#(and this always reminds me of this one line from i think an anne of green gables novel can't remember which one where someone says:

[gogandmagog]

Anne of the Island, by L.M. Montgomery

Anne of the Island, Chapter Three!

Here comes Redmond! It would be on a Monday, too.

Two things I really, really love: that Di and Anne wanted to drive to the station together, and Anne’s sense of foreboding/little “presentiment” that she was actually leaving Green Gables forever. Of course, we readers know this to be true, but we thankfully have the advantage of knowing yet another truth... that yes, Anne can be happy somewhere else. I also wonder how much of Anne’s foresight is linked, in terms of the bends-in-the-road, to the appeal and/or dread of the ferry itself (as last time she was a passenger, it brought her from the asylum to Green Gables), because it seems to be the very vehicle of Anne’s shifting futures.

“Dora […] was one of those fortunate creatures who are seldom disturbed by anything.” Funny. I can’t tell if this is supposed to be her natural-born disposition or if it’s a defense mechanism learned by way of necessity, on account of having Davy for a brother.

Something else (of virtual inconsequence) that I like to note about the boat interlude, is that Anne’s internal monologue demonstrates clear annoyance towards Charlie, supposing that he’d be only pretending to be sentimental about watching PEI disappear from their sight... when only one or two lines later, it’s Gilbert that’s actually openly unsentimentally commenting, “Well, we’re off!” But Anne is somehow rather fine with that, lmao. I suppose it’s just the pretense that bugs her. Or maybe it’s the pretense of Charlie being able to relate to her feelings that bugs her? Meanwhile, there’s zero pretense in Anne’s ability to comfortably share her truest feelings with Gilbert. Cute!

That Gilbert’s not-so-very-sentimental over leaving Avonlea is not particularly strange, either. He is 21, and he has been largely out of his parents home, experiencing self-reliance, for over a year now, while boarding and teaching at White Sands. The age gap between Anne and Gilbert is nearly always negligible, but here in this one book I do think it’s occasionally a little glaring. Anne’s just a wee and nervous fledgling, dipping a pinky toe into the pool of independence, where as Gilbert’s wings are strong, and already maturely developed. 

Anne of the Island, Chapter Four!

Anne of the Island, by L.M. Montgomery

Every time I read this chapter, I’m reminded of the main difference between Anne of Windy Poplars and Anne of Windy Willows… which is that the Canadian publisher, for Windy Poplars, was mighty concerned about Maud’s fixation on graves and cemeteries and gruesome deaths throughout the text, and asked for quite a lot of it to be cut out. The English (Windy Willows, that is), however, really said doooon’t care. 🤓

Much respect and credit due to the Montgomery scholars, who have over the years hunted up and presented the following photos of Old St. Paul’s Burying Ground in Halifax, as close as possible to how it would’ve looked, for Anne and Pris and Phil.

Pris feeling like an ‘elephant’ at registration because of her considerable height, besides just making me sad for her, is always a source of curiosity for me. Anne is tall too... but she is proud of this, and when people speak of Anne being tall, it’s always in a tone of admiration. So, I wager we can guess that Pris must dwarf Anne’s tall? In the 1880s, historical data generalises that the average Canadian woman was 160 cm or 5’3[ish]. Anne, being ‘tall’, was probably 165 cm or 5’5, soooo Pris, markedly feeling enormous, maybe 172 cm? 5’8? This would be boyishly tall, since the average man of this time-period was the same 172 cm or 5'8.

Phil! ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Btw who’s gonna take one for the team and dream up an “Anne of Mount Holly” fic, an (obvious) AU where Anne’s mum Bertha and Phil’s mum were pals (since they’re from the same city, after all), and it ends up it’s actually the Gordon’s that take Anne in, when her parents pass. An Anne from luxury, instead of an asylum.

“Thanks,” laughed Anne, “but Priscilla and I are so firmly convinced of our own good looks that we don’t need any assurance about them, so you needn’t trouble.” How far Anne has come. I think of that Louisa May Alcott quote, “love is a great beautifier.” Maud also leans heavily into love as transformative/beautifier for so many of her girls, and imo this is a pretty great message and overall universal truth, security and kindness giving way to confidence.

Okay, but between the two, as described, am I on crack or is the obvious choice not Alec? Or maybe I’m prejudiced against the name Alonzo, as well.

Anne going cold on Phil the second she mentions finding Gilbert ‘really handsome’ is soooy charmingly Anneish. Bonus points to Pris here, because evidentially she knew to begin preparing to leave in that moment too. Girlish solidarity.

The connection between Phil and Ruby is yet another point of interest to me. They share nearly the very same lines, sometimes, here specifically when we march steadily backwards to Anne of Green Gables when of Ruby the narrative asserts for her, "Frank Stockley had lots more dash and go, but then he wasn’t half as good-looking as Gilbert and she really couldn’t decide which she liked best!" Compared of course to Phil’s, “I like them both so much that I really don’t know which I like the better.”

Anne of the Island, Chapter Five!

Anne of the Island, by L.M. Montgomery

Gilbert Blythe is good at everything he puts the tiniest amount of effort into. 😌😌😌😌😌😌😌😌😌 He’s class president, he’s football captain, and he’s singled out among the other members of the freshman class, to join a frat. Niiiiice. I know I’ve totally yapped about it before, but I think it’s wildly intriguing that Maud put Gilbert into Lamba Theta, when irl there were only three frats existing across all of Canada. Even when she attended Dalhousie, almost two decades after Anne and Gilbert attend Redmond. Small potatoes Dalhousie wouldn’t have a proper frat until 1923. So, I’m dying to know where from she gathered her frat info, especially as she’s obviously familiar with hazing/initiation processes. Elsewhere, the good news is: a Victorian-era frat was a legitimate intellectual and debate society, not a collection of dudebros in Sperrys, having beer pong championships at 9 am on a Tuesday.

“Gilbert Blythe won’t take any notice of me, except to look at me as if I were a nice little kitten he’d like to pat. Too well I know the reason. I owe you a grudge, Queen Anne.” Gilbert Blythe also has tunnel vision. You can line up every single one of the above ^ accolades, but none of them hold as strong or are even half so appealing as this; Gilbert’s capacity for fidelity. Phil’s the best-looking girl in her class, and besides which is also enormously clever and funny and affluent, and yet her attempts (“won’t take any notice of me” implies that Phil did try, and did seek said attention) fall flat. His heart has been spoken for since he was 13, you see.

Officially entering ‘Queen Anne’ 👑 into the registry of Anneisms.

"Even the grumpy old professor of Mathematics, who detested coeds, and had bitterly opposed their admission to Redmond, couldn’t floor her [Phil]." This was reputedly a real fellow iirc. In a magazine article from I think, 1912, A. Wylie Mahon published a review of Anne of the Island, in which he stated emphatically that “Redmond College is Dalhousie University” (true) and that the 'grumpy old professor of Mathematics, who detested coeds,' “was known to the students of his day as ‘Charlie'...” (possibly true).

“I don’t believe any but fools enter the ministry nowadays,” she wrote bitterly. PFFFT 😭😭😭 I laugh every time I read this letter. I wish I could correspond with Mrs Rachel.

I do wish I could forget about the ugly ‘big black man’ story that Davy shares, but is anyone familiar with “the old Harry” he refers to? 🧐 I’ve never been able to tell if this is a Mi’kmaq Gugwe reference or if it’s just supposed to mean literally like… some guy… named Harry. Orr?

[sbrn10]

It has been approximately 1.5 weeks since I admitted that maybe I have a problem in the form of (primarily) Alicent Hightower constantly rotating in my brain nonstop, and I would really like to apologize to CR fandom for ever thinking it's crazy.

[cozymoko]

Wild, Wild West 𐚁

Introduction fic for my cowboy OC idea. I hope you guys like this. This was in my drafts for at least half a year, haha.

Pairing: Yandere Cowboy x City Girl! Reader

Format: Short fic; 1.4k words

WARNING(S): Yandere themes, possessive, minor insecurity from reader.

Synopsis: Jealousy, Jealousy, read all about it! When in a new environment, insecurities are bound to surface. Why don't you go get you a drink to simmer down a bit?

REBLOGS ARE APPRECIATED!

The old Texas sun was relentless, harsher than usual, beating down on the skin of those poor townspeople just going about their day. Its temper reminded you of your late grandmother, always nagging and pestering like there was no tomorrow.

You found refuge near the large clumps of hay by the stables. The smell was familiar—unpleasant, sure, but nothing you couldn’t handle.

Why the hell were you out here? Damn you for wanting to tag along, keeping that big oaf company. He couldn’t stop poking fun at you, pushing you past your limits. It was like he knew you inside and out, from the surface of your pampered skin to the depths of your fluttering heart. For a man who wasn’t too fond of school, he sure seemed to study you a lot.

And speak of the devil. He wiped dirt and grime off the worn denim that hung low at his waist. “What’s the matter, darlin’?” he called out, glancing over his shoulder to meet your eyes. “You don’t look too hot.”

Hell, that was an understatement.

He sauntered over, slipping his hat off his head. His long strides had him at your side in moments, staring down at your seated position. Pushing his deep auburn hair from his damp skin, he squatted next to you. “What’s the matter?” he asked, placing the hat back on his head.

You pressed your lips into a thin line, torn between telling him and keeping your annoyance to yourself. You weren’t even doing any heavy lifting, just spectating, but somehow, that made the heat even worse.

“It’s hot,” you mumbled, swallowing your pride.

“Then take your shirt off.” He grinned, raising a brow. “It’s just you ‘n me today, and it’s not like I haven’t seen you without it anyhow—”

“Stop!” you shouted, hugging your knees to your chest. If not for the heat, you’d have flushed even redder.

“Alright, suit yourself.” Jamie smirked, planting a kiss on your temple before rising to his feet in one swift motion. He turned back to his polished truck, the one he treated like gold. Sometimes, you swore he loved that hunk of metal more than anything, but you’d soon learn that his world revolved around you.

Your eyes followed his back, tracing the way his muscles moved with each twist of the wrench. Jamie was a tease, but damn if he wasn’t easy on the eyes. Your gaze drifted to the tattoos scattered across his tanned skin, lingering on the intricate, slightly faded markings near his jugular—your name, carved right there. The sight of it made you hot all over, and you found yourself popping open a few buttons.

You had told that stubborn fool not to get it, warning him that tattoos were permanent and took hours of pain to remove.

“Why’re you sayin’ something like that?” he’d chuckled back then. “It’ll be a cold day in hell before I get this baby removed, sugarplum.”

The memory made you want to laugh. Jamie was as stubborn as a bull—and as big as one too. Too bad all that stubbornness would be the death of him. Not literally, of course.

“You wanna help me with the cattle? Think they need some lovin’, too.”

You tilted your head, a spark of hope flaring up. Maybe he was serious about wanting your help, about spending time together—maybe he was letting you be part of this place, tending to your shared home. But then he shrugged.

“Or I could get Mary Anne to come by. She’s always good with ’em—knows her way around horses like she was born with ’em.”

Mary Anne. Just the mention of her name made your blood boil. You’d seen her—all soft curls and sweet smiles, the kind of girl who fit right in here. Unlike you.

Your lips thinned, the jealousy rising like a rattlesnake. “Oh, is that so?” you asked, trying to keep your voice even despite the bitterness creeping in. “Mary Anne this, Mary Anne that—why don’t you just go on and ask her, then, since she’s not a ‘city girl’?”

Jamie’s eyes narrowed. “Hey now, what’s got you so riled up, sugar?”

“What’s got me riled up?” you snapped, rising to your feet. “You know damn well, Jamie. You think I don’t notice how you bring her up every time it’s my turn to help?”

You took a deep breath. “I know I’m not as capable as the others, but this is my home too. I’ve been here for over a year, and you still don’t ask me to help.”

He rolled his eyes, sighing as he straightened up, towering over you. “Aw, hell, [Name]. You actin’ like this ’cause you’re on the rag or somethin’? Ain’t no need to get all hot ’n bothered over nothin’.”

The words hit you like a slap, and for a moment, all you could do was stare at him, disbelief turning into a wave of fury. “You think that’s what this is about?” you hissed, your voice sharp as a knife. “You think that just because I’m upset, it’s gotta be because of that?”

Jamie shrugged, unfazed, and that was the last straw. You spun on your heel, the dusty ground kicking up beneath your boots as you stormed off. “Go on and call her, then!” you shouted over your shoulder. “I’m sure she’s just itching to help you!”

You didn’t wait for his response. You marched across the sunbaked field, fists clenched tight. You needed to get away—somewhere he wasn’t. The barn blurred into blobs of red as tears stung at the corners of your eyes. But you weren’t about to let him see you cry. Not now, not ever.

This is not where you wanted to end up. An old, run-of-the-mill saloon on a Friday night, surrounded by drunkards and divorcees, the air thick with the stench of stale tobacco. Voices murmur, glasses clink, and the laughter around you is harsh and grating. To hell with it all. To hell with them.

The whiskey settles in your veins, warm and familiar as you lean against the sticky bar. Neon lights flicker, casting a red glow across your half-empty glass, and you blink to clear your vision. You know you’ve had too much, but the night’s long, and the noise makes it easy to drown out everything.

"Fuck," you mutter, rubbing your temples.

You’ve never been much of a drinker. After moving to the countryside to be with Jamie, life on the ranch demanded your focus. Jamie hated liquor, practically despised it.

Dammit, [Name], forget about him. You shake the thought away.

“Now, darlin’, looks like your glass is ‘bout empty,” a smooth, slow drawl cuts through your thoughts. The man tilts the brim of his hat back just enough for you to catch a glint in his eyes—cold, calculating, like a snake. “Why don’t you let me get you another?”

Oh, right. You weren’t exactly alone.

“Sound good?” he asks again, his voice dripping with intentions you’re too drunk to untangle, coaxing you with the rough pad of his thumb tracing over your knuckles.

You hum. “Thank you.”

For a moment, you try to recall his name—Michael? Richard? Ashton? Danny? None of them sound right. Nothing about him feels familiar. Just another face in the blur. You decide he’s irrelevant.

"You don’t want it to get cold now, do ya?"

A voice in your head tells you to stop, to head home before you cross a line. Something about him makes your stomach churn, but you blame it on the alcohol. It doesn’t take much persuasion before you reach for the glass.

The liquor is bitter but good. But once it slips down your throat, the room spins. You blink hard, trying to steady yourself.

The barstool creaks as you sway, gripping the counter for balance. The stranger’s grin stretches wider, eyes watching you like a hawk. You know you shouldn’t have taken that drink, but it’s too late. The world starts tilting.

You turn, ready to brush off the man beside you, when you hear the heavy boots. They echo on the old floorboards, slow and deliberate, each step sending a chill down your spine. Then, a hand rests on your shoulder, the grip firm, possessive.

“Takin’ drinks from strangers now, sugar?” His voice is low, a whisper against your ear. “Why’d you go and do that for? You know better.”

Jamie.

His breath is warm, almost too close, as his fingers dig into your shoulder just enough to keep you anchored. The stranger’s hand pulls back, and you catch the flicker of fear in his eyes.

Jamie’s fingers tighten, not enough to hurt, but enough to warn. “Ain’t polite to drink without me, darlin’.” His tone is calm, but there’s a tension in it, like a leash pulled too tight.

You look up at him, the soft light catching the curve of his grin. The cowboy hat sits low, loose curls brushing the nape of his neck, his button-up shirt hugging the broad stretch of his shoulders. His forearms, tanned and strong, are exposed as his sleeves are rolled up. His eyes, though—dark and unreadable—pin you in place. There’s a hunger in them, one that makes your skin prickle.

He runs his thumb over your bottom lip, wiping off the smudge of your lipstick. His grin widens, revealing sharp canines that peek between his lips. It’s friendly enough—too friendly. Like the way foxes smile when they’re circling prey.

“Mm, you’re drunk.” He says it like it’s a fact he’s already known for hours. “How much you had tonight, sugarplum?”

You stare at your glass, pretending you don’t know. You don’t want to admit to your carelessness.

Jamie chuckles, a low, knowing sound. “So, quite a bit, huh?”

His laugh is loud, and it feels like a warning. He leans in, his hand settling on your hip, fingers curling possessively. “And flirtin’ with some nobody at the bar. That’s new.” His eyes narrow. “So, you gonna tell me who he is?”

The stranger shifts uneasily, glancing between you and Jamie. His bravado fades, and he mumbles, “Look, I didn’t mean no harm. Just thought she could use some company.”

Jamie doesn’t even look at him. His eyes are locked on yours, sharp and unyielding. “Ain’t that sweet?” he says, his voice soft, but his grip on your hip tightens, like he’s claiming a prize. “But I think she’s got all the company she needs.”

The man hesitates, looks like he’s weighing his options, then backs off with a muttered apology, disappearing into the crowd.

The world tilts again, and you’re struggling to stay upright. The bar fades around you, the noise drowning in the back of your mind. The room swims, and your vision blurs, the faces blending into nothing but shadows.

Jamie’s presence feels suffocating. His eyes linger on you, dark and intent, like he’s waiting for something. Like he’s testing you. And you know, deep down, that he doesn’t just hate you drinking—he hates you here, surrounded by people who aren’t him.

“Let’s get you home, darlin’.” His tone is almost gentle, but there’s an edge beneath it, something possessive and unyielding.

Before you can protest—before the room spins again—he’s there, pulling you into him, lifting you off your feet like you weigh nothing. His arms wrap around your waist, and the world blurs as you’re hoisted over his shoulder, carried out the bar like a prize he’s claimed.

The night air bites at your cheeks as he strides through the darkness, the cold wind cutting through the haze in your mind. You can feel his heartbeat, steady and sure beneath you, and his fingers grip your thigh, possessive and unyielding. He’s not letting you go.

Everything in you says to fight back, to push away, but he smells like home—like honey and oak. The world narrows down to him, the steady beat of his heart, the warmth of his touch.

“Man, you’re gettin’ heavy. Eating too much pumpkin pie, huh, sugarplum?”

“Fuck you,” you manage, but it’s weak, and the smile he gives you is sharp and satisfied.

You close your eyes, the world tilting again, and for a moment, you let yourself sink into it. Maybe this isn’t so bad.

Maybe this is just how it’s meant to be.

⠀⠀𐚁

⠀. ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁

©CozyMoko, all rights reserved. Don't repost my work on other platforms.

[butternutt613]

PSA!!! IT IS OKAY TO CHANGE YOUR STORY HALFWAY THROUGH OR TO NOT HAVE IT BE PERFECT!!!

Fanfic writers (myself included) are way too hard on ourselves sometimes. I was chatting with a few amazing creators on Discord about this, and I realized just how much pressure we put on ourselves to make everything perfect.

Let me remind you: it’s completely okay if your story isn’t flawless right out of the gate.

The way I see it, fanfics, and most things posted on AO3 or Wattpad are like first drafts. ESPECIALLY!!!!! when you’re still actively writing your story. You’re still figuring things out, shaping the narrative, and building the world. It’s not set in stone, and it’s okay to make changes as you go. Hell, completely rewrite it!

So many of us get caught up in trying to make our stories perfect from chapter one because we’re scared that if it’s not, no one will read it. I experience imposter syndrome so hard lol

But NEWSFLASH!!! Even published authors don’t create flawless stories from the start. Their first drafts are messy, full of edits, rewrites, and changes. Entire chapters get cut, characters get reworked, and sometimes entire backstories get scrapped. AND THEN!!! EVEN WHEN THEY THINK THEY ARE DONE!!! THEIR EDITORS GIVE THEM 39 THINGS TO CHANGE!!!

If that’s how the ‘pros’ do it, why are we holding ourselves to an impossible standard?

And I’m going to be so real with you right now… 99.99% of the time, the characters we write about aren’t even canon or have never even interacted in canon or only had 2.3 lines of dialog (I'm looking at you, Jegulus….)

That’s the magic of fanfiction. You get to create something ENTIRELY NEW. You get to take these characters and give them experiences and a life the og author never did or never could. Fanfiction is about imagination and creation, not about rigid rules.

There will always, ALWAYS, be someone who says "you're doing it wrong” or “that character wouldn't do that” and I'm sorry to break it to them but idk if you know this but… THEY AREN’T REAL!

If I want these two guy best friends to kiss, I will! If I want my MC to save Anne by perfecting Isadora’s magic, I will! If you want Ominis to say “fuck you” to his family or Sebastian to become a healer or an auror or a potions master, then GODDAMMIT YOU DO THAT!

BECAUSE YOU ARE WRITING YOUR STORY!! It is YOURS, not anyone else's. You’re the author. Your creative process is valid and so is your work, even if you decide to change direction halfway through. (Elsa was originally going to be evil…)

There will always be haters. Even when something is canon, there are people who’ll criticize it (seriously like look at flat earthers….) That’s why you can’t let the fear of criticism hold you back. Write what YOU love. Create what brings YOU joy. The right people will find your work and appreciate it for what it is.

At the end of the day, fanfiction is about expression and connection. Whether you’re writing for an audience of hundreds or just for yourself, it’s yours. You’re building a world, shaping characters, and sharing something that came from your heart. And that’s what makes it meaningful. So stop being so hard on yourself. Keep WRITING. Keep CREATING. KEEP COMING UP WITH FUN HEADCANONS!!!

Your story deserves to be told. And you deserve to have fun and love doing it.

*mic drop* *peace sign*

[kkukverse]

thieves of the heart

summary: In the heart of Gotham’s night, they let the walls fall, trading sharp banter for quiet intimacy. The city’s chaos faded, leaving only the heat of their unspoken bond.

pair: batman!namjoon x catwoman!reader

genre: batman au

warnings & ratings: explicit sex scene | smut 🔞(minors dni)

wordcount: 7k

author's note: who's your favorite catwoman? so hard to choose, i'm torn between michelle pfeiffer (batman returns 1992) purely because her attitude, her wardrobe, the whip ahhh! but anne hathaway (the dark knight) was golden too! idk! anyway. hope u guys enjoy.

He is a man of control. 

Born from a long lineage of money and power, Namjoon is the most influential man in the city. It is no secret that he lost his parents. Gotham city practically bows down to his family, the Kim. How powerful is his family? Well his family is in charge of the dam that was built to run the electricity all over the city, lines of banks and corporate companies are ruled under the Kims too. It was believed that the very first generation of Kim was the founder of Gotham city. A city built from a wasteland to the most lavish city in the world. 

But everything comes with a price. 

As the only heir of the infamous Kim, his family was prone to danger. When he was a wee little boy, barely a teenager, his parents were brutally murdered in front of his eyes. Leaving him as the sole heir of Kim. After the very incident, he hides himself. No one really saw his face. He came in and out of his building with so little people know. He is just comfortable in managing his family’s empire from behind the scenes. After all, his family only hired the best of the best to assist in maintaining the legacy.

One thing that allows him to use his power for good is to help the citizens of Gotham. Namjoon wanted to be a plight of light because he saw how injustice roamed in his city. Day after day, the authority loses pitifully at the hands of the criminals. With his money he created a hero. Someone with no real name, a character that shows up when behind a mask. He became a batman.

How did he become a batman? That's another story to tell. 

Though he is a man of control, there’s only one person that can shake him to his core. 

“Namjoon,” 

“Not now, Alfred.” He walks past the old man. 

Pulling off his mask and the cape, at the first tug, the black cape was stuck and it made Namjoon yell out frustratingly. He snatched the cape until it tore from his shoulders. 

Alfred sighs, already thinking of making a new one, again. Namjoon is usually a calm man, but he sometimes forgets how strong he is. 

“Master Kim, it is my duty to remind you to keep calm. The wound on your leg is still fresh.” At the call of his formal name Namjoon flinched. Realizing he hurt his butler’s feelings. No, Alfred is much more than a butler to him. Alfred is a loyal man. Alfred has been taking care of him ever since he was born. Everything that he said is always for Namjoon’s best interest. Namjoon felt guilty at the sudden tantrum. He should’ve acted better.

“How does she always slip away so easily? It's like every time we get a trace of her, she is already four steps ahead of me,” Namjoon roughly ruffles his hair. Just thinking how he is so close to capturing the cat.

“Sly cat.” He snarled. “I swear I will not go easy on you.” Suddenly he can feel the stabbing pain on his left leg. The one that you caused. Namjoon has to go for hours of agony because you fire a crossbow just a few inches from his batmotor. Causing him to fall and being crushed by the heavy mobile. 

“May I ask, for what reason must you catch the catwoman, Namjoon?” Alfred monotonously asked. Honestly the old man is less interested in knowing the reason by now because as far as his wise age can conclude, his master and the catwoman have another issue than just chasing tails.

Namjoon just left the cave, limping. Alfred was all alone with an unanswered question. Alfred knew his master was wounded, not only on his leg, but also his heart.

“Get down right now! I swear I'll pull your legs! Look at this mess!” A piercing voice breakthroughs your dreams and almost makes you fall down from your hammock bed. The hammock was your safe haven. It is a bright orange hammock, tied so close to the ceiling because you’re the only one who can climb up to sleep there. With your legs dangling out of it, your body weighing down the hammock and Jungkook is worried that the ties will snap unless he does something about it, again. 

“What happened to your arm?!” Your best friend, big thick glasses Jungkook, gasped. He stares at the long gash from your forearm up to your elbow. “Oh dear, is this a pigsty or a house?!” He pinched on a piece of cloth he picked up on the floor while scrunching his pretty face. Hoping that they're clean.

“Kook, it's too early for this,” you yawn from the top of your bed. “I got home really late last night. Please let me rest.” You grumble. Eyes shut tight as you move your body in the tight hammock. Turning away from the nagging sounds of Jungkook.

But Jungkook is faster and he is itchy in his head the moment he sees the condition of your house. “Early, my ass. It’s evening, it's almost dusk. At what time you’re actually home?”

He climbed up the chair to smack the bottom of the hammock, hitting your butt as well. You yelped and flew out of it carelessly but managed to land on four on the floor. You fast reflexes woke you up. Wide awake.

“Fuck off!” You yelled at him.

“Poor Kitty, that trick works all the time.” Jungkook chuckles. “Now do something with your…” he sighs as his eyes caught a bunch of sparkles in the hammock. You're sleeping with jewelry, as usual “...house. Get up!” 

You love Jungkook, dearly. Best friend since highschool to be exact. He was the boy who was bullied and you’re the girl who saved the day. Just a cliche friendship trope. But really, the day you saved him was when you were too busy ‘pickpocketing’ Alex’s Superman watch as he was slamming Jungkook on the locker door. You accidentally twisted his arm and resulted in a serious pain for him and he released Jungkook. Ever since then Jungkook has followed you like a little duck.

Over the years of growing up together, both of you have been through so many hurdles and adventures. To this point, right now. He knows who you are, that's why he is special. You trusted him.

“How many times must I tell you? Trade them, cash them out for money, and we can eat grand food! Instead of weighing down your house with heavy golds and diamonds, why can't we just stuff our pitiful tummies with food?!” He nags as his busy hands are classing the clutter on the floor. You have a hoarding issue. 

“I love sparkling things, and you know that.” You pouted, with unruly hair, you're trying on a pearl necklace. Smirking at the sight in the mirror. Pulling up your hair, the necklace elongated your neck and they're just stunning! Mrs Kim knows how to live well, you sigh. His son will kill you if he finds out but nevermind.

“Why do I keep helping you to sort out your trash?!” Jungkook is inspecting a piece of painting. A big canvas of swirling colours. Jungkook doesn’t know much about art and he knows, so do you. It is a beautiful piece of art, and an expensive one.

“Really?! A Monet?! How do you even carry this!” He shouted, you winced at him but your hand was still clutching the pearls. A true picture of an aristocratic lady in a dramatic moment.

“Stop shouting!” 

“That’s it. I'm done. I'm done. No more stealing! Thieving! Next time you want something, think of a place to store them because this house is a second away from collapsing. And what that batman boyfriend of yours would think when he came over??” He babbles.

“Your mouth is moving too fast and I caught nothing.” You get up to palm your fist on his mouth. Jungkook is being too loud. You know what they say, ‘Speak of the devil and he will show up’ 

“Shut up Jungkook, he cannot catch me,” you whispered with wide eyes. Jungkook is smirking cheekily and you know it’s nothing good. 

Jungkook slaps your wrist and you let him. “Say that to this,” he fished out his phone from the back of his jeans. Swiping to find something before he yells out an Aha!

“Read!” He shoved the phone up to your face, with squinting eyes, you read the words.

“Tell her enough games, I'm coming over tonight.”

It was a message from Namjoon himself.

“You backstabbing shit! You motherfucker!” You jumped on his back, slapping his shoulders because not only Namjoon texted him but he exposed your little yet humble but also messy nest to him! You are a very territorial person. It is very unbearable to receive an unexpected visitor in your territory. You don’t like it. Simple. Not because you’re ashamed.

He lets out a boisterous laugh. “Watch out for the pearls!”

“No! How! Did! He! Know! My place?!” You emphasized on each word with a slap on his back.

“Well kitty, in case you forgot I walk in and out of his mansion everyday. I am his informant! The only person who knows his secret and yours. What do you expect?” Jungkook tried to pull you away from your body cage but he gave up. He walks to the kitchen with you still hanging on his back.

“Annoying. He is so annoying!” You grunt. “I was planning to steal a masquerade mask in the museum before his annoying ass shows up.” You whine in an unnecessary dramatic tone. 

Jungkook hums along as he pours down orange juice in a glass. “I know, I told him that too.”

“You little shit!” You karate chop Jungkook on his side neck, making him splutter out the juice. 

“Ugh!” Jungkook hunched down as the juice dripped from his chin to his beloved shirt. 

“You clean that up!” You jumped from his back and strutted down to the couch. Feeling satisfied seeing your friend in a mess. But the relieved feeling was a short one. The smug smile on your face slowly turns into a frown. Namjoon is coming and the thought of him makes you panic a little. 

“What is it that he wants this time,” you grumble. Furrowing your brows and crossing your arms on your chest. Very unamused of this situation. 

“Maybe an apology?” Suggested Jungkook. He has a good hearing and a very observant fella. 

“For what!” You barks. Jungkook raises his hands in peace. He knows better than to disturb the hissy cat.

“I don't know? Maybe because you bailed out on him when the two of you planned to ambush Bane?” Jungkook said with an unsure tone. Steadily scooches away from you. He doesn't want you to slap him again. You can be unpredictable and your moves are very agile. Jungkook shivers at the possibility of being scratched by you. He experienced it once before and nope, he is not trying his luck.

“I didn't leave him.” You mumble. Eyes casting down your toes. Wiggling them as a distraction method. “I was distracted.”

“Tell him your reason, on your own” Jungkook covers his ears as he prepares for another shout from you. He is a bit ashamed to admit that he flinched a little when you straightened your body.  

There’s nothing wrong in what Jungkook just said. 

“Namjoon is a nice dude, sometimes you’re the one who loves to tease him too much.” Jungkook adds. 

Now you're looking more like a scolded puppy instead of the feisty cat he usually knows. Jungkook likes it when he brings out Namjoon’s name to make you think rationally. Because that certain man always brings out this side soft, yet fierce of yours. He shakes his head with a smile on his face.

You're not replying. Instead you stand up to push Jungkook out of the house.

“Wait-” the door slammed on his face. 

“Ouch,” he mutters. “Call me if you need me. And clean your house! He's coming.” Jungkook reminds you again. He stepped out of the apartment complex by the back door, disappeared into the untangle maze of buildings with a bag that contained his green and black outfit. 

The robin is out to watch the city. Namjoon is counting on Jungkook to watch the day as he will be very ‘busy’.

“Open the door.” Namjoon no longer knocks as he said the words for the fifth time and yet the owner of the house is unbudged from the inside. He’s been standing at your door for half an hour now. He is a man of virtue and patience but he swears, you’re the only that pushes his button. He hates that he likes it.

You were sitting on the couch, with knees pressed to your chest. Unbothered. You want Namjoon to know that he has no effect on you at all. Despite not welcoming him to your house, the house is decently neat. The moment you pushed Jungkook out, you scrambled to clean the mess. In reality you just shoved all the jewelry in every cupboard you can find.

“Please,” his soft voice is melting you. How dare you Namjoon! You yelled to yourself.

“No.” Your voice, albeit soft, Namjoon can hear it just fine.

“Don't make me break the door, Kitten.” His dominating aura can be felt even if there's a thick door in between the two of you. You shudder at the thought of his face when he calls your pet name with that tone.

Almost mewling in surrender, you bite back your lips. Refusing to submit. You're the catwoman. The greatest, most flexible burglar, you cannot simply bend down to a man's will. 

“Fine,” Namjoon took one step back, his trench coat ruffled with his movements and your sharp ears caught that. Is he leaving already? You catwalking to the door. Being aware of making any sound. With every careful step you took, there’s not even a sound. Namjoon and Jungkook think you’re the most stealth person they know but they refuse to boost your ego. 

“I’ve warned you,” You heard the echo of his voice. So, you took another step. You were sure by the echo, Namjoon left the door. With confidence, your hands are on the door knob. Bracing yourself if he even tried to break the door. You will scratch his face if he destroys your door.

A silent. 

One beat, two beats. There's zero sounds beyond the door and you let out a sigh of relief. Though your face is frowning. He really did leave just like that?

“Really, Kitten? This is an old trick.” 

You screamed at the voice that was whispering close to your ear. 

“WHAT THE FU-” hand is on your chest as it heaves up and down. Panting from the shock. Your eyes trace behind him. The windows. 

“How the fuck do you even fit through the window, Namjoon?” With wide eyes you look back to him and the wide opened windows. The curtains are flowing when the wind blows. “Didn't you learn any basic human courtesy? Like, how you should behave when you're in someone's house? I pity Alfred. His poor soul has been teaching your sorry ass since you're a kid and this is how you act?!” You scoffed.

“Hush, kitten.” He sighs. Taking off his beige trench coat and throwing it out on the floor. Exposing his broad shoulder and chest with the tight turtleneck he's wearing. His bulging biceps are screaming, a stitch away to rip apart his top. Really? How did he even fit the window?! 

“Hush? You're in my house. You hush!” Hands on your hips. Ready to turn your back to open the door, expecting to kick him out. 

In a matter of seconds he slams his palm firmly on the wooden surface, not allowing you to open it.

“Don't you have anywhere else to go? Someone to save?” You gritted your teeth as you face him.

“Doesn't matter.” He crouched his insanely gorgeous tall figure to you as your whole body is pressed on the door. With his stunning face leaning closer and closer to yours. His perfect hair and his big hands are caging you. If you don't have a will in you, your knees will buckle down first. Weak kitty. 

“What matters right at this moment is, you,” his lips jutted out towards you, “pretty, cunning, and sly cat. You have an apology to make, kitten.” His nose is nuzzling on your neck with every description of you coming out from his mouth. 

You can feel a pathetic whimper at the end of your throat and you’re fighting it with everything that’s left in you to keep it at bay. Letting out a sound would make him win so you're biting your tongue. The pupils are shaking and expanding as your sense is heightened when he slowly circled his arm on your waist. Pushing himself a lot closer than before. Almost chest to chest.

“Hum? Cat got your tongue?” He chuckles at your stiffness. 

Like a flicker switched on, his words make you brazen up to fist his perfect hair, pulling him up from your neck to face you. Scratching your pointy nails on his scalp while your other hand is cupping his chin. The hissing sound, the satisfied grin and the way his eyes rolled back makes your thighs twitch. “Tsk, this batsy, batsy boy,” you lick on his cheek. 

“Nuh uh kitten, this is not your game anymore.” Namjoon snapped open his eyes and it's like two dark dark gazes swallowing your soul. He pulls you up and with an instinct you tighten your hold with your legs on his waist and arms on his neck with him slamming you back on the door.

“You left me, baby, how could you?” Instead of an accusing tone, the way Namjoon said them is so sultry. With his deep raspy voice. Getting braver now, his lips are on your neck. He bites and sucks ferociously. His big palm rubbing your side up and down, causing goosebumps at his electrifying touch, every damn time. 

“Nam- slow down, ahh!” Your arms and legs feel like jelly and they're fast to fall down from his body. But Namjoon will never let you fall. Bouncing you back, he grips hardly on your hips. He did not stop sucking and licking your neck. Definitely will leave some more marks, since the last ones are not faded yet. 

He is making sure you stay in position. By position, it’s your lower belly snuggling his crotch area, already feeling the hardening of the other big body part of his. His lips are attacking yours now. Swallowing the sinful sounds you make. Oh, he won.

“So pretty, you always sound so pretty for me Kitten,” he breathes in between kisses. 

You're catching your breath after he kept sucking your breath out of your lungs. Your thighs are trembling at the feeling of that hard thing that is poking your lower stomach. Someone’s clearly excited.

“Joon,” you mewled. 

“I almost beat Bane to death, baby. All because I was furious you left me in the sewer. You are a mean woman.” He spanked and squeezed your ass and the act jolted you up. 

“Thank god Jungkook came and took over. Bane would've been dead instead of going to the Gotham prison. All because of you.” Another spank and this time he kneaded your ass. If you didn’t know any better, you’d say your ass is his stress relief ball. 

You giggle at the thought and the sound brings another glimmer to Namjoon's eyes. You sure are his death. An anti-heroine who rejoices in other people's agony.

“Aww you're a sweet little saint aren't you. Couldn't kill a soul,” you fake pouted at him. Though your entire face is clearly heated up from his ministrations.

Chuckling, Namjoon bites your earlobe. “Yes, baby. Though I shall never kill, I can make your pussy stings.” He whispered. The hair on your body all rises up at his words.

With your body being supported by the door, he sneaks one hand inside your thin, tight shirt. Namjoon almost drools like a dog in heat when he sees you wearing such a sinfully thin shirt and a boy short. Your attire accentuates your perfect figure. Your round ass, the tits. God, your perky tits.

“I’ve been dying to touch these pretty tits. I can see them jiggle when you get so worked up just now. Driving me nuts.” he mumbles. 

“Oh no! You’ve been staring at a lady, what a bad role model!” You fake gasp. You know he’s coming so there’s no point in wearing something that restricts him from seeing you clearly.

He sucks and bites even harder with a growl and your neck is blossoming with red like cherries. You winced at the slight pain but soon it washed away. Rubbing your thighs together for friction, hoping for him to not notice that you are reaching your patience limit. 

He did notice how your pretty legs tremble and the way you’ve been rubbing your thighs, yearning for friction for your pussy. He silently cheered for himself at that sight. This sly kitty is about to become putty in his hand, again, 

Namjoon feels that this is not enough, so he carries you to your table. His impatient hand started to push away all of the stuff on it, while his other hand is holding you up securely. 

Not allowing him to conquer you, you lick his neck. His legs stiffen when you sink your teeth on his skin. You know really well of his soft spot. 

“Ah, baby. I haven’t put you down yet,” Namjoon sighs. His tone is darker now. He’s trying hard to control it but his dick is begging for a sweet, tight and slick pressure. As if you can read his mind, you’re slowly palming his clothed dick. A pure torture to Namjoon.

“Put me down, now, or I will keep teasing you like this.” you command. Giving his ear a lick.

But Namjoon refused to lose. He grabs your waist with his big arms, sliding you on the table until your legs are dangling at the edge of it. His action excites you but where’s the fun in giving up first?

“Mr batman, do you wanna fuck me that bad?” You pout. Pushing his buttons is the best. Namjoon has this gentleman facade that he has to take care of. During the day, he is the most respected man in the city, at night, he is the hero. Usually the hero will give you an eye roll and ignore you. 

This time, there’s no eye roll from him, not even a sound. Only his labored breaths, his eyes are hazy with lust. “Yeah, I do,” he breathes.

The unexpected answer from him caught you. 

Pulling down your shorts, Namjoon is on his knee. Like the knight in shining armor, his eyes fixed on the prize, your pussy. It’s almost shameful to be in this position, with his breath fanning your hole and it would have been great if he played with it but he is just staring.

“Such a glorious cunt,” he whispered under his breath. His voice brings chills to both your body and your pussy. 

Your eyes never leave him. How can you, when all you can see is his luscious hair in between your legs. You want to tease again. He looks so focused and so cute.

“If you only gonna stare, might as well go home,” you cheekily said. One hand palming your cunt. Covering him off his best view. That kinda pushed him.

You know Namjoon is a buff guy, you just never realize how buff he actually is until he looms over your body. He propped up both of your legs over his shoulders. He inches closer until you swear you can feel his bulge. You like it when he’s like this.

“That’s not nice,” he tutted. He took your hand, the one that covered your privates and he brought it to his cheek. Leaving a soft kiss on your palm. “Now, will you be a dear, and use these fingers to touch yourself,” he commanded.

“No, why would I?” You tilted your head to your side while biting your lips.

“Or, you'd rather me to do it, but you’re just too shy to ask, hum?” Namjoon chuckled. He thinks he already got you soft. He gave another kiss on your palm before he put it down. Now his hand is slowly caressing your bare pussy. Luckily for him, you’re already wet. 

“Answer me,” he said as he ran his two fingers on your folds. A fluttering feeling but it already makes your body twitch. “Someone’s excited,” Namjoon said with his mouth close to your legs. Even if you wanted to show your dominance, your body seems to betray you. He notices the goosebumps on your delicate skin, he can help but to leave trails of kisses until he is a little too close to your pussy.

“Just touch me already!” You bark.

“As you wish,” he smirks.

He puts his middle finger inside your warm pussy. Namjoon is too ashamed to admit how your wet velvet walls feel like a home to him and that is just his finger. He moves his finger in and out very languidly. He stares at your moves in relief. As if this is what you need. And he wanted more. So, he picks up a pace and starts pumping in two fingers inside you. The room is filled with the squelching sound and the muffling moan from you. He thinks it’s such a shame when you suppress your voice. He wants to hear you scream for him.

You on the other hand are becoming a mess. His elongated fingers hit your spot so perfectly. It is embarrassing to succumb like this, especially on his hand. He really knows how to touch you. Although you wanna act all tough, your body says otherwise. From the way your pussy keeps clenching on his digits, shamelessly gushing out your wetness, to your writhing body, lost pleasure. This game is not over yet, you thought. You still have a chance to dominate him.

“Ah Namjoon, you’ve been practising?” You breathe. Actually he is the one who is taking your breath away with the thrust of his finger. It didn’t help when Namjoon made a come-hither movement in your pussy. You wish to cover your face. It only satisfied him to the moon to see you grimace in lust. The knitted brows, the gaping mouth, and your eyes. Your lustful eyes never lie.

“Why? Is this the first time a guy fingered you so well?” Namjoon retorted back. 

“Cocky.” You bite back. 

“Uh oh, someone’s mad.” Namjoon teases. The pushes from his finger did not stop with his knuckles deep inside of you and he topped it off by rubbing his big thumb on your clit. Your body trashes at the overwhelming feeling. He managed to shut you up with your witty words. He loves this feeling, when he can make you scream just by using his hand.

“Yes! Nggh,” you groan. The band snapped and unbeknownst to you, Namjoon was awestruck. 

The gush released from your pussy drenched his fingers and it dripped on the palm of his hand. Looking at you, hair sprawling on the table, thighs quivering and your laboured breath. Your face is glowing. Namjoon is dying to fuck you right here and now. 

Just before he can do anything, you beat him to it. 

Sitting up straight, your hands are busy unbuckling his belt. You know it's your chance when Namjoon straightens his body right after you cum. From the look from his eyes, deep and dark. Namjoon is not going to stop there. He wants it too but you are gonna give it to him on your own terms. 

“Not so fast, batman.” You whispered to his ear. The bodies are so close together, almost chest to chest. It drove both of you insane but you bask in torturing him. Your left hand is caressing his cheek. Feeling soft underneath your touch. He must’ve shaved before he came here, your heightened sense of smell caught a whiff of his cologne and you’re cheering from the inside. You noticed Namjoon makes himself handsome before meeting you. Always. 

Right hand is slowly touching his muscular body. From the firm pectoral muscles - which makes you salivate- to his sturdy abdomen. Your fast hand sneaks inside his tight turtleneck shirt. Feeling every ridges and the bumpy muscles. Your eyes are locked on his face. To search for any emotions or reactions from your touch. He usually is very stoic and very dominant. It's not fair sometimes, when he melts you into a puddle. So, you want to do that to him. Melts. You lightly teased and pinched his nipple. 

To your surprise, he groaned. Body tightened at the sudden pressure.

His face is blushed and you can see how he struggles to control his face. His forehead is scrunched and his eyes are shut. Feeling the reaction was too small for you. You keep on moving downwards. Guiding your hand to his happy trail before settling on his bulging pants. 

The one that’s been poking you from the beginning. Paying extra attention to it, you slightly rub your palm around it. You know his size but it always excites you.

You’re not the only one who is excited, it seems. Namjoon is putting both of his hands at your side, gripping the table as if it anchors him down before he drowns even further. Your touch is so electrifying. Your delicate hand trailing from his chest, his nipples, his whole body and a little scratch from your fingers are to die for. He is a weak man for you.

“Not so cocky now, huh?” You chuckled. Your hand is busy playing with his hard cock, up and down. By unbuckling his belt, it provides you more space to play. You don’t know what got into him but you wanted to keep teasing him more. This is fun.

“Dick already this hard, must have been painful, huh?” You cheekily pouted. Already imagining his answer. 

“Touch it.”  He commanded and you grinned like a Cheshire cat. Unwilling to give him what he wants, just yet, you choose to play coy.

“Where’s the fun? If I give you what you want?” You asked. Shrugging your shoulders and acting like you don’t care. You let go of the hand that grips his dick and Namjoon almost whines at the loss of your touch. He was almost bursting when he saw you unravel with his fingers and with your playful touch on his hardened dick. To be deprived of you is like a punch to his gut.

It has been awhile since the two of you were in this position. Truth is, Namjoon missed you. And you know how to make a guy, even the strongest ones, weak on their knees. The thing with you, you are quite literally a cat. Nobody can hold you down. The moment he thinks you’ll stay longer at his manor, you’re gone. Strutting through the street, getting yourself in danger. 

Namjoon doesn’t have to worry about you, but he can’t ignore the nagging voice in his head. What if something happened to you? What if you get in trouble? What if he couldn’t be there on time? Love is a wild thing. 

If it’s up to his possessive instinct, he’d put you in a luxurious cage. Safe and sound. But who is he kidding? This is The Catwoman. The same woman that always shows up earlier than him at any crime scene. The same woman who knows the narrow streets, the nook and cranny of Gotham because you love to wander around. The one he first met years ago on a yacht that holds a handful of elite people related to Kim's business. 

You were very fast and agile, buglaring some of the passengers' jewelry and expensive belongings. Namjoon is just lucky enough to catch you red-handed. When he unmasked you, he was sure that was when he fell for you. Or maybe when he saw first-hand you were in hand-to-hand combat with the bad guy. Also, you’re a master at flirting.

What started as him catching you and cooperating with you, turns to sharing a bed with you. It has been awhile since you left his manor, sulking because he stopped you from stealing a huge diamond cut on an old crown from the museum. The shimmering stone has bewitched you for quite some time and Namjoon was there first. Protecting it. Mission unaccomplished. So you left his big ol house.

“You know what, I’m getting bored. If you’re gonna daydream, go home.” You fake a yawn. 

“Really? Let me check,” Namjoon eyebrows twitched up. Unamused. He gently pushed you back on the table. “Enough game, just wanna be inside you,” he adds. He took off your tee in one swift motion, and instantly placed his hand on your perky tits. Kneading the soft tissue. 

“Ahh that’s more like it,” you sigh.

Namjoon didn’t reply with words. He turns to one of your nipples and starts sucking on it like a starved man. He hums in joy when he gets to taste your skin like this. Waves of sensations are crashing on you as he paid attention to your other nipples. He licks and laps and sucks on the skin around your nipples. Every time his nose brushed with your sensitive nipples, your body jolted. 

“This is for your tease just now,” he mumbles as lightly bites on the hardened bud. Earning a short scream, from you.

“That really hurt!” You smacked on his bare body. You have no idea when he took his shirt off. 

“Don’t pout, baby. You like it when it hurts,” Namjoon cooed while aligning his stiff dick to your entrance. For someone who said it will hurt, he sure does take his sweet, sweet time to fuck you.

You, on the other hand, are very impatient. “C’mon darling,” you said with a sultry voice, inciting him to just ram his dick into you. Your dangling legs are now hugging him, your heels planted to his firm buttocks, pushing him straight into you. 

“Easy, love” Namjoon chuckled. You’re like a cat in heat and Namjoon secretly loves it. In one swift movement, he slotted deep inside your warm pussy. It’s been a really long time for him. Apparently to you too.

“Ahhh, see how perfectly your dick fits in my pussy, it’s like we’re meant to be,” you joke. Namjoon didn’t laugh, instead he picked up the pace. The longer he stays inside of your pulsating pussy, he will blow his load right now. Scratch that. Seeing how good he makes you feel right now, makes him wanna cum.

Your lean legs around his waist are somehow limiting his movement and that’s bothered him, so he hooks your legs on his arms. With one quick thrust all at once, you can see how focused Namjoon is. His eyes can’t get enough from looking at how his dick pistoning in and out of your pussy, fully coated with your juice. The sound of the squelching and the skins slapping mixed with your moans is what he lived for. Hero? The knight? Those names are out the window. He is no saint.

“Not so bored now, huh?” He asked.

There’s nothing you can say back when moan after moan escapes your lips.

Namjoon steals a glance or two at you and god, he loves it when he can make you become a mess. You threw your head back with the satisfied emotions written all over your face. Your arms are above your head as you grip the edge of the table. Your nails are gonna be fucked but who cares?Namjoon loves this view, your exposed body and your bouncy tits and your fucked face. It is as if this is something that you crave for too long, and he’s the one that delivers it to you. The table is shaking violently but neither of you care. His hand firmly grips on your thigh and you counter it back by clenching hard on his dick. That elicited a suppressed groan from him.

You like him so much. His bigger build towering over you like this, him taking full control when fucking you — not all the time, because that’s not fun, and you love controlling him too — he fucks so good when he’s desperate like this. You feel the band around your lower belly is about to snap and Namjoon can tell by how your back started to arch and the throaty moans that come from you. He sneaks his thumb to the bud on your pussy mound and starts to rub circles on it. The waves of simulations crash you down. 

“God, you’re killing me,” he groaned. Your pussy wall is tight like a vice, and it keeps sucking him in. It is almost slippery. “Such a greedy cunt,” he adds. Some of his hair is sticking to his sweaty forehead, and you can see from the muscle on his neck and his clenched jaw that he is so determined to fill you to the brim. Looking at your orgasmic face is certainly not helping, so he hides his face on your neck.

“In me, cum in me,” you command. Your flexible legs are suddenly on his waist again, securing him closer as if he is not balls deep enough inside of you. “I’m on pills,” you whispered to his ears. He picked up the pace as he gripped on to the flesh of your ass. You felt him fumbling the rhythm with his grip on your ass, leaving marks as he thrusted inside for the last time. Ribbons of cum painting your pulsating walls. 

He let out a long pant and gently released his grasp on you. He raised his head to look at you and you can a cocky smirk across his face at your fucked out expression. His dick is still warm and snuggled inside you.

“Fine, you won this time,” you rolled your eyes at his smug face. You winced a little when he pulled out his coated dick and he grabbed a roll of tissues from the kitchen before he wiped you clean. Once you’re clean, he can’t stop himself from kissing you while putting on your shirt. Of course you kissed him back as your hand is busy rubbing the back of his head. A silent pat that you’re kinda missing him too. 

The sudden sound of police siren and gunshot stopped the two of you. Naturally, Namjoon carries you to the opened window. Glancing down he can see two to three police cars, blaring their sirens as blue and red coloured the road. You’re looking up and the bat sign is already flashed up in the sky. 

“Oh baby, it’s work time. Shall we?” Namjoon rubs your back, eyes bore on you as the moonlight makes your face glow so beautifully. He fell once again by the way your eyes stare at his signs in the sky and the smirks on your face. Namjoon can never be sure about the look of this face. It’s like you’re so proud of him but it also could be your mischievous look as if someone just said “playtime”. Whichever it is, Namjoon is smitten. 

“See you there, batsy,” you whispered before you backflipped from his hold. All this time you could’ve easily gotten out of his hold. Namjoon shakes his head at the sudden escape of yours. Sly kitten!

“Maybe we can have a second round there!” you shouted.

“Yeah, yeah” Namjoon replied, only to himself. He knows there’s nothing stopping you from what you want. His heart with a claw-shaped marks is beating alive.

Namjoon touched the pocket of his coat and was relieved that you didn’t notice the box inside of it. You have a very good instinct especially for jewelry. Before he’s done, he has to make sure the box that contains the very diamond from the crown — the one that you wanted to steal so much — is secure. 

He bought the diamond at the highest bid only to place it on top of the band of a ring. Your betrothal ring. 

Namjoon rushed to his bat mobile, all suited up. There's a particular woman waiting for him, you. You stolen jewels, secrets, and even his heart, but as the first light of dawn touched Gotham, all he could do was smile—because you always gave him a reason to chase.

[seeingivy]

ribbons release

actor eren x f!reader

**part of my method acting series

content: happiness for once. until it is not. ronnie's love for foreshadowing strikes again.

an: not a fan of this chapter, but we digress. read it and do not kill me if you don't like it.

song: not explicitly mentioned, but this chapter reminds me of about you by the 1975. ratty healy, I hate you but you ate on this one thing.

previous part linked here

--

“I ju-just sent my loc-location, Eren.” 

“I got it, Y/N. I just need you to hold on for ten more minutes, okay? Can you do that for me?” 

“Y-yes.” 

Seattle is famous for rain. You understand that all too well now. After what you’ve counted as twenty-seven minutes - from when you went to take the trash out to the mailpost you’re hiding behind now - you’re all but soaked. Drenched. 

Your phone is blowing up with texts, the rain is only getting harder, and the mini black dress and ribbon in your hair do no favors to keep you warm. You slide out of your call with Eren and quickly scan through the messages, buzzing so loud they’re blocking Eren’s voice. 

reiner: so, so proud of you always!!! stop being a big famous pop star and go back to being the little twerp who needs my help killing spiders on set :/ 

levi: I love you too, kid. And on a real listen, we really do love the album. 

armin: ann and i are smelling a triple threat on the horizon. love you to the moon and saturn <3

connie: i was accidentally pooping while i listened to dorothea for the first time and i think the combination of those two things at once gave me like a really visceral reaction. im not ok. u are amazing. 

mikasa: u are givg me aneurysm. pls don’t forgor to call me the scnd ur okay. 

erwin: Call me ASAP. 

erwin: Not urgent. Just feeling emotional about my little Canadian reaching hearts all over the world. 

king of bitches (maybe: ryomen sukuna): Fluff shit indeed. Blow me a kiss when you beat James for Album of the Year. 

danny: where is the album release post? it’s almost been half an hour. 

You have bigger problems at the moment. Like the frozen piece of fabric you’re wearing. You should have named the album sweaters or scarves or something. Then at least you’d be warm. And blend in with the paparazzi. 

Fuck.

“W-wait, Eren. Y-you ca-n’t b-be the one to get me.” you murmur, shivering through your teeth.

“Do you want to stay with someone else? I know nice people here. My neighbor is in her late forties and has like two middle school aged girls that are really nice. They’d take care of you, I promise you can trust them and-” he rambles. 

“N-no. I want to st-stay with you. But pa-papara-zzi. S-send ss-omeone e-else.” 

“Paparazzi? Why are-?” 

“Er-eren.” 

“Would it be that bad if it was me? Like it has to be someone else, Y/N?” 

“Y-yes.” 

“I have someone in mind. She’s leaving right now, okay?” 

Eren’s sound is muffled over the line now, which has you digging your phone into your ear to catch the ends of what he’s saying. 

Blast the heater….butt warmer on before she’s in the car….bring it up and I will kick your freeloading….

“Y/N?” 

“H-here.” 

“Good. I’m sending her. Don't get upset, this is the best I could do, okay? I-I promise she’s actually nice. You can trust her and-and I’d never send someone who would do something bad.”  

“O-okay. I t-trust you. J-just get me ou-out of th-this, please.” you whimper, praying to god the rustling behind you is a rabbit and not the group of them finding you. 

“I’m trying sweetheart, okay? She’s speeding. She’s on Main and Third, three lights and she’s there.” 

That’s when you see it. The flash of the camera. And hear five consecutive clicks right after. You look around the periphery, before you see two of them, two tall guys speed walking closer to where you’re hiding. 

So you do the only thing you can. Stand up and run instead. 

You scramble up off the pavement, hiking your dress down, and keep running down the block. Climb up the gates, knock over trash cans to block the way, anything to stop them. And when you look back, after who knows how long, you realize they’re gone. 

And sit flat on the messy pavement, finally lifting the phone back up. Only to realize Eren’s no longer on the line because your phone is dead. You drop it straight into your lap and dig your hands into your head, covering your ears to stop the pounding sound of the rain from getting any louder. 

God. Just breathe. Whoever is coming to get you is on the way. They’ll come get you and then you’ll be out of this mess. 

You hear three resounding clicks and a flash of a light to look up at two different paps, two girls this time, getting a straight on picture of you. And all you can do is put your head down in your lap and cry. 

They already got the picture. There’s no point in trying to run out of it anymore. 

“Y/N.” 

“Pl-please. I’m b-begging you. You already got your picture and can ss-spin it into whatever you want. I-I’m still a person, please. Just let me go.” you respond, the tears blinding your sight of vision. 

You feel a towel being wrapped around your shoulders and soft hands lifting you up by your arms. And then all of a sudden you’re in a warm car, being sped out of the neighborhood past the groups of paparazzi in between the houses, and not directly across from them having your picture taken. 

You’re in a car. You’re okay. You’re leaving. You’re okay. 

You lean back and breathe hard, phantom sobs still racking out of your chest, trying to register that you’re almost there. Safe behind closed, triple locked doors. 

“D-did you tell Eren?” 

“Yes. He’s not far, we’ll be there soon, okay?” 

“Okay. T-thank you. I’m Y/N.” 

“Lana.” 

You turn your head to actually take in the driver this time, to be met with the Lana you feared. Ricky’s ex-girlfriend, Lana. She has short brown hair - entirely different from her long, beachy waves from the Girlfriend incident - a pointed nose and a very clenched jaw. 

“Th-there are more blankets on the floor. I pumped the heater pretty hard, but I’ll turn all the fans your way. And anything you could possibly need is being rushed to the house for you, so just don’t worry, okay?” 

“I appreciate it. Thank you for coming to get me. I-I” 

“Please don’t thank me. I just-” 

She takes a harsh intake of breath and turns to give you a look, her mouth upturned. 

“He locked you out, didn’t he?” she whispers. 

“Yeah.” you respond. 

“What did you do?”

“I told him I didn’t like him back.” 

She turns her head towards you, a look of confusion on her face. 

“It was a PR thing.” 

She snorts. 

“Your managers must hate you.” 

“I’m starting to think they just might.” 

“Well. Don’t feel bad. Not for a fucking second. Just because he likes you, doesn’t mean he’s entitled to you reciprocating back. You like who you like. And if I were you, I wouldn’t stop liking a guy like Eren for a skeeze like Ricky either.” 

You lean against the glass, hot air blowing in your face, as you take in her expression - so enraged, so exasperated, so furious that it gives you a chill. But when she looks over and gives you a halfhearted smile, you see the pained expression there too. 

That’s when you pinpoint it. Lana reminds you of Historia. 

“I’m sorry.” you respond. 

“For?” 

“You knew he locked me out. He must have done it to you too, no?” you whisper, the tension in the air delicate. 

She swallows hard and clenches her knuckles on the steering wheel, eyes laser focused on the red light shining on her face. And beyond the original striking features - her sharp jaw and nose - you see the softness too. The dimples, the wrinkles near her eyes, the light brown freckles. 

“I wanted to take time off from acting. It-I did a role that was really traumatic and I just needed a break. And he was just about to go on tour and he wanted me to come to support. Like a little cheerleader.” 

“So he locked you out?” 

“For two days. He-he’s just. A lot of the fame stuff got to him when he was really little. And now he’s got this convoluted sense of self-image and it just- I don’t know. He’s got problems.” she responds. 

“I’m sorry. Really, that’s-” 

You stop talking, words failing you. And maybe it’s the way your head was frozen ten minutes ago and it’s being melted now, or that the picture they took is going to leak soon, or that there is no good thing to say to something shitty like this. It only took him three months to turn on you, which you’re guessing is generous now. She must have infinite patience for putting up with it for an entire year. 

“In a weird way, I’m glad it’s me and not Eren. You- this does something for me. Making sure you’re not out there for two days, it-it helps me.” she whispers, looking over to give you a smile. 

“I really appreciate you, Lana. Thank you. And I-I’m not mad at you for the Girlfriend thing. You had every right to do that.” 

“Y/N. I have every right to drag Ricky James’ name through the mud. But not yours. And I- shit. Please don’t tell Eren we talked about this. He’s going to kill me.” 

“Why?” 

“He told me that if I brought it up, he’d kick me out of his house. I kind of stay there because I-I hate living in our townhouse on set because of how toxic it is and he was nice enough to offer. And he made it very clear that I have to pick you and make sure you’re okay, not make you uncomfortable or anything. We’re here to take care of you and-” 

“I brought it up. I’ll deal with him if he gives you a hard time. I used to be really good at that type of thing.” 

“I know for a fact that you could tell him to twirl in the air like a show pony and he’d do it.”

“I’ll test the theory and let you know.” 

She laughs, giving you a smile which you warmly return. Your phone buzzes in your lap, finally revived, and you send a quick message to Mikasa and Jean before shutting it off. 

“I-I didn’t know that it was going to go that far. I knew the song and that we were just going to sing it. Let people speculate it was about you. I-I didn’t know they’d have a girl who looked like you OR bring Eren up on stage. And Eren didn’t know anything about the song or the performance at all - they, they set him up.” 

“Why would they do that? I mean, they got horrible backlash in the entire thing.” 

“They thought people would like it. And they severely underestimated how much people love you. And they did it because, Eren- he. He doesn’t follow rules and-” 

“Follow rules?” 

“I’m saying too much. He-he’s going to get mad. Ju-just rest, okay? You’re okay now, we’re two minutes from the neighborhood..”  

You give her a questioning look, which she returns with a dismissive shake. Stubborn - she’s Historia alright. You lean back in the chair and reach for the music nob, twisting it on. Only to be met with the Teletubbies Theme blasting through the car and a very flustered Lana turning the knob off. 

“Fuck.” 

“Teletubbies?”

“I-I can explain.” 

“Please. I’d love to hear it.” 

She drums her fingers on the steering wheel as the silence hangs in the air. 

“Okay. Maybe I can’t explain.” 

“No need. I appreciate versatile music taste in prospective friends. Especially classics like this.” you respond, cranking the music back on. 

“Friends?” 

“Don’t be silly. Not exaggerating, but I think you quite literally saved my life a few minutes ago. You’re like the La-La to my Dipsy.” 

“Lame. You’re more of a Tinky-Winky. And anytime. We girls stick together, right?” she responds, reaching for your hand and giving it a squeeze. Like Eren. 

Did she learn the hand squeezes from Eren? Is he squeezing her hands? They live together so …are they dating? 

“We’re here.” 

You nod, appreciative of Lana more than maybe any person on god's green Earth, as she pulls into the driveway and helps you out of the car. It’s only after sitting that you’re realizing your legs are so bone dead tired that you’re barely moving on your own. 

You move past the hood of the car as Eren walks into the garage, immediately beelining towards you. His hair is long again - it’s always changing every time you see him - and he’s all wound up with tensions sitting in his shoulders. His hands are warm and cupping your face, yanking the cold towel off and replacing it with a warm one. 

“Hey. You-you nicked your face, Y/N. And you’re freezing, you-” he whispers, brushing his fingers across the skin near your eye that stings on touch. 

Lana holds the door open as he leads you in, arms aggressively moving up and down your shoulders and his face all pinched up in concern. 

“You’re good to go? I put your stuff out by the door.” Eren says, gesturing to Lana. 

“Is she leaving?” you ask, looking up at Eren. 

“Yeah. Don’t worry, it’ll be just us. And I’m sure Mika and Jean will drop everything to fly out for you tomorrow, I can tell them if you need me to and-” 

“Well, don’t make her leave. She shouldn’t stay on that stupid set just because of me.” you respond. 

Eren looks over and glares at Lana, who is now wide eyed and giving Eren a sheepish smile. Fuck. He asked her not to talk about that. 

“Lana.” he says, in a warning tone. 

“Eren. Chill out. I didn’t even-” 

“You’re so full of yourself, you know that? You- she got drenched and the rain and you were talking about set?”

“It’s not like that! It just came up and-” 

“Oh, for sure. You just happened upon it like you were a villager walking in a town square. Ooh Y/N. You just got drenched in the rain and chased by paparazzi, but more importantly, the girls I work with are super bitchy.” he responds, mimicking her voice. 

“You-it wasn’t like that! You’re so aggravat-” 

“Eren. Leave her alone.” you ask, looking up at him. And you’re sure you must look horrible because he immediately stops when he looks at your face again and signals for her to leave, which she’s receptive to. 

“Okay. Lana, text me when you’re there. And check if you were followed on your way out.” Eren says. 

Lana stops and holds both of your arms at your biceps, hands soft on your skin. 

“Do call me if you need anything, okay? Especially Ricky related. Whatever you do, I’ll back you up, Tinky-Winky. ” 

“Thank you, La-La. I’ll take you up on that.” you respond, giving her a warm smile. 

“Oh god. No. No, you don’t get to be friends now. Fuck no, Lana. Please stick to the geriatric grandmas you play Scrabble with.” 

“You’re just mad they beat you at mahjong last week. Because you’re a prissy loser.” 

“And you’re-” 

You jab Eren in the side, signaling him to stop, as they both nod and she slides her way out. From the way he’s arguing, the look on his face is so similar to the one he gives Connie when they argue, you know they could go on for years if they got the chance. 

“Fuck you, Eren.” 

“Eat shit, Lana.” 

She flips him off as the door clicks shut behind her, the lack of her presence making you suddenly aware of your breaths. And of Eren, warm Eren rubbing into your shoulders and concerned green eyes staring into yours. 

“I like her.” you whisper. 

“Me too. Don’t tell her that though, she’s got an ego problem.” he responds.  

You laugh, which has him smiling at you, and suddenly you’re sobbing. And on cue, Eren has his arms around you, his touch warm and his voice oh so soft that it kills you. That you haven’t seen him in two months. And haven’t talked to him for longer. 

“Eren.” 

“Hey, hey. Don’t cry, it-it’ll be okay. I- we’ll fix this, okay? I’ll call Levi and Hange, whoever you want, they’ll all come and-” 

You reach up, tangling your arms around his neck as he keeps nervously talking, trying to hold you closer even though it’s not physically possible. And he’s just so- 

So familiar that he feels like home. 

“You’re breaking my heart here, Y/N. Please stop crying, I-I’ve got you, okay?” he murmurs, straight into your skin as you nod, trying your best to even out the sobs still leaving you. And slowly but surely, the stream slows and your breath evens out enough to get at least a few words out. 

“Okay. Okay, okay. I’m okay.” 

“Y/N?” 

“Hm?” 

“As much as I like holding you, you’re freezing. Take a shower first and we can do this all you want, okay?” 

You pull back, wiping the tears off your cheeks and giving him a nod. He gives you a small smile, before placing his hands on your shoulders and leading you down towards the bathroom. And you don’t miss all the posters and pictures he has on his walls - one from each season of Attack of Titan, a few of him and Armin, and even one of him and Lana flipping off the camera together. 

He pushes you into the bathroom and immediately turns on the shower all the way to the hottest setting, before turning around and putting his hands on his hips. 

“Towels, clothes, shampoo. There’s soap in there already and take as long as you want. Sit in here for three days if you have to just- do-do whatever you have to do and-” 

You pick up the bottle of shampoo, the lavender scented Pantene, the one that you’ve been using since you were fifteen. And you know, you know that Eren’s atrocious ass uses a three in one hair and conditioner so it’s not his. 

“Eren.” 

“Hm?” 

“Did you just happen to have the brand of shampoo that I use?” 

“N-no. Those are Lana’s.” 

“Then why are they unopened?” you ask, giving him a smirk. 

He glares at you, before rolling his eyes and holding your face. And now he’s leaning so close, so close that your lips are only a few feet away from yours, when he talks. 

“You know why you can’t make fun of me for keeping a spare of your shampoos in my house?” he whispers, green eyes burning in yours. 

“Why?” you whisper back, stomach lurching. 

“Because you’re actually here. I knew you’d come back to me.” he responds, giving your cheek a pinch before walking out. 

And when you watch him walk out, giving you one last smile before he shuts the door, you can’t help but roll your eyes. Typical Eren. Funny, irritating, and soft all in one. 

He’s the same as you left him. 

--

You pad out of the shower, Eren’s hoodie and sweatpants ridiculously huge on you, as you follow the sweet smell into the kitchen. Eren is leaned over the counter, sliding vegetables into two bowls of ramen as you walk in. 

“Hey.” 

“Hi. Took a while. Thought you died in there.” Eren responds, pressing his hands to your skin to test how warm they were. 

“I almost wish I did.” you respond, laughing. 

Except Eren doesn’t find it funny and instead he’s dropping the utensils and standing at your side. 

“Y/N.” 

“I was joking!” 

“Nothing about that was funny. Don’t ever joke about that.” he responds, rummaging through the drawers at your side before pulling out a little tube of gel. 

Eren taps the top of the counter, which you jump onto, before he takes his place in between your legs. His hands are focused on reading the instructions, forehead all scrunched up in concentration.

“What’s that?” 

“It’s like this…scar ointment or whatever. Helps things heal better, I want to use it on that cut on your pretty face.” he responds, twisting it open and squirting some on his finger. 

He brings his hands to your face, eyes intently focused on your cheek. You hiss the second his finger makes contact with your skin, the tingling sensation catching you off guard. 

“I’m sorry sweetheart, I know it hurts.” he whispers, smothering the cold gel down the side of your eye. 

“I-I fell on the pavement. My knees are pretty bad too, Eren.” you whisper, which he nods at. 

After he finishes, he’s carefully sliding the ends of your pants off and carefully placing the ointment on each of the jagged marks on your legs. And you eye the bowls of ramen at your side - knowing instantly that the one without mushrooms is yours - and reach for the food. The broth is so warm it soothes the aching feeling in your throat, still seasoned to perfection the way Eren always makes it. 

“Eren.” 

“Hm?” 

“Can I ask you a weird question?” 

“Sure.” 

“Are you and Lana dating?” 

He looks up from your leg and gives you a devilish smirk. And then starts laughing. Like full on, crouched over, tears from his eyes laughing.  

“Okay. It wasn’t that funny.” you murmur, rubbing your hands against the warm bowl and frowning. 

“Oh god, Y/N. Jesus-” 

“It’s a normal question! She lives with you, you trusted her to come get me, and you guys have a picture together in the hallway.” 

“Are you jealous?” he asks, standing up and leaning straight into your space. 

“Absolutely not.” 

“Are too.” 

“Am not.” 

“You don’t need to get all embarrassed. Watching you kiss Ricky James made me want to break something, preferably his neck.” 

You swallow hard at the mention of Ricky again, the thought of him and what happened was so far away because you were with Eren. In his space, in your shared bubble, after so long. And he catches on too fast because he’s already profusely apologizing. 

“Hey. I didn’t mean to bring him up, I-I’m not trying to push you into telling me what happened it’s just-” 

“No. No, Eren. It’s okay. I know. I-” 

You breathe in hard and put the bowl of ramen down and reach for his hands instead. You keep your eyes focused on them - on the little mole on his left hand, the feeling of his knuckles underneath your fingers, and on him squeezing your hands three times before you start talking.  

“Ricky and I were faking the relationship for PR. Since London Boy and all that, it was Danny and Sareen’s idea. That-that’s why I stopped talking to you, I-I felt bad. And I was ashamed that I was even doing it, I-I don’t know. The Little Women press and all that, it would just get people to stream and talk. Make me a triple threat. And then today, I- He told me he liked me. And I said I couldn’t do that right now. That I don’t like him back. I went to take out the trash because it was so awkward and then I was going to go home but he- he locked me out. And when I asked to come back in, he repeated the same words to me. That he couldn’t do that right now.” 

Eren lifts your hands, still locked with his, and presses a kiss to the top of your knuckles, as you continue. His lips burn your skin, still. 

“I was out there and it-it was cold. And then I heard the cars and I saw seven paparazzi trucks, right on the porch. Ricky, his address isn’t leaked. No-no one knew I was there or that he was but they all showed up, right when I was out there and-” 

“He called them, didn’t he?” Eren asks, his tone so harsh, so unyielding that it almost doesn’t sound like him. 

“Yeah. And I ran, for so long. I- they got a picture. A few, I know they did and I was just so, so scared that I was going to be out there forever, that I was all alone and they were just going to-” 

Eren reaches forward, wrapping you in his arms for what feels like the fiftieth time tonight, but you welcome it. Focus on his heart beating under your ear, running your fingers over his fish tattoo on his bicep, and on his soft, steady breaths. 

“Eren.” 

“Hm.” 

“You didn’t say anything. What are you thinking about?” 

“What I’m thinking isn’t productive for you to know right now.” 

You look up at him, giving him a questioning look. 

“Drop it, Y/N.” 

“No. Tell me. I’m sure you’re mad and all but-” 

“Mad? I’m fucking furious, I’m livid. That he fucking locked you out and left you in the cold. You-you could have been seriously hurt. You are hurt. And not only that, the fucking paparazzi. You-you ran in the cold, you fell, you can’t stop crying and-and- I’m going to kill this asshole when I see him next because it’s his fault you’re feeling like this.” 

“Eren.” 

“No. Shut up, Y/N. I’m being serious. I-I don’t like seeing you like this and don’t tell me not to. He hurt you. It’s that simple.” 

You deflate, knowing Eren too well to know that he won’t drop this. Especially when he’s overly passionate, deep in the feeling right now. 

“Okay. But can you just be here for me right now? I need you here and not all….tense and mad. B-Be soft. And warm.” 

He stops, the frustration in his forehead dissolving as he takes a breath and smiles at you. Not fully, but it does the job. 

“Okay. I can do that. Let’s watch Fruits Basket. And then go to bed.” 

“You hate Fruits Basket.” 

“But I love you. Enough to watch your weird bestiality adjacent show and pretend to like it.” 

You smile and he reaches forward to pinch your cheeks. 

“Look at that smile. There she is. There’s my sweet girl.” he whispers, voice all tangled in his throat. 

--

You wake up to an empty bed, Eren’s side cold. And you pull his hoodie on before padding downstairs to find Eren’s phone pressed to his ear. He gives you a wave and points to the plate - a mix of eggs, french toast, and fruits - perfectly placed to perfection. 

You give him a smile and he walks off, taking the phone with him. You frown as you watch him disappear, jabbing your fork through the cantaloupe. 

What is he talking about that’s so important he doesn’t want you to hear? 

You jump off of the stool and quietly pad towards the direction he walked, hiding in the hallway. He’s leaning against the wall, staring at the picture right across - one of Levi and Hange kissing your cheeks at the vow renewal - and angle yourself to hear his words. 

“Is he okay?” 

“I’m glad. You tell me if you need anything else, okay?” 

“Okay, Coco. I missed you too, yeah?” 

Who the fuck is Coco?

He hangs up and you immediately scramble back to the kitchen, trying your best to stay inconspicuous as he comes back and gives you a smile. It doesn’t reach his eyes, the expression on his face almost tired. 

“Hey sleepyhead. You okay?” 

“Mhm. Food is really good, Eren.” 

He gives you a smile as he sits at your side, eyes focused on you as you eat your food. He places both of your phones in front of you, and you spot yours with nearly a hundred notifications. But when you reach for it, Eren grabs your hand in the air and locks it on his own instead. 

“Just-wait. Eat first.” he says, his tone hollow.

You turn your head to the side and take in Eren’s expression, downtrodden and uncharacteristically unexpressive. The complete opposite of Eren yesterday - moony eyes and soft smiles. 

“Eren.” 

“Y/N. If I ask you to do this for me, can you trust me and listen?” 

“No. You-what’s wrong? You’re being weird.” you ask, reaching for his hand. 

He looks over, the look indiscernible, as he leans forward and presses a kiss to your cheek. 

“You-I took care of most of it, okay? Levi and Hange are coming. Just, don’t panic. You-it’s okay.” 

“Eren. You’re scaring me. Just tell me.” 

He takes a deep breath, cracking the knuckles in your hand as he nervously talks. 

“You-your pictures leaked. The ones of you running last night. And-and people started speculating really fast - wondering why you were running and crying on the night your album released instead of celebrating it. And-and then Ricky, he tweeted a bunch of things.” 

You pale. And reach for your phone, which Eren stops again. 

“They’re lies. Obviously. You don’t need to read them, not yet. And Lana told me she’s ready to back you up, whatever you want, when you need it. But, that’s not-” 

“What, Eren? Just spit it out.” you respond, frantically. 

“They- Ricky’s fans are mad at you. They’re sending you death threats.” 

“Oh.” 

You deflate, staring at the cold mess of breakfast on your plate. Death threats. Hate, you’re no stranger too. Of people commenting on your looks, how bad your singing is, how lame you are. But wishing you were dead? Full on, unbothered and cursing your existence? 

“And not just you, but your family too.” he whispers, watching your face fall. 

Your family. Your parents, Colt, Falco-

“Excuse me. What did you just say? 

Eren doesn’t respond and the tears fall immediately from your eyes, hot and angry as he reaches forward, immediately swiping them away. His expression's pained, he knows this all too well.

“I sent your family a security detail. Don’t worry. Colt was only minorly injured and-” 

You stand up and grab Eren’s shirt, bundling the fabric into a fist in your hands, as you glare at him. 

“Injured? What the fuck do you mean injured, Eren?” 

He sighs, lifting his hands to move yours, and hold them. You’re still clenching hard, so hard you’re sure you’re drawing blood, but he’s doing his best to uncurl your hands as he talks. 

“They threw a brick through the window. And the glass, Colt was sitting right there. I was just on the phone with Falco, he said he’s doing better. The security detailing has medical so you don’t have to worry about that again and they’re both okay and-” 

“No part of this is okay, Eren! Quit saying it’s okay when it’s not! They almost killed my brothers.” 

“Y/N.” 

“No. No, this is horrible, Eren. They-they don’t do any of this stuff. Falco’s barely thirteen. And Colt - he’s going to college. He’s not a celebrity, he’s not a singer, he’s just a student. How is he supposed to go out after this? Why- how is it supposed to be normal? And now, they’re going to be like us. They’re going to feel like they’re trapped in this fucking suffocating ass fish bowl and everyone’s watching and laughing at them and they just-” 

“Y/N. Stop. It’s not going to-” 

“Falco’s too soft for this. He’s just a kid, Eren. I can’t- no. This isn’t fair. Eren, they didn’t even do anything. They’re literally just related to me, they just love me and they’re getting hurt because of it. You- you’re probably getting dragged in the mud too. Everyone who helps me gets subjected to this, loving me comes with this big thing behind me and I can’t even keep people who get it with me. I let you go when you were the only person who understood and I messed it all up and got myself involved with Ricky James of all people and-” 

“Y/N. Stop. Please."

You sit flat on Eren’s floor, head in your hands, and cry, teardrops falling straight onto the floor. And Eren’s sitting there with you, with your big mess of jumbled feelings and mistakes, and trying his best to help you with it. 

That’s how Levi and Hange find you two, after pocketing the spare key Eren told them about. After he insistently called them and payed for a private jet, going on and on about how Y/N needed them. And here you two are, despite their original conceived notions that you two were fighting, on the floor, in each other’s arms. 

“Some things never change, huh?” Hange whispers. 

“Yeah. They keep fucking crying every time we see them.” he whispers back. 

--

Between Levi and Hange - Jean, Mikasa, and Connie who make it out that night - and Eren and Lana, they fix things. Most things. 

Ricky’s narrative about you is clear cut - half-true and half-fake. Your team forced him to date you and defend you for PR purposes, after the Girlfriend incident. There was an agreement that you two would write certain songs, make certain appearances, and support each other. 

But then Ricky turns the gate. Says that you’ve deeply, severely hurt him. That you led him on, that you used him to boost your own ego, and that you were dangerously obsessed with fame and not him. That you were all things - heartless, fake, that he doubted if you were even a real person. A glorious pop-star, empty and hollow on the inside.

And people jump on it fast. Citing the fact that you would throw away your friendship with Historia to be famous, that you stopped dating Eren when he stopped being successful, that you can go to tours but not to Mikasa or Jean’s birthday parties. 

The worst part? Ricky lied, but the things they pointed out were true. Every mistake you make is on display and that people make it a point to draw attention o it. That you really were in too deep, too deep into pleasing Sareen and Danny, and being a triple threat that you forgot that they were all there too. 

Eren, especially. Sweet, sweet Eren who saved you, who held you when you needed him. 

You look over at him and Lana, the two of them very aggressively debating how to use their last turn of their daily Wordle, and feel your heart deflate. 

You dropped the ball. You’ll never make it up to him. 

Lana, in her infinite kindness, has chosen to share her own story, as a corroboration for yours. That Ricky taunted, mocked, and harassed her the entire time they were dating. That you're anything but the things he says. Because she’s had enough and she’ll do it to help out her Tinky-Winky. (Much to Eren’s dismay, he hates that you’re both becoming closer as time goes on.) 

And to complement the announcement, Lana asked for one thing. To go out in style. You wrote a song with her and promised her that she was going to be the lead actress in the music video. A girl rage moment, like The Man. Danny and Sareen approve the move, making no comments or concerns about anything else that happened, and ask to be involved when the time comes. 

You sit on it for a few days. Till you’re ready. But where you are now - with these people - needs to stay for a little longer. Before you brace everything again. 

“Yo.” 

You smile, opening up space for Connie on the couch for you. 

“Hi Con.” 

“Deep in your thoughts there, princess. Thinking about how your album is about to go Multi-Platinum?” 

“No. Just the entire thing.” you respond, frowning. 

Connie rolls his eyes, reaching forward to squish your cheeks way too hard. 

“Ricky, when I catch you, Ricky-” Connie says under his breath, 

You snort, reaching forward to push Connie off. You focus back on Eren and Lana, who are now pulling each other's hair and a nice string of insults, as Mikasa and Levi brew their tea, entirely unbothered in the back. 

And when the screen in front of you flashes, when your third album goes Multi-Platinum after a week of being released, they’re all climbing on you. Jean and Mikasa are hollering in the back, Connie and Lana are jostling you in the air and pressing kisses to your cheek, and Eren, Levi, and Hange smile at you, the three of them enveloped in their own hug, across the way.

You split your separate ways at the end of the week, when you’re ready. Connie, Jean, and Mikasa return to set, Lana and Eren are gone with the wind, and Levi and Hange disappear again. 

When you sit on your plane back home, it sits in. How lonely this entire thing is. How a week full of your friends who love you only happened because of this sickening thing. That it's not a given, that they're presence is only in the bad times and almost never the good.

Your phone buzzes in your lap and you pick up your phone to read the notification. 

eren: don’t be a stranger. fish like to swim in schools, not alone. 

It’s something that rings in your mind, time and time again. When everyone else wins the war, when you keep performing and letting them take and take, for the sake of the work. For the art, for your dream.

And when you give up acting, singing, and dancing at the end of it all and make zero intentions to ever do any of this again, the question still bothers you.

If fish like to swim in schools, why did Eren push you so far away? Why was he so intent on swimming alone? Where you couldn't follow?

eren: I'm not saying that for you. and I know that this is selfish but...

eren: I need you just as much as you need me.

.

.

.

Fucking liar.

--

next part linked here

taglist:

@k0z3me @kayleegomez @yihona-san06 @bsenpai @sweetenertea @mykyoon @violetmatcha  @rebeccawinters @cutiejg @bokutosthings @bookwrmm @mblrrr @wheredidmycrowngo @somethinginyoureyes7 @chilichopsticks @okaystopwhore @you-always-made-me-blush @itzmeme @firelordazulaaaa @whoami-72 @g-ghostly @intimacywithceline @erensmoodygf @cocomellxn @princess-ackerman @jaegerfiles @cacapeepee @squirrelspoetry @rui-0836 @moonmalice @invisible-mori @sofiasber @bbybeeb @timetobegone @tee4str @ttokki2 @leave-rae-alone @ec3lipsy @officialsimpp @gojojang @yookayyo @lordbugs @multiplefandomthings @iobeyfandoms

[netherfeildren]

The Cassandra Complex : Chapter VI : Sisyphus

Series Masterlist : Moodboard

(Din Djarin x F!Reader)

Content Warnings: Canon typical violence; Blood and Gore; Explicit description of injury; Use of misogynistic language; Threat of SA but none occurs; Ass play; Anal sex

A/N: It's all downhill from here, baby!!!

Rating: Explicit 18+

Word Count: 10K

Read on AO3

CHAPTER VI : SISYPHUS

DEATH: Why the bow, if you’re breaking no laws?

Anne Carson, Grief Lessons: Four Plays by Euripides

You’re in the dark again, warm and sated, together. He’s propped up on one elbow, practically half on top of you while you lay on your belly, pressed into the soft blankets and the blistering heat of his body; your cheek, smooshed into the ball of his shoulder while you let him explore your skin at will. He’s been biting and licking and kissing all over for what seems like hours after having fucked you halfway to delirium, and you can do nothing more than hum and whimper when his teeth get too hungry, his bite too sharp, listening to the sounds he makes. Low rumbles of appreciation deep in his chest that you feel vibrate into the bones of your back, breathy huffs where he takes in your scent, mingled with the flavor of his own sweat and come. You’re damp and sweaty and a little sticky in the soft crevices between your limbs, and maybe it should be disgusting, but he tastes you everywhere anyways.The tip of his nose dragging down the line of your spine, a soft nip to your waist, a sharper one to the inside of your bicep, that vulnerable and ticklish swell. He rolls you slightly further towards him to expose your breasts to his explorations, and you feel the tickle of his armpit hair on your cheek where your face is tucked into his side. He sniffs below the damp line of your hair at the nape of your neck, mouths wetly at the satiny skin, and you drag your fingertips up his arm, barely there, pulling a shiver from him and a soft moan. “What’s your favorite place in the galaxy?” Your voice barely a break in the silence, the soft song of your breathing.

A wet suck to your nipple, “Balls deep inside of you,” entirely serious in that monotone way of his.

“Disgusting.”

“Nuh uh, delicious,” a long swipe to the other nipple, pad of his thumb brushing over the dip of your navel. A whine of his name, and he gives you a laugh, the sort of laugh that changes the trajectory of a person’s life, the sort of laugh that is so real it could almost be confused as imaginary. He moves up, lets you savor the sound of it, and there is no better taste than this: someone else’s laughter in your mouth. You twist your fingers in his curls, run your tongue behind his teeth, belly pressed to belly. “I’m being serious,” you remind him.

He buries his face in your neck, a soft hum, “Here, on the ship.” With me? You want to ask. “What about yours?”

“I like water.” You always had, had always been a swimmer when the moment allowed.

“Then we shall have to find some water for you, won’t we?” His fingers have snuck down to your bottom, and he kneads your soft flesh, the line of his once again swollen erection trapped between your bodies. Yes, you’d like that, you think, to be in water with him. You dig your fingers into the rock hard muscles of his shoulders as his mouth resumes its explorations.

“I want a loth cat,” you tell him next.

Mhmm.

“Din?” His mouth is once again latched at your breast, and his cock has begun to thrust and grind against your belly, sticky tip drooling against your skin.

“Please, be quiet,” he says with your breast still in his mouth. “I’m very busy.”

You ignore him, twist your fingers tighter in his curls, arching your chest further into his mouth. “Will you get me a loth cat?” Voice all soft and breathy and breaking as you lift your thigh around his naked hip.

Distracted: “A what?”

The man really, really does not listen. “A loth cat. Will you get me one?”

Finally, he pulls his head back. “No. What is that?”

“You’re saying no, and you don’t even know what they are!”

“You’re not bringing any animals on my ship,” and even though he can’t see it, you roll your eyes at him.

“It’s a pet. Not an animal.”

“Explain the difference to me.” He bends his head to your breast again, all teeth now.

“A pet is fluffy, and I will love it.” But he brings his cock back into the mix then, and there are no more allowances for ridiculous requests for quite some time after that.

-

“Now you’re going to be good and stay here like I’m asking you to this time, right? Where you’re safe.” He’d landed the Razor Crest a conservative distance away from Niima Outpost; didn’t want you too far isolated in the sand dunes while he left you to go out and fetch his bounty, but not so close you’d be easily noticed.

“Oh, you are soooo stern,” you pout up at him from where you’re curled up in your bed.

His only response: a long suffering sigh, hands on his hips. You roll your eyes at him, nuzzling into the pillow that smells just like his hair. “Yes. I promise I’ll stay on the ship this time. Where it’s safe.” He comes to one knee beside your shared bed, he’d never crawled back into that tomb of a bunk again after that last time together, this was your shared place now. He brushes a gentle thumb over the pout of your bottom lip, tipping your chin up to the dark tee of his visor, “What a good girl you can be… when you set your mind to it, little one.” You scoff, rolling your eyes at him again, but feel your cheeks heat and your lower belly go tight and fluttery. Your pussy clenches with a slight twinge, and you feel the slow thick drool of his come seep out of you. He’d taken you hard earlier, savage and rough and without restraint – like he was angry at having to leave you and taking it out on your cunt.

“Only when I try very, very hard,” you tell him. He dips his chin once, and then unfolds to his great height above you, another nod, another paused moment to take one last, long look at you, and you want to beg, so badly, for him not to go. It feels like the first time he’d left, all those weeks ago. Your first experience staying on the Crest without him while he went out to hunt his bounty, and at the same time, all the worse. You know him so much better now, you need him, you… You what? No, you can’t think of it now. It’s a non possibility, something you aren’t capable of. But a pesky, perilous corner of your mind whispers, like the Force healing? A non possibility of that sort? You want to ask him to take his helmet off and kiss you before he goes, you want to beg him to stay, you want to ask him why he’s not called you that sweet name again since that last time, the only time, in the heat and damp darkness of the fresher when he’d whispered it into your skin, cyar’ika, and you want to cry, just a little bit, if you think on it too much. On the fact that he’d not repeated it, at the possibility of it having been a mistake or a slip in the heat of the moment. But you say none of those things, and ask for no kiss, and look after him with regret and an inkling of unsettled trepidation as the broad expanse of his back lumbers down the lowered plank and then disappears with the closing of the hatch into the scorched badlands and marching dunes of Jakku.

The hull is left dark and serene with his departure, quiet, and yet it sends a small shiver up your naked spine, bare and wet beneath the warm covers like he’d left you. He keeps the space meticulously clean, but now it’s littered with small signs of your presence in his life, of your life together. Your tunic thrown over the lone stool where he forces you to sit when you take your meals with him crouched at your feet, obsessively watching to make sure you have your fill, strange and lovely man that he is. He has a complex about the food you consume, as if it’s imperative to him that you eat as much as you can, that you’re always satisfied in the ways he cannot, or will not allow himself to be. He doesn’t eat enough, never as much as you know he’d probably secretly like to, and for a man of his size and brawn, surely not enough as he needs to, and it’s slowly fostered an angry kernel of resentment within you. He should always have all the things that he needs and wants, as much food as he desires, always, and anything that would keep those things from him you’re bitterly coming to detest. It even, in a strangely convoluted way, makes you angry at yourself, that your presence here with him prevents him from freely and comfortably discarding his helmet to take his meals. If you weren’t here with him he could eat as much as he wants whenever he wants without worry of being seen, and sometimes, try as you might, you can’t let go of the thought.

He’d left the pair of his thick socks you’d appropriated for yourself draped over one of the steam pipes that are warm to the touch, so that when you’d put them on they’re nice and toasty for you. The sight of them makes your heart kick and flip and burn in your chest, and you turn over to face the other way, towards the wall so that you’ll not be forced to look upon the empty hull and the warm socks and the Din-less space and remind yourself how much you hate when he goes away. He’d said he’d be back quickly, only a few hours he estimated, and you comfort yourself with this as you tuck your hands beneath your cheek and slowly drift off into a restless sleep.

-

“Hello, beastie.”

You’re thrashed into wakefulness by an agonizing grip twisting in your hair trying to rip the very strands from your scalp. You screech, disoriented trying to kick out, get your bearings, but the hull is still darkened from the way Din had left you. You feel another pair of hands trying to grasp at your ankles, and you kick out savagely, bracing yourself against the cold floor, and then the sickening crunch of the bones in your hand as a heavy boot slams down on your fingers, agony, agony, what is happening? An alien dialect in a language you can’t discern, rough and grating is spit back and forth between several voices, and then the first voice comes again and an old, hunched female steps into the dim light from the shadows. You recognize her reptilian Thalassian aspect immediately, and your heart drops into your stomach. Slavers. You double your efforts, kicking and screaming and trying to claw at the hands in your hair, to rip yourself away while your crushed hand screams in agony. The old female comes closer, beastie, beastie, we’ve caught ourselves a beastie, she sing-songs in a hollow voice. Another boot to your belly, kicking the air out of your lungs, sending fire through your ribs and bile up your throat, but when you turn your head, you make eye contact with one of the old crones henchmen, another Thalassian, and with a single thought you send him slumping to the ground, brains oozing out of his ears in a melted, bloody mess.

“Murderous little beast!” the female screeches, and she’s unraveling a whip from around her forearm, and before you can even brace yourself, snapping it at you so that it’s splitting open the meat of your cheek. Searing agony spreads across your face, your vision goes in and out, and you try and shake it away, but then more of that guttural unknown language and an order from the crone, and your arms are being jerked forward so harshly it feels as though your bones will be wrenched from their sockets, and they’re clamping something around your wrists. Something cold and sucking and terrible. You slump forward, tangled in the soft blankets of yours and Din’s shared bed, still naked beneath, and you try to reach for the Force, for your strength, for Din’s mind out there in the desert, but there’s nothing. Acute silence, unbearable nothingness. All your strength zapped and stolen away in the blink of an unguarded moment, like an amputated limb.

The female is hunched over the body of the one you’d killed, leaning heavily on a thick walking stick, spitting hissing sobs, and when she turns back to look at you, you can see there are tears marring her ugly, wrinkled face. “You killed him! Creature! Dark creature!” She spits. “Pull her back, let me look at the little whore’s face.” Unforgiving claws in your hair again, and your head is ripped back and angled towards the weak light of the fresher, the blanket covering your modesty slipping to reveal your nakedness beneath. Fear and shame and fury curdle and burn within you like acid. If he comes back and finds you gone, or worse dead, he’ll be devastated, so hurt, so angry, he’ll blame himself. They can’t – they cannot put him through that. You have to think, calm yourself, get out of these binders they’ve put you in, some sort of Force suppression technology at work. The things glow a sickly purple color, nothing like the lovely warm violet of your saber. But before you can even get a firm grasp on your thoughts, collect yourself, the woman slides the walking stick in her grip, and pulling it back behind her shoulder, swings it forward with all her might to hit you in the face with the heavy, bulbous end of it, right over the split from the whip. You feel the very mass of your brain jostle within your skull, a sickening crunch, the vision in that eye going completely dark. Maker, they’re going to kill you if they’re not careful. A terrible sound rips from your throat, something worse than a mere cry, going slack jawed, whacked further into the pit of unconsciousness. One of the others says something to the old Thalassian and turning away from you, she hisses something back. She goes still for a few moments, leaning on her stick heavily once again, the sound of her wet panting breath, and when she seems to have finally collected herself she turns back to you again. In basic she says, “I know what you are. I’ve heard what they’ve been trying to do to your ilk. How they mine you for that sweet little nectar that runs through your veins, through all of us – the Force. There are rumors of you circulating the Outer Rim, did you know? We heard of you and came searching. Received word from our Huttese friends, whispers of a Mandalorian mercenary and his dark pet roaming about the dunes of Jakku, an old gunship spotted lurking where it should not be. We’ve been searching for you, beastie,” she whispers, coming closer to inspect you, voice maniacal with cruel glee. The pain in your face, your head is a numb throb sharpening to acute fire, vision fading and then glowing bright white and burning. Your head, Maker, they’ve knocked it clean off your neck. “There are many clamoring to get their hands on you. Tell me, what does it feel to be whittled down to nothing more than the worth of an invisible and illusory thing? The Force,” voice contemplative and disgusted, all the same. “To be worth nothing more but that unseen ether flowing through your veins. How does it feel to be nothing? Look at you – playing the whore to some Mandalorian brute. Pretty thing…” She pushes back at your shoulder with the butt end of her stick, “Before you went and made me angry. Hmm… perhaps, I shall sell you with that same offering, as well? Would you like that? I wonder what will fetch a higher price, your blood or your cunt.” She laughs and her thugs join around her. You can feel the wide split in your face drooling blood, throbbing in agony, the sound of their raucous and cruel laughter creating a painful symphony above the pounding of your blood in your ears. “A magical whore!” She cackles, flashing her rotting grimace. “Yes, I quite like that idea. Stealing you away from that murderer – mercenaries, the lot of them, those Mandalorians. They hide behind the conflated righteousness of their Creed and their failed history, but they are nothing but another murderous cog in the wheel that would subjugate those of us they deem lesser.” The laughter leaves her suddenly, going serious, and you feel such fear in that single pause of silence. He’s going to

be so angry when he finds you gone, and you– you cannot be enslaved again, you can’t, you won’t. You’ll kill yourself before you allow it. “Monster,” she hisses, “This is nothing worse than what a thing like you deserves after the sort of evil your ilk spread. Imperial slut,” she spits at you, and her saliva lands like a glob of acid on your bare chest, burning. “Grab her. We’re going before her Mandalorian brute returns and kills us for taking his pet.” Her underlings say something in that unknown language, gathering to grip you under the arms and around your ankles, and a frenzy ignites in your heart. Through your broken and torn face you begin to howl, writhing and kicking your legs with as much strength as you can muster despite the broken ribs. “No, no! I will not go!” You screech, getting one in the face. He jerks away and lets your bottom half hit the hard floor with a harsh thud. “Let me go! I will not– I will not go!” You won’t be taken from him, you won’t, you won’t. The one holding your upper half shoves you painfully to the ground, your poor, battered head slamming once again, and another brutal kick lands to your ribs. Maker, you’d not missed beatings like this. The crone begins to scream at them, garbled sounds you can’t make out, and you lay your head on the cold floor. You just need a second to breathe, that’s it. You can endure much, much more than this, it’s only the binders stealing your strength, you just need a moment, and then you’ll fight again or break out of these terrible things and kill them all, but your head, Maker, your head feels as if it’s been split open down the middle. Their yelling reaches a crescendo, an added shrillness to it that was not there before, and then one of the henchmen is toppling painfully over your prone form, a heavy knee to your spine as he lands diagonally over your body, but his weight is instantly ripped away from you. More screaming and oh, the sound of blaster fire, the piercing screams of the old Thalassian, you turn your head slowly, slowly to the side and there, through the bloody and matted strands of your loose hair, that bright and familiar gleam, a flash of burnt red. You bring your manacled wrists slowly up to your chest, hunching into as small a ball as you can make yourself, cradling your broken hand to yourself. 

He’s here. 

He’s here, it’ll all be okay now. 

You let your eyes flutter shut and listen to the Thalassian’s screaming reach a crescendo, and it sounds a little like that long ago familiar sound of flesh tearing from flesh. You don’t want to see. You don’t want to see him commit atrocities in your name. It’s a funny thing, you think, the nature of his violence. He is a Mandalorian, and like the Thalassian had said, yes, perhaps, mercenary, and so it would stand that he is a man who commits violence, but you’d found – Maker, you hurt – you’ve found… that a thing that commits violence is not always also, or at once, a violent thing by nature. The moment makes of us what it needs us to be, but that does not always indicate our true selves. Violence committed in an instant of necessity, the peril of threat, does not always mean that we are bad or violent in our hearts, and Din… your Mandalorian does not have a violent heart. Beneath all of that uncompromising beskar is a soft heart, a good heart. It’s why you–

The scream stops.

-

No, no, no, no, no– “Look at me, look at me, cyar’ika. It’s okay. It’s okay, I’m here now. They’re gone, it’s okay.” You’re a crumpled, bloody, broken heap on the ground. He’d left you. He had left you here alone for this to be done to you. There is something hot and terrifying crawling its way up the inside of Din’s chest, searing his throat, turning it to char. He turns you over with all the gentleness he can muster, his shaking hands slippery with blood, the broken, dead bodies littered around the two of you as he pushes your bloody hair from your face and takes in the way they’d savaged you. 

And Din– Din feels a fury the likes of which he’s never felt before in his entire life. And in the wake of a sort of fear he’d never experienced previously either, not even at the sight of his child self watching his mother and father murdered, the image of their crumpled and broken bodies becoming smaller and smaller as he was taken away into the unknown by the Mandalorians who’d saved him, it leaves him unbalanced and of tremulous control as he pulls you into his arms. You’re cupping one of your hands strangely in the other, and when he takes your manacled wrists you let out a painful, garbled sound. Your hand is mangled, fingers darkening already and bent sickeningly in incongruous angles, and he wants, very badly, to look away from the sight of your pain. It causes a physical ache inside of him, nausea and fire and thunder, like a blaster bolt to the belly, a knife to the lung. “Look at me, cyare,” and your eye blinks open, the darker of the two, the one that whispers silently at him when he looks at it too long, the other, the bright one like a scream, is too swollen to open, but you, miracle of miracles, for you are a miracle wrapped in the shape of a girl, give him the tiniest of attempted smirks; something like the creation of myth unfolding before him. The side of your face not broken and bleeding, lifting into a crooked little half moon, and bloody smile full of sharp, menacing teeth you croak, “I knew you’d come.” 

Din knows in this instant that he is going to love you for the rest of his life. It is not a question, or an uncertainty. It is simply fact. Truth like his Creed, like The Way. 

 “I’m here. I’ll always come for you,” he tells you in lieu of saying that which sits heavy on his tongue now, which is that he’d let you eat his very heart out of his chest if you so desired it, that he belongs to you intrinsically. “I’m so sorry. I’m here now.” The hand not mangled grips the fabric around his throat and Din feels a sob in the shape of your name build in his chest. The Mandalorian, on the verge of tears. He gently presses you closer, tries to breathe, tries to swallow his howls. They were slavers, he’d marked them from the moment he’d spotted them through the open hatch of the Crest, dropping the long dead bounty he’d found half buried in the sand to sprint towards you. He’d worried about the possibility of this for some time now, the threat of someone coming for you, recognizing what you were, thought he’d prepared for it. Rumors were difficult to avoid or quell and despite his attempts to keep anyone from getting too close to sniff you out, you attracted attention. It was inevitable. Too beautiful, too alive, too alluring. He’d been afraid of something like this happening, and he’d thought the best way to keep you safe was to keep you here, hidden away on his ship, security system set and impenetrable. He’d been a damned fool.

He takes in the sight of your bare limbs, the beginnings of nasty bruising over your naked abdomen. The idea of someone taking you from him, severing his claim, keeping you away from him… and like this, when you were supposed to be safe here in this place the two of you’d made a home of together, while you were bare and waiting for him as he’d left you, when you were still full of his semen, potentially full of his– 

He swallows the thought. There are certain things you believe about yourself that Din is doubtful to agree with just yet…

“Take them off,” you whisper up at him, “I’ll–” a pained swallow, “I’ll heal. It’s okay, Din. Don’t be afraid,” you say with such earnestness, a tiny life of an eyebrow, but he is anyway. You shouldn’t be the one telling him not to be afraid right now, split open as you are, but you do anyway, and Din is deathly afraid – of this, of you, of everything, of not being fast enough, strong enough, good enough to protect you, to keep you. Din feels more afraid now than he has ever felt in his entire life.

“It’s okay. I’ll be okay. It’s not that bad,” and at the same time, your words make him so angry. At what life had made you believe, at what the galaxy had made you believe was okay. This is not fucking okay. Seeing you hurt like this is not okay. He moves to gently, as gently as he can possibly be, disengage the binders from around your wrists, careful to not jostle your broken hand too much. 

“It’s not okay.” He looks at your mangled face, the blood running into your hairline, your swollen eye, that lovely and luminous eye that makes his heart feel split into a million different pieces, all engraved with the etching of your name, “This is not okay.” And then his gaze lands on the blood splattered gem of your earring. This sight he must close his eyes to, he cannot bear it. That tiny sparkle, the significance of your relationship made material, covered in your own blood and his failure to protect you. 

He opens his eyes again to take in your wet gaze, unseeingly staring up at him, dark and fathomless. It shutters closed, long lashes clumped together in the sticky mess of your blood and tears. “It will be. I’ll heal soon. This is not the worst that’s been done to me,” voice thin and reedy, as if you’re embarrassed, ashamed to say the words out loud. As if you recognize them for the travesty they pose. He has to look away, swallow another sob. Din can’t remember the last time he cried, the last time he felt like crying, but he feels it now. Eyes hot and pinched and uncomfortable. 

He should have never left you. He will never leave you again. 

Wrapping you in the blanket, he makes sure your modesty is covered, and with as much care as he can, takes you in the cradle of his arms and moves you back into your bed. 

“Where’s your bounty?” You croak.

“That doesn’t matter now. Rest. I’m going to–”

“Of course, it matters. It’s–” a pained swallow.

“Don’t talk, cyare. It’s okay. We can–”

But you press on, cut him off. “That's the whole reason we came here. We’re not going to let this be a waste.” This being your savaging, split open, almost stolen. Din feels his heart drop down into his stomach. He nods once, swallows, tries to cough up the knot of agony lodged in his throat. 

“I dropped it when I saw them. They did something – fucked with the system and deviated the signal so I wasn’t alerted when they broke in. The bounty was already dead. Beacon signal still going. I found him and came straight back – saw the open hatch and knew something was wrong–” You give a soft, pained moan, brow folding into an agonized frown. Maker, he’s not going to survive this. He feels like a fucking coward. Terrified, sick to his stomach, angrier, weaker than he’s ever been in his entire life. 

“Slavers. Thalassians,” you whisper, resting your head against his chest plate, broken hand clutched against your chest. “I need you to reset my fingers before they heal wrong.” Fuck, he’s never had a panic attack before, but he worries he might be having one now. He tries to swallow the scream for you, thinks he whispers something like, alright. Shifting you in his lap, he pulls his blood soaked gloves from his hands, and when he reaches for your hand he takes in the tremor of his own fingers, feels a humiliating wash of shame curdle inside of him. He’s a Mandalorian for Maker’s sake, a warrior, and yet the sight of your pain, your hurt, leaves him unraveled, as frightened and green as a child. He has never experienced the dilemma of having someone he– someone that matters, hurt. Carefully propping your back up against his bent knee he pulls you in close so that your hip is tucked up against him, he grasps your wrist tenderly between his fingers, soothes the pad of his thumb against the soft inner slope of your wrist, the webbing of blue beneath the thin skin is comforting somehow, you’re alive. He made it in time, he’s going to fix this, take care of you. “It’s okay, Din,” you whisper again. 

A sharp jerk of his chin, “I know. I’m going to make this right.”

He smooths his thumb up the base of your palm, trying to settle, comfort you, the both of you, he rubs a gentle circle into the center, feels you tremble and jerk against him, and he hums low in his throat, a deep sound to remind you that he’s here, he’s got you. “It’s alright, little one. It’s alright, it’s alright,” keeps murmuring low reassurances in your ear, unsure whether they’re more for you or for himself, as his fingers slide up slow and light and grip your ring finger first, grasping it at the base to hold it securely and pulling on the tip to straighten it out, quick and efficient movements, a muted snap. There’s one. “It’s okay, it’s okay.”. Moves to your pinky next, so tiny gripped between his own large, rough fingers. He has to grind his molars together, bite the inside of his cheek so hard he tastes blood. He holds the base of that vulnerable little finger, the fine bone almost nothing beneath his touch and straightens that one too, listens to the hollow pop of the joint righting itself back into place. That one pulls a swallowed screech from your throat, you turn your face sharply away, and he sees your legs shuffle and kick in his periphery, your breathing fast and shallow. 

“Hurt– That one hurt,” you choke, and he watches a single tear squeeze out of your swollen eye and make a slow, devastating track down the slope of your mangled cheek, losing itself to the shredded gash. 

“What did that to your cheek?” He grits at the same time that he rights your index finger into place, tenses his knee to keep you steady and upright as you jerk. Panting wet breath hiccupping, trying to swallow back your cries for a moment, he cradles your bruised hand in his, wishes he wasn’t wearing this fucking helmet so that he could kiss the back of it, lick your wounds. He feels like screaming. 

“A w– a whip.” You don’t turn back to look at him, and Din feels his blood turn to frost. Something so painful moving through his chest he struggles for breath.

“They whipped you in the face?” He looks at the pieces of Thalassian surrounding the two of you and curses himself for killing them so quickly. He should’ve been smarter, more patient, drawn it out. Made them suffer. 

“It’s okay–” voice short, tense. “I’ll heal.” Face still turned towards the open hatch and the hot Jakkuian night, he watches another tear fall. 

“It doesn’t matter–”

“I’ll heal. I’ll–”

“That doesn't matter–they hurt you. You can be hurt. Just because you can heal, just because you don’t care about what happens to you doesn’t mean that I don’t.” He cups the back of your head, begs you to turn back towards him with his touch. “You being hurt hurts me, do you understand me?” Voice soft as he can make it go, trying to make you see what he’s saying in the only way he thinks will penetrate the fog of your painful history. 

And you do turn back at that, finally, thank you, thank you, he can see the edges of the wound start to knit themselves back together. A girl and a miracle and a myth all woven into one. “Do you understand me?” He asks again, cupping your chin, gathering the wet of your freely falling tears now, pressing the pad of his thumb to the corner of your eye.

“No, no, I don’t understand,” face crumpling, you press your forehead beneath the edge of his helmet. They hurt me, they hurt me, you cry over and over, and Din knows that you don’t only mean the Thalassians. He wishes he possessed the hand of the Maker. That he could reach across to the far corners of the galaxy, the most shadowed depths, the blackest pits, and wipe away any speck of darkness that’s ever touched you, anything or anyone that had ever done you harm. He wishes he could give you his very heart as an offering, anything that would settle the sound of your anguish. But then he thinks that an impossible sort of thing, for his very heart is held right here, sobbing in his arms, living on the outside of his chest. 

-

After he insists on you allowing him to spread bacta along your cheek and hand, despite your protestations that it’ll close on its own, that you’re fine, you remind him that his bounty is still lying dead and forgotten out in the sand sea beyond the ship. He goes out to retrieve the pitiful thing, felled by the wrath of Jakku, most likely, and you make an agonized attempt to stand and dress yourself. Your ribs and back ache, the line of your spine feels on the verge of fracture from the last blow you’d taken, and you shuffle about slowly, trying to force yourself to hurry and get yourself covered before he returns, not wanting him to see the extent of the damage done to your ribs and back. You manage to get on a pair of underwear and one of his shirts before he’s stomping back up the gangway, dead bounty slung over his shoulder. He bends to shuck the thing off, the limp body hitting the durasteel with a harsh thud that snaps your mind into focus for a millisecond so that you’re taking in the carnage surrounding you. The release of gas from the carbon freezer sounds around you as you find the old Thalassian – her head seems to have been ripped clean from her neck somehow, you cock your head slowly, taking the sight in. He’s moving about, dragging the pieces of the bodies and chucking them out the hatch, and your mind feels like a piece of elastic snapping far out and away from you, and then shooting back in a painful reverberation, vision going hyper focused, too bright to bear, and then murky, as if viewed through a broken pane of glass. You hear the whirring, metallic shifting of the closing gangway, and your head swoops, belly twisting with nausea. There are pools of blood coagulating thick and disgustingly viscous on the floor, and you reach out for the wall to steady yourself as your blood rushes in your ears, but he’s immediately there, gentle hand to the curve of your waist and the bend of your elbow to pull you to himself. “It’s okay,” he says again. And he keeps saying so, but seeing this, what he’s done for you, something feels distinctly not okay. 

You think of the Corellians who’d attacked you all those weeks ago, the Corellians you'd slaughtered for him. And the memory somehow makes the sight in front of you worse, some sort of horror. You’d turned him into you. You’d forced him into repeating your own horrible actions. In a moment of startling, sickening clarity, you’re confronted with the reality that he is only encased in beskar, he is not made of it. And one day they will go through him to get to you. Because there will surely be more, there will surely be another day, another time, another planet; more slavers or dark siders or someone of equally low measure will come for you again, and he can’t protect you forever, nor you him. 

This time, please, let it end differently. 

It’s all you ever do, you think, beg and plead for a different sort of fate. The duel of the fates, over and over again, but it is only ever you, alone, at odds with destiny itself. Fighting against what must be, what already is, what always has been. Your own sick ouroboros; eternally destroying and recreating yourself and the things around you. 

He leads you back to bed, grabs his socks from where they’d lain draped over the warm steam pipe, and you return his own past words to him while he kneels before you, pulls them over your cold feet, looking over his shoulder the world seems inverted, mirrorlike, the black puddles of blood filled with dark mercury. They would have taken you from him. “You shouldn’t have had to do that.” Your voice sounds hollow and cold, unlike yourself.

He pauses his care of you, helmet tipped down, and you wish you could see his eyes right now, you feel, strangely, like you need them, like it would make everything better, more clear and stable. Taking one small foot in hand, he wraps his fingers around the entire thing. “You’re right,” he tells you, and your stomach flips with bile and fear again. “I shouldn’t have had to do it because I never should have let it happen. This is on me. I shouldn’t have left you alone for this to happen.”

You reach for his wrist, wrapping your fingers around the thick of it to feel his pulse beat against your fingertips. Something furious in the fluttering thrum of it; something of a monolith about him, steadfast, unmovable, the strongest thing in the entire galaxy. There’s a tinge of crimson rage swallowing him, and you can tell he’s doing everything in his considerable strength to keep it under reign for your sake; the proof is in the strew of bodies he’d littered the floor of the ship with. “They’ll always come for me, Din. As long as I’m alive, as long as the dark exists, as long as The Force exists they’ll come for me. They’ll never stop.”

The helmet snaps up, the yawning tee of dark transparisteel whispers its rage at you. “Then I’ll make them,” he grits. “I’ll find a way. I’ll protect you. We’re going to fix this. I’m going to fix this.” And you feel so–so strange. So sad. Devastated. The wave of fate swallows you whole, and that dark red thread crumbles to dust. You feel so unbearably sad for the both of you that your tears are renewed. Sad and old and at the end of your line. 

And again: A person without a soul cannot cry. And so this must only be proof of the fact that you still possess yours, as shriveled or weak as it’s been made, you must still have one. You must. You must. 

It’s his now. Undoubtedly. Whatever of your soul has bloomed back into life belongs to him now. You bring your trembling fingers up to the face of his shining beskar helmet, warring wishes wrapped into a strange tangle for what you know will not be the last time: that it wasn’t there, that you could have all of him, and, at the same time, that you too had something of such strength and conviction to protect you as his Creed protects him. What a comfort it must be. “I know you will.” Lie. 

He goes to initiate takeoff and get the ship into hyperspace after that, and you can hear the uncharacteristic frenzy of his movement echoing in his rushed steps as he flits about the cockpit. Settling into your nest of blankets, you face the wall so you’re not made to look at the mess that’s been left, and when he returns, you listen to the sound of him divesting himself of his armor, the rustle of falling clothes, you can feel his panic now up closer, pressing against the confines of your skin like some living thing, trying to sneak its way into whatever break in you it might find. He was frightened, he is frightened. For you. If you weren’t struck stone cold you’d perhaps laugh at the idea of it, but strange memories flash in your mind, highlighted by painful bursts of bright light behind your closed lids, memories of darkness and pain and being so alone another person, a real person, existing in the entire galaxy seemed too far fetched a thing to be true. The sort of loneliness that forces you to forget that other living things exist. You curl in on yourself, still tucking your now halfway mended hand close to your chest, cupping your other palm over your eyes to hide yourself away. Shocked into a subdued, humming terror. A peripheral thing, the reality that you should be afraid or shaken, and you are, kind of, but interrupted by that memory of similar or much worse things that make this small mishap seem inconsequential in the shadow of all the rest, all the past. 

You listen to him move towards the fresher to throw the two of you into darkness, and you panic, “Don’t turn the light off, please,” you murmur, still hidden behind your palm. If you cannot see the world, perhaps the world cannot see you either. “I’m sorry to ask – I won’t look, I promise.”

He pauses, silent for a moment. “Don’t apologize. Don’t. It’s okay. Anything you want.” What you really wish he’d say is that he doesn’t care if you look or not, a selfish and rotten and horrible feeling rolling in after the thought.

He crawls in behind you, sliding up against you bare and burning hot; an entire sun held inside the heart of a single man. He keeps his hands to himself at first, and you enjoy the brush of his chest up against your back on every one of his inhalations, the symphony of his breathing, but eventually he braves the salted earth and passes a gentle hand down the line of your spine. 

“What do you need?” His voice is the deepest thing in the entire galaxy, you think. Space has nothing on it. 

You press your hand tighter over your eyes. “Nothing.”

“You are strong and capable,” he says after a moment, and you worry you might vomit. “But you don’t always have to be. I don’t want you to have to fight when you’re with me. I only want you to be comfortable and cared for and well. Let me help you.”

“Okay,” barely a sound breathed through the part of your lips. And it takes several hours, but eventually that thing they’d come for, the very thing they’d attacked and tried to take you for, heals you. The Force. What is it to hate the very thing that makes you up, the very marrow of you, the sustenance of your life? Agony, madness, bitter, bitter resentment. Loneliness. To be alone within yourself. Terrible pain. Every bad thing that’s ever come to you throughout your entire life has been done in its name. And you’re angry at the fact, you think. For years and years things were done to you to honor that invisible giant, and it built an anger within you that is incoherent, unidentifiable, inconsolable.

You ache like you’re recently made. 

But he holds you so gently while you knit yourself back together, seam by seam, so that the possibility of pain is removed entirely from the equation. He holds you like he loves you, and you want to ask him if he does, if he thinks he could ever love a thing like you, even if you do not deserve it. Even if he does not deserve it.

You fold it away instead.

Tell me, what does it feel to be whittled down to nothing more than the worth of an invisible and illusory thing? To be worth nothing?

Like spitting salt through an open wound, the agonized phantasma of an amputated limb. 

You’re nothing. 

And Din? He’s everything.

From behind your hiding spot you tell the quiet: “Sometimes it feels like I haven’t been happy my whole life. But I know I feel it with you. I want you to know that.”

“Do you?” His hand slides up the line of your vertebrae to cup the back of your neck, and you tremble beneath his heat, as if he were anointing you with the power of a sun. 

“Yes.” You wish you had the courage to say more, to say everything. A real confession, the cutting sort: I was made to be nothing more than a weapon, but now I am a human, now I am alive. Now I am only myself. And I hurt, and I wish I were a girl again: only half savage, unmarred and free. But despite all of this, I am still only yours. 

“I know already.”

Cyar’ika. Cyar’ika.

And so what does it matter if you hurt when he calls to you so sweetly? And yet, a quiet and unused part of you whispers back that it should not be so, that the thought is not quite right. Focus, focus, call them growing pains if you must. Focus only on him. And you realize that there is something about him that makes you fragile in the face of his strength, for some reason and most importantly, in a way that you like, in a way that is appealing to you like nothing else you’ve ever experienced before. Something that tells you that you need him to be strong in ways you’ve never had or needed to be strong before, a strength that is soft, something that is unyielding for the vulnerability you allow yourself with him. You can’t understand it.

“And I will let you take care of me.”

“I’m going to. This means something,” he says very quietly, the words bouncing off the back of your neck, and you know it is true. “This means something.”

It does. Everything. The two of you mean something together.

You finally turn to face him again, eyes closed, seams more securely knitted together and press your forehead to the notch of his throat, cracking your eyes open to look down at the expanse of his abdomen. You run a flat palm down his belly, feel the strength of him. If there is nothing else, perhaps, there can be Din. 

“Close your eyes,” he threads his fingers through the back of your hair, “Let me kiss you,” and you feel your heart break and melt into desperation all at once. You press your eyes shut tightly and tip your face up towards him, parted mouth and bated breath, ready to receive the taste of him. He licks into you, pulling a moan from your belly and onto his waiting tongue, and you wish there was something more you could give him, something deeper, more significant that could translate all you feel for him. “I need you to forgive me,” he licks the words into your skin. “I need you to tell me you forgive me for letting this happen.”

“Don’t say that. There’s nothing to forgive. There’s nothing–”

“I should’ve been more careful. Smarter, more prepared. We shouldn’t have wasted time in that fucking desert for so long.” But you’d distracted him, kept him from going out, seeing to his responsibilities. 

“There’s nothing to forgive,” you say again, tipping your head back to bear your throat for him. 

He licks a line up the slope, tasting your pulse, the proof you’re still alive. Plants a kiss at the hinge of your jaw and then presses his forehead there. “I’ve failed you,” he whispers. 

“Din, listen to me, listen to me. You could never do that. Never. Do you understand me?” If he only knew all you’ve not told him, all the ways in which you’ve failed him. You’re sure he’d see you in a very different light. 

“It’s not going to happen again,” he promises, and you’ve not the heart to tell him again that they’ll never stop. That the life of a hunted creature is the only sort of existence you could ever live. You pull his mouth back to yours, kiss him with a renewed fervency. If you cannot give him anything more you’ll put everything you have into this. 

“Just kiss me, please,” you beg, twining your arms around his neck and opening to him. He drags his mouth along the inner slope of your bicep, ending at the dip of your elbow and laving his tongue at the sensitive dip. Gripping the bend of your knee he hitches it against his hip and rolls the two of you over. Settling between the cradle of your thighs, he levers himself up off you, careful not to demand you bear his full weight, and finally, you feel ready for the dark again. With a single thought you submerge the two of you into the almost dark again, a weak stream of light coming from the fresher, rattle of the Crest moving through hyperspace sounding around you. He prepares you to take him softly, slowly, with intention. The gentle pad of his thumb to the slick seam of your cunt, parting your folds to get to the wellspring of your desire for him. A single finger and then another hooked against that place inside of you that seems now branded with his ownership over you. Nothing like this has ever existed, and you press the thought into his mind as he tastes your tongue, brings you to orgasm for him with slow and exploring fingers, the slick slide of his thumb over your swollen clit, and the whisper of your name to the shell of your ear. When he feeds his cock into you, slowly, so that you’re made to feel every curve and ridge and then meeting the end of you, so deep you can’t tell where he ends and you begin, it brings tears to your eyes and all sorts of confessions to your tongue that your more rational mind knows should be kept in the shadows. But very like the sun, he shines a light on all the dark and derelict parts of you better left unseen. 

When you come for a second time, thick cock splitting you in half, there’s a screaming desperation for more urging you on. “Remind me–” you beg him.

“Of what? What do you need?”

“That I’m yours. That I belong to you. That I’m alive.”

“Do you need reminding of that?” He squeezes your bottom, presses you tighter to himself, his wet mouth sliding against the slope of your shoulder. “Don’t you know always? No matter what?”

“Yes.” Soft, soft, soft, but you don’t need it like this – you need it more– “Remind me anyways.”

You’re as close as can be, but he tells you anyway: “Come here, come here. I’m going to take care of you.” He pulls out, a wet and sucking sound, and turns you in his arms so you’re back to belly, and pulls you open again, thigh thrown over his hip. He runs his hands over the hills and contours of you, cups and squeezes your breasts, rough fingertips softly at your nipples, and you feel your cunt clench and gape, hungry for filling. He cups you over that soaked, ravenous place, slides his hand back and forth over the wet, swollen mess, and then further back, his fingers pressing and prodding gently at your ass. “I’ll have you here now, little one. Yes?”  All you can do is nod back against his shoulder where your head is propped, a tightening so intense it’s almost painful strangling your throat, your heart, your cunt. Nothing more than a knot of abandoned want. A thing that doesn’t know how to take without devouring, and you do, you want to devour him. You think he might even let you. He presses a slow finger into the knuckle, and you go tight, bearing down around the invasion, spitting his name out in the shape of a wail into the quiet hull. 

“It’s alright,” he gently thrusts that probing finger, hooking and wriggling it. Making space within to fuck you open on his cock. “You’re so tiny here, little thing. But you’re going to take me so well. I know you are.” He pulls his finger out entirely, and then there are two pressing back in as slow as possible, petting first, stretching second. “How’s that? How does that feel, my sweet girl?”

“I don’t– I don’t know,” moaning and shifting, trying to plead for more with little hitched arcs of your hips. “More, please.”

“You want my cock?”

“Yes–”

“How badly do you want it? Tell me–” He twists his wrist, stretching, claiming, all while the hill of his palm rubs against your cunt, so wet you can hear the slick sound of its desperation echo in the quiet. 

“So badly,” you moan and sob, “More than anything.” He pulls his fingers from you and grips the root of his cock, fat head at your ass and starts to press in slowly, slowly, stretching you open around the incredible girth of him. Your breath comes in puffs and gasps, an unbearable heat flushing through your body, pulsing in your face and swirling in your belly, tightening the tips of your breasts into painful knots. You moan out his name, please for more, for harder, for faster until he’s buried to the root and you’re strangled into a hiccuping silence. Overwhelmed and overwrought by the feel of him buried in your ass so deeply. There’s no space for anything else inside of you, stretched to the brim and so full you can barely breathe. He’s everywhere. Gripping your hip you feel his breath against your cheek, the sweating, curling hair around your ear ruffled as he pants and groans, gritting his teeth and rumbling deep in his chest as he starts to thrust slowly into you. 

“How’s that?” Voice strangled. His other hand comes around to thrum gently at your clit, the swollen mass of bundles pulsing with each punch of his hips. Your cunt leaks down to where the two of you are joined, and he picks up his pace, fucking up into you harder, faster, that strumming thumb flicking more quickly. He flattens his fingers against you, rubs at the length of your leaking sex, and you’re beyond words. Impaled and cock drunk. All you can give in return is an approximation of his moaned name, and he gives a quick, sharp slap to the top of your mound. “I want you to tell me how it feels,” voice ragged, almost broken. You tighten almost impossibly at his roughness, clenching down around him so he’s gasping, shocked ah, ah, ah’s, ending on a ragged groan. He brings his forehead to your shoulder, and you listen to his overwhelmed sounds. The first time you think you’ve heard him so close to the precipice of losing control. “Most perfect fucking ass in the entire galaxy,” he grits. All mine, mine, fucking mine.

“Feels–” His fingers resume their exploration of your cunt, “Feels so– so good,” your voice is nothing but agony made pleasure. 

“Yeah? Feels good?” The sound of his hips slamming against your ass, wet and lewd, the press of his heavy balls to the round of your bottom. “What about this?” He begins to slowly press two fingers into your gaping, grasping cunt, and oh, it’s too much, your orgasm hits like an exploding star, singing all coherent thought along the way. You feel your pussy gush, go tight as a knot, and he snarls at the curve of your ear, bites down on the line of your shoulder, not halting the thrusting of his fingers inside of you. “Fuck, yes–fucking come for me. Come for me while I fuck your ass–”

“No–no, I can’t anymore, please, I can’t,” you cry.

“You can–you can. I know you can. My fierce little cyar’ika, soft only for me. Aren’t you?”

And how can you deny a man such as this anything. One that holds you so, one that fucks you like he loves you. You’ll lie to yourself, like so many other lies you tell, and pretend that this is the touch of love, that it’s something you deserve. His fingers, his cock are ruthless within you and they force another soaked orgasm out of you, shaky and weak, before he’s following suit, fucking the searing heat of his spend deep inside of you. He rolls you over onto your belly, levers himself up over you and slows his thrusts until you feel the last spurt of his cock kick inside of you, the low reverberations of his pleasure sounding from his chest. When he pulls out he spreads you apart, thumbs at your swollen skin. “It gapes so pretty for me,” he murmurs as he plays with the milky white drool, smears it into your slick, stretched skin. “This is how you should always be, covered in my come, beautiful thing.” All you can do is bury your burning hot face in the blankets. 

When the two of you have finally settled later, cleaned yourselves up, and he’s made sure you’ve had enough water and a snack, when your panic has gone dormant, you remember your earlier request. A sniffle, and then voice broken and wet, just for added insurance: “You’ll get me my loth cat now, won’t you?”

A long suffering sigh, but he squeezes you tighter to his chest, presses a kiss to the crown of your head you feel sizzle all the way down to the tips of your toes. “I’ll get you anything you want, anything.” You smile into his skin, a miracle all of its own, that after everything he still provides you the ability to smile. 

But later, right before he falls off the precipice of consciousness into the ebony deep and serene lake of sleep, you whisper into the thrum of his life force right at his neck: “We will take care of each other, won’t we?” Again – the both of you, together. 

“Always,” he says, and it rings with such promise, in a way you know only someone such as he could swear, and you’ve always been a liar, but you do not want this to be a lie. 

This time, please, let it end differently.

Chapter VII

Netherfeildren's Masterlist

Updates Blog!

[slytherinzz]

A crown of Thorns - Chapter 1 (Ominis x MC)

Hey everyone! 🌟 I’ve just posted the first chapter of my story A Crown of Thorns, and I’d love for you to check it out if you enjoy a mix of tension, emotions, and a complicated romance between Ominis and MC! ❤️✨

The journey’s just beginning, and there’s so much more to come — heartbreak, secrets, and, of course, some swoon-worthy moments. If you like what you read, please feel free to follow along, and if you're craving more, I upload new chapters multiple times a week on my Wattpad! 😍

✨ If you’re into:

Ominis Gaunt 💫 and characters as Sebastian Sallow, Poppy Sweeting, Garreth Weasly, Natsai Onai.

Complex relationships 💔

Magic, mystery, and deep emotions🔮

A bad bitch MC (this will come later, hang on!)

TW's: Violence, Sexual Content, Blood, Alcohol

Then you’ll definitely want to be a part of this journey. Please check it out and let me know your thoughts! I’d love to hear from you. 💬

Find me here on Wattpad: Slytherinzz101 - Wattpad

Chapter 2

I couldn't believe it. After everything that happened last year—Ranrok's rebellion, the unrelenting menace of the Ashwinders, and Sebastian's tragic downfall to the Dark Arts—it was supposed to be over. At least, that's what I told myself every morning when I woke up.

But was it really over?

There are shadows I can't seem to outrun, demons that cling to me like an unwelcome second skin. I carry scars into this so-called fresh start, though some are etched deeper than others. The most visible reminder—a thin, jagged line—runs from my left eyebrow to the middle of my cheek. A well-placed Diffindo during the chaos of the repository battle gave me that little souvenir. It's ugly, but at least it's honest.

Physical wounds are simple; they scab over, heal, or scar, their stories etched plainly for all to see. But the ones no one else can see? The ones that throb in the quiet hours of the night? I'm not sure those will ever heal.

Those wounds have two names: Sebastian and Ominis.

I don't know which memory cuts deeper—Sebastian's fall or Ominis' silence.

Sebastian was my ride or die. He always had been. We'd forged something unshakable through fire and defiance—or so I thought. But the boy I knew was swallowed by the same darkness we all fought to resist. His obsession with curing Anne devoured him. It left me with nothing but ashes where our friendship used to be.

"You're nothing more than a means to an end," he'd spat at me in the end.

The words hit me like a Blasting Curse, and they still echo in my head, a festering wound that reopens every time I think about him. But as much as it hurt, I can't hate him. I've seen the boy beneath the monster. I know the good that's still there—the Sebastian who laughed with me under the stars after a reckless raid, who stayed by my side when the weight of the world crushed me. That boy is still there, buried under all that darkness.

That's why I fought for him. Begged for him. Pleaded with Ominis not to let him rot in Azkaban.

Ominis.

Even thinking his name feels like pressing on a bruise. If Sebastian's betrayal burned me, Ominis' silence froze me. I begged him to help me see reason, to understand that Azkaban would destroy Sebastian—body, mind, and soul. But all I got was cold, impassive judgment.

"After everything he's done, Cassandra? He deserves to be there."

And then he walked away. Not just from the argument. From me.

The memory is a noose around my heart, tightening with every passing day. Ominis was supposed to be the one to temper the chaos, to steady me when the world spun out of control. He used to tell me the world wasn't entirely cruel. I clung to those reassurances, to the safe haven he represented.

"I'll always be here for you, Cassandra."

Broken promises. I should've known better.

This summer, I had no one. Alone in a creaky, nondescript cottage on the edge of Hogsmeade, I spent my days doing odd jobs for the townsfolk—fixing enchanted cauldrons, brewing potions, chasing away mischievous magical creatures. The money's not much, but it keeps me afloat. The cottage is functional, I guess, though it groans with every gust of wind. It wouldn't matter if I were surrounded by luxury; nothing could fill the hollow ache in my chest.

The occasional owl reminds me that the world is still turning without me.

Imelda brags about smashing broom-racing records, her cocky tone practically jumping off the parchment. "Bet you can't beat me when term starts," she wrote in her last letter.

Natty sends vibrant accounts of her travels abroad, her words glowing with an enthusiasm I can barely muster.

And Poppy—sweet, stubborn Poppy—sometimes asks me to help raid poacher camps. I always say yes, if only for a brief sense of purpose.

But from them? Nothing.

No owls. No notes. Not even a whisper of their whereabouts.

Some days, I tell myself it's better this way. That their silence is its own kind of closure. But at night, when the cottage is still and my thoughts grow too loud, I wonder.

Are they okay? Is Sebastian holding on to the good in himself, or has the darkness devoured him whole? And Ominis... is he still furious with me, or has he simply erased me from his life entirely?

I don't know. And that not knowing—that's the worst part. More than the scars, more than the loneliness.

It's the silence that breaks me.

[ravenclaw-legend]

If I Killed Someone For You

I'm sorry that I did this

The blood is on my hands

I stare at my reflection

I don't know who I am

Practice my confession

In case I take the stand

I'll say I learned my lesson

I'll be a better man

"You KILLED him, Sebastian! You used an UNFORGIVABLE CURSE! I cannot look past this, if I turn a blind eye I am just as guilty!" Ominis was yelling at Sebastian in the Undercroft, completely ignoring Sebastian's attempts to explain himself and convince Ominis to not turn him in.

"I KNOW OMINIS! I'M SORRY, ITS MY FAULT! You don't think I know that. The nightmares of being covered in blood are reminder enough. Just let me explain myself. I will be better, I swear to you!" Sebastian shot back when he swore he would be better, his eyes moved to lock with mine, across the dimly lit Undercroft. Their secret place that holds so many positive memories now is the backdrop for this fight, it's almost poetic.

You're conflicted about whether to turn him in or protect him. Anne has made her choice and abandoned the house in Feldcroft with only a note left behind. She told people that Solomon had died in his sleep, which was convincing enough.

I'm packing up my things

And I'm wiping down the walls

I'm rinsing off my clothes

And I'm walking through the halls

I did it all for her

So I felt nothing at all

I don't know what she'll say

So I'll ask her when she calls

After we returned from the catacombs, Sebastian pushed everyone away. The most I heard of him was Ominis telling me how Sebastian would be screaming in his sleep, always the same things; "I won't let her suffer!", "ANNE!" and "Nooo!"

I didn't know what to do, I was in love with Sebastian. Never acted upon the feelings but I loved him regardless. I always helped him but tried to keep him away from the dark arts; he wound up heavily into the dark arts anyway. Sebastian Sallow was determined to a fault and sometimes crossed the line from determination to stubbornness. Unfortunately, he still learned the Unforgivable Curses despite Ominis attempting to stop him.

After Ominis and Sebastian's argument, I found Sebastian in the boy's dorm in the Slytherin common room. He was packing up his things, obviously he was preparing for the worst. I looked at him sadly, it was like the bright personality he had when I first met him was now dulled. Sebastian's shoulders were now slumped and his confident posture was now seemingly weighed down. "Bastian?" I said quietly as I reached to place my hand on his arm, at my touch he spun around to look at me with his face stained with tears.

Would you love me more

(Would you love me more)

If I killed someone for you?

Would you hold my hand?

(Would you hold my hand?)

They're the same ones that I used

When I killed someone for you

Sebastian looked at me with so much pain and hurt in his eyes. "Would you love me?" He asked, keeping his watery hazel eyes locked on mine. "What?" I asked, shock filling my voice. Did he know? How did he know how I felt about him?

We stayed that way for what could have been minutes, hours, or even days. Time seemed to stop as we stared at each other, the air becoming thick with the tension between us. "Would you love me, if I killed someone for you, MC?" Sebastian said this as he began to walk towards me and took both of my hands in his. His hands were larger than mine. They were warm, inviting, even comforting. "Would you hold my hand, if they're the same ones that killed someone?" He says quietly. I know what he is doing, he is trying to figure out who is on his side, who he can find comfort in and open up to. "Bash" I sighed "I care about you. But you know what you did was wrong. Killing Solomon was wrong, no matter if he was attacking us or not." I hugged him. This man may be a murderer to everyone else but he is still my best friend, he is still the man I love; he is just misguided right now.

Would you turn me in

(Would you turn me in)

When they say I'm on the loose?

Would you hide me when

(Would you hide me when)

My face is on the news?

'Cause I killed someone for you

"Are you going to turn me into Black, to the Ministry?" Sebastian asked holding me close enough that I could feel his heart racing in his chest. "No. I won't. But I don't condone what you've done and it will take time to fully forgive you." I stepped back from him looking him in the eyes as I continued to say "I killed for you too Sebastian...

You have to understand that

The one I killed was me

Changing what I was

For what you wanted me to be

I followed your direction

Did everything you asked

I hope that makes you happy

'Cause there's just no turning back

"MC. I'm sorry. You never needed to change for me. You had my attention from the moment I saw you enter the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom on your first day and I knew I loved you the moment you beat me in that duel. I know you probably don't feel the same but I had to tell you, in case I never get a chance again. I don't know what Ominis will do" Sebastian reaches out to cup my face in his hands, cradling it like I am made of glass and will shatter if he isn't careful enough. "Sebastian," I sighed turning into one of his hands and reaching out with my own to grab a hold of the front of his robes "I love you too." The next thing I felt was Sebastian's lips on mine. He was clutching me tightly against him. Our lips moved together in sync as if this was meant to be. It felt right to be in his arms.

[dullyn]

Arthurian Retelling Book Review I

Dark Sorceress by Clara Ann Simons

There will be spoilers.

This review might be a bit harsh as there are lots of things that I personally think the book did poorly/are just bad. From formatting, to editing, to plot and characters, there was always something that seemed out of place.

Technical Stuff

Why are the margins two inches and why is the book doubled spaced? It’s giving: wanted to make the book seem longer but didn’t want to write more words. (Which the book could’ve used because everything at the end was rushed and a lot of stuff made no sense because there were no explanations).

There were also so many typos? It seemed like there was no editing done. Along this line there are also several times that there are lines referencing a series of dialogue or action that did not happen. So it seems like the author wrote something and then went back and deleted it and then never reread and edited the parts referencing these deleted chunks. There are also whole paragraphs and pages repeated at various points in the book, such as every time the MC eats soup she describes it the exact same way.

Here are various examples:

Spacing typo; the worst justified line spacing I’ve ever seen; another typo. (Lol wizaard).

This is the way the entire book is formatted. Insanely large margins and spaces between lines.

Plot/Characters

Never in my life have I seen such a self insert main character in my whole life. Ana, she comes into Camelot via a magic portal and then everyone around her is completely on board with the idea of time travel and like don’t really hold any hostility towards her. Guys that is a random person who just showed up in Uther’s room out of the blue?? Along with that Igraine is portrayed initially as being a hysterical pregnant woman that all the men dismiss, but then in the middle of the book she has a weird half of a chapter that’s her POV and it’s revealed that she’s actually evil and in cahoots with Arthur (who is Uther’s brother in this) and that the baby she’s pregnant with is actually Arthur’s. WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS? Of all characters you’re going to put ones that are traditionally mother and son together???? Ew.

Throughout all of this Ana is in a love/situationship thing with Nimue (who is Uther’s court sorceress) and they keep randomly having sex throughout the book. All fade to black but it always is just randomly there and choppy af. There’s also an entire plot of: There’s a Dark Sorceress Who Has Been Missing For Years.

Gee I wonder who it is :/

Merlin, Mordred, and the evil sorceress (called Kaeth Adú) are all non human wizards by the way. Several times Mordred looks at Ana and Nimue and goes “you’re not even the same species.” Like why??? Mordred isn’t related to anyone in this universe. He also is super weird and cryptic and sides with Uther on the grounds of controlling magic while Merlin is with Arthur wanting to free all magic (it’s kind of a side plot). Mordred refuses to tell anyone anything about the dark sorceress though but then Ana ends up going exactly to where the dark sorceress’ lair was and Wow We Were All So Surprised What Happened Next. (Heavy on the sarcasm).

So Ana finds out she’s the dark sorceress and the like magic possesses her body and turns her evil? She kills all of Arthur’s troops in one swoop with a giant fireball and then goes off and Nimue finds her and through the power of love like turns her back to normal. It must be noted the entire book is resolved in like 5 pages.

Conclusion

I hated this book. The concept was there but it’s like the author wanted to put no time into it, watched BBC Merlin, and called it a day (the MC even references the show IN THE BOOK). It reminds me of something I would find on teenager Wattpad in 2015. Therefore:

0.25/5 ⭐️

[fumifooms]

Do you think hanahaki-AU fits DunMeshi? As one of magical traps/curses of the dungeon, maybe. I only thought of Chilchuck's flowers: hemlock (pun intended. Also small light flowers giving headache), clover/shamrock (so Irish! Also sweet - and Chilchuck dislikes sweets), thistle (so prickly - and Celtic too) - and there my imagination stopped. And thank you for hosting the marchil event, it was great!!!

Oooh! You know what yeah I see the vision! I’m not a hanahaki person myself but yeah… Yeah I could see it. Out of any fandom, for the fantasy manga about funky speculative fauna and flora it could 1)make sense for it to exist in the world and be in line with canon and 2)be very interesting to explore. I imagine it’d be a sort of parasitic plant that grows in you not unlike how tentaclus and cracks in walls… I do feel like they’d have found a way to cure it and get rid of them in the world though, but it could be that people who can treat it are rare especially since it’d be a delicate operation. But a straight up magical curse from the dungeon would also be very interesting.

I really like your picks for chilchuck!!

I tried to look for flower meanings and you undersold hemlocks their poison are straight up terrifying. Hemlock also reminds me of the word wedlock, if that adds anything… Because of their poison they’re associated with pain and self-sacrifice, had trouble finding anything that didn’t start and end at "they’re bad news" lmaoo. Clovers are more of a no-brainer with meanings like hope, faith, love and luck. I associate them with youth as well but looking it up that’s just a me thing… Luck could be fun in an ironic way considering his life conditions, but also fun for the lucky very precise shots he makes like when he threw the knife at the dragon or with his bow, though he would hate having it be attributed to luck instead of his own hard-earned skills haha. And omg the Thistle…….. I’m obsessed with that actually. Sensory horror wise it’d be really interesting to read how it’s like coughing it up, ESPECIALLY with the sweet taste accompanying it oh my god. If we’re going with a marchil angle, the fact that she’s a sweet person… He dislikes sweets and he hates that he loves her. It reminds him of her and he hates it, the thistle in his throat is also her, his love for her is a thorn in his side, he loves her and it hurts him and he hates it all. It’s so Chilchuck to just suffer in silence and do jackshit about an unrequited love except beating himself up for it, sigh…

I’m sorry Thistle thistles are a Chilchuck thing to me now <3 You know I always underestimated how wild thistles look… It really does look like the flower is in a green jester costume with a funky little collar. Kui you visionary Thistles are also small and round and cute… What the prickles? No no that’s just little hair ahoges <3

I don’t have any particular ideas for everyone else… Forget-me-nots are a very Marcille pick with devotion, true love and remembrance… I also associate Marcille a bit with buttercups. Also Queen Anne’s Lace, which besides beauty symbolizes sanctuary, safety and refuge… Their seeds are edible and kind of taste like thyme btw, hah, time. They’re all softer kinds of flower, no poison or thorns afaik, and I think it suits her. Unrequited love with her wouldn’t be something as acid, it’d be a more poetic sort of ache, doomed longing that feels like a bruise rather than salt in an open wound.

[ca-suffit]

yeah anon I don't want to publish ur specific ask for the reasons u said, but thank u for reminding me of this post. this post from nalyra-dreaming was part of the affirmative action drama and I think a lot of what's in this post got lost out being talked about because of that. so let's talk about it. let's comb thru this so ppl can rly understand nalyra's racism and what they're defending when they want to defend her.

first off, lol take ur own advice. but anyways. this way of speaking is crazy. this is why this whole group of besties put everyone off as time went on. that's why it's lol when ppl come to me saying nobody likes u, we prefer them. okay?? ur weird and u like being yelled at idk. these ppl read some dumb books and think they work on the show. they reference each other's fanon more than anything else. there's no discussions. they talk AT u. it's a bunch of ppl who want to be seen as smart and popular. that's it lol. "we've been trying to tell them" girl u don't work on the show stfu.

this bitch is a whole bitch. u act like u have been victimized by a black fan because you had a disagreement. u play up "I tried to listen and I agree too! poor me, THEY don't want to hear anything else but what THEY want to hear :(" and THEN u have the fckn audacity to say shit like why aren't u all listening to BLACK MAN JACOB ANDERSON. why aren't u listening to black fans? why are u here making this post to act like a victim to "mean" black fans who just don't listen to facts and logic and jacob anderson himself. why are u here twisting this shit up to pretend u have empathy for black ppl by stepping over everyone here (who does not have to filter anything for show press) and saying "actually ur all wrong and stupid and ur the REAL racists because u take away jacob and bailey's own voices."

this is a real level of fucking evil racist shit and why I'm spelling this out rly slow rn so u all understand.

"Louis is not chained to his coffin guys, he could have left, and a fight which shows off power discrepancies within the show story line is not automatically domestic abuse."

u jump thru so many hoops for lestat's defense it has made u dumb as fuck.

where was louis supposed to go? he's black, his family hates him, his husband is a demon spawn who stalks everyone down who tries to leave. who BEAT HIS ASS already at the *thought* that he'd even leave. that's not DV?? he could have left?? how are u like 50 years old and victim blaming like this and then saying u have authority over analyzing these books for the peasants here lol.

the favorite go to line from this dumb group is "they're monsters" "they're vampires." anne rice was famous in the first place for using iwtv to humanize vampires. I think she used this type of "logic" over time too tho and that's prbly where this comes from. it's a bad excuse tho. we're talking about DV but u say it's not DV and then say "they're all murderers anyway so nothing matters." girl the redemption isn't about vampirism, it's about whiteness. u big fucking dummies who can't talk about race always want to pretend this is about lestat being a vampire and how we're too stupid to understand vampires and monsters. the horror of lestat rn is his whiteness. the horror is the power that gives him as he's the least capable of rational thought in that whole "family" unit. he's ignorant, controlling, and quick to anger. he never tries to fix his ignorance, he makes excuses for all his behavior because he CAN. because society allows him to do that! louis and claudia can't make any mistakes or be forgiven because black ppl are not given that same grace. u can call lestat a monster because on a white man that's still an attractive quality. ppl LUV white serial killers and abusers so much and hype them up like they're galaxy brain heroes. calling a black person a monster is just every day. with no benefit. that's the one u rly believe is the threat and then u shoot to kill.

she's so dumb omfg. isolation doesn't mean put in an empty room. lestat wove himself into every aspect of louis' life so that louis could not exist without him. yes, on a level, louis was showing off his man, but u see how the "roots" take hold more and more over time. he's living in lestat's house, lestat is now the one driving the car. more and more lestat is telling them what they're doing and becoming critical of what louis will not give up. acting up v loudly when he doesn't get his way (he brings antoinette in when louis isn't "acting right" so he can torture louis at his job so he'll fix himself already, then he "allows" louis to see other people except now I'm gonna overreact about that too, now I've chased claudia off but btw did u know I've always had a big dick and u not being fun for me anymore is why all of this has ever happened??)

again with the evilness of trying to prove ur shit point by saying "if u disagree with me then u hate black people (jacob anderson) even tho I'm speaking over all black ppl here with this post." ok lestat lol. u are always trying to excuse lestat's actions for being what they are by saying there's a book reason behind it or saying louis or whatever black or brown character is the REAL abuser. do u think abuse has to be intentional to count as abuse? do u rly think lestat's actions are justified when he could have easily explained any of it without doing all that? his response to louis' depression is to do everything I wrote above. u think that's not abuse? u think that's not isolation? "be my companion" but he didn't mean emotionally. u don't think that's maybe the arc lestat is going to have to go thru to be a better partner to louis? what do u think his arc is then, louis just made it all up and soon we won't have to care about race and lestat has been a cool guy this whole time just kidding?? anne rice rly gave u a smooth ass brain.

I don't even know what this means. u all love to skip over points and just say "okay SWEETIE u just don't understand dark themes and monsters, u won't ever get it." okay U, SWEETIE, ur 50 years old, talk slow for me. I know u can do it. if u want authority then prove u know ur shit. a loud voice by itself doesn't do anything but yell. but this is all mama rice taught u tho. so here we are lol.

"everything is unreliable narration except for lestat who is always telling the truth because his egotistical crazy ass white woman author who wanted to be a white man so badly and wrote in his voice IRL to yell at ppl for real said he's telling the truth" u are all so crazy and racist and then u get big mad when ppl notice how crazy and racist u are lol. this gap between series airing has been annoying af but it's sure exposed ur asses because ur not smart like u think u are. when someone rly shows up and breaks down ur arguments to ur face and that is the sole reason I'm here, u all have nothing to say anymore. so fuck u lol enjoy this well earned fallout.

[hekateinhell]

Grief, loss, and mourning are such prominent motifs in VC from the beginning to the end, especially for Louis, Lestat, and Armand.

@rainbowcarousels just reminded me of when Lestat says the name 'Nicolas' to Louis for the first time that he can remember, in the 200 years that they've loved each other:

Ah, if only I could reach back over the centuries and bring the light of this ballroom into the world I had once shared with someone else....

"What's the matter?" he [Louis] said to me suddenly.

"What?"

"I saw something, something in your eyes."

"Just thought of a boy I once loved a long time ago."

"Nicolas," he said.

"Yes, Nicolas," I answered. "Seemed all the little victories of life and life after death were so hard for him, happiness was so hard for him.. joy was an agony I think, but I don't want to think of it now."

"Some of us are infinitely better at being miserable than happy," he said gently. "We're good at it, and proud of it, and we get better and better at it, and we simply don't know what it means to be happy."

I nodded. My thoughts were as thick and confused as the dancers, the music. But the dancers and the music were beautiful. My thoughts were not.

I could not recall ever having spoken of Nicolas to Louis, never ever even mentioning Nicolas's name. But then I do not remember everything, as I once thought I did.

There is something in us, even us, that will not allow for that, something that pushes the memory of suffering that is unbearable slowly away.

"I have no gift for being miserable," I said.

"I know," he said. He laughed. Such a human face.

Such a lovely face.

There must surely have been twice as many blood drinkers now in this ballroom as there had ever been, and I sensed that I had ought to stop having such a marvelous time and return to greeting newcomers as the Prince should. But not before holding Louis for a moment, and then kissing him and telling him low in French that I loved him and always had. ~ Lestat, BC

To me, the later trilogy — maybe due in part to being more action-based and primarily set in the present? — largely lacks the depth and emotional resonance of the earlier books, but they do feature some of my favorite moments in the Chronicles as well.

And this is one of those scenes that stands out as being the final step in the process of grieving a loved one. The place where given enough support, security, and time, we can perhaps settle into and we can talk about them as being someone we once knew and loved (Claudia is different in this context because that is a shared loss to Lestat and Louis).

Additionally, the lines 'we simply don't know what it means to be happy' and 'something that pushes the memory of suffering that is unbearable slowly away' are simple enough in the language used but devastatingly powerful in describing the feelings of brain fog and disassociation that can come with living day-to-day with clinical depression and PTSD (which can also be triggered by loss), and I don't know — I'm grateful to Anne for sharing the ups-and-down her life's journey through her work in a way that made both baby and adult me's world a little less isolating and confusing. Because she understood.

[nuagederose]

Dark Roots of Earth | Chapter Twenty-Four: Little Bones

ao3 link

Despite the warmth of the afternoon, Chuck huddled up next to Christine there on the bus, and all the while, he kept his hands pressed down onto the crests of his knees. She sniffled as she struggled to keep the tears at bay: every so often, one would leak out, and she bowed her head forth so no one would see her crying there in the seat next to him. The two of them leaned forward and rested their heads upon the back of the seat in front of them: it reminded her of the times in which she would ride the bus to school with Ann, and they would sit exactly like that.

The memory felt so faint and so far away, but she could remember it through the fog bank which whirred about inside of her mind. Indeed, thinking of the memory bestowed a glaze upon her face, such that Chuck had to shake her a bit to garner her attention.

“I bet it is hard,” he admitted to her; he kept his face close to hers, such that she could smell the cologne on the side of his neck as well as the drink on his breath. The latter never fazed her for a second, but she knew that it could possibly give them a little run of trouble in the future should things ever manifest in the way that he had suggested to her before.

“I had him in my arms,” she whispered to him as the bus lumbered forward along the street. “I cried into his chest. I never thought I would bleed over a man so much as the way I did, but I did.” She could feel her throat closing up from the thought of losing him to her, to Captain Howdy.

“And what did he do?”

“He vowed that I would never lose him,” Christine recalled, “but the thing is I really don’t know if he understands the damage she’s done unto him. When she’s in the picture, it’s like he goes into tunnel vision of sorts and he forgets about anything and everything else that matters. The day of the wedding, I really could lose him.” She closed her eyes and felt her bottom lip tremble from the apprehension. Chuck shifted his weight, but he moved in closer to her. He was letting her vent and bleed on her own.

“So, when is their wedding?” he asked her in a low voice. “Do you know at all?”

“First night of Hanukkah,” she replied, and she huddled closer to him. “Or rather, the day after Christmas.” She sniffled again. “I really just… I love him, Chuck. He’s the love of my life. And he tells me that I won’t lose him at all, but I know in my heart that the second he signs his name on the dotted line, that’s it. He’s pushed into Captain Howdy’s arms and then I’m ancient history.”

Her bottom lip trembled from the thought, and Chuck rested a hand on her upper back.

“Well… let’s start from the beginning,” he coaxed her. “School starts after Labor Day so you can make it known that you’re sleeping with him before then.”

“Before?” Christine raised an eyebrow at the sound of that.

“Oh, yeah, you ever hear a wild rumor about someone at school before?”

“As a matter of fact, I have,” she answered.

“The juiciest ones always start on the first day or before school starts,” he told her. “That’s when everybody is new, so to hear something like that from the start sets the tone for the year. It’s like laying the roots down for how the school year is going to go for that person as well as the periphery. Think of the time when you got back to school following the summer of someone’s growth spurt. It’s like that.”

“Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, like that.” Her memory was foggy and dark, but she did have a slight memory of that particular summer and that particular first day of school. She could not recall as to whom it was that came back beginning to develop such as that, but it rang through her mind, however.

“How do you think I should do that?” she asked him with a knitting of her eyebrows at him.

“You leave that up to me,” he advised her, and he flashed her a wink. Christine gaped at him.

“You wouldn’t!” she replied in a hushed voice.

“I’m going to,” he promised her. “Really, it’s going to be mental, and I won’t hold back, either. Just as long as you’re comfortable with it, because that’s a huge rumor to spread.”

“It really is, and I don’t think I’m very comfortable with someone else spreading something like that about me, either. Let’s approach it together as well as slowly, like uh… how about…” She shrugged her shoulders. “I dunno, like Alex and I get caught in the act.”

“And I’m the one who catches you, too,” Chuck quipped.

“Yes! Yes, and then you spread the rumor from there. That way, I can have some sense of control over it. I can also do things like deny it.”

“Say I was drunk or that my eyesight is bad,” he followed along, and he had a particular twinkle in his eye that Christine found rather endearing.

“And that’s exactly what I’m going to do, too. We can go from there after that.”

“It’s just finding the right moment to do that,” Chuck followed along some more.

“He wants to take me up to Lake Placid before school starts,” she informed him. “The weekend before Labor Day, too, so we have the place all to ourselves. I’ll give you the full scoop, too. You could say like… you just so happened to be there and you saw us together.”

“I can’t just so happen to be there,” he pointed out, and he lifted his head right as the bus halted right to the next stop. He fluttered his eyelids at the feeling and then shook his head.

“You okay?” she asked him.

“Yeah, the bus just kind of… braked suddenly is all. I also couldn’t remember if this was my stop, either.”

“Surely, you would know,” she told him.

“I do kind of know and don’t call me Shirley,” he joked, and she giggled at that. “Anyways, I could say that I was visiting my friend up there before school started and I just so happened to see you there. How ‘bout that?”

“I like it,” she told him with a nod, and she raised her head up from behind the seat. “I can roll with that. But wait, what about Nelly?”

“What about her?”

“She got me into this in the first place,” Christine explained. “She’s the whole reason why this whole affair with Alex is as clandestine as it is. If she finds out about this rumor at all, she’ll wanna know what the hell happened and what we did to get caught.”

“I could just be an outsider to the whole thing,” Chuck suggested. “You know. New boy, just visiting his friend and he saw one of his professors with a girl from his class. He didn’t know what was going on but it wouldn’t surprise him at all. You could swear up and down that you thought you were alone together there. Takes the responsibility off of you as well as me because I could do the whole ‘I heard this’ nonsense, you know?”

“True, true… there’s a part of me that worries, though,” she pointed out. “You know, Alex could get fired and lose his teaching license, and I could get expelled and my parents will wonder where the hell they went wrong, especially since they don’t know about Alex…” She sighed through her nose. “This is a lot harder than I thought.”

“It really is,” Chuck confessed, and he once again leaned his head against the back of the seat before them. “Understand, you are older, though, so I don’t see it being that scandalous so to speak. It’s hard to say, though, especially when you bring up your parents.”

“Yeah, an affair is an affair,” Christine noted. “And it’s true that I am having one with him.” She showed him a wink, and he returned the favor with a smile.

“I remember when Eric tried to spark a rumor that Captain Howdy was a lesbian,” she recalled, and Chuck snickered at that.

“And how’d that go?”

“It actually didn’t get off the ground,” she said. “He tried to say that Alex was with a closeted woman, but I haven’t heard anything of it since then, though.”

“Actually, now that you mention it, I do remember that,” Chuck said with a wag of his finger to her. “I remember hearing about it in summer school, like on the first day I was the aide. It was one of those things that I heard in passing, too, and I had to stop and really pay attention to it.”

“Do you remember who said it?”

“I don’t. But it was a couple of girls, though, which means it does have some traction to it.”

It was as if a lightbulb had gone off in Christine’s head right then.

“Hey, yeah, that’s it!” she declared. “Let’s parlay on that.”

“Alex is with a lesbian and looking for a way out,” Chuck followed along, and he raised a fist to her for a bump. She gave him one, and then he raised his head again as the bus came to the next stop. “Oh, here I am now. You got my number, and I have yours.”

“Indeed, I do,” she promised him as he gathered himself and stood to his feet. She watched him pad off the bus with a few other people; through the amber light of the setting sun, she could see him walking up to his apartment building with the key to the front door in hand. Though she was risking something by sparking a rumor, she knew that she could work her way around it all once the dust had settled around her.

But she knew that she would have to dig back into Nelly’s realm before she went any further, however. If nothing else, she had to set the record with her lest the rumor find its way over to her at any given point: something told her that it would as Nelly knew everyone in the school.

The bus reached the curb outside of the front door of her apartment complex, and right as the sun disappeared behind the rest of the buildings on either side of her: the amber light began to shift and change color to bright pink interlaced with violet. She hoped that Nelly was home as she made her way to the second apartment on left side of the second floor.

Christine was greeted by the sound of Stephen Stills emanating from her mother’s apartment right across the hallway. She smiled to herself and hoped that at some point or another, Wendy would make that chocolate tres leches cake that was always wonderful in the thick of summer, in particular those dog days of summer when the heat seemed to drag on and out. If nothing else, she could take something back to Alex to further seduce and entice him.

She ducked inside of her apartment, opened the windows to let the evening air inside, and fetched her phone. She still had Nelly’s number in her address book, and she was quick to dial it.

It rang once, twice, three times, and then she reached the machine. It was so strange to hear Nelly’s voice after not hearing it for some time prior to then, but Christine had to think of the matters at bay.

“Nelly—it’s Christine,” she began, and all the while, her voice trembled a bit. “I just really want to talk to you, especially since school’s going to start soon. I don’t want anything bad between us, and especially not this year, either.” She closed her eyes and sighed through her nose. “I need you, and so does Alex. Give me a call if and when you can, thank you. If I’m being completely and totally honest, I want to tell you that I miss you.” She hung up and ran her fingers through her ponytail there at the back of her head.

With nothing more to add, she changed into her pajamas of a camisole plus some shorts, and then she padded across the hallway to have dinner with her mother. All the while, she never made one mention of Alex or the wedding to Wendy. Something told her that she was eventually going to have to come clean, even before Chuck had showed up, but she knew in her heart that she would have to prepare herself for the worst.

The next morning, Christine woke up bright and early to fetch herself a cup of coffee as well as a bite to eat, but before she even so much as put her shoes on, she picked up her phone once more and dialed Alex’s number.

It rang once, twice, four times—

“Hey, it’s Alex—I’m either out teaching a class or doing something else. Leave a message and I’ll try and get back to you. Thank you.” The beeping sound followed, and Christine closed her eyes.

“Hey, baby, it’s Christine,” she told him, and her voice came out in a near whisper all the while, especially since she knew that Wendy had to be awake at that point. “I’m just getting back to you as promised. Um… give me a call back if and when you get this. I love you.”

No sooner had she set the phone down on the little side table by the couch when it rang again. She pressed the button and answered.

“Hello?”

“Hey!” His voice hit her like a brick.

“Oh, hi!” She could feel her face growing warm from the sound of his voice. “I just left you a message.”

“Yeah, I saw it just now. What’s happening?”

“You wanted me to call you today,” she explained.

“Yeah, I did. Because I just… I wanted to hear your voice. I needed to hear your voice, actually. I honestly can’t stop thinking about yesterday and the way that you cried to me.”

“And I can’t stop thinking about it, either,” she confessed, and she could feel the tears welling up at the mere thought of it.

“I still want to take you up to Lake Placid,” he said; his voice was as tender and sweet as ever. “Week before school starts, we find ourselves a little cabin in the woods and have some fun, if you catch my drift.”

“Let’s go alone,” she suggested to him. “I want to go there with you and only you.”

“Of course!” he promised her. “The whole shindig wouldn’t be a date with my girl Christine Sixteen if it wasn’t just me and her.”

“I wanna take our mugs, too. You know. The mugs I made for the two of us—you and me, I mean. Let’s make this all our own because I want you to have a good memory to ruminate over before the wedding.”

“Oh, those! Yeah, I agree. Let’s take something of ours and then go to the place where we can be alone. We can camp out in the woods together in a little cabin and have those mugs on hand. I’ll make us some coffee and we can spend all the time in the world together.” He then cleared his throat. “Bring something baked, too. That apple Brown Betty was just to die for, let me tell you.”

“Oh, I can tell,” she promised him, and she couldn’t resist the smile on her face at that. “How about something sexy like… something chocolate and laced with some spices?”

“I vote yes,” he answered, and he cleared his throat right then. Something about the sound of his voice made her wonder, as if he was hiding away in the closet in the hallway or in the bathroom, away from those prying ears.

“My mom makes a mean chocolate cake laced with cinnamon and nutmeg—it just tastes like chocolate pudding with some Mexican hot chocolate mixed in,” she explained.

“Ooh, like a… a, uh, tres leches cake?”

“Yeah! It’s especially good this time of year given her kitchen gets so hot and everything.”

Alex cleared his throat again, and Christine wondered if he really was alone in his apartment, as if he had just ducked into the closet or the bathroom, away from Captain Howdy.

“Alex,” she began again.

“Yes?”

“Are you alone right now?”

“Yes, of course.” He paused right in his tracks. “Why?”

“You just sound like you’re trying to keep your voice down is all.”

“Nah, I’m laying in bed,” he replied, and she could hear him stretch after that. “When you called me, I had literally just woken up. It is still early after all. I’m laying in bed, flat on my back with my hand up my shirt to touch my chest. I wish you were here to hold me right now.”

“I would love to hold you,” she admitted. “In fact, that’s all I feel like doing right now, especially since you’re in bed and everything.”

“And believe me, if she was here, I wouldn’t be talking to you, period,” he assured her. “The very second she walks through my front door, she puts a monopoly on everything I have, to the point where I have absolutely no escape whatsoever.”

“I really wish I could hold you now,” she confessed in a soft voice. “Like, you deserve to be held so snug against me like a big teddy bear. A big teddy bear with a soft cute belly.”

“And you deserve a big teddy bear,” he said, “and god, I wish you could seriously hold me right now after hearing all of that.”

“I’m about to go and get some coffee as well as something to eat at the restaurant near my place,” she told him. “You wanna meet up?”

“Oh, god, I wish I could, but I have a professor’s meeting at the school today,” he replied with a sigh. “I have another one tomorrow so tomorrow morning is no good, either. I feel like I keep making promises to you and they just fall through because something always happens. That’s why I really want to take you to Lake Placid before school starts, you know?”

“Just you and me away from the world…” Her voice trailed off.

“Just you and me,” he echoed her. She heard him grunt on the other end, which was then followed up by his bed making a noise. He was telling the truth.

“You know what’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately?” he began again, and his voice remained low and throaty.

“What, making out with me?” And she couldn’t resist smiling at that.

“Well, that, too,” he quipped, and she could hear him chuckle on the other end. “I’ve been thinking about trying to be more romantic towards you, especially with summer almost over and school starting soon here pretty soon. There’s just… something about this time of year that makes me nostalgic in a way.”

“The days are still warm but the feeling of fall is in the air,” she followed along.

“It makes me all warm to think about, too,” he continued. “It gives me a tender feeling inside and… I want to come forth with this big Skolnick gesture towards you. Let’s go to Lake Placid. Let’s go to the ocean, too, and when I say the ocean, I don’t just mean Coney Island. I mean, further away. I’m talking Cape Cod and New England. She’s doing some wedding planning bullshit that I really just don’t want to think about the longer I’m talking to you, so I want to get away from that, and I know you do, too. What do you say?”

“When do we want to go?” she asked him, and she thought back to Chuck’s plan for a brief moment.

“How about next weekend? Gives the two of us some time to plan ahead and everything. I’ll just mosey on out of here without a word, too. She doesn’t need to know where I’m going.”

“No, she doesn’t,” Christine assured him, and she couldn’t resist the smile on her face, either. “She absolutely does not. Let’s do it.”

“Okay! I’ll get us a room and then we can sneak on outta here, lock, stock, and barrel. Go eat, dear Christine. I can tell you’re hungry.”

“I can tell that you are, too, baby,” she told him, and she heard him chuckling at that. “I’ll talk to you soon.”

“And I shall return the favor,” he vowed to her. “I love you.”

“And I love you to death,” she followed up, to which he let out a low whistle.

“Phew. Words can’t say how long I’ve been wanting to hear that one.”

They hung up at the same time, and Christine adjusted her ponytail at the back of her head. She wondered what he meant by sneaking out lock, stock, and barrel, and if it had anything to do with slipping out in the middle of the night.

[bohemian-nights]

I can’t believe there’s excuses for what Rhaenyra says about Nettles, the only Black character in the Dance (“a common thing”, “low creature” and “you need only to look at her to know she has no drop of dragon’s blood in her”). Trying to pass it as her paranoia due to Mysaria and cheating doesn’t work. If you call a POC a racial slur, that’s racist regardless of whether that person did something to you. Rhaenyra isn’t Daenerys or Arya, she tried to murder a teenage Black girl. I am not here for any Rhaenyra’s stan trying to excuse or downplay a white woman’s misogynoir and classism because her sons died. Grief doesn’t make you suddenly racist, or compel you to say racist things. You were always that way. The grief just brought out the racism and supremacism that was always simmering beneath the surface.

Actually, Rhaenyra reminds me of the racist Southern plantation owner Mary Epps in the film 12 Years a Slave, who feels jealous and threatened by Patsey (played by Lupita Nyong’o) when her husband Ed constantly rapes Patsey and other female slaves. Mary hates and blames her and the other Black slaves for “seducing” her husband, while making excuses for his outbursts of rage, violence and lust.

And the fact that some of these people say that they like Nettles is what makes it worse.

(This also goes out to some of Team Green who any other time are capable of admitting that Miss Maegor is in the wrong, but suddenly when it’s a Black girl it’s all Missy Anne is a victim too).

If you actually liked Netty you wouldn’t downplay her hurt. You wouldn’t downplay how she was almost killed in her sleep by Missy Anne. You wouldn’t forget that she’s vulnerable. You wouldn’t forget that she is a too woman.

Any way you slice it, she being Black, homeless, a bastard, and the daughter of a whore, is the lowest person in the racial/social/class strata. You don’t like someone and ignore their identity and the role that plays in their treatment(both inside and outside the story).

Septon Eustace(the one who reported on what happened during the council meeting where Nettles death was given a death sentence) may be biased against Missy Anne, but remember who Nettles is.

Remember that even when he was defending her Corlys of all people still called her dirty and ill-favored.

Is it really so hard to believe that Missy Anne would call her a low creature without a drop of dragon’s blood?

Is the woman who ordered her head truly supposed to suddenly be a beacon of morality?

Murder is fine, but she wouldn’t stoop to racism. Eustace totally just threw in those lines for shits and giggles.

As if he needed to do such a thing when she was fine with breaking guests rights and murdering her in her sleep.

Missy Anne is in the wrong here. Not Daemon who was the one person(baring Maester Norren, shout-out to him, he seems nice) who didn’t have a thing to say against her and protected her with his life. Or Mysaria, who while is a conniving snake, she’s not the one who signed that letter.

Like it or not the moment Missy Anne ordered Nettles to be murdered she became the big bad wolf in her story.

The “mental breakdown” excuse is old. She was perfectly fine with Mysaria sleeping with her husband, but only flips out when a Black girl does it.

To not acknowledge that shows me that you value her feelings, personhood, and “suffering” over Nettles(and there are broader implications with that).

Rhaenyra is just like the women from old yonder. The only difference between she and a woman like Mrs. Epps is that she has more power yet she still chooses to punish Nettles rather than her husband. Point blank period she’s a racist.

Then again it’s not hard to see why these people don’t think Missy Anne is racist given how quick they are to say Nettles should be cut because she is Black, are comfortable with calling characters the N-word or comparing Black characters to monkeys, don’t see the problem with calling Dettles disgusting even though they ship an abusive incestuous relationship, yet somehow they aren’t racist a**holes.

Anyone taking these people remotely seriously, let alone viewing them as an authority on racial issues is out of their mind.

[runnning-outof-time]

Evie not taking after her uncle Arthur and being math wiz lol

if you have the time can you talk a little bit about the girls personalities for some girl!dad lore?

Thank you so much for sending this ask in, anon!! ☺️ like I said in my previous answer - seeing this in my inbox made my day!! I appreciate your interest in my stories!

I had to read the parts that I’ve shared of this lovely family so that I could get a reminder of the girls and what I’ve written for them already.

I’ve added some insight into their personalities below the cut!

Theadora Rose Shelby “Thea”

Thea’s a ray of sunshine

She also embraces the ‘oldest child’/‘big sister’ role and embodies it beautifully — she loves her little sisters

She loves nature (hence where Juniper received her name) and enjoys spending time outside

She also has a tendency to dive completely into whatever it is that she finds she’s passionate about — also where Juniper got her name.

I think she’s also the most caring out of the three. Like if someone in her family’s upset, she’s going to stay with them and make sure that they’re going to be ok.

Kind of going off of the last one, Thea’s really pure — in the sense that she’s always seeing the good in everything. And that pureness lasts for a while; throughout all of her childhood years and up into her teens (which Tommy’s genuinely grateful for because he’s always worried about his line of work and exposing the girls to it).

I imagine her going on to do something good in the world … to inspire and advocate for change in some realm. … maybe she’d become a teacher so that she could make an impact on the next generation while also fighting for change that she wants to see in her community.

Evelina Marie Shelby “Evie”

Evie’s definitely the one who brings the sass and drama the most

But she’s also very much goofy and a trickster … she really takes after her uncle John

She’s also not afraid to let her true emotions be known — she wasn’t a fan of no longer being the baby of the family at first, and she made sure to let her mom and dad know that … but then she came around and is happy to have Juni.

Now she likes the ‘middle child’ role …. But she doesn’t conform to it completely (in the sense that she doesn’t just blend into the family dynamic) — which is where the sass comes in.

I imagine that she’s definitely the trickiest to handle growing up … from getting into stuff she’s not supposed to be getting into, to finding herself in situations that Tommy swears cuts years off of his life - he and (Y/N) have had the most talks about her out of all the daughters (and she was the first to have an actual boyfriend…regardless of what her father said).

But with that being said, she’s also smart…in every sense of the word. We saw an inkling of it in the very latest blurb (which the comment about Arthur made me giggle…she’s way better than her uncle at maths) — I definitely think that she’d be the daughter to score the highest in school.

Evie’s definitely going to hold some sort of position of power when she grows up — I’m not sure if timelines work out, but hell, she’d make them work because I could see her being some sort of lawyer, or in a position where she’s able to use her knowledge and wit to best an opposing side.

Juniper Anne Shelby “Juni”

Juni’s truly a ball of sunshine — like she’s Thea times 10.

She admires her big sisters too. They’re the world to her.

I’d imagine that she’s the daughter that falls in love with horses. Sure, Thea and Evie both ride, and have been riding their entire lives, but Juni is the first girl to really love the animal.

And she and Tommy really bond over that.

So I definitely see her as being the ‘daddy’s girl’ of the daughters. … so just when Tommy thinks that he’s finally got this girl dad thing down in the scheme of his daughters getting older and wanting to start families of their own (because yes, he allows that), his world gets rocked when Juni tells him that she’s found someone special — because that’s his little girl, and she’s not so little anymore.

With her love for animals - horses in particular - I see Juni being the daughter who grows up and works with animals as her livelihood. Maybe she has her own piece of property with like a rehab or training facility on it? And of course she keeps a few horses of her own, which Tommy is thrilled about. I’d imagine that there’s family rides that happen on her property almost weekly.

———

I’m sure I’ll think of more little tidbits about these ladies as I write more stories about them, but hopefully this is a good starting off point for a little more insight into who they are — and hopefully I didn’t leave out anything that I said in the stories already…if I did, don’t be afraid to tell me and I’ll add it here!

If you’re new to the Girl Dad series, but you still read this post (firstly, thank you!) you can read their ongoing story HERE!

Thanks so much again for sending this lovely ask in! It was so fun thinking about these girls and diving deeper into who they are!! 🥰❤️