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tripleyeeet · 6 months

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THE PADLOCK PLAYOFFS

SUMMARY: Astarion and you compete for the camp's best lockpicker.

PAIRING: Astarion & Gender Neutral Reader

WORD COUNT: 1,190

WARNINGS: None?

AUTHOR'S NOTE: @leighsartworks216 is a genius and wrote the hilarious text post this little fic is based off of, so thank Leigh for their perfect brain! Also, no editing because I'm supposed to be on vacay.

MASTERLIST

“Are you two always this competitive?”

The question originally had come from Wyll. After a particularly heated argument over the most effective way to distract and pickpocket, the answer quickly became obvious and the topic was dropped, knowing that forevermore, you and Astarion would always be seen as two opposing sides, competing for the ultimate prize of best rogue within the camp.

At first, it was civil. At least to some degree. Discussions between the two of you would always rise to a boiling point but would never overflow the pot. Oftentimes both of you would just laugh at the other’s supposed perfected tactics, claiming to be the best before deciding a test would inevitably occur once the time was right.

No testing ever followed through though. Considering you were far too busy with the threat of the Absolute and the fact that none of your discussions were ever that serious. Each time a competition was promised it was slowly forgotten and neither of you had a problem with it.

Well, until now. Until Lae’zel absentmindedly makes some comment about how long Astarion’s taking to pick the lock of the chest in front of him.

All of you are back at camp for the night. After a particularly rough day of looting through an overflowing camp of Absolute cultists, the majority of you are lounging by the fire, drinking ale or wine, staring at the flames in silence as you all settle down.

Towards the tents though, Astarion kneels in front of a large chest, brows pushed towards the centre of his face in deep concentration while Lae’zel stands above him, arms crossed angrily over her chest. Both you and Karlach spare a glance, watching the inevitable argument that breaks out, noticing the exhaustion in Astarion’s eyes as he turns towards the Gith and yells.

“If you’re so keen on rushing my craft then I’ll just piss off and let the second best rogue do it!”

He motions to you with an open hand as he says it, catching the annoyed look you give him in the process. How your jaw all but sets into a stiff position, your lips pressing together in an attempt to surpass the insults you wish to throw his way.

“Yes, perhaps such a suggestion is best.”

Stealing your attention, you watch as Lae’zel motions to the chest with her chin, giving you the kind of nod that has you jumping to your feet and readying your tools, watching as Astarion merely rolls his eyes.

“Second best rogue —are you kidding me, Star?” You huff and shake your head, angrily shoving him aside before he can even react. Then, you shove the short hook into the hole, feeling three successful shifts before pulling open the lock.

When you do you narrow your eyes at Astarion before faking a yawn, patting the palm of your hand to your lips in the most dramatic way possible.

“You were watching me do it,” he immediately argues, pointing to the tools in your hands, glaring at them like they’re the most evil instruments in the world.

“From across camp?” You raise your brow and smirk. “Sweetie, you and I both know my eyesight isn’t that good.”

“It’s good enough to recognize technique, darling.”

Somehow this time the argument of who’s better than who doesn’t die down like it usually does. Instead, it merely escalates to the point of interruption, causing both Gale and Wyll to step in, suggesting you all go to bed. Neither of you relents though, knowing what’s at stake. Knowing that whoever gives in will always be referred to as the lesser rogue.

“How about we settle this fair and square then?” Astarion says.

You look at him like he’s just lost his head. “Wait, you’re capable of fairness?” you ask sarcastically, watching him roll his eyes before changing the subject, asking the camp for their finest padlocks.

It’s decided then that your semi-consistent call for competition is finally answered. That after countless weeks of rivalry amongst varying tactics, you’ll finally get to decide on at least one of them.

The camp reluctantly wanders to their tents then, allowing you and Astarion a few moments to stare the other down with newfound skepticism until the party all returns with various locks, holding them out for both of you to survey.

“Forgive me for questioning, but are competitions like this common amongst thieves?”

Gale looks at you as you lower your head to his hands, narrowing your eyes at the lock’s design. It’s intricate on the outside, displaying an ornate pattern that wraps around the opening in two mirrored filigrees.

“Very,” you reply, snatching the lock from his hand with a grin, turning to Astarion afterward. “Basic rules? I pick your lock, you pick mine, any means necessary?”

Astarion nods, holding out the lock inside his palm to you, prompting you to do the same.

Once switched you both immediately get to work, running your eyes and fingers over the mechanisms, trying to form the best course of action. Next to you, Astarion looks at his with great attention, mumbling to himself as he picks apart all the padlock’s quirks, quickly discovering your choice is unfortunately smart.

Hailing from a specific locksmith who works with magic users exclusively, you know he can tell the lock inside is enchanted. That once you stick your hook inside it’s essentially a free-for-all in regards to what happens next.

Based on the filigree design it’s obvious to those who know that it’s laced with illusionary magic. Something you’re certain Astarion’s at least somewhat familiar with, allowing you to take your time.

Not that you need it. Not with the lock he so foolishly chose.

As soon as it was placed into your open hand you recognized the model. An old faulty lock that had been giving rogues like you grief for years. Back when it was first developed it was quickly run off the shelves once people found it was impossible to open without destroying them completely, prompting a surge of collectors to adopt most for display.

Knowing this, you also know a bit of brute force in the right spot can remedy such a fault.

Smirking to yourself, you twirl the lock on your finger and wander over to Karlach, eyeing her competition offering before holding out your hand.

“May I?”

She and the rest of the party look at you confused, watching as the tiefling hands it over almost immediately.

You thank her kindly with a dramatic bow before glancing at your competitor, noticing how he’s finally found the right hook to ensure his success.

“I’m surprised, didn’t think you’d get that far,” you tell him then, earning his attention long enough to hit the butt of Karlach’s lock against the other, triggering a loud click to signify its opening.

At which point, Astarion all but stares. With eyes so wide you swear they might fall out, you toss the lock in his direction, watching him fumble with the one in his hand before ultimately catching yours against the base of his forearm, looking up to glare as you blow him a cheeky kiss.

@poohxlove @gaiasmight @sassy-stupid @novarex @v-gremlin @sapphiccloud @lipstickghoulie @kuroitsukyo@jjfchk@idiotsatan@bluestuesday@bloopthebat@art-by-greenie@heneralmoon@sukunababe@dreamingaboutyousworld@ranfithegood@haniscrying@liadamerondjarin@the-lake-is-calling@marina-and-the-memes@rookieoftheyear@zraloci-cpr@kaetmo@snickerdoodle-daydream@wowowwild@d1anna@raswiet@conniesbbymama@venus-wrts@demonicthorns@kihten@deadglamsheep@sanscas@spammypasta@leighsartworks216@rose-gold-blue@p1ssmagg0t@hellish-writes@ghostinvenus@otayz@sexysquatch@sleepyeclair@colorful-anxieties@alina-exe@ilana-the-lasagna@lillifer@girlwiththepapatattoo@y2cade@acelin-ginsberg@pinkuranium@catrad0rable@scarletrosesposts@qwnamidala@itsrosebabe@bunnyperi@queenofcarrotflowers-s@tatumadams20@spkyxszn@chlort@f3v3rs@awkwardwookie@joy-the-reader@warm-milk-with-honey-blog@vertigocrime@iyis@wildpiper@pebblethestone@tillywasneverhere@bex-03@kaetmo@revemiya@staticspouse@itzagothamcitysiren@djarinsmixtape@when-the-night-came@epicy0n@bababahannah@sleepyred1703@lotus-99@lofcompass@r4d10h34d5@vampninjaz@itsmekalou@offbrandhand@yikes-buddy@konenichi@rainonarden@oceanbluesixeyes@bodtyworship@maydayitsjay@greasyslimebucket@yeeteth-the-raven@fantasyfairysworld@allexthakatt@flowersaretheshit@morglyne@thespectacularspaceace@cephiss0@use-your-telescope@furblrwurblr@kloverfield@angelofthorr@writervaul-t@starved-kitten@minixluvr@crowley--aziraphale@sapphicwren@alionera-blog@jennithejester@dezedrol@thisisew@saladalpaca@applepiewithbacon@httpbiohazard@aurasyn@nerdoodles@kingpinthedevil@itzkawaiix@domainoflostsouls@silverskylan@uminootome@helpidkwhatimdoingwrong@deadlyinfernos@blackbirdswhispers@sarahskywalker-amadala@writingmysanity@f3v3rs@jayjones03@quietlyebbie@optimisticprime3@eyes-for-daze@sunnytalia3@megoshh@maddiedott@cappsikle@mostbeautifulnightmare@lynnlovesloki@simpytheshrimpy69@astarion-archive@smaranshakthi@autistic-deer@shadowfeart@freckled-petals@candied-lavender@hp-art-studio@ghouligan@satelliteapotheosis@waywardwitch-hel@pandimoostuff@mythoughtsofinsanity@ilovelovelylove@oneandonlyizabelle

TAGLIST NOW CLOSED!

#the padlock playoffs #astarion fan fic #astarion x gender neutral reader #astarion x reader #astarion x rogue reader #summer writes

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intoxicated-chan · 25 days

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Assassin’s Creed Rouge Question

I just bought Assassin’s Creed Rouge and was immediately hooked onto it, mainly because of Shay Cormac. (I prefer his unshaven appearance)

Anyways, I never played any of the games and I have just started this one and was wondering, in the future (let’s say early October or December) would you guys be interested in a series/for me to start writing for Shay Cormac or Assassin’s Creed in general.

Obviously I’ll start writing for it once I finish the game and my other works but was curious.

#x reader #x female reader #x gender neutral reader #shay cormac x reader #shay cormac #assassin's creed #assassin’s creed #assassin’s creed rogue #assassin’s creed x reader

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uwingdispatch · 10 months

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Devotion

Notes: Brasso/Reader, established relationship, gender neutral reader, post-rebellion/post-war, hurt/comfort, chronically ill/disabled reader

CW: depression/mental health struggles, active shooter

Ao3 Link

★★★★★★★★

“What’s going on?”

You’re in your pajamas, standing at the end of the hallway that leads to your bedroom. It’s 3:00 in the morning and you’ve woken to find Brasso sitting at the kitchen table, fiddling with something in his hands.

Startled, he looks up. “How long have you been standing there?” He asks, running a hand through his dark hair, his grays hidden in the shadows of the dimly-lit room. In this moment there’s a sadness in his eyes that he doesn’t often allow you to see.

“Not long,” you say.. “I woke up and you weren’t there. I had a feeling…”

“I made you anxious,” Brasso says, pushing away from the table. “I’m so sorry, love.”

You insist that you’re fine, but he’s already wrapping his big arms around you and you can’t help but sleepily lean into his embrace.

“I got a message from Wilmon today. Did you know it was the anniversary of Rix Road?”

“I should have remembered.”

“No, darling,” he says, kissing the top of your head. “No, I’d rather not remember that day. Most of it, anyway.”

“Are you all right?” You ask.

“I will be,” he says. “Last time I was on Ferrix, Xanwan’s niece was cleaning up his old store front, getting it ready to sell. She gave me this keyfob of his that she found in a drawer. It’s just a festival trinket from an old holiday but…there are pictures from that day. The old gang, you know? Before I met you, even.”

“You’re thinking about Xan?”

“And everyone who didn’t make it out that day. How things could have gone differently if I’d just—”

“If you’d just what? Let fascists steamroll your entire community? Brasso, people did get out because of you. And I’m sure I’m not the only one you warned away from town that day.”

“You’re not.”

“And you got Wilmon out.”

“I did.”

“Bee. Bix. Jezzi.”

He answers with a sigh.

You step back so you can see your partner’s face, tucking a few strands of hair behind his ear so you can look into his eyes. “You’re one man, Brasso. A very good man, but still just one. How were you going to stop anything that Maarva Andor started?

He laughs a little, remembering the woman who had been so much to so many people. You’d never been a Daughter of Ferrix, but it was Maarva who invited you to join in on some of the community projects anyway. It was people you met through Maarva who had encouraged you to start selling your handmade goods, who had told you how much they’d enjoyed the things you’d made for fundraisers over the years. And it was the Daughters, so many now spread throughout the galaxy, who’d helped you leave Ferrix and find a place on Gatalenta. Who’d told you that Brasso would find you when the war was over, because surely someone knew where he was, even if it wasn’t safe for you to know yet.

In the hallway, Brasso hands you the keyfob. There’s a year etched on the back and it is indeed before you’d met Brasso, but you’d been in town then. Back after finishing your degree, trying to feel out what was next. You’d made jogun fruit jam that year for the festival these pictures were taken at. And you’d only been at the stall for a few hours each day, but in the background of one of the pictures, there you were.

“Brasso,” you say. “That’s me.”

“No kidding,” he says, zooming in. “Beautiful as ever.”

“You can barely see me.”

“I can see enough.” Brasso kisses your forehead, his lips soft and warm on your skin. “Let me get you back to bed, darling. Enough of my troubles for the night. I never should have woken you in the first place.”

“You didn’t wake me,” you remind him.

But he has your hand in his and is leading you back down the hallway to the bedroom, the keyfob left behind.

There were a lot of things you loved about Ferrix, but the time grappler had never been one of them. He was a nice enough man, and you didn’t have any quarrel with him personally. But you’d never been a morning person. And nothing about Ferrix was going to change that. You’d occasionally pick up a morning shift at the café where you worked if someone called out and they needed help. But other than that? You needed the rest. So you jammed a pillow over your head while the time grappler struck the beskar steel in the tower at the start of each day until you could go back to sleep.

You’d known Brasso for a few years when he showed up with a basket of fruit a few hours after dawn, banging on your door like the galaxy was collapsing. You crawled out of bed and put on a robe, sure that there was some kind of maintenance emergency in the building.. But when you opened the door, it was Brasso, all two meters of him with a desperate look on his face. And…the fruit.

“What’s wrong?” you asked, the annoyed tone in your voice unmistakable.

“Thank the stars,” he said, pulling you into his arms. “You’re all right.”

“Shouldn’t I be?”

“Someone opened fire at the market this morning. Not even from here…at least nobody I can think of matches his description. Someone called Morlana-1. Corpos showed up and all they managed to do is chase him to the café.”

You knew without asking that he meant your café, and at the word of corpos, you stepped back to let Brasso in. His cheeks were rosy from the early morning cold, his eyes bright, and his work clothes were crisp and tidy before a long day at the salvage yard.

“Is anyone hurt?” you asked.

“There were some injuries at the market,” Brasso said, running a hand through his hair. “But the café…we don’t know yet. They won’t let anyone near the building. I came to see you as soon as I heard.”

You didn’t live far from your work—just a few blocks. And as all of the information you were receiving began to solidify in your brain you felt your nervous system kick into high gear. You tried to steady your breathing as you asked, “What’s with the fruit?”

“The Daughters dropped this off for my mum the other night. But you know how she’s allergic to meilooruns—won’t eat anything that’s touched them out of precaution. I thought I’d leave it for you on my way to work…and then someone commed me about all this…I’m just so glad you’re safe, love.”

This was the first time he’d ever used that term of endearment with you, and you weren’t sure what to make of it, but it warmed something inside of you that you knew you’d never shake, even as you felt yourself giving way to panic.

Brasso pulled you close again. “Hey,” he said. “I’ve got you.”.

It’s all you needed to hear.

“I know you don’t do mornings. I’m so sorry to wake you…I just…they don’t have the guy in custody yet. Do you mind if I stick around for a bit? You don’t carry a blaster and…”

“I’ll make us some caf,” you say, turning toward your little kitchen.

“No,” he said, his hands steady on your shoulders. “You sit down. I’ve thrown off your day, the least I can do is make you breakfast.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

“Unless you want to go back to sleep. I can leave if—”

“No,” you said, your breath shaky. And, when he took your hand in his, it felt so right that for a moment you forgot that everything about this morning was unusual. “Stay,” you said. “Please.”

“All right,” he said, his eyes searching yours for something neither of you seemed to quite grasp.

You snapped out of your haze and went to get yourself cleaned up and dressed, allowing yourself in your sleepiness to think thoughts about this man, your closest friend, that normally you pushed away. He was right there, after all. In your kitchen. If you let yourself feel what you felt, if it came burbling out of you in a groggy delirium…you couldn’t bear the thought of anything changing between you. Of losing this closeness. Because somehow it hadn’t occurred to you that he felt those feelings about you, too.

You wake to the sound of clattering in the kitchen, a string of curses on Brasso’s tongue. There’s not a lot that can get you out of bed quickly but, after last night, you’re a little worried that he’s not just upset about a broken dish.

You slip into a robe and hurry into the kitchen where you find your husband sweeping up broken glass.

“It’s early, love,” he says when he sees you. “You can go back to sleep.”

“No, I can’t,” you say. “Some anniversaries you just feel in your bones. This is one of those for you.”

Brasso is washing his hands. You can’t tell if he’s ignoring you or if he just doesn’t know what to say.

“Brass?”

“I don’t know why it’s hitting me like this,” he says. “It’s been so long.”

“You told me last night you heard from Wilmon. Is he all right?”

“He is.”

Brasso drops a towel on the counter and you take his hand. You’ve both had more than your fair share of grief. Grief for loved ones lost. For futures that could never be. For safe places that would never feel safe again. And with the Imperial occupation of Ferrix you lost your home as you knew it. But you’d moved there as a teenager. You didn’t have generations of history there like Brasso did. His roots there were different. And when he chose to stay on Gatalenta, it was partly because could never go back to the place he left—not for more than a visit. Because too much had changed for it to feel like home for him.

“Let me make us some caf,” you say.

“Nonsense,” he says. “I’ve spoiled your sleep again, I’ll just—

“Brasso.”

“Okay,” he says, taking a seat at the kitchen table. “I hear you.”

He’s always been the kind of man who takes care of everyone else and struggles to let others take care of him. It’s not that he doesn’t know how to ask for help, it’s that he doesn’t want to burden anyone. Even after all this time, he hesitates to tell you when something is wrong that he thinks he can handle on his own. You usually figure it out anyway, and he usually gives in to your care. But it hasn’t always been easy.

As you grind the caf beans—a blend he’d picked up at the market last week—you think of all those afternoons after you’d first met, when he’d turn up at the cafe on his break. It had been the best part of your day. You’d later learn that he’d been pretty loyal to a caf bar closer to his place until the day he stopped in on his lunch one afternoon and recognized you, the person he’d helped with the spilled groceries just a week or so before. Soon, he was a staple, falling into an easy routine with you. The two of you started taking your breaks together, soon becoming so close that it seemed like you’d always known each other. The first time he walked you home, on a night when the end of your shifts coincided, you had a feeling that maybe—just maybe—when you got to your apartment he was going to kiss you. But the moment passed. And you let yourself push the thought of a romance with Brasso to the back of your mind for the first time.

When you put a cup of caf in front of Brasso today, he takes your hand, bringing it to his lips for a kiss.

“Tell me what you need,” you say.

“Just sit with me, love,” he says. “All I need is you.”

Brasso was the kind of man who didn’t know how not to be busy. He’d been in your apartment for all of ten minutes before he’d sliced up some of the fruit to go with eggs and toast for breakfast. You’d known him long enough to know that this was just what he did. When he was upset, he took care of other people. So you should have known that when you’d sleepily mentioned that your refresher sink had been leaking that he was going to have to try and fix it. Now, a few hours later, he was in there with the tools he’d meant to take to work before the trajectory of his day had changed, leading him to you instead.

“You don’t have to do this,” you told him. “I can call the building manager and have him come take care of it.”

“It’s a simple fix,” he said. “I’m almost done.”

It was noon. Word was out that the scene had been cleared at the cafe, luckily with only some minor injuries. But nobody wanted to go out while the corpos were still around. And Brasso hadn’t said anything but you could tell he didn’t want to leave you by yourself either. Ferrix had always watched out for their own, and there was no telling what these off-planet police might do while they were here. Who they might bother. They didn’t know Ferrix and they didn’t like it any more than it liked them. So the streets had emptied. Places of business were closed. And Brasso was still with you.

“Finished,” Brasso called out from the refresher. “Good as…well as good as it was when you moved in here at least,” he said.

Not a lot on Ferrix was brand new. You liked this about your home. When you first came to Ferrix, you hadn’t known what to make of it. But now—now you felt there was something cozy about it. It was comforting to think about all the lives that had touched everything here.

You smiled as you heard Brasso taking off his tool belt and putting it with his boots by the door. When he came to sit with you, he’d unzipped the top of his coveralls and tied the arms around his waist, the black tanktop underneath accentuating the muscle of his chest, his broad, freckled shoulders. His hair was a bit mussed, and you fought the urge to reach out and touch it, to smooth it back in place.

He noticed.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” you said. “I zoned out for a moment. Probably just tired.”

“Things are changing around here,” he said. “It’s setting people on edge. I can’t remember the last time I had a day where I just felt at peace. Where things felt normal.”

“I wish there was something more I could do.”

“You’re here. That’s peace enough for me today.”

You yawned then, and he put his arm around you.

“Come here,” he said, grabbing the knit blanket you kept thrown over the back of your couch. “Close your eyes. Just rest.”

So you did. You let yourself relish in that closeness, in his clean, familiar scent, the secure warmth of his strong arms, the steady rhythm of his heart. It wasn’t the first time you’d fallen asleep in his arms. And you did still wonder, sometimes, if there was something there that neither of you dared to speak about. But you had seen Brasso’s affection with other friends as well. And, at the end of the day, you were grateful for what you had with him, even if it wasn’t quite what you wanted. He made you feel safe, even on days like this, and given the state of the galaxy, that was a considerable feat.

“Would you want to go out today?” Brasso asks.

He’s just woken up from a nap, and he’s wandered out of the bedroom looking delightfully mussed in his favorite pair of sweatpants. You’ll never get used to the fact, even after all this time, that this beautiful man has chosen to spend the rest of his life with you. You’d been answering holomail, but you put down your datapad, ready to do what you can to ease your partner’s stress.

“Are you up for it?” you ask. “There’s that food festival downtown, you know. In the park by the spires. I wasn’t sure if you’d want to go.”

“That sounds nice.” He sits on the sofa next to you, still rubbing the sleep from his eyes. “I think I need some fresh air.”

“I think you do, too.”

You smooth his hair away from his face. Even as you say this, a part of you wants to just sit here like this all afternoon, resting your head on his chest, tracing the lines of the tattoos he collected in his travels, before he came home to you. A part of you wants to just stay here, like this, for the rest of the day. Still, you tell him to go get dressed, that you’ll be ready to go when he is.

Soon you’re in the park, a soft blanket laid out over the grass beneath you, paper containers of hot treats waiting to be opened—things from a few different food carts, because neither of you could choose.

“Now this,” Brasso says to you, “this is something I want to remember.”

“Hm?” You’re trying to open a bottle of a fizzy drink you hadn’t seen here before.

“Love,” Brasso says, one finger under your chin as he eases your face toward his. “Today is the day I first met you. Did you know that?”

You have to admit you didn’t remember the date. But he isn’t the kind of person to be upset over that. He knows his memory is better than most, and that you have a tendency to forget anything you don’t write down.

Still, you say, “I’m sorry,”

He smiles, leans in to touch his nose to yours. “No need,” he says.

There was a time when you never could have imagined Brasso would be the type to kiss you this way, out in the open for everyone to see. But whatever part of him that maybe had been too bashful for that kind of intimacy was gone with the war. With all the years he couldn’t hold you or kiss you at all. And under the bright sun he pulls you toward him, bringing your legs over his lap as he leans in to kiss your forehead, and then your nose, and then your lips, a kiss rich with devotion as he cradles your cheek in one of his big, rough hands.

You reach for his face, caressing the scruff of his short beard before threading your fingers through his hair, now collar-length, the silver strands catching the light. He still doesn’t believe you when you tell him you’ve never seen anyone more beautiful than him. But you’ll never get tired of telling him this, of telling him that from that day you met him there was nobody else in the galaxy who stood a chance to win your affections.

Today, you tell him: “I love you, you know. So much.”

“I know,” he says, a sparkle in his hazel eyes. “I can remember these things for the both of us.”

He kisses you again, a bit deeper, lingering, and you whisper, your lips brushing the shell of his ear, “People are staring.”

He laughs, running his fingers softly over your jaw before his hand comes to rest at the nape of your neck. “Let them,” he says.

And so you do, letting yourself enjoy this closeness as a warm breeze comes through the park, the sky in this moment seemingly full of possibilities, his kiss an infinite canvas for you to complete. You make a note of the date, and think to yourself that you won’t forget this time. You couldn’t possibly forget an afternoon like this.

★★★★★★★★

Hopefully it won't be so long between fics next time, but I hope you enjoyed this! Thank you for reading! I hope this fic made you feel seen and loved.

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butternuggets-blog · 1 year

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Paw Patrol

Fluff/Humour, SAS Rogue Heroes Werewolf AU

Gender Neutral Reader

Outside, Cairo sweltered through the start of a blisteringly hot morning, but inside the hotel it was deceptively cool. ____ yawned and stretched; after a difficult month of sand, sweat and blood, it was nice to be able to relax and take things slow.

____ looked up as Corporal Heaney came sprinting through the hotel lobby into the dining room, weaving around guests and tables until he came to a stop in front of ____.

'What happened? What's wrong?'

'Noth-nothing's wrong, I just-' Heaney paused for air, 'Could you look after the little guy for us? Just for a short time?'

'What-oooohh!'

Tucked into the crook of Heaney's arm was a fluffy, bright-eyed white puppy. Its long ears perked up at ____'s coo, and it started wagging its tail excitedly.

'His name is David' Heaney handed him over and the puppy immediately launched himself at ____, licking them all over their face.

'I've got to go'

'Heaney, wait, does he have allergies-'

Heaney was already making his way back out the door.

'Who does he belong to?!'

'SAS!' he yelled over his shoulder, and disappeared out of sight.

____ sighed and stared at the puppy. 'What am I going to do with you, huh? What-am-I-gonna-do-with-you?!'

The puppy cocked it's head, and licked ____'s face all over, again.

________________________________________________________________

After breakfast ("No, you cannot eat my food! Noo! ...okay, just the scraps"), ____ waited patiently as the clock ticked on.

After an hour, ____ took their new companion on a trip to the alley outside to go toilet. The hotel clerk had conjured up a leash from somewhere and after distracting David with a belly rub, ____ managed to attach it without much fuss.

____ glanced at their watch, and sighed, as David cocked his leg against the alley wall. 'It's almost been two hours now. I don't think they're coming back for you, are they?'

David yipped quietly, finished peeing, and waddled back to ____.

____ scratched David's chin; the puppy whined and leaned into it, closing his eyes and letting his tongue loll out the side of his mouth.

'I wanted to go sight seeing today... would you like to come sight seeing with me, huh? Huh? Would-ya?'

David yipped again, loudly, and took off towards the street. Before he had gone a handful of steps his paws got tangled up in each other and he face-planted into the dirt.

'Oh no! Oh, baby, are you ok?!' ____ rushed over but David was already staggering to his feet, shaking his head and sneezing the sand and dust out of his nose.

'Oh, poor baby!' ____ laughed and scooped David into their arms, giving him a cuddle and a kiss on the forehead. The puppy's fur really was soft; wispy and thick, with a strong musky scent.

'There you go' ____ set David back down and gave a gentle tug on the leash. 'Off we go!'

________________________________________________________________

David was irregularly unsteady on his feet, so after much slowing down and speeding up it became easier for ____ to simply carry him.

____ stopped a few times to chat with friends, as David bounced around their feet, being adorable. Once or twice ____ had to pull him back before he followed an intriguing scent out into traffic, but on the whole he was very well-behaved.

They wandered around the markets; ____ bought a camera and a roll of film, and a red fez a street vendor had ordered for their pet monkey and had never come back to collect. They drifted through a museum, and an art gallery, and went outside the city limits to squat between the paws of the Great Sphinx, gazing up at the sunset as they ate sandwiches together for dinner.

On their way back to the hotel they passed a group of soldiers who insisted on taking photographs of David posing in front of their jeep. After being swamped beneath a collection of oversized berets, helmets and caps, a thoroughly tired David gave everyone one last lick goodbye before dozing off in ____'s arms.

Muffled shouting rent the evening air as they turned onto the main thoroughfare. Peering across the street into the hotel lobby, ____ could see the rest of their squad - Freeman, Yates, Cunningham, Willoughby, Richards, Kent and Heaney - lined up in front of the reception desk while Captain Anderson loomed over them, screaming himself hoarse.

'-UTTERLY IRRESPONSIBLE!! WHEN SOMEBODY CHARGES YOU WITH LOOKING AFTER THEIR MASCOT, YOU DO NOT PASS THE RESPONSIBILITY ALONG BECAUSE IT IS INCONVENIENT TO YOU!! I OUGHT TO LET MAYNE SORT YOU OUT!!'

Anderson hooked a thumb towards a feral-looking blonde man being held back by four other soldiers. ____ shook their head and walked in.

'WHERE THE BLOODY HELL IS THE DOG??!!'

Author's Notes

'Here sir' ____ gently soothed David back to sleep as the puppy stirred from the noise. The soldiers released Mayne, who immediately strode over, arms out.

'We went out sight-seeing; I did leave a note' ____ rocked David into Mayne's arms and unclipped the leash from David's collar.

'He's been very well-behaved all day. He's had plenty of water and lots of food, oh, and this is his-' ____ pushed the tiny fez into Mayne's breast pocket.

'Thanks for taking care of him' Mayne rumbled, calmer now he was cradling the squad mascot.

____ smiled, and gave a sharp salute.

'Any time.'

Thank you Lt_Aldo_Raine for the names 😄

#sas rogue heroes #x reader #gender neutral insert #gender neutral reader #paddy mayne #werewolf au

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obsessivevoidkitten · 5 months

Text

Heroes To Villains

DILF Yandere Superheroes x Gender Neutral Superhero Reader CW: Noncon, imprisonment, minor violence, gratuitous amount of firearms, super powers, super soldiers, spitroasting, general yandere behavior, bratty reader Word Count: 3.8k (I am sorry this took a bit for me to get to, only took a few hours to write though. I hope you guys love it. Feel free to tip if you do~)

The city you were stationed in was under attack by some fairly destructive super villains. They were either traitors born of the same government program that had produced you and the other super soldiers you worked with or they were sent by another country to attack the retired super agents of your country. Though it was also possible they were a rogue foreigner with a vendetta. All the people making up your squad had been in the military and had made significant enemies.

Their goals did not really matter so much at the moment. It was more important that they were defeated before they caused any casualties.

There were two of them. One of them with an ability to lash out with streams of fire and smoke and another that could jump up really fast and high before slamming down and causing a large explosion on impact.

They were no match for you and your comrades. Red and Ace had handled much worse threats than these two with ease. Ace had been a top pilot before undergoing medical experimentation that left him with angel-like wings and the ability to shoot energy blasts from his hands. The man was like a living B-52. And Red was basically a human tank. Very little could so much as scratch his skin and he had tremendous physical strength.

Both of them had soared through the ranks and had distinguished themselves as competent generals in the last great war. Now they were retired and used their abilities as super soldiers to become heroes and protect the capital from the strange threats that had been unleashed during war time. Mostly the occasional villain. Sometimes a mutant animal.

You had just been a simple medic. Nothing too fancy, but you had hesitantly taken the opportunity to go through experiments that would allow you to heal others much more effectively and without the need for invasive surgery. Most of the super soldiers gained a unique ability and also became more resilient to damage and agile.

And you had gotten those perks too, but not to the degree as everyone else. Though you had gotten an extra ability that most people lacked. Hyper accurate aim with long distance weapons. But you also suffered a drawback when compared to your peers. You got exhausted easily, having very little stamina.

Who could forget the time you had saved the city by firing the railroad gun at the giant robot that used mutated biological components in its construction? Firing a 19,000 pound shell and obliterating an entire giant robot with one perfectly executed shot had been amazing.

You longed for that kind of usefulness again. But currently you were a bit bored, as a long range support unit you frequently hung back a bit. Red and Ace normally cleared everything up themselves without having need of your abilities.

Ace had plucked the hopper from the sky and injected him with a serum that would knock him out cold until he could be taken into custody where his abilities would be removed completely, if they could be. Red had similarly taken out the fire user who had discovered that his searing flames did little more than make Red sweat a bit.

They regrouped together before they started walking back to you, each carrying the limp weight of an unconscious enemy on their shoulders. It would be a few minutes before they got to the rendezvous.

You heard the gruff voice of Red on your comm line.

“We got em’ On our way back now.”

“Affirma-”

You were cut off by a sudden shift underground followed by a woman jumping up from the earth below you and punching you hard enough to launch you several feet.

There had been a third and they had split up to take you on individually.

As you fell through the air you took out your side arm and fired every round in rapid succession. Each one aimed for her heart. Each one hit their mark. But when you hit the ground you had smacked your head pretty hard and the world faded to black.

You woke up in a medical bed in the basement of your headquarters. You were quite dizzy and you felt like you were certainly going to vomit.

You held your hands to your head and your palms flashed.

Much better. If you hadn’t been knocked out you would have simply been able to heal whatever injuries you had sustained in a flash. Oh well you were better now.

Ace walked in to check on you right as you had been getting up. He burst into a smile at seeing you awake. His blue eyes full of joy.

“Hey runt! Glad to see that you’re getting up and about!”

“Who’s a runt!?”

He flexed his biceps to drive the point in.

“Red, get in here, The runt is up!”

You heard his loud steps reverberate upstairs as he bounded towards the basement door and came rushing down.

“It’s been five days, we were beginning to really worry about you, squirt.”

He was smiling but you could tell his red eyes held a lot of concern in them. It seemed like there was something he wanted to say but didn’t know how.

“Well, no need to worry. I am not as fragile as a regular person. And I am fully healed now.”

“Yeah… but you weren’t hit by a normal person. And you aren’t as durable as most of us…”

That was Ace.

“Yeah, yeah, I will be more careful, okay? I know my limits. I don’t need a lecture. I took the enemy down and I am okay now so we don’t need to linger on it.”

Ace put his hand to his face and his wings quivered in annoyance as they often do when he tries to lecture you and you just won’t have it.

You rolled your eyes and finally Red spoke up.

“This isn’t the first time you have gotten hurt on the field. Even with precautions like staying back you still end up injured!”

“What’s your point? It's a battle, injuries happen. At least I can heal.”

Ugh, an Ace lecture you were used to. You didn’t need both of them nagging at you.

You rolled your eyes as Red continued.

“Have you ever considered… going into another career? You volunteer at the hospital… maybe you could do that full time?”

That did it.

“Excuse me? I wasn’t in any command position, but I was a trained soldier all the same! I think I can handle myself!”

You stormed away from them and went up the stairs, slamming the door behind you. Assholes. Who were they to tell you what you should consider doing? It was your life and if you wanted to use it fighting genetically enhanced monsters and super-criminals then that was your right to do so.

It would become evident in the future that this incident was where everything started to go wrong. Going forward in battle they always had at least one of them at your side whenever it was physically possible for them to do so.

When you were eventually still injured even with that precaution, even though it was minor, they pressured you again to quit being a hero. They thought maybe you just were too attached to them to leave so they even suggested that you could still be their medic but you would stay on at the base. You could even still operate the railroad rifle that could fire shells from miles away whenever a large foe approached the city.

But you wouldn’t have it. Fuck them. You told them that if you had to form a new squad in a new city then you would do so.

They frantically apologized immediately so they let it go.

It was unfathomable that they would ever allow you to do such a thing. Go off where they couldn’t protect you even a little? Where some inexperienced whelp of a leader would surely get you killed? Not a chance!

But neither could they allow you to remain a front line combatant. Not after the injuries and not with how easily you became fatigued when exerting yourself.

The solution was ugly, but it was what it was. You left them no other option for your own safety.

Though it would make them criminals themselves they had to do it for your own good. They had to keep you here with them where you would be safe and secure. They could turn the base’s AI defenses to keep you here and make sure that you were safe. They could also have it alert them through their comms if you there was any trouble while they were on a mission.

You were laying on your bed with your hands behind your head. You stared at your ceiling and contemplated all that you had been through. The war, seeing comrades on the battlefield ripped apart with no way to save them as they bled out in agony. You had to protect people from that in every way that you could, and if you did die on the battlefield then that was fine by you.

The intrusion of Red and Ace barging into your room out of nowhere pulled you from your thoughts and you regarded them both with a scowl.

“What NOW!? Can’t you guys at least knock? I mean seriousl-”

Ace cut you off with a hand gesture for silence before Red spoke up.

“Listen squirt… we decided something. We can’t allow you to join us on the field anymore…”

“Didn’t you just apologize for saying that after I threatened to leave? Whatever, I am out of here!”

You hopped up to gather your belongings and set out at once, the mere sight of the two heroes making you want to go on a rampage, but Red pushed you back onto the bed, then Ace picked up where Red had left off.

“Well that’s not all, runt. We also decided… you can’t leave here either…”

You started laughing. It had to be some kind of joke. But the tension that filled the room told you otherwise. You looked from Red to Ace and the empty expression from Ace and the guilty one from Red told you that they were deadly serious.

You grabbed your sidearm and launched yourself at Ace, you weaved past Red and twirled yo get behind Ace and held your arm around his neck with your gun aimed at his head. You didn’t speak a word, your intention clear.

There was no way you would be kept here.

You couldn’t go for Red as small arms fire would bounce off of him, but at point blank range Ace was toast. You backed out of the room, pulling Ace along with you. He cooperated fully. Even a pair of overprotective psychos didn’t want their brains blown out.

Out of nowhere a robotic arm emerged from one of the sockets in the walls. It seized your gun and then Ace flipped your positions with him behind you.

They had reprogrammed the defenses of the base to not allow you to have a weapon. These two were not former generals for nothing. They knew how their adversary, you, would react.

You slammed your foot down on Ace’s and smacked your head behind him to hit his nose. Such weak attacks did nothing to dislodge you from his ironclad grasp.

“Stop this childish behavior and just accept things. This is for your own good. If anything this little outburst has proven that you need to be protected because you certainly cannot control your emotions!”

Red was in front of you, still looking at you with that guilty expression.

“I’ll go get your weapons from your room.”

Ace and you watched in the doorway as Red got a sack and rummaged through every single inch of your private space to look for what was now contraband.

“Come on! If you are going to keep me here at least don’t go invading my privacy like this!”

Much to your embarrassment you actually cried a bit as the large man went through all your things.

He started by removing your pistols from your weapon’s display case. Your Beretta M9, your SIG Sauer P320, you… dear god no… not your baby, not your Magnum Research BFR!

You thrashed more as you saw him take that one.

Then he moved on to your bookshelf. He took out your religious text from the shelf.

“Hey, keep your grubby mitts off of that! It’s sacred!”

“Yeah, Red, don’t you think you should focus o-”

He opened it revealing that it had been cut out and housed one of your many sidearms.

“Of course,” Ace said flatly.

When Red finished with all your pistols he moved on to the ones mounted on your wall. Your Mauser M 98, your Browning BLR, and your little Marlin 70PSS.

The rest of the search was much the same. All but one had been found. Red had to get a second bag for them all. The ones in your desk, under your bed, and the one in your mattress.

Well at least they hadn’t found your most precious gun-child…

“Okay I think I got them all. Nowhere else to search. Be truthful, did I miss any?”

You wiped the tears out of your eyes and lied convincingly. You tried to look as defeated as you could.

“No”

Ace moved the two of you out of the way so Red could take your weaponry to the armory. As he started to leave the room he noticed his footsteps sounded odd in one place.

He pressed his large foot down in the spot a few times, narrowing his eyes.

Fuck.

He bent down and realized he could remove the floor board under the rug in that spot.

He found it, the bag unzipped and your M1 Garand joined the rest of your firearms.

“NOOOO!!! That one is my favorite! It PINGS when you use it!”

Now you were truly defeated, they had gotten every single one of them…

“Holy fuck, how many did you need??”

Ace joined in.

“Yeah that’s all a bit… much…”

“If your only offensive power came from guns then you would make sure to have one near you at all times in case of infiltration or emergencies…”

Ace sighed and let you return to your bed in peace. Or what peace could be had in your glorified prison.

Later in the evening they knocked on your door.

“Hey, we made your favorite food for dinner! And made your favorite dessert too…”

That was Red, you could hear the nervousness in his voice. He knew you would hate him now. You ignored them.

“Come on, don't be like this, you have to eat!”

And that was Ace, insisting that not complying with his psychopathic behavior was childish.

You opened the door and took the food tray. Both of them smiled.

“There, see? We can all still get along. We worked very hard on that meal for you!”

You were sure that they had, they were both skilled cooks. You stared at them expressionless and slammed the tray into their faces before slamming the door.

Ace looked furious but Red held him back.

“Come on Ace… they just need to adjust…”

But you refused to adjust. You ate only when they were out of the house. As the days went by you didn’t speak a single solitary word to either of them, you may as well have been a ghost.

Well… it would have been. Had you not been doing your best to make them the two most miserable men on the planet. You destroyed all the toilet paper, clogging every toilet in the base with it, you destroyed the fridge twice, you broke the TV, tore the couch, the robotic arms stopped you, of course, but you could manage to do a bit of damage each time before it stopped you.

Even Red was getting annoyed with your behavior.

They had both tried everything to get you to behave. Punishments ranging from not eating anything but flavorless oatmeal for days to being forced to sleep in a bed with one of them so they could make sure you didn’t cause any destruction while they slept.

Finally they had had enough, things could not continue on like this and it seemed like you may never open your eyes and see that they were just trying to keep you safe. Without them you’d have ran right into the jaws of danger.

They discussed it among themselves and had one more idea. You needed to feel loved in every possible way. They loved you so much after all, that’s what all this had been about, to protect you because they cared for you. But clearly they needed to step things up a notch or ten.

When they came home that day they barged into your room and grabbed you, taking you kicking and screaming into one of the many spare rooms the base had.

They had outfitted it with a huge bed, the walls painted your favorite color, fresh roses filled a heart shaped vase on the nightstand.

“Let go of me! What did you drag me here just to give me a newer bigger room? A prison is still a prison…”

“It’s going to be…” Red started.

“Our love… nest…” Ace finished, blush evident on his face.

“No thanks. Fucking weirdos.”

“Come on, sex is known to alleviate one’s mood!”

“Yeah, just give it a chance”

Ace smashed his lips into yours and kissed you deeply, you looked at him stunned.

They were serious… You wanted to wretch… Fervently you struggled, trying to get out of Red’s grip but he handed you off to Ace who wrapped his wing around you and led you to the bed.

They took your clothing off before moving on to your own. All of you had scars due to combat and training, and you had seen them nude in the showers before, but this was different. For the first time you felt vulnerable and scared under their combined gaze.

You covered your genitals but they each removed and held one arm so they could appreciate the view. “Come on, don’t be like that. Nothing we haven’t seen before,” Ace whispered as he spread your legs apart.

“Red, did you bring the lube?”

“Yeah, right here.”

Red opened a bottle and lathered both of their growing cocks so that they were drenched with the stuff and then pressed some to your hole and massaged it in. They had no intention of letting this be a painful experience for you. They wanted to show how much they cared about you.

You tried to clench. To close yourself off from them. But the probing fingers would not be denied. You squirmed uncomfortably at the sensation of cold lube being worked into you.

“Try to relax, it will be much better if you embrace us.”

“FUCK YO-”

Red cut you off with a kiss. You tried to bite his tongue but his tongue was no more vulnerable than the rest of his body.

Two sets of hand roamed and pet, and groped your body. Gently caressing you as Red made out with you. When they felt as if they had explored every part of your body they flipped you on to your belly, with Red on his knees in front of you. His crotch level with your face.

Ace was behind you on his knees between your legs, holding them still as he wedged himself closer to your entrance, until the tip of his cock was kissing it.

You couldn’t kick because he had control of your legs. You couldn’t punch because Red had your arms pinned. Now they just had to plug your bratty mouth and you wouldn’t have any means of protest. Verbal or otherwise.

They knew you’d try to bite so Red took your mouth, claiming it with his cock. You tried to move and turn away but once Ace sank his cock into your sensitive depths you gasped in surprise so Red took the chance to put his cock in your soft mouth. He did not go in balls deep, neither of them had yet. They wanted you to enjoy it. To relax. Not worry about being hurt or gagged.

Red humped into your mouth carefully and slowly while Ace did the same behind you.

“Damn, for someone so opposed to it you fit me so well.”

Then Ace added, “Your mouth feels amazing babe. He used his thumb to draw lazy circles into your arms where he held them down. He sighed in pleasure when he felt the pleasured moans Ace was coaxing out of you. Much to your dismay.

But you couldn’t deny that it felt nice. Your body relaxed, just a bit, as the men slowly bred a bit of the stress you had been under out of it.

Now that it seemed that you were enjoying yourself, even though reluctantly, Ace decided he could speed up just a bit, rolling his hips as his cock dug further into you.

Red was going a bit faster too now that you had acclimated and stopped trying to resist so hard. He let your arms go, sure that you had finally realized how silly fighting was. The large man stroked your cheek as he continued thrusting into those sweet lips.

Ace was the first to cum, his wings outstretching fully and deep voice gasping as his large nuts filled you with wave after wave of his seed. His large cock twitched inside of you, pushing you over the edge and into your own orgasm.

Feeling all your muffled cries of pleasure right in his prick caused Red to start cumming. He pulled out, not wanting to choke you on his copious amount of semen that he knew all super soldiers produced in spades, instead cumming all over your face.

Ace pulled out of you and was the first to speak.

“There, that wasn’t so bad, was it?”

You didn’t respond, you were still panting from the workout you had just received. You didn’t protest when Ace pulled you into his lap and held you with your head nestled into his chest. Your head laying right on his hawk tattoo. You didn’t protest when red scooted beside him and kissed you tenderly on the forehead. You even let them clean you up and feed you your favorite meal that they diligently cooked for you while you waited politely on the couch. They figured your resistance to them before was just because you had needs that weren’t getting met.

And from that day forward they knew that anytime you got too snarky or rebellious all they had to do was make time to fuck the brattiness out of you.

#yandere x reader #yandere boyfriends #male yanderes x reader #yandere men #yandere #yandere superheroes #gender neutral reader #male yanderes x gender neutral reader #My OCs #My OC Red #My OC Ace #Military Yandere

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augustslippedavvay · 1 year

Text

like real people do (eddie munson)

summary: you’ve known eddie for a few months now, but nearly every day you discover something new about him that breaks your heart and makes you desperate for him to know how much you care for him.

author’s note: eddie deserves soft and sweet and gentle love he deserves to be held and to feel loved and to be cared for and to know a life outside of the cruel world he was born into and i intend to give that to him one ~1.5k word fic at a time

pairing: eddie munson x reader (this one is gender neutral - no gendered terms used!!) word count: 1.4k warnings: hmmmmmm none

“Eddie?”

“Hmm?”

The two of you have been lounging in bed in his shoebox studio apartment all afternoon, passing a couple of blunts back and forth and shooting the shit. You had curled up onto your side, facing him, only twenty minutes ago, and haven’t shifted since, transfixed by the way his profile – his beautiful, beautiful profile – moves, the way his smile reaches his eyes, the way his Adam’s apple dips, as he talks. Talks about music, and movies, and maybe going to the lake for the weekend, or to the city to check out a new record shop one of his buddies had told him about, and he doesn’t give you the chance to interject, but it’s alright, because he’s so pretty, and you think you’re starting to fall in love with him. So you’re alright with listening to him talk.

“What were you like in high school?”

Eddie turns to face you, a slow smile spreading across his face. His hair tickles your nose, fanned across the pillow beneath the both of you, and you edge your face just that much closer to his.

“You wanna know?”

You nod and he hums, shifting onto his side, bringing one hand up and underneath his cheek to prop his head up. It’s easier for him to look at you this way.

“I…I used to, um…”

You look at Eddie expectantly as he trails off, his chest stuttering on an inhale, his lips twitching into a grin.

“Do you know what Dungeons & Dragons is?”

There’s a moment’s pause before you start giggling. Hurt flashes across Eddie’s face and you put a hand onto his chest, shaking your head as he asks, “What? What’s so funny?”

“No, no, I’m sorry,” you laugh, “I’m not laughing at you. It’s just – I used to play D&D in high school, too.”

“What?!” Eddie sits up abruptly, your hand falling from his chest onto the bed. You roll onto your back so you can look up at him and nod. He prods your side and you giggle, smacking his hand. “You what? How has this never come up before?”

You shrug, hiding your sheepish face behind the palms of your hands. “Didn’t want you to think I was a nerd.”

“Baby,” Eddie whines and pries your hands back from your face. “I like nerds!”

“I know that now!”

“We’re discussing this later. You played a rogue, didn’t you? Or maybe a ranger. You little sneak.”

You grin and he snaps. “Fucking knew it. I know my baby. Remind me to circle back to this.”

Eddie laughs and you join back in, the two of you giggling like children. Eddie falls back down onto the bed beside you, curling onto his side and laughing into your neck, before he palms your cheek and turns you to face him again, your body following your head, your mouths inches apart. Your stomach aches in the best way and you pant against his lips, his eyes trained on you.

“No, but seriously,” you breathe, carding your fingers gently through his hair. He leans forward and kisses the end of your nose. “What were you like? Wanna know.”

Eddie shrugs. “I was a nerd. An outcast. A freak, or whatever. I played D&D and listened to loud music and lived in the trailer park on the edge of town with my uncle, so people thought I was plotting to kill them and unleash the power of Satan unto Hawkins. Which, for the record, I was.”

You laugh, but you can tell that he’s deflecting because the subject is painful for him, uncomfortable. You run your thumb over his cheek and smile when he sighs against your mouth.

“I don’t know. I was just some guy, you know?”

You shake your head in disbelief. Some guy. “I would’ve had the biggest crush on you, you loser.”

Eddie’s mouth gapes slightly, the apples of his cheeks rosing. “What? What do you mean?”

“Okay, well, first of all: you’re a total fucking smoke show.”

This invokes a guttural reaction from him that you think might be a combination of Eddie’s versions of embarrassment and desire.

“You listen to all of my favorite bands. You play Dungeons & Dragons, apparently. Those stupid rings you wear, and that vest you cut up and put patches all over –”

“You think my rings are stupid?”

“Munson,” you huff, smacking him playfully, no heart behind it, on the chest. “I would’ve been so hopelessly in love with you.”

“Yeah?” The sound of his voice tells you this is perking him up.

“Yeah,” you say, biting your lip, running your fingers along the bare skin that’s peeking out from under his tee shirt where it’s ridden up. “You would have looked at me from across the cafeteria and I would have melted into a puddle right on the floor. Like, if we had any classes together and you ever asked me to borrow a pencil? Or if you had a question about the homework? I’d have been done for. I mean, I don’t think I ever would’ve done anything about it…but I would’ve crushed on you so goddamn hard.”

Eddie has this giant, giddy grin on his face, and you can’t decide if you want to kiss or smother it from his face. “Why wouldn’t you have done anything about it?”

“I was a loser, too, Eddie,” you laugh, squeezing his cheeks. “People thought I was a freak. We would’ve been the same brand of freak, sure, but I didn’t have any courage in high school. I never would have thought about asking you out, because I would have assumed you’d turn me down.”

He considers this for a second. “I wouldn’t have turned you down.”

“Once again, I know that now, duh.”

Eddie has one hand on your neck, his thumb stroking the length of your jaw. He watches your face for a second, then murmurs, “Do you think we would have been friends?”

“Maybe?”

“Why only maybe?”

“I dunno,” you whisper. “You’re so…outgoing. And I’m a lot different now than I was in high school, but I was so shy.”

“That’s cute,” he says, surveying you with pursed lips, and you roll your eyes. “Well, you’d have been in Hellfire, right? In this hypothetical scenario where we went to high school together. That was the D&D club at Hawkins. You’d have joined?”

“God, if you were Dungeon Master, Eddie, I’d have…I don’t think I ever would have been able to pay attention. You would have…”

Eddie laughs at you as you trail off, running his hand your side down to squeeze your hip. “Yeah? You’d have had a crush on your Dungeon Master, is that it?”

You roll your eyes, but you don’t tell him he’s wrong.

“That’s frowned upon, you know,” he jokes, cupping the back of your thigh and pulling it up and over his.

“That’s why you wouldn’t have known!”

Eddie smirks at you, something unspoken passing between the two of you, and you know that no matter whether you’d said anything or not, he would have known. He’s been able to read you from the jump - from the moment you’ve met, there’s never been anything that you’ve felt that he hasn’t picked up on.

“I’m glad you’re here with me, now. I’m sorry high school sucked for you, baby.”

Eddie shrugs again, but you shake your head and tuck yourself into him, push one hand underneath his torso so he has to shift closer to you, too. He lays his head against your chest and lets you start to run your fingers through his hair.

“It sounds like none of those people really knew you. That’s what it sounds like to me.”

Again, you get nonchalance in response. You worry you’re about to cross a line, to overstep some unspoken boundary - you have only been seeing one another a couple of months, after all – but you feel Eddie squeeze you tighter when you try to pull back even a little bit.

“You’re allowed to be mad about it, Eddie. At the people who made everything miserable for you.”

“It wasn’t all miserable,” he murmurs into your neck.

“No?”

“No.” Eddie sighs. “I had the Hellfire Club. And my band. And my uncle.”

“Tell me about them, then.”

He grins against the skin of your neck, and you close your eyes as he starts to tell you about all of the reasons he would have stayed in Hawkins. You can’t help but feel glad he decided to get out.

#eddie munson #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson fluff #eddie munson/reader #eddie munson fic #eddie munson fanfic #eddie munson fanfiction #stranger things #stranger things 4 #eddie munson stranger things #stranger things season 4 #stranger things season four #eddie munson blurb #eddie munson oneshot #eddie munson one shot

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moonlitdesertdreams · 8 months

Text

Downed

A/N: I got the cut scene of Astarion imitating Halsin in the middle of drafting a drabble, and this is the result. Please enjoy. Tags: Baldur's Gate 3, Astarion x Tav, Astarion x OC, Astarion x Half-drow!Reader, gender neutral reader, BG3, TDU!Reader, BG3 Astarion WARNINGS: hallucinations, canon-typical violence. Summary: You get hit by a fear spell while in the Underdark and hallucinate shadows in anticipation of fighting the Shadow Curse, Astarion is angry and it's all Halsin's fault. Apparently.

Word count: 1.6k+

(GIF Credit to @iplann)

All Astarion remembered was seeing you go down.

It was an ambush by two rogue Duergar as you crept through the Underdark. Originally, the pair of you had been on an unimportant quest for you to retrieve some bioluminescent mushrooms to make lanterns; Astarion doesn’t understand the appeal but is also unable to say no to any of your requests.

He regrets being a pushover at that moment, as it’s landed you both in this one.

After you fell, he had lunged across the field and sunk his teeth into the neck of the Duergar casting spells. He refuses to provide the sorcerer a painless death by draining, instead tearing at the flesh with his teeth. A sick gurgling echoes through the grassy hollow you’d been attacked in, and Astarion releases the dwarf. He stumbles for a moment, clutching at the missing area of flesh on his neck before falling face first into the grass.

The other blue-skinned creature freezes at the realization they're fighting a vampire, and Astarion wastes exactly zero time thrusting a rapier directly into her heart.

The vampire instantly changes pace from attack to healing as he dashes towards you and leaves the bodies behind. You’re laid out a few metres away, curled into the fetal position and muttering nonsensical words into the humid air. A putrid green film coats your armor, and Astarion wrinkles his nose at the spell.

“Tav, can you hear me?”

Your eyes find him, familiar but distant and darting about all over the cavern. Astarion recognizes the after effects of a Fear spell, and the Ray of Sickness’ grotesque slime. He was fairly certain the sorcerer had struck you with a bout of sickness while you were paralyzed by fear, hallucinating figures of great evil and unstoppable power.

“...’starion?”

“Fortunately for you, yes.” He quips, trying not to let his voice quiver. “If only I was a Cleric.”

Your eyes search his face, landing quickly on his mouth. Astarion freezes as you tense. “V-Vampire.”

His first instinct is to frown, concealing his fangs from your warped mental state. “All the better to keep you safe. Now come on, we need to make haste back to camp so our resident Cleric-”

You clutch at his collar, a wheeze escaping you. Your frenzied eyes have moved away from his fangs to something in the distance, apparently deciding he was less of a threat. “It’s coming. ‘Starion, please, please, get me out of here.”

Astarion recognizes the delusional panic lacing your voice and chooses to hush you softly instead of turning around. He’s determined not to feed the plague gnawing at your mind, and not to let it invade his. You’re the first thing that’s motivated him, loved him for two centuries and he is terrified to see you in such a state. Every other wound has been bandaged or healed shortly thereafter by Shadowheart, but this is different. He couldn’t cover this with gauze, and nothing in his repertoire includes healing of the mind. Rest and comfort will be the best cure for you.

“It’s a spell, darling.” He coaxes you into looking back at him. “I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”

There’s no stopping the feral gleam in your gaze and Astarion knows you need to get somewhere safe to rest, to be rid of this ailment. He ignores the stink of your gear and scoops you into his arms, immediately angered by the tremors wracking your body. Your arms wrap tight around his statuesque neck and shoulders.

“They’re everywhere.” You whimper into his collar, pointing towards the Duergar’s bodies.

Curiosity gets the best of him. “What’s everywhere?”

“The sh-shadows.” You manage, fingers swiping through half-dried blood on his face. “They’re coming.”

Astarion curses Halsin under his breath. The camp’s talks of making it through the Shadow-Cursed lands had been a hot topic as of late, brought to them by Halsin’s tales of suffocating darkness and misery. It was true you had to navigate through them, but Astarion had his own qualms with wasting their time trying to fix it in order to please the Druid. Especially since said Druid had been eyeing you up as if he were starving each time you saunter across camp.

“There’s too many of your glowing mushrooms here to be any threatening shadows, dear.”

Astarion trudges further into the hollow, finding a small secluded cove to one side. It’s as if the Gods were anticipating someone making a camp out of it - the small opening is no more than a metre wide, and damp lichen hangs in wisps from overhead. Fungi of numerous colors and brightness glow around you both, and there’s a moment of worry that they've stumbled into a transportation circle. The last thing he needs is to be unwittingly thrust to the surface in the Hag’s putrid swamp or a Gnoll’s den. A few fleeting taps with his toes stir no magic in the foliage, and Astarion feels comfortable enough to set you down.

He digs through both your backpacks for supplies, coming up with two bedrolls and enough wood to stack for a half-ass campfire. It takes only a couple minutes to get your outer layer of clothes off and your body settled on a bedroll before Astarion moves onto the fire.

Dancing flames have your rapt attention when they spring up from the wood. “No shadows.”

The child-like tone you carry in your confusion tugs at Astarion’s dead heart. “Correct, my sweet. No shadows here. Just a vampire and a very, very confused monk.”

You seem to settle in between bouts of coughing. Astarion sheds his armor to lessen the smell of sickness and looks through his pack once again, coming up empty for any elixir to remedy your fear. He instead stands to peek out of your makeshift camp, confident that as you settle your condition may improve.

“N-No!” You burst out into a fit as the vampire moves away, one hand clutching his boot. “You can’t leave me here.”

Any intention of looking out is forgotten as you begin to cry. Astarion hushes you like a scared animal, pulling the bed rolls together and joining you on the floor. He indulges you in a rare moment of gentility, pulling you into his side and whispering into your hair. These moments back at camp are rare, saved for when your mates are asleep or out of sight.

It isn’t until you pull away from the crook of his neck that he notices your eyes are sharper, no longer darting about or hazed over with artificial fear. Despite this, tears still leak from them.

“Tav? Are you all right?”

You sniff softly. “I’m so tired, Astarion. And I feel terrified… like something’s watching me. But something in me knows it’s not real.”

He nods, tongue running along his fangs. “Damned sorcerer that ambushed us struck you with a Fear spell.”

“I had a dream that we were near Moonrise Towers.” You flounder for a moment, “There were shadows everywhere.”

“Not a dream, I’m afraid. More a hallucination than anything.” Astarion explains, “A real drag to bring along after the fight, you were.”

His teasing is welcome, chasing away the worst tendrils of darkness licking at your mind. “Cheeky… But I’ve never taken the blow from a Fear spell before. This is awful.”

Astarion can tell your mind is still fearful despite breaking through the confusion, parasite reaching out to his in flashes of white hot panic and terror. Your heart is racing, the ever-so-tempting vein in your neck throbbing in sync. It’s a juxtaposition against your determined face, trying so hard to remain strong.

“Afraid so… I’ll be speaking with Halsin about his persistence in this shadow curse solution. No need for it to plague you like this. Especially seeing as we haven’t even trudged our way through the Underdark yet.” Astarion’s voice is sharp and surprisingly protective.

“Astarion, I do feel obligated-”

“You should feel obligated to do nothing. You already play peacemaker for these morons, no need for them to dump all their hopes and dreams on you. Especially when your mind uses them to terrify you.”

A weak chuckle escapes you, and your fingers toy with the fabric of his undershirt. “I think the effects of the spell were to blame for my terror.”

“The effects of the spell are determined by the worries in your mind. In other words, the man of the forest can take them all elsewhere.”

You snort at his distaste towards Halsin, as it’s not the first time you’ve noticed.

A particularly loud drip of water somewhere in the hollow causes you to jolt into Astarion, adrenaline still coursing like fire through your body. “Gods. How long am I going to feel like a mouse?”

Astarion grips you a little tighter, “Until you rest, most likely.”

“Are you going to meditate?” You ask, curling into his side.

“I’ll be keeping watch. You need to sleep. Heal your mind from this wretched curse.” Astarion’s words are a little too aggressive, his own nervous mind still concerned for your wellbeing above all else.

You’re familiar with the tone, and can only smile softly at the vampire’s inability to express concern without placing blame. Perhaps all this talk of a Shadow Curse had caused you to be plagued by such figures in the depths of the spell, but you don’t place blame on Halsin.

Though, you were certain Astarion would never see it that way.

He’s taken a moment to relax now, laying on his back with an arm behind his head. You’re curled into his side, one leg hooked over his. Astarion’s other hand traces patterns onto yours, lazy circles that lull your mind into a quiet sense of security. The terror subsides ever so slowly, intensity halved while lying in his arms.

“Astarion?”

“Hm?”

“I’m okay, you know.”

A huff answers, and a brief rush of words. “I’m still blaming the Druid.”

“Of course you are.”

_______________________________________

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#Baldur's Gate 3 #Astarion x Tav #Astarion x OC #Astarion x Half-drow!Reader #Astarion x You #gender neutral reader #BG3 #TDU!Reader #Astarion #BG3 Astarion #bg3 astarion x you #astarion ancunin #shadowheart #underdark #duergar #halsin #dnd druid #bg3 halsin #bg3 romance

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forbidden-sunlight · 23 days

Text

Poppy Playtime Project - soft yandere! Catnap x gender-neutral!Protagonist! reader

Hey guys, welcome to this small excerpt featuring one of my favorite mascot horror video games, Poppy Playtime. Special thanks to @semisolidmind for allowing me to use their Survivor!AU concept set in this game.

If anyone would like this to be a two-part series, please let me know via liking this or in the comments section below. So with that being said, sit back, relax, and let's explore the halls of the dilapidated toy factory while questioning our sanity :)

You did not know what compelled you to save Catnap from being killed by the Prototype.

He threw you down the garbage chute and stalked you in the halls of Home Sweet Home. He tortured you through hallucinations caused by the Red Smoke. He tortured Dogday. Everything he did was of his own volition, for the Prototype that he worshiped as a god. To him, you and Dogday were heretics. Yet instead of delivering the final blow that could finish off the last Smiling Critter once and for all, you used the electrical current from the green glove on the Prototype’s skeletal hand to drive him away.

Maybe it was because you were tired of being told who you could and couldn’t save in this place. Or maybe it was your guilt, knowing that through some twisted logic, you were the reason that everyone had disappeared on August 8th, 1995.

Leith Pierre never liked it when one of the company’s successful experiments went rogue, especially when it was in relation to unlocking the secret to slowing down the aging process.

But that was then, and this is now. You had saved Catnap, and there was no going back. You told him to hide, or at least stay out of sight until the Prototype was dead. You knew Dogday wasn’t going to like seeing his worst enemy still alive, but this was not the time to get into a fight. Not when there could be more dangers lurking in the depths of the factory.

You’ll deal with their quarreling once everything is over.

Your truck could fit Kissy and Poppy if they sat in the back seat, maybe Dogday too. He still needed some more patchwork done, but at least using a cauterized needle stitched up his lower half so none of the smaller Smiling Critters could get inside him.

What you didn't realize at the time was that Catnap had begun to question his beliefs in the god he had been worshiping for so long. Why he had poured his heart and soul to the Prototype, giving him everything he asked for and yet received nothing in return for his devotion. Could he, a heretic, find salvation with you in an unknown world beyond the factory’s gates?

Catnap was not sure, but he was determined to follow you wherever you and the others went. A Savior must be protected from heretics. A Savior must be cherished. And a shrine is one of the best ways to show his faithfulness to them, is it not?

#forbidden-sunlight #yandere x reader #yandere #gender neutral reader #poppy playtime 3 #poppy playtime dogday #poppy playtime #poppy playtime catnap #catnap x reader #poppy playtime chapter 3 #catnap #smiling critters #yandere catnap #soft yandere

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sankttealeaf · 8 months

Text

unlocked

pairing ; astarion x (rogue) gender neutral!reader

summary ; a few failed attempts at picking a lock causes you more than enough embarrassment for you, yet Astarion finds it highly amusing.

other info ; based on a true story where my Tav failed 4 times to unlock a door and after switching to Astarion, he does it first try >:( Tav even had a guaranteed 7~11 bonus too. set in act one just as you get into the Underdark. first time writing for him be gentle please :')

warnings ; swearing, a kiss, and suggestive themes in this but nothing too wild!

word count ; 4.1k

The journey down into the Underdark had been tiresome. A few goblins remained at the camp that were hungry for a fight and after spending way too long trying to solve the puzzle in the temple, you were ready to rest. The outpost you found yourself at seemed to be a safe place to set up camp - tall stone walls, a portcullis with a lever on the inside, and whatever those beams of light were that incinerated an angry looking minotaur moments ago. Yes, it would be safer inside here. Everyone else seemed to think so, too.

Gale, Wyll and Karlach began the very important task of searching through the old crates and boxes to check for any edible food, while Shadowheart and Lae'zel took opposite ends to look for anything important that could aid you in your journey - notes, books, signs of life nearby. You decided to check for traps, not entirely trusting that this outpost was as safe as it seemed. It made sense to ask Astarion to join you, the ongoing joke about the two rogues being tasked to scout out everywhere before settling down repeating in your mind, but when you turned to ask for him you found that he was no longer standing behind you. No matter, you thought. You had enough trap disarming kits and lockpicks to keep you company.

The room to your left was bare, with only a few rotted crates and furniture that had seen better days. Lots of moon iconography too, though that was to be expected considering this was an outpost for Selûne. Part of you wanted to go check on Shadowheart and get her opinion on this place - for no reason other than pure curiosity.

You stuck your head out of the room to check to make sure no one had gotten injured or found anything of note down in the main room. Karlach had moved on from checking boxes and was now assessing a few weapons she had found, calling over Lae'zel to check them out as well. Shadowheart stood in front of the large statue, a frown on her face. You couldn't work out what she was thinking and the gentle pressure of your tadpole behind your eye reminded you that you weren't going to know. Not until you asked her in person.

You then spotted Astarion, ever helpful when it came to readying the new spot for camp. He perched on an old granite bench, lazily flipping through a book he had found. You were slightly irked that his attention was elsewhere but it meant that if you found anything interesting around you had first dibs. Darting across the walkway you approach the other gate. This one was locked, rusted and old.

A locked door couldn't keep you out.

You crouched to eye level with the lock, hands instinctively finding where you kept your lockpicks. It should be simple enough - you could pick locks in your sleep. The appearance of the lock was what concerned you, though. Rust had built up over the long years of abandonment and it could prove deadly for your picks if you weren’t careful.

Slowly as to not jam the lock, you began the intricate process of inserting in a pin, moving, waiting, listening for a click. The sound of the pins grinding against iron made you frown, pausing in your attempt to make sure nothing was breaking. With your picks intact, you continued turning.

A loud gasp caused you to flinch, breaking your steady grasp on your picks and hearing the dreaded 'snap' of metal. Shit.

You turned to see what the commotion was - Gale and Wyll stood around an old, rotted burlap sack, a handful of mouldy vegetables laying at their feet. Shadowheart approached them and you heard Gale explaining how an infestation of bugs were eating at an old carrot and it spooked them.

You rolled your eyes at the situation, trying to get back into the groove of it. Breaking a lockpick was bound to happen, it wasn’t that big of a deal. You pull out another pick, ready to try again. Sometimes locks were easy. Sometimes they were bastards to crack. This one was proving to be a pain in your ass as you heard the familiar sound of metal snapping again.

“Shit.” The tip of the pick had broken off and you were now down another. Best of three, you told yourself as you took out another lockpick and hoped to anything that was watching you that this would be the final attempt.

There was an uncomfortable wriggling sensation behind your eye for a moment as you lost focus, the sudden shift in movement from your tadpole causing your guard to go up. And for another one of your lockpicks to break. You’re blaming the tadpole for that one.

"I thought you said you were good at this?" Astarion's voice carried as you turned to look at him, not appreciating how now everyone knew you were failing at the one thing you were around for. It was just a bad streak of luck! The next attempt will be it, you could feel it.

You looked back at the lock. "I am." The scattered remains of old lockpicks said otherwise.

"That's the third lockpick you've broken. I'm starting to wonder if you even know what you're doing." He crouched beside you, a grin on his face. "Perhaps you should leave it to the professionals in future."

You grit your teeth at his comment, pulling out another pick for your fourth attempt. Growing up with dexterous hands and a knack for getting into places you weren't supposed to had prepared you for moments like this. Yet the one time you wanted a quick break the universe cursed you. Maybe it was Selûne looking down and preventing you from entering this room. Had you not wished to be smited by the God in a place dedicated to her you would show her a rather rude gesture right now. If your hands weren't full you would show it to Astarion, too.

The tension wrench felt heavy in your hand as you removed it from the lock, rolling your shoulders in an attempt to loosen up. Astarion hadn't moved, instead taking great joy at seeing you mess up a task you had bragged about being so good at many times before. This wasn't like you. You were quick to blame it on how tired you were feeling. That was it - you were tired. Tiredness, tadpoles, bugs. All excuses no one would believe. And now with Astarion looming over your shoulder watching you as you gently twisted the pick to position, you were determined to not mess this one up.

Your heart pounded in your chest, soon the only thing you could hear as you tried to keep focused on listening for the click of the lock unlocking.

“Are you actually moving it? Or are you hoping it will do the work for you?” Astarion asked, breaking your concentration.

"Be quiet." You shifted in your position and very slowly tilted your hand to the left. Nothing. No click of it opening and no snapping of the pick breaking. It was slow progress, but good progress. The pick was still intact - that’s all you cared about.

You could hear the smug smile as Astarion spoke up again, "All I’m saying is that it’s certainly a choice you're making."

"Hush." You twist it to the right. Still nothing. Maybe it wasn’t you, maybe the lock was the problem? It had to be, you were doing everything right!

“Have you tried--”

Snap.

You took in a deep breath, eyes closed to hold in your frustration at this stupid lock and its stupid inability to open. Was this how Karlach felt before she raged? Maybe you should ask her about it. Once you were calmer, of course. Right now you just wanted to get into this room and find something good and then go to sleep. Gods, you needed some sleep.

“What a shame. Bested by a rusty lock.” Astarion shook his head in feign sorrow, hand over his heart. “How ever are we to move on from this? Whatever shall we do?”

“I don’t see you making an attempt at it,” you mumbled, standing upright and giving the lock a glare as if that would shatter it.

He smiled, head tilted and arms folded. “But it’s already in such capable hands.”

“Do you want to try?” You gestured to the lock, knowing you only had one set of lockpicks left and that he most definitely had a few tucked away in his own bag somewhere. There was a time where you had a slight disagreement over who would be the designated lockpicker but it was decided you would alternate. Or it would be down to whoever found the lock - whichever was first.

“Are you asking for help?” he asked.

"No, I'm offering for you to have a go."

“So you are asking for help.”

You clenched your teeth, avoiding eye contact with him as you willed everything inside of you to utter the words he so desperately wanted to hear. “Will you help me with this lock?”

He held a hand up to his ear and you shook your head, refusing to indulge in this ridiculous game he was attempting to play. “Did you say something, my dear?” he asked, grinning as you crossed your arms over your chest and sighed deeply.

“Astarion, my dear, dear friend. Would you please do me the honours of helping me with this lock, for I simply cannot open it without you,” you deadpanned, though it seemed to be enough for him.

“Of course I’ll help. You only had to ask,” he replied with a gentle applause. “We’ll make an actor out of you yet!” He waved for you to step aside from the door, lockpicks in hand as he stood where you once were and assessed the situation. “I hope you’re taking notes.”

You watched as he got to work, crouching beside him like he did with you as he repeated the actions you were doing moments ago. He wasn’t doing anything different, in fact you noticed he was copying what he saw you doing on your third attempt. You waited for the snapping of metal, but it never came. He furrowed his brows as he leaned closer to the lock, and with one final twist you heard the sound of it unlocking. The lock hung loosely on the gate.

"Was that meant to be difficult?" He stood as the lock then fell to the floor, tucking his lockpicks away in a quick motion. “Honestly, if you wanted me to help you from the start you should’ve said something.”

You stood quickly, bewildered at how easy he made it look. The gate groaned loudly as he pushed it open, giving a grand gesture for you to enter first followed by a wink. If it weren't for the smug look on his face you would have thanked him for it; instead you sulked past him, irritated that he now had something to hang over your head for the next few hours. It was something you noticed he did early on, whether it was because you both had roguish tendencies and there was an unspoken competition between you both, or perhaps he enjoyed being better at something you wanted to do. Either way, you were not about to live this down anytime soon.

The room, now that you were inside, lacked anything interesting in it. A locked door always meant something good was behind it but the more you searched the less you found. Rotten food, old clothes, an old book with pages lost to time. The failed attempts at getting here hardly seemed worth it now. You lit the candles as you went, the warmth from the light putting you at ease. Everything felt a little safer now that you could see. Astarion lingered by the doorway, peering to his right to see what was inside an old crate.

“All that effort for some rotten food…” He nudged a piece of rubble with his foot and you turned, giving him a look.

“At least I was looking around for things,” you said. It was no secret that Astarion found setting up and taking down camp a tedious task - it was no one's preferred job to do but everyone had their role. You had found him on several occasions sweet talking Wyll or Karlach into doing all his heavy lifting, and there was one time you were swept up under his charm and ended up doing his washing up for him. There was one theory that was stuck in your head that he did it because he knew it got under your skin. He had made many comments about how amusing it was to see you irritated at something.

“And you found a room with nothing in it.” He huffed quietly and you turned your back to him to continue your search. There had to be something, why else would this room be locked?

You were about to give up and accept your loss when something caught your eye. Sitting atop a small alcove in the far end of the room was an ornate chest with delicate gold details engraved onto a dark wood. You noticed a keyhole but no key nearby. Of course it's most likely locked. Selûne must be having a field day watching you fail to rob her acolytes of anything worthy.

You caught Astarion's gaze as you moved with a speed only reserved for combat, heading towards the chest. When the lid of the chest didn't move when you tried to lift it up, you grinned. Now was your time to prove yourself. Not that you needed to prove yourself to anyone, especially Astarion, but the irritation of failure was eating away inside of you and you needed to show him you could do the one thing you thought you were good at.

No. You knew you were good at this.

"Are you sure you have it in you, darling?" His voice was low as he approached behind you, looking at the chest. “I would hate for you to break another set of picks.”

You had one set left that was intact. Who knew when you would be able to find another? The odds weren’t stacked in your favour. It was painful for you to do this. You picked up your pride and turned to face Astarion, the smile on his face only added fuel to the fire but you refused to stoop to his level. With a forced politeness you stepped aside, allowing him direct access to the chest.

"By all means, be my guest." You gestured to the lock as he approached, lockpicks in hand again.

"I'm always around for private lessons if you ever need a refresher on how to do this. You'll find I am very good with my hands," he said, repeating a similar motion to what he did at the gate. Your cheeks flushed at the comment and you forced away any images of what a private lesson on lockpicking would look like. For some reason you didn't think there would be much lockpicking involved.

“It’s just a bad streak. I’ll be back on my game in no time,” you mumbled as he hummed in response, pausing to look up at you. “And then you can go back to looking pretty while I do all the hard work.”

“Looking pretty is hard work. Someone has to do it.” He gave you a grin, going back to twisting the picks in different directions to see which would work. You watched him work, eyes darting from his hands to his face and then settling on staring directly at the keyhole. It felt rather intimate to watch him so closely, the way his brows creased in focus or how his head tilted to hear better. Nimble fingers made quick work of the lock, the satisfying click being music to both of your ears.

You were quick to lift open the lid before he could, having been the one to find this after all. Inside was a coin pouch, a few spell scrolls and a couple of gems that looked like they could be worth a lot. Was it worth all the effort? You were hoping for something incredible, but it was better than nothing. Reaching for the coin pouch your hand collided with Astarion’s, who had a similar idea to you.

“Now then, it’s only fair that I take a higher cut. After all I did most of the work here,” he said, taking a hold of your wrist to push your hand away. The cold touch caught you off guard, and though there wasn’t any hostility behind it you wondered what lengths he would go to to get a bigger share of the loot.

You frowned at him, twisting your arm out of his grip in a quick motion. “I found the godsdamn thing! It’s not my fault I had issues with the lock.” Glancing quickly back at the coin pouch, you decided to make another grab for it. Astarion had the same idea - rogues always seemed to think alike, you thought - as you both lunged for the leather pouch. Hands pushed hands away and shoulders tried to push each other away from the chest. A rather strong shove from you caused the chest to fall to the floor with a large clatter, the contents of it spilling out onto the floor in front of you. The shove had also caused Astarion to lose his balance, grabbing onto you as he tumbled backwards to the ground bringing you with him.

You landed on top of him, hitting your head against his shoulder with an uncomfortable groan. The coin pouch had fallen behind where Astarion laid and the spell scrolls fell out and landed elsewhere. There was a moment of silence as you sat up, the positioning of you both causing your cheeks to warm up in embarrassment.

"If this was your plan all along it would have been easier for you to simply say so," he said, leaning on his elbows once you had moved.

"You think I fucked up picking a lock just to try and get us into a compromising position?" you laughed, though it certainly looked that way to an outsider. Astarion sat upright, the both of you now almost flush with each other. You felt his hands rest gently on your hips, fingers digging in ever so slightly.

"Are you certain you don't want me to refresh your memory on the art of lockpicking?" he asked, a hand running up your side. "I'm a very good teacher."

You tried to keep your thoughts from wandering. It was proving difficult as you kept Astarion's gaze, his eyes moving from your own to your lips and back. "I think I'll pass for now. I'm normally good at it, you know this."

"Yet here I am, saving the day," he said with a grin, the annoyed look on your face only adding to his enjoyment at this moment. His hand brushed against your cheek, moving down to lift your chin up slightly. There was something different about all this yet you couldn't place your finger on what it was.

"My hero. However can I repay you?" you asked, not sounding at all interested in repaying him for helping. His eyes looked over your neck, and if you were going to repay him, at least it could be something you had done before. "Did you want to…?" You exposed your neck to him. It came as a shock to you when he shook his head.

"Later, perhaps. I would hate to use up all our fun here and now," he replied, running a finger down the main vein in your neck, the touch barely there. His hand continued downward, stopping at your chest. In another strange shock he laid it atop of your heart as you felt it quicken. It made sense why he would want to feel it, you supposed, but given the circumstances it did throw you off guard.

You placed your hand atop his, feeling the coolness of his skin against yours. The sounds of the others melted away until it felt like it was just you both in the room, hands on top of each other, listening to the rhythm of your heart beat. You wondered what he was thinking as you studied his face, trying to get a hint of his thoughts. His eyes were focused on your hand, and only when you shifted slightly did he blink and look up at you.

"Alright?" you asked softly, giving his hand a very gentle squeeze.

"Perfect," he muttered in response, pulling at the top of your shirt to bring you closer to him.

"This isn't going to give you a bigger cut, you know," you mumbled when you felt your nose bump against his. How quickly things changed between you, you thought. Somehow you always found yourself here, like this, with him. It was like some force was pulling you towards him constantly.

He smiled at you. "Ah, a shame. You foiled my plan." In one quick move, he closed the gap between you both. The kiss was unexpectedly soft, especially given the circumstances. Your hands rested on his chest and you felt one of his arms loop around your lower back, pulling you closer towards him. It was nothing like the hunger and desire you felt all those nights ago after the party. This was gentle. Delicate. Like one wrong move could break you both, the same way you had broken many lockpicks moments before. It was everything you didn't expect to feel when kissing Astarion, and you wondered why. He pulled you flush against him, your hands tangled in his hair and savouring the moment. He removed his right hand from you to prop himself upright, the other staying at the small of your back, keeping you in place. The moment was perfect; nothing could break it.

"Food is ready!" Gale's voice appeared in your mind, arcane echoes lingering behind as you recognized the use of the message spell. At least he didn't yell it out loud and gave away your location, you thought. You pulled away from Astarion, his face contorting into a look of annoyance as you assumed he got a similar message in his mind as well.

"I'd prefer it if we didn't hear the others in our heads when we do this," he complained as you climbed off of him quickly, not wanting anyone to catch you like this.

"Could've been worse. Could've used the tadpoles to tell us," you said, pushing yourself up to your feet and holding a hand out for Astarion to take.

"He would have been met with some rather…" he paused to look you up and down with a grin, "interesting images then." He took hold of your hand as you helped him up and didn't let go for a little longer than normal. You shot him a playful glare, letting go of his hand as you began to collect up the loot that had fallen on the floor.

As you picked up the final spell scroll, you noticed a lack of coin pouch. With a frown you turned to Astarion to ask him if he had seen it. He held it in his hand, counting out coins in the other. That bastard.

"How did you…" You approached him slowly.

He paused in the counting and grinned. "You're easily distracted."

"You know what? Take it. You deserve it at this point, with all the picking locks and distracting me," you said, waving him off. It was annoying but there wasn't much you could do at this point. You'd take the gems and hoped they would sell well. Once you had gathered everything up, you gave Astarion one last look. He held out the pouch for you.

"Your cut."

"Thanks…?" You blinked, and when he didn't elaborate you took it from him slowly, waiting for there to be a hidden meaning behind it. Your fingers brushed against his as you pocketed the money quickly, ignoring the feeling of warmth in your chest at the touch. There was a moment where neither of you moved, unspoken words left lingering in the air as you thought through what to say. After everything that happened between you both you could never find the right words to speak after a moment like this. Instead, you gave him a nod and left the room, heading back downstairs to the others.

Camp was slowly being set up. Most people had their tents sorted and Gale was serving up food, explaining in depth to Wyll what he had done with the supplies that were given to him. You placed the loot on one of the granite benches for the others to sort through later, spotting Astarion joining the group when you turned back.

He gave you a soft smile, and you smiled back.

#astarion x reader #astarion x tav #reader insert #bg3 #baldur's gate 3 #astarion bg3 #tav x astarion #; tealeaf's writing

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starrierknight · 8 months

Text

❣ TAGLIST FORM | BYF + DISCLAIMERS ❣

𝐈𝐍𝐓𝐑𝐎: hi, darlings!! this is my first kinktober, which is so exciting! while this doesn't adhere to the official 2023 kinktober prompts, i hope it will be enjoyable for you all! 𝐃𝐄𝐓𝐀𝐈𝐋𝐒: this event exclusively features dom!reader x sub!character. the reader inserts are always gender neutral and written with AFAB anatomy in mind. all fics will be published at 11:30pm BST. all writing for this event will be tagged under ꒰ 🝮 ꒱ — kt 23 ❣ REBLOGS ARE VERY APPRECIATED! ❣

𝟎𝟎𝟏. 𝐃𝐔𝐌𝐁𝐈𝐅𝐈𝐂𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍 | megumi fushiguro

❥ dumb doll | 1.8k

You have a bad habit of breaking your favourite toys.

𝟎𝟎𝟐. 𝐇𝐔𝐌𝐈𝐋𝐈𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍 | ryomen sukuna

❥ poor thing | 7k

"O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!" — William Shakespeare, via Hamlet Act 2, Scene 2

𝟎𝟎𝟑. 𝐁𝐎𝐃𝐘 𝐖𝐎𝐑𝐒𝐇𝐈𝐏 | getou suguru

❥ just us / microcosm | 7.2k

“I am tired, I have a colossal need of you.” — Albert Camus, from a letter to María Casares written c. June 1944

𝟎𝟎𝟒. 𝐏𝐑𝐎𝐒𝐓𝐈𝐓𝐔𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍 | toji fushiguro

𝟎𝟎𝟓. 𝐏𝐔𝐏𝐏𝐘 𝐇𝐘𝐁𝐑𝐈𝐃 | yuuta okkotsu

❥ chew toy | 3.1k

Your puppy missed you while you were at work. Won’t you give your dog a bone(r)?

𝟎𝟎𝟔. 𝐅𝐑𝐎𝐓𝐓𝐀𝐆𝐄 | yuuta okkotsu

❥ guilty pleasure | 5.2k

“It is always pleasant to divulge a secret under dramatic circumstances.” ― Thomas Burnett Swann, Day of the Minotaur

𝟎𝟎𝟕. 𝐅𝐎𝐎𝐃𝐏𝐋𝐀𝐘 | gojo satoru

❥ glutton for punishment | 7.2k

✩ ✩ ✩ ✩ ✩ 'Cause I'm all that you want, boy / All that you can have, boy / Got me spread like a buffet / Bon a—, bon appétit, baby — Katy Perry, Bon Appétit

𝟎𝟎𝟖. 𝐌𝐀𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐑/𝐒𝐋𝐀𝐕𝐄 | toji fushiguro

𝟎𝟎𝟗. 𝐏𝐑𝐀𝐈𝐒𝐄 𝐊𝐈𝐍𝐊 | choso kamo

𝟎𝟏𝟎. 𝐔𝐍𝐃𝐄𝐑 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐈𝐍𝐅𝐋𝐔𝐄𝐍𝐂𝐄 | gojo satoru

❥ drunk 'n' nasty | 8.8k

“Here's to alcohol, the rose colored glasses of life.” ― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned

𝟎𝟏𝟏. 𝐒𝐎𝐌𝐍𝐎𝐏𝐇𝐈𝐋𝐈𝐀 | getou suguru

𝟎𝟏𝟐. 𝐊𝐈𝐓𝐓𝐘 𝐇𝐘𝐁𝐑𝐈𝐃 | gojo satoru

𝟎𝟏𝟑. 𝐎𝐑𝐆𝐀𝐒𝐌 𝐃𝐄𝐍𝐈𝐀𝐋 | yuki tsukumo

𝟎𝟏𝟒. 𝐓𝐄𝐌𝐏𝐄𝐑𝐀𝐓𝐔𝐑𝐄 𝐏𝐋𝐀𝐘 | megumi fushiguro

𝟎𝟏𝟓. 𝐌𝐎𝐌𝐌𝐘 𝐊𝐈𝐍𝐊 | ryomen sukuna

𝟎𝟏𝟔. 𝐆𝐔𝐍𝐏𝐋𝐀𝐘 | gojo satoru

𝟎𝟏𝟕. 𝐓𝐇𝐑𝐄𝐄𝐒𝐎𝐌𝐄 | choso kamo & yuki tsukumo

𝟎𝟏𝟖. 𝐁𝐎𝐃𝐘 𝐌𝐎𝐃𝐈𝐅𝐈𝐂𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍 | getou suguru

𝟎𝟏𝟗. 𝐄𝐗𝐇𝐈𝐁𝐈𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍𝐈𝐒𝐌 | gojo satoru

𝟎𝟐𝟎. 𝐁𝐔𝐍𝐍𝐘 𝐇𝐘𝐁𝐑𝐈𝐃 | choso kamo

❥ like rabbits | 5.3k

You both like the thrill of the chase, but he likes being caught more. You were fully willing to take advantage of this fact (and him).

𝟎𝟐𝟏. 𝐏𝐇𝐎𝐍𝐄 𝐒𝐄𝐗 | toji fushiguro

𝟎𝟐𝟐. 𝐒𝐇𝐈𝐁𝐀𝐑𝐈 | getou suguru

❥ lit fuse | 6.3k

“Each of us is born with a box of matches inside us, but we can't strike them all by ourselves.” ― Laura Esquivel, Like Water for Chocolate

𝟎𝟐𝟑. 𝐅𝐀𝐂𝐄𝐒𝐈𝐓𝐓𝐈𝐍𝐆 | maki zen'in

𝟎𝟐𝟒. 𝐅𝐄𝐌𝐈𝐍𝐈𝐒𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍/𝐏𝐄𝐆𝐆𝐈𝐍𝐆 | choso kamo

𝟎𝟐𝟓. 𝐊𝐍𝐈𝐅𝐄𝐏𝐋𝐀𝐘/𝐁𝐋𝐎𝐎𝐃𝐏𝐋𝐀𝐘 | gojo satoru

❥ bite the hand that feeds | 5k

“Love is a sacrament that should be taken kneeling, and Domine non sum dignus should be on the lips and in the hearts of those who receive it.” ― Oscar Wilde, De Profundis

𝟎𝟐𝟔. 𝐌𝐀𝐒𝐓𝐔𝐑𝐁𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍 | ryomen sukuna

𝟎𝟐𝟕. 𝐒𝐄𝐃𝐔𝐂𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍 | nanami kento

❥ work hard, play rough | 4.4k

You don’t work or play by the rules. So what if that’s unfair? This is a dog-eat-dog world, and the losers get left behind.

𝟎𝟐𝟖. 𝐂𝐎𝐑𝐑𝐔𝐏𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍 | yuuta okkotsu

𝟎𝟐𝟗. 𝐁𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐓𝐇𝐏𝐋𝐀𝐘 | maki zen'in

𝟎𝟑𝟎. 𝐌𝐈𝐑𝐑𝐎𝐑 𝐒𝐄𝐗 | getou suguru

❥ pretty when you cry | 3.5k

You did his eyeliner and one thing led to another. Who can blame you, though? He had it coming (pun intended).

𝟎𝟑𝟏. 𝐀𝐅𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐂𝐀𝐑𝐄 | unspecified m!character

𝐍𝐎𝐓𝐄: I aim to complete 15/31 fics this year (2023) , and then finish off the rest next year (2024). this is a two year event! (⋆ˆ ³ ˆ) ✎~

these works belong to STARRIERKNIGHT . please refrain from plagiarising any of my works and do not repost/translate/modify/copy onto any platforms.

#꒰ ✎ ꒱ — tongues in trees #꒰ ✑ ꒱ — they kiss consume #꒰ 🝮 ꒱ — kt 23 #jjk x reader smut #jjk x reader #kinktober 2023 #kinktober masterlist #sub! jjk #sub!jjk

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gothamitelove · 1 month

Note

could you do nolanverse scarecrow and riddler with a very affectionate partner please?

ooh i like this. ok so nolanverse doesn't have a riddler (and if youre referring to paul dano's riddler i unfortunately havent seen batman 2022 so idk him well enough to write him, my apologies), so im just go w nolanverse scarecrow :)

nolanverse!jonathan crane w/affectionate!reader

it takes him a minute to get used to this, but boy howdy when he does he's enjoying every second of it

you'll probably have to make the first move for a while. he's one of those touch-starved people who doesn't know they're touch-starved and so he doesn't really know how to ask

and he's embarrassed about it. so you'll be doing the initiating for a while

he might go a little stiff at first until he realizes, oh, you're just giving him a hug

and then he gets into it and he'll hold your hand and smile real tiny to himself

compliments are EVERYTHINGGGG btw. he loves hearing about how great he is

also he uses physical touch when he wants to show you off, so if he touches you in public all of a sudden take a look around- are his academic rivals here? rogues? batman??

#asks #jonathan crane #nolanverse #dcu #x reader #gender neutral reader #jonathan crane x reader #scarecrow x reader #scarecrow dc #scarecrow #dc x reader #rogues gallery #headcanons

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dilatorywriting · 1 year

Text

Monster Mayhem: Donkeys & Dragons [PART 4]

Gender Neutral Reader x Malleus Draconia Word Count: 6.7k

Summary: 'Never tickle a sleeping dragon.'

🌶️Obligatory Warning for Some Descriptions of Violence & Mild Suggestive Content

[PART 1] [PART 2] [PART 3] [PART 4] [EPILOGUE]

As detestable as they were, at the very least your assailants were well organized.

You were plopped neatly at the center of the room, in a very conspicuous location that would have made it difficult for a hypothetical someone to, say, just flat-out torch everything in sight without also catching his very tiny, mortal, companion up in said firestorm.

The group of them split off to tend to their tasks with a frankly shocking level of competence and foresight. Was this how adventurers were actually supposed to work? They didn’t just—I don’t know—saunter into an abandoned castle on a whim and a prayer, with no real end goal in sight and nothing but the perpetual bounding of a singular, shared, braincell to keep them on their toes? There was a plan? What was this madness.

“How much time do you think we have?” one of them called, busy working to set up some sort of wire trap that, in your humble ‘I have faced this legendary dragon and survived’ opinion, looked like it would do exactly diddly squat.

“Enough,” the Elf Wizard shrugged, thin arms crossed tight across his equally gaunt chest. “These vermin don’t have the same concept of time as we do. It may return soon, but we may also be waiting hours.”

Hours? Hours? You fought the urge to groan. And then remembered it hardly mattered if you did or not, because you were still trapped in a bubble of perpetual Silence, and that just made you want to groan louder.

Assumed-Rogue nodded tersely in response and continued constructing his pseudo-trap. The long, red, stripes of his sleeves were odd things—very in-your-face bold for a dude whose job you assumed it was to slip through shadows unseen. But then you noticed that the threads he was spinning were pooling from those slashes of crimson, and alright, that was fairly cool. ‘Your failure of a stealthy design gets a pass this time, good sir.’

“You’re certain this is one of the Briar Beasts, Lord Flamm?” Armored Lady piped in, busy shifting through the various swords strapped at her hip.

“Of course,” he hummed, flicking through his spell tome. “Have I ever led you astray before?”

Armored Dude snorted from his place across the room. “You’re not the issue. I just have trouble believing one of those monsters would still be alive at all after all this time.”

‘Lord Flamm’ snorted. “And why not? They’re like cockroaches—thriving through the worst of the world and gorging themselves on its corruption. This one is no different.”

Your brows twitched irritably.

Thankfully, Silence was not an indefinite spell. And after about ten minutes of muzzled misery, you felt its sticky, gauzy, gunk wash itself out of your throat.

“I’m getting the impression that you’re really not a fan of dragons,” you said, testing your volume.

Lord Flamm stared down at you with a hawk-eyed sort of sneer. His pale, green, glare felt like a tangible thing crawling along your skin.

“They are unnatural,” he huffed after a moment. “No creature should walk the planes of this world for such a great span of time. Immortality is a perverse transgression against the sanctities of life and existence.”

“You are literally an Elf,” you replied, incredulous. His face scrunched up like you’d forced a whole lemon into his mouth, and then he dropped another dome of Silence over your head.

Another ten minutes crawled by, and words returned to your tongue.

“Don’t you think you’re being a bit hypocritical?” you hummed, casually testing the arcane restraints binding your limbs. Those seemed to hold themselves in place with a great deal more fortitude than his on-again-off-again Mute Button, which was as frustrating as it was respectable.

“It’s not nearly the same. I was born into my burden,” he sniffed.

You blinked, confused. “I mean, so was Tsunotarou.”

Elf Wizard made a punched-out sort of noise, like you’d decked him right in the spleen.

“You named the beast?” he gawked. “Like a pet?”

“Look, man,” you grouched, offended on your scaly friend’s behalf. “If anyone’s the pet here, it’s me!”

Lord Flamm’s face went white, to red, and then nearly puce.

“Wait,” you spluttered. “That came out wrong—”

And then you were gagged once more.

The next time your muzzle was lifted, Lord Flamm was already pacing along the little, invisible, edge of the spell’s cage. You cleared your throat and he came to a stop a few feet away from where you were bound.

“I can see what’s happened here,” he said, stern, and you arched a brow in disbelief. You didn’t even have any solid idea what the fuck was going on, and you’d been living it for the past few weeks. He cleared his throat and glowered down at you. “You’ve been taken in by the monster’s wiles.”

You spluttered. “Not to just keep repeating myself, but really, if anyone did the ‘accidental seducing’ thing here, it was—”

He waved you off with a puckered grimace. “That hardly matters. At the end of the day, you are still the creature’s prisoner, and it is my duty as a man of integrity to assist you however I can.”

You frowned. Because while this whole thing had technically started as a hostage situation, it hadn’t really felt like one lately. Sure, Tsunotarou still threw tantrums that shook the foundation when you’d tried to put up a makeshift bathroom door, but he also listened to all your stories with the rapt attention of someone genuinely invested in the garbage pouring out of your mouth. He tucked you into your big mattress nest at night with his scaly nose, and endured all your griping with nothing but good humor. He showed you his treasures and told you terrible, dry, jokes that you were sure you only found so funny because he certainly hadn’t meant to be.

You sighed and dipped your head, expression shuttered.

Lord Flamm stepped forward and you felt a thin, gloved, finger tuck itself beneath your chin to tilt you back up to face him.

“I will save you,” he promised, something genuinely sturdy and righteous coating the words. “If you ask it of me.”

You took a deep breath in through your nose.

“There once a man from Trebucket,” you chirped, letting the jaunty tavern melody roll off your tongue like any good Bard ought to.

Lord Flamm arched a thin brow, in equal parts amusement and exasperation.

“Who really only wanted to find the dragon so he could fuck it—”

His face twisted in rage, and to the surprise of literally no one, you were Silenced yet again. Though this one felt the most like a victory so far.

And thus, the cycle repeated itself. Every quarter hour or so, the spell would drop and you’d start babbling some sacrilegious, borderline pornographic, nonsense that had him cursing you all over again. You counted each round of mockery softly in your head. Half to keep time, half to—

Your gaze trailed past the intricate, stone, entryway and caught. Perched atop the overhang were two gargoyles. Which was quite odd, seeing as you’d spent half a month living out of this room now and had never noticed them before (and you certainly would have, what with your host’s propensity for pointing out the gothic carvings each and every time one popped up in the castle’s architecture). Not to mention, they looked an awful lot like the pair of grey monsters which had been guarding the entrance when you’d first slunk in—the very duo that you’d sworn had tracked you and your friends with beady, gemstone, eyes and dug their pointed talons through solid rock.

Ancient buildings always seemed to have a life about them—never quiet, never still. Always settling with strange noises and shifting shadows that danced oddly along surfaces that were forever decaying. And this castle was no different. So it took you really listening, really closing your eyes tight and straining your ears against the perpetual white noise, to make out the low grinding of the Gargoyles as they shifted atop their perch and curled their sharp claws.

You tilted your head at them, curious, and the one on the left seemed to bristle. As much as stone could bristle. The one on the right very softly dipped its chin, almost like a bow. Its purple, glass, eyes flashed in the lowlight.

‘Wait,’ that look said.

And so you did, sitting straighter and at proper attention.

The group of Dragon Slayers was still milling about making preparations. Eventually, one of the two yet-unclassified hench people slunk from the room, and when your gaze slipped back to the gargoyles, the one on the right was gone.

You made eye contact with the remaining carving, and it curled its lip at you like a grumbly hound.

There was a scream from beyond the threshold, and then a great clattering of noise not unlike an earthquake, or the resonating crunch of a building crumbling at its base.

Immediately weapons were drawn, shoulders hunched in panic. Defensive magic swirled through the air like ink in water.

“What’s going on?!—”

With a shrieking roar, the remaining gargoyle lurched forward and collided with one of the armored attackers. The impact was like a crack of thunder, and it rattled around your skull like a gong.

And with that—dragon or no—the battle against the Hunters had officially begun.

With a panicked squawk, you began worming your still very bound self out of the dead center of this tornado of chaos. You flopped across the floor like a particularly determined caterpillar, or someone trussed up a in a sleeping bag with no limbs. You made it almost a solid twenty feet before you were scooped up by the back of your collar and dropped onto your knees.

“Not so fast, you little cretin.”

And then there was a curved knife at your throat and a set of hands trapping your own. You gulped and the blade bobbed against your chin. Stupid rogues with their stupid stealth. You grit your teeth and clenched your fists, willing the meager scraps of magic that twirled in your veins to bob to the surface. You could feel the trace rumblings of a Thunderwave reverberating down your limbs, and it was certainly no Fireball, or Lightning Bolt, but maybe it would be enough to—

There was a spray of red, red, red and the Striped Rogue at your back collapsed in a puddle of gore.

Standing over the corpse of the felled assassin was a boy. Or, well, something that very much looked like a young boy. Or, not young. Just… It was strange. He was small, slight, with a cheerful youthfulness to him. But the mirthful expression lighting his crimson eyes chilled your bones like the seeping cold from a long-forgotten tomb. It was like looking at someone with dozens—hundreds—of faces. A kaleidoscope of lifetimes. It was disorientating.

“Hello, you,” the little demon cooed. He reached out to tap a clawed finger against your forehead and the arcane binds holding your limbs shattered on impact. “Let’s get you out of here, hmm?”

Something tugged at your brain as you gaped at that mess of choppy, black-and-pink, hair, and the glittering irises that matched the blood splattered across his cheeks almost too horribly well.

“Are you… Lilia?” you asked, dazed.

“Well done, little human,” he trilled, lips curling in delight as he hauled you back to your feet. “But there will be time for proper introductions later. Let’s get you somewhere safe first, before my silly ward really does tear this whole castle down.”

“Tsunotarou is here?” you frowned, anxious. “But these people are here to kill him.”

“We’ve done our best to keep him away for as long as possible,” Lilia hummed. “But I doubt he has much more patience for skulking about in the shadows. He never did,” He sighed, long and world weary. “And I loved this old haunt so much too. I hope it survives.”

“You—” you gawked. “You’re talking about the castle?!”

“Of course,” Lilia smiled, perfectly sweet. “Swatting these pests is going to cause more damage than they’re worth to begin with—”

You were yanked out of the path of an encroaching blade, and Lilia sidestepped the pair of you smoothly to safety.

“You’re not going anywhere!” the Paladin thundered, hand whipping out to leash a whirl of vibrating, bright, magic around Lilia’s wrists. “This fight is mine! And you will have no other!”

“Ah,” your savior sighed, looking down at the faint, yellow, glow circling his skin. “Now that is a doozy.”

The great sword came down with a crash, and Lilia ducked away from the destruction with ease. He gave you a light tap on the shoulder, pushing you forward, and you felt the flush of a Haste spell nibbling at your limbs.

“Go on ahead,” he said, with all the nonchalant politeness of someone lamenting that they were going to be late for afternoon tea. “I’ll be with you in a moment.”

BOOM went the now glowing sword as it sliced through the air where your savior had been standing not a moment before.

“Do not take me so lightly, wretch,” the Paladin spat, and Lilia’s civil little smile twisted into something that sent shivers racing down your spine.

“If you insist,” he beamed, with a level of enthusiasm that was bordering on sociopathic.

You didn’t stay to see the fallout. Lilia’s orders to flee aside, you knew well enough what a cat looked like before it pounced—that smug, animalistic, satisfaction that came after deciding that it was going to play with its meal for as long as it liked. And the grinding, snapping, howling noises coming from their direction was enough to reinforce that looking back would be a very terrible idea indeed.

You’d only just made it past the threshold and out in the grand hall beyond when there came a whining groan that sounded familiarly enough like the protesting noises the banister would make whenever Tsunotarou dropped too much of his weight on top of it. You peered back into the room, and from the darkness at its rear emerged a long, thin, snout.

The Great, Ebony, Dragon slithered forth from the blackness like a snake through the grass. The sharp drag of his claws against the stone was earsplitting, and when he spread his wings behind him, he seemed to cast the entire cavern into shadow. Faster than you could blink, one, two, three of the Slayers were scooped up by those massive, pointed, teeth and tossed through the air—wherein the pair of gargoyles descended upon them like a set of well-trained attack dogs. Your dragon swiveled to spit black smoke across the rest of the echoing room and its occupants. Between the swirling smog seeping from his throat and the blackness of his wings, the brilliant, green, glow of his eyes were the only source of light in the gloom. It was all horribly eerie, but mesmerizing in a way that reminded you exactly why so many ballads and epics had been written about the terrible might of Dragons.

He reared his head back and roared. His bellowing seemed to shake the very foundation of the castle, and the sparks jumping from behind his canines bit through the smoke with harsh little pop-pop-pops. And man oh man, he reallymust have been taking it easy on you and your duo of idiots, because this would have had the three of you shitting your pants on the spot.

From there, the battle more or less became a one-sided massacre. The stone soldiers flew through the air, decimating the opponents as their master demanded. Occasionally there was a flash of pink, and then a cheerful laugh followed inevitably by a noise that was all kinds of unpleasant. And at the center of it all was your newfound friend—picking apart the opposition with all the careful rage of someone determined to sear the consequences of these Hunters’ folly into the memories of their lineages for ages to come.

And then—amidst all the quite frankly epic fighting that you would have to tell Ace and Deuce all about when they came back to visit—you noticed that not far from where you were hiding observing was a familiar, angry, gaunt face. Lord Flamm’s elaborate black and maroon robes swirled around his ankles as he paced, and he was leering at the chaos unfolding not a hundred feet away with an expression that calling murderous would have been kind.

You bristled immediately, limbs lancing through with a tight sort of indignation.

He was just—right there! Standing all the way out here! When the rest of his party was busy being chewed to itty-bitty pieces!

And sure, rationally you knew that Wizards were squishy, glass-canons not meant for close combat more intense than a round of rock-paper-scissors. Sure, when you and your idiots had been facing down a dragon, Ace and Deuce had ordered you and your equally ill-armored self to run for it. Someone had probably hurled the Elf from the room the moment combat began, or demanded he whirl away to safety.

But you wanted to be angry. Because this was the man who had strode, eyes wide open, into a hornet’s nest with the sole intention of crushing the poor bugs beneath his heel. He deserved to bear the brunt of the miserable, stinging, backlash.

It certainly didn’t help that he was glaring down Tsunotarou with near frenzied loathing. The tome in his hands was flipped open to a dense spell that you couldn’t even begin to make sense of, and he was casting. Something tedious, and extravagant, and with enough somatic nonsense to make your head spin. His gloved fingers glowed beneath a growing mote of magic that shone horrible and bright in the natural shadows of the castle. Whatever sort of magic it was, it was strong enough to make the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end and push frantic adrenaline through your veins. Sigils swam through the air, and you swore you could feel it sapping at your own tiny pool of mana. If this was some kind of spell that would gobble up magic, then a dragon who was nothing but magic—then Tsunotarou—he would—This spell might actually—

You ran at that wretched little bitch with everything you had, and tackled him to the ground just as a bolt of crackling, pale, force magic boomed from between his fingers. The spell shot wide, and you thanked every divine being you could think of for the enduring shittiness of Wizard Muscles.

“I should have known you’d risk your life to save that unholy monster,” he seethed, rolling back to his feet and sending you tumbling off the side.

You stood firm and silent between this awful, garbage, Elf and the Dragon he so hated.

Lord Flamm raised a hand in your direction, incensed, and then you watched as something sharp and frightened slithered its way across his features. No sparks danced along his fingertips, no black miasma curled from his palms. You shoved your hands into your pockets and rocked back and forth on your heels like the most obnoxious piece of shit you could be.

“Wow,” you drawled, low in your throat. “That was impressive. I mean. How many times did you cast all those spells on me earlier? I’m shocked you have anything left.”

The already dark look coloring his face twitched into something truly foul.

“You were doing that on purpose,” he snarled. “You vile, loathsome, bumbling ignoramus of a bard!—"

“Ah, stop, stop!” You beamed, fanning yourself with a limp wrist. “You’re going to make me blush~”

You ducked out the way with a yelp as a mote of fire whizzed past your ear—singeing far too many hairs at it went. Because fuck fuck fuck. Cantrips were still a thing. And he was powerful enough that those simple, little, bits of magic would still probably be more than enough to fry the meat off your bones.

“It’ll be enough to kill you,” he seethed—like he could read your thoughts—teeth tugged into a hideous, gaping, sneer.

Your mind zipped through every possible escape route and settled frantically on the only option that had ever truly seemed to save your ass.

“What white teeth you have?” you tried.

He roared and another shot of brilliant, red, flames careened over your head.

You ducked out of the way with a squawk just in the nick of time, nearly faceplanting into a wall in your haste.

And thus ensued a terrifying but morbidly hilarious Benny Hill chase through pillars, and behind rocks, and into holes. You killed your singular, daily use of Misty Step just trying to get out of one of said holes. And your brief attempt at tossing up a Mirror Image to throw off his groove did little but get you whacked with a Counterspell that made your bones ache.

Just as you’d burned through the last of your meager magic and were genuinely preparing to just try and deck the guy again, black smoke began to curl through the hall—soon followed by the ominous roll of thunderous growls and the heavy grindingof a gigantic beast clawing its way into the room.

You threw yourself at the dragon with more enthusiasm than was probably proper for a situation like this, and he immediately ducked his head to catch you against his snout. He curled himself around you with a rumbling snarl and your vision was drowned in a shifting sea of ebony scales. You squished yourself into his bulk with a shuddering sigh, fingers clutching a bit uselessly at the slippery surface of his natural armor.

A burst of orange flames rolled harmlessly off Tsunotarou’s scaled side and his lips curled unpleasantly over his canines. You could see the licks of emerald fire rolling off his tongue—dancing along his white teeth and lighting the hall in an ominous, sickly, glow.

Before the pair of you, Lord Flamm looked half-mad. If not fully consumed. His party wiped, his hostage freed, and the creature he hated so fiercely baring down on him with no escape.

He let his head fall back with a discordant trill of laughter and grinned at the approaching dragon without a hint of repentance. Fear, perhaps. Panic, certainly. But no remorse. He raised his hands once more, and another dredge of his own fire sparked along his fingers.

“And he shall smite the wicked and plunge them into the fiery pit.”

The Great Briar Beast of Old opened his gigantic, black, maw and choked the hall in a torrent of emerald fire.

And Lord Flamm and his Dragon Slayers were no more.

You stared intently at the singed corridor, as if waiting for one of the piles of ash to jump to its feet and pull a sword. Which you might have excused as paranoid fretting if you hadn’t heard of necrotic magics capable of doing exactly that. But after a long moment of waiting with bated breath and tight fists, the monsters did not rise from their graves, and all seemed to be truly well and over.

You let out a gigantic gust of a breath and collapsed bonelessly against the dragon at your side. After a solid minute or two of just awkwardly trying to find a good way to hug a giant lizard more than a dozen times your size, Tsunotarou slipped out of his scales, and then he was warm and fleshy in your arms once more. Still too big, still earth-shatteringly strong, but human-shapedenough that you could merrily settle into his embrace without the risk of becoming a pancake.

“Tsunotarou!” you chirped past the lingering haze of smoke. “You’re okay!”

“Me?” he gawked at you. It was an awkward angle to make eye contact, seeing as he’d latched himself onto you like a particularly determined koala, but he managed nonetheless. “You were worried about me during all of that?” He blinked those wide, neon, eyes at you like you were some horribly long and tedious math equation that he couldn’t even begin to make sense of. “You were the one who was captured!”

“They were Dragon Slayers,” you entreated, brow furrowed. “They didn’t need me for much of anything. Of course I was worried more about you.”

When the constipated look on his face refused to fade, you prodded him gently in his side.

“Look, I promise if we ever run into Bard Poachers I will be exponentially more cautious.”

He didn’t look particularly convinced—whether because he was trying to suss out of if something like ‘Bard Poachers’ were an actual, factual, threat upon your person, or because you’d just openly hurtled yourself at a clearly overpowered, feral, wizard with no regards to your already shitty constitution to speak of, so a promise to ‘be more cautious’ was about as good as saying that maybe next time you wouldn’t outright flirt with death. Only subtly. A lil’ bit.

You reached up to smoosh your thumb along the sharp slant of his frown and smooth out the harsh edges that were practically digging into his jaw.

“Tsunotarou, if you keep making that face, it’s going to get stuck like that,” you warned.

“Malleus,” he interrupted, firm. You blinked up at him slowly and your hand fell back to rest in the nonexistent space between you.

“A what?”

“Malleus,” he repeated, and you felt the weight of the word dance through the air like sparks. Like an invocation, or a curse. “My true name.”

You waited a moment in shocked silence before slowly repeating your own name back at him. He startled and snorted a laugh into your neck, some of that lingering, terrible, tension finally seeming to seep out of him.

“I am well aware of what you are called, Child of Man.”

“…I know that,” you mumbled, fighting the urge to fidget. Malleus, Malleus, Malleus. The syllables sat heavy on your tongue, like your mouth couldn’t figure out how to push them past your lips. “I thought you said that dragons don’t give out their real names.”

He drew back just enough to cup your cheeks in his ashy palms, brushing a clawed finger back and forth against one of the small cuts littering your jaw.

“There is power in a name,” he said. “It is not a gift readily bestowed.”

Then why—

You swallowed, nervous, and one of his thumbs tracked the movement along the hollow of your throat.

“This way, if you call for me, I will always hear you,” he promised, eyes going flinty and venomous as he gazed at the cinder piles of smoking intruders. “And something like this will never happen again.”

“I—I mean,” you spluttered. “Me being—And this being—I mean—” You cleared your throat. “That hardly seems like a good enough reason to—to—” To put something so important into the hands of someone who literally broke into your house less than a month ago. To give something so precious to someone so human.

“Isn’t it?” he smiled, that sharp anger melting back into something painfully soft. Your poor heart kickstarted itself all over again. He ducked forward to press his nose into your temple, and you could feel the soft puff of his breath as his grin sharpened into a smirk. “Though I would have liked to bestow my titles on you in other ways as well, if this little hero would be amenable.”

You squawked, and the only thing that shook you out of the immediate spiral into ‘did he really just ask me to—am I really going to be stuck in every goddamn bard’s trope existence of—of—' was the merry laughter that bubbled up from somewhere behind you.

“Careful, my Prince,” Lilia hummed from his place perched atop a particularly large heap of rubble. “If you come on too strong, you’ll only scare them away. Humans are flighty like that, I’m afraid.”

You could feel Malleus’s pout against your forehead.

“Not my human,” he grouched. His hands dropped from your cheeks to encircle your waist and clutch at your lower back. “And that besides,” he continued testily, “you were the one who only just this morning insisted I take decisive action.”

“That’s true,” Lilia agreed with a gentle bob of his head, resting his pointed chin against his palm. “But perhaps three sentences at least before the proposal?”

Malleus blinked, slow and serpentine, before flicking his neon gaze back to you. “That does seem fair I suppose. What do you think?”

“I think,” you gawked, trying and failing to process any of the words that were coming out of their fanged mouths, “that I am having a stroke.”

“NOT ACCEPTABLE!” boomed a voice from overhead. “YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO FALL ILL AFTER ALL THE EFFORTS WE TOOK TO KEEP YOU SAFE!”

You jolted in shock, and Malleus’s talons flexed reassuringly at your waist as he gently turned you back-to-chest so that you could face your accuser. He nestled his chin into your shoulder, and you could feel his horns bump against your skull as he tried to burrow in as close as possible. Which all would have been thoroughly distracting, but then you noticed that one of the Gargoyles from early had landed directly across from you. Its spiked head was swiveling back and forth as it appraised you like some particularly ruffled cockatoo. And that in itself was bizarre enough to help you focus on something other than the weight along your back and the steadily rising heat in your cheeks.

“Uhm, hello?” you tried.

“WE HAVE ALREADY MET!” It screeched. “THERE IS NO NEED FOR INTRODUCTIONS!”

“It talks,” you blanched.

“OF COURSE I SPEAK, YOU IGNORANT ENTERTAINER!” The Gargoyle thundered. Its yellow eyes flashed in indignation. “HOW COULD I NOT LEARN TO COMMUNICATE IN A RESPECTABLE FASHION WHEN SERVING SOMEONE SO MAJESTIC AS HIS MAJESTY?!”

“I think,” the other Gargoyle said, slipping forward so silently you could hardly believe it was made of such strong stone at all, “that what Sebek is trying to say, is that we are happy to finally be able welcome you into our home, even if it is under less than ideal circumstances. And that we are very pleased to be able to speak with you.”

“THAT IS WHAT I ALREADY SAID, SILVER!” the spiky one snarled. No one else looked particularly bothered by his ceaseless volume, so it was probably normal. He stuck his carved nose into the air with a harumph. “AND I HAVE HEARD OF THE WAYS OF YOU TRAVELING STORY TELLERS! IF YOU BREAK MY MASTER’S HEART, YOU WILL SUFFER AN ETERNITY OF TORMENT AT MY HAND!”

Malleus growled, low and rumbling, from over your shoulder. Instantly his stalwart guardian cowed—head dipping like a kicked a puppy.

“Of course,” it continued, much softer. “I don’t think this human would do that. And—And I think my master has made a very good choice in his mate, and I will be happy to serve you too.”

Lilia sighed a sigh that sounded very much like a doting mother overflowing with parental affection. Like the kind of noise one may hear on a cozy Sunday afternoon while helping prepare dinner, or while sitting on a little, floral, couch and sifting through little paintings of grandchildren. There was still blood splattered all along his cheeks.

“It’s so lovely to have the family all together again,” he cooed. “And I do think that you will make such a marvelous addition.”

“Oh. Well. Thank you,” you nodded jerkily, just as your knees buckled and you collapsed to the floor.

On the first day of the new month, Ace and Deuce made their way back to the forgotten castle nestled in a pool of lava.

“We should never have left them,” Deuce grumbled for what was maybe the ten thousandth time. Ace was sick of hearing it. He was even more sick of the fact that despite being constantly inundated with various versions of ‘oh, we’re such terrible friends,’ the little, twisting, spike of guilt in his gut never grew any duller. Wasn’t that how it was supposed to work? Something-something-repetitive-exposure-therapy, or whatever? This sucked. He wanted a refund on this whole ‘conscience’ thing. Maybe it wasn’t too late to sell his soul and become a Warlock or whatever. Surely that would help.

“We didn’t have a choice,” Ace reminded him. Again. “They’re okay. I know they are. We’re going to show up and they’ll be, I don’t know, lying in a bed of gold being hand fed grapes or something.”

Deuce made a rumbly, whining, kind of noise that made him sound even more pathetic than usual and Ace sighed, determined to instead focus on the rickety rope bridge swinging beneath their feet.

The ancient, looming, monstrosity of a building was just as cold and dark as it had been the first time. If anything, it was more filthy. With walls stained with seeping ash and the charred, skeletal, remains of something that Ace was definitely, absolutely, not going to think about scattered throughout the grime.

The two of them made their way to the heart of the castle until they were standing at the entrance of a grand, cavernous, chamber that may have once been some sort of ballroom.

Ace didn’t know what he was expecting. Slaver’s coils maybe. A chain around your ankles and rags drooping from your shoulders. Or maybe you wouldn’t even be there at all—long since swallowed down as a little, midnight, snack.

He certainly wasn’t expecting to see you lounging contentedly atop a mountainous heap of soft blankets, with the master of this castle—terror-incarnate, death from above, an eldritch beast ripped straight out of legend—curled along the lumpy hills of your grandiose pillow fort, its great head nestled at your back as you reclined against its scales and chattered away. Like the goddamned, rambling, idiot you had always been.

One of the dragon’s large, green, eyes shifted towards the intruders at its door, and Ace froze in place. You paused your chattering to raise your hand with an excited little wave. Your tattered traveler’s clothes had been replaced with something silken and soft enough that it would probably melt in his fingers, and it swayed like mist around you as you made your way to your feet. You were practically dripping in platinum, and diamonds, and emeralds, and—he was going to stop counting them before he gave himself a conniption.

And yeah… it wasn’t exactly a throne of gold and gemstones, but it was almost just as impressive. And immediately indignation swept through Ace with a horrible kind of vengeance. Because how dare you actually be living it up over here when he had been so fucking worried just lying about all that cool stuff to keep Deuce from storming the castle gates?

“You made it!” you chirped, perfectly merry despite the gigantic maw full of sharp teeth hovering at your shoulder.

“Of—Of course we did,” Deuce stuttered, his blue eyes flicking back and forth so quickly from the dragon, to you, to Ace, to the dragon, to you—that Ace genuinely thought he might be having a seizure. “We promised we would.”

You stopped in front of them with a considerate little hum, sharp eyes tracing and cataloguing their varying reactions. After a moment of what was obviously some very smug preening and even smugger ‘I win this round’ silent gloating, you slipped out of the piles of entangled jewels with an exaggerated shrug. With the exception of an intricately carved emerald pendant hanging softly between the hollows of your collarbones, the rest of the infinitely expensive and rare gems fell to the ground with a series of clattering chatter.

“All that shit is so heavy,” you whined. Whined. Like you had any right to complain about anything at all for the rest of your existence. You leaned forward with a wink. “I was just hoping it’d make your thieving, money-hungry ass, jealous.” You smirked, proud. “And it looks like it worked, you goddamn traitors.”

Ace was about to splutter out the most scathing remark his spiteful little brain could come up with, when Deuce ruined everything by rushing forward like the blubbering idiot he was and scooping you up into a bearhug.

“You’re okay! You’re okay!” he wailed. “We missed you so much!”

“Speak for yourself,” Ace huffed, and twinged miserably when it came out sounding far too soft. He cleared his throat and decided to take a different approach. “You know, last time I was sort of joking about the whole ‘bards and dragons’ thing. But it looks like you’ve made yourself real comfortable. And here I thought you were always super opposed to the ‘fucking my way out of my problems’ stereotype.”

However, because the universe seemed determined not to give Ace any kind of win for the rest of his natural existence, instead of getting all embarrassed and mousey, you just huffed and turned up your nose at him.

“Well obviously not as a dragon,” you complained. “Do you know how big he is? How would that even work, huh?” The aforementioned dragon lowered his gigantic head to settle on the ground at your side, and you leaned against him good-naturedly when he grumbled low in his throat. “Yeah, no,” you said to the beast, rolling your eyes. “Nice try, but no.”

Deuce immediately choked and started hacking up a lung, and Ace wanted to die.

“You can talk to it?” the redhead asked instead of keeling over.

You shrugged.

“Not like this. But I’ve learned to interpret most of it.” You wiggled your fingers. “It’s my sixth sense.”

Ace’s nose scrunched. “Yeah, right. If anything, it’s your ‘I’ve been dicked down by a dragon and think that makes me soooo special now’ sense—”

The great, ebony, monster growled and the Fighter’s mouth snapped shut like someone had taken a hammer to his jaw. You snickered goodhumoredly and elbowed your companion gently at the base of one of its long, sharp, horns.

“He’s just joking around,” you said to the winged horror. “You don’t have to get all defensive.”

There was another grumpy sneer, but the dragon simply settled more heavily at your side with a defeated sort of huff. The gust of a sigh sent a wave of scorching heat along Ace’s front, and he fought the urge to cow immediately and beg for his life. Because apparently that wasn’t going to be necessary, because you had—you had—

“Are you in love?” Deuce blurted, because unlike Ace, the Barbarian was pure, and good, and still didn’t fully understand how eggs worked, let alone the concept of Fuck or Die.

And then you surprised him yet again by getting as flustered as he’d expected you to when he’d accused you (rightly) of bending over for a goddamn fucking dragon.

But before you could answer, the dragon lifted its head to press its temple against yours. Or, as well as it could do that when it dwarfed the lot of you the way an elephant might hover over a mouse. Mostly it just ended up being a very, very, delicate head bump. A deep, warbling, purr started from its chest and rolled all the way up and past its sharp, white, canines.

“Uhm,” you tried again. “You guys are invited to the wedding, I guess.”

“The what?!” Deuce howled, before promptly falling to his knees to fan himself like a devasted matron in a church.

You sighed and rubbed at the back of your head, clearly embarrassed. You mumbled something under your breath that sounded a bit like ‘it’s kind of a whole saga, y’know.’ And Ace, in all his infinite good will, decided to take pity on you just this once. And also because you were clearly loaded now, and all good friends know that sharing is caring, right?

“Come on then, Bardy,” he smirked, leaning down to kick Deuce flatter to the floor—half to knock the guy out of his frantic spiraling, half so he could perch on his back like a chair. Because the stone floor looked really uncomfortable, and he had a feeling that trying to slip into that nice nest of blankets of yours would not end well. “Tell us a story.”

[TAG LIST] CLOSED

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#twisted wonderland imagines #twisted wonderland #twst x reader #Malleus Draconia x Reader #Malleus x Reader #Malleus Draconia #Malleus x Yuu #Dragon Malleus #Monster Mayhem #My Writing #Twst Fantasy AU #Sebek Zigvolt #Lilia Vanrouge #Silver Twst #Rollo Flamm #Slight Rollo Flamm x Reader #Ace Trappola #Deuce Spade #Monster Mayhem Malleus Part 4

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uwingdispatch · 2 years

Text

How to Surrender

Notes: Cassian Andor/Reader, everyone lives au, post-rebellion, hurt/comfort, disabled reader, fluff and angst

CW: PTSD, panic attacks, chronic illness, disability, implied sexual intimacy

Ao3 Link

★★★★★★★★

You wake alone, the spot where you’d usually find Cassian on a lazy weekend morning empty. And upon rising, you find yourself to be the only organic being in the house other than the tooka cat—who does not rise to greet you. You spot Kay on the back patio with the astromech who recently moved in. When you slide open the transparisteel door, they seem surprised to see you.

“I thought you were with Cassian,” Kay says.

“I was sleeping,” you say. “Where is he?”

“There’s a message in the kitchen,” he says. “I thought you couldn’t possibly be sleeping this late. So I assumed you had gone with him for…the air.”

It’s only eleven, but you push Kay’s comment to the side, heading to the kitchen to find the note. “Needed to get some air,” you read aloud. You turn to Kay, whom you find hovering over your shoulder. “That’s all he said?”

“Yes,” he says. “You seem worried.”

“You’re not?”

The astromech, Arseven, whistles low and in a series of beeps and warbles reminds Kay that it’s the anniversary of the Battle of Scarif.

“I know that,” Kay says. “I was there.”

“I think I know where he is,” you say. “And he shouldn’t be alone right now. Will you drive, Arseven?”

Kay gives you a look. He’s insulted.

“Someone should be here if he comes home,” you tell him. “In case I’m wrong.”

“You have been known to be wrong.”

“Call me if you hear from him,” you say.

Kay nods. Arseven hands you your com—you’d almost forgotten—and you grab your jacket and head out to the garage.

As you make your way across town, you’re glad to have the little droid with you. The situation with her last person hadn’t been great and a few weeks ago Cassian had finally offered the man a ridiculous sum to bring her into your home. Kay had set straight to work cleaning her, buffing out the restraining bolt marks, finding the exact shades of silver and violet match her original paint job, and polishing her until she felt like herself again.

She is still getting used to independence and Cassian often reminds her that, “In this house, we all have free will.”

And in this moment, headed to the hangar where Cassian stores his U-Wing, you are grateful for her free will, for her care, and for her choice to take on additional programming and equipment to help you as a support droid. Right now she knows exactly how fast your heart is beating, whistles low and beeps to assure you that you are safe and Cassian will be okay.

“Thank you, Arseven,” you say. “I just know how powerful an anniversary can be. We both do, don’t we?”

She beeps in the affirmative. Says you are very close to your destination.

At the hangar, you ask Arseven to stay with the speeder for a bit, that you’ll ping her if you need her. And you knock on the door before punching in Cassian’s security code. The door slides open, and there he is, sitting on the loading ramp of his U-Wing—the one recovered from Eadu by a handful of young rebels after the base was abandoned. They wanted to return the ship to the man they idolized. Of course this made Cassian uncomfortable, but he wasn’t upset about having the ship back. At the time it was the closest thing he had to a home.

You took a few steps into the hangar. “Cassian?”

The hangar smells of metal and engine grease and Cassian looks so small in the shadow of his ship, hunched over with something in his hands. He hasn’t lifted his head to meet your gaze, but you approach him anyway, noting the speeder bike he came here on parked against the wall.

“Can I sit with you?” you ask. “Would that be okay?”

Cassian looks up, the corners of his mouth turning up in the saddest smile you’d ever seen. “My heart,” he says. “You always know where to find me.”

“Shouldn’t I?”

He reaches his hand out, and you take it, settling in next to him on the ramp.

“I remembered what day it was,” you said. “Thought you might be with your ship.”

“Funny,” he says. “This ship never even made it to Scarif. And that whole planet is destroyed now.”

“You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to,” you say. “But I don’t think you should be alone. We can stay here. We can go home. Arseven is outside with the landspeeder and she has your meds if you want them.”

“You know—”

“I know, but she has them. If you want them.”

“Okay,” he says.

“What do you have there?” you ask.

He hands you a small, heavy piece of metal—his captain’s plaque, a bit of tarnish clouding the two blue pips that signify his rank.

“I’ve never seen this before,” you say.

“Because I hate to look at it.”

You close your hand around the plaque. You’ve heard him talk like this before, felt the dark paths he sometimes lets his mind travel on. “You don’t have to,” you say. “Not today. And not alone.”

“It’s been ten years since the end of the war. The memories shouldn’t be so hard.”

“What would you say to me,” you asked, “if I said that to you when I was struggling?”

He doesn’t answer the question. You didn’t expect him to. But he does say, “Hold on to it for me? For a little while?”

You nod and slip the plaque into your pocket before putting an arm around him. He leans into you, and you feel his shoulders rise and fall with each deep breath as he tries to pull himself back into calm.

There’s a long pause and then he gets up. “Come inside, my heart. Let me just…”

You follow him in where pulls down one of the bunks, folding it out from the wall—definitely more comfortable than the ramp. There are memories on this ship that you will never get out of him, but the two of you have made memories here as well. Happy memories. Tender memories.

“Let me just hold you,” he says.

So you lay down, and you sweep his hair out of his face, tucking it behind his ear so he can see you and you can see him. He just looks so tired. But he touches his forehead to yours before cupping your jaw with his hand and pressing a slow, soft kiss to your lips.

“Thank you,” he says.

“It’s nothing you haven’t done for me.”

When Cassian suggested the two of you take a little trip off-planet, you hadn’t expected to end up on a space station you’d never even heard of, stuck waiting for a part to come in on the next transport to fix the U-Wing’s hyperdrive. If it were anyone else, with any other ship, you’d have pushed to let the local mechanic use whatever he had on hand to get you home. But you knew that for Cassian it was worth the wait and the extra credits to make sure the repair was perfect.

Even if you were sitting in the U-Wing by yourself now, with no sense of where you were or what time it was, starting to wonder if your partner had gotten hurt or lost. You find yourself almost wishing you’d brought Kay along.

You’d had a lovely long weekend on Takodana, the beautiful sky highlighting every moment as you strolled around artists’ markets, tasting new foods, spending lazy afternoons in parks making out like teenagers as the birds of this beautiful planet called down from the trees.

And you hated for this unwanted pit stop to color any of those wonderful memories. But after several days of pushing your body to its limits, exhaustion had set in, and your joints were aching past the capabilities of bacta spray. Cassian had dug out a heating pad you hadn’t even realized he’d packed and brought it to you where you were resting—in the bunk he had modified before this trip as a surprise. It now folded out of the ship’s wall to fit two.

“This isn’t a warship anymore,” Cassian had said when he brought you on board. “I thought we should make it our own.”

And it touched you that he would share something this important to him with you in such an intimate way. So you tried to hold on to that as you sat with your back propped against a pillow—a nice pillow, no doubt bought specifically for this trip like the rest of the linens Cassian had purchased for the updated bunk—scrolling through your datapad, the heating pad on your left knee. But as the minutes ticked by, you felt the early symptoms of panic creeping in. And when you heard the ramp start moving, you were startled, for a split second forgetting to breathe.

“Cassian,” you called out. “Please tell me that’s you.”

“Of course it’s me,” he said, his steps quickening.

He had several bags with him, which he immediately dropped onto a storage crate so he could take your hands. Sitting next to you, it took him no time to realize what was happening.

“I shouldn’t have left you alone, my heart,” he said. “Stars, I wasn’t thinking. You’ve never been someplace like this before, have you?”

“No, I don’t think I have,” you said. “Where are we, again? And what time is it?”

“We’re not that far from home. Can I see your datapad?” You handed it to him and he pulled up a map. “See this dot right here? That’s us. And this other spot here? That’s Ralltiir. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry at the hyperdrive frying a chip just one jump from home, but we’re lucky this station was close. The mechanic said the part we need will be here in a few hours.”

“It’s just so strange,” you said. “For me, I mean.”

“I know,” Cassian said with a sigh, running a hand through his hair. “But look—I got us this.” He reaches for one of the bags he brought in with him and pulls out a blanket—it’s soft and heavy as he drapes it over the both of you, cuddling into you. “You said you were cold earlier. Thought a fuzzy blanket might help.”

“How did I get so lucky?” you asked.

“I don’t know that I’d call stranded on a third-rate space station with a broken hyperdrive lucky,” he said. “But I’m more than willing to make you feel as lucky as possible.”

“I’m still unclear on what time it is.”

“Does it matter?” he asked, pressing his body closer to yours, his hands wandering down your back to tug at the hem of your shirt as his lips captured yours in kiss that brought you back to calm.

You returned the kiss, threading your fingers through his hair, only pulling back when he paused to remove his shirt.

“Are you still sore?” he asked, just above a whisper.

“Just be gentle with me,” you said.

“Always, my heart.”

You get a ping from Arseven. “Yes,” you reply. “Tell Kay he’s safe.”

You spot a blanket in a nearby storage crate and reach for it. It’s soft and heavy and you pull it over the both of you as you snuggle closer to Cassian. His breathing finally starts to steady and you think perhaps that he, too, is remembering how this blanket came into your lives.

He slides one hand down over your hips until it rests on the pocket where you put his plaque. “People used to ask me all the time about this,” he says. “But how could I care about something as ridiculous as rank? With all the death I touched?”

He’d mentioned this before—everyone around him rose in rank while he stayed Captain Andor. Cassian’s days as a spy were over, his face now as well known as Leia’s or Bodhi’s. And while he was offered several opportunities, he chose a lateral promotion to squadron leader. In this position, he found that he had the time to ruminate. To resent himself for all the ugly things he’d done to serve the alliance. To regret having to leave so many good people behind on Scarif. He would never tell you everything, but you knew he hadn’t expected to survive that mission. And you knew that for weeks afterward he’d wake up most days having to vomit, eventually ending up with a prescription for antiemetic tablets.

There are still people in his life who call him Captain, and he tends not to correct them—but for him it has become a hollow word at best.

“You know, Cass,” you say, “a lot of people lived because of you, too. Jyn, Bodhi, so many folks from the Alliance…so many people you’ve never even met? They lived because of choices that you made. I know you had to do things that weigh heavy on you. But you saved a lot of lives, too.”

Cassian lets out a deep breath, closes his eyes.

“How many more Alderaans would there have been? For all you know Ralltiir wouldn’t be here. I wouldn’t be here.”

“Don’t say that,” he says.

“I just need you to remember, even today, that we are all so much more than the worst things that we’ve done.”

He touches his nose to yours, his arms tightening around you as you lay in the quiet bunk on his quiet ship, just the two of you.

“And you did plenty of things you can be proud of.”

“My heart,” Cassian says, “Is Arseven still out there?”

“I’m sure she is.”

He pulls his com device from his pocket and pings the droid. “Can you join us, Arseven? I heard you brought medicine.”

The door to the hangar slides open and the little droid rolls in, producing the medication Cassian is supposed to be taking when he’s experiencing severe symptoms—and which he never takes.

He must see the surprise on your face because he smiles and says, “Progress.”

“I’m proud of you,” you tell him.

Arseven whistles and beeps, asking what else she can do for him.

“How about you take us home?” he says. “I think I just want to be home right now.”

“Yeah?” You ask.

He smiles. “Yeah. I miss that awful tooka cat.”

You laugh, and Cassian kisses your temple. You both gather your things and leave the ship, securing it behind you before getting in the speeder that Arseven is more than willing to drive again. You move her datapad from the passenger seat, where a holodrama has been paused—she must have been watching this while she waited for you.

Cassian sits next to you and takes your hand. Nodding at the datapad he says, “Romance, huh?”

Arseven beeps excitedly.

“If it makes you happy, I’m for it,” he says, sounding so much more like himself. Then, leaning close to you, he whispers, “And later, whatever makes you happy? I’m especially for that.”

Kay is so relieved to have you both home that he actually offers to go pick up something for dinner. Arseven goes with him, giving you and Cassian a bit of alone time at the house—something that lately you have admittedly not had much of.

“How are you feeling,” you ask, bringing him a cup of jogun fruit tea—an old favorite for both of you.

“Tired,” he says. “But also…okay. Truly, I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

“Fortunately, you don’t have to worry about that.”

“I am fortunate,” he says. “Come here.”

He shrugs out of his jacket and tosses it over the back of the sofa before pulling you close. You press one hand to his firm chest, resting it for a moment over his beating heart.

“I’m still learning who I am without violence,” Cassian says. “Without waking up every day to war. I think I always will be. But you…you steady me.”

“Cassian,” you say. “You’re a good man. Tell me you believe me when I say that.”

“When you say it, my heart? I do.”

You trace the line of his jaw with your fingertips, admiring the bits of silver that have started to appear in his short beard. Cassian catches your hand in his and brushes his lips over your wrist. Pulling your legs into his lap, he kisses you—slow and deep, as if he’s been waiting for years for this kiss. You slide your fingers into his hair, wishing you had enough time to slip away to the bedroom before the droids would return. But for now you’ll take this moment, this beautiful man and all of his imperfections, his sins, his troubles. He breaks the kiss to take a breath and you catch a tear at the corner of his eye, gently brush it away.

“You are a miracle,” he whispers. “Thank you.”

And you softly kiss his cheek, whispering back, “Always.”

★★★★★★★★

Thank you so much for reading! I hope this fic made you feel seen and loved. It's definitely a lot more intense than what I usually write but it felt like something I needed to do. Will definitely try to do something more fluffy next time. Tagging folks who I think would enjoy! I really need to get a proper taglist going:

@justrunamok @writingbylee @princessxkenobi @zinzinina @aerynwrites @galaxtic-writings @belfry-bat @phoenixhalliwell @laserbrains @r1-sw-lover @darthanakin @disastersim @infinityrevengers @lovedbyth3sun @usernamesarebitches @maul-ologue @operation-spot @strwrs @writeforfandoms

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