down to his mouth, those full lips she’d coveted since the moment they’d met, if she was telling the truth.

This was the moment that John’s will to fight it broke at last. He felt it inside, not like a hard snap, but a definite release, like a boat coming unmoored, being swept down a swift stream. There was no more resisting. He was lost to her.

Pulled like a magnet, he finally leaned in that fraction of distance to press his lips to hers. His kiss was like a sunrise in her heart; warm and bursting, soft and sweet. She couldn’t stop herself from standing on tiptoe with a low moan, looping her arms around his neck as she pressed her body against his. It won her something like a deep growl that thrilled her to her toes, and greedily she wanted more.

She teased the seam of his mouth with her tongue, begging entrance he gladly granted. She felt the tremor in his arms as he held her, so tightly that he nearly lifted her from the floor. He kissed her like a starving man offered a life-giving meal, and her fingers fisted in his hair at the back of his head, holding him to her, holding on.

His heartbeat a thundering timpani in his ears, John felt like Helen’s lips on his was the answer to a question his heart had been asking his whole adult life. She was the air he breathed, the sustenance necessary to live, and the desire to drink her down, to eat her up, was a dogged, insistent demand from the darkest depths of his soul.

He never wanted to let her go.

With a ragged breath he pulled back to rest his forehead against hers, his fingers digging into her sides. She might have bruises later.

She didn’t mind.

She wanted his hands, rough or gentle.

She wanted all of him, and if he didn’t return his mouth to hers she was going to scream.

“Helen,” he panted. “I—”

The tinny electronic sound of his phone ringing in his pocket interrupted what might have been a foolish—or a life changing—confession. “Fuck,” he cursed under his breath, knowing he had to answer it. That was the deal with the devil he’d signed, when he didn’t really have any better choice. He was on call all the time.

“I’m sorry,” he apologized.

She nodded, but did not extricate herself, leaning on his shoulder while he pulled the device from his pocket. It was Viggo Tarasov, and his heart dropped like a stone. It was rare that the boss Himself called. He absolutely had to answer it, and he had a feeling he wouldn’t like what his pakhan had to say.

With a heavy heart he lifted the phone to his ear, his other arm still wrapped possessively around Helen.

“Da?”

“Good evening, John.”

John fought to keep the impatient snarl out of his tone, but feared he failed royally. “Evening, Viggo.”

“I’ve just heard some interesting things about your latest adventures about town. I think we need to talk.”

That was probably the understatement of the century.

“When?”

“Now.”

Of fucking course.

“I can be there in an hour.”

“Good.”

Viggo hung up, and John clenched the phone in his fist, fighting not to throw it across the room. He knew Helen heard every word for the way she sighed with disappointment, snuggling into the bend of his neck. The sensation of her front molded to his was heaven, and he didn’t know how to let her go.

“I’m so sorry,” he apologized with lips to her forehead. “I have to go.”

“I understand.” There was some consolation, in that she sounded as devastated as he was.

“You’ll be ok here? My house is your house. Help yourself to anything you want.”

She made a kittenish little sound that sent all his blood straight to his groin. “What I want is leaving,” she informed him with a pouting lip, tugging on the front of his shirt.

He couldn’t stop himself then from stealing another kiss, a deep and probing thing that left her breathless and starry-eyed.

“I’ll be back as soon as I can,” he told her.

“Promise?”

“Yes.” John wondered what Viggo had in store. If he was in trouble, or if his boss would send him out to teach the Medvedev boys a lesson tonight. He didn’t want to go hunting that night. Everything he truly wanted in the world, he realized, was standing right in front of him, looking up at him with melted toffee eyes. He cupped her cheek, memorizing every detail of her all over again.

He realized with a startling clarity that he could never get enough of her.

The intensity of his stare sent a thrill jetting down her spine. “John…” He worried her a little, when he got like this. She wasn’t afraid of him, exactly—but some little intuition in the back of her brain sang out that something bad might happen.

“It’ll be alright,” he told her, sensing her unease. “I have to change.” He kissed her forehead again, and disappeared up the stairs to his room.

Helen plopped down on the couch with a sigh, crushed with disappointment but knowing this was how it was, and she understood more than ever now that it wasn’t his fault or his choice. She picked up the Villanelle book, No Tomorrow, stroking her thumb over the cover, but not cracking it open.

When John stalked down the stairs he was wearing one of his slim-fit all black suits again, his hair slicked back from his face. He looked beautiful, and predatory, sleek as a panther stalking in the jungle, and fierce attraction warred with dread in Helen’s breast. She had a feeling that someone might die tonight, and it was so strange to think in those terms with such a sense of acceptance.

At least she knew John’s prey would be no one innocent.

“Don’t forget you owe me a chapter,” she said in a sing song tone as he approached, waving the book, trying to lighten the pall that had fallen upon the room.

The smile he paid her was filled with melancholy; she felt it like a knife between the ribs. “I won’t,” he assured her, taking her hand to press his lips to her knuckles. He paused, looking down at this beautiful woman seated on his couch, with her legs that went on forever and the warmth in her eyes all for him. There was nothing he wanted more, than to stay there with her. To lay her down and kiss every inch of her perfect flesh. He probably should have told her that, but he just sighed, and let her go.

“I’m going to leave this here, just in case,” he said, all business as he showed her a blocky black automatic pistol. “There’s one in the chamber. All you have to do is pull the trigger. It has a long trigger pull but please do not touch it unless you need it, and be very careful.” He stashed the Glock in a drawer beside the couch. “I’ll leave the alarm on. If it goes off I’ll get an alert on my phone.”

With wide eyes she nodded. “Do you…think the Medvedevs will come here?”

“No, or I wouldn’t leave you here alone.” He honestly thought this was the safest place for her. “But…” One never knows.

“Okay.” He could tell that he managed to scare her a little, and he hated himself for it.

“I’m being paranoid,” he tried to assure her. He dared add, “Because you’re precious to me.” She softened then, and stood to wrap her arms around his neck once more. Embracing her was as intoxicating as kissing her, and again John warred with himself as to how he was going to leave.

“Come back to me,” she demanded softly, kissing the soft scruff of his cheek.

“Always,” he answered without allowing himself to think about it, pressing his lips to hers in a long, gentle kiss filled with all the yearning in his heart.

Reluctantly, he slipped from her grasp, and didn’t look back.

She watched him go, admiring his tall dark form even as he was leaving her.

She heard the roar of the Mustang starting in the garage, and the trail of its growl as it prowled across the driveway, disappearing down the street into the night. She couldn’t help but feel like her heart sped away with it.

#john wick #john wick fic #john wick x helen #helen wick #john wick the night nurse #keanu reeves

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toska-writes · 1 year

Text

“Random Clone Headcannons p.1”

These I made instead of working on my WIP for some reason but I have no regrets!

My ideas here are all over the place but please enjoy!

If you see any you like and such I’m planning to turn a few of these into full length writings so let me know!

Clones x reader pairing! (Platonic!)

• You cant tell me that if You had longer hair that so many Vodes would keep hair ties on their wrists for you

• Wolffe is the reason you have a deadly eye roll and amazing smart comments

• I feel like if you gained his. Trust you and Crosshair would be deadly on the battlefield- like he’d do the thing where he’d steady his riffle on your shoulder

• Jesse and Hardcase would beg you to show them some moves with your lightsaber, and honestly they aren’t terrible

• Braiding Tup and/or Hunters hair for fun. That’s it just think about it.

• You absolutely begged Rex if you could help to bleach his hair- finally giving in and needing a touch up he agrees to let you help. You don’t know how it’s happened but bleach is literally everywhere

• You and a few others were so excited to help the Wolfpack paint the “Plo’s Bro’s” and were so proud to stand next to Wolffe as you showed Master Plo for the first time

• Lake days with the 501st- just imagine. This I think will be my next WIP

• To say that you weren’t the best wingman for your brothers was an understatement you were amazing- Hardcase wouldn’t be anywhere without you. Playing match maker is so fun for the Clones and seeing them embarrassed is even better

• Rex can sleep anywhere. You’ve found him in so many different places just slumped. It’s become a tradition now that if you see him you’ll curl up by his side and get some rest and vice-versa (cause if Rex falls asleep you know you should be too)

• In your defense how could you not take those loth kittens back to Coruscant with you? Fox was a wonderful babysitter as you figured out where they could go

• You introduced wrecker to markers and now you take turns coloring small doodles on each others arms. Wreckers gotten pretty good over the last few times, and it’s alway fun to see the huge clone in training with a sleeve of colorful doodles

• You, Boil, and Sinker have always talked about taking you to get your first tattoo and you couldn’t agree more- Wolffe has to be the mom and shut it down pretty fast but one day soon it will happen

• Tech will teach you all these strategies to different games knowing at when you keep practicing he’ll have some good competition

• He has regretted this decision ever since you beat him once and his brothers and yourself hang it over his head all the time

• Delta Squad loves having joint mission with you and your battalion- Scorch can count on something interesting going down and Boss gets more gray hairs by the second in all the situations he has to get his squad out of

• So so so many nicknames it’s insane. They vary from who it is with Cody and Wolffes battalion keeps it sweet and simple with kid, vod’ika and Cyare where as groups like the 501st, Delta Squad and the Corries have unusual and creative names like Scrappy, shorty, and others

• Cold nights and everyone’s having a huge sleepover in the barracks- sneaking in and never sleeping more soundly then you have before

Hmm guess I could go back to my WIP but if you want a Part. 2 I’d be happy to make one!

—————————————————————

Taglist: @arctrooper69 @thereforepizza

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absolutebl · 10 months

Note

Hi!

I love your Blog and love to read your takes in everything. So thank you so much for all your Posts and thoughts about the industry etc.

Here is my question: i came across one of your posts where you wrote "actually gay, not bl gay" (it was a Post about Jojo and Only Friends) and while I FELT that I TOTALLY understood what you meant and instantly was like "yes 100% clear" Id love to read and learn more about what this means exactly and why some bls feel quite heteronormative while some dont. Would you mind explain the take on "actually gay Not Bl gay" a little bit? And why some Shows feel just more queer than others (besides the unbelievable stupid "gay only for you" trope lol)

Thank you so much and I hope you will have a nice day!

actually gay, not bl gay

There's actually quite a discourse on this right now mostly originating with @waitmyturtles and @wen-kexing-apologist (Post @killiru references above is here.)

I tend to mostly talk about this in broad brush strokes as a queer lens.

But there's a great ven diagram (which of course I've lost the link to) that approaches the idea of and queer lens by tunneling into its approach and intent:

about queers

by queers

for queers

How do different BLs intersect in different ways with these three elements?

When I said "actually gay, not BL gay" I was alluding to this discourse. Specifically the "about queers" category of BL.

There are characters in BL who read as genuinely gay (as in belonging to the queer family of this terrible reality we live in) and then there are those that seem more performative (to exist in a bubble of fantasy were sexual identity is almost unimportant, only the romance matters, everything is safe sweetness & light). For some queers this can read as manipulative or even exploitive (because it is inauthentic to most queer experiences). For me, it's fine... even desirable. I like the safe bubble. I enjoy the utter delusional escapism of it. Sometimes I will call this sanitized gay. (Since it is designed to make gay palatable to non-gay identified folks e.g. seme/uke.)

A sanitized gay BL may be unintentional but it is nested in origin yaoi and mm romance whose target market has never been the queer community, and whose authors have historically not been members of it, either.

Let's be frank, we queers are generally a terrible target market, we don't have enough spending power - especially not for a piece of pop culture as niched as BL. And as creators we really want our voices to be heard (obvs), which makes us produce content that those unsympathetic or uncaring find uncomfortable. (Yes, I know, fuck them, but also, they have all the money and the entertainment industry is a numbers game.)

So in the arena of office romances, just as an example:

actually gay = The New Employee

sanitized gay = Our Dating Sim

actual gay = Step By Step

sanitized gay = A Boss And a Babe

All of the above have the same tropes, archetypes, and premises. All of them are BL. Some are just... queerer feeling than others. And the characters in those shows (Step by Step and The New Employee) read as more "actually gay."

This has nothing to do with the actors, chemsitry, or how much we may personally like the show (Our Dating Sim is one of my absolute favorite BLs). It has to do with how closely those CHARACTERS intersect with the reality of queerness as we inhabit it today. It will be lots of little touches given to the drama by director and script:

language use,

surrounding friendships (and friendship style),

mannerisms and physicality (specially body language around straights vs other queer characters),

makeup & wardrobe,

facial expressions,

surrounding queer-coded behaviors by side characters,

layers of story nuance that indicate a complicated queer-driven back story.

Markers of specifically a queer identity are given to the leads.

These kinds of BLs are satisfying the "about queers" category. ("By queers" can be difficult to extract because IRL outting is involved. "For queers" is the rarest kind of BL, because making something specifically for us often alienates the majority of the rest of viewership/market. I could be argued that SCOY did this.)

I'm sure I've missed things, but I hope that kinda makes sense?

By/For/About discourse from @wen-kexing-apologist here:

Parts 1

Part 2

Part 3

I'm indebted to them for the links!

More Queer Stuff from Yours Truly

BL Linguistics & Queer Identity - I Am Gay versus I Like Men

Will BL Get More Honestly Queer?

Queer lens (from the director) and chemistry (from the actors) in BL (A Tale of Thousand Stars)

Touch & Daisy in Secret Crush On You - Queer Coded Language and 3rd Gender Identity

BL in Taiwan & Gay Marriage

Debating Queerbaiting in BL ( + Devil Judge... is it queerbaiting?)

BL Actors and the Assumption of Queerness - outing actors, coming out, being out, more: Is that BL actor actually queer?

So is it really fetishization? straight women loving bl

Some BL fans are sasaengs, and it’s a problem in this fandom

BLs That Highlight How Society Treats Queers

10 BLs That Are Honest to a Queer Experience

(source)

#asked and answered #bl and queer identity #intersection between BL and queer stories #about queers by queers for queers #thai bl #korean bl #the new employee #step by step the series #actually gay #not bl gay #actually gay not bl gay #BL university

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breakfastteatime · 9 months

Text

Today's request is for @serena-darrin, who chose 'Are you okay?' (¬‿¬)

Sometimes, Cal wonders if the Force is punishing him, because of all the cabins he had to walk into on the entire Venator they’re scrapping, he’s stepped into a long-dead Jedi’s bedroom. It’s dark, the power long since cut, and yet that doesn’t stop Cal from seeing the single bunk identical to his own, a desk covered in study materials and the training tools, and a robe hanging over a locker. All of them are markers of a life torn away.

And now Cal’s got to gather it all up and throw it away.

The echoes in here hum and sing, voices bleeding into the present. He’s not getting through this without smashing into the past. It’s too loud, too demanding. First things first though. Cal sticks his head into the hallway. Good, no one’s coming. He blocks the door with the trash can anyway. Better safe than sorry.

He goes through the room carefully, tossing the training aids he wouldn’t be able to use anymore away, feeling the determination and pride clinging to them. His body wants to move with the memories, feel the satisfaction of perfecting a new skill. He still remembers how easily it all came to him compared to the others in his clan…

It hadn’t helped at all in the end. All that studying. All that training. For what? Master Tapal’s dead and the Jedi are gone.

Cal makes good progress, tossing the past into the trash. He knows this was a Padawan’s room, although she’d been far older than him and preparing for knighthood. Her life slips through his mind in a wash of emotion and chatter. She was so sure she’d pass the Trials, so excited for the end of the war and a return to peace. Cal throws away her mementos: a holoimage of her and her master with their troop, a carving depicting a bird Cal’s never seen before, a selection of pressed flowers, more clothing several sizes too large for him along with space for arms he doesn’t have… It’s all useless now. Anyone seen wearing it would probably be shot dead on sight.

The dead Padawan’s datapad lights up when Cal touches it, a half-finished message popping up. ‘Be back on Coruscant soon, according to Master Day. Can’t wait to see you! Maybe we’ll head to the lower levels and –’ Cal tosses the datapad into the trash. It doesn’t matter. None of it matters. She’s dead. Her friend is dead. Their masters are dead. All the Jedi, except for Cal it seems, are dead.

Cal’s deep in the storage locker when he feels something unexpected buried under a pile of wrinkled robes. His hand slides under cloth, fingers closing around something cold. Metallic. Wrapped in leather.

“Master, I think it’s time.”

Master Day looks up at her, brown eyes crinkling with a smile. Not so long ago, it would have been the other way around, but she’s had a growth spurt and all the aches and pains have paid off. She is taller than her beloved master, and it is time for another change.

“My lightsaber hilts are simply too small. It is affecting my performance. With your permission, I would like to spend some time redesigning them.”

“Of course, Padawan. After all, I can hardly enjoy beating you in sparring if your lightsabers are so small they fall from your hand, and you burn yourself on the blades.”

She is nowhere near Master Day’s level, and such a thing will not be happening anytime soon. But someday, maybe… “Master, when I beat you at sparring, you will have to petition the Council to knight me on the spot.”

Master Day’s laughter is rich and full. “Young one, if you are still a Padawan by then, you will be the oldest to have ever lived.”

Cal breaks free of the memory. He can feel himself smiling, heart swelling with love and joy that do not belong to him. They fade steadily, leaving him in the dark with a pair of hilts that no longer house kyber crystals and the Jedi who built it long gone.

He tosses them in the trash and pretends it doesn’t tear something out of him to do so.

By the end of his shift, the cabin is empty, ready to be stripped tomorrow. Cal pushes his trash cart outside. Cold rain pelts him as he tips its contents into the ever-hungry Maw. He trudges back, ready to catch the train. Prauf’s there, and he waves him over. Cal joins him.

“Hey Cal.”

“Hi, Prauf.”

Prauf stares at him. “Are you okay?”

Cal shakes himself. Nothing can be done. The past is the past, and he must accept that. “Yeah, I’m fine.” He makes himself smile. “Long day.”

“Hah, ain’t it always!” Prauf pats him on the back. “C’mon, let me buy you a non-alcoholic beverage of your choice at the Rust Bucket.”

“Feeling flush?” Cal asks as the train pulls onto the platform.

“I wish! Nah, you look like you could use it.”

Cal blinks back a sudden rush of tears. “Yeah, okay. Thanks, Prauf.”

“Attaboy. No booze though. I’m not dragging your drunken ass back home.”

“No booze,” Cal says, even though a few hours of oblivion sound pretty sweet. “You got it.”

#fic requests 2023 #star wars jedi: fallen order #jfo headcanon #jfo minific #cal kestis #prauf #we are having prauf feels todaaaaaaay #bracca

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lexiepiper · 1 year

Text

Strange Relations

Hey @five-rivers happy truce! Sorry for being a little bit late, life got crazy.

I combined two of your prompts - Prompt 2: Clockwork gets sick of how Jack and Maddie treat Danny and spirits him away. Jack and Maddie must prove to Clockwork that they'll do better by completing his challenges. Whether or not they succeed is up to you. Prompt 4: Soft and cozy body horror. Lots of tactile texture and gentleness. Positive ending. :)

I hope you enjoy it! I’m a big fan of a lot of your writing and so tried to embody your masterful grasp of the abstract and eldritch, with a few references to some of the different elements/versions of Danny I’ve seen in your works.

The fic can be read here on ao3, or in this tumblr post.

...

Time is a mortal construct. At least, the understanding of its measurement is. For Clockwork, the markers of its passage were far less significant. What care did he need to have for weekdays, or hours, or the amount of revolutions around the sun?

He measured by different means.

How long it took for his endangered plants to sprout, grow tall, and flower or bear fruit.

The stretching eddies of dynasties rising and falling, and the outward-extending ramifications throughout the history of humankind.

The slow, awful rhythms of celestial bodies that he could barely parse even after aeons of watching the universe unfold in their rippling influences.

Mostly, he measured his time through the things he observed. Once he interacted with something it became difficult to ascertain its final path — like ripples obscuring the bottom of a small pond if you tried to put your hand into the water. The image only stayed clear so long as he refrained from touching it.

That being said, it was another regular morning when Daniel Fenton’s parents shot him out of the sky for the one hundredth time. A Tuesday, if anybody was keeping track.

Clockwork measured time by things that piqued his interest. Patterns, irregularities, and notable things in between that brought him any sense of emotion beyond simple detached interest.

So, he noticed, and he cared. He cared enough to burn.

One hundred times.

He burned hot with anger, his core flaring with a fire that he’d forgotten he harboured, and Clockwork was no longer able to hold himself back from plunging his hand into the pond despite all of the restrictions and regulations that normally kept him in his place.

The parade vanished, his vision of the future clouded, and within a mere selection of months, Clockwork found himself on the cusp of crossing the threshold of one of the only spaces beyond the time stream.

The place had many names, as did its denizens. There was no true way to define them, and perhaps that was the point of it all. The building changed depending on the perspective from which one tried to take it in, its architecture shifting from angle to angle. One moment it seemed as though it was a drab twentieth-century office with soap-bubble windows and floors that reached into blurry uncertainty. Then the building shifted, almost imperceptibly, and its peeling brick facade melted into the carved columns of an ancient Greek pantheon, complete with a sprawling copse of ancient olive trees that quietly creaked as ghosts moved between them. A moment later, and it was a connected city of tents strung with colourful banners that fluttered in a nonexistent breeze, flaps propped open with sticks with seemingly no coherent system that could be discerned by the outside observer.

Clockwork drifted across an invisible barrier and it ruffled his essence like the sudden breath of air conditioning one felt when entering a supermarket on a hot day.

The tent city’s trampled grass shifted to polished tiles, smooth beneath Clockwork’s boots as his core sank into dormancy and bade him land. The lack of ability was discomfiting but he shook it off and walked purposefully to the revolving doors of a great glass skyscraper, his cloak drifting around his ankles pleasantly with the sudden gravitational assertion over his typically-spectral body.

Being forced into a single form was more unpleasant even than the temporary binding of his powers, but Clockwork spared at least a sliver of gratitude that his default was that of an adult that appeared to be roughly in his thirties. If he were a child or an old man, it might damage his chances, depending on the test that the council ended up choosing.

The door spun on its center pole as he approached, its glass panes flashing in the light of a swarm of tiny blob ghosts that flitted around its interior segments. Their cores, like those of the denizens of this zone, were unfettered, as they were not here with a petition for review. It was a relief to see them, enjoying the neutral safe space and clearly having fun as they bounced around the entryway with glee.

Their purity reminded him of the severity of his purpose here, and as he stepped into a gleaming glass lobby that shifted into a sun-washed garden an approximation of a secretary rose from the path in front of him. It was faceless and blank, and Clockwork stood still as it passed an appendage that might have been a hand over the clock casing embedded in his chest.

The being didn’t speak, but he understood nonetheless when it confirmed his identity as applicant Clockwork the Timekeeper.

The pleasant sound of running water deeper into the garden paused for a moment, and the intermingled murmur of voices and birdsong went quiet. He figured that it wasn’t every day that someone as consequential as himself came here, but he shrugged off the feeling of being observed. The lull was only brief, and ambient noise resumed before Clockwork could do more than wonder yet again if he’d chosen the correct course.

The wondering, in and of itself, was nothing new. As soon as he’d reached through his viewing screen to scoop up a bleeding Daniel his vision had clouded, and since then, he’d done nothing but wonder.

He could have tried to just keep the boy, to adopt him by force and never let him go back to the life and people who were so horrible to him, but as he followed the secretary down a path through verdant twelve-foot ferns dappled with sunlight and filled with flashes of jewelled dragonflies, Clockwork’s doubts faded. He reminded himself that by surrendering Daniel to the protective grasp of the impartial council while taking the time to go through all of the proper applications, nobody would be able to dispute his relationship with the child on the other side. It was the only way to make Daniel permanently, irrevocably his, and despite his current inability to see the outcome for himself, Clockwork knew that there was no way he would fail the test.

The path ended abruptly in a freestanding stone door, ornately decorated with a mosaic fresco of towering creatures that Clockwork didn’t recognise from any reality that he was privy to observing. It swung open soundlessly as he approached, and beyond its threshold stretched an unremarkable hallway. The paint was yellow with either age or poor lighting, or perhaps a combination of the two, and the floor was worn threadbare carpet that might have once been a colour but was now more of a faded light brown.

There were no doors or windows, and when Clockwork stepped onto the carpet the guide shut the freestanding door behind them, cutting off the light and sounds of the garden. He didn’t need to breathe, but the mustiness of the corridor stuck to his throat anyway, and he followed wordlessly when his guide kept moving.

It took several minutes for them to reach another door. This one matched the hallway they were in, being remarkably plain with a little brass plaque at head height.

He couldn’t read the language, but entered anyway when motioned to do so.

The guide didn’t follow, and the door clicked shut behind him as Clockwork blinked in the warm light that spilled through a large window. The room seemed to be a small office, but it was homely, with abstract artwork on the wall and nice armchairs both in front of and behind the desk.

The person sitting at the desk was also faceless, but unlike the neutral tones of the secretary, it was wearing flowing fabric that shimmered between cool tones with each small movement.

It gestured to one of the armchairs and Clockwork sat, feeling as welcomed as he would have by a smile and friendly words. It would have been rude to speak when his host did not, so he stayed quiet and exuded his own pleasantries nonverbally, as some ghosts were wont to do. It seemed to be the right move, because the person nodded and Clockwork sensed its warm appreciation.

It opened a drawer and produced a slim file, sliding it across the desk to rest in front of him, and Clockwork recognised the paperwork that he had so painstakingly filled out over the past several months. The registration and application process had been long and arduous, and Daniel had been kept from all interested parties for the duration. He’d been kept here, in fact, but Clockwork knew that he had no hope of interacting with the boy before the petition trial was complete.

He skimmed through the papers, noting the extra stamp at the end of each page. The final page had a line to sign, and when he glanced up at the faceless being it beckoned for him to hold out his hand.

He did so, and it drew off his glove, exposing the pale blue flesh of Clockwork’s palm. With a sharp swipe a letter opener flashed across his hand and green ectoplasm welled in its wake, and Clockwork allowed his hand to be tilted so that a few drops fell onto the paper just above the line. It soaked in until it disappeared, leaving the white parchment spotless, and then Clockwork’s name etched itself out in flowing green script.

The person nodded approvingly and offered a strip of plain white cloth, which Clockwork allowed it to use to bandage his bleeding hand. Usually such a trifle wouldn’t be an issue, with the power to simply shift time around the wound and immediately heal, but with his abilities bound by this interdimensional space he would have to make do with the far more mundane option.

He reclaimed his glove but tucked it into his belt when the person shook its head at his attempt to put it back on. The bandage on his hand stood out starkly against the dark tones of his clothing, and he realised that it was a badge of honour, signifying that he’d come far enough to be considered a candidate for the judgement.

The being shuffled the papers back into order and rose from its chair, tilting its head in an unspoken request to follow when it moved towards the door. Clockwork complied, and when it opened he was not faced with the same hallway that he’d walked down before, but a large atrium filled with silver light that spilled through a delicately domed glass ceiling.

They entered on one of the upper levels that hugged the round wall of the space. It was a narrow walkway that led to individual evenly-spaced boxes, each holding a single seat. They called to mind witness boxes, although the chairs were carved from the same marble as the walls and floors, and inlaid with plush green velvet.

The lower level of the room was blocked from view by a shimmering barrier of black smoke that sparkled as though filled with stars. Clockwork watched it as he walked, and it drifted with the slow, soothing movements of gentle eddies. He looked up again once they reached the nearest box, and allowed himself to be ushered into the seat. It was even softer than it looked, and once he sat the same starry mist rose around him and cut off all sight.

He hoped he wouldn’t have to wait long, but quieted any irritation at the delay. Time was nothing, after all. He just needed to win the case for custody of Daniel, and then there would be all of the time in the universe, both known and unknown.

He comforted himself with that knowledge, and whiled away the waiting by planning the things that he’d do once he took Daniel home. It was a topic that had become a favourite among his daydreams, and he’d already prepared a room that was draped in constellations and held all of the comforts that the boy could possibly want. Beyond that, he’d already begun to make changes to Long Now. The clock tower, while perfect for Clockwork alone, was not conducive to the rounded development of a child’s core. As he’d laboured through the application process, Clockwork had changed much, working on making shared spaces like the kitchen and garden habitable for a halfa, and private spaces, such as his own viewing room, at least safe for Daniel to spend time in should the opportunity arise. After all, children always ended up where one least expected them to be able to reach.

His ability to sense time was unavailable here, but Clockwork still felt that his wait stretched for longer than was comfortable. He resisted the urge to leave his seat for a stretch, since technically he didn’t need one. This may be a part of the process itself, determining if he possessed the necessary patience to nurture a wilful creature such as Daniel.

Some time later, the smoke around him thinned, then dissolved in a breath of cool air. Clockwork blinked in the silver light, realising that since he had sat down he had been unable to hear anything aside from the small chimes and noises of his own internal rhythms. Now, he recognised the low murmur of voices in a tongue he couldn’t comprehend, and when he glanced down toward the noise he saw a platform jutting from the wall just above the cloudy barrier that was still in place below. It was crammed with figures that blurred Clockwork’s vision, and whenever he tried to focus on a single detail all others slipped into fuzziness until he could no longer recall anything.

These must be members of the infamous council, removed from the affairs of the infinite realms and truly impartial in every meaning of the term. They stood only for justice and harmony, maintaining delicate balances and judging only the most significant cases across realities.

Clockwork glanced up at the giant moon through the window, the source of the brilliant silver light. It was peppered with craters not dissimilar to Earth’s, likely to help put Daniel at ease with what he would be going through right now, and stars blazed in the cosmos that outlined the moon in a thin band between its edge and the round windowpane.

The same smoke that had shrouded him also drifted around the other boxes, which had been empty when he had first entered the atrium, and Clockwork tried not to show interest as it began to thin and reveal the people within.

Of course, Vladimir Masters would have been one to request inclusion as a candidate. He sat smugly in his space in the full ghastly splendour of his ghost form, and as his shroud dissolved into nothing he smirked at the other candidates before looking at Clockwork with a clearly confused lack of recognition.

The sight of the other two candidates, each in their own individual boxes, struck Clockwork’s soul like a flint, setting loose a spark of anger that he fought to keep from showing on his face. He forced himself to relax his shoulders and keep his hands loose in his lap, resisting the urge to grind his teeth as Madeline and Jack Fenton looked around. Their expressions were slack with awe, mouths open and eyes wide as they gazed at the surrounding splendour which they should have never had a right to witness.

He tamped down on the unruly emotion, reminding himself that each of them had a solid claim on Daniel, and that this was the only fair way to determine true rights to parentage. There was nobody else, and he was initially surprised at the lack of Frostbite, considering the level of support that he had provided over the past few years. He wondered if the relationship was less one of parentage and more one of worship and awe that blended into camaraderie, but brushed off any suppositions before they could colour his perception. Conjecture was useless right now, and he knew that he’d be able to piece things together later, once his powers were restored.

Madeline opened her mouth and clearly called for her husband, but no sound left her lips. Her brow pinched in building panic, and she tried again, with the same result. Vladimir waved a hand and her attention snapped to him, her panic melting into something harder and more accusatory as he shook his head and pressed his fingers to the hollow in his own throat.

Clockwork wondered at the display. Surely they’d been briefed as to the rules of the trial, including the inability to communicate verbally once it had commenced so that they would not be able to distract Daniel or each other throughout the process. Now that he saw who he was competing with for custody he wondered if this safeguard was to also arrest any untoward exchanges between ghosts and hunters.

A soft chime rang through the atrium, and all four of them looked down at the group of assembled judges. The speech in the unknown tongue had stopped, and they were gathered in a perfect line along their platform, watching silently. One rose from the middle of the line, floating into the centre of the room and nodding to each of the applicants in turn. You each hold claim to Daniel James Fenton Phantom as your child, a genderless voice whispered inside Clockwork’s mind, and each of you in turn has passed the preliminary application process when you were informed of the request for a custody ruling. This trial will determine which, if any, of you can recognise his deepest needs and see beyond your own ideals to accept who he truly is.

Out of the children below, all of them are the one to which you lay claim. You will see all stages of his becoming as individual persons. To pass this trial, you must understand him deeply enough to know which form is his final one, and offer a contrite and willing heart to heal his hurts and nurture him as he truly requires.

Take as long as you need, and from this moment, you will not be able to meet each other’s eyes or share any information that you may glean with other candidates.

May balance and justice be restored.

A stillness settled over Clockwork’s soul, all anger and irritation at his competition melting away as the chime sounded again and the judge returned to their spot in the line. The barrier of mist dispersed, revealing a round open space below them. There was a plush green carpet scattered with white pillows and blankets, and dozens of children were strewn amongst the softness.

Each one of them was Daniel, in varying stages of being and becoming.

Clockwork glimpsed a flash of pain on Jack Fenton’s face before his vision tunnelled, and then he could see nothing but the children bathed in silver light.

Daniel lay on a large floor cushion, breathing heavily as smoke coiled from his singed hair and clothing. His fresh lichtenberg scar pulsed an angry, deadly green, visible even through the suit that his parents had so lovingly custom made, unaware that it would become his funerary shroud. His uninjured hand lay over his heart as he panted, eyes closed, pain clear in his furrowed brows and gritted teeth.

The echo of black bones was barely there, but when he sucked in another breath one could glimpse deep, dark eye sockets and a jawline like a smudge of charcoal beneath semi-translucent skin that held the blue pall of death.

It was hardly his truest form, but still, the moment of his death was difficult to see.

Clockwork caught his cheek between his teeth and looked at the others.

One Daniel held himself like a superhero, hands on his hips and his shoulders thrown back with a jaunty smile on his face. His hair and white cape rustled in a nonexistent wind and he just… stood there, suspended in a snapshot of time.

Nearby slept the featureless figure of a child bathed in the fabric of the night sky, every inch of skin liquid with a flowing firmament that dripped and swirled with the rise and fall of his small, fragile chest. He stirred but did not wake, murmuring wordless nonsense sounds of contentment from whatever dreamland had claimed him. He was laying on one of the white blankets with his head resting on a folded arm, and another blanket pooled around his lower half, giving the impression of the night sky glimpsed through a gap between clouds.

As Clockwork watched, the stars and galaxies on his skin of liquid darkness bloomed into brilliant nebulae and sank into spirals that grew ever brighter as they dropped into cores of black holes, and it was as though he were watching the entire unfolding of a universe contained within a single person.

Beyond, there was commotion. Daniel’s wings were coming in, and he shivered as plumes of feathers overtook him in sprays that created layer upon layer of new appendages. There was an aborted noise, as though he tried to cry out, but then that dissolved into gentle bell-like chimes that slowly smoothed into a calmer cadence. The darkness in his hair and clothing were quickly overcome, melting away into more and more soft fluff until he was nothing more than a mass of glowing white feathers and wings draped with silken fabric. The child hovered momentarily, as though uncertain, before shivering again and fluttering over to sink into a pile of pillows and blankets that had been arranged to resemble a nest, perfectly sized for this new form.

Yet another Daniel was also changing, splitting beyond his skin until the husk of a body disintegrated into nothing and released a cloud of lime green essence that roiled and foamed until it dripped down into the gelatinous shape of a blob ghost. It peered around with wide green eyes devoid of whites or pupils, quivering but not yet able to take any greater form. When nothing else seemed to happen it began to fly around the room, moving frantically at first like a trapped bird, but slowly settling into a more leisurely pace once the shock of the change wore off and it found no way to leave.

There were many more, a few scores at least, and Clockwork took the time to carefully observe each and every one of them from his vantage point high up on the wall. While many seemed initially confused or distressed, and some even pained, they all slowly drifted into various stages of calm restfulness. One factor that linked each child was a note of softness, whether overt like the feathered shape or the space child, or more subdued, like the smudged bones and gentle smoke of Daniel’s first ghostly iteration, or the way that some of the harsher forms blurred into wisps at the edges, as though unfinished.

This was, after all, a distillation of essence. They were all Daniel, but only one of them was what he became when purified down into his truest form. Clockwork just needed to put aside any latent bias he might still hold, and look for the version that embodied Daniel at his most honest self.

There was one that caught Clockwork’s attention, sitting on a floor cushion with his head tilted up to watch the moon beyond the domed glass ceiling. His eyes were voids of darkness swathed with stars, and his slender body drifted like smoke when he moved to adjust his position.

He was clothed in a loose starry shirt that frayed at the edges into a pattern of Amity Park’s skyline lit with street lights and suburban buildings, but when he moved again the hemline morphed into an imitation of the swirling eddies of the ghost zone.

His death scar faded the longer he looked up at the sky until it was nothing more than the barest impression of a shadow on his skin, and stress lines smoothed away from his face as his mouth curved into a soft smile. He was wearing plain dark pants, form-fitting but clearly comfortable, and his feet were bare, toes curling in the thick green carpet as though it were grass. There were frost flowers in his hair and the stars in his eyes glinted blue and green as he stared straight to the heavens.

This child was equal parts incorporeal and solid, his past painful traumas clear but exactly that: in the past. His frame was so small and appeared frail in comparison to many of the others, but his aura shone beyond his boundaries with a soft, steady glow. Clockwork sensed a childlike curiosity that had not been present in the others, clear with a desire to drink in the knowledge of the universe in a safe environment at his own pace.

He shook himself when he realised that he’d been staring at this child for far longer than the rest. This version of Daniel was everything that Clockwork wanted for him, but just as he prepared to make his choice, he paused.

Was this truly Daniel, or simply the Daniel that he wished for? This was a test, after all. Each candidate must see a version that embodied what they desired the most in a child.

No, the true question here was which form embodied what Daniel most desired.

Clockwork looked again, carefully examining each version of the child he hoped to adopt. He would only get one chance at this, and if he failed, he would not be permitted to see Daniel again. He had to get this right.

He surveyed the room several more times, and each time, he was drawn back to the one staring up at the sky. Slowly, as he eliminated each other version as possibly being Daniel’s true self, he realised that perhaps the reason that he was so drawn to the peaceful, inquisitive, happy person who seemed to truly embody the balance between life and death was because this was the way things were meant to be. Clockwork knew Daniel as well as he knew himself, and he knew when he recognised the essence of the child that belonged in the safety of his care.

He made his decision, clasping his hands and leaning back in his seat. His vision cleared as he did so and restored his view of the rest of the room, revealing again the line of impassive, featureless judges and the other three people trying to lay their claims in this soul-deep custody battle.

It appeared that Madeline and Vladimir had finished ahead of him, which was expected, given the amount of times Clockwork had reviewed what he saw before choosing his child. They were both looking about the room and occasionally glancing down at the children, but none of their eyes met the other candidates’. Much of the pomp and pride had drained away from both of them, the hard lines of their shoulders and jaws smoothing into something gentler.

He turned away from them and looked back up at the moon. Now that he was removed from the pressure of choice he felt a wash of anguish for the changes that Daniel had clearly gone through, mindful of the pain and confusion he would have felt as he had cycled through those different forms until he had settled into his essence. It chafed, knowing that Clockwork had not been there to comfort him during the different stages of becoming.

Movement from the adjacent box caught his attention and Clockwork glanced over to see Jack Fenton still staring at the assortment of Daniels. Tears freely flowed from puffy red eyes and he wiped his bandaged hand beneath his nose before mouthing Daniel’s nickname. It was both fascinating and satisfying in equal parts, but Clockwork looked away quickly, trying to school himself lest the judges sense anything untoward in his feelings and dismiss his claim on the basis of unacceptable levels of bias. He didn’t know if it was a possibility in this case, but he'd heard of it happening before and didn’t want to take the risk.

Besides, he admitted to himself for the first time, if Jack was here then he clearly showed enough determination to care for Daniel’s needs and right past wrongs to qualify for a claim.

It took a while longer for Jack to make a decision, and Clockwork watched his own preferred child in the interim. The longer he looked the more peaceful he felt, surer with every passing moment that he had made the correct choice.

Eventually Jack leaned back, scrubbing his hands over his drenched cheeks as his shoulders trembled with silent residual sobs.

The dark starry barrier rolled back over the lowest tier, hiding the children from view once more. The judges dissipated into nothing and their platform melted away, leaving a smooth, featureless patch of wall in their wake.

Clockwork turned when something shifted beside him, and a guide who could have been the same one from earlier beckoned for him to leave through a door that materialised in the stretch of wall behind them.

He obeyed, sending one last glance to the people who had dared to challenge his claim to custody as they were similarly ushered away. Madeline frowned when she finally caught his gaze, and he only had a brief moment to wonder what she was thinking before he stepped into an office that mirrored the one in which he had signed the papers, except that the artworks on the walls were hand-painted starscapes interspersed with planets and nebulae that he didn’t recognise.

Through a door on the opposite wall stepped Jack Fenton.

A judge was waiting behind the desk, and motioned for the two of them to sit. Clockwork moved numbly, his mind racing as he took one of the armchairs while Jack collapsed into the other one. The man was still crying, the cuffs of his sleeves and the white bandage around one hand soggy from repeatedly wiping his face.

The judge looked to both of them in turn, the only indication of its shifting focus a subtle turning of the head. Congratulations on your joint custody of Daniel James Fenton Phantom, that same soft not-voice said, slipping between Clockwork’s thoughts. The pre-prepared living space in Long Now has been approved as his new residence, with minor changes required to accommodate the presence of Jack Fenton. No other persons are to interact with your child for the next six months without the approval of this court while he settles into his distilled form, and neither of you will leave him throughout this process.

Neither Vladimir Masters or Madeline Fenton are permitted to interact with your child from this moment on, and any ties they have to his soul or emotions will be severed immediately.

Congratulations on your joint adoption. Daniel has been moved to a comfortable waiting room to rest now that he has completed his initial process of becoming and assigned his parents. A guide will collect you presently. Once you have completed the introductory course in the next room, the two of you are free to collect your child, and return with him to your home.

May balance and justice be forever upheld.

The judge disappeared as a chime rang through the room, clear and true, and Clockwork’s core seized as his ticking clock skipped a beat. The universe shifted around them, and a deep, primal tie to Daniel imprinted itself upon him so firmly that Clockwork’s entire view of existence shifted.

He… he had a child.

Daniel was his child.

And…

Massaging his clock casing, he looked over at Jack Fenton, who was clutching his own chest. His eyes were wide, mouth opening and closing as he seemed to struggle to keep up with what had just happened.

Clockwork swallowed as the tightness that had been in his throat since the trial commenced fell away, and he sighed. The sound was a quiet chime, like a distant grandfather clock in the middle of the night, and then he shifted so that he turned in his seat to more fully face the person who, against all odds, had somehow managed to glimpse the truth of Daniel’s soul enough to gain shared custodial rights.

“Hello, Jack,” he said, surprised at how soft his tone was. Gone was the bite of anger that had been there previously, replaced with the recognition of a person whose goals and parenthood aligned with his own. “I figure that since we’re to share our child, we should at least know each other’s names: I am Clockwork the Timekeeper, longtime mentor and new parent to Daniel. I hope that despite our differences, we can work in harmony to help him become the best version of himself, whatever that may be.”

He smiled, showing just the barest hint of fangs, and Jack baulked for just a moment before visibly gathering himself and taking a deep breath in. “Nice to meet you, Clockwork,” he said, and to his credit, his voice barely trembled, though his eyes were still watery with the threat of further tears. He clearly glanced at the scar over Clockwork’s eye before looking away quickly. “I guess, since Danno’s a halfa, one parent from each side makes some kind of sense, right?”

Clockwork raised an eyebrow. “I never thought of it like that,” he confessed, leaning back in his seat. “And you don’t know it yet, but lack of knowledge is a rarity for me.”

Jack frowned. “So… we’ll be living in this Long Now place?”

“I’m assuming that your profession makes you at least passingly familiar with the concept of lairs,” Clockwork said. “It will be comfortable, and after six months have passed you will be able to come and go as you please. As much as this is unexpected, you’re right — it does make sense.”

Jack swallowed. “So, uh… what now? I feel like I should know more about you, and about Danny.”

“I’ll try to answer your questions, but I expect that someone will come to move us to the introductory program soon.”

He nodded, brow furrowing in thought. “Right, okay then. I’ll just ask a few questions while we wait, since you seem to know a lot more about me than I do about you. Um… uh… okay, I have to know. Do ghosts like fudge?”

He was an all-knowing, powerful being, an embodiment of control of the concept of time itself. Yet, in this tiny office, with his powers bound and with no ability to see the future beyond his own powers of logical deduction, Clockwork never would have guessed in a million years that this would be the first thing that Jack Fenton would ask.

It reminded him so much of Daniel that he couldn’t help but smile. It looked like, no matter how chaotic everything ended up becoming, things were going to work out just fine.

#lexiepiper #holiday truce 2022 #Danny Phantom

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