#this has to be mild rage baiting right??

[blind-sheep]

As someone who spend so much time on more lgbtq+ settings on the internet, I tend to forget how much the average joe is, by norm, very heteronormative, as is society.

Like, there was this short video on youtube showing the Falin's resurrection scene and all, and some peoples did some comments about it.

As someone who do ship falin × marcille, and compared to what we see around here, that's pretty mild stuff right?

But as I keep forgetting, some people get quite mad at the simplest suggestion that gay people may exist in their little show.

Tbf, the first comment may just not be into the ship and is finding reasonings to why it doesn't work on their eyes, but they're very defensive still.

The second comment however is at quite a point of hetero delusion. Falin was about to marry Toshiro? What? It was mentioned he proposed to her, not that she had accepted and was about to marry him! But, to some people, a man liking a woman is enough for them to be already together, no matter how she feels about it, bc it's "the norm" for the boy to get with the girl. Like, he likes her, and that's all that matters so they will totally get together at the end?

Sadly, that's one of the reasons I see Laios × Marcille as a boring ship sometimes. By all means, I see why some people ship it, there is some real reasoning behind it, but I just know the biggest reasoning for most people that ship them is just "he was a boy, she was a girl, do I need to say more?" Type of mindset.

This next one just makes me laugh, it HAS to be bait:

Like, Marcille NEVERS blush around Falin AND just blushes around Laios? Fella, I don't think we watched the same anime or read the same manga, even people that don't ship them can see that they are a little gay. Or can they? (Vsauce theme starts playing~)

About their age difference and how race works in Dungeon Meshi, that's quite the big topic, not sure I want to stray too much here (there's too much text here as it is).

And about that part that says "makes me think they're all very straight": if this comment is a joke or not, this bit says a lot. Most people see the whole world like that, everyone is straight till proven other wise, and you gotta prove a LOT in media for characters to be gay, or it doesn't count. To most people, being hetero is the norm, and seeing lgbtq+ ships is very hard for most bc of this.

No one is forcing anyone to ship anything here, but lots of people really do forget being gay is even possible sometimes, and get mad at us for shipping what reflect our realities (at least in our eyes). Especially in the anime community, where the simple threat that their "waifu" may not like dudes send some fellas into a fit of rage and homophobia.

And I know, the focus of Dungeon Meshi is not romance and never was, and we can't see the story only through these lenses, I agree with that. But people will ship anything in any show, and I just used it as an example to talk about this topic. It's something that comes often to my mind and I never had the chance to talk about it till now.

Here's a little Farcille gif as a treat for those that read all this rant of mine:

( so cuute~ )

#dungeon meshi #farcille #falin x marcille #falin touden #marcille donato #laios touden #dungeon meshi spoilers #delicious in dungeon

[siriuslovebot]

˖ ࣪⭑˖ ࣪𝒅𝒆𝒕𝒆𝒏𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏 ➸ 𝒔𝒊𝒓𝒊𝒖𝒔 𝒃𝒍𝒂𝒄𝒌˖ ࣪⭑ ˖ ࣪

𓏲 ࣪₊♡𓂃 𝑨𝑵𝑶𝑵𝒀𝑴𝑶𝑼𝑺 𝑨𝑺𝑲𝑬𝑫: slytherin!reader x sirius enemies to lovers possibly? thanks love!!

𝑾𝑨𝑹𝑵𝑰𝑵𝑮𝑺: smut (18+, minors dni!), enemies to lovers, mean/condescending sirius, lots of teasing and arguing, unprotected sex, semi-public sex, petnames (doll, pet), explicit sex scenes, etc.

𝑺𝑼𝑴𝑴𝑨𝑹𝒀: the reader and sirius are always at odds. after earning a detention, they decide to sneak to the kitchens at night and get sidetracked.

𝑨/𝑵: ugh i'm such a slut for enemies to lovers with sirius eeeeek. i had had had to write this! btw sorry for going mia for a few days; work has been exhausting me :( i'm gonna work on some requests tomorrow since i'm off and hopefully that can hold you all over until i have more time. also, to clarify, my smut posts are for 18+ audiences only! i will be blocking minors who interact with my smut posts. as always, this is unedited, so sorry for any errors/typos! hope you enjoy!

𝑾𝑶𝑹𝑫 𝑪𝑶𝑼𝑵𝑻: 4.7k 𓂃♡₊⭑

·͙⁺˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚⁺‧͙⁺˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚⁺‧͙⁺˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚⁺‧͙•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚⁺‧͙⁺

“you bloody prat!” the foul words leave your mouth before you have a chance to stop them, your hand flying up to cover your mouth. immediately, your gaze finds the figure of professor slughorn at the head of the classroom. his eyes are wide, set in a surprised expression as he looks over you.

“miss y/n,” he says, in a rather mild voice for his looming presence.

you flush, skin burning. the entirety of the class watches you, fists clenched around a handful of wormwood as it crumbles. beside you, there’s a self-satisfied smirk on sirius black’s face. he’s got a smear of flobberworm mucous over his sleeve, where he’s just emptied his entire container into your cauldron, effectively rendering your sleeping draught entirely useless.

“i’m sorry, professor,” you say. in an effort to placate him, you glance at sirius and sigh in exasperation. “sirius just– bumped into me, and knocked all of this flobberworm mucous into my cauldron. promise it won’t happen again.” you cut your eyes at the elder black brother, his expression slightly bemused at your sudden change of tone. there’s no need snitching to professor slughorn; you’ll get sirius back, and it’ll be far worse than any detention with the head of your house. 

“very well,” says professor slughorn. he’s taken your bait, and you’re glad for it. “mr. black, i’m sure you won’t mind miss y/n assisting you, since her potion is now–” he peers over your shoulder, having lumbered over to your table. his lips curl up into a grimace “--ruined, yes, quite awfully. sharing is caring, after all.”

sirius grunts as professor slughorn slaps him on the back like an old chum. your features curl up into a sneer, your eyes glowing with retribution. sirius huffs a quiet, “yes, professor.”

he glares at your shit-eating grin as you settle yourself beside him. his own potion doesn’t look much better than yours; he’s clearly been focused on making your life a living hell rather than on his potion-making, and it shows. “this looks shit,” you say, making a face at him.

“‘course it does,” he says, sourly, “dumped all my flobber mucous into your potion, didn’t i?”

“serves you right, you dirty, conniving little–”

sirius cuts you off with a snort, “ugh, y/n, if you want to fuck me so badly just say that.” his sarcastic words send a jolt through you, your stomach bubbling with rage.

“in your dreams, sirius,” you spit, knocking your shoulder into his with enough force to make his stool wobble. professor slughorn is none the wiser, gloating over lily evans’s potion across the room. 

sirius grumbles under his breath, tapping his wand mindlessly against the cauldron in any effort to help his quickly deteriorating potion. after a moment he says, “help me out here, will you? it’s your bloody potion, too.”

“i’d rather die,” you say dramatically, lifting your chin haughtily as you distract yourself by scratching a star into the tabletop with your fingernail. the fury radiating off of him is enough to satisfy you for now; he’s swearing under his breath, dumping odds and ends into the cauldron in a futile attempt to save his mark for the day. you prod the inside of your cheek with your tongue, trying not to smile at his frustration. karma, karma, karma. you can only hope he’ll have to endure extra credit hours in slughorn’s office, listening to all the stories of his talented old students. you couldn’t imagine a more boring saturday night. 

“stupid, fuckin’ thing, what am i doing wrong?” sirius says quietly, startling you with a particularly hard thump of his wand against the cauldron. you glance inside, the mixture having congealed into something nasty and grey. you wrinkle your nose.

“everything, by the looks of it,” you say. you answer his tight-lipped expression with a sickeningly sweet smile and a bat of your eyelashes. you’re sure he’s starting to rethink his choice to ruin your potion this morning. 

“shut up,” he hisses, a particularly foul emphasis on the words. if looks could kill, the daggers he stares into you would be piercing straight through your heart. you almost want to goad him even further, provoke him into a reaction that will be enough to get him in trouble with dumbledore himself, but you know better. you’re very good at playing the long game.

thus begins your blood-thirsty rivalry with sirius black. of course, neither of you were particularly fond of the other in the first place; you supposed it was his hatred of slytherins. he approached you as if you were some scum-of-the-earth, less-than-human creature, solely because of the house you were placed in. funny coming from someone whose little brother shared the same house. from your first interaction, you decided you could be exactly who he envisioned you to be, and you made it your mission to do so. 

at first, the incidents are easily passed off as “accidental.” sirius charming your quills to pelt you in the head, aiming for your eyes. you muttering a particularly difficult to reverse rendition of, “engorgio skullus,” that put him in the hospital wing for a week whilst madam pomfrey tried to shrink his head back to its regular size (though, in your opinion, it wasn’t much bigger than normal.) you began to map your paths through the corridors, purposely avoiding the places in which you knew sirius would be present. he grew very fond of casting non-verbal tripping jinxes, sending you and all of your belongings sprawling through the halls. similarly, when you found him pestering remus in the library, you were quick to employ the oppugno jinx, sending a spattering of books barreling towards him. 

you earned a detention from madam pince for that one, but it was well-worth it when you saw sirius’s battered appearance the next morning. the antics go on and on, until you’re both at odds to the point where the entire school is invested in who’s going to one-up the other depending on the day. you hear james and remus making bets on it as you pass the gryffindors on your way to herbology one day; you can’t help but smirk as remus bets on you. you always knew he was a smart man. 

after a horribly timed jelly-legs jinx from sirius, you wobble into the slytherin common room to get ready for bed. your muscles ache, as your legs collapsed beneath you just as you were at the top of a staircase. toppling down the stones, you were too busy screeching in anger to notice the almost worried look on sirius’s face at his handiwork. he’d even bounded down the stairs, muttering a half apology before you hissed, “flipendo,” and sent him crumbling into the staircase himself. as you passed his crumpled frame, groaning in pain, you were pleased to see a sheepish james handing over another galleon to remus. 

you wince as you finally make it down the passage, stopping for a second to rest your burning limbs. regulus reclines on one of the sofas, feet kicked up as he flicks through an old book. his eyes find yours briefly, flashing with mirth.

“what are you looking at?” you breathe, putting pressure on an especially sore rib. a sharp pain causes you to frown, doubling over for a second.

“y’look like hell,” says regulus.

you roll your eyes. “you know what–” you take a sharp breath at another pain. “--i get enough shit from your git of a brother. don’t you start on me, too.” you point a finger at him, wagging it.

he laughs, dropping the newspaper onto his stomach. he clasps his hands over it, cocking his head as he eyes you carefully. there’s a wicked little grin on his chiseled, handsome face. his intelligent eyes scheme for a moment, thoughts crossing through them to the point where you can practically see the gears turning. 

“what?” you repeat, impatient with his conspicuous contemplation. he’s clearly dying to speak his mind, and you’re sure you won’t make it another two minutes standing in the common room before your legs give out completely. you’re dying to get into bed. 

“i was just thinking,” regulus contemplates, smug as he leans up on his elbows.

“didn’t know you could manage that,” you say sarcastically, rolling your eyes. if nothing else, regulus is as dramatic, if not more, than his brother.

he wrinkles his nose.

“go on,” you urge. “i’m dying to know what you’re thinking, reg.”

he smiles, the curve of his lips meant to be placating in spite of his words. “how long are you and sirius going to play cat-and-mouse before you give up the act and admit you want each other?” 

“i hope you’re joking,” you say flippantly. you turn immediately from his lazing figure, marching towards the girls’ dorms. 

“deny it all you want,” he calls from behind you. “everyone knows!”

you find your dorm, luckily empty, and slam the door behind you. your neck and ears burn, as you suddenly feel quite embarrassed. there’s no way sirius likes you, and you certainly don’t have any feelings for him; other than hate, annoyance, and frustration, that is. yes, you’d like to throttle the eldest of the black brothers, and you’re sure you would get a great deal of pleasure from it. but want, lust, affection? regulus has officially lost his mind.

you seethe as you get ready for bed, a dozen reminders of sirius as you ache all over with each movement. hate certainly brews a certain sort of passion within a person, but you’d march into the forbidden forest wandless, robeless, and blindfolded before you had a single warm thought for sirius black. 

you’re still fuming as you nestle yourself beneath the duvet. and as awful as it is to admit, your last thought before you sink into slumber is of that stupidly handsome, haughty face that you think you hate so much. 

˖ ࣪⭑˖ ࣪

“not like that, you dumb–”

“please, sirius!” you retort, frustrated with the dark-haired young man sitting beside you. he’s genuinely dancing on your last good nerve, offering a snarky comment for your every movement today. “just shut up.”

somehow, you’ve been sat beside him in transfiguration. professor mcgonagall had the ever-so-lovely idea to come up with a new seating chart, placing you and sirius at a table together. you’re moments away from throttling him and being sent to azkaban for murder. 

“i’m trying to help you, here,” he says, shrugging. “do it wrong, then, if y’want. i couldn’t care less.”

“oh, you’re so good at it, are you?” you stare at him, a sour look on your face. today’s lesson was supposed to be easy (according to professor mcgonagall), and you were having an impossibly hard time as it was one of your first lessons on human transfiguration. you had yet to be successful in any of the other human transfiguration lessons, either. sirius’s nagging presence wasn’t doing anything to help. 

“seeing as i’ve been doing it for the last half an hour, i would think so.”

“well, show me, then, you bloody genius,” you sneer, crossing your arms over your chest. you blink at him, waiting for his enormous display of intelligence.

“so easy,” he mutters, rolling his eyes. “i mean, ‘s not like you’re turning yourself into a bleeding dragon or something…”

“i’m just growing my hair by magic,” you say, hot under the collar with frustration. “not everyone’s mr. perfect like you.”

sirius rolls his eyes. you watch him for another second, trying not to look impressed as he does exactly that. his dark hair grows longer before your eyes, sweeping down over his collarbones and skirting just above his elbows.

“okay, show-off,” you mutter, turning away with a frown on your face. “an inch is the requirement.”

he chuckles, smug. “‘s all right,” he says, reaching to tug on a strand of your hair, rather harshly. you gasp at the sting, swatting his hand away with a blush on your face. you shift uncomfortably in your seat. “maybe we can do it manually.” he pulls on another strand over your hand.

“sirius,” you whine, grasping his wrist to stop him. your heart thumps wildly at the look on his face, a pleased smile on his lips. he’s apparently enjoying teasing you. maybe a little too much. “that hurts.”

“aw,” he says, his voice mocking as he feigns pity. “poor baby. hurts, does it?” the condescending tone in his voice has a pit growing in your stomach, your heart sinking into it by the second. he dodges your grasp. there’s another pull on your hair. he raises his eyebrows at the whimper that comes from your lips as you shove him.

“can– can you— stop it, you shit,” there’s a flash of hands as you and sirius battle it out, him reaching over to pester you some more as you block him as best as you can. truthfully, you’re embarrassed that him teasing you is stirring your insides, exciting you in a way that is very wrong. plus, you refuse to let regulus be right. you’d rather have a slap-fight with sirius in the middle of class then let him make you crumble at his taunting actions. 

you wince as he jerks your hair again, this time hard enough to make tears prick your eyes. you respond with a sharp SMACK against his forearm, which rings through the room not unlike a gunshot. there’s a split second of complete silence, as mcgonagall is comprehending your misbehaviors.

“miss y/n, mr. black,” she says, voice strict. “ten points from gryffindor, and slytherin. see me after class.” she peers at the two of you over her spectacles, meaning business. you sink into your seat, chastised. sirius nods, pressing his lips together as he settles back into his own place. 

“nice one, dumbass,” he says quietly, crossing his arms over his chest.

“i told you to stop a dozen times.”

˖ ࣪⭑˖ ࣪

“bleeding candelabras... my fingers are going to fall off,” you complain. it’s well past midnight, filch having finally decided that you and sirius had sufficiently completed your detention. after a miserable few hours, crouched in his office polishing the silver, the two of you are finally free to go.

“tell me about it,” sirius yawns, shaking his head. “don’t think m’hands will ever be the same.” he holds his palms out in front of him, wrinkling his nose at the cracked skin. 

“gross,” you peer at his dry hands. “it’s those muggle chemicals he insists on using. much safer to use magic if you ask me.”

sirius chuckles, “poor guy wants us all to know how hard it is to be a suffering squib.”

you laugh despite yourself, then shake your head. “i hope mcgonagall’s not expecting us to go back tomorrow night. don’t think i can miss dinner again.” you clutch at your stomach. “‘m starving.”

“let’s sneak into the kitchens,” sirius suggests.

you look at him as if his head’s fallen off his shoulders. “are you out of your mind?”

“oh, c’mon. james and i have done it plenty of times. the house elves aren’t going to tell anyone.”

“we’re in enough trouble as it is, sirius,” you say firmly.

“suit yourself,” he stretches his arms over his head, turning on his heel. you watch him pad down the hall, his shirt lifted slightly to reveal his lower back as he stretches. you swallow hard, averting your eyes as your hands go a bit clammy. he rolls his neck side-to-side as he lowers his arms. 

you think about it for a second, then you call, “wait–wait for me.” it takes more than a few strides for you to catch up, and then you’re slinking downstairs with him, headed for the kitchens. a midnight snack couldn’t hurt anyone, right?

“knew you couldn’t resist,” he says, voice teasing.

you roll your eyes.

there’s a certain thrill to stalking the castle’s corridors at night. you’re not sure if it's the adrenaline or the repeated image of sirius’s bare skin burned into your mind that has your pulse hammering endlessly. a giddiness employs itself in your stomach, churning as you follow him on the familiar path down to the kitchens; it’s clear that he’s been out after hours plenty of times. he knows the place like the back of his hand, barely batting an eye as he leads you through the corridors. 

“are you sure we won’t be caught?” you whisper, voice hardly audible through the sound of your own heart.

“we’ll be fine,” sirius says, confident. “don’t you trust me?” he quirks a slender eyebrow at you. his grey eyes have a dark cast in the low light, only the shine of a few candles illuminating his features. you shrug, your mouth dry as he grins at you. 

“i–i mean, sure,” you say, half-hearted. his laugh is low, gravelly. accompanied with his tired voice, it’s enough to make you swoon.

“right, then,” he says, “we’re nearly there.”

you’re close to your destination when sirius stops in his tracks. you nearly trip over him, grasping his arm for balance as he stops, listening.

“what?” you tug at his sleeve. “what is it?”

“shut up,” he mutters, seeming much more like his normal self. “someone’s coming.” his eyes scan the corridor ahead of you, then he spins around, shoving you towards a door a few feet away.

“what–where are we?” 

he’s shoving you into a dark room, pulling the door closed very gently behind him. a heavy-sounding lock clicks into place. you push past him, hands finding the door as you place your ear against the heavy wood. you hold your breath as you listen for footsteps outside the door.

the room is very small; your feet shuffle to find somewhere to stand, through piles of junk on the floor. sirius does the same, crowding in behind you to listen along at the door. you try to ignore the heat in your stomach as he presses his body against your back in the small space. it’s the only way he can eavesdrop at the door alongside you. at least, that’s what you’re telling yourself.

you’re both dead quiet, your hands shaking as you listen. the footsteps echo closer and closer, and stop. you bite down on your lip, trying to pay attention. however, sirius’s lithe frame pressed against you is proving to be a great distraction. you feel the rise and fall of his chest as he breathes calmly. he’s pressed against you, solid and unmoving. the heat radiating from his body is lighting your skin on fire; sweat prickles your skin. 

“scared?” he whispers, voice barely perceptible.

“no,” you lie. you hope he doesn’t know the true root of your fear; the sinking possibility that he could find out just how much you’re enjoying this. how much you’ve been dying to be this close to him for the last few weeks. 

“liar,” he mutters. he’s still listening. “it’s mcgonagall out there,” he says.

“how can you tell?” you ask. the darkness has heightened your other senses, but you’re not as observant nor perceptive as he is. at least not with him pushing you against the wall like this.

“dunno, the cadence of her footsteps or something. remus can probably explain it better than i can. i just know.”

“you just know,” you say simply.

“mhmm,” he hums in agreement. “i just know a lot of things.”

“like what?”

there’s a second of loaded, thick silence. the air is thick enough that you swear you can feel it wrapping around you, suffocating you.

“like how much you’re enjoying this.”

“what?!” your voice is more of a hiss than a whisper, and he shushes you gently. 

“careful, pet,” he says, “want mcgonagall to find us like this?”

“we’re not doing anything,” you say, embarrassed.

he chuckles darkly. “not yet.”

sirius presses closer to you, his body pinning yours against the door. a gasp escapes you, your mouth hanging open as his hand finds your chin, lifting your face towards his. “such a pretty noise, doll,” he says. you can hardly see him, but you can imagine the look on his face from his tone. his eyes dark, lips quirked in a pleased expression, eyelids hooded. 

“sirius,” you say, though it sounds more pleading than you intended.

“gonna start begging for me already?” there’s that laugh again, sending a jolt of heat straight to your core. 

you’re burning up, embarrassed that you’re so needy already. you shouldn’t be enjoying this as much as you are, enjoying your least-favorite person pinning you against the wall in an old supply closet. not to mention your professor stalking the hall just outside the door. your head spins. 

“shut up,” you mumble, though you don’t mean it. you squirm, taking a breath as you feel his length pressed against you from behind. he sucks air in through clenched teeth at the feeling. his face dips down to meet yours, his lips catching yours in an open-mouthed kiss. he licks into your mouth, your tongues uniting messily in the middle. there’s a clash of teeth, a grunted noise from him, and strings of saliva as he pulls away for breath before he’s diving back in. you relish in the obscene sensation, the messiest, wettest kiss you’ve ever been privy to. you’re enjoying every second of it, however naughty it may be. 

your stomach flutters, enjoying the sharp dig of his other hand gripping your hip. another soft noise from you, into his mouth. he groans, his long fingers still holding your face in place. he pulls away, lips swollen and chin coated with saliva. he trails wet kisses down your jawline, biting at the tender skin of your neck. you rock back against him, your core throbbing as he muffles a low noise in the back of his throat. 

“fuck,” he slurs, breathing heavily already. “you don’t know how bad i want to fuck that smart fucking mouth…” he whispers, his breath hot on the shell of your ear. “shut you up for once…”

you’re throbbing at his words, aching so bad that you’d get on your knees and beg him just to touch you. you’d do it yourself, even, if only he’d talk you through it. but sirius has other plans, clearly as desperate as you are.

“please,” the soft croak of your voice has him grinning at you. you can faintly see the outline of his wolfish smile, his hazy eyes as he looks at you.

“no time right now, pet,” he grinds his hips against you, still fully clothed. his bulge is rock-hard against your ass. he’s grunting softly, running his hands up and down your body. his fingers grasp your breasts, roughly squeezing through the material of your shirt. “wish i could take my time with you… it’ll have to wait.”

“just do something,” you mutter, growing impatient at the ache between your legs. you can feel your panties, soaked and sticking to your center with your arousal. 

“use your manners, you fucking brat,” he snarks, nipping at your earlobe.

you squeak, and he stiffens for a second. his hand slides up, wrapping around your throat. “and shut up. how many times have i got to say it?”

“sorry, ‘m sorry,” you whisper. the footsteps don’t come any closer. you wonder if mcgonagall is even out there at all, but your mind slips back to sirius as you feel him dragging the waistband of your trousers down. 

“keep that pretty mouth shut, pet, or i’ll shut it for you,” he warns.

you nod. you’ll do anything he says just to have him buried inside of you. you need it so bad, your entire body begging for his touch. you brace yourself, spreading your legs to allow him access as his hand delves between your legs from behind. his fingers drag through your slit, slow, spreading your juices. 

he takes a deep breath, burying his face into your neck. he’s smiling against your skin. “that pretty cunt’s just dripping f’me,” he says softly, the contrast of his filthy words and gentle tone making your head spin. “wish i could make you scream and cry for me…”

you barely register his words, flinching as he prods a finger at your entrance. he swirls it at your swollen hole, enjoying the way you jerk against him, sensitive. you bite down on your bottom lip, hard. your eyes are half-hooded, struggling to stay open as he teases you. he pushes your legs further apart, then his hand is gone. you hear the clink of his belt buckle, feel him adjusting his position behind you.

tears of pleasure prick your eyes as he sinks into you; you want to cry out, the sound threatening to rip from your chest at the slightest movement from him. he feels your whole body tense, his hold on your throat tightening. “not–” he pulls out briefly, before burying his cock to the hilt inside of you again “--a fucking sound.”

you nod, “yes, yes sir,” you breathe, as quietly as you can manage. you take trembling breaths, trying to contain yourself at the mind blowing drag of his swollen cockhead against your walls. his pace is slow, but forceful. 

his every movement is making your body tick closer to release. his thrusts are steady, wet noises squelching through the room as your juices drip down your legs. your legs are weak already, but his body pinning yours against the door is enough to keep you upright as you claw at the wood in front of you. he squeezes your throat just enough to cut off the sounds that you can’t help. his other hand finds your stomach, palm pressing into the flesh to feel the bulge of his cock buried deep inside of you. 

“god–” you breathe, throwing your head back. “can’t take it much longer…”

he makes a noise, half laugh and half moan. his voice is condescending as he says, “gonna come f’me already? pathetic little pet…” his hips rut into yours with increased force; you wince at the sudden sound of soaked slapping skin, the noises cutting through the quiet broom cupboard like a knife.

“s–slow down, sirius,” you whine, squeezing your eyes shut as the feeling becomes overwhelming. you slump against him, head lolling back onto his shoulder. “someone’ll hear us.”

his hips snap into yours, sharper. “won’t hear anything if you’d just listen,” he says, his voice sharp. “how many times do i need to tell you to be quiet?” his fingers snake up from your neck, two of them sliding between your swollen lips. you moan around them, your jaw going slack. 

he’s hitting the perfect spot inside of you, your vision going fuzzy as he forces you to the brink of orgasm. he doesn’t even have to touch your clit, having gotten you so worked up that he can just hammer into your g-spot and drive you over the edge. he hums his approval, dragging his teeth along your collarbone as you dissolve into moans and whimpers around his fingers. you drool around his long digits, teasing the back of your throat. you gag around them, your saliva leaking down his wrist. 

“there’s m’good li’l pet, being so quiet for me,” he praises in that mean voice. you clench forcefully around him, your entire body overtaken by waves of pleasure that send your knees crumpling completely. a gravelly moan comes from him, the repeated tightening of your walls pushing him over the edge. the feeling of him coming inside of you sends renewed waves of ecstasy through your body, your mind going blank as you lose yourself in the feeling. your mind can’t conjure a single thought except him, his hands all over you, his teeth grazing and marking your skin, his cock rearranging your insides. 

“sirius,” you gasp, appreciating the strength of his grip on you as he helps you regain your footing. he plants a kiss against a dark spot on your neck as he holds you upright. there’s a second where the two of you catch your breath, the quiet overwhelming after the overload of emotions you just experienced. he pulls out of you, and you whimper softly at the emptiness. you struggle to adjust your trousers, smartening yourself. 

“i wasn’t too mean, was i?” he brushes a sweat-soaked strand of hair from your forehead.

you smile gently, shaking your head. “you’ve been much meaner, trust me.”

he laughs. “seems like i’ve fucked the attitude out of you.”

“watch yourself, black.”

“right,” he nods, looking a bit flustered at the sharp look on your face. then, he says, “still up for sneaking into the kitchens?

#sirius black #sirius black fic #sirius black x reader smut #sirius black smut #sirius black x reader #marauders era fic #marauders smut #marauders fanfiction #marauders fic #marauders era #harry potter fanfiction #harry potter #smut #slb.works

[oneoftheprettynerds]

Fixed: Dark!Steve x Reader (Mob AU)

Chapter 4 in the Lipstick and Crayons Series.

Chapter 3: Love So Soft

Main Masterlist

A/N: It’s shorter than my usual updates but I’m busy so sorry for the delay. My final exam dates have come and all I can do is pray right now lol. Please pray for me if you can, this sis is out here writing fanfics for yall instead of studying so, haha. ANyways, enjoy babies! Shit happens in this chapter.

Warning: Non-Con, Sickening Threats, Mob Themes, Violence, Death, Manipulation, a mild mental breakdown, Cheap Tricks.

Genres + Characters: Mob AU, Single Parents AU, Steve Rogers x Reader.

Summary: Steve can’t ever repay you for what you did. After meeting you, Steve believes his broken family is the missing piece in the puzzle of your own wrecked one. Indebting the crime lord to you has been the biggest mistake of your life, cause now you can’t get rid of him, no matter what. Loyalty and favours go a long way in the mob.

Word count: 5K

Chapter 4: Fixed

You didn’t sleep that night. Or the next few. Your hands shook every time you got a flashback and even though you were numb to emotions that entire day, tears threatened to spill whenever your mind took to you to that overpriced kitchen again.

Now that he had gone to a dangerous and unnerved assaulter from a Dad trying to take care of his daughter, your mind wouldn’t put anything past him. You knew that in the back of your mind that he was a mobster and your ‘friendship’ was alarming to say the least, but now there was no denying his resources and power and the very obvious threat to your life lingering in the air.

At least before you had the luxury to be oblivious and ignorant, not anymore though. Steve felt even more unhinged and liberal now, even messaging you daily, greeting texts that you obviously ignored. He knew you both were aware that you never handed him your number and he felt no need to hide his pursuit.

You read most of the messages, not bothering with a single reply though. You tried to block him but somehow your phone would still receive messages from his number, even though his contact would always peek back at you from the otherwise empty blacklist.

As if his torment wasn’t ample, another message thread from a different number would forward you alarming images, photos of Grace in her daycare, on a class trip to the park and even her playing in your backyard. You had no doubt that this was another game of his to show you his resources.

You skipped daycare for a few days, your mental health worse than it was after the carnival attack, because now you had a personal tormentor and you cursed yourself for falling into this mess. At times, you believed it wasn’t your fault really, you just helped a kid and this situation spiraled itself but what would pointing fingers now get you? The harsh truth was you were in a calamitous situation now and every step from now on had to be thought out.

So, you let Grace attend her daycare and acted if nothing was amiss or altered, after the few initial breakdown days of course, kept going to your job and earning the bread. You considered your options, you really wanted to go to the cops or a higher fair power but those were few these days, almost non existent in your city. You also vaguely recalled meeting three of the Captains of the PD at Sarah’s birthday, all smiley and doe eyed for Steve. You knew they wouldn’t help, fucking kiss-asses.

Maybe you would have to move somewhere else, perhaps to your hometown, at least till things cooled down or better yet were forgotten? But that trail was very predictable and you didn’t want your parents in this mess.  

You also came to know that Steve had inserted himself in the other spheres of your life. You were sure your location was always being sent to him, the knowledge a courtesy of the black car following you while you travelled to home at some late day’s end.

Aiden told you whereabouts were easy to track, when you inquired ambiguously. Another instance was when you went to the bank to deposit cash for your debit card, you came face to face with an enormous amount already there. Somehow, the limit on your credit card was also extended. How, you knew. The clerk told you about an email you must have gotten in regards to it, you dismissed that justification away and told them to not accept the cash. To sum the discussion, they weren’t helpful and had no policy against anonymous donors.

Aiden, your trusted coworker cum pal, sensed the shift in your aura and fidgety form very easily, pestering you with questions and you decided to turn to him, stressed and tired and ready to do something. His questioning eyebrows made you confess vaguely but you refused to tell him the extent of it. Just that his prediction came true and you needed help. Let’s just say, Aiden was a good man.

With time, Steve’s ‘affectionate’ messages became deranged, and you found it harder to act nonchalant in your daily life. You were thankful he didn’t come to visit you, possibly occupied with the rumored war between the mobs. You just prayed for a few more days of ignorance, just enough time to think and do something.

“What do you mean someone collected her?!” You had a hard time controlling your voice, you were about to burst, in tears or with anger, you didn’t know.

“The man was verified in the emergency contacts and we got a letter signed and approved by you to skip the day an hour into the first activity.”

“A man? Emergen-, wait no! What fucking approved letter?”

You had three emergency contacts, your mom in another state, Aiden, and one of the other kid’s mom you had grown close to. Aiden was with you at work all day, so did someone disguise themselves as him? And what was the deal with the letter signed by you? You surely didn’t remember writing and authorizing one.

The boy, Pietro, who had been the receptionist for as long as you could remember, shuffled through the chaotic piles of paper and presented a letter to you, and your blood froze as your eyes skimmed the font.

Your beautiful cursive stared right back at you and you knew that no one would ever be able to distinguish between this penmanship and the one in the pocketbook in your clutch. No one but you. Even though you knew you had not written it, the slightly different ‘f’ and ‘g’ told you everything.

Your signature at the bottom though, was done quite perfectly and that made you even more scared.

“I did-, I didn’t write this! What the-” Your widened eyes met Pietro’s from above the paper but all he offered you was a meek smile. Your hands shook with rage and for the first time in your life, you had the urge to slap someone really bad.

“Maybe your family had an emergency to take he-”

“No, you don’t get it!” You stopped yourself from getting frantic, willing yourself to take deep breaths and think rationally. Today of all days, things had to mess up.

He didn’t know you had no family in this city, that you had a mobster after you or the subtle threats that his hired spy sent to you.

Was going to the police an option? Aiden already told you that the cops were as good as Steve’s men. But this was about your missing kid! You’d never forgive yourself if something happened to her. And you were giving Steve way too much credit, what if he wasn’t behind this all? Come to think of it, what if the other number wasn’t his?

Relax yourself! Thinking of disturbing theories wouldn’t help anyone. You thought you should go to the cops, just in case. No mentioning of Steve, just a woman with a ‘missing child’ report.

‘Missing Child’ left an acrid taste behind and you were too close to a breakdown, but your whole journey of single-parenthood taught you to kick vulnerability aside, well most of the times.

You turned and were about to leave, but Pietro stopped you. “If you are going to the cops Ma’am, they require 8 hours of inactivity or disappearance time for kids under 5.”

Well look who just read your mind.

You huffed and kept the tears at bay, your mind thinking of what to do then? Grace was obviously taken-

“How could you let a toddler leave without informing the parents?” You knew your anger was channeling out at the wrong man but didn’t he all but hand Grace to the stranger?

You beat him answering and inquired, “What did the man look like? Do you have any footage? Anything?” The wrinkles in your forehead and stress creases on your face paired with the eyebags betrayed your age surely. You were sure you had aged more this week than an entire decade, juggling your normal life with the hovering threat.

“You shouldn’t be this worried Ma’am.”

The fucking audacity.

“Your daughter recognized him, she all but ran to him and this other little girl he came with. You should maybe ask your parent-friends around? A blonde family perhaps?”

As all the emotions drained from your face and terror took over, the young lad in front of you looked smug. You wondered as if you imagined the faintest of smirks on his face.

You crumpled the letter in your hands, seething with rage as you stepped in your car. Oh, you were mad, more wrathful than ever. You could take any hits on you, any threat but not on Grace, never on her.

You were stupid, you had already decided you wouldn’t put anything past him but unknowingly, you did put this past him. You thought this man had a shred of decency to not use your kid in this adult war, being a parent himself and all but what a surprise! You were wrong.

You drove to your home, your thoughts a mix of trepidation, anxiety and fury. You were scared of him and his reach and resources but if he put Grace in any type of danger; whether to teach you a lesson or use her as bait or both, there’d be consequences.

Lord knows you killed a man a month ago Grace was threatened.

You had one thing to do before contacting Steve about Grace but you never got to do it because unexpectedly the bastard was in your home. In your home.

The black sports car outside was a huge giveaway but your suspicions were confirmed when you opened the door with your house key. The banter and giggles from inside alarmed yet calmed you; the dread of confrontation and the assurance of Grace’s safety reigned your mind.

As the door opened painfully slow like a horror movie, the sight that met your eyes made you sick with a feeling of failure. It wasn’t gore or blood or grunge, it was Steve bouncing Grace in the air and catching her while Sarah twirled around in the living room.  

This man was craftier than you thought, every action of his was calculated, each a refined step. You had been so preoccupied to avoid direct encounters with him in your little family’s life that you didn’t think he had other ways. He was always looming around with Sarah and as Grace began to trust Sarah, she consequently began to trust her blonde guardian too.

As you slammed the door behind you, Steve’s eyes snapped to yours and his smirk made you want to punch him so hard. The smugness on his face while he let Grace down without breaking eye contact told you he had no regret, no remorse. In fact, he was loving every second of this cat and mouse chase between you two.

You were a millimeter close to losing your shit, the only check being the kids in the room. But you were mad and he was going to know it.

“What the hell, Steve? Messing with my kid?” You threw your clutch onto the couch, Steve haughty by the reception of his sent message but still holding back because of the kids. He called Wanda and you didn’t really notice where she came from but you did register Steve asking to take the girls to the park for a ‘private discussion’.

As Grace passed by you, you grabbed her arm lightly, making her look at you with doe eyes resembling yours. You gave her a smile trying to ease her, but you knew she was smart enough to sense the change in the atmosphere.

Apparently, the whining Sarah wasn’t.

You looked back to Steve, your hold still on Grace and continued with a frown and raised eyebrows, “She isn’t going anywhere, not out of my sight and obviously not with you or your goons.”

Wanda had the audacity to look offended and you scoffed at her, eyes staring Steve’s down.

“Honey, I don’t think the kids should hear what I think you have to say right now.” He said nodding to Wanda to take Grace.

“You must be deranged to think I trust Grace near anyone even remotely related to you! Take your people and get out.” You held your hand up to stop Wanda and pointed towards the door with the most menacing glare you could form.

Grace looked incomprehensibly between you two, concern and confusion on her face. That might have been the first time such a tone was used in your household. The grumbling Sarah was close to throwing a tantrum, irritated by the change in the playful air or the lack of attention to her, you didn’t know. She was hanging on Wanda’s forearm, her feet slipping on your printed rug. Wanda was trying to not look hurt still by your previous statement, distracting herself by the blonde kid and you were baffled by her obliviousness to all this.

Steve, the beefy blonde Lucifer, was furious and seething. His white knuckles and ticking jaw were the most obvious giveaways, the fingers just itching to beat the shit out of someone no doubt.

Was he imagining striking you into compliance into his weird playhouse game complex? You wouldn’t be surprised given the extent of his attempt to ‘win’ you over.

The ‘get out’ tone and blatant disrespect was a bruise to his ego for sure, and by you, a middle-class woman nonetheless was a worse injury. Steve was the deadly boss to armored men in the vicinity, the kids’ father figure, according to him, and Wanda’s stern yet kind employer.

People had been killed for less and there you were, standing in all your glory, being the only person alive to reject Steve Rogers and now, the only to raise your voice at him.

You almost scoffed at his impudence to look offended, what did he expect? For you to submit to him after the stunt he pulled? His reach was scary he proved today and that any future with him in your life in any way, was a fearsome possibility to entertain but you’d be damned if you went down without a fight.  

“You can’t make me leave; we both know. You don’t have the physical edge nor the mental one. I have no problem drawing out G-U-N-S in front of the kids or to throw the warnings around, although I would prefer not to.”

Your free hand itched to slap him, like how his did minutes ago. It wasn’t a mankind problem about men thinking they were entitled to everything; it was a Steve Rogers’s problem. Of course, with him consent didn’t matter. If he had a ‘housewife, kids and fences’ fixation, he’d make it come true.

“Do you even listen to what I say? Or your own words even? Please, go ahead! Traumatise my kid and also yours in your wooing process! Why are you so obsessed? Leave us alone, you freak! I just ignored few messages!” You had a hard time maintaining your cool, if there was any left. You were sure you were scaring Grace and no matter what happened next, you knew she was already traumatized by this entire ordeal already. You were so sorry, so, so, so sorry to your poor baby caught in this mess.

You knew, no, you hoped, he wouldn’t pull out the gun, his actions at the carnival a proof, you remembered how he hid his gun on finding Sarah. That threat was empty but the next one wasn’t, his words making you freeze in your spot.

“I think you keep on misunderstanding me, sweetheart. I don’t make empty promises,”

Posh word for threats.

“For starters, maybe I should pay my future in-laws a visit in their blue duplex. They might need help with the vast garden they have, it is the season for ‘violets’, isn’t it?”

As you froze with your parents being brought up, he also cooled, albeit differently, smirking once again gaining the upper hand, not that he lost it if you were being honest.

“Isn’t threatening my kid enough for you, Steve?” You hated how your loud voice almost broke, your anger slowly subsiding into helplessness and you hated that. You hated his guts, his entitlement, his claim; everything about him.

“You still don’t see it, do you? Our family of four is the most important thing to me right now and I’m not above doing anything to save it.”

“There is no family of four Steve! I keep explaining and you keep coming back to square one with all this bullshit!” The curse word did tick Steve off but he would correct that later, when bigger things weren’t at ploy.

“Your ignorance makes me a little mad sometimes sweetheart and that is why I have to do all I do. You haven’t realized we need each other yet, but I’m staying until you do and even after that, I promise. You know how much it pissed me off to see your tickets and the packed suitcases after I’ve been nothing but nice? I was so generous to spoil you with my riches but instead I find that in your finances.”

This fucker knew. Of course, he did!

You were wondering in the back of your head what had prompted this visit with so many threats and warnings and anguish. He was pissed even before you ‘acted out’, he tracked the tickets and the plan and that meant he even tracked-

“You have so much to learn, but luckily you interact with quite a few people. I am most tempted to start out with this Aiden guy, trying to be the hero and giving you all the ideas. Maybe I should visit him?” Steve wondered out loud, and you flinched at his suggestion, hating how you were trapped by this man.

You couldn’t live with yourself if anyone got hurt because of you, be it your parents or Aiden or any other possibility Steve would come up with. Of course, Grace was your peak priority but you doubted he would hurt her as he threatened to harm them.

“Steve, please.” The fire was almost out, your hands trembling, Grace worried and Steve smug.

“Let the kids go and I think we can come to a conclusion.”

“Steve this needs to stop.” You said, your breaths heavy and helplessness clawing away at you.

“I won’t repeat myself.” He voiced out with a threatening edge, gesturing to Grace and Wanda, clearly telling you to first get the kids out.

For a deranged fucktard, he sure cared about the kids a lot.

You loosened your hold on Grace, patting her arm softly and nudged her to Wanda. Wanda received her little hand and enticed the kids with the promise of ice-cream. Sarah clapped her hands and as the trio left, Grace did look over her shoulders at you in concern and for permission, majorly in concern though. You nodded and waved, a tear dropping as soon as the door clicked shut.

You were still staring at the door, not wanting to meet Steve’s stormy blue orbs when he began, “Today was a slip up that I won’t tolerate again. Neither the cursing nor the dramatics.”

We aren’t in a fucking play, what the fuck is he labelling as dramatics?

Your eyes slowly flickered to his, and you had a hard time not letting the tears escape except the one traitorous one earlier. The fatigue, the worry of Grace’s disappearance, the threats to your friends and family were all catching up to you. It took all in you to stay strong and not fall down right now.

“Steve this isn’t funny anymore. It’s sick and you know it! I just said no! Was that so inexcusable that you had to follow up with this? You have violated me for that, broken into my home and now kidnapped my daughter! At what extent will you stop?” You broke down finally, arms a flailing mess as fat tears rolled down. Nothing scared more than the helplessness this moment. He won and he knew it. The carnival incident was nothing in comparison to this. The only good thing you could hope in all this was a safe Grace but that too only if you complied, which seemed like what you would do now given your attempts at fighting back and scampering have failed laughably.

“Gosh, I forgot how theatrical women are. You are smart darling; you know what I want from day one, just a happy family. Nothing that horrendous has happened and especially not as badly as put it. I’m just looking out for you and me in the long run.” Steve slowly treaded towards you, his hand extended to pat your arm comfortingly but you involuntarily flinched at contact and stepped back. Steve clearly didn’t like that as he caught your arm in a bruising grip and jerked you towards him. Manhandling you as your wet hands rushed to ease his grip was not a tough task for Steve, a surprise to none.

“Stop trembling like I’ve actually done something to harm you!”

Steve clearly didn’t know how to comfort women and it showed.

You stopped with the cowering away, even though it disgusted you to be this much in close proximity with your assaulter. He clearly had anger issues and no clue how to solve them. You needed to steer the conversation right and get him out. You could see your hands visibly shake as you put them on his chest, just to create some distance and in a way of surrendering to not fight. The tears slowed but you don’t think they stopped; it was hard to tell with a million other things on your mind.

As your eyes made contact, Steve loosened his grip, clearly a bit satisfied by your submission, as he began counting to help you breathe. As much as you hated to admit, it helped you and you got a flashback to the time when you freaked out on him about Grace at that extravagant dinner date. That was a sweet gesture then, not so sweet now. Funny how drastically things change with time.

It wasn’t so much Steve’s help as it was your own mind telling you to be fucking smart about the whole ordeal right now.

“Good. Better. Now let’s talk. Why were you planning to run away? I’ve been busy and coming home to find out that wasn’t joyful, you know.” His smile suggested a better mood than before but his voice, his husky voice always had this daring edge that almost challenged you to defy him but at the same time warned you of unpleasant consequences if you did.

“Steve, I’m scared.” You spoke with utmost honesty. “The part of the world you associate yourself with scares me. You can’t blame me for not wanting that life for Grace, I mean you have a kid of your own. Wasn’t the carnival attack specifically on Sarah?”

The reasoning was right but you knew you triggered him the moment his smile evaporated. He either felt insulted as a parent or disrespected in his profession or probably both.

He was fighting his inner demons already and you pointing it out was a slap to his face, a hit he didn’t want to take.

“That was a slip up, I admit. Never again. I’m only human, okay?” He convinced himself and you, his grip tightening a bit again.

Oh no, not the right direction to take.

You reckoned he still had nightmares about it like you, he really did love Sarah a lot, all things aside.

“Besides, I am looking out for you! Out for you and Grace and Sarah. I remember my promise of never putting either of them in harm’s way ever again.”

You definitely didn’t trust his security or his people because what sort of a mobster let his daughter get targeted and possibly abducted? You definitely didn’t know the whole story or if it was just a bad day but he wasn’t a person that deserved some slack. Despite all this, you knew what all he held above you, above a common man. He might not be ‘Kingpin’ skilled but a threat to you nonetheless.

Before you could stop yourself, you blurted out, “Is that what you call following me around, huh?” which you immediately regretted.

“Trust the process, baby. Everything is just to protect you.”

Is that what he called stalking even Grace around and twistedly enough, sending you proof of that? The anonymous thread of photos was another nightmare of yours, thanks to him. The last being a candid photo inside Grace’s room, her sleeping in her bed this morning and that’s when you decided you needed to get out. Of course, that didn’t go as planned.

“How am I supposed to do that when you have cameras in my house?!” You scoffed and he reeled back at the accusation, having the nerve to look impressed at being uncovered and caught red-handed.

“Oh my fucking God, it was you! You sick pervert!” You jumped out of his grip, your eyes wide and horrified. “I wasn’t aware of what to make of it but of course, it was you! Who else would be sick enough to do that?” You let out a humorless chuckle. You always put things past him even when you keep telling yourself you shouldn’t. When will you ever learn huh?  

You were full on panicking yet again, this man was an assaulter, a stalker and a creep too. It would have made a good dark, psychological thriller for you to watch if you weren’t the protagonist about to suffer his obsession.

He reached out to steady you again, but you whipped and stumbled back, realizing too late that you elbowed Steve’s nose so bad that there was a crunch. That, right there, was the look a man real-fucking-furious on Steve’s face and now you could see the feared mobster, the man who was personally terrorizing you under the beautiful, Greek God façade.

Steve reacted so fast even with an injury that in a split second, your view of his face turned into a view of his crotch.

“You do realize that there are others ways for me to teach you obedience? I think it’s fucking time you show me your gratitude for my care and attention and apologize for your misconduct and unkind response.” Steve spoke with a hoarse voice, a voice running out of patience and just about done with defiance.

His hand fisted your hair, maintaining eye contact while he nodded between you and his crotch. You knew what he wanted, what he was expecting as ‘thanks’.

“Steve, please no, you don’t-”

His other hand grabbed your jaw, stopping you from speaking as he warned, “I think you have done just enough talking for today, so why don’t you put that tongue to a better use and show me how sorry you are. Better make it convincing because I’d hate to pay one of your friends a visit and then bitch about a nasty blowjob.” He smirked at the end of his monologue, eyes shining with triumph and amusement.

You wouldn’t let him harm anyone else, you couldn’t. You and your daughter were already knee-deep in a pit and at this point, it’d just be cruel to drag someone else in. With shaky hands opening his pants, you just hoped you could get Grace out before you eventually were buried in it.

“Now that’s a good girl. Submissive is a sexy look on you.” His hands patted your hair, playing with your tresses while yours pulled his pants and then briefs down.

His member jerked out, almost slapping you in the face as you recoiled at his insolence to get hard and erect at your torment. Your disdain must have shown which he took as admiration and derision to take his affluent cock in.

“No need to get shy, I have faith you’ll be able take it just as well in your pretty pussy as you will right now. Open up-”

“Steve, I beg you-”

Just as you had cut him off, he interrupted your pleading. Your gag reflex was probably the most efficient in the world but that turned this narcissist on. It had been years since you had done it, never with a man as beefy as Steve.

His taste was salty and if you had to put it into better words, it was the like overpriced sea salt flakes that you never bought. High and pricey and for the entitled.

Your hands clutched at his thighs as you blacked out multiple times; your jaw aching, uvula swaying and tears escaping. Him forcing himself on you brough a new sense of vulnerability as your body trembled. Steve relished like a sadist, practically rutting into you all by himself as you just sat there with your jaw unnaturally open.

His obscene moans and groans were crass and nauseating and you just prayed for this to be over soon and for no one to walk in on this, especially your kid.

It seemed like it would never end, your body dehydrating with all the spit it produced, the drool dribbling and landing just beside your knees on your printed rug. You would have to throw that out.

The tears stooped after some point, the sobbing an unnecessary action that just tired you out more on this eventful day. You moved your tongue around to prevent your teeth from scratching him when he shifted angles. If this was what he did on slightly mad, you didn’t want to find what he did for a more serious punishment.

Apparently, that action was something that turned him on even more, his breath hitching as neared closure. In broken whispers he demanded that again and you complied, wanting to get done with it.

He growled in the moment of his release and you tried to lean back but his grip didn’t relent. “Swallow.” His grainy, exasperated voice said out loud and you knew better than to defy.

He released you and you fell on to the rug, hip bruising by knocking into some furniture and tears coming back again after being hydrated by his seed. He packed himself, his smile smug and content as his expressions truly resembled ecstasy being personified.

“You be a good fiancée from now on and maybe you’ll have all your friends alive and present at our wedding. No cheeky business from now on, got it?” Steve hummed then and strutted out, not even bothering to listen to your reply.

As soon as the door slammed, your eyes closed and your demons danced again.

There was no right direction to take when you were stuck in a loop.  

#Dark Fic #dark mcu #dark!steve rogers x reader #dark!steve rogers #dark!steve x reader #Steve Rogers #steve x reader #steve rogers x reader #Chris Evans #chris evans x reader #marvel fic #mob au #mob!steve #Mob!steve x reader #mafia au #mafi #dark! mob! steve rogers #raywrites #fixed #Lipstick and crayons #Lipstick and crayons masterlist

[hizashis-lil-bunbun]

No Rest for the Wicked- HardDom!Dabi X Fem! Brat Reader

Prompt: Dabi just wants to take a nap but everything goes wrong

I asked a friend in one of my discord groups for a random writing prompt when I was up late. Something about this one activated my inner ✨brat✨

Enjoy!

Word Count: 3.3k

Kinks/Warnings: brat taming, degradation, pain play, spanking, belting, mild dacryphilia, bondage, edging and denial, hints of dubcon

Banner made by the always lovely @ladyshinigami!

••••••••••••••

Exhausted.

That was the best way to sum up Dabi’s mood as he trudged through the bar fronting the League’s headquarters. Shigaraki had sent him out on a mission with orders to “stake out and take out” a small band of up-and-coming heroes. It had been easy enough to find them (newbies can never resist being flashy), but making sure they were all disposed of was another matter. A matter only made more complicated by a few rogue civilians that happened to spot him. It had taken him two full days to track everyone down, leaving him covered in blood, soot, and burns. In short, Dabi needed a break.

“Well, well, well.” Came the nasally voice of their fearless leader, “The prodigal son returns! Took you long enough, Dabi. Hope that means you didn’t fuck up the mission.”

“Don’t get your panties in a twist.” Dabi snaps back, too tired and sore to care about his tone. Not that he’d be any kinder to Shigaraki if he wasn’t. “I did what you asked and left no witnesses. Now piss off before I turn you into a smoldering pile.”

Shigaraki didn’t rise to Dabi’s bait, opting to simply flip him the bird before going back to whatever game console he was currently obsessed with. Dabi returns the gesture in kind, glowering as he disappears behind the bar and into the League’s living quarters. Their warehouse provides more than enough space for everyone to have their own room, and the boss even allowed them to decorate and furnish them as they pleased. Wasn’t that generous? Dabi plods down the hallway to his assigned room and kicks open the door only to find it was occupied. By you.

“Dabi?” You question for a moment before your eyes light up with excitement. “Dabi! You’re back!”

As a fellow Stain devotee, you’d sought out the LOV and been initiated as a member a mere six months ago. And two months later, you’d been initiated into Dabi’s bed. You wouldn’t exactly call yourselves “lovers.” Love was few and far between in a hornet’s nest of villains. But you’d certainly become something more than the occasional lay.

He grunts as he stalks into the room, shedding his coat and boots as he went. Dabi was never big on grand displays of affection. And in his current state, that small show of acknowledgment may as well have been equivalent to a bear hug.

“I missed you.” You chirp back, undeterred by his gruff response. “How was the mission?”

“Long and shitty.” Came his terse reply as he strips off the rest of his clothes and grabs a towel from a nearby wall hook. “I need a fucking shower.”

He wraps the towel around his waist before he sets about searching for body wash and a first aid kit. Greedy eyes roam the plane of his toned torso, eager to touch the scarred and stapled flesh you’d spent many a night mapping out. Before joining the League, you’d never had an opinion one way or the other on touch or physical intimacy. You didn’t dislike it by any means; it was just something people did, fuck buddies or otherwise. But now that you’d shared a bed with Dabi, your perspective had changed. His rough touch was your drug of choice, intoxicating in all the best ways. And with him being gone for almost 72 hours? It was safe to say you were jonesing for a hit.

“Oooh, sounds like fun.” You purr, sprawling out on the mattress in a catlike stretch. “Want me to join you? I think we could use a little… quality time together.”

He snorts derisively at that, straightening up once he’d found his supplies and fixing you with a deep scowl. So pretty even when he’s pissed. You bat your eyelashes in return.

“Don’t get cute, dollface. Once I get cleaned up I’m passing out for the next century.”

Before you can shoot off another coquettish remark, he turns on his heel and marches out the door in the direction of the communal showers. You huff and clamber out of bed to follow him, determined that he wouldn’t get away so easily.

“C’mon Dabi!” You whine, trotting along behind him as he stalks down the hallway. “I haven’t seen you in days! Are you really just gonna give me the cold shoulder?”

“Yup.” He snaps back, shooting you a harsh glare over said shoulder before barging through the bathroom door. From the other side you can hear his bark of “Move it, psycho!” followed by an indignant squeak from whom you can only assume to be Toga. You huff and stamp your foot like a petulant child, turning on your heel to flounce off in the direction of the League’s bar front.

“Bastard.” You seethe under your breath, “Who does he think he is, ignoring me like that? It’s his fault I’m so pent up. If I tried ignoring him when he was all hot and bothered–!”

You pause for a moment as a lightbulb goes off in your head. A single impish thought flashes through your mind and it causes your lips to curl into a Cheshire grin. He wants to play games? You’ll give him games.

You continue your trek into the dimly-lit, woodpandeled speakeasy, a renewed vigor in your stride as you make a beeline for the bar top. Kurogiri is standing behind it as per usual, wiping out a pint glass like the faithful bartender he pretends to be. You sidle up to the bar and place both hands on the oaken surface, adopting a sweet, too-innocent lilt to your voice.

“Kuro-baby.” You purr, the cutesy pet name causing the misty specter to look up from his task. “Can I have a glass of water, please? With lots of ice, if you don’t mind.”

Wordlessly, Kurogiri sets down the glass and picks up a shorter one, using it to scoop up a generous portion of ice from the freezer below before filling it nearly to the brim from the tap. If he has any suspicion of you, he’s very good at hiding it. The same can’t be said for Shigaraki, sitting a few stools down from you and still tapping away at the buttons of his console.

“Fucking with Staples again?” He questions disinterestedly, followed by a hiss of annoyance when the game lets out a series of gunshots. He must have gotten himself killed again.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” You shoot back airily, swiping the glass from Kurogiri’s outstretched hand and hopping off your own barstool.

“It’s your funeral!” He calls after you, waving you off with one hand. You snicker as you march back into the living quarters, one hand wrapped around the chilled glass and the other flattened over the top to ensure you won’t spill a drop along the way. Soon you find yourself back in front of the bathroom door and, suppressing the urge to giggle, you slowly push through it and into the steamy room beyond. In spite of the hideout’s outward appearance, the place is surprisingly clean and well-kempt (all thanks to den mother Kurogiri). Two sinks stand against the left-hand side of the wall, with two doors opposite them leading to the toilets. Next to the sinks are the showers: three open-faced, tile cubes barely covered by flimsy plastic curtains. Toga is standing in front of the nearest sink, wearing a skimpy pair of Hello Kitty pajamas and washing the blood and goop from her latest transformation out of her navy, pleated skirt. She looks up at you when you enter and you quickly put one finger to your lips, smirking as you point between the glass and the running shower beyond. Toga lets loose a sadistic giggle of her own before hastily shushing herself when you hear Dabi’s bark of “Pipe down out there!”

As you move past her, you can see her mouth the words, “You’re so dead, big sis.”

You can feel a jolt of adrenaline course through your veins as you sneak up to the edge of the tiled wall separating the shower from the rest of the bathroom, the glass in your hand shaking briefly. A small amount of water sloshes over the rim and spatters onto the floor, the sound barely overshadowed by the shower.

“Doll?”

His low, rumbling voice coming from the other side of the curtain sends another shiver down your spine.

“What are you up to out there?” He growls dangerously, as if he has a sixth sense when it comes to you and your shenanigans. For just a moment, the rational part of your brain takes over and makes you question your actions. Dabi’s already in a foul mood, and getting worse by the second by the sound of it. Maybe if you hold off and behave like a good girl–

Your body seems to move of its own accord. The next thing you know, the contents of the glass are sailing through the air, arching high over the plastic curtain rod and landing with a messy splat onto your unwitting victim on the other side.

“What the fu–!” Dabi’s curse is cut off by yours and Toga’s mad giggling as you sprint out of the bathroom and down the hallway. Passing by a very confused-looking Spinner, you dart inside Dabi’s room and slam the door, locking it for good measure. Seconds later, he’s pounding on it, using enough force that you’re convinced it might splinter and break off its hinges.

“Open this door right now and make this easier on yourself!” He roars, furiously jiggling the handle.

You let him pound away for a few more seconds, in part to allow yourself time to catch your breath but mostly to delay the unenviable punishment. With a deep, steadying breath, you plaster on a mildly amused expression, undo the lock, and pull open the door. Dabi is visibly seething, water dripping from his hair and cascading in rivulets down his toned chest onto the towel slung low on his hips. His brows are knitted together in rage, turquoise eyes flashing dangerously while one hand is still raised in a fist.

“Oh hey, babe. Done with the shower al–?”

His hands are around your throat before you can blink, your sassy remark devolving into a high-pitched squeak.

“You little bitch.” He spits at you, forcibly backing you further into the room as he advances. “Was that your idea of a joke?”

“N-no.” You gasp in response, voice slightly raspy from the pressure on your jugular. “I just thought–“

“Thought what exactly?” Dabi growls, kicking the door shut behind him with one foot before giving your shoulders a hard shove and pushing you onto the bed. You land with a slight bounce, the momentum giving you just enough time to prop yourself up on your elbows.

“Well?” He hisses, venom dripping from the word as he glares down at you.

“I was worried.” You start slowly, tone almost loving as you gaze up at him with big, doe eyes. “You seemed so tense when you got back. And don’t think I didn’t notice those new burns on your arms. So I thought, since the mission was so hard on you…”

Your face suddenly splits into a shit-eating grin.

“I thought you might need to cool down for a minute.”

Dabi blinks for a second, seemingly struck dumb by your remark. And then his hands are back on you in an instant, roughly flipping you over to lie chest-down with your legs hanging off the edge of the bed.

“Of all the stupid–“

Your shirt is ripped over your head from behind.

“Immature–“

There goes the bra, clasps and straps lost to a wildfire of blue flames as it falls away from your body in a charred heap.

“Bratty little schemes.”

Your leggings and panties are harshly yanked down, slipped off, and discarded into some unknown corner of the room. You feel cool air hit your legs and backside, moments before a harsh slap lands on your right cheek. With a yelp, you cast a wide-eyed glance over your shoulder at the menacing presence behind you; a pillar of rage and sadistic urges looming over your naked form.

“You wanted my attention that badly, dollface? Well I’m sorry to say you’ve got it now.”

Before you can react beyond a pained, needy whimper, Dabi hooks his right arm under your thighs to haul you up and onto the bed. He lays his full weight across your back and reaches around and underneath the farthest edge of the bed to produce a simple, black cuff, attached to the nylon spreader running along the underside of the mattress. Giving it a few cursory tugs, he grabs ahold of your right wrist and yanks it towards the corresponding corner, attaching the device with practiced speed and precision. You continue to writhe and pant below him, muttering a litany of curses and “no’s” as he does the same to the opposite side. You’re now bound by both wrists, unable to do more than thrash wildly on the mattress in a humiliating, spread eagle position.

“Seems like you need a reminder of who’s in charge around here.” He snarls in your ear, pushing himself off of you and marching over to his discarded pile of clothing. You can hear the soft rustle of fabric, followed by the telltale clink of metal on metal that makes your eyes go wide.

“Y-you wouldn’t dare…” You start breathlessly, just before the first blinding sting of leather greets your exposed skin, right at the juncture where the soft swell of your ass meets the tender flesh of your thighs.

“That’s where you’re wrong, sweetheart.” Dabi says mockingly, his tone dripping with false pity and saccharine sweetness as he takes his place at the edge of the bed once more. “I don’t have any problems dealing with a mouthy… little… brat like you.”

His words are punctuated by three more vicious blows, this time striking the meatiest part of your ass and sending the pliant flesh jiggling. The metal rivets in his belt only add to the pain, biting into your rapidly heating flesh and causing tears to prick at the corners of your eyes. Shifting your hips in a futile attempt to get away from Dabi and his newfound torture device, you roll partly onto your side and look over at him with watery, pleading eyes.

“S-sir… Dabi, please!” You sputter out, voice already wavering as your resolve crumbles beneath the stinging sensation. But Dabi’s not in the mood for bargaining. Instead, he growls as he wraps an arm around your waist and shoves his left knee underneath your belly, hiking your ass further into the air.

“Hold still!” He barks at you, another crack of his belt sending a fresh wave of searing pain along your already raw skin. You scream in agony, unable to do more than wriggle and squirm against his hold.

“Start counting, brat.” He demands huskily, your only warning before the next punishing spank meets your burning flesh.

“One!” You gasp out, “I’m sorry! Please–!”

Another blow lands, somehow harder than all the others, revisiting the spot where ass and thigh meet and causing you to wail in pain.

“Too late for apologies, dollface. The only thing I wanna hear from that slutty little mouth is counting. Understand me?”

The arm looped around your waist tightens in warning, and you hiccup before sputtering out a shaky, “T-two.”

“That’s more like it.”

He continues spanking you at a steady pace, the only respite coming when he pauses to hear you choke out the next number. By ten strokes, you’re bawling. By fifteen, you’re practically brain dead, unable to quell the sobs that wrack through your body or think beyond the next count. He mercifully stops at twenty, dropping the belt and loosening his own grip on you. All you can focus on is the burning pain radiating out from your tanned backside, sobbing as you bury your face into the pillow below you for comfort. Dabi’s own breathing is heavy and ragged, and he takes a few deep, measured breaths to steady himself. After a few moments, that hand that once held his belt is carefully laid on the curve of your ass, and you gasp both at the gentle touch and the shock of prickly pain it brings. Judging by the way he strokes the heated flesh, you’re sure the silver eyelets have left a series of bruises behind.

“S-s-sir.” You blubber, “I’m... I…”

“Shhhh, quiet down.” He says softly, voice uncharacteristically tender as he runs his hand along the width of your heated cheeks. “It’s over now. You did so well.”

The unexpected praise makes you whimper beneath his affections, devolving into a quiet moan as his hand travels even lower, fingers coming to rest at the entrance to your heated core. He begins to gently massage at your folds, middle finger slipping inside to find you impossibly wet and clenching around the digit.

“You filthy little thing…” He breathes out on a chuckle, “Are you really that turned on by me beating the hell out of your cute little ass?”

His finger delves deeper, pussy eagerly sucking him in as you keen below him. His free hand begins to lightly scratch up and down your back, goosebumps rising in the wake of each careful caress. Without thinking, you shift further onto your knees, fighting through the pain to push against his hand.

“Please, Sir.” You moan wantonly, “More. Please.”

With another dark chuckle, Dabi slips a second finger inside of you and begins to languidly pump them in and out. Pain and pleasure meld together in a sinful symphony, pants and whimpers coming from you as you rock your abused body against his own scarred flesh. He adjusts the angle and crooks his fingers downwards, curling them just shy of that sensitive bundle of nerves you know would have you seeing stars. Your back arches as you hungrily push against him, dignity forgotten in the face of pure, carnal desire.

“Getting impatient, are we?” He growls teasingly, fingers suddenly slipping out from your sopping core and wrenching a high-pitched whine from the back of your throat. He moves off the bed entirely, ordering you to stay put as he walks over to the nearby dresser and opens up the top drawer. Like the cuffs would allow you to do anything otherwise.

“Ah, here we go.” He says after a few seconds of rummaging, striding back over to the bed and taking up residence behind you. You feel the mattress dip under his weight seconds before his hands find your hips, roughly hauling them upwards and forcing your face further into the pillows. You shriek as he grabs ahold of your left cheek and squeezes harshly, pain shooting up your spine like a bolt of summer lightning. Something hard and cool prods at your quivering entrance, briefly brushing against your clit before being plunged inside of you. The sudden stretch feels at once too much and deeply satiating, sending burning, pleasurable heat licking across your oversensitized nerves. Once the toy is sunk to the hilt, Dabi gives a short grunt of satisfaction before sliding off the bed and circling around to lean over your quivering form. You turn your head to face him and he smirks at the sight of your fucked out expression: eyes red and puffy, cheeks streaked with half-dried tears, lips swollen from the bluntness of your own teeth.

“Aren’t you a sight?” He hums lowly, brushing away an errant strand of hair to plant a condescending kiss to your temple. “Such a needy little slut for me.”

With another dark chuckle, Dabi pats your cheek, straightens up, and turns towards the door.

“Wait!” You squeak out, squirming against your restraints as you watch his retreating back. “You’re just gonna leave me like this?”

“That’s the plan, dollface.” He shoots back, casting you a wicked grin over his left shoulder as he pulls the door open. “At least until I finish my shower.”

#bnha #bnha x reader #dabi x reader #Dabi #mha smut #mha x reader #tw: noncon #tw: pain play

[yukikathesnowflower]

Tartaglia | Fishing

Pairing: Childe/Tartaglia x [f]Traveler/Lumine

Genre(s)/theme(s): slow-burn romance, fluff, fantasy, mild rom-com, a slice of life, Tartaglia showing off his fishing skill, an accidental kiss

Summary: After fighting off with the Ruin Guards, Tartaglia took a nap on a hill. As he fell asleep, he unexpectedly dreamt an old memory of his…

Word count: 1.1k+

A/n: I got the idea when I was reading one of his stories in the game. This is my first Genshin Impact fics. Enjoy! | Masterlist

Kindly help me reblog pls. Thank you :)

‘Ajax…this is what fishing is,’ this was the voice of his father teaching him one of the Snezhnaya life skills when he was still a child.

The young man gradually opened his blue eyes from his nostalgic dream. The sweet scent of the grass tickled his nose as the winds breezed over the hill. The corners of his lips curved, recalling that memorable scene of his dream as he yearned to see his old man in his homeland again.

“Look! There are a lot of black-bass fishes in the lake!” Paimon shouted out in a loud voice.

‘Oh! It’s ojou-chan (young lady) and Paimon!’ He turned his gaze at the girls from afar. That familiar high-pitched voice has gained his attention.

Drooling with a drip of saliva from the side of her mouth, she rushed over to the lake. She stared hungrily at the fish while standing at the edge of the lake.

“Let’s catch those fishes for our dinner tonight!” Paimon danced in excitement.

Her hastened gaze searched her baggage and sighed. There was no appropriate equipment for her to catch any fish.

“I don’t want to drench my clothes again, Paimon.” She gazed up to the dusky sky, letting out another sigh, “Let’s search for other ingredients to make our food tonight.”

“Urh…” Paimon groaned.

“Why don't I help you instead?” Tartaglia jumped off after sliding along the slopes of the hill.

“Childe!” Paimon shouted in surprise, unaware that he was nearby.

“Why are you here?” She gave him a cold stare.

“Well,” he chuckled, “I was checking on those ruin guards over there.” his thumb pointed at the direction where those damaged Ruin Guards were.

“So how are you going to help us?” Crossing her arms, Paimon stared at him.

His dull-blue eyes searched for the materials nearby. Glancing at that special Cuihua tree among all, the side of his lips curled. He summoned his treasured Rust Bow and charged toward that tree using Foul Legacy: Raging Tide.

“Is he trying to cut that tree?” Paimon was puzzled.

He jumped onto the tree, swinging his twin blades, cutting out two long branches.

“So...what are you going to do with these branches?” She stared at him as he picked up the branches, “I do not have any strings with me.”

“I happen to have some strings with me though,” beamed with pleasure, he grabbed her hand while holding the branches in his other arm.

Her cheeks blushed red by his unexpected gesture; silently hoping he wouldn’t notice her current state, which he actually did. He let out a satisfied smile as they walked to the lake.

They found some rocks at the lakeside and sat on them. He tied the strings onto the tip of the branches, followed by the fishhooks on the other end of the strings. Her amber eyes widened, amazed that a Fatui Harbinger would craft leisure items other than weapons.

“Here,” handing over his crafted fishing rod onto her hands, “with this, you should be able to catch those fishes.” he grinned.

“Thanks,” she simpered as her eyes met his, “but we need some baits too…”

He turned his gaze away from her, searching for suitable baits around them. He spotted a few small crabs along the sand at his sides. In a swift, he grabbed a handful of it and placed it into his pouch. Hooking one crab onto their fishing rods as bait.

“All right! Let’s get started!” rising from his seat, he swung his fishing rod backward as the hook floated in the air, tossing it toward the lake in the next second. The hook plunged into the water far away from the shore, waiting for its predators to prey on it.

Mimicking his actions, she did the same with her fishing rod. But her hook plunged into the water nearer from the shore.

“It seems you have good fishing skills.” her envious eyes took a glance at him, whose gazes were engrossing on his own fishing rod.

“I was taught by my old man when I was a child. Ice fishing is common in Snezhnaya.” He chuckled.

“I see,” she turned her gaze back to her fishing rod.

“Ohh!” noticing the jerking of his fishing rod. Immediately, he pulled out the string, and a big fish stream in the air. “I caught a big fish!” He grinned.

A blush spread across her cheeks as she gazed at his child-like smile.

“Your fishing rod is jerking…” Paimon commented.

She quickly turned her attention back to her fishing rod, lifting out from the water.

“I caught a fish too!” her amber eyes beamed.

“That’s not enough for Paimon,” Paimon took a glance at the fish, which was smaller in size compared to Tartaglia’s.

She frowned at Paimon.

“Let me teach you the tricks,” he placed a new bait onto her hook before walking over to her side, his hands holding onto hers from behind.

She gripped onto her fishing rod tightly. Her heart pounded like a drum in her chest as her cheeks gradually blushed red.

“Relax,” his breath tickled her flushed ear.

They swung the fishing rod to the back and tossed it forward into the lake. This time, the hook plunged further away from the shore. She could feel her skin burning up while waiting for the response from the fishing rod.

A moment later, the string of the fishing rod shook vigorously. They lifted the fishing rod with all their strength.

“It’s a huge fish!” Paimon cheered.

As the fish was too heavy when they pulled together, her foot slipped while stepping backward. His arms held her from her back as they fell onto the ground.

“S-Sorry. Are you all right?” her hands pressed onto his chest, trying to get herself up.

Her amber eyes met his dull-blue eyes when they stared at each other, cheeks blushed red.

“I-I’ll go get some wood to set up the fire!” She pushed herself away from him, stood up, and rushed into the forest.

“Wait! Paimon will come with you!”

Tartaglia got up from the ground. The corners of his lips curled as his fingers touched his lips, which has a thin layer of smudged pink gloss. He chuckled.

As the sky turns dark as time passes. They set up the fire with the woods she had collected.

Tartaglia caught a lot more fish during the time she was in the forest. Seated side by side close to the fire, they grilled all the fishes that they had caught. Paimon munched onto the huge grilled fish.

“H-Here,” she gave him the fish that she had grilled, “thanks for your hard work today,”

“You’re welcome!” he gave a delighted smile, taking the grilled fish from her.

“Let’s go fishing again,” she turned her nervous gaze away from him, “if we see each other next time...” her cheeks blushed lightly.

‘Thanks, Dad! For teaching me this useful skill!’ he cried out in his mind.

Published on 20/08/2021

BACK TO Masterlist

#genshin impact x reader #genshin x reader #genshin impact #genshin imagines #genshin fluff #genshin chilumi #genshin childe #genshin tartagalia #tartagalia genshin impact #tartagalia x reader #childe #childe genshin impact #genshin #genshin ajax #tartagila #childe x lumine #tartaglia x lumine #childe scenarios #childe imagines #genshin impact imagines #genshin impact fluff #childe x traveler #tartaglia scenarios

[tiny-maus-boots]

Queen of Hearts pt 13

A/N: Always and first thank you to my bestie @chloes-yellow-cup for always doing the thing. and to @kimmania who always gives each chapter a thoughtful review. 

13.  

“Oh, my dear it’s so lovely of you to come to brunch. I was starting to feel a little put off you know. All those invitations you so politely refused. I was beginning to think you were avoiding me.”

Stacie smiled and sipped her cool iced tea to give herself a moment. It was true, she had ignored all of Edith’s requests to have lunch. And yes, she had been avoiding the older woman. It was a matter of self-preservation really. Keeping up the appearance of normality around someone as observant as Edith Roussard-Ford was never easy. She had a keen eye and open ear to everything that happened to the biggest families in society.

“Well…I suppose I can be frank with you. Now…that things are…resolved.”

The old woman across from her nodded encouragement and leaned forward eager for any tidbit she could glean from Stacie. It was necessary even she’d rather not talk about life with Weston. When dealing with Edith you had to give some to get some.

“Of course, my dear. Dreadful business…”

“It was hard to get away…often times my only haven was my work. Weston was…” Stacie trailed off and cleared her throat. It wasn’t acting, the rush of anxiety she experienced just thinking about that time robbed her of speech. “Weston Whitman was a very controlling man. Controlling and more often than not…violent.”

It never got any easier admitting the truth of things but she raised her chin defiantly. Edith’s eyes widened slightly but her surprise was more about Stacie admitting it than the confirmation itself. She waited a beat for the other woman to ask what she knew was coming.

“Oh, dreadful. Just dreadful. And still…you never knew? There wasn’t a hint of suspicion about his true character?”

“Of his character, yes. Of his actual coming and goings and affairs…no. I had no knowledge of those terrible things. I shudder to think of him, under my roof, sleeping next to me self-satisfied with the blood of innocent women on his hands. What a joke I must have been to him with my work at the shelter, helping him keep up the façade unknowingly.”

“To think nothing of the scandal about the money.”

Of course, the money was far more important a topic than her public humiliation and shame. Stacie let her gaze drop demurely. Money was everything in this world, who had it, who needed it, and who stole it…

“I’ll admit Edith, I had some concerns about Weston’s business. He seemed edgy and evasive and he asked me to empty my personal safe…spending cash. Some jewelry. It was nothing that would ever pay back his investors.”

“I heard the federal agents seized everything. It’s a wonder you have a roof over your head, my dear.”

Stacie’s smile was brief and coy. “Much like oil and water, money and love simply do not mix. When you’re a Conrad you learn that at quite a young age.”

Edith leaned back to watch her carefully. Weighing all that she had learned and the earnestness in which Stacie had conveyed it. She could see the respect dawn in Edith’s gaze and when the woman leaned forward again it was with eager confidence.

“You may be a Conrad in name but you are Helene’s daughter in more than appearance. Your father barely had a nickel to his name when she ran off with him. Now there’s a scandal for you!”

It was surprising and Edith laughed gleefully when it showed on her face. She’d been raised her whole life on the presumption that her mother hand done what she had been expected to do. Money marries into money.

“Didn’t know that did you? She might have run off with August but she was no fool. Van der Berg family lawyers ensured he couldn’t take a dime of it.” Interesting. Stacie made a soft thoughtful sound and Edith continued unprompted. “You have to hand it to August. He made a name for himself. All that money is his by right…I suppose.”

Stacie’s brows came up and she tipped her head to the side. “You sound doubtful of that Edith.”

“I wouldn’t dream of speaking ill of your father, dear. I know you’re not close but there are some bonds that can’t be broken. Family bonds. You understand. I wouldn’t want you to have different opinions of your father. He’s done well by your mother.”

It was there, below the surface, begging to brought into the open. Stacie could feel it between them, brewing like a great storm. One little flicker of interest and it would come out. And then things would change forever between Stacie and August Conrad. And with that she was sure the tentative and fragile bridge she and her mother were building.

But if she were really like her mother, Helene would understand why she was doing this. At least that is what she hoped if this all ever came to light. Stacie let out a soft sigh and leaned back. She couldn’t out right ask about it, it had to be done delicately. Edith watched her work through the knowledge that there was something going on that she hadn’t been aware of. It was a careful dance baiting the woman to reveal more than what Stacie herself had given.

“Well, whatever my father is or is not doing, it’s nothing I know about. He and Weston shared that in common.”

“Ah yes. Thick as thieves those two…”

There it was. The hook Edith thought she was dropping in the water. Stacie batted her eyes in mild confusion, ignoring the slightly predatory smile on the old woman’s face. Her lip pouted out just enough to give the impression that she wasn’t making the leap entirely. Stacie smiled inwardly as Edith swallowed her own lure.

“Mind you, I’m not saying August is a thief, he’s merely an opportunist you see. He’s very good at knowing who to know. It’s how he made his fortune through the years. Nothing illegal in it exactly. Most would say it’s a shrewd bit of business.”

“But I don’t see how that could help him benefit from Weston’s…activities. Of course, he knows everyone, he’s a politician.”

“Hm indeed, indeed. Of course, he wouldn’t be involved in any such thing. Strike it from your thoughts, my dear.” The woman brushed a hand over her knuckles, and not for the first time during the conversation. Aubrey probably would have called the tell earlier but Stacie was proud of herself for picking it up now. “In any case I am quite sure Senator Grant and Warren Randall would lean very heavily on your father if they felt he was in any way responsible for Weston stealing their money.”

Stacie’s heart beat double time but she rolled her shoulders casually in a shrug. Jackson Grant and Warren Randall were her father’s closest confidants, present at every family function since as far back as she could remember. Uncle Jack had even gifted her the first horse she had ever owned. They were, in a fashion, family.

“I haven’t seen Uncle Jack in a few years. Not since his son Kodie and I went to Senior Prom together.”

It hadn’t been her choice of date, and the argument that had raged in the Conrad home had lasted three intolerable days, she and her mother butting heads on everything from the color of her dress to the way she wore her hair. Kodie wasn’t a bad guy and truthfully, he hadn’t wanted to go the dance with her any more than she had with them. But it had been arranged years before the event was even due to take place. In the end they both dutifully took their places next to each other for pictures in the foyer before escaping to the limo to get happily drunk on the well-stocked wet bar.

“I had almost forgotten about the blush of young love. I was worried about that boy for a while. You heard they caught him awhile back in a house full of street whores and enough cocaine to give that Tony Montana character a seizure.”

Her brows came up at that. It seemed unlike the boy she had known but people changed and it took more strength to keep from breaking under the family pressure than perhaps Kodie had. She let her curiosity at the topic glimmer to the surface.

“A house full of…he was the perfect gentleman at prom. I can hardly imagine that scene.”

“Who can say what’s gotten into that young man. If Jackson hadn’t gotten him a job at the Port of Los Angeles, he’d probably be in an out of rehab facilities I imagine.”

She could tell by the way Edith waved a hand dismissively that Kodie wasn’t worth the energy to think on. Stacie lifted a shoulder casually giving it the appropriate gesture of disinterest that was expected. There wasn’t much more to gain from digging further. Eventually Edith would wonder why she was so eager to gossip about the families. It was better to go on to something everyone knew.

“Speaking of rehab, did you know Tristaan has a new line coming out now that he’s clean and sober? He plans to call it Clarity. I saw a sneak peek of some of the pieces and they are just gorgeous. You’d just adore the mother of pearl pin collection…”

The conversation shifted easily and she spent another hour enjoying the afternoon with Edith. She kept the tone of their topics light but her mind was turning over the information she’d gleaned. Stacie was willing to bet even money that Uncle Jack and Warren Randall were in on whatever Weston was into. Whatever business they had together scared Weston, enough to demand she empty her safe, liquidate assets…it was big. Big enough to ignore Weston’s predilection to torturing and murdering women. Stacie knew there was a bigger play on the table, she could feel it even if she couldn’t see it yet. They needed more information and she knew just which card to play. She waved one last time to Edith as she slid into the backseat of the SUV.

“Home?”

She gave Happy a distracted nod that the blonde smiled at before turning to put the car in gear. “Who do we know in drugs?”

Happy’s bright eyes cut to her quickly in the rearview mirror with curiosity. She was weighing the request to see if Stacie was joking or not. After a second she gave a delicate grunt and focused on the road.

“Depends on how much of what you’re looking for.”

“Enough cocaine to make Tony Montana have a seizure.”

This time the eyes panned up in a slow disbelieving arc. Stacie smiled widely and gestured to the street to remind the other woman to keep her focus where it needed to be.

“We might know a guy…”

“Good. Aubrey’s going to want to talk to him.”

“I’ll make it happen, boss.”

#pp au #queen of hearts #staubrey #stacie conrad

[spacetimewraithwrites-archive]

Find the Word Tag Game

tagged by: @sleepyowlwrites very kindly tagged me all official-like, thank you ❤ my words: star, light, bright, first, tonight, wish, diamond tagging: @zmlorenz, @ashen-crest, @drabbleitout, @pertinax--loculos–loculos, @drippingmoon, and Winnie the Pooh and Tigger too your words: stomp, pillow, wild, tone, fly

star (Rebirth)—

Warren didn't dare turn around to look at his target. "Is this why you look like you're channeling the gayest rock star there's ever been?"

Guetry narrowed his eyes over his lopsided grin. "Bisexual. Mint for clocking the rock star bit. Doesn’t matter, I was going through a 'macho' phase when they took that photo anyway. It’s a long story."

"You know I've seen your file?"

"You're not exactly blending in, here, gorge."

"Well that’s fucking racist."

Guetry lifted his groomed eyebrows at him, not taking the bait.

light (Meridian)—

Warren's blood turned to ice. "What?" He shook his head. "It sounded like you said...it sounded like you said not to go after him. But that would be ridiculous, because we all need Thrive back, and we need him back in one piece." He regarded the orb with a hard look. "Right?"

The messenger ceased its gentle bobbing in mid-air and became concentrated light near the viewscreen. "His capture by beings beyond our realm of knowledge has been—"

"I don't know if you realize this," Warren interrupted, "but I've been around a long time. I've seen things I've never should've seen and yet I've forgotten more of my trauma than half of my species has ever lived. I've got nothing but time, my guy. If you don't wanna help me, that's your prerogative, but I'll be damned if you think I'm gonna let you tell me not to find Orthrive'poliea because it's 'too dangerous.' I'm not scared of you or them, so fuck your entire selfish, righteous people for the big pile of dog-shit nothing you've done for me and him."

The orb exploded outward, its light intensifying along with a window-rattling roar, like the scream of a blazing comet, filling bones with dread and ears with pain. It sent a chill down Warren's spine, injected him with necessary rage. When the onslaught of light and noise finally ceased, he did a visual sweep of the room to assess everyone's status, then turned back to the orb.

"...Did you not hear what I just fucking said," he said darkly.

bright (Destiny)—

Warren disrobed and stepped into the form suit, which stretched smoothly over his limbs, molded to his skin. The collar hugged his throat, yet he didn't feel like he had been stuffed into a sausage casing. The material was silky, snug, and warm, allowed him plenty of stretch to move around to his fullest capacity, and the pattern of sleek silver swooping over the black material flattered every aspect of his appearance. His complexion looked deeper and flushed with color, his eyes more blue and bright, and the pattern slimmed him down.

"Oh, damn," he murmured in approval, checking himself out in the mirror from most angles. "I'm keeping this."

"Feel free! We've got loads of them for replacements or repairs." She smiled at him as he exited the bathroom. "Yes, the silver makes your eyes stand out."

"I don't even care that it makes my ass look bigger, to be honest."

Sussa raised her eyebrows. "Bigger? Or...better?"

Warren laughed. "Ooh...you're gonna be a huge fucking problem, aren't you?"

first (Eternal)—

Warren almost didn't hear her as his eyes were locked with Thrive's across the room. He seemed equally bewildered to see him, but no less relieved and overjoyed in his very Thrive way of showing it, meaning to a bystander he showed no emotion whatsoever other than mild surprise.

"Wow," Warren blurted. The door tried to close on his momentarily paralyzed form and bounced painfully off his shoulder. "I...you look...so good."

And he did. Thrive's hair had been combed into an unfamiliar but flattering side part, his already sun-kissed skin practically glowing in the harsh lighting of the office. A wrapping of green cloth over a golden form suit made the color of his eyes more intense, and while he still looked tired, he looked like he'd definitely done some physical labor in the time they'd been apart. Warren couldn't remember him looking as stunning as he did just then, seeing him in person for the first time in almost half a year, with an audience, when he least expected it.

"As do you," Thrive said, and the sweep of his gaze over Warren's admittedly more toned form set off a wave of goosebumps. "...It's...incredibly good to see you again."

tonight (Rebirth)—

"So where and when's this show gonna be?"

Guetry hauled a huge equipment box onto his good shoulder and walked with Warren down the ramp of the shuttle bay. "Tonight, right here."

[...]

And now, as Warren looked at Guetry with that same expression, he was met with a mischievous grin.

"What do you mean right here?"

Guetry did a wide spin as he disembarked. "This whole port, man. I rented it out for the next forty-eight hours."

"An egregious waste of funds," Thrive said, descending the ramp behind them. "Could an auditorium not have sufficed?"

Guetry genuinely laughed as if that was the most ridiculous question he'd ever been asked. Thrive rolled his eyes when his back was turned.

wish (Eternal)—

"DeCosta," Thrive said, his voice thundering over the whirring of the consoles. He turned his fiery ire to her and Warren grimaced. "I was under the impression that this would take vessels across the galaxy in an instant. Did I misunderstand you?"

"Not exactly," DeCosta said. "We had to condense the truth as we believed our accomplishment wouldn't be taken seriously if we'd been forthright."

Thrive's tone remained surprisingly level despite his rage. "You have used an unauthorized connection with a vital transportation hub eighty-four light-years from the Felir'ís Sector, in the protected space of Tytiva. The brightest star in the upper left of the gate, at the forefront of the nebula, is Rūka, around which orbits the planet Zliyagi. You have effectively given an open invitation to any and all eliyi who wish to settle their score with me and everyone else in this galaxy, and you're facing serious criminal charges at the hands of the Tytivans, so allow me to go on record as saying that I will be the first in line to testify against you at your trial."

diamond (Aurora)—

A few tables adorned the balcony, occupied by patrons quietly enjoying their meals—not without recognizing Thrive and Warren and whispering amongst themselves—but only one table had been set with a flameless candle in the center and highly polished silverware on either side. Glass jewels cut to look like diamonds circled the candle, and electronic menus sat on the two empty plates.

"Oh, boy," Warren said at length, carefully taking his seat as the host pulled out his chair. "I may be too casual for this place."

Thrive politely declined the host, who had been about to pull out his chair as well. "Then don't think of it as a restaurant. Think of it as just the two of us taking in each other's company wherever you'd like us to be."

Warren regarded Thrive warmly once the maȋtre d' made his exit. "Wherever I'd like us to be?"

Thrive pinned him with a knowing, but still somewhat disapproving thinning of his eyes. "Other than the obvious."

#tag game #y'all would legitmately not be able to stand me anymore if you knew the snippet I was originally gonna use for wish lol 😬 #also that was literally the only instance of 'diamond' lmao

[driversmutbucket]

Suspension

Headmaster!Kylo AU x reader

(The vibe - except no facial hair and longer actual hair).

Warnings: power dynamics, switch!reader, switch!kylo, verbal abuse, orgasm denial. Only very mild NSFW

Hello chaps. A wee multi chapter fic I have been writing 100% in my head (why am I like this?!) for a few weeks. About time I put it to paper tumblr. I have no idea where this is going, as usual. 👌🏼👌🏼👌🏼

Many described your new workplace as a real-life Hogwarts. The 17th century boarding school was grand, roaming ivy accented the tall arches of the exterior walls. You loved the sliding vertical windows, which were made from, what seemed like, hundreds of small square panes of glass bordered by thick metal glazing bars. The school sat on a large former-estate, no other buildings or civilization in sight.

Parents paid out the nose for their little darlings to attend. It was an interesting mix of emotionally neglected and rebellious rich kids, ultra-smart and relatively normal scholarship kids and stuck up spoilt-brats.

If the school was a Hogwarts, then the headmaster was a Snape.

He was notorious. Or so you heard.

You had heard murmurings of junior school students bursting into tears at the mere sight of him.

You could hardly be blamed for stopping dead in your tracks- or rather- teachings, when the classroom door creaked open and all your students went dead silent, some as white as a sheet.

You knew this was Headmaster Ren from the reaction alone. But when the tall, pale and bizarrely handsome man stepped into the classroom, you could have been knocked over by a feather.

You were expecting an ugly, miserable old git with a thorn in his side.

“Please pretend I’m not here Miss y/l/n.” His voice was deep, smooth and foreign, American? Why had no one mentioned this. You felt betrayed by the lack of information your colleagues had provided, blindsided.

The students followed him with their eyes as far as they could without physically moving as he retreated to the back of the room and sat on a stool. Crossing one leg over the other. Your eyes lingered for a moment on the third button of his dress shirt that seemed to be working just a bit too hard.

You cleared your throat, “right, well, as I was saying, this term our first module….”

You could feel his eyes on you as you leant against your desk and spoke about the outline for the term.

You eventually managed to relax, dishing out the necessary supplies for the first exercise as you explained what you expected the students to produce by the end of the class.

After watching for a time, you notice one of the shyer girls, Molly, hadn’t begun.

You pulled up a stool next to her at the table.

“Why haven’t you started Molly?” You asked gently.

You noticed Headmaster Ren was now walking around the tables slowly, looking at what the students were doing.

“I’m scared.” Molly whispered, her bottom lip quivering.

“Of the Headmaster?” You asked, quietly.

She nodded.

Bloody hell, you thought, glancing at your unreasonably handsome headmaster as he walked around the tables, hands behind his back and stony expression hardening his already strong features.

“How about I stay and help you until he buzzes off?” You smiled at the young girl.

Molly looked up at you, slight shock flitting across her freckled face. You winked, and picked up the protractor.

The only plus of having Ren hovering around would have been that the students were on their best behavior. But they weren’t even speaking, “why are you all so quiet? Feel free to compare your drawings and see what your neighbor has done, they might have some valuable tips!”

The students looked at you startled. You sighed, “well if you don’t I will just start picking students to come and show the rest of the class their progress at the front here.”

That worked a treat, a low hum of chatter and rustling of paper broke out, breaking the godawful, pin-drop silence.

You watched Ren, a flicker of amusement passing briefly over his features.

The bell rang, and the students bolted when you dismissed them.

Headmaster Ren loitered, you could feel his eyes appraising you.

“A pleasure to finally meet you headmaster.” You offered, finally making eye contact as he walked up to your desk.

“Your teaching style is interesting.” He said coldly.

“Oh, ok?”

“You don’t prefer silence in your classroom Miss y/l/n?” He tapped his lips with his pointer finger, as if in deep thought.

“No, I don’t think art class is the place for silence.” You crossed your arms with a small frown.

His eyebrows shot up into his hairline, “I see, perhaps my idea to inject some young blood into this institution was a flawed one.”

Your frown deepened, and you met his eyes, was he baiting you?

“Headmaster, I hardly think that is fair!” You said calmly but sternly.

You swore you saw the corner of his mouth twitch.

“Can’t say I’ve ever had a teacher, let alone, a new hire, challenge me.” He continued.

“This is absolutely absurd.” You tried your hardest not to scoff. Your patience wavering.

“What is absurd, Miss y/l/n?” He locked eyes with you, you swore he was challenging you.

“You.” You snapped, “this ridiculous conversation is over.”

Before you could chicken out, you strode out the classroom door.

—

The summoning to Headmaster Ren’s office was hardly a surprise.

What was surprising was that it took a week.

In that week you had seen why he struck the fear of god into everyone.

Except for you.

Quite frankly he struck you as an arrogant, controlling, stuck up, wanker. Albeit a sexy one.

His explosive temper reminded you of a spoilt teenager. You had lost count of the number of times you had had to stop yourself from rolling your eyes.

But tonight you had been unable to stop yourself. You had rolled your eyes. You had to admit, you went into the meeting on the defensive.

You met his rising temper with a calm, stern teacher voice, even though you wanted to scream at him.

“Headmaster, if you are going to continue this conversation behaving like a petulant child I will simply leave.” You sighed, standing in front of his desk with your arms crossed.

He was whiteknuckling the arms of his office chair. His hands were so big….

That’s when your gaze drifted to his crotch.

There was no mistaking it. He was hard.

You slowly lifted your gaze to meet his. Had you misread lust for hate?

“Are you fucking hard?!” You hissed, breaking your calm and collected facade.

He moaned. It was deep and guttural. Your nipples hardened and your cunt betrayed you as it began to throb.

Planting both hands on the desk, you let your gaze linger on his straining black dress trousers. There was no doubt he was packing. You very slowly let your eyes wander up his large torso. His three piece suit seemed like overkill for a Headmaster, but he pulled it off. His cheeks were flushed, the first time you had ever seen color grace his pale skin. His plush lips parted slightly as he panted, blown pupils watching your every move.

“You are disgusting.” You spat. “Arrogant, conceded, fucking wanker.”

His eyes rolled back in his head. You couldn’t believe this was happening. But you were high on the power you held over him. His reaction egged you on.

“Are you going to cum in your pants like a teenager Ren?” You scoffed, feigning disgust.

He didn’t reply, but his hand drifted toward his zipper.

“Don’t you dare.” You snapped. “I asked you a question.”

“Yes.” He gritted out.

“Yes….?” you prompted.

“Yes, Miss y/l/n.”

“Good boy.” You cooed, breaking into a smile.

You turned on your heel and walked out of his office and down the hall his raging yells echoing behind you.

—

Let me know if you want to be tag-listed

#headmaster! Kylo Ren #Kylo Ren x reader #boarding school AU #let see where this trash train takes us

[theimprobabledreamersworld]

Finally got another one shot done! This is based very heavily off of a Doctor Who scene which I absolutely adore <3 Hope you enjoy!. Read on Ao3 or under the line!

General writing taglist: @psychedelicships @jwillowwolf @red-imeanblue @lost-in-thought-20 @writerwithtoomanyships (I know you’re not on my taglist @edupunkn00b but you liked the snippet I wrote for a handwriting game, so I thought you’d like to see the whole thing! <3)

If anyone would like to be added to my general writing taglist, let me know! <3

Virgil paced around the small room with anger racing through his veins. The next time he eventually sees his ‘husband’, he is going to have some extremely angry words to say to him. Over the last ten years, he has been kidnapped by Logan’s enemies seven times. Which is fine, it comes with the paperwork when you marry an international and notorious thief with an incredible track record. He just wished that he wasn’t used as leverage by so many people. He could never be sure that Logan would save him, and this time it was certainly not a guarantee because he hadn’t seen Logan for over three years. Virgil received the occasional letter but could never respond to them as he wouldn’t put a returning address. He understands that it’s just to keep him safe, that didn’t stop him from feeling angry at Logan.

Hello, Darling.

Logan/Virgil

Word Count: 2308

Warnings: Very mild cursing and threat.

He couldn’t help but jump slightly when he heard a firm knock on the door and a timid face peered around the opening gap.

“Urm… Hi. I’m Roman. I have to take you down to the office; he wants to talk.” Virgil sighed and reluctantly walked behind Roman as they took a scenic route through the building. He had to admit, this was the most comfortable kidnapping he’s ever been involved in, and when he saw the piping hot tea sitting on an elegant coffee table, it almost felt like it was going to be a polite conversation. There were no weapons this time, which was reassuring, but the several figures lurking in the shadows reduced his confidence significantly.

All of the men stepped forward at once, Virgil gulped before he was encouraged to sit down by the man in the middle. The man smiled and Virgil felt even more concerned now, it was never good when a kidnapper smiled… he knew that from experience.

“Let’s get the embarrassing details out of the way, my name in Janus. This is Patton, Roman you’ve already met and Remus. He’s a pussy cat really, don’t let the menacing face fool you. Virgil looked at each of them in turn and curled into himself a little. He genuinely didn’t know what was happening here. He looked around him for the main exits in case he needed to run away, and he saw another person who wasn’t introduced. A butler, dressed in all black was busy polishing some silverware. This made everything even more confusing for Virgil, but if they were letting the butler stick around, at least hurting or killing him wasn’t top of their agenda.

“Come now, Virgil. I’m not going to harm you, I’m just a friend of Logan’s.” Janus smiled once again, but with a sinister undertone this time and Virgil’s brow furrowed in confusion. He gulped softly before mustering the courage to talk.

“A friend?!” His voice was full of mock surprise and Janus raised an eyebrow in return, almost as if he wasn’t expecting Virgil to engage in any kind of conversation. Remus turned his head towards Virgil growled deeply, so Janus waved a hand nonchalantly and chuckled.

“Alright, alright. An enemy then.” His eyes glimmered with malicious intent and Virgil’s eyes widened at how things had taken a turn so quickly. He put on a pretense of relief and hoped Janus would buy the bravado.

“Oh… which one?” Janus’ smile dropped and his eyes began to cloud over, apparently it was clear that the time for games was over, and Virgil was silently regretting his choices in his mind. Janus slowly spun the chair around and fell into it gracefully. The room began to darken, and Virgil knew that this was where things might get messy.

“Okay, enough games. I grow weary of this. Where is Logan?” Janus slammed his hand down on the table and Virgil realised that he could gain the upper hand in this scenario. He shrugged and darted his eyes around the room.

“Haven’t the faintest idea.” All four men looked at Virgil with an incredulous look in the eye. It’s no surprise that they don’t believe him, but for once in this scenario, he was actually telling the truth. Logan could literally be anywhere. He heard a clatter and remembered the butler who had just dropped a piece of silverware, he frantically picked it up and turned his back to the group.

Janus continued to look at Virgil directly in the eyes, as if he was waiting patiently for Virgil to crumble and break down in front of him and slyly remarks “Come on Virgil, is that credible?”

“It’s truth. Go ahead. Check whatever records you may have about his last whereabouts. You’ll probably find out more than me.” He spoke with a spiteful tone and another man stepped forward with an extremely worried expression.

"B- but you're the man that he loves!" Virgil couldn’t help but laugh at the sincerity of his statement, almost as if he was talking about them like they were some kind of fairytale. He continued to laugh in their faces. The men all looked at each other, and Remus banged in fist against the table, and it brought Virgil back to the task at hand. The longer he was involved in this conversation, the more his insecurities took over and he couldn’t stop his raised voice. "No I'm not! Logan does not and has never loved me." He covered in mouth in shock at the fact that he just shouted a very false statement. Unbeknownst to Virgil, the butler flinched in the background as well.

Patton interrupts again while Janus looks on in confusion. "So my information was correct then. You are the man who loves Logan!" There was an odd mix of confusion and triumph on Patton’s face, there was nothing wrong with what he just said, but the doubt still consumed his mind.

Virgil agrees with a new-found confidence in his voice. "I never denied it. But he's Logan after all. A notorious thief. The most meticulous criminal and the cleverest soul I've ever met. If you think that someone like him is that ordinary, to be staying in love with someone like me... then you have no idea who you're dealing with." Virgil continued to adamantly make his case, yet he still remained oblivious to the butler who had gradually put down his polishing cloth and had slowly made his way closer to the centre of the room.

Janus stands in front of Virgil completely dumbfounded at this point. This clearly wasn’t the way this was supposed to go. Virgil had to admit that he didn’t think he would stay this strong for so long, but it was working. If he bought enough time, maybe… just maybe… Logan might somehow come and save him. "I was assured that you would be the perfect bait! If you were in danger. Logan would come running!"

Despite the small slither of hope Virgil felt, he knew he needed to keep it buried deep down, or he would lose this battle. He needed to keep going, they were starting to crack, he knew it. "Oh, you are a moron then!"

Janus bowed his head and took a deep breath. He regained his composure and looked at Virgil smirking with malicious intent once again before pressing a button underneath the desk. "We both know he's probably already here, he's the master of disguises and this isn't exactly the first time he's had to save you.” He chuckled smugly as a barrage of clicks echoed around the room. Virgil tried to hide the panic in his eyes, he didn’t know what was going to happen now, but the total lockdown of the room was enough to induce all of emotions to come to the foreground and he couldn’t stop what he said next. The butler was now standing directly behind Virgil, and if he had noticed, he would have realised that Janus wasn’t looking at Virgil at all. He was looking behind him that entire time.

"No he isn't. Of course, he isn't! Go on! Look around this place, send your cronies on a wild goose chase. He won't be here! I mean, you can't miss him. Stupid polo shirt, stupid tie and the stupidest pair of glasses you’ve seen. That should be a big enough clue!" He huffed as his chest rose and fell angrily, all the rage he felt when he was first brought to this place bubble to the surface. The butler coughed lightly before calling out timidly, "Virgil..."

"God knows where he is right now, but I promise you, he's doing whatever the HELL he wants because he doesn't give a damn about me!" Virgil shouted out at the ceiling; his arms raised above his head in an aggressive stance. He silently cursed the heavens themselves as the butler tried once again to get Virgil’s attention. He stood right behind Virgil’s ear and called his name once again.

“Virgil!”

He didn’t even realise that his name was being called, he was so consumed by his emotions that he let them flow like an uncontrollable stream of consciousness. "And I'm just fine with that! When you love someone like Logan, it's like loving the stars themselves. You don't expect a sunset to admire you back. And if I find myself in danger, let me tell you... Logan is not stupid enough, or sentimental enough and he is certainly not in love enough to find himself standing in it with me!!"

The room fell silent, the butler had been waiting with bated breath for Virgil to realise that he was standing next to him, but he still hadn’t noticed. So eventually, he took hold of Virgil’s wrist lightly. Virgil took a few breaths before looking once, looking twice, then looking a final time before holding his focus on the butler’s face. Virgil stared into his eyes, and they glimmer with recognition. As he gasps, the butler smiles back softly before finally whispering "Hello, Darling."

“Oh I hate you.” Virgil smirks as he realised that Logan had been in the room the whole time.

“No, you don’t. I have to admit, that was a spectacular performance you did just now.”

“Shut up!”

“I mean, I never knew you cared that much.” Their bickering was interrupted by a timid cough coming from in front of them. Logan and Virgil looked at Janus in irritation. How dare he interrupt mummy and daddy talking?! At least it confirmed one thing in Virgil’s mind, they definitely acted like an old married couple.

“Urm, I hate to break up this touching reunion, but I believe we have business to attend to.” Janus held a hand out sarcastically, motioning for Logan to give him something and he just raised an eyebrow in response.

“Oh, where are my manners? First, get rid of your boys.” Janus raised an eyebrow with a tone that screamed why should he follow his orders. Logan looked around the room, eyeing the exits and planning in his mind. Virgil stepped back and let him work, it was the best thing to do… because they are going to regret messing with Logan.

“I don’t like being outnumbered. It makes for too much stupid in the room.” Janus frowned then nodded at Roman, Patton and Remus to leave. They reluctantly make their way to the only unlocked room in the building which was located behind Janus. Remus refused to move initially until Janus snapped his fingers and Remus growled one final time before going through the door and slamming it shut.

“Well. You’re trapped now, Logan. I have the high ground here. Give me, what I want… and I won’t harm Virgil.” Janus held his hand out once again and motioned for something from Logan. It caused Logan to laugh wildly and wipe a tear from his eye. Janus stepped forward, ready to grab Virgil in order to get what he wants.

“Oh Janus, Janus, Janus. You’ve made a big mistake my friend. There is one thing you don’t put in a trap, if you’re smart. If you value your continued existence. If you have any plans of continuing your sordid little business for many years to come, there is one thing you should never ever put in a trap.” He wrapped an arm around Virgil and began to move him away from Janus, towards the now unguarded door. Janus chuckled while being oblivious to what was going on, he was adamant that he still had the high ground after all.

“And what would that be?” Virgil glanced up at Logan with adoration, Logan smirked before pulling a small device out of his pocket and raising it in front of Janus’ eyes. When Janus noticed what he was holding, he shrunk away and pinned himself against the wall.

“… Me.” Logan pressed the switch, and a thick smoke began to fill the room. Virgil heard Janus coughing as the two of them ran through the unlocked door. The coast was clear, and they kept running through the house until they were hit by bright sunlight. On the main road, Virgil stopped them and wrapped his arms around Logan, and he felt a tight grip around his waist in response. It was almost too good to be true but, deep down, he knew that Logan would have saved him. He kissed his cheek gently before staring into Logan’s ocean eyes.

“Well, after everything I’ve put you through. I definitely owe you a date. Dinner? My treat?” Virgil smiled and nodded. They took each other’s hands and headed to a car that was parked nearby. As Logan drove, Virgil stared out of the window smiling softly.

Despite it all. He wouldn’t change anything for the world. He was the husband of a thief, a thief who stole his heart many years ago… and he always would be.

#sanders sides #logan sanders #patton sanders #roman sanders #virgil sanders #janus sanders #remus sanders #doctor who references #ts fanfic #ts fandom #sanders sides fanfiction

[mamahersh]

The Road to Hell (is Paved with Good Intentions) Chapter 3

“Season 8 was well underway, and the server’s first conflict is bubbling just under the surface. But BDoubleO can’t worry about that right now because he has an Etho to find so they can work on the Horse Course together. However when Xisuma calls a surprise server meeting on behalf of EvilXisuma, BDubs gets his answers about where Etho’s been in the worst way possible.”

(CW: angst, blood, gore, torture)

Chapter rating: M

Back to BDubs and friends

Welcome back to my first attempt at Ethoslab angst! Time to find out why EvilX is being evil lol. Sorry again if any of the characters are OOC, though as stated on the box, EvilX is going to be fairly OOC. If y’all have suggestions or feedback, feel free to come and say hi!

P.S. I got my inspiration for this fic from this fic over here! Give them some love too.

Chapter 1 / Chapter 2 / Chapter 4

“ETHO?!”

BDubs was having a waking nightmare. He had to be. This was so far out of left field, he legitimately was having problems processing whatever this was.

Here he was, standing with Doc and Beef, watching a screen with their final NHO member beat to hell and back sitting in a chair next to EvilX. Not only that, but Xisuma himself had been acting so weird up till now, and now he seemed to be just as confused as the rest of them. He could hear Iskall and Grian already going off on Xisuma (which honestly he would normally be over there right along with them), but from the looks of it, Xisuma seemed to have no idea what he just did. Which was a whole thing to unload later, because right now he didn’t like what he was seeing on the screen. 

To start, Etho didn’t have his mask on. BDubs had never seen Etho without his mask, never. He knew Beef had more than likely seen Etho without it, but that was one of those things all the Hermits had never brought up. You just didn’t ask Etho to take off his mask, and he never removed it. Also, BDubs was absolutely horrified to realize that not only was Etho chained to the chair with cuffs that looked like they were spiked inside the cuffs, but he also had stakes in his arms to keep them completely immobile. Plus, Etho was still conscious, though how much so was difficult to discern from the TV alone. And they had no idea where Etho was. They didn’t know where Etho was, and they were about to watch him probably get even more hurt. BDubs was about to pop a blood vessel, mark his words. 

“Beef. Beef, we don’t know where Etho is,” pleaded BDubs to the open air as he continued to stare at the screen. He felt a solid hand on his left shoulder, and a slightly leafy one (as only creepers could have) on his right.

“We know BDubs,” replied Beef, gripping onto the shorter one in a vague hope to comfort them both. “God, I know.” Doc gave a quiet hiss of agreement, clawed grip a bit too tight to be comfortable.

While the Hermits devolved into chaos, EvilX had stood patiently beside his captive till in a brief lull in shouting he called out, “HERMITS!” Suddenly, the group was silent, all members anxiously awaiting his words. “I hope you are all doing well in your various business ventures, but we have called you together today for an important step in my business empire!” BDubs could not let this stand.

“OY!” Suddenly every eye was turned to BDubs. EvilX looked stoic as always, expression impossible to see beneath his mask. The rest of the hermits were in various states of confusion and worry. “Now you listen HERE, you… you OAF! What do you think you’re trying to pull?! This isn’t a business deal, you’re holding Etho hostage and- !!!” Suddenly he was cut off by a worried looking Doc covering his mouth.

“Please BDubs, just a bit longer… we need to find out why first,” mumbled Doc.

“I-I must agree with BDoubleO, EX.” There was Xisuma, finally speaking up. “What you’re doing here most assuredly doesn’t seem like a business deal.”

EvilX chuckled as he placed a hand on Etho’s head and gripped his hair. “Oh, I assure you all, this is a business deal. A very pivotal one as well.” Evil X gestured grandly as he spoke with his free hand. “You see, Derpcoin has hit a plateau. A major roadblock if you will. Some of it is due to inaccessibility in the markets, you know who you are who don’t allow Derpcoin in your shops.” Here EvilX paused, the mild grandiose gesturing stilling to allow him to give a meaningful stare at the camera. Then he continued. “I tried peaceable means of convincing you all to use Derpcoin. In fact Etho here was having productive discussions with us about potentially expanding into Iskall’s prismarine business.” BDubs glanced at Iskall to see a conflicted expression on his face. “But, he had his doubts, and so he was planning on going the route of Boatem.” The air became tense as the Hermits waited with baited breath for the inevitable. The Boatem Crew in particular looked ill-at-ease, Grian’s feathers fluffed and Mumbo looking like an anxious puppy beside him. “So in response, I decided to enact a new plan for Derpcoin expansion. If you all do not accept Derpcoins in your markets:” EvilX suddenly pulled at Etho’s hair, lifting his head at an awkward angle and digging the spikes in the collar into the back of his neck. He barely let out a whimper. “I’ll make an example of Ethoslab.”

Understandably, the Hermits burst in furious bickering, not the least of which was the Boatem crew arguing heatedly amongst themselves. BDubs wanted to yell and scream; preferably at EvilX, though Etho was a close second. What he would yell at Etho for was undetermined, but he was ready to give someone a very loud series of rebukes. However, all 3 of the remaining NHO members had in one way or another ceded to EvilX’s Derpcoin cult. They had heard about Boatem being a diamond exclusive economic zone, but never in their wildest dreams had they thought this would be the end result of any of their choices. To be honest, BDubs now felt dirty accepting Derpcoin. If this was what it meant to use it, he wanted no part of it. But now, not allowing Derpcoin would lead to EvilX doing something terrible to Etho.

“Well Hermits? Will you allow Derpcoin in all your markets?” Seemed like EvilX had become impatient with them. And now all the server was staring directly at the Boatem crew because they all knew who it was EvilX wanted a response from. Mumbo, who was the most nervous, yet also CEO of their megacorp, was pushed to the front of their group. He stuttered for a few moments, looking just as terrified and lost as everyone else in the group was feeling.

But before Mumbo could say anything, they could hear Etho say, “D-don’t do it.” EvilX slowly turned his head towards Etho.

“Would you like to repeat that Ethoslab?” Never had BDubs felt so helpless. It was like watching a trainwreck in slow motion, knowing that at least one person would die in the process but there was not a single thing he could do to change it.

EvilX slowly let go of Etho’s hair, and went back to crouching, though now slightly to the side so the camera could see everything that they both were doing. Etho, meanwhile, glared at EvilX the entire time, and finally huffed out, “they shouldn’t do it.” EvilX didn’t do anything, so Etho kept going. “You and I both know there’s more t-to this than what you’re asking.” BDubs could see how nervous Etho was, how his hands spasmed and the rest of him was set more still than stone. BDubs could also see that EvilX had a knife in his hand, and he looked about ready to use it. 

“Etho!” BDubs shouted, and lurched at the screen in a failed attempt to stop the inevitable. Just as he called out, EvilX stabbed down into the meatiest part of Etho’s thigh, and left the knife there. Etho threw his head back and grit his teeth, moaning through them as he seemed to adjust. The rest of the assembled Hermits let out various noises of shock and dismay; a particularly angry screech came from Cleo, and BDubs could hear Doc angrily hissing to himself behind him.

“Let that be a lesson,” said EvilX, standing back up and turning back to face the camera. “Now, with no further interruptions,” he took a moment to turn his head back towards Etho in a meaningful gesture. “I would like your answer.”

BDubs felt his heart sink as he watched a furious flurry of whispers start up in the boatem group again while Mumbo looked uncharacteristically serious beneath all the anxiety. Mumbo pushed out from the group, though Grian latched onto his suit jacket; whether for moral support or to try to pull him back in was unclear to BDubs. “We have an answer for you.” BDubs felt Beef come back beside him to grip onto his shoulder. “We…” Everyone seemed to hold their breath, or maybe that was just him. “... will NOT accept Derpcoin as a legitimate form of currency in our shops.” He felt his breath leave him. His feelings were mixed up in a boiling stew, though if he had to pick a predominant one, it would have to be dread. “We can’t justify allowing the use of alternate forms of currency until there is a transparent, stable conversion rate between them and diamonds; as well as a way to easily convert the currency to diamonds. If people on the server want to use derpcoins at our shops, they should be able to exchange them for diamonds so that we are all aware of the actual value they are using in our shops.” Mumbo deflated a bit after he had said his piece, almost seeming to fall back into Grian’s white knuckled grip on his suit. They all knew that he had doomed Etho. BDubs could feel Beef behind him getting tenser, and he thought that if he looked behind, he’d see the rage building on the alien face.

“He did not just sacrifice Etho for his shopping district,” muttered Beef from behind. “He absolutely did not just sacrifice Etho to guarantee a profit for his fucking mega-corp.” BDubs heard a whirr of machinery, and Doc hissing behind him, “Beef, you know why he did it. Etho himself didn’t want them to give in to EX’s demands.”

“That doesn’t make it right, though!” angrily whisper-screamed Beef.

“Will you two just drop it?!” exclaimed BDubs, turning around to them both. Doc and Beef both looked mildly shocked and embarrassed. “There are bigger things we gotta deal with, like trying to save Etho from whatever horror show EvilX has cooked up right now!”

A sudden laugh from the screen shut him down however, as EvilX faced the camera. “Oh please. By the time you find me, I will already be done! But how about a challenge then?” EvilX gestured at the surrounding stone on his end of the screen. “I shall give you an x coordinate, and you can have Etho back once you find him! However, at least one of you has to stay back and watch, and I’ve messed with the respawn mechanics. Now, you respawn where you die, and you only come back with two hearts. I think you can connect the dots. And remember, I am doing this, because the kiddie gloves are off. You forced my hand. I would never have done this if you had just accepted Derpcoin when I offered it to you.”

“And now,” with a flourish, EvilX brought up his communicator and typed a quick command into it. “You can find me at x=537.” 

BDubs frantically tried to remember coordinates, but his usual estimations were falling through his brain like sand through his fingers. “Say, that’s not too far from our base!” called out Stress, Tay and False nodding along beside her. “We could start at my base and work out from there perhaps?” Suddenly it seemed like every hermit was piping in. 

“I’m fairly certain the Goatem Pole is by those coordinates!” called out Impulse.

“My base is nearby as well!” called out iJevin.

“Our base is along that axis as well!” called out Cleo, Joe looking ill-at-ease beside her, though nodding along.

“Fucker couldn’t make it easy, could he?” mumbled Beef, glaring intently at the screen. It’s a point somewhere along the longest axis of the island with the most players situated along it, realized BDubs a moment too late. It would take them hours to search along that x coordinate.

“I’ll stay,” called Mumbo, an odd mixture of sheepish and serious sounding. “It was my choice that put Etho into this situation, so I will stay to see the consequences of my actions and be with him the best way I can be.” Here Mumbo looked fully ashamed. “Plus, I will be the first to admit I am not good at finding my way around, muchless finding a hidden bunker.”

“I’ll stay with you,” stated TFC from the opposite end of the crowd. “I’m not in my prime anymore, so I would be best with those staying behind with Etho.”

“I’ll help with the search,” said BDubs, unable to contain himself any longer. He wanted, no needed, to find Etho, and the only way he could do that would be to go with the search group.

And after a bit more haggling, the groups were divided up as to who would stay, and who would go.

Going was the gals, BDubs, iJevin, the Boatem Crew minus Mumbo and Scar, Beef, Ren, Horsehead Farms, and Welsknight

Staying was TFC, Xisuma, Mumbo, Scar, Joe, and Doc.

With that, BDubs and the rest of the search party shot off, plan set up and in motion; and all BDubs could do was hope they wouldn’t be too late.

#bdouble0 #ethoslab #docm77 #vintagebeef #Mumbo jumbo #nho #boatem crew #the hermits #hermitcraft #evil xisuma #xisuma #blood #gore #graphic depictions of violence #torture

[beauregardlionett]

no choir (4/7)

AO3 Link

If one were to travel north of Kamordah along the fringes of the heated mountains, they would encounter numerous streams and rivers. Many of them did not bear names—at least, not names that any human would know. Should one be lucky enough, they might encounter the spirit of a waterway and learn their name.

Most were not lucky.

The spirits of the rivers were benevolent, but cautious. Too many of them fell by the sword of glory hungry adventurers, or became tamed and twisted to the will of mages. It was rare these days to encounter the water spirits known as Imugi. So rare, the mundane populations nearly forgot the name itself in the present.

There existed several breeds of dragons—some better known than others. Imugi were considered of lower stature and lesser power than their fully dragon counterparts.

Which was why Beau remained so determined to find a yeouiju of her own, to ascend into higher stature and power. However, with the dwindling knowledge of her kind, fewer chances were afforded to Imugi like her to gain a yeouiju. Lack of knowledge and faith meant the god that created Imugi was fading from power and existence. It took more out of them to create yeouiju now than it had hundreds of years before.

These facts did not daunt Beau’s determination, though.

Every day, she swam the length of her river charge, eyes on the heavens. She would consult schools of fish on their numbers, give them directions, rearrange river rocks, and tend to the flora on the banks of her river. Throughout each daily chore, Beau waited. At night, when the current babbled calmly over her stones and banks, she watched the heavens. The stars would twinkle back at her, each distant flash stoking a false flame of hope in Beau’s chest. Each time her aging heart would leap, thinking this might be her falling orb, her chance at last.

Each morning the sun greeted her dwindling patience with empty warmth.

“Haven’t you ever heard the term, a watched pot never boils?” Caleb asked her one evening. He ruffled the feathers of one wing as he groomed his beak through his primaries.

“Hasn’t anyone ever told you that you spend too much time eavesdropping on humans?” Beau retorted, voice sharp and bitter. Caleb did not rise to the bait, but his eagle eyes gave her a knowing look before returning to his task.

When the storms rolled in with warmer weather, Beau roiled in vicious hatred. They were awesome displays of power, and she knew dragons controlled these storms, dragons that had once been Imugi like her. If she focused hard, Beau could summon a mild cloud cover, but never more than that. She could not bring forth rain, let alone thunder and lightning. Her powers barely extended past the banks of her river.

On one such day, a storm raging with a rare ferocity above, Beau lay coiled in her hollow. Bright blue eyes trained on the clouds, she tracked each strike of lightning, shuddered with every crack of thunder. She longed to know the thrill of controlling the storm.

There was a flash among the clouds, bright white and searing purple. Beau’s head popped up, eyes wide and nose twitching as the burn of ozone filled the air. Thunder raged like a mournful cry and rattled Beau’s bones.

Something glowing fell from the clouds.

Heart racing and veins throbbing with adrenaline, Beau shot from her hollow with a speed unknown.

This was her chance. This was her yeouiju.

Beau could fly in the loosest sense of the word. She often made it to just above the treetops and no higher, lingering in the air for a few minutes before she had to return to the water. Without a yeouiju granting her stronger powers, she could not make it to the heavens. Despite this, Beau pushed herself now, straining her ability as much as possible, claws extending toward this glowing orb, this shining future.

The yeouiju hurtled closer, burning and beautiful. Beau’s heart sung in her chest with victory as her claws closed around the object just above the treetops.

But instead of the thrill of power, the surge of ascension, the weightlessness of true flight, Beau felt a static buzz singing through her veins. It felt like holding lightning, whiting out her vision for an instant.

It was then she realized that the object in her claws was not an orb at all.

Confused and frustrated, Beau wove her way back to the river, unable to stay in flight for much longer. Depositing her charge on the banks of her home, Beau coiled around herself until she stood small and human on the damp sand.

Glaring down at what she thought would be her yeouiju, Beau instead found the hulking figure of a woman. Her skin was alabaster in hue, hair the blinding white of lightning. Her right arm had sporadic, spiraling veins of scars—evidence of lightning damage. An oozing gash on her temple bled sluggishly as her breath stuttered from her lungs.

Beau could not pretend to understand, but she sighed, short and sharp, as she knelt beside the woman. They were close to Beau’s hollow, and she knew despite her frustration, she would not leave the woman here to die. She was not that heartless.

In the days following, Beau went about her usual routine, but now with an unconscious guest to tend to. She was not a healer, but Beau did her best to tend to the lightning wounds and forehead gash to the best of her ability. She got water and sometimes food into her charge, and asked the resident birds to watch over her when Beau left the hollow. The schools of fish were gossiping about the woman in Beau’s care, eager to learn more. Beau offered little information, as she had little to give.

It was one otter that finally noticed, three days after Beau had taken in the strange woman.

“You smell different,” the otter chirped. She spared Beau a glance from where she observed her husband teaching their son how to reinforce their home. The otter—Veth—swept a critical eye over Beau’s human form.

“What do you mean?” Beau rumbled, depositing a pile of sticks beside Veth.

“Usually you reek like the river and everything in it. But now you smell different—like a storm.”

Beau lifted her arm to her nose and inhaled. Veth gave her a dubious look as she sorted through the offered sticks.

“Maybe it’s because that woman is stinking up my home,” Beau grumbled, folding her arms over her chest. She knew she sounded awful and mean, but she felt cheated—no matter how the stranger held no fault.

“Maybe,” Veth agreed, cryptic and distracted as she gathered up some sticks.

Before they could say anymore, a bluebird Beau had left to guard the woman came fluttering down the riverbed at rapid speed. Beau held out her arm for the bluebird to alight on and listened to the rapid, excited chirping. 

“Beau! Beau! Beau!” Jester said excitedly. “She woke up! That smelly lady woke up! She seems really out of it, but she’s awake! Her eyes are super cool. Did you know she has cool eyes?”

Offering a distracted wave to Veth and her family, Beau gave Jester a gentle shove into the air. She curled around herself and melted into her true form, weaving low and fast over the babbling water back toward her hollow. Beau lost Jester at some point, moving too quickly for the little bird to keep up, but Beau’s focus remained on getting back to the hollow.

She pulled to a stop just outside the curtain of lichen that acted as a screen. The woman stood outside, blinking around her, not noticing Beau.

Beau narrowed her eyes as the woman leaned heavily against one of the curving trees near the entrance, weary and wobbling. One of her eyes blinked a brilliant purple like the horizon before a thunderstorm. The other flashed like a summer sky, pale and bright. She reeked of ozone, glowed like a flash of lightning personified. There was power in her veins Beau could sense even from a distance.

Whoever this woman was, she possessed more than Beau ever had.

Coiling around herself after she stared for a few moments, Beau shifted into human form, feet dipping into the babble of the stream beneath her. The water parted for her descent before it wrapped eagerly around her ankles.

She scowled to realize this woman’s hulking figure was taller than her own.

“You’re awake,” Beau called, determined to get the first word. The woman looked to her, still leaning against the tree, holding her limbs like she was stiff or in pain.

“Where am I?”

Beau blinked, the woman’s voice raspy and deep, rolling like distant thunder through the syllables. She slowly realized that whomever she had grabbed from the sky was a storm personified.

She squared her shoulders against this woman’s gaze.

“This is my home—my hollow and my river. I’m the guardian, and I caught you when you fell from the sky.”

Something in this stranger’s expression seemed to shatter.

“I fell?”

“Yes,” Beau said, hesitant. She felt like she was delivering bad news, but she didn’t know why.

The woman cursed viciously under her breath, punching the tree she was leaning against with obvious frustration. Beau flinched slightly and took a hasty step forward, angry and a tad frightened all at once.

“Hey! Don’t hurt him!” Beau snapped, the nervous warble of the water around her rushing faster with her anger.

“What?” The woman looked around at Beau, confused. “Who?” 

“Him,” Beau gestured empathetically toward the tree. “Haven’t you ever heard of a dryad?”

As if on cue, the bark of the oak that curved around Beau’s hollow shifted and warped. The woman made a startled noise, stumbling away from the trunk and tripping over her own feet, landing in the shallows with a mighty splash. A vaguely humanoid figure melted from the trunk, stepping free of the bark but still bearing the pattern on their green tinted skin. He rubbed at his chest, wincing as he looked around.

“That hurt,” the dryad said, gruff.

“Are you okay, Fjord?” Beau huffed, wading through the water until she stood on the banks. She looked over the oak and then over Fjord, concern easing from the set of her shoulders when he appeared unharmed.

“I’m fine,” he reassured Beau anyway, turning to look at the woman sprawled in the water.

“Oh, isn’t this the woman you rescued?”

“Yeah, and she’s the one who hit you. But I don’t think she knows about dryads.”

“I’m right here,” the woman snapped from where she soaked, eyes thunderous but confused. “And I have a name.”

Beau cocked an expectant eyebrow down at her, the bitter part of her enjoying this floundering version of her charge. But the quieter part of Beau wanted to help her up and make sure she was okay, explain everything she didn’t understand. It was a facet of herself that Beau was used to stifling.

“It’s Yasha,” she grumbled, making no move to stand.

“Where are you from?” Fjord asked, folding his arms over his chest and standing at Beau’s side. He possessed many of the same traits that Beau did, but he wore his charisma much better than Beau did.

Yasha cocked her head to the side, as if bewildered by the question.

“The sky? I’ve lived there among the storms my entire life. Where else would I be?”

Beau gestured around her widely in answer.

“How does anything live down here?”

Beau and Fjord exchanged a long, meaningful glance.

“You don’t know much, do you?” Beau asked, curious but also rude. “I’m a river spirit, Fjord’s a dryad. There are birds and otters, fish and land animals. Humans live in the villages and cities around here. I don’t know what goes on up there in the clouds, but there’s a lot of life down here.”

Yasha blinked up at Fjord and Beau with a look of disbelief. But it appeared difficult for her to maintain that, given the evidence literally surrounding her.

Beau sighed, short and sharp. Stepping up to Yasha, she extended a hand, but was sure to appear annoyed about it. On a normal day, Beau would leave Yasha in some town and wish her luck. She didn’t have time to babysit a grown woman who should know better. But there was a selfish part of Beau who wondered if this woman from the sky could get Beau what she wanted. A smaller, less selfish part of Beau that told her to stop being so closed off for once.

“Get up,” Beau said when Yasha stared at the hand extended her way. “I need to treat your wounds again. Then I have a lot to teach you, apparently.”

Yasha hesitated, her mismatched eyes flicking behind Beau to Fjord and back. Beau’s impatience was mounting, on the verge of snapping, when Yasha took her hand.

She told herself the rush of static electricity in her veins was nothing, as Beau hauled Yasha to her feet.

--

The days passed, Beau tending to Yasha’s lightning wound every morning and ensuring they were healing every night. In between those quiet moments, Beau showed Yasha around. She introduced her new companion to the rest of the dryads with Fjord, Caduceus, the slow talking oak near Beau’s hollow, and the miscellaneous other trees near Beau’s banks. Jester introduced herself with excited chirping before Beau could even open her mouth. Yasha seemed to take to Jester quickly, often letting Jester ride around on her shoulder. 

Veth hesitated to introduce Yasha to her family, but Yasha took one look at little Luc and melted with fondness. Beau and Veth watched on as Yasha played gently with Luc and Veth welcomed Yasha warmly every time after.

It took a few days, but Caleb eventually made his way back to the river, alighting on Beau’s shoulder as she sat in the river near her hollow. Yasha was on the banks, talking with Caduceus as he showed her how to weave flowers into a chain.

“Welcome back,” Beau said, just loud enough for Caleb to hear. “You were gone for a while. I was starting to worry you got taken down or something.”

Ruffling his feathers, Caleb sent Beau a mildly indignant glare, but it was mostly fond.

“I was gathering information,” Caleb divulged. His beady eyes zeroed in on Yasha as she stood and waved to Caduceus. They watched as Yasha waded into the water toward them.

“What did you find?” Beau asked, keeping her voice down.

“Quite a lot,” Caleb said as he twisted to preen at his flight feathers. “Your new companion is quite a topic in the skies.”

“What?” Beau said, turning to stare at Caleb.

A ring of flowers dropped onto Beau’s head, making her startle. She twisted to stare at Yasha as she sat down in the water across from her. But Yasha’s eyes were on Caleb, his eagle eyes lifting from his preening to stare back at her.

“Who is that?” Yasha asked, blunt as ever. Beau had discovered that about Yasha rather quickly. It was either because Yasha had no social graces to speak of, or she simply didn’t care enough to try. Beau wasn’t sure yet.

“This is Caleb,” Beau answered, making no move to take off the flowers even as she kept staring at Yasha.

“And you are Yasha, the fallen Druk,” Caleb said as he folded his wings neatly at his sides.

Yasha went rigid, her eyes flashing like they were filled with lightning.

“Ah, so it’s true,” Caleb said. “Most in the heavens believed you dead, so I couldn’t be certain.”

“Whoa, wait.” Beau held up her hands, anger bubbling under her skin at the lack of understanding she possessed. The surrounding water swirled in time with her emotions as it lapped over her and Yasha’s legs.

“My name is Yasha,” Yasha spoke up before Beau could ask questions. Her gaze still sat firmly on Caleb, as if he held all the answers. “I am the current incarnation of the dragon Druk, the Lightning Bearer. I am the Storm Herald, right hand of Kord. I am alive, even though the Chain Maker wished otherwise.”

“Please stop speaking like you’re part of a horrid play and tell us what the fuck that entire stream of nonsense means,” Beau snapped. Everything Yasha said sounded impressive, but they were hollow words and titles to Beau. She had never been to the heavens, didn’t know a single soul that resided among the clouds. All of this was foreign to her, and she hated it.

“The Storm Lord, Kord, controls the climate of the heavens,” Yasha said, finally looking at Beau instead of Caleb. “I am his right hand, the Lightning Bearer. There are several things that I do but do not have time to explain. A few nights ago, Kord and I were around here, and the Chain Maker attacked. He is an avatar of a much larger threat. He tried to engage Kord in battle, but I got in his way. I don’t know what happened, exactly, but whatever he was going to attack Kord with seems to have struck me down.”

“And then I caught you,” Beau said.

“You did. I don’t know why,” Yasha’s intense gaze softened ever so slightly. “But I’m grateful for it. I probably would not have survived if I hit the ground. Or maybe I would have, but I would be much worse off for it.”

“I thought you were my liberation,” Beau bit out, letting the bitterness creep into her voice. “My yeouiju.”

“Your what?”

“I don’t know what a Druk is, but I am a dragon that requires outside intervention to ascend to the heavens. Until then, this river is my anchor for the world and my home. Without it, I have no purpose. But without a yeouiju from the heavens, I cannot ascend either.”

“Curious,” Caleb spoke up at last from Beau’s shoulder, startling them both. “You seem to have met in the middle. Perhaps it is fate.”

“Fate isn’t real, Caleb,” Beau scoffed.

“Some would say otherwise,” he shot back in that annoying, know-it-all tone of his.

“You said the heavens assumed I perished,” Yasha interrupted them, leaning forward, eyes imploring. “Would you be able to spread the word that I am not? Perhaps it will get back to Kord that I am trying to return to him.”

Caleb studied Yasha for a long moment in that unnerving fashion of his. But after a few moments, he inclined his head toward Yasha.

“I will see what I can do. There is a cloud spirit I am rather close with who might lay the foundations for spreading the news.”

“Is this the cloud friend?” Beau asked teasingly, unable to help herself.

She chuckled as Caleb ruffled his feathers and scooted away from her head, along her shoulder.

“My interactions with Essek are none of your concern,” Caleb said, clearly flustered. “Whatever Jester told you is to be taken with a grain of salt. You know she’s fond of stirring the pot.”

“I also know you’ve been spending a lot of time in the heavens lately,” Beau pointed out, grinning.

“I should be going,” Caleb said brusquely, hopping off Beau’s shoulder to a nearby rock so he could take off properly. “News to spread and all that.”

“Say hi to Essek for me!” Beau shouted after him.

A few moments of silence passed before Yasha spoke up.

“Your friends are very helpful.”

“They do their best. Most of the time they just like to meddle because they’re all incurable gossips.”

“Still,” Yasha said with a fond smile. “I am grateful. You said you don’t believe in fate, but this seems too good to be true most of the time. I’m glad you caught me.”

Beau stared back at her, awkward and silent for a lack of knowing how to respond. Yasha sounded so genuine, seemed so open and kind that it was hard to reconcile this version of her with the ‘Lightning Bearer’ that had glared at Caleb so intensely. She distrusted Yasha—or at least she wanted to. But she had given Beau no real reason to do so. Yasha had only been kind and helpful, if a little confused. But she seemed to enjoy learning about Beau’s everyday chores and tasks and had made fast friends with a lot of the animals in Beau’s domain.

Yasha dipped her hand into the current at her hip and smiled as the water curled around her fingers.

Beau’s heart skipped a beat in her chest, feeling more alive than it had in years.

Shit.

--

It was the middle of the night when everything happened. Loud rustling and distant screeches heralded the chaos. Yasha was sleeping in Beau’s hollow (and Beau didn’t even want to unpack what that meant) and startled into wakefulness seconds after Beau. Yasha had been in Beau’s domain for near two weeks now, accustomed to their routine and the peaceful nights.

So it tracked that she seemed just as concerned as Beau by the disturbance.

They shared a quick look, concern melting into fierce determination before ducking from the hollow.

Beau knew the instant she laid eyes on the rowdy group of five just down the banks from her hollow. She scowled, shifting into a lower stance, and growling low in her chest.

“Adventurers. Perfect.”

“This is bad, then?” Yasha murmured, eyeing up the strangers warily, but also with no small degree of curiosity.

“They’re probably here to kill me,” Beau grumbled. Yasha shot her a startled look that Beau waved off. “Not the first time, definitely won’t be the last. They’re an annoyance more than anything.”

“There!”

One adventurer had spotted them, pointing and whirling the rest of their party up into a frenzy. Beau huffed as she took a step forward. 

“You don’t have to fight this battle if you don’t want to,” Beau said over her shoulder. “They’re petty creatures I can handle quickly.”

Without waiting for an answer, Beau shifted into her dragon form with a rapid coiling motion. Rumbling from deep within her chest, Beau snapped at the approaching party in warning before she engaged them in battle.

She hated that the mundane populations were such gossips because the legend of river Imugi was such a tempting conquest for every adventuring party. It meant that Beau couldn’t live in peace, and therefore the creatures and dryads she looked over couldn’t either. They were collateral damage and their home invaded, and it wasn’t fair.

Beau took her anger out on the adventurers, holding nothing back and showing no mercy. Her fangs ached with the force of her bites, her tongue tasted metallic with their blood, and her hide stung from their blows. But it was tolerable, if it meant they would leave.

She was facing down one of the last standing fools, ready to send them sprawling, when a sudden, searing pain flared to life in Beau’s chest. Roaring with the unexpected agony, Beau glanced down and found no wound to speak of that could have caused it. Fearing that it was some kind of magic taking hold, Beau lashed out at the adventurer in front of her and knocked them to the ground. With their collapse, she expected the pain to fade, or even vanish abruptly, but it lingered. It felt less intense, but still burned.

Turning around, searching to make sure there were no other adventurers standing, Beau found her answer.

On the banks of her river stood a mage, hand outstretched toward her hollow. Yasha slumped on the ground in front of Fjord’s tree, clutching her chest. Through the grey darkness of night and from a distance, Beau saw a faint, dark stain on Yasha’s fingers. 

Before Beau’s rage could encompass her, Yasha raised a hand at the mage. Her palm glowed with crackling energy in a tight sphere before she unleashed it on the mage. He fell to the ground and didn’t get up again.

The threat eliminated, Beau coiled into her human form and sprinted through the water toward Yasha. Fjord melted from the trunk of his tree at the same moment Beau dropped to her knees on the bank beside Yasha.

“What happened?” Beau snapped, reaching for Yasha’s hands.

“I think that mage was trying to hit my tree and make it fall on you. Yasha jumped in the blast's way.”

“Let me see your wound,” Beau demanded, voice sharp with anger that masked her worry. Yasha obeyed her, despite the harsh edge to Beau’s demand.

It was a shallow wound, but horrid looking all the same. Jester came fluttering down from the leafy boughs of Fjord’s tree to alight on his shoulder, twittering nervously.

“Fjord, Fjord, Fjord, are you okay? You weren’t hurt, right?”

“No, Jester. I wasn’t. Yasha protected me. You’re okay, yeah?”

Jester nodded her head as she fluttered her wings and turned her attention to Yasha. A bluebird’s face was not built to be overly expressive, but Jester was nothing if not a miracle compiled beneath a layer of feathers. She looked distressed and worried as she chirped high in her throat.

“That looks really bad, Yasha. It probably hurts a lot.”

Yasha shrugged, despite the fact she was bleeding from her chest.

“I suppose I have to patch you up again,” Beau said, standing and carefully bringing Yasha with her. “Everyone, go back to sleep if you can. We shouldn’t have any adventurers here for another couple months.”

“The dryads and I will handle the bodies,” Fjord said, giving Jester a nudge back into the branches of his tree. “You take care of Yasha.”

Beau waved him off with gratitude as she and Yasha limped into their little hollow.

--

“Thank you, by the way,” Beau said as she continued wrapping cloth around the poultice-covered wound on Yasha’s chest.

“For what?” Yasha asked. She was sitting as still as possible, but Beau could tell the wound stung by the way Yasha’s brow furrowed.

“For protecting Fjord. I was so focused on the fight I forgot to make sure they wouldn’t hurt anyone else.” 

“Why did they want to hurt you in the first place?”

Beau sighed, pausing her wrapping for a moment before she began the steady winding motion again.

“They’re adventurers, it’s what they do. They hear stories and legends from the elders in their towns and grow up believing the crowning achievement of an adventurer is to slay a dragon. But our stories have been diluted and muddled and forgotten. Most don’t even know anything about the animals like Veth and Jester, or the dryads like Cad and Fjord. They don’t know killing an Imugi like me means the river system becomes disrupted. They don’t know every creature I look after looses a guardian—and they don’t care to know either.”

“I never knew it was so complex down here,” Yasha murmured, more to herself than to Beau.

“Yeah, well, welcome to the world, Yasha.” Beau tucked the loose end of the bandages in place and leaned back to admire her work. “That should hold.”

“Thank you,” Yasha said, moving her arm around a bit to test the give of the bandages.

“Sure,” Beau shrugged, turning to put the poultice away. “Don’t mention it.”

“No,” Yasha said, voice soft yet firm. Beau twisted back around to look at her. “I mean it, Beau. I wouldn’t be alive without you.”

“You’re being dramatic,” Beau grumbled, but Yasha was already shaking her head.

“I told you. I don’t know what would have happened if I hit the ground that night I fell. You saved me, and I’ll never be able to thank you enough for that.”

Yasha reached out and placed a hand on Beau’s arm, but they both pulled sharply back when a zing of static went spiking through their limbs. Blinking at one another in bewildered befuddlement, Beau found her voice first.

“That keeps happening. Is it something you can do?”

“I’ve never done it before, as far as I can remember. But it started with you, and it’s not every time we touch.”

Beau hesitated, chewing at her lip, before, “I think I felt your pain earlier, when you got hit.”

Yasha’s eyes blew wide.

“I guess Caleb was right about fate, then,” Yasha murmured.

It took Beau a moment to realize what Yasha was saying.

“You think we’re soulmates? Those are rare—almost myths, these days.”

“True, but you just told me everyone down here thinks the same of you. Yet here you are.”

Beau didn’t have a good comeback for that.

“So…what now? We’re supposedly soulmates. But I have a river to guard and you a god to get back to. Eventually I hope to join the heavens, but I think I’ve lost enough hope to admit that won’t happen anytime soon. Are we fated to meet and then die apart?”

“Is there another way to ascend to full dragon besides gaining a yeouiju?” Yasha twisted her fingers together as she looked at Beau, eyes wide. It was such an honest expression that Beau had to glance away, cheeks hot.

“After a thousand years I can. But most of my kind rarely lives that long with adventurers and other factors taking us out. And I’m only 224 years old. That’s…a long time to wait. I don’t even know how old you are or what your life expectancy is.” 

Beau huffed, frustrated as the reality of their situation set in. Yasha was her soulmate, a woman she barely knew with emotions for her that Beau could barely describe as love. She had met the woman two weeks ago, for crying out loud. Yet they were still trying to get Yasha back where she needed to be, and Beau had a duty and a life down here, with no way to follow Yasha to the heavens. And Beau hadn’t truly believed in soulmates until two minutes ago.

“Beau?” Yasha murmured, drawing Beau’s attention back to her. “I understand it might be a lot to ask, but if you’re willing to try it, could we make this work?”

Yasha held out a hand, brow soft and eyes sweet.

Beau thought of Yasha protecting Fjord, weaving flowers with Caduceus, and letting Jester ride on her shoulder. She pictured Yasha speaking intently with Caleb, cooing over Veth and her family. Beau envisioned sitting in the river’s current with Yasha at her side, staring at the water with all the fondness she now directed at Beau. She reached for the empty neutrality born of loneliness she wore like a shield and found it missing.

Instead, she found fledging hope that Yasha might stay in those little joys of Beau’s life rather than fade from them.

Beau reached out and slipped her hand into Yasha’s, shuddering at the static thrill that buzzed in her veins.

“Let’s make it work.”

#cr #critical role #writing #my writing #beauyasha #beauyashaweek2021 #beauregard lionett #yasha

[serendipityunho]

Cuts & Curses (M) ~ Part One

!! DO NOT REPOST MY WRITINGS !!

❀ Genre: smut, college au ❀ Pairing: boxer!Jongho x Reader (fem.) ❀ Word Count: 4.3k ❀ Warnings: depictions of violence, small injuries, explicit language, fingering, handjob, shower sex, clit play, breast play, semi-public sex, mild dirty talk, thigh riding, mature sex, overstimulation, multiple orgasms, unprotected sex, pull out method

❀ Synopsis: Jongho may have been an out-of-nowhere-shoulder to cry on but he definitely proved he could be more than that when you found yourself taking your throne on his thighs.

→ PART TWO

a/n: i’ve always wanted to write a boxer!jongho smut and here it is. i will admit that i am very proud of this one and i actually love it so much and i hope you guys will too x

“You should see me in the ring tonight” You were met with a pair of brown eyes when you snapped your head up.

Jongho stood in front of you, looking down as he slips you a slim piece of paper, presumably an address of some sort. You let your pen fall onto your book as you eye the piece of paper on your table.

“Give me one reason why I should go” You cross your arms, leaning forward against your table as you stare back at the boy.

“Jungkook will be there” Jongho smirks, hands now planted on your table, leaning down to your level.

“I don’t see how that’s a valid reason for me to go” Your brows furrowed in response to Jongho.

“Don’t you want to see your ex get beaten to a pulp?” He wasn’t wrong with that. 

There was one thing you hated more than Jungkook himself, it was Jungkook walking around with his cocky smile, baiting girls in just to play with their heart like another one of his sports. Unfortunately, you were his first victim since he entered the school.

You were a fool to believe he had loved you, and an even bigger fool to fall in love with him. Since then, you’ve tried to avoid him, but he always found a way to have you find yourself standing in front of him once again, falling for his senseless sweet talk that would unsurprisingly lead you through an event of another heart-aching encounter. 

“How do I know it won’t be you getting beaten to a pulp?” You’ve seen the swoon-worthy biceps of both boys, needless to say, you’ve seen them in action before, not against each other though. Tonight would be the first time, also another convincing imagery to have you show up.

“Jungkook may be older but I’ve been in this shit longer than he has. I know things he doesn’t. Don’t question my abilities” Jongho’s lips carve into a small smirk as he tilts his head to the side.

“Alright, fine. I’ll be there” You shut close your book and packed away your belongings into your bag as Jongho leans back up, crossing his arms over his chest. 

“I’m looking forward to seeing you then” Jongho takes off with a wink, leaving you to read the slip of paper once again before making your own way out of the library.

It wasn’t every day you spoke you Choi Jongho, he was simply a boy with the same objectives who, conveniently, happens to be your lab partner too. The two of you didn’t get off on the right foot, his rival being your boyfriend of course. 

But that all changed when the entire school’s phones had a copy of Jungkook in bed with a girl who was not you. Since then, Jongho’s been nothing but a near friend once he’s realized how heart-broken you were. 

The two of you settled aside your differences and turned them into kindred traits, a vendetta against his arch-nemesis and your ex-boyfriend. Which got to where you are now, attending an illegal underground boxing match just to watch the face you fell for getting beaten in a way you dreamed of imagining.

It seemed like an endless passageway filled with nothing but darkness and cold air, leading you to a parade growing louder and louder with chants. The sound of your sharp breaths echoed off the concrete walls, soft platter of water as your feet hit the damp floor with each step bringing you closer to the violent event.

“... Jongho! Jongho! Jongho!...” 

It would be generic to say you had seen the light at the end of the tunnel, but that’s exactly what you saw. The lights hanging above the ring dimly lit barely the rest of the room, making its priority the contents inside the ring below it. 

Arms and fists pumped the air as ear-bursting yells bounce off the walls. It was filled with raging energy as you watch from the isolated corner occupied with very few bystanders. From here you could see the leveled ring, two large figures preying each other dead in the eye, swinging blows left and right. 

“... Jungkook! Jungkook! Jungkook!...”

There he was, wearing that cocky smile of his, the same cocky smile that got you and who knows how many other girls on their knees. It was the smile you wanted to see get knocked off, literally. 

“Place your bet or get out” Your thoughts were interrupted by a deep voice beside you. 

A large bald man towers over you as you turn around to face his cold-emotionless face. Behind him were smaller men immersed in the stacks of crimpled cash, slipping back and forth between their hands as they count them. 

“A hundred and fifty bucks on Choi” You wipe out the bundled cash from the pocket of your leather jacket, carefully taking out the amount from its elastic hold for placing it in the hands of the bald man.

It was a difficult attempt, pushing past all the sticky bodies to gain a better closer view at the front rather than squinting in the corner you were just in. Your eyes slightly stung at the sudden brightness at the front of the ring, but now you could see clearer. 

Pure concentration was evident on Jongho’s face as his brows furrow deeply, eyes piercing through his opponent. It was the sudden hard blow to his face that made you wince back, hissing even though you weren’t the one socked. 

Jongho stumbled back a bit before quickly throwing a right arm, knocking Jungkook’s head to the side before throwing more consecutive punches to his body, pushing him back against the ropes of the ring. It was then you realized how feral this semi-quiet boy was. It was quite shocking to see the other side of these two boys on a night like this in a ring painted with their blood punched out of their faces.

“... finish him!...” 

Jongho’s eyes remain piercing, that was until he conveniently spotted you below, watching him. It was that split eye contact that costed him, Jungkook took the advantage to throw a hard blow right to his face, making Jongho stumble back, falling onto his side as Jungkook pounces on him, throwing hard left and rights onto his cowering body before getting pulled off by the ref. 

“And the winner is Jeon ‘Buckshot’ Jungkook!” 

There was also another thing you hated more than his cocky smile, it was his cocky smirk. Jungkook happens to also conveniently spot you by the ringside, glaring at him with a clenched jaw, making him throw a snarky wink as his arm held high for victory. 

“Fucking prick” You mutter under your breath before turning your attention to Jongho, slipping under the rope being thrown displeasing words from the crowd for butchering it the last minute. 

Series of chants boomed through your ear as you brush past the bodies, easier than before as they pile into the dark tunnel you entered from. You were left with a few people in the now empty room, most of them you recognized from the isolated corner and the cash handlers by the table. 

“...Here’s the betted cash, take it and leave...” The men hands over a locked box, probably filled with cash, over to the other group of men. There you saw him, Jungkook dabbing his sweat with his towel.

“Oh, so you came just to see me win? Can’t get enough of me, can you?” Jungkook strides closer to you after locking eyes. 

“Fuck you”

“Already did, sweetheart” Jungkook shot a wink before dipping into the dark tunnel followed by the other group of men.

You didn’t know your anger had turned to pain until you felt your palm stinging, looking down you could see your nails carving crescent shapes into your palm from your tight fists. 

“Hey” Your head snapped back to the front, where Jongho was standing with a towel hung across the back of his neck.

“You owe me a hundred and fifty dollars, loser” You cross your arms over your chest, mentally scolding him in your head for losing your money.

“Well, I didn’t think you’d actually come” Jongho forces a quiet chuckle before scratching his head.

“I did, and you lost. What happened to ‘don’t question my abilities’?” You mocked him from before, gently waving your hands in the air for emphasis.

“Just because I lost this round doesn’t mean you should still question my abilities” Jongho turns around, walking away to another room.

You couldn’t help but follow him quickly behind, seeing the cuts on his face struck worry in you. Following Jongho, you found yourself entering a brighter lit room, a locker room. 

Jongho sat on the bench, unwrapping the bandages from his knuckles. You close the door behind you and step forward, leg on either side of the bench next to him.

“You need to treat that, you know?” You point to the small gash fixated at the top of his eye.

“I’ll be fine” Jongho continued to unwrap the bandages as you scanned his face. His tan really accentuated under the coat of sweat and blood, face now relaxed compared to before.

“It could get infected. Those are worse than the actual cut itself” Jongho stopped, dropping his hands on the bench before looking up at you.

“Can you get the first-aid? It’s in there” Jongho points to the mirrored cabinet above the sink.

“Not even a ‘please’?” You tease slightly, pushing yourself off the bench to the sink.

“Please” 

You chuckle, opening the cabinet to take out the kit before making your way back onto the bench. Jongho was now seated the same way you were before, legs either side of the bench and bandages were now thrown on the floor. 

“Thank you-”

“I’ll do it” You interrupt Jongho and sit down in front of him, opening it to a bunch of medical supplies.

You grimace at the gash above his eye after looking at it closely, pulling a disinfectant swab to wipe away the blood around it. Jongho hisses before pulling his face back, throwing you a hurtful look.

“I didn’t even touch you yet, Jongho, don’t be a baby”

“Just- Just hurry up” Jongho leans back down again, letting you attempt to treat his wound. 

It was quite difficult attempting to tend to his gash, leaning forward as you try to keep your balance but also being gentle. Jongho must’ve noticed your frustration before swatting your hand away.

“Stand up-” 

You were barely standing before Jongho grabs you by the hips, sliding himself forward on the bench and pulling you down on his thigh. You let out a surprised gasp at the sudden action. 

“Um- thanks” You focus on the cut once again, successfully treating it before hesitantly bringing your other hand up, grabbing Jongho’s face gently to turn it around.

You didn’t realize how close your faces were to each other until he turned around and looked you in the eye, making your breath hitch at the back of your throat. With how close your bodies were, practically leaning on him, Jongho could probably hear the thumping of your heart in your chest, threatening to explode. 

You could feel Jongho’s intense stare on your face as you focus on the cut on his lip. Your hands shake as you bring them up to cup his face and the other cleaning his cut lip. 

“Are you nervous?” Your gaze snaps back up to Jongho, who was staring at you with soft eyes, hooded but soft. 

“What’s there to be nervous about?” You were suddenly quiet, almost whispering. Even your breathing was louder than your voice.

“I don’t know. You just seem nervous”

“Well, I’m not”

“It’s him, isn’t it? You’re still not over him-” 

“I don’t want to talk about him-”

“It’s odd to find yourself sitting on my thigh, right? So close to my face, it reminds you of him doesn’t it?-” 

By now, you have absolutely no ideal responses to bark back. Jongho didn’t remind you of Jungkook, he reminded you of the sinful things Jungkook did with you sitting on his thighs. 

“- I can show you I’m different... better” 

Jongho’s voice was equally quiet as yours, the gap between your faces unnoticeably grew smaller with each passing second. His arm wraps around your back, pushing you forward.

Your lips plant against his, eyes shut close as you drop the things in your hand to the floor, lips moving in sync with Jongho’s as you wrap your arms around his neck, pushing off the towel that was there.

All thoughts left your head, the vendetta, everything. All you could think about now was the words that left Jongho’s mouth a minute ago replaying in your head, how he could be better than Jungkook, and you were starting to believe it despite the reasoning. 

Your chest pressed against his as you feel him nip against your bottom lip, slipping his tongue in as the two of you wrestle for dominance. You could feel his hands move to your waist, squeezing you gently before pushing your hips back and forth, creating a friction between your crotch and his thigh. 

A small moan slips from your lips in the kiss, you were too immersed with his lips to care or feel embarrassed. One of your hands slides down his naked chest, tracing the outline of his pecks with your fingers before tracing down his abdomen to his lower region.

You can feel your wetness spreading with each time Jongho helped you roll your hips against his thigh, making you grow needier and needier by the second. By now, you were confident enough to move them on your own, taking Jongho’s hands and guiding them down to your ass.

Jongho firmly grasps your ass, squeezing it as he spreads your cheeks apart, still pushing you back and forth against this thigh. Your wetness probably soaked through your shorts by now, staining Jongho’s. 

You take your hand, squeezing Jongho’s other thigh before moving back over to his crotch, feeling his boner before sliding your hand under the waistband of his shorts, palming him over his boxers. 

Your clit was throbbing under the material of your shorts and panties, making you aggressively kiss Jongho as you roll your hips faster. Jongho breaks from the kiss, pecking your lips before instantly attacking your neck, sending your head falling back to let him cover more of your neck.

A breathy moan falls from your lips as Jongho sucks on your sweet spot, making you squeeze his clothed dick. His hands slip under your shirt, quickly throwing it above your head, letting your jacket fall to the floor before attaching his lips onto your chest, kissing the top of your breasts as he fondles with the clip of your bra. 

“Please tell me you know how to take it off”

“Remember what I said, don’t question my abilities” And with that, you could feel your bra unclasp, strap dropping down to your arm as your breasts become free and naked in front of him. 

Jongho kisses the valley of your breasts before taking one in his mouth and playing with the other in his hands, nipple slipping between his fingers as he fondles. 

Your lips were now parted, mouth dry as the friction between your clothed pussy and Jongho’s thigh increases. Jongho took the opportunity to lift you up slightly, fingers hooking under the waistband of your shorts and panties before pulling them down, exposing your gushing pussy to the cold air.

Jongho stands and wraps an arm around you before pushing you against the locker, slamming his lips back against yours as he lets your bottoms drop to the floor, leaving you naked against the locker. You could feel his hard dick rubbing against your leg, letting you take the opportunity to take down his shorts and boxers.

The two of you stood naked in the locker room, swallowing each other’s lips as you grab his dick and start pumping him with the small coat of precum you smeared all over his length. 

“Mnngh- faster” Jongho groans against the kiss, bucking his hips up to meet with your quickening pumps. 

Jongho squeezes your ass before trailing a hand to the front, cupping your wet pussy before rubbing your clit with his fingers, making you moan into the kiss. You could feel your pool of wetness coat your inner thigh as you rub them together under Jongho’s touch.

“Fuck so wet” Jongho circles his fingers over your clit a few more times before pushing your legs apart, slipping his fingers between your legs and coating them with your juices. 

You let out a breathy moan as inserts his fingers into you, pumping them in sync with your hand movements on his dick. You give him light pecks on the corner of his lips before kissing down his neck, sucking on the spot behind his ear before resting your head back on the cold locker your back was pressed against. 

“More, please-” You begged with furrowed brows, eyeing Jongho’s replicate expression.

Jongho slips his fingers out of you and cups the back of your thighs, hoisting you up to wrap your legs around his waist, letting the tip of his throbbing cock poke at your pussy. Jongho wraps his arms around your back, pulling you down to kiss him as he walks away from the lockers.

You were too immersed by your own lust to feel him push you against another cold surface, slightly wet. Then you realized it was a shower the moment you heard the squeak of a knob, cold water turning warm as it hits your naked bodies, making the warmth between the two of you grow.

Jongho grasps your ass, slowly sinking you down on his dick, making you break from the kiss again, letting out a breath of air as his girthy length stretches out your hole. Your face scrunches in pleasure as he bucks his hips up, bouncing you up against the shower wall and thrusting himself into you.

“Ohh fuck- ohmygod” Jongho bounces you faster, hands firmly planted on your ass to lift you as he knocks the air out of your lungs every time you come down on his dick.

You push back the wet hair stuck on his face, exposing his forehead as you tangle your fingers through his hair. Your breasts bounce with your body as your legs threaten to become undone around his waist. 

“Mmnnghhh- fuck you’re so tight” Jongho groans against your neck, kissing it before moving back to your lips, water slipping into your mouths as Jongho wrestles with your tongue. 

“Fuck- Jonghonnnghhaa” The squelching sounds grew louder as the sound of his thrusts echoes through the lockerroom. 

You grip on to Jongho’s shoulders, feeling every flexed muscle as he holds you up, squeezing his biceps as you release uncontrollable moans into his ear. They grew louder and louder as Jongho deepens his thrusts, sending you bouncing higher than before and sinking down deeper onto his dick. 

Jongho grips your waist, lifting you off his dick and onto your feet before spinning you around, pressing your body against the cold wall, moving your face out of the shower of water. Your hips push back, rubbing your ass against his dick, feeling the tip already in your hole. 

“See how much better I can be than him?” Jongho growls against your ear, pushing his dick into you with a hard thrust, squeezing your breasts on to the wall. 

“So much better- fuck sososo much better” Your head turns to the side, meeting with his before barely kissing him as he starts thrusting fast again.

“How many times has he made you cum in one night hm?” Jongho was breathing heavily against your ear, gripping your waist tightly as he slaps his hips into you.

“Mhmph fuck I don’t know- ah fuck Jongho!” You bite down on your lip, head falling back onto Jongho’s shoulder as he pounds into you from behind, the skin of his torso slapping against your ass each time. 

“Tell me- oh fuck” 

“Ohmygod nnghha- two! Two!” 

“Pathetic. I’ll make it three” Jongho pushes your legs apart with his hand, fingers finding their way back on to your clit.

“Jongho fuckkk-” Jongho circles his fingers over your clit, rubbing your bud of nerves as he quickens his thrusts into you, making you gasp for more air each time.

At this pace, you were so close to cumming around his dick. Your eyes shut close, letting sprinkles of water hit your scrunched up face as Jongho breathes against your ear, letting you hear his deep low grunts coming with each thrust. 

“Are you close? Hm? Cum for me” Jongho grunts through gritted teeth, hardening this thrusts as he rubs your clit faster.

The overwhelming pleasure causes you to release high-pitched moans, mouth gaping wide. You could feel it coming, the built-up euphoria edging to be released through your entire body with each thrust. 

“Oh fuckfuckfucknnnghh ohmygod Jongho!” Your walls clench around Jongho’s dick, breathing becoming heavier as your hips start to twitch and the knot in the pit of your stomach snaps, making you convulse underneath Jongho’s body, hips pushed back and hands flung up around Jongho’s head, gripping his wet hair as pure bliss washes over your body. 

Jongho grunts loudly, fucking out your high with deep thrusts as his fingers still rub at your clit, bringing you close to another orgasm from the stimulation. His thrusts slow down as he focuses on your clit, rubbing it fast with his fingers flat against it. 

Your forehead rests against the wall as you breathe heavily with water dripping down your chin, watching the way Jongho’s fingers rub against your clit. You could feel another orgasm coming, making you grip Jongho’s free hand, pulling it up to your breasts as you squeeze his forearms, feeling his flexed muscles. 

“Oh my god- pleasepleaseplease” Your knees bent, body threatening to collapse on the second orgasm only to be pushed back up again by Jongho’s fingers on your clit.

Your eyes roll back, clenching your jaw as you feel another wave of pleasure wash over your entire body. Broken high-pitched moans escape your lips, thighs trembling and closing together as Jongho rubs another orgasm out of you. 

“I promised you a third, didn’t I?” 

Jongho slips out of your hole again, spinning you back to the position you were in the first time, holding you against the wall as his arms wrap around your back with you clung on to him, sinking down on his dick, twitching slightly as you were still sensitive from the first orgasm. 

You were too fucked out to say anything, needing to have Jongho back inside you again. You were on the verge of crying from the overwhelming pleasure, making your moans turn from soft to pleading cries. 

“Ahhh Jongho shitshitshit oh my fucking god- right there nnghh fuckfuck” You bounced on his dick, back sliding up and down against the shower wall.

Your legs started trembling, on the verge to become undone around Jongho’s waist as another orgasm approaches. You cup his face in your hands, bringing it up to kiss you harshly as your face scrunches harder, brows furrowed deeper. 

Jongho helps you reach your third orgasm, thrusting his hips up, deepening himself into you. Sweet moans filled the kiss as you become undone on his dick, arms slung around his neck and body off the wall, pressed hard against Jongho’s chest. 

“Ohmygod, Jongho- fuck!” 

“Jesus Christ- I’m so close” Jongho grunts before pulling himself out, letting you drop to your feet, struggling to stand after your final orgasm. 

Jongho wraps his hand around his dick to pump himself, head falling back as his spurt of cum shoots out, covering your thigh only to be washed away by the water. 

“Ohhhh fuckkkk-” Jongho takes your chin with his free hand, pulling you in for a kiss as he milks the rest of himself out. 

He slowly pumps himself before taking an arm around your waist, holding you close to him as he passionately kisses you before breaking off. Jongho gapes at you with soft eyes, hand still cupping your face. 

The two of you stay like that for a while under the water, gazing into each other’s eyes not knowing what to do or say. That was until you decided to break the ice.

“You’re going to catch a cold” Jongho’s lips carve up into a small smile, letting his hand drop from your face and turning the shower knob, water coming to a complete stop. 

“You’re lucky I have thick towels” You chuckle, throwing a soft punch to his chest before pushing past, stepping out into the locker area with Jongho following you closely behind. 

Jongho wraps a takes out a towel from a locker before throwing it over your shivering body, patting you dry before grabbing another, throwing it over your head and patting it before deciding to cup your face with it, squeezing your cheeks slightly.

“Be mine” Jongho looks at you with sincere eyes, scanning every inch of your face, waiting for a response.

“This isn’t some sort of way to get back at Jungkook, is it?” 

“No, it isn’t” 

“Why?” 

“Because you came tonight. Nobody ever watched me before”

“That doesn’t mean fall in love with me”

“I don’t love you. Yet” 

part two

Copyright © 2020 by serendipityunho All Rights Reserved

#ateez smut #ateez imagines #ateez fanfics #ateez scenarios #kpop #kpop smut #kpop imagines #kpop fanfics #kpop scenarios #choi jongho #jongho smut #jeon jungkook #bts smut #bts #fanfiction #jungkook smut

[bookishbarnowl]

“I’m a person!”

The intimidation technique didn’t seem to phase the cocky teen. He smirked. “Techno, you gotta show me what’s wrong,” he goaded.

Break his leg, the AI suggested, but he blocked that out. He refused to play charades with the pint-sized terror.

In a post-apocalyptic world where the remaining survivors live in secure underground bases, Techno is a metal heart among dozens of warm, beating ones. That doesn't stop him from embracing his humanity, but it also means he has a few weaknesses others don't.

Warnings: Mild dehumanization (resolved)

Relationships: Technoblade & Tommy, Techno & Tommy & Wilbur

Word Count: 1,849

Ao3 Link: Here

Here’s a Wingdings translator if anyone wants to follow what Techno’s saying, but don’t feel like you need to, it’s not really plot relevant. Almost all of it is him threatening Tommy. :)

https://lingojam.com/WingdingsTranslator

Technoblade stormed down the hallway, mechanical limbs pounding against the floor of the bunker with resounding clangs as he stopped bothering to lighten his footsteps. Stealth was not a priority right now. He cranked up the volume on his voicebox, uncaring that no one could currently understand him. He was sick and tired of his Tommy’s ridiculous pranks, and changing his language settings while he was recharging was the last straw.

“❄︎□︎❍︎❍︎⍓︎!” he roared in his default android language, slamming doors open and shut as he searched. Other personnel quickly caught on to his current temper and promptly got out of his way, retreating to the parts of the base he’d already searched.

Yeah, faster, the broken AI jeered in the back of his head, spurring him on. He growled and tried to ignore it, but picked up the pace anyway. He was done.

He finally found Tommy and Wilbur in the latter’s bedroom, playing a video game together and bickering happily. He flung open the door with a bang and grabbed the remote, turning the TV off as they both yelled indignantly.

“✡︎□︎◆︎🕯︎♎︎ ♌︎♏︎⧫︎⧫︎♏︎❒︎ ♐︎♓︎⌧︎ ⧫︎♒︎♓︎⬧︎ ❒︎♓︎♑︎♒︎⧫︎ ■︎□︎⬥︎,” he snapped at Tommy, positively radiating anger.

The intimidation technique didn’t seem to phase the cocky teen. He smirked. “Aww, Techno, I can’t understand you. What exactly is the matter?”

“👍︎◆︎⧫︎ ⧫︎♒︎♏︎ ♍︎❒︎♋︎◻︎📪︎ ♓︎⧫︎🕯︎⬧︎ ■︎□︎⧫︎ ♐︎◆︎■︎■︎⍓︎📬︎ ✋︎🕯︎❍︎ ♎︎□︎■︎♏︎.” he replied, his face darkening. He wasn’t going to negotiate.

“Techno, you gotta show me what’s wrong,” Tommy goaded.

Break his leg, the AI suggested, but he blocked it out.

“✋︎ ❒︎♏︎♐︎◆︎⬧︎♏︎📬︎ 🕈︎♏︎ ♌︎□︎⧫︎♒︎ 🙵■︎□︎⬥︎ ⬥︎♒︎♋︎⧫︎🕯︎⬧︎ ⬥︎❒︎□︎■︎♑︎ ♋︎■︎♎︎ ⍓︎□︎◆︎ ♋︎❒︎♏︎ ♑︎□︎♓︎■︎♑︎ ⧫︎□︎ ⬧︎⬥︎♓︎⧫︎♍︎♒︎ ♓︎⧫︎ ♌︎♋︎♍︎🙵 □︎❒︎ ⬧︎□︎ ♒︎♏︎●︎◻︎ ❍︎♏︎-” he broke off, gritting his teeth and distractedly registering the AI trying to convince him to commit a war crime. He crossed his arms, resentment and fury pooling in his stomach. He was not playing charades with the pint-sized terror.

Wilbur was looking back and forth between the two of them, observant enough to piece together the situation. He was also partially fluent in the android tongue, enough to probably pick up one or two keywords in Techno’s rapid-fire speech.

“⬧︎ ◻︎ ♏︎ ♏︎ ♍︎ ♒︎ ⬧︎ ⧫︎ ◆︎ ♍︎ 🙵,” Techno enunciated clearly in his direction, slow enough that he could pick it up, then switched back into his regular talking speed. “❄︎□︎❍︎❍︎⍓︎ ✋︎ ♋︎❍︎ ♎︎♏︎♋︎♎︎ ⬧︎♏︎❒︎♓︎□︎◆︎⬧︎📬︎ ❄︎♒︎♓︎⬧︎ ♓︎⬧︎ ■︎□︎⧫︎ ♐︎◆︎■︎■︎⍓︎.”

“Voice… trapped? Stuck?” Wilbur translated. “And something about death? I heard the word Tommy…” He rounded on his brother. “What did you do to him?”

Tommy was trying hard not to laugh, which only made Techno feel worse. “It was just a prank,” he defended. “Isn’t it hilarious? Go on, try and say something else,” he prodded.

Techno didn’t move, mouth stubbornly shut. Some of his anger was eating away into humiliation, which he was sure was the worst emotion in existence. He quashed the feeling and tried to get back to being infuriated.

Oooh, someone’s embarrassed, the AI mocked. Scared, even? Ah, and there’s the helplessness.

Sometimes the voice cut deeper than it had any right to. Techno growled again, the sound rumbling menacingly through his entire body as he determinedly refused to dwell on those statements. He fixed Tommy with a glare that would have most people in the base quivering in fear, but he had the audacity to grin back at him.

“Techno, you’ve gotta ask me for help if you want it fixed,” he taunted, standing up with a hand on his hip as Wilbur looked torn. “The great Blade’s gotta admit he needs help.”

That was the tipping point for Techno.

“G̵͙͊ẽ̷̮t̵̜̽ ̶̬̆r̵͉͐i̸ḑ̴͂ ̶̧̂ō̷̜f̷ ̵̼͘t̷̑h̶̽is ̵͎̾n̸̠͑o̷̦͘w̸̠̃,” he snarled, brute forcing his way through the sloppily installed language blockers in sheer rage. His eyes flashed red and the claws stored in his finger joints slid out against his will, the voice in his head cackling as oily tears started leaking from his eye sockets.

Wilbur’s eyes widened and he jumped up, grabbing a screwdriver off of the desk and cautiously approaching the crying android. Tommy looked taken aback, his expression dissolving into something more sheepish.

“⚐︎ ■︎ ❍︎ ⍓︎ ♌︎ ♋︎ ♍︎ 🙵,” Techno instructed Wilbur carefully, directing him to the detachable panel on his lower back. He closed his eyes and tried to get a grip on his emotions, retracting his claws and silencing his snickering commentator.

“I didn’t mean anything by it,” Tommy sputtered, backpedaling.

“Then get over here and fix it,” Wilbur told him severely. The teen hung his head and came over to help Wilbur get the panel off, revealing the computer screen embedded into the metal there that Tommy had used to hack into Techno.

Techno shivered as he felt the two of them start going through the code looking for Tommy’s software, exceptionally conscious that they literally had his entire being at their fingertips. A few malicious clicks, and he could be altered in any number of ways.

Phil had tried to help him update the security on his data so things like that wouldn’t be possible, but his system seemed to vehemently reject any permanent alterations to his code and always did a system reboot afterwards to purge the new protections. He suspected the busted AI he shared a headspace with was behind it. Unfortunately, it didn’t seem to care about short-term add-ons like the one Tommy had undoubtedly used.

He trusted both of them. He did, and no amount of pranks would change that. If he didn’t they wouldn’t be behind him right now, painstakingly removing the last traces of the language blocker. But sometimes they went too far. He felt used and taken advantage of. And that was not okay with him.

As soon as they got his back panel reattached, he left, ignoring their worried questions about if he was okay or not. He needed some time alone, and there was only one place no one would want to follow him.

He made his way to the airlock and grabbed a pack, slinging it over his shoulders and grabbing a blaster off the rack on the wall. Pulling a shield down over his face, he punched his code into the computer by the exit and signed himself out, then allowed the airlock to seal behind him.

The huge door slid open with a hiss in front of him, letting him out into the wasteland. The face shield protected him from the dust particles the inexhaustible wind dragged across every surface, and his metal body meant he didn’t have to deal with an oxygen tank or protective suit like the rest of the residents in the base. He scanned the area around the base with a keen eye, clipped his blaster to his hip, and set off into the desert.

He didn’t go far, barely beyond the next hill, but it was enough to make him feel like he was the only one in the world, which was what he wanted.

Lonely, lonely, lonely, the AI chanted in his head, and he pushed it away. Solitude helped him think.

But his peace didn’t last very long. The sound of clumsy footsteps stumbling through the dirt reached his ears, and he bowed his head and internally groaned. Someone had come after him, and it sure didn’t sound like Phil. A few more seconds of waiting would tell him which of the two less tolerable options he’d gotten. He considered running farther away, certain he could outdistance whichever it was, but if it was Tommy he’d just doggedly follow. And Wilbur would feel hurt. So he stayed put.

Leave him behind, the voice commanded. Shut up, he told it.

Sure enough, a moment later Tommy all but tripped over the crest of the hill and joined him at the bottom with a little help from gravity, breathing hard through the oxygen mask and making a vain attempt to brush the sheen of sweat off a brow covered by his helmet.

“These suits are so awkward to walk in,” he started, voice coming through the speakers in the aforementioned suit with a slightly tinny distortion. It was obviously an attempt to break the ice, though a pretty terrible one since Techno had no need for the bulky garments. He took the bait anyway, might as well get this over with.

“You were still pigheaded enough to come after me in one,” he replied.

“Well, uh, Wilbur put me up to it, y’know, and Big Man TommyInnit’s never one to back down from a challenge, eh?”

“Did you at least sign out a firearm before you left?”

“Nah. Who’s gonna mess with these guns?” he cracked, flexing non-existent arm muscles. Not that you could tell through the suit. The thick fabric made even someone like Phil, one of their best scouts, look like they’d rolled in marshmallows. The corner of Techno’s lip twitched in spite of himself.

Heh, Lonely Man thinks the Stupid Child is funny- He shoved it back again. Get some more creative insults, he thought.

“If you get jumped by a monster I will laugh at your corpse,” he warned.

“You wouldn’t, you love me too much,” Tommy sniggered, punching his shoulder.

“You’re right, I do,” he responded, unexpectedly serious.

The change in mood was not lost on Tommy, and his laugh quieted. “I love you too, man,” he returned. “I’m, um, really sorry about earlier. That was too far.”

“It was,” Techno agreed noncommittally.

“I shouldn’t mess with your code.”

“You shouldn’t.”

“I’m not going to stop playing pranks on you.”

He sighed. “I knew my expectations were too high.”

“But I won’t hack you again.”

“Thank you,” he said, accepting the apology. “Messin' with living code is a serious invasion of privacy.”

“Yeah,” Tommy whispered, guilt heavy on his tone. “But I wouldn’t hurt you, you know that right?”

“Of course I do,” he reassured him. He was rarely the one to initiate physical contact, but this time he made an exception, leaning over for a one-armed hug. Tommy leaned into him, but his personality wouldn’t let the silence continue for long.

“So whaddya say we go back and make Wilbur wish he’d never sent me out to reunite the dream duo?” he blurted, grin wide and looking like it had never left.

Techno didn’t bother hiding the upward quirk of his lip this time. “Let’s go beat up a nerd.”

#mcyt #dsmp #fanfic #technoblade #tommyinnit #wilbur soot #hurt/comfort #family dynamics #mobpocalypse au #first of two fics in this au #also on ao3

[hypnoticwinter]

Down the Rabbit Hole part 29

The FBI agent reclines the front seat in the big black Tahoe and gives me a look like I’m a little girl being stubborn. My nose is still a little stuffy from all the crying I’ve been doing, and my leg feels swollen and crooked and wrong, but the time for all that is past now. I take a deep breath and let it out and refuse to meet his gaze, glare out the tinted window at the fading afternoon.

Outside there are two more FBI men in big baggy blue windbreakers, chatting casually. One of them is smoking a cigarette, and as I watch him bring it to his mouth I feel a little gnarled pang of want, for it really has been so long since I last had one, and after everything I’ve gone through –

“How’s your leg?” the agent in the SUV with me asks, and I look round at him but don’t answer. He’s a big, broad man, probably somewhere in his forties or maybe his late thirties. His tone is calm and mild but his voice is deep enough that it feels like it ought to be accompanied by a rumbling vibrato I can pick up in my bones.

My leg is okay. Makado knew exactly where and how to kick me, it seems; after the FBI agents picked me up and carried me out of the gondola Makado got them to take me straight to the infirmary where a small, stone-faced woman looked it over and tutted at how they were treating me, saying that it probably won’t heal right, but they got her to just shoot me full of painkillers and throw a boot on it. After that I was able to walk, at least a little bit; I found to my immense surprise that with the boot I was actually able to put some weight on my right leg without it folding under me or my calf snapping in half. I examined it as best as I was able on the walk over to the parking lot and discovered that instead of the mangled wreck I was half-expecting there was just a rough scrape from the cleats on the bottom of Makado’s boot and only the slightest misalignment of the broad flat bone there. I could feel, I discovered, the part where my bone melded into the synthetic replacement the autodoctor had put in, a little ridged scoriation dividing the two.

“I have some ibuprofen,” he says, reaching into the pocket of his windbreaker, “if you need it.”

“I’m fine.”

My voice is dry from lack of use. I lick my lips, make a little cough in the back of my throat. He shrugs, puts the bottle away. “Suit yourself,” he says.

Another five minutes or so go by. I pointedly ignore him. Eventually he clears his throat. “It’s going to be a lot easier on you,” he tells me, “if you talk.”

“There’s nothing to talk about.”

“Oh, I disagree,” he says. “We’ve got a lot to talk about. Ever since Miss Veret gave us a call and told us what you were up to, we’ve had a lot of questions for you. I think you’ll find that you’d prefer me to be the one asking them.”

“Is that a threat?” I ask him, and he laughs.

“It is whatever you make of it, Miss Dzilenski.” He stumbles over the frontloaded jumble of consonants, overemphasizes the ‘e’ sound in the middle. Duh-zil-een-ski. Almost makes me wince.

“Alright,” I say. “What did Makado say I had been up to, then?”

It would probably be smarter not to talk at all, but sitting here in the blasting a/c in the back of the Tahoe is making me sleepy. It feels like I haven’t had a chance to actually sit and rest for what feels like ages, even though just earlier today I was just waking up from a day-and-a-half nap after surgery. I’d gone through the pumped-full-of-energy phase and then the ballast had worn off and I’d gone through the splitting-migraine phase on the way up and now at this point I just feel hollow and brittle and empty. Even though it’s cowardly I try not to think of Elena and how I’ve abandoned her, I try not to think of Makado and what she’s done, but it’s futile. Rage and despair course over me in alternating waves and I haven’t a clue as to how to adequately deal with either.

The FBI man offers me a tissue and I realize with a start that I’ve nearly begun crying again. I wipe at my eyes as best I can with my cuffed hands and leave him there, hand outstretched, until he sighs and takes his hand back, tosses the wadded tissue on the floor. “How’d you end up here?” he asks me. I stare back at him. He reaches over, takes a slim manila folder from the center console, leafs through it. “Not a lot on you in here,” he says. “Except for that whole thing with your father.”

I stiffen.

“Must have been hard,” he says, neutrally.

I know I’m being baited and I ought to stay quiet but I can’t stop myself. “You don’t know the first thing about it,” I tell him, “so you should just shut up –“

“On the contrary,” he says smoothly, turning a stapled, glossy page and squinting at the next. The first page hangs over the edge of the folder and I can see through it to the other side, see the painfully familiar mugshot that’s been etched into my brain, little fourteen-year-old me, her eyes red from crying, trying hard to keep a stiff upper lip, staring defiantly into the camera, still wearing the lumberjack shirt she’d begged her dad buy for her as soon as they made it to Illinois and the nights started to get cold. “I know a lot about it,” the FBI man continues. “I’ve got the entire report right here.”

“If you read the report,” I say, trying to keep my voice level, “you know that by now it’s ancient history. It happened twelve years ago.”

“Yes,” he says, “and now twelve years later you’re in another mess. I suppose you’re going to blame somebody else this time as well?”

The words strike me with about the subtlety of a sledgehammer but I still stiffen in the backseat, my fists clenching so hard that my nails dig into my palms. “Fuck you,” I blurt. He continues on as though he didn’t hear me.

“I don’t know what exactly they’re planning on charging you with, but I know it’s at least a few dozen counts of manslaughter, and possibly a couple of murder charges. Then there’s all the human trafficking you and your partner Peter Caum were doing. Did you really think you’d be able to get away with that?”

My mouth dropped open about halfway through. “So that’s how it is,” I say. I feel like I’ve been struck by lightning; my heart is going about a million miles an hour and all the hair is standing up on my arms. I feel claustrophobic suddenly, here in the back of the SUV, my hands cuffed together, my leg throbbing in time with my heartbeat.

The FBI man’s eyes flash beneath his glasses. “That’s how what is?”

“Makado is trying to blame all this on me,” I tell him, knowing that it’s futile, that maybe it’s even actively detrimental to say anything, but I – I can’t just say nothing, I can’t just –

“Are you saying that she’s the one responsible for this?”

I swallow and nod.

“That Makado Veret,” he says, tossing the folder to the side and fixing me with his full attention, “the Chief of Security for the Permian Basin Recovery and Superorganism Containment Corporation, that Makado, has really been trying to smuggle people inside the Pit, with the help of a disgruntled ex-Park Ranger and mental patient, for…no real apparent purpose other than to fleece desperate people of their money?”

“Yes,” I say softly. It’s pointless. He isn’t going to believe me.

“And you are,” he continues, “the same Roan Dzilenski who has a documented history of lying to law enforcement authorities?”

“I was fourteen!”

“So you aren’t denying it? That you have lied to the police before?”

“I –“

“I mean,” he says, speading his hands, “it was a juvenile offense. And it was overturned. You got off scot free.”

“I did not get off scot free,” I tell him. “I’m tired of this. You’ve got the fucking report, you can read it. Either arrest me or don’t.”

“Fine,” he says. “If that’s what you’d like me to do.”

I lick my lips. “Look,” I say, trying to think of how to phrase it, how possibly I can tell him and get him to believe me. He gives me an expectant look. “Look,” I say, a little more softly, “this is all fine, but right now there’s someone down there inside the Pit who’s hurt. Someone who might die if I can’t get to her. And if you arrest me –“

The FBI man laughs, cutting me off, and rolls the window down to signal to the other two men in windbreakers. The tall, thin one with the cigarette tosses it on the black asphalt and grinds it out with his foot, and then he gets in next to me. I can still smell it on him. And then the other gets in the front seat and, after a quiet, murmured conversation with the man who’d just been grilling me, pulls us out of the parking lot and onto the curving road that reaches around the back of the ranger barracks and over to the main road back to Gumption. I feel as though I’m going to be sick.

The sky is terribly blue and for a long while I have a hard time recognizing it, I stare at the clouds passing by outside the window and wonder at them. The world feels strange when it isn’t pitch-dark and smelling of meat.

And, god, Elena –

I’m done crying. I can’t do anything for her now. I – I wasn’t good enough. I didn’t see it coming, I didn’t see that Makado was just using me.

I suppose I will process all of this later, in a jail cell somewhere. Right now I don’t have the ability to handle any more. I lean my forehead against the cool glass next to me and shut my eyes. I’d rather think about something else.

 * * *

 “Now remember,” my father is telling me, “it’s going to be hard to pull that trigger, but if you just squeeze it steadily it’ll be okay.”

“But daddy,” I start, but he just ruffles my hair like he always does and adjusts the revolver so that the two little legs stuck to the barrel sink a little deeper into the berm we’re both laying on.

“Now go ahead,” he tells me, his voice gentle, “and line up those two little bits there with this one in the front.”

I close my left eye and peer down the ridged metal spine of the thing. Just holding it makes me nervous, it’s like holding a power tool, like holding the big reciprocating saw he keeps down in the garage for his woodworking. It’s heavy and weighty and purposeful. “Okay,” I murmur.

“You’ve got them lined up? The one in the front should be in the middle of the rear two, and it shouldn’t be higher than the rear two.”

“Yes.”

“Alright, now, line the whole thing up with that beer bottle over there.”

“Which one?”

“The Blue Moon bottle over there on the left.”

I shift the gun over a little and then line it up again. “Okay,” I mutter. The little green bead in the front rests just above the label, but now it’s up too high, it’s poking above the line made by the back two bits.

“Remember to focus on the sights, not on the target. If you focus on the target you won’t be able to tell whether the sights aren’t aligned. Keep your eyes right here,” my dad tells me, pointing to the front of the pistol. I nod.

“Got it.”

“Okay. I’m going to move the cylinder now so that the hammer is over the chamber with the live bullet in it. When you pull that trigger the gun will fire. Got it?”

I swallow hard. I can see the back of the cartridge in the little cutout for it on the left side of the gun. My dad told me it was so you can see whether it had already been fired but I don’t know how that works. As I watch he reaches down and moves it so that it’s in line with the barrel. “Daddy,” I say, “I don’t know if –“

“Hey, it’s going to be fine. Now, it’s going to have a hard kick, but I’m going to be right here holding it with you, okay?”

“Okay,” I say again. Down there, maybe about fifty feet away or so, the sunlight is glinting off the darkened glass of the Blue Moon bottle. My father places his hands loosely over mine; his skin is calloused and rough. He is a carpenter but only during the day, at night he writes, holed up in the den with the door cracked open so if I want to I can sneak up and peek in, see him tapping away at the enormous computer with the cathode-ray screen, the big stuffed buck’s head on the wall just behind him, angled just like his, echoing his. I want to write like he does when I get older.

His hands are just over mine. They’re very warm, and so big compared to mine. I still have a band-aid on the ring finger of my left hand from where I tripped and cut it open on the ground outside the motel yesterday. Dad was proud of me for not crying about it but I wouldn’t have cried about something like that for a long time. Even this young I’m serious, more serious than either of my parents. Right now my father is being very serious and it isn’t something I’m used to. It makes me feel nervous, like I’ll do something wrong.

“Whenever you’re ready, keep the sights lined up and pull the trigger back slowly. It’s got a bit of a weight to it so you’ll have to squeeze hard, but it’ll shoot.”

And so I pull the trigger back slowly. My hand is shaking a little but that’s just from how hard I’m holding the gun. As the trigger moves the little metal lever on the back of the gun moves too, and I glance over at my dad. “Is that supposed to –“ I start, but he’s already nodding at me.

“That’s the hammer, that’s what actually hits the cartridge to make it fire. It has to drop down onto it to do that, so when you pull the trigger what you’re doing is bringing the hammer back and then dropping it. Go ahead and shoot, baby.”

I keep pulling and the hammer keeps going back and back and back and what I realize is going to happen is that there will be a point where it’s all the way back and then it’ll fall and the gun will go off and scare me half to death, and I keep anticipating it and it doesn’t come and eventually it’s too much and I ease off of the trigger. My dad stares down at me wondering if something’s wrong, takes his hands off of my hands and starts to lean over, and the thought of having to explain all this to him is far too unpalatable for me, so instead I squeeze my eyes shut and jerk the trigger back as far as it will go, and the gun roars so loud that for a moment I wonder whether I’m even wearing the big bulky earmuffs my dad handed to me.

The pistol leaps out of my hands and then something slams into my face and I cry out and clap my hands to my nose. The revolver is lying there on the berm, kicked over onto one of its little legs, and my nose is bleeding. My dad looks like he doesn’t know whether he wants to yell at me or cheer for me. Instead he just hugs me to him before I can start crying and points down at the beer bottles. “You did it,” is all he tells me, and when I look I see that the Blue Moon bottle, amber-hued and glossy, has disappeared, and even though I’ve gotten blood all down the front of my new plaid lumberjack shirt, I can’t stop staring at the place it would have been, can’t stop grinning at the knowledge that I did that.

 * * *

 The glass jostles against my forehead and my eyes flick open. I’d drifted away for a second there. Then the noise begins and the man driving slams on the brakes, sending us screeching to a halt. “What the fuck was that?” he cries.

I know what it is, of course – it’s the Pit. What else would it be? What else can open its gaping mouth and scream like that, scream from its belly, miles and miles and miles deep, channel the sound out into a pinprick-tiny orifice and make it shriek for kilometers? The noise is throbbingly deep, rattling into our bones and setting my teeth vibrating unpleasantly, but also somehow manages to screech upwards into a high keening wail that drags on and on and on…

The FBI men look shaken, at least. I’d heard groans and moans and shrieks like this down in the Pit, but none quite so angry, and definitely none as loud. It makes me wonder if there’s something different about this or if the sound is muffled, down there in the Pit, muffled by the flesh everywhere. Maybe it carries differently.

There is another low resounding thump and again the ground shakes. I freeze. If we can feel it here on the surface –

The FBI men glance at each other, and the one in the passenger seat, the one who’d been interrogating me, nods. “Let’s get the hell out of here,” he tells the driver, who puts the SUV back in gear and starts off again down the road, moving at a faster clip than before. He isn’t quite gunning it but he’s getting close. The one in back sitting next to me leans forward.

“Did they say anything about this?” he asks. “Is it like a test or something? I heard –“

I never hear what he heard, though, before the ground erupts like a bomb maybe two hundred yards to our left and a vast stream of – of something hurls upwards into the sky. The driver cries out in shock and for a moment all of us are just staring out the left side of the SUV, watching as a nauseatingly pale pillar of flesh hovers there, sticking out of the ground at an obtuse angle, quivering in the waning sunlight. It must reach a couple hundred feet into the air at least, and it’s as thick as a redwood, or maybe even a couple of redwoods, it’s hard to tell from this distance. It curls inwards on itself and slams into the ground and begins scrabbling around on the ground, splintering trees and bushes and rocks, crushing them beneath itself.

“Makado was right,” I breathe, watching the tentacle writhe like a blind, pale worm. “She was right, it is waking up.”

“What did you say?” the man in the passenger seat asks, but before I can repeat myself there is another echoing roar and another tentacle, a smaller one this time, bursts out of the ground just before us. The driver screams a profanity and tries to turn but the big fat SUV is too damn slow. We strike it at an angle instead and it is just enough to flip the car.

It all happens incredibly quickly. I’m very lucky that the man who got in next to me buckled me in; he neglected to do the same for himself and got tossed around the cabin like a ragdoll, slamming into the ceiling and then falling through into the back and rattling around back there like a roulette ball. The two in front are a little luckier; they both had buckled up but I see the one in the passenger seat strike his head hard against the window next to him, hard enough that the window cracks, and when his head reels back I see a flash of bright red blood mottled in his hair and dripping down his forehead. The driver is still tugging desperately at the wheel, his instincts screaming at him to do something at least, but it’s useless – we flip end over end three times before the car settles onto its side and comes to a halt.

Aside from nearly being strangled by my seatbelt, I come out of it okay. I knocked my leg against the front seat a few times but with the boot on it isn’t nearly as bad as it could have been, and then when the front windscreen burst inwards I did end up with a few cuts on my face, I think, and the same bruised spot on my cheek where Klaus struck me is aching like hell.

I think I screamed, that’s all; it’s like my brain shut down as soon as we flipped and I was simply running on automatic, no conscious thought required. I remember bringing my hands, still cuffed together, up to protect my face, and I remember clenching just about every muscle in my body tight enough to leave me with a lingering ache in my abs once we rolled to a stop, but somehow I haven’t done myself any lasting damage.

It takes me only a couple seconds to realize that this might be my big break, and then I spring into action, slamming my fingers down on the release for the seat belt and rocketing out of the SUV as quickly as I can. The driver yells at me, apparently still conscious as well, and I snap a terrified glance back at him, but he’s trapped – I can see now standing on the outside that his door is crumpled inwards and jammed into the frame, and what’s more it doesn’t look like he’s able to undo his seat belt, although I can’t tell whether it’s because it’s jammed too or because the man is injured.

Behind me the roars continue unabated. There is the faint ratcheting wail of a siren coming from the facility, over the lip of the hill, just there to my right.

The man with the glasses who cracked his head on the window, he has the key to my cuffs. I sprint around the back of the truck, tear the passenger door open as quickly as I can. He falls out, lands on his belly in the dirt, and then I am rummaging through his pockets; not here in the jacket, not on the other side of the jacket, not in the left back pocket…

I can feel my panic mounting as I rifle through his things, trying to ignore the angry cries of the man in the driver’s seat, telling me to stop, telling me that I’m going to be in really fucking big trouble if I don’t come around and help him get out of the damn truck. I shut him out, I don’t even look at him. Where is the fucking key? If I can’t find it, if it’s fallen out of his pocket somewhere when the SUV flipped –

There is a raw, wet noise next to me and I glance over. The tip of the tentacle, glossy with slime and bleeding from a dozen skin-deep cuts, from rocks and sticks and just abrasion with the ground, is nuzzling at the deflated rear tire of the SUV. It’s insane how normal it seems to me. A month ago I would have figured I was going insane if I had seen something like this grubbing around on the ground like someone trying to reach a potato chip they’ve dropped on the floor. Where is that fucking key? Goddam it –

I take a step, dragging the FBI man with me, or at least trying to, because the fucker is heavy, and immediately the tentacle jolts in my direction. I feel a scream catch in my throat but I manage to clap a hand to my mouth and stop it. The sound? No, that doesn’t make any sense, the thing’s skin is smooth and clear and bereft of anything close to being an ear. Vibrations then, that must be it.

I eye the thing. The end is blunt and about as narrow as a baseball bat but it widens out to about as wide around as a tree trunk a little further down. It’s obviously very strong; rippling bands of muscle shift beneath its thin skin. If it got wrapped around my leg –

“You fucking bitch!” the driver curses at me. He’s still yanking fruitlessly at the seat belt. I see the tentacle’s skin twitch with each word, and then it snakes its way under the SUV. “You bitch! I swear to god, if you don’t come over here - !”

I have one last pocket to search. Rear right. Wallet, what feels like a package of breath mints or chewing gum, a piece of paper…no keys. I shove my hand in deeper, all the way to the bottom, and then I find it, the tiny metal key brushing against my fingers. My heart jolts in my chest and I pull it out as quickly as I can and then try to unlock them myself, but it’s no use, I can’t reach it. “Fuck,” I murmur, out loud, and then glance carefully at the tentacle. It’s wrapped itself all the way around the SUV. At this point the man inside has seen it. It sounds like he’s having a panic attack.

I start to back away slowly, just as the tentacle flexes and lifts the SUV into the air. “Holy shit,” I murmur before I get a grip and shut up. The tentacle seems satisfied with its prize, though – it doesn’t pay any attention to me. There’s more commotion inside the SUV and then – I jump – a few gunshots. I see them slap into the tentacle’s flesh, puffing out sprays of blood, but it’s entirely futile. The tentacle flexes and crushes the SUV with the ease of someone crushing a can of Coke and then it whips back down into the dirt, still clutching the SUV, and then they both are gone.

My heartbeat is very loud in my ears. The enormous tentacle off in the distance is still scrabbling around someplace else, pointed off in the other direction from me. My hand have gotten very sweaty and I’m scared I might drop the key someplace, but I haven’t got anywhere else to carry it. I take a step tentatively, cringing in anticipation, waiting for another tentacle to burst out of the ground and scoop me up, but when none are forthcoming, I break into a hobbling sprint and make for the facility. I have to find someone who’ll be willing to uncuff me, who might be willing to help me get back down into the Pit so that I can find Elena –

The thoughts die in midstride. I crest the ridge and stare down at the wreckage below me. There are three more tentacles of roughly the same size as the first rooting around the wreckage of the administration building, which looks as though it’s been peeled open like a tin of sardines. Before me, down on the road, a Humvee speeds by, and then another. There are people rushing all about the sedative plant, and I wonder if they’ve done anything, if there even is anything they can do. Can they turn it up to 11, pump even more sedative into the thing? Would that even work, does it have a tolerance for it?

The exclusion plate, at least what I can see of it from this vantage, is cracked into three pieces, and beneath is just pale skin basking in the orangey sunset.

As I watch, one of the tentacles shudders and flops to the ground. I can feel the impact throb through my soles all the way from here. A dust cloud rises from beneath it.

I scan the line of intact buildings nearest me and then slowly, unwillingly, I grin and start to make my way down the slope.

For there, just down the hill and across the road, is the ranger barracks. And there, in the third window from the left, a light shines, and I can see Fumi’s unmistakable shaggy silhouette outlined in it.

 * * *

 When he opens the door after about five minutes of knocking I push in past him and scan the room. “Roan!” he blurts. “What the fuck are you doing here – “

“Fumi, there’s no time. Are we alone?”

“Well, yeah, but –“ he says, and then he breaks off. He’s glimpsed the cuffs around my wrists and I give him a little sheepish grin. “What’s going on?”

“I should be asking you that,” I tell him. “Why’s the Pit freaking out? And why are you in here and not -”

He blows his breath out, and glowers. “Firstly, Makado’s taken a Tunneler down to get that crystal. Those always piss off the Pit and I guess after 2007 it decided to grow some extra appendages near here that we weren’t aware of and now it’s putting them to good use. And secondly,” he shrugs, “I think they just forgot about me. I’ve had my radio on and I’ve been waiting to respond but I never got a call. Not really complaining.”

I hold up my hands. “Sorry – Tunneler?”

“It’s what they used to make a lot of the bigger tunnels in the Pit. You ever seen those big digging machines they use to dig train tunnels and stuff through solid rock? Think that but bigger and grindier. It’s got vacuums to suck away the dead flesh, cauterizes as it goes, the works. Pisses the Pit off like crazy, though, and now that it’s hungrier these days I guess it got mad enough to pitch a fit about it. They still have two or three of them in a hangar, sitting around from the old Anodyne days just in case they ever need them.”

“Jesus Christ,” I murmur. “And they – Admin or whoever – they let her do that?”

Fumi laughs. “I guess,” he says. “I heard she stormed into Admin and raised a huge stink about the crystal, told them this was their last chance before the Leechman vanishes with it, and they signed off.”

“Fuck her,” I growl. Fumi looks a little taken aback at how bitter I sound. He starts to ask something but I shake my head. “There isn’t time. Help me out of these. Please.”

Fumi mutters a curse under his breath and takes the key. The cuffs fall away from my wrists and clatter on the floor and I am so relieved I don’t know what else to do but hug him. He smells of sweat and cigarette smoke but at the moment I don’t care. His hands flutter, startled, before they close around me and he holds me gently. He pats me on the back after a moment, and I draw away from him. “I’m sorry,” I murmur, feeling suddenly embarrassed. “I was just –“

“I get it,” he says. “Look, why don’t you just get out of here? With all this chaos it’d be easy to –“

“No,” I tell him. “I can’t, I can’t just leave. I have to get back down there.”

“Roan,” he starts. Something about his tone puts pressure on some place in me that’s been bending and bending and finally I snap.

“Fumi,” I say, my voice harsh, “Elena is down there. Maybe she’s already dead, but if she isn’t, she needs me. Nobody else is going down to get her, especially not now.” As if to punctuate my argument, there is another crash from nearby as a tentacle slams into the ground. Fumi nods, explaining that they’ve probably upped the sedative dosage and it’s finally taking effect. His face grows more serious.

“Do you know if she’s still alive down there?”

“No,” I admit. “But if she’s dead I – I have to know. I just have to. Now you can either help me or not, but if you don’t, I’m probably going to end up dead,” I tell him. I marvel at the perfect calmness in my voice. “One way or another, because I’m not experienced enough, because I don’t know the landscape, whatever. But I’m going down there, and that’s final.”

I stand there staring up at him, my hands balled into fists on my hips, and am relieved when his shaggy face breaks open in an unwilling smile. “Alright,” he says after a moment. “But I hope you know a way down, cause there’s no way we can get in through the main orifice now. When the Pit bucked it cracked the plate and wrecked the gantry up here.”

I bite my lip. “Couldn’t we use whatever hole Makado made with the Tunneler?” I ask. Fumi shakes his head.

“No, it’ll be practically vertical. You could maybe rappel down it if you had a whole team to support you but we won’t.”

I utter a mumbled curse. I feel like punching something. If I’ve come all this way and I can’t go back down and get Elena because Makado bored a hole into the Pit and it threw a fit about it –

I stop. Fumi raises his eyebrows. I look over at him and grin. “Fumi, I know how we can get in.”

“Okay, but how - ?”

“There’s no time,” I tell him. I grab his hand and drag him over to the equipment locker in the corner. “Get a suit on and then help me with mine,” I tell him, crouching down to take the boot off. “We’re going to save Elena.”

Continue with Part 30

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#mystery flesh pit #writing #writeblr #original writing #alt lit #mystery #thriller #caving #disaster #romance #Michael Crichton

[nonbinarybrainstorm]

Is the ask box still open? May I ask for Hot Rod/Soundwave content?? Please and Thankyou ❤️❤️

I got your other message not to worry

Some spicy Cyberverse Soundrod coming right up

Additional content: public sex, possessive themes, mild masochism, wall sex

Of course he just had to get a darker paint job. It’s because he’s been through a lot, because he needed a change, Soundwave knows this but can’t help the ideas and connections his processor makes with the black paint and scorching flames glaring in his vision. It’s loud and still undeniably vibrant much like Hot Rod himself but now there’s new context and a deeper meaning. There’s a need, a claim for power that’s so Decepticon but Soundwave knows that he can’t mention that, it’s not what Hot Rod had intended. Even so, it makes Soundwave feel that Hot Rod had somehow become more… obtainable. It’s a ridiculous notion for sure even with the tentative truce that’s formed that he could spend some more time with the Autobot, that he could ask Hot Rod out for fuel, that he could run his hands over his dark plates, that he could push Hot Rod up against a wall… Soundwave shakes his helm and regains focus on the mechs in front of him. Hot Rod had been talking to Bumblebee about something from their past, a race or that’s what they had been talking about when Soundwave had spaced out, ogling Hot Rod’s paint job. Bumblebee leaves, called to another task by comm with only Hot Rod and Soundwave standing in the corridor.

Soundwave tries to think of something to say but Hot Rod beats him to it, “Heh, sorry about that. Didn’t mean to bore you…”

He rubs the back of his helm a little bashfully as though he was actually embarrassed, he probably was. Soundwave knows that his rather… placid body language comes off as unimpressed at best and intimidating at worst but that’s not at all how he wants Hot Rod to feel. A faint buzzing, foreign and insistent, hums in Soundwave’s lines.

“Admittedly racing isn’t one of my own interests.” Soundwave rolls his shoulders and tosses his helm back in an attempt to be casual but it comes off more smug than anything, “However, you seemed to enjoy it. I’m sure it’s different for those with racing frames.”

“Yeah…” Hot Rod looks off to the side, his smile going crooked with amusement then he returns his optics to Soundwave, “So, where were you?” When Soundwave narrows the light of his visor at him, he taps Soundwave’s helm, “I mean what were you thinking about?”

Soundwave catches Hot Rod servo in a gentle but firm grip and moves it from his helm but doesn’t let go.

“Your paint job,” Soundwave admits, not seeing any harm in divulging that much.

This has an unexpected effect on Hot Rod, he tenses and his servo flexes in Soundwave’s and his smile disappears making Soundwave’s spark shift uncomfortably in his chest.

“Is it that bad?” Hot Rod mutters off to the side, “I know it was kind of a dramatic change but I thought it looked cool…”

In a surge of trepidation, Soundwave grabs Hot Rod by the shoulders and steps forward to get closer only to set Hot Rod off balance so he stumbles back into the wall. Hot Rod makes a sound of surprise and grabs Soundwave’s arms to stabilize himself, looking at Soundwave when he’s against the wall. He stalls, staring at that red visor and knowing now, with experience, that Soundwave only has two settings: perfectly calm or completely dramatic that Soundwave doesn’t mean to hurt him. The intensity is still surprising. It’s just a paint job after all, there’s no need to worry too much about it. He could just change it if it looks bad. However, with the way Soundwave’s servos sliding over his armor, passing over his shoulders to settle on his arms, Hot Rod doesn’t think that’s the issue.

“Quite the opposite,” Soundwave assures him in a low tone Hot Rod’s never heard from him before.

Hot Rod swallows to hold back that cheeky smile threatening to break on his face. There was no mistaking the way Soundwave is looking at him now or the way his servos flex now that they’re actually on Hot Rod making a bubble of excitement burst in Hot Rod’s spark. Now that he knows what’s up, there’s no way he was going to let Soundwave off the hook so, he might as well play it up. Hot Rod turns his helm to the side, feigning dejection in a way that exposed his neck cables to Soundwave.

“Come on, it’s okay.” Hot Rod shrugs and smiles coyly, “I know the flames aren’t to everybody’s taste…”

Soundwave leans in closer, taking the bait only to stop short and clear his intake much to Hot Rod’s disappointment.

“I think they suit you,” Soundwave mumbles low, his course voice lowering to a soft growl.

“Glad you think so.” Hot Rod doesn’t hide his cheeky grin this time and pulls Soundwave closer.

Soundwave feels the brush of Hot Rod’s faceplate’s against his and runs his hands unconsciously over Hot Rod’s chest along the flame decals and sucks in air through his vents that’s shockingly cool in comparison to the warm frame under his fingers. Then, he presses his faceplate against Hot Rod’s neck with a static kiss as he trails his hands to Hot Rod’s hips. Hot Rod pulls Soundwave fully against him, pressing them together so he can feel the rapidly increasing pulse of Soundwave’s spark in his own chest. With another sharp invent, Soundwave feels Hot Rod’s cables between his seams and runs a finger over a hot fuel line getting Hot Rod to gasp. It’s such a lovely sound that Soundwave searches for every spot on Hot Rod’s frame that gets him to gasp and moan softly, tugging on seams and pressing his face against the fuel line at Hot Rod’s neck to send energy coursing through his lines. Hot Rod chuckles but it’s quickly cut off with another moan as Soundwave digs into his hips.

“You know if you like my paint job so much…” Hot Rod trails of as Soundwave peppers more static kisses over the plating around his collar then regains his voice, “How about we get some transferred onto you?”

Soundwave stills and pulls back to look at Hot Rod who’s now completely flushed, running hot and panting softly with his hands still rubbing along Hot Rod’s hips, his thumbs catching the edges of Hot Rod’s array. Hot Rod shrugs, his smile faltering as he loses some confidence but that’s quickly remedied by Soundwave hooking his hands under Hot Rod’s thighs and lifting him. With his hips between Hot Rod’s thighs, Soundwave grinds against him, his codpiece catching against Hot Rod’s, the heat between them increasing as charge transfers between them.

Soundwave presses his face against Hot Rod’s audial and growls, “Open for me.”

Hot Rod wraps his legs around Soundwave’s hips and obeys, his spike pressurizing between them and valve cover sliding free. Soundwave grinds against Hot Rod’s spike, the hot, flexible cabling rubbing easily against his pelvic plating, already slick with pre-fluid. Letting himself pressurize, Soundwave grunts as his spike brushes against Hot Rod’s and moans into Hot Rod’s audial as Hot Rod takes both of their spikes in one hand. Soundwave hisses as the ridges of their spikes catch with every thrust as Hot Rod squeezes down harder and harder, his vents going ragged as his cooling fans turn up to full. Gently, he moves Hot Rod’s hand away and shifts their position so his spike is pressed up against Hot Rod’s valve. Hot Rod tugs at Soundwave’s helm and moves him so that their helms are pressed together as Soundwave slides his spike between Hot Rod’s folds. Scratching the paint of Soundwave’s shoulders, Hot Rod drags his fingers down Soundwave’s back as the ridges of his spike catch Hot Rod’s node and tease his entrance. Thick lubricant covers Soundwave’s spike and starts to run down Hot Rod’s thighs.

“I want you inside me already,” Hot Rod pleads, his hips following every pass of Soundwave’s spike, “Take me, claim me.”

Soundwave grunts and grips Hot Rod’s hips in a harsh grip that makes Hot Rod yelp and cling to Soundwave.

“Careful, Hot Rod,” Soundwave growls a low warning in Hot Rod’s audial, “We Decepticons can be rather possessive when given the chance.”

Hot Rod moans and nods, pressing kisses against Soundwave’s helm and says, “Well, maybe sometimes we Autobots like to be possessed.”

Delight floods Soundwave’s spark and he pushes into Hot Rod who pulls in Soundwave as much as he can with his legs, a delightful burn forming in his valve as Soundwave’s spike stretches him open.

“All the way,” Hot Rod moans, “I want you all the way now.”

“I don’t want to hurt-”

Hot Rod cuts him off, “I want it.”

Soundwave hesitates for a moment before hilting himself into Hot Rod fully, groaning at the feeling of Hot Rod’s hot valve around his spike. Hot Rod gasps and moans at the burn his valve that fades away as Shockwave rocks into him, grinding the head of his spike against the entrance to Hot Rod’s gestation tank. When Hot Rod nods, Soundwave thrusts slow and hard into him, his hips rubbing harshly against Hot Rod’s thighs. The thought of having dark, black marks on his blue plating to show everyone what he’d done forms in his mind and drives him to thrust harder into Hot Rod, his valve making obscene noises with every thrusts as their plates scrape roughly against each other. The sharp pain from the scrapes make Hot Rod gasp and he can feel his valve tighten around Soundwave’s spike, every sharp peak of pain mixing with the pleasure and driving Hot Rod closer to the edge. Soundwave had Hot Rod in his hands, his valve around his spike as he made the sweetest sounds pushing Soundwave closer to the edge.

“Hey S- whoa!” a voice stops Soundwave cold and he looks to see Acidstorm in the hall they’re in, frozen in shock.

“Leave,” Soundwave orders, his voice dark with rage and Acidstorm goes racing down the hall.

Hot Rod can feel his spark jump in his chest with fear and embarrassment at the sight of Acidstorm’s retreating form the memory that they’re still in the hallway hitting him like a block of ice. Seeming to not care they were seen, Soundwave starts thrusting into him again hard and Hot Rod nearly forgets everything.

“We should-” Hot Rod gasps and moans as Soundwave presses another static kiss to his neck, “We should go somewhere more private.”

“Any Decepticon that sees us will know better than to interfere,” Soundwave doesn’t slow down as he pants in Hot Rod’s audial, “Any Autobot that sees us will have to deal with me.”

Hot Rod thinks of one of his friends seeing him like this with Soundwave’s spike in him while he’s pinned against a wall and instead of shame he feels his charge build. He shakes it from his processor and focuses on the mech in front of him, looking down to see black streaks on Soundwave’s thighs. Leaning in, he bites Soundwave’s neck, groaning deep in his chest and gasps as hot transfluid floods his valve, spilling into his tank. Soundwave doesn’t slow down, transfluid and lubricant streaming from Hot Rod’s valve until Hot Rod cries out, his hips spasming on Soundwave’s spike as his valve flutters around it, trying to get every bit of transfluid as it can. Hot Rod falls limp in Soundwave’s arms, gasping and panting, and makes a soft noise when he feels himself be removed from the wall and carried down the corridor. In his temporary room, Soundwave sets Hot Rod down on the berth and finally pulls out of him then fetches a cloth to wipe them both down before crawling into the berth alongside Hot Rod.

He pulls Hot Rod into his arms and holds him tightly to his chest, venting in slowly, delighting in how perfectly Hot Rod fits in his arms and places a static kiss against Hot Rod’s helm. A few moments pass and Hot Rod feels recovered enough to stand so he begins to get up only to be pulled back down by Soundwave.

“I told you,” Soundwave whispers, “We Decepticons can be rather possessive when given the opportunity. I don’t just want a quick frag, Hot Rod. I will make you my mate and one of the most revered mechs in the optics of the Decepticons.”

Hot Rod’s optics go wide and he hides his face in Soundwave’s chest, “Isn’t that a bit fast?”

Soundwave hums and rubs Hot Rod’s back to soothe him, “If you don’t want this, you’re welcome to refuse…”

Hot Rod knows Soundwave enough now to detect the inconsistencies in his voice to know at least his general mood and right now he’s upset but Hot Rod knows he means it. He means it but doesn’t want it. Hot Rod snuggles in close to Soundwave and shakes his helm.

“I could try it out…” Hot Rod shrugs, “See how things go.”

Soundwave’s engine turns over so fast it startles Hot Rod but the heavy rumbles of Soundwave’s engine quickly calm him and he smiles to himself as Soundwave clings to him. His smile falters only a little as he rubs his plating over his gestation tank well aware of what might happen now.

#valveplug #soundrod #tfc #nubbs writes #drkr-ao3-primary #queueb

[foularcadebanana]

Food, Fights(,Fever) and Brotherly Love (Part 2)

Day 26 Prompt for the Untamed Fall Fest 2020 is ‘Remains’.

Summary: Wei Wuxian finds out that Jiang Cheng has a fever and takes care of him.

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Jiang Cheng had a fever. It was a mild fever, Shijie had told him, but Jiang Cheng never got a fever. Wei Wuxian was not worried, of course, about Jiang Cheng. He wasn’t supposed to be worried because he wasn’t talking to Jiang Cheng. And he wasn’t talking to Jiang Cheng because they had sort of had a fight two days ago.

Wei Wuxian hadn’t been acting reckless and he hadn’t asked to be drowned in the water. He had thought he’d seen a lotus pod floating somewhere near the docks. How could he have known that it was just overgrown seaweed and waste? And how could he have known that he would get his leg stuck in it? He had tried to be as careful as he could have been, but according to Jiang Cheng, it hadn’t been careful enough.

Jiang Cheng had pulled Wei Wuxian out and then given a lecture about being more careful and asking for help and about how sick and tired he was of saving Wei Wuxian’s stupid ass.

“Fine! Then you don’t have to save me any longer. I didn’t ask you to save me this time either. You could have just let me drown,” Wei Wuxian had angrily yelled back.

“Wei Wuxian!” Jiang Cheng had fisted Wei Wuxian’s robes in his hands, with a rage that Wei Wuxian had never seen before. Then he had pushed Wei Wuxian away roughly. “Next time you need help, don’t call for me. Die, and see if I care.”

Jiang Cheng had walked away with those words, leaving Wei Wuxian at the docks. They hadn’t spoken since then. And Wei Wuxian had stayed at the docks until his shijie had called him for dinner. He still wouldn’t admit to wiping the tears in his eyes as he had followed her.

Now here he was, brooding as he sat in the middle of the training grounds and stared into the distance. He was angry about the fact that no one had told him that Jiang Cheng was sick. He had found out when he had loudly asked the teacher and the disciples why Jiang Cheng hadn’t come for training. Jiang Cheng never missed training, not that Wei Wuxian cared.

That was when he had found out that Jiang Cheng had spiked up a sudden fever the night before and it made sense to him why he hadn’t seen his shijie for breakfast this morning. He hadn’t seen Madam Yu or Uncle Jiang, but then he never really saw them during breakfast. He always woke up a little too late for that.

So, Wei Wuxian stood up, wiping dirt off of himself, and decided to grudgingly stomp his way Jiang Cheng’s room. When he opened the door to the room, Shijie was sitting at the bedside, wiping sweat off of Jiang Cheng’s forehead just as Wei Wuxian had predicted. As Shijie turned to him, she seemed slightly surprised to see him, and Jiang Cheng tensed up when he spotted him.

Wei Wuxian didn’t care. He made his way over to his brother, who he had to admit didn’t look too good, and loomed over him. Wei Wuxian crossed his arms and frowned at Jiang Cheng, the same way Jiang Cheng did in front of him sometimes.

After a few seconds of observation, and complete silence (they were all holding their breaths, even Wei Wuxian), Wei Wuxian reached out and gently lay his hand on Jiang Cheng’s forehead. Fucking hell! His brother was burning up! Wei Wuxian would damn whoever had told him that Jiang Cheng was only slightly feverish.

Wei Wuxian’s then held his hand against Jiang Cheng’s cheek and neck, and they felt even hotter.

“Jiang Cheng, you’re really sick,” Wei Wuxian said, worriedly seating next to Shijie at Jiang Cheng’s bedside. Jiang Cheng huffed out a breath and looked away. Wei Wuxian turned to his sister. “Shijie, why didn’t you tell me?”

“I just found out this morning when Mother told me,” Shijie told him. “A-Cheng didn’t tell anyone that he wasn’t feeling well for a while, did you A-Cheng?”

Jiang Cheng continued to look away, his cheeks red. Wei Wuxian couldn’t figure out whether it was from the fever or something else. As Shijie’s words sunk in, Wei Wuxian’s frown deepened. Jiang Cheng’ hadn’t been feeling well for a while? But he had been fine when—

Wei Wuxian suddenly gasped. “Jiang Cheng you— you— you fucker! You asshole! You absolute—!” He shook his brother, with a violence and anger he had never felt towards him before. Jiang Cheng stared at him in shock, eyes widened and mouth gaping slightly.

“A-Xian!” Shijie called out his name alarmed, pulling him away from Jiang Cheng. But Wei Wuxian didn’t care. He was just so— so fucking mad at his brother!

“You fell ill after you jumped into the water to save me, didn’t you?!” Wei Wuxain exclaimed. “You arrogant bastard, you— you—! Why didn’t you tell me?” he demanded to know.

Jiang Cheng blinked at him, and then, to Wei Wuxian’s surprise, a small smile grew on his face. Why was he smiling?

“Now you know how I feel,” Jiang Cheng said softly, and Wei Wuxian wondered how high Jiang Cheng’s fever must be for him to talk nonsense, “every time I have to watch you get hurt. And you never ask for help. I always have to run after you and save you.”

“It’s not the same thing,” Wei Wuxian mumbled, taking the wet cloth from his shijie and sitting where she had been. “You can go Shijie. I’ll take care of this stubborn idiot.”

Shijie nodded, ruffled Wei Wuxian’s hair, gave Jiang Cheng a soft kiss on the forehead and whispered for him to feel better before she walked away.

Jiang Cheng spoke as he watched their sister walk away. “Why is it not the same thing?” he asked. “Is it because you think my life is worth more than yours?”

Yes, Wei Wuxian wanted to scream, your life is worth a lot more than mine. But what he said was, “It’s because you are a future sect leader.” And my brother. Jiang Cheng looked away bitterly. “The Yunmeng Jiang Sect needs you.”

“And what about you?” Jiang Cheng asked. Wei Wuxian swallowed as he put the damp cloth in his hand on Jiang Cheng’s forehead, wiping away new sweat that had gathered there. “Don’t you need me?”

The vulnerability in Jiang Cheng’s voice made Wei Wuxian freeze and finally meet his eyes. I need you more than you could ever know, A-Cheng. “Jiang Cheng,” he said softly, “of course I do. You have no idea how worried I was when I didn’t see you at the training grounds today, and when I heard that you had a fever…. You should have told me.”

Jiang Cheng looked away again and muttered something that didn’t reach Wei Wuxian’s ears, but Wei Wuxian held Jiang Cheng’s chin and tilted it towards himself, careful not to hurt Jiang Cheng in the process. Wei Wuxian gently rubbed the damp cloth against both of Jiang Cheng’s cheeks and then presses it lightly against his neck.

“I wanted to tell you, but I knew you were mad at me and I— I didn’t think you would care.” Jiang Cheng spoke up quietly.

Wei Wuxian looked at Jiang Cheng with disbelief. “You didn’t think that I would care about the fact that my didi had a fever?”

Jiang Cheng refused to look at him. “I—”

“Especially that you had a fever because you had to dive in and save me the day before yesterday?” Wei Wuxian felt like a dam ready to burst, a volcano ready to explode.

“I just thought—” Jiang Cheng hesitantly spoke.

“Well, you thought wrong,” Wei Wuxain interrupted, “and if you ever think like that again or keep things from me, then I’ll— I’ll— I’ll tell Shijie to never make our favourite soup again. Or worse. I’ll tell her to make our favourite soup and then I’ll drink it all up!

Jiang Cheng gasped. “You would never!”

Wei Wuxian raised an eyebrow. “Oh yeah? Try me.”

When Wei Wuxian joined his shijie in the kitchen, it was already mid-afternoon. Jiang Cheng had fallen asleep some time after having lunch, and Wei Wuxian had stayed by his side for some more time, checking his fever between intervals, before finally letting him get sleep on his own.

“Shijie, are you making lotus root and pork ribs soup for Jiang Cheng?” Wei Wuxian asked. He could already see the water boiling in a container, and his shijie was popping lotus seeds out of their pods. She looked at him and nodded her head. “I want to help,” Wei Wuxian said.

When Jiang Cheng woke up, Wei Wuxian was by his side keeping a tray of soup in front of him. “Drink up,” he said.

Jiang Cheng looked suspiciously at the soup kept in the bowl for him. “Who made this?”

Wei Wuxian tried not to feel too nervous. He had made the soup entirely on his own, but Shijie had been there all along, instructing him on what to do and exactly how to do it. After all, it was his fault that Jiang Cheng was sick.

“I did,” he said.

Jiang Cheng snorted, “Yeah, right. Tell A-jie I said thank you.” He took a spoonful of soup and then froze after he had taken a sip.

“I really did make it,” Wei Wuxian muttered quietly. “Shijie helped.”

Jiang Cheng slowly looked up from the bowl, his eyes meeting Wei Wuxian’s. He swallowed and then took another spoonful of the soup. Wei Wuxian watched silently as Jiang Cheng finished half of the soup, and then groaned.

“Jiang Cheng.”

“Wei Wuxian, I can’t.” Jiang Cheng admitted, and Wei Wuxian leaned forward with his hand already outstretched to check his temperature. Jiang Cheng swatted away the hand.

“It isn’t that bad,” Wei Wuxian teased, but his brother didn’t take the bait. “Look if you don’t drink up the remaining soup, then I’ll have to go throw it in the lake and let it all go to waste. Would you like that, Jiang Cheng, hmmm?”

Jiang Cheng looked down at the soup in his hands and kept it on the tray. “Maybe the fish will have it,” he replied.

Wei Wuxian rolled his eyes, giving up on convincing his brother. He took the bowl into his own hands and took a spoonful of the soup. Blowing on it once, he pushed the tray away, sidling up next to his brother. “Open up.”

Jiang Cheng groaned. “You have to be kidding me.” But he did as his brother told him to and kept his mouth open.

Wei Wuxian put the spoon into his mouth and watched as Jiang Cheng chewed a bit before swallowing the soup. He pulled the spoon out of his brother’s mouth and repeated the motion until all of the soup was in his brother’s stomach and the bowl was empty.

“There we go,” Wei Wuxian wiped Jiang Cheng’s mouth with his sleeve and kept the bowl aside on the tray.

Jiang Cheng stared at Wei Wuxian, his entire face, neck and his ears red. “Thank you,” he said, so softly that Wei Wuxian wasn’t sure he had heard him correctly at first.

“Don’t be ridiculous, A-Cheng. What are you thanking me for?” Wei Wuxian demanded.

“For making the soup. It was delicious,” Jiang Cheng spoke, his gaze faltering and shifting to his fidgeting hands.

“Was it more delicious than the soup Shijie makes?” Wei Wuxian asked. It was a long-standing joke between him and his brother, ever since the first time Wei Wuxian had made something for him.

But Jiang Cheng’s words were genuine as he made eye contact with Wei Wuxian. “You know it was.”

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