#BRANCH IS ALLOWED TO BE PETTY ABOUT IT

[razzle-zazzle]

Hey for your between au would branch talk about gristle to his older brothers like "yeah my big little brother gristle was about to get married and blah blah blah" but forgets to mention that gristle is a Bergen so the only one who knows that branch is proudly talking about a species that ate them regularly is John dory and when Bruce Clay and Floyd go to meet branch's little brother they freak the heck out or would he not tell them anything about his life without them (also the added guilt of finding out that your little brother was literally almost killed because you abandoned him has gotta mess with them)

It's kinda a mix! John Dory got the reveal head-on due to having to go directly to Bergentown to get Branch, but Bruce only gets a few hints of it up until they make it to Hole-n-Fun. There's a lot of ways to go about it, so I don't have everything nailed down just yet, but with the way things are currently planned Branch's role as Prince of Bergentown is outright stated at the minigolf course.

Floyd and Branch only get a few moments before the climax hits, so Floyd only knows that Branch is wearing a cloak and crown—up until after Floyd's fakeout death. At that point, well, with Gristle there and Floyd alive and safe, there's no reason for Branch to not get a little petty about introducing his younger brother >:]]

[intuitively-her]

First energy I'm picking up on somebody that you recently cut off or you need to. This could be someone apart of your friend group. I feel like you were put into a situation with this person that made you realize that they aren't really down for you like you thought. You made the right decision cutting them off. They are a straight up user and opportunist. Now they're pissed because they can no longer eat off your plate. They are now forced to watch you be happy from afar.

Second energy This is someone that works in the same field as you. I feel like most of you know who this is. This person tries to one-up everything you do. They might even try to dress better than you. This energy is SO immature lol. It feels very petty and tit for tat. My advice is to just ignore them. Don't give them any type of reaction because that's exactly what they want. For some of you, this person will try to extend an "olive branch" and act like they want to help you with something. DO NOT accept anything from them. They want to sabotage what you have going on.

Message from spirit📞 Stop worrying/overthinking so much about this situation. We are protecting you all the way through. Put your focus back into what matters most as you go through this transition.

Main energy This is a family member or lover. This could also be a sibling or parent maybe? I feel like y'all aren't as close as used to be. You could feel like you're outgrowing this person. They feel very rejected by you right now. This person has shown you time and time again that they are unreliable. They are jealous the love and praise that you receive from others.

Message from spirit📞 Allow this relationship to fall. You know this person cannot come with you.

First energy I'm getting strong 3rd party vibes. There is someone that feels like you have what's theirs or vice versa. I keep hearing "he/she's mine!" This is making me think of that movie "Obsession". Go watch that. Someone here recently found out that “their person” is dealing with someone else and they are PISSED.😭 This is "the other woman/man." They are mad that they no longer have access to your person. Especially if your person has money and likes to spoil/take care of you. I feel like your person was juggling you and this other individual in the past, or maybe they dated them once and things didn't work out. Regardless, this other woman/man is mad because your person chose to be with you instead. Don't pay this person any mind lol.

Second energy This is your ex. This person is lurking harddd on your socials. You've probably been noticing hella fake pages popping up on your feed, and it's definitely them. If you've started dating again or talking to someone new, they are mad as hell.🤣

Message from spirit📞 You need to do some self-reflection. Heal from the things that once hurt you. Figure out what you love about yourself/ what you'd like to change. Do more of what makes you happy. Cut out distractions and meditate for a clearer outlook.

*ONLY TAKE WHAT RESONATES*

💖Please DO NOT copy, repost, or steal my work. Thanks!💖

[jadewolf22]

Some Peace and Quiet

Aura x Fem!Reader

Warnings: Fluff, idiots in love, ect…

Summary: Just a quiet, peaceful night at home with your beloved Aura. 

A/n: This is my first time writing Aura… I hope I did her justice… And thanks to @milfsloverblog for giving me the little nudge I needed to write this. 

A/n: I know I have like 3 series that are still waiting on the next chapter, but I've seen so many requests for an Aura fanfic I knew there was no way I was going to be able to work on those again until I got this out there.

Word Count: 901

Quiet nights sitting around a fire with a cup of tea in hand had quickly become one of your favourite ways to end the day since you and Aura had taken up residence in the woods. The chirping crickets, crackling fire, and occasional hoot of an owl were like serotonin for the both of you, allowing you to relieve yourself of the stresses of the day while you nursed on warm tea. 

You sighed in content, leaning back against your chair and looking up at the stars as they shone through the treetops, branches shaking in the gentle breeze. A light snore drew your attention to your wife who’d fallen asleep not long ago, her empty mug dangling precariously from her fingertips. A quiet laugh escaped your lips as you smiled, finishing off the last of your tea before you stood, calling her name as you shook her shoulder.

“Aura, my star,” you cooed, brushing a loose strand of hair from her face as she stirred, “Come on. I think it’s time we head off to bed.” 

Aura groaned, watery-blue eyes fluttering open as her face morphed into a pout from having been woken. Even now, after almost thirty years together, your heart still skipped a beat everytime she looked you in the eyes. Though she no longer believed it, you found her as beautiful as the day you’d met. Sure her hair was now silver instead of blonde, and sure more age lines graced her face, but to you they were never flaws or imperfections, just simply new things for you to adore. You smirked, placing a kiss to the tip of her nose as you opened your arms to her, a silent request for her to stand—but she insisted on being stubborn. 

“Come on, Aura. Don't be petty. You’re tired and we both know it.”

“I am not!” she insisted, though the large yawn that followed quickly disproved her words. You crossed your arms, face forming into an I-told-you-so kind of look and Aura sighed. “Alright, alright. Fine.” she muttered using the armrests to help push herself out of the chair. 

Biting the inner corner of your lip to keep from cracking a victorious smile, you snaked your arm around her shoulders, pulling her against you as the two of you headed into the trailer. Taking Aura’s mug from her, you set about washing the dishes from dinner as Aura went to change and freshen up for the night. When you came to join her, Aura was seated on the edge of your bed, attempting to take a hairbrush through her ever-untamable mane of silver hair. You had to stop yourself from laughing when the brush snagged on yet another tangle and Aura let out a curse, pulling the brush away from her hair and tossing it down on the bed. 

“Why don’t you let me do that?” you offered, coming up behind her and resting your hands on her shoulders.

“Good luck.” she muttered, her tone both annoyed and clearly exhausted. The poor woman was going to collapse soon and you knew it. 

Gathering up your comb and her brush, you sat down behind her and set to work, picking away at the tangles with the comb before smoothing them out with the brush once you’d loosened them enough. This act had become a nightly ritual between the two of you since you’d moved out here and, even now, Aura still doubted your ability to detangle her hair when she couldn’t. She sighed with each tangle removed, wincing every now and again when your comb snagged on a particularly large one. Once you were finished, you stood, kissing the top of her head before putting away the brushes as she climbed into bed. Blowing out the candle that lit up the trailer—all save for the one on your nightstand—you crawled into bed beside Aura, wrapping your arm around her as she snuggled into your side. It was her favourite way to fall asleep, tucked up against you with your arm wrapped around her, humming as you played with her hair absentmindedly. And you loved it too, the way her body fit perfectly against yours, the faint traces of jasmine and sandalwood that clung to her hair and skin from the soap she used to bathe, even the way her warm breath tickled as it danced across your neck. 

“Good night, my star.” you whispered against her hair, breathing in her scent as if you would never get to do so again. 

Aura hummed, pressing herself impossibly closer to you, tucking her head into the crook of your neck and whispering against your skin, “Good night, Y/n.” You felt her press a kiss to your collar and, without another word, she was fast asleep, her breath slow and deep as a soft snore crept from her mouth every other minute. 

Chuckling quietly so as not to wake her, you twisted your upper body around carefully, blowing out the last candle before resuming your earlier position. Staring at her silhouette as moonlight crept in through the thin curtains covering your windows you breathed a final, “Sweet dreams… Aura.” before draping your other arm across her hip and allowing sleep to wash over you like a wave of warm water, falling asleep beside your love like you had so many times before, the both of you content and blissfully happy.

[hp-fanfic-archive]

Harry/Draco Fluff Masterlist | fics with less than 5k words

long story short: my masterlist page is broken because I’ve maxed out the length of it because I have recc’d too many fics. So I’m taking a page out of @wizardingworldlibrary ‘s book and making masterlist posts which you can find and be directed to on the updated masterlist page. They will contain every fic ever recc'd on this blog, but will be searchable based on ship, genre, length, among other things.

last updated: 09/17/24 | links last checked: 09/17/24

A Fluffy Little Olive Branch by JulietsEmoPhase [T, 4k]

Harry comes into work one day to find a box with a baby owl inside sitting on his desk, and a note from a mystery well-wisher.

*Code-Cracking For Gryffindors by Saras_Girl [T, 4k]

Harry should know better than to conceal mysterious body art from dorm-mates who pay no heed to what happened to the cat.

*Come as You Are by peachpety [E, 3k]

If asked, Harry Potter would categorize his high school senior year as normal: football, friends, and one devastating crush on his tutor, Draco Malfoy. When presented with an opportunity to help Draco, Harry rises to the occasion. Unfortunately, so does his dick. Sparks fly and alarms blare… and the Hogwarts Owlz Gossip twitter feed blows up. Or: the one where an inconvenient erection brings them together.

Cookies and Kisses by bettydice [E, 1k]

Harry is baking christmas cookies and Draco really can't take this anymore.

*Draco L Malfoy (The L Stands For Legs) by StarQuesting [E, 1k]

Harry could spend the rest of his life in the embrace of Draco Malfoy’s legs. If he was lucky, he would.

*Draco's Emotional Uprising by XxTheDarkLordxX [T, 3k]

“For the love of—really Draco? Artificial leather?” The horror in his father’s tone was amusing. “You have money, use it. And what’s with the color scheme? Is that—oh Merlin it is—floral print? This is worse than I thought. You need to move back home. Clearly allowing you to venture out on your own was a mistake.” “I’m an adult,” Draco yelled, still laying on the ground, not bothering to care enough to move. He had chosen his furniture knowing it would haunt his parents. Petty spite did wonders for the soul Revenge, friendship, and a surprising romance kindle after Draco experiences a recent breakup. He just wants to discover who he is, and maybe the knowledge was there all along.

*everything he is by vityenka [G, 1k]

It's almost like a surprise when Harry pads into the kitchen that morning after and sees him standing at the window above the sink.

Happy Halloween! by SereneFreakGeek [T, 3k]

Harry and Draco have been dating for about a year now when their friend Luna has invited them to a Halloween party! What could possibly go wrong? (sequel to Care For Me)

Harry Potter and the Incredibly Organized Personal Assistant by megyal [T, 2k]

Harry Potter's new assistant is snarkily organized.

Hold My Hand by bafflinghaze [M, 3k]

Harry has been with Draco for a number of years now. So when Draco gets injured, Harry has to storm St. Mungo’s.

Keep You Close (Keep Me Safe) by bafflinghaze [E, 2k]

After a long day, Harry comes home knowing Draco will take care of him.

*love me now (touch me now) by swisstae [G, 3k]

Harry's never had a bath. Draco plans on changing that. OR in which Harry gets his hair washed and Loves It (and Draco. He loves Draco too.)

Meeting The Guardians by jlpierre [T, 3k]

Will Draco meeting the 'Dad's', Sirius and Remus, go down well for Harry?

*Patronus by drarrily-we-row-along [T, 1k]

“Calm down? Calm down?! Pansy, you recall that I have a dark mark don’t you? The final is half of our grade! I’m going to fail.” “You’re not going to fail,” she informed him calmly. “You’ll learn Draco, you have over three weeks.” “But I’m an ex-death eater,” he whispered, as though anyone could ever forget. “Death eaters can’t cast a patronus, you know that.” “That’s not true,” a voice behind them piped up, making Draco jump. “For Circe’s sake, Potter, stop sneaking around,” he grumbled. The other boy shrugged, “Sorry,” he said unrepentantly, “Couldn’t help but overhear what you were saying.” Draco rolled his eyes, “Oh, you just couldn’t help it, huh?” He flicked a careless grin at Draco, his dimple showing, and as always, Draco didn’t know quite what to do with that. “I’m just saying that death eaters could cast a patronus.” “How would you know?” Draco asked, crossing his arms over his chest. “Snape could cast one, and Merlin knows that you did far less horrific shite than he did,” Potter replied as he sauntered past them and into the common room. “I could help you, if you want,” he called over his shoulder before walking out of view.

Pomegranate Seeds by Lomonaaeren [M, 1k]

Harry and Draco are having fun planning their futures together. And making obscure mythological references.

Problems in Tying by fuxked [G, 1k]

"Well, considering I switched our ties on purpose, I'd hardly say you're going to make me do anything I don't already want to." "You what?" Or the classic tie swap one shot nobody asked for.

Real Texts by Affectiion [G, 2k]

Kingsley has decided all his Aurors need muggle mobile phones. Draco has finally learned how to use his, and gets a hold of Harry's number.

Ron Weasley: Accidental Matchmaker by Phoenix_Waves [T, 2k]

"There's not a sexual tension out there that the man can't accidentally detect!" George beamed. "And then ask the stupid arse question that's going to light the spark and fan the flames." Lee added matter-of-factly. A fluffy Christmas one shot featuring our favorite older Gryffindors.

Spin the Wand by WrittenSins [T, 2k]

In the spirit of inter-house unity, the eighth years have a small party. In an attempt to get Harry and Ginny back together, Hermione and Ron come up with the plan of a rigged game of Spin the Wand, but not all goes as planned.

The Talk by WolfstarPups90 [M, 1k]

Sirius and Remus think it's time they give Harry "The Talk" when they find he's been sneaking out at night to see someone special.

*The Worst Plan He's Ever Had by gnarf [G, 3k]

“I need you to pretend to be my boyfriend until valentine's day is over. I detected at least three hexed objects in my mail and five attempts to poison me with love potion this week and I'm sick of it.” “To be—your boyfriend?” Malfoy's voice stuttered and Harry braced himself for the punch he was expecting. But it never came. Instead— “Fine. I'll do it.” Harry couldn't believe his ears. “Just like that?” “Yes Potter, just like that."

They Don't Know About Us by weasley_bee [G, 1k]

Harry and Draco are in a secret relationship. When they are both invited to Ron and Hermione's house for dinner, will they give the game away?

Welcome to the Family by Jencala [M, 2k]

Remus turned to face his husband. “Your godson is engaged to a Malfoy. He’s used to the finer things in life and I, for one, would like to make sure this dinner is not only pleasant, but that he knows we are not peasants.” Sirius barked a laugh. “So the truth is, you want to show off for the little bugger!”

you've got something on your neck by liliette [M, 4k]

when will harry not have something on his neck?

*denotes personal favorites

[dancingdonatello]

Can i get some donnie x reader?? Maybe some angst with some fluff and cuddles at the end??

rottmnt donnie x gn reader

It had been a stupid, petty fight.

He had been super stressed over something, something he refused to tell you or talk about, and you had accidentally maybe been too annoying or something. Touched stuff that he didn’t want you to touch or something.

To be honest, you can’t even remember the fight.

So now you were laying in bed, alone. You two hadn’t talked in a day. You had never gone this long without talking to him, except when you had first met. You felt lonely.

Super lonely.

As in you were willing to put out an olive branch kind of lonely.

Which wasn’t like you. You never liked crawling back to someone like that.

You groaned and shivered, suddenly feeling cold.

You thought it was your own imagination but when you glanced at your window, the drapes were blowing in the wind.

It didn’t click for a moment but when it did you jolted, frantically reaching for your knife. A green hand shot out and grabbed your wrist, and when you followed the arm upwards, you stared at Donnie’s face in shock.

“What are you doing here?!” you whispered harshly at him, allowing him to dislodge the knife out of your grasp.

“You might want to get the blade out before you start trying to slice people up,” he said dryly, throwing the knife onto your carpet and putting a knee on your bed.

He looked unsure if he should continue climbing in, so he stood there awkwardly with one foot on the bed and the other on the floor.

You stayed silent and he sighed. “I texted you I was coming.”

You shrugged at him. You hadn’t been looking at your phone for the past three hours. Contemplatively staring at your ceiling had taken up most of your time.

He sighed again and climbed into the bed. He yanked the covers off of you rudely and stole most of them. He mirrored your position, staring at the ceiling with a contemplative look.

“I’m sorry,” he finally choked out, voice gruff with reluctance. “I shouldn’t have shouted at you like that. You were just trying to spend time with me.”

You huffed, chilly. The window was still open. As you slid closer to his arm to cuddle up for warmth, you realized he had left the window open on purpose. Asshole.

He lifted an arm oh so kindly for you to slip into his side and covered the two of you up.

“I guess I forgive you,” you muttered out, melting into the warmth of him. Was he always this warm? “I probably shouldn’t have unplugged your computer like that.”

“You’re forgiven,” he chirped happily, obviously just pleased his plan had worked.

Whatever. You’d let him get away with his scheme for now. You were too comfy to put up much of a fight anyways.

[cozymoko]

THANKヽ(*´∀)ﾉﾟYOU for doing my request (the Mukami sister one)! I loved it so much!!!

You mentioned that Platonic Yanderes are your favorite, so I hope you don't mind terribly if I make another request? Your headcanons for the Sakamaki or Mukami brothers (whichever you prefer!) with a young sister who's energetic and adventurous. She is always eager to try new things (regardless of danger), tends to run off to explore her surroundings and, worst of all, loves to meet new people. Basically a nightmare scenario for her poor brothers haha

RECKLESS, SOCIAL LITTLE SISTER

Note: No thank YOU and keep 'em coming, I enjoy doing them very much! (≧∇≦)

SYNOPSIS: Sakamkai's with little sister who enjoys exploring, is reckless, and loves to meet new people.

Pairing: Sakamaki brothers (seperate) x platonic! sister reader

Format: Headcanons

WARNING(S): Yandere themes, mentions of murder/obsessive behavior in Kanatos' part.

Want more Diabolik lovers? → Masterlist! ★

SHU SAKAMAKI

The ridiculous amount of energy you have is already enough for him. Shu doesn't so much as try to keep up with your childish eagerness anymore. You'll learn your lesson sooner than later so he does very little interfering with your careless endeavors. That is if they don't cause you any serious trouble.

However, he draws the line at your friendliness. Nothing gives him more of a migraine than your pointless interactions with everyone you meet. It's exhausting, to say the least, and he prays that you'll grow out of it someday. But if it makes you happy as of now, then so be it.

"Tsk, troublesome girl...What do you gain from interacting with strangers? Hah, figures, at this rate I'll have to tie you to a chair."

REIJI SAKAMAKI

You've had your fair share of punishments by Reiji's hand, which was no surprise. For instance, when he caught you dangling from that villainous branch that framed your bedroom window or even seated on your knees to coo to a mere alley cat who caught your eye. He. Was. Livid.

Your need to befriend every person you see is ridiculous. As a young lady, you should be focusing on your studies and extracurriculars he arranged in your stead. There's absolutely no time to be dwelling on insignificant people who will do little to better you. But a little begging goes a long way, my dear.

"Young lady, have you lost your mind? Such behavior is absolutely unacceptable. Have you no care for your safety? This kind of behavior cannot possibly go unpunished."

AYATO SAKAMAKI

Ayato couldn't give two fucks about your "adventures", better yet, he'll tag along just to "protect" you. (Or taunt you for better wording). With you being immortal, death didn't come as easy as other things so he has no real worries for you...safety-wise.

Now, this is the utmost disrespect. How could you possibly want to speak with anyone but him? Ayato is a narcissist so save yourself the pointless arguing, you won't win. He's petty to the point that you almost forget that he's older than you! But I digress, a few shots to his ego and he'll be as good as new.

"Oi, what's the point in talking to other people when Ore-sama is here, you're wastin' your time. I'm way better than 'em anyways!"

KANATO SAKAMAKI

You're lucky. If you weren't his sister, he'd kill you. Everything about your personality plagues him and his sanity. Or whatever's left of it. He found your recklessness to be incredibly unladylike. If ruining dresses was a sport, you'd be a pro and he despises you for it.

Not even his own sister is exempt from being locked away. Kanato may not be as inclined to do it but the option is still on the table. Nothing terrifies him more than the possibility of you leaving or attempting to replace him, he won't allow it. Even if he has to kill everyone you meet.

"Hey! Don't do that, you'll ruin the dress I made you! Uu...You're so careless...hic...are you trying to worry me?!"

LAITO SAKAMAKI

Though not the protective type, Laito never strayed too far from your side. In mild curiosity, perhaps, but mostly for his own enjoyment. If you truly need it, he'll save you; however, don't expect this to happen often. You're a vampire after all, why would he ruin his fun to rescue someone making rash decisions? Even his precious sister is no exception~!

At first, he found your boldness amusing. Ranging from painfully awkward encounters to the potential blooming of new friendships. But he simply cannot ignore the lingering stares you received, some in astonishment and others not so much. That left him in quite a sour mood.

"Ah~! That boy, do you know him? Fufu~ he was definitely flirting with you just now. What a shame, I'd never allow such filthy men to touch you."

SUBARU SAKAMAKI

As we all know, Subaru is awful at suppressing his emotions despite how hard he tries. Nothing will ever prepare him for this heart-stopping behavior of yours. Subaru understands that you're growing up and you can take care of yourself, but even that isn't enough to ease his nerves. Especially not with you taking after your "dumbass of a father", as he'd say.

The first time he witnessed this he almost had a heart attack. His fair skin was drained of every drop of color and he appeared absolutely mortified, which he was. Subaru had left your side for a mere second and here you are, seated at a table, completely engrossed in a conversation with mortals that looked to be your age. All in all, he's just anti-social and protective, don't be too hard on him!

"Oi, don't go talkin' to just anybody, got it? Ha—? what do you mean 'why?' Tch, forget it, I'll beat their asses instead."

[romanarose]

Triple Frontier Write-A-Thon

Hosted by @romanarose and @for-a-longlongtime

Hello everyone! March 13th of this year is the 5 year anniversary of Triple Frontier, a movie that was underrated but very precious to all of us. To me, it is a comfort movie and something that through fics and fandom has helped me process a lot of things. 

Charlie Hunnam announced recently that there is potential for a sequel and he is trying to get it in production and has signed on as a producer. Me and @for-a-longlongtime want to both drum up a little noise and celebrate this media we all love so much!

How it works

Write a fanfiction of Triple Frontier, following the content rules listed below. This is for both art and fanfiction. We encourage you to utilize twitter or instagram if you’d like to share either, and #triplefrontier or #triplefrontier2019 on any site you post on. If you don’t want to make art or write, we encourage you to use social media platforms with the hashtags to help make some noise.

We are highly encouraging LGBT themes and for you to think outside of x f!reader. 

All fics that fall under the rules are encouraged, so if you write Santiago Garcia x afab!f!reader, that’s great! But we’d like to take this time to encourage gay/bi pairings, trans readers, or even trans interpretations of the boys. Branch out!

When you post, tag @triplefrontier-anniversary on tumblr and we will reblog it there. We also may reblog onto our main, so consider tagging one or both of us so we know what’s up! Please follow that page to see what other people are writing! In the tags, please tag it triple frontier write a thon, just to make everything easily found.

If you want to post art that tumblr doesn’t allow like nude art, link the content in a tumblr post, like a twitter link, and we’ll reblog that!

If you exclusively write on ao3 or wattpad or other, you can either make a link on a tumblr post and tag us. Other option is to message me (RomanaRose) privately and I’ll make a post and link you and reblog it to the page.

Rules

We will run from March 1st to March 14th. Fics and art posted before or after will not be counted.

This is not a dark event, sorry! Some of us enjoy dark content but wanted to keep this particular event mostly non-dark. That being said, we will allow dub con in the context of mild alcohol use, power dynamics etc. Kidnapping/arranged marriage etc is fine as long as consent is given for anything sexual. Mostly we are looking to avoid non-con/violence. If you have questions, don’t be afraid to reach out to us!

All participants must be 18+, although smut is not required

No incest, including Millercest. None of the usual ‘no’s’, such as underage content apply in addition to no dark.

We have the right to exclude any fic that makes us uncomfortable. It’s our event.

However, we will NOT be excluding people for personal biases, unless it encroaches on our boundaries. I.E. If we have you blocked, please don’t try to enter the event. However, if we’ve had petty beefs or you and one of our mutuals don’t like each other, we generally will include your work. This event is to promote Triple Frontier, not about us.

LGBT themes are highly encouraged, not required.

Tom is allowed. We’re not gonna tell you not to include him if that’s what your little heart desires. However, we highly encourage that your work includes at least one of the usual 4

Leave me alone I love Arrested Development, RIP Carl Weathers.

We hope everyone has fun and this drums up more Triple Frontier fics, in which we are severely lacking!

Remember to reblog and comment to support artists!

Please come to us with any questions!

[winged-void]

Here's the story yall asked me to post

Hello! I am posting this short little story, which is the first of a number of short stories I have written about these two characters, a delusional noblewoman and her deranged maid. By clicking the readmore you agree that both characters contained within, regardless of what the text says, are girls.

In some forgotten corner of some forgotten city, a forgotten noble of a forgotten family sits in petty agony. 

Protected from the onslaught of acidic rain only by a hastily constructed sheet metal roof, he imagines Mother's pain at the tears in his coat, and the scion of the Branche family considers weeping. 

What would it cost? 

Too much. 

Elan Branche pushes it down. At twelve, one puts such childishness behind them. 

Back straight. Assess the damage. Find the solution. 

The coat was heavy. Too large, and far too decorated with old and meaningless signifiers of unearned and forgotten glory, weighed down further still by the damp of rain and blood (hidden at least by the deep red color of the fabric), he takes it off and hangs it on a bit of exposed rebar. 

It was old and beautiful; burgundy and torn to shreds. The sleeves and the tail had cuts and rips that Elan knew he could never fix. He thought of a picture he'd found of the family's old staff, and the dedicated tailor among them. All gone now, gone since before his birth. This burden, like all before it, must be borne alone. 

Put it out of mind for now. 

He turned away from the coat to inspect his blade. Sharpening the noble edge sharpens the noble mind, he thought, and began to clean. His adventures to these parts were proving more expensive than he thought, but the rabble must know the Branche Family. Their petty vassals and pettier commoners had forgotten and darkness had come to them. 

By sword and torch and pistol he would bring light and flame back. He would polish the old blazonry with the blood of those foolish and cruel enough to have taken advantage of the weakness of his family. No longer would commoner merchant thugs an-

Hold. A sound. 

Elan jumped and turned, blade pointed at his empty coat, hanged and swinging in the breeze. 

Foolish. Too easily startled. Undignified. Waving your sword around at an empty coat. 

But then another sound, like the whimper of a kicked dog. 

“N-Nothing gets by you, milord….”

A hunched and crouching pathetic figure emerged from behind the rebar, raising its hands, but holding onto what seemed to be an especially short thin piece of scrap metal, bent at the end such that a thread could pass through it. 

Elan's mind raced. First, relief, then recognition. Figure was a boy. No older than thirteen or fourteen. Thin, so thin, tall and dressed in rags. 

“You. You're that kid from the other day. The mugging victim, yes?”

Wasn't that mugging four towns over? 

He left it unsaid. He continued. 

“What are you doing with my coat?”

The figure squirmed, and tried to stand up straight. 

“I-I-I saw. The state of your coat. And I thought I might be useful, milord…” It paused, and jumped as though shocked, “My lord.”

It gestured towards the left sleeve, and Elan's eyes traced the crimson thread from the needle in its scarred hand to the sleeve of the coat, partially sewed with baffling skill. 

Elan considered the boy. His hair gray (common in these chemically stained regions), his form clearly starved, his body shaking but his hands so very steady. 

Potential and possibility, all of it. Solutions to problems named and those he refused to name. 

“How useful,” Elan lowered his sword and allowed himself to smile, “would you like to be?”

[unhappytimeleaper]

I don’t know how to feel about this. I just couldn’t stop thinking about watching the rain and reflecting on Neuvillette. Also, who knows what might change as he is officially released. This is just an idea that was eating my soul. 

Also, requests are open. I don’t really need to close them, but I am still slow with writing since I work full-time. I am hoping to branch off a little more from just Enstars requests, and ,I’ve taken a lot more of an active interest in writing for Jojo specifically, but anything works.

Neuvillette; Unedited. Gender Neutral Reader. 

Warnings: very vague for the most part but talk of isolation, mental and physical abuse, and manipulation. It’s still Yandere.

Word Count: 2,300+

This blog is 17+ please have your age in your bio or tagged; any ageless blog and below the age asked for will be blocked at the end of the week.

plitter-platter, plitter-platter, plitter-platter—

The rain had been pouring for some time now, longer than usual. What could have set him off for so long was still unknown. The drumming of the rain against the window, your head pressed more into it and away from the armrest of the chair, almost as if hoping by sheer luck you’d phase through the glass and be set free. The sound of the rain, once so peaceful, has grown to become nauseating. Ringing in the depths of your ears and into your soul, plaguing as a reminder of the life you now had. When there is nothing to shut it out, it only digs in more into the predicament you’ve been chained to. No more are the cozy aspects of the rain curled up in a family home with food, cooking, and music as the rain danced across the roof or the time with friends running through the storm in attempts to find shelter, laughs filling the air—just you and the room. 

Well, the room could be your fault. You weren’t physically chained there— not anymore, but the walls of the home, as big as they were, only served to mock you. Too big of a cage, a labyrinth that could only make the looming fear of loneliness bury itself between your ribs and bloom across your heart. The shadows of people known not to interact with you but their whispers tickling in your ears. Sounds of them adding about their personal lives and families, trips, gossip across Fontaine… all while your days had become mostly kept in silence. No, you’d rather stay in here… just one room that you could build into an escape paradise from the weighing ache the rest brought you—filled with books, a window [that you had spent countless hours fighting with], plush chairs, and per your request some plants. You managed to get your argument across to him on allowing for such necessities; although he liked to remind you what he had given, he could just as much take away. Though you knew his bleeding heart for you, that under it all, he craved the love he one day believed you’d give him. Punishments were honest; you knew that much had been burned into your brain, but it was rare that little things would be a trigger for him to take account less you become too much of a “brat.” Ugh, how easy it was to scoff at that term— treating you like a child having a tantrum compared to the reality of a human stuck in the grasp of the inhuman judge himself. 

Sometimes, you wondered what was better; he often was gone. Working, fulfilling a role you had to bite your tongue to denounce him from. If someone couldn’t understand humans, couldn’t understand what drove them to petty crimes and the struggles so many befall, why should he be allowed to make the calls? Judge-free, unbiased… no, that isn’t the way to handle it; you knew the pain of it all weighed down on him, which was something enough [better than doing so without remorse] but didn’t alter the unfair nature of the law. Not when, through it all, you ended up here, a product for his love rather than a participant. But him being gone didn’t change the aching; with the limited interactions, it was only through him the loneliness had a moment to dull. Even if you hated to admit it, you were only human— only able to crave someone to share time with to break the deafening silence of the home. Of the rain. It scared you. To know if he was around more, around enough that your fight to be free would extinguished. You’d lose yourself, complacent in a life you never asked for. If he was home more, would you lose yourself faster, lose the motivation to escape, and become just another wheel in the cog of fate? Or would you have more time to whittle down his defenses and create more openings for means of escape? The thought could only make your heart beat faster, drumming along to the rain, though was it out of fear or excitement? It was hard to tell.

plitter-platter, plitter-platter, plitter-platter—

Breathe fogged up a patch of the window, the cooling glass chilling the chunk of the forehead that was placed against it. The feeling was uncomfortable, both in angle and blooming chills from the material, but not enough to want to move. The rain was still falling, though slowly dying down. He’d be home soon, creeping into the room looking for you just like every night. Days spent on loop, blending more and more into each other. He didn’t mind crying in front of you, often the tears adorning your shoulder or back as he held you close, but he seemed to try to keep the outside world— well outside. He knew it upset you, that it’d turn into some argument, and he’d need to find a reason to punish you for breaking the rules. You often had to bite your tongue, wanting to tell him this is why inhuman creatures shouldn’t have human partners. The gap in communication, feelings and needs was too much. It was killing both of you. You could feel it as he wept, the soft rain showers of him just not understanding, not being able to communicate effectively the motions of his heart. 

Two drops lined up just centimeters from your face. The mark of a race, the starting line. It was a time that once was so innocent when you were a kid choosing a random drop and narrating it in your head as you waited for the storm to pass so you could go out and play. ‘Woe is me’ could only be how you thought of it now. Him and you set up for the race— the starting line and… go. 

Rolling down the frame and collecting other droplets, their trails jumping and altering in their paths as gravity dragged them down. One pulled into the lead, always him. He was always one step ahead, one smarter and more intuned. Like a kid with their hand in the cookie jar, he always found your new escape attempt and could see through your flowery words of deception. In that sense, you had to admit his role fits him well, but only left the bitter remains of the stems in your mouth when he locked you back up with a ‘you’ll be let out when you learn not to lie.’ It must be something tied to him on a fundamental level, a sense. Or perhaps it was just age, something you could never achieve. You couldn’t count how many times you watched the droplets race, hoping that maybe just once you could be one step ahead, one…

No. Even if you did, where would you go? The melusine were everywhere, and getting out within reach of the court would be a life sentence of punishment. Perhaps solace somewhere in the underground community, but someone likely would sell you out to better favor their outcome. You could break for the border; it’d be brutal and dangerous, a bounty on your head faster than you could imagine. Would other regions even be safe from a runaway? Maybe some other small communities… would become looking for you? Would you have to always stay alert for the rest of your life? Would you have to live alone, fending only for yourself? You’d lose yourself just as much in a life like that, but maybe it was the price of freedom. The price of not playing a role, soul withering away trying to maintain the rules and ideals of something you could never understand. When did your thought become so sorrowful, the fight you once had? A flame extinguished by the rain left only as sparks fumbling to stay lit. Look away, it wasn’t over yet. There had to be good out there, people who could understand, you’d take you in. Life would never be easy again, but it wasn’t over. Not yet. 

Lifting your head from the window was always weirdly comforting, the movement restored to your neck and it stretching back into place. The coolness of the glass no longer flushed against your skin, allowing the heat of the room to melt away the temperature. Rest your mind, reset your body. He never minded the long game, maybe as time for him felt infinite. But rushing would only cause holes in a plan you couldn’t keep affording to lose. The storm would pass, and you’d find a way to relight that flame. You couldn’t let him win, and you couldn’t let this system win. 

plat, plat, plat…

“My love,” he spoke. He— Neuvillette, was home. The rain had stopped, only some residue drops highlighting the storm moments before. He stood in the doorway, hand holding the frame as his voice reverberated across the silent room. He always waited for you to notice him before entering. Permission didn’t matter, but in a sense, it tended to bring some comfort to know where the dragon lurked. It only took a brief flash of eye contact for him to take it as clearance into entering the room, legs quickly carrying him to your seat. 

Neuvillette stood in front of you, pristine and put together; his eyes sharply focused on you, and his neutral expression made him seem more intimating than you knew he was. You had been here long enough as well to see the faint but dried crust of where his tears had pooled down his cheeks from moments just before. It didn’t change the power radiating off him, seeping into the room and over you like a blanket to remind you he was in charge here. Curiosity burned in your stomach, leaping up your throat, wanting you to ask what could have caused him to cry so much.

Gossip regarding the law wasn’t to be taken seriously, but the lack of outside world stimulation always makes the prospects more enticing. It burned in your mind to know what was happening outside of your cage, in the world below. Though asking would only come back to haunt you, the fights that led to punishments burned into your mind and skin even if the physical sides had healed. Not to mention the way he would take it if the words even managed not to set off a disagreement, that you cared. Neuvillette may be blind to human emotions and feelings, but he did have his own set— and that presented as caring for him on the most basic level of touch or tone only worked against you. Solidifying your partnership, your love in his mind. 

The silence was always more deafening when he stood before you; that even a breath would break the moment. His hand was delicate, though, floating to your head before wistfully tracing your hair and to your chin. It tickled, enough you wanted to flinch but knew better as he tilted your head to look into his eyes more. Pulling his hand from your face, he held it with his palm up. You knew what he was asking. Take his hand, but don’t look away. Unlike his graceful movements, you didn’t have as much time before his eyes would narrow, a sign of rejection in his eyes— he couldn’t take it. Unlike for humans, you could only assume there was something dormant, something innate that drove the ideas of jealousy, rejection, and the need to isolate on a biological level rather than mental. People could do just the same; you knew this for a fact, but the way he carried it out felt more visceral. Not doing so wasn’t an option; it freed him from his own judgment because nothing could defy the fact of biology. 

Your hand moved from instinct; at least, at this point, it was strange to think of how things now were ingrained in you. The movements of hands, replying to questions, from when it was time to sleep and wake up to where you walked through the day. That it just instantly would click, a passive thought or action. Not trained into you but a reflection of your life, how the passing days and routines with him had become a staple in your life. You had changed since then, proof that whatever was to come was inevitable—a mark of fate. 

Pulled to your feet, Neuvillette wrapped his arm around your torso, still ghostly with his touches. His face now resting on your hair as he breathed– in and out. The tension in his body released just slightly, but as if you were the answer to what had been weighing down on him. “My love,” he repeated, lips softly tickling the top of your head, “come on. Let’s have dinner.” 

The routine of your long day: Neuvillette returns from work to fetch you from your room to a meal before settling into bed together. He’d try to make a convo, and sometimes you’d reply. Other times, he’d focus on reading something, and you’d do the same or just turn your back, hoping he’d get the hint. There was no use in fighting it; the rules layered in stone. 

“Okay.” 

[dfastback68]

Tried and failed to write yesterday but was successful today!! Finally started the goth fam sequel (yeah, not the prequel... oops) and also a short fic that's 99% finished at around 4k. It needs editing and polishing and then I'll try to post it in the next few days.

I just want my blorbos interact and was possessed by the sudden need for Perona and King to not only meet, but also braid each other's hair. I mean come on. It's the perfect activity for them. Plus, their captains have history!! I wanted to write something relatively light hearted anyways. So, here's a snippet:

__

“Moria complained all the time about your captain, you know,” she says, which gets his attention. He’s not keen on talking about Kaido much these days, but he supposes it can’t always be avoided. “That if not for him, he would have stayed in the New World. It was one stupid fight and he never shut up about it! Ugh, it was so annoying.”

“I was there,” Alber says without thinking. He does remember that fight, too, because Moria’s zombies had been a pain in the ass to put down. They were as susceptible to his fire as anything else, though. Kaido handled Moria himself.

“What?!” Perona drops his hair and braces her hands on his shoulder, leaning over to see his face. “Really? Moria was in his prime back then, I wish I could have seen it!”

“I was Kaido’s second from the very beginning,” he says, frowning. Back then. Had it really been that long ago, or is she just that young? “It was a fairly short fight. Moria didn’t belong in the New World, and we made sure he knew th - ach.”

Alber winces as Perona yanks a fistful of his hair.  “Don’t speak ill of Moria! How could you? After I’ve been so kind to you!”

As if she hasn’t complained about Moria several times already, and now she’s trying to exact some sort of transactional cost out of this activity again? He offers no apology, nor does she seem to expect one.

“Well,” she says with a sniff. She smooths her hands through his hair again, and picks up where she left off braiding. “If you hadn’t chased him out, he would have never found me, so. It’s alright, I guess.”

“Hm,” is all Alber says in response. It’s the closest he’ll get to an olive branch, but he’s never been above being petty. Perona is much nicer company than Queen, though, and if Mihawk allows her here, he needs to respect that, too.

“Hawkeyes told me to be nice to you if I ever ran into you,” she says, immediately undoing whatever goodwill had been extended just a moment ago.

[incorrect-jojolands-quotes]

Chapter 18 Yap Session: Paco, can you serve?

A potential look into Paco's past.

Other Yaps (To Be Updated as I Go): 14, 15, 16, 17, 18

Despite being 19 and in school, Paco seemed to already have some military experience. While this is an unusual circumstance, joining the military before graduating high school is possible.

All US military branches require a high school diploma or GED to enter. However, there are a few ways to get in without it legally (though the end goal is to have it anyways).

In high school, you can join D.E.P.; you start as an inactive reservist before your last year of school. You won't be an official service member until your actual training day but you've "joined" the military. Until then, you are finishing your high school education and getting either your diploma or completing your GED. Your parent or legal guardian can sign you off to join the military early with the deal that you will complete your diploma or GED eventually, but that also means they can have the court order you to come back. In both cases, if you end up leaving before your education is complete, you are sent back to school to do so. This is rather uncommon but it is possible.

So, most likely, the only way to get in without your proper education and sent back to complete it is if you were to falsely say you completed it. That brings to dishonorable discharge.

In the military, you only get that if you committed a crime and was found guilty in martial court. Considered to be the worst way to leave the military, you are not allowed to have veteran benefits and may lose certain rights depending on what you did. These crimes can range from treason to murder to theft and obviously there are negative connotations in society when one hears you have this on your record. Any crime a civilian can commit that harms the military and its personnel is considered good reason for dishonorable discharge, like sexual assault or damaging property. While disobedience and minor infractions don't get you immediately discharged, a record of it can be the thing that causes the military to get you tried in court and use it as evidence against the more serious crime. So, Paco being a thief could have landed him in hot water that caused him to go to trial and be found guilty of something else. And that something is fraudulent enlistment and separation.

If you lied on your application, you can be charged under Article 83 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ). Fraudulent enlistment means you lied on your application while separation means you lied about why you need to leave the military. The things you can lie about range from medical history, criminal background, and education status. When you're caught, depending on how bad the lie is and whether there are other charges against you, you can have your rank reduced, lose your pay, be confined, and be dishonorably discharged. For those who committed these crimes because they are underaged, they will receive an order of release from custody and control of the military and given an what's called an "uncharacterized discharge".

Given Paco's home life and how he appears older than he is, I think he intentionally faked his way into enlisting. He possibly lied about completing his education and that he was old enough to join the military so he wouldn't have to stay with his father until he became an adult. It's also possible that he committed some petty crimes like theft prior to joining the military and didn't mention it in his application. Once the military found out he committed fraudulent enlistment and he was found guilty, he was sent back to complete his schooling.

That would be the best speculation as to how Paco has military experience yet needed to return back to finish high school. This still opens up the possibility that he did more than just lie on his application due to how being charged with fraudulent enlistment is oftentimes alongside other charges that were arguably more serious. For example, the case United States v. Watson mentioned the defendant had other crimes brought to him like possession of a weapon with intent to harm, absence without leave, and possession of child pornography. What the defendant, and therefore Paco, is charged with will depend on the attorney's ability to represent in trial. And, like many things in law, there are cases where the charges don't actually match the reality of what happened. It could be that there were things that Paco is innocent of but things were fabricated or he got scapegoated in some way.

That being said, what do you think Paco did? Do you think Paco really got dishonorably discharged because he faked his applications? Or, is there more?

Could Paco be much more dangerous and sinister than we think?

[stuck-in-the-ghost-zone]

@intertexts BEHOLD. NEW HAVEN WARDS: THE WIBBY AND DAVID DYNAMIC ESSAY. this got way too fucking long 2 put in ur inbox so im making a post about it. ENJOY THE STICK FIGURE VIOLENCE <3

okay im just gonna start from the beginnign here and try not to get too sidetracked as i go (<< me when i lie) um. so. still not entirely clear on what williams trigger event would be so that may change how some of this works out logistics wise. but just assuming it would be SOMEWHAT similar to pd- william dies/has his near death experience and is Changed By It. in obvious ways that are impossible to hide. his parents find out because he had been missing for days and presumed dead so when he came back home covered in mud and dried blood and Different, everyone kind of broke down. they know about his powers from the start. william hates them (the powers, not his parents) but his dad especially has always been very supportive of capes and urges william to use them for something good! his mom, who has always grieved the lack of a relationship between her two sons, brings up the suggestion "hey, you know what! yeah! your older brother just so happens to live in a city with a really good cape population, maybe you can go live with him for a bit while you go to school <3" (<< this is also going off the assumption that the general public doesnt really. understand. capes much. his parents dont know theyre signing him up to be a child soldier and die before 40. they love him so much and just want the best for him- if they knew about all that they wouldve never even made the suggestion. but they see how much his powers are hurting him and theyre grieving the death of their youngest son who is still. awake and sitting in his bedroom. and i dont think any of them know how to deal with that)

william, not really having a place to argue from or another option to even consider, reluctantly agrees. hes too caught up in the fear and worry and unpredictability of his powers to even imagine himself as one of the heroes. but he goes anyway. and lives with david. its just as painfully icy as you imagine- david never signed up to be a permanent babysitter, i imagine theres a lot of. phonecalls overheard through the walls of his apartment of david on the phone with their mom asking if this was some sort of punishment. david spends all his time at his office and never takes time to even get to know william. he still takes care of him- he has the money for a penthouse apartment and keeps groceries stocked- but its not like theyre having cozy family meals every night. this does wonderful things for williams mental health obviously. which im sure makes his powers feel so much better (<< this is sarcasm). they dont talk much. obviously. william knows david works for/runs a branch of some tech company but thats about the extent of his knowledge and he never cares to ask further details than that. theres a little bit of resentment there on williams side (william wisp, known jealous petty little bitch- "i thought you were the first good thing to come out of deadwood"). david is someone who's important and has his life together and william is. in his own mind. a freak.

after joining the wards program and meeting dakota and virion and such. william IMMEDIATELY decides he is going to spend less and less and less time at davids place. and so the fucking. chasm between them grows. mutual good riddance. (they dont hate each other. theres just. not a whole lot of care there. but theyre still family, yknow?) and its just like. the BARE MINIMUM amount of contact. william stops by davids place to like. get stuff from his bedroom. uses davids apartment as storage for things he can't keep at the wards base (are teen superheroes allowed to smoke? i imagine that cant be good for their public image). so its not like they totally cut contact theres just. even less of it than there was before.

and then william learns about the SIGNIFICANT importance of keeping your cape and civilian identities separate. any villain who learns who you are behind the mask can be a threat to not only you but also your family. william, who loves his parents very much and knows they love him back, wants to protect them at all costs. conveniently, he doesn't live with his parents anymore. his current guardian just so happened to keep their mom's maiden name. so what does he do! bam. easy fix, change your last name to match with your brother. satisfies the heroes a little bit because its that extra step harder to connect william with people outside the city, AND its not suspicious on the civilian side either because. i mean he still matches surnames with his family. surely this will not come back to bite him (foreshadowing). i think it would be PERFECTLY in character and slimy for david to get a kick out of this name change btw. its been weeks since theyve spoken full sentences to each other but the next time william goes back to the apartment david is there at the kitchen table and just kind of laughs at the paperwork like "aw, little brother, i didn't realize you liked living with me that much. im flattered" etc. etc. eugh

behold! i can call him wibby now. awesome. so cool. anyway.

blahblah whatever whatever. im saying for au convenience david lives in new haven even though in pd canon he technically lives in freedom city. don't worry about it. HOWEVER. this becomes important. new haven wards are like?? vaguely sometimes in contact with the wards of the nearest settlement with a significant cape population- freedom city! this is alan, x, cantrip. I think they probably have like. fun friendly sparring matches sometimes (like the cage matches where they first met but like... legal. and mario kart!) but aren't close enough to be Friend Friends. freedom city wards uncover some shady underground company using illegal research (nhw equivalent of harttawa? dying 2 link this back to mark somehow bc im always thinking abt him but i KNOW u have plans for him already and im dying 2 know them) to give people artificial powers (connected to cauldron in some way but not obvious about it. ill explain this more in a minute) and guess who this gets linked back to. our one and only lovely wicked david bell. freedom city wards don't know williams connection to him since they wouldn't know his civ name. I don't think he would tell them. i also don't think they would actually TALK to David here like they do in canon, i think the heist goes a little more successfully and he's not actually physically THERE so all that happens is that they sneak in and see a bunch of files/papers. and william makes the connection with David's name and maybe picture. but the whole. killing a bunch of guards still happens. "its okay they're villains" etc. i don't know who would run freedom city wards program but they're more. loose about the rules than in new haven. which is why xavier and cantrip are Like That.

anyway on the way back to new haven william is REALLY shaken and dakota and virion obv pick up on that right away (i think they'd also know OF williams brother but not a lot of details bc he never talks about him.) william tells them that that was David and doesn't know what to do etc etc . I think he avoids the apartment for a looooot longer than he usually does because he doesn't want to accidentally run into David there and have to confront this. I think he's probably shell shocked by the idea a little- david is VERY MUCH against the hero program and doesn't like capes at all and is very vocal about that fact (this is pd canon too)!! why the fuck would he be working with the company that gives people powers and Makes More Capes! even though his mystery solving brain is going into overdrive thinking about the reasons and details and minutae of this discovery, william is also chronically avoidant of all his personal problems so i don't think he does any digging into it yet. until. well. the freedom city wards go missing

they on the other hand DID do a lot more digging into this. and david caught on to them and we end up with the scene in the basement . this is where I'm gonna get sidetracked bc there's a lot of information I'm thinking about at the beginning of all this

when william/vyncent/tide get there it's a very similar scene to in pd. x and cantrip are chained up, david has allen cut open on a table. william is. HORRIFIED. maybe even moreso than in pd.

x is even more immediately hostile to william when he and cantrip wake up because part of the information they uncovered in doing their own digging was the fact that david and william are related. and this pisses x off SO BAD because william never told them. and I think he uses wills secret identity against him and that's part of the reason william is SO DESPERATE to stop him. Just imagining that scene in the hallway at the beginning where they're screaming at each other and x just goes "that's your fucking *brother?* you're related to that monster and you never thought to, yknow, share that little bit of information with us?! william bell?????" and as soon as x says his name william just SNAPS and swings the axe at him .

anyway. back to the basement scene. david does his whole manipulative villain monologue with a scalpel to Allen's heart and we learn David is the head of an offshoot branch of cauldron (thinking about like maybe where they sell the vials to people under the guise of experimental medical treatment? for their own research purposes on how the vials affect people. real unethical shit! I feel like I need 2 learn more about cauldrons motivations before I set this in stone though) . anyway. we also learn here that david Has Fucking Powers. I don't know exactly what those would be right now but I think they would be pretty... inconsequential and at a really low power rating, but just that fact alone is enough for him to almost lose william completely.

this whole time william is just full of this icy dread and betrayal, but as SOON as david reveals he has powers that all just snaps to rage. comparable to that feeling where you've been bullied for something for years and then one day everyone decides that same thing is cool now. ("how long. how *long*, david? did you have these powers while you shunned me, sat on the phone with mom in the other room complaining about how much of a freak your little brother is? how *painfully sad* it is for you to share an apartment with the corpse of your baby brother, trying to get mom to pity you enough to take me back and get me out of your hair?")

and ofc david being who he is has some sort of slimy manipulation that saves his ass and gets william back on his side. tide and virion being there they immediately see right the FUCK through it but I think william would be compromised enough at that point that he wouldn't be thinking clearly enough to listen to them. (also side note . like I said I'm VERY undecided on what davids powers would actually be but the two ideas I've been bouncing back and forth are a) some kind of medical Thinker which is how he knows how to put allen back together the right way or b) some kind of Master which makes the manipulation thing worse <3. so maybe wibby is compromised bc davids using his powers on him. if it's the second option. smile!)

anyway wibby goes on his nightmare arc. right. even more fucked up bc of what x says to him about his identity. I actually think a lot of this stays the same but just with the addition of context and also the thing I said yesterday about the guards radioing to each other to evacuate.

everything happens pretty much the same with cantrip and he and virion getting back to the office only to find everything totally wiped clean already. william still does the Nightmare Thing in davids apartment afterward. still undecided in whether or not their parents will be there? I guess it depends on what we do with the trickster. (oh god I haven't even thought about the trickster irt new haven wards. fuck!) . I think actually I'm leaning more toward having them NOT being there? because I think william reigned himself in because he didn't want to scare them too much. and this is worm world i don't WANT wibby to reign himself in at all. I want him to go fucking nightmare apeshit.

btw this whole time? virion stays with him and it scares the SHIT out of him. he's still going to stay because ... this is william. this is his best friend (gay) and he HAS to trust that he knows what he's doing. I think afterward william stands up, david still unconscious on the floor, and there are silent tears streaming down his face and there's this expression of rage and betrayal and grief on his face that virion has NEVER seen on another person. so he reaches out to put a hand on his shoulder or maybe offer a hug (which in my mind is HUGE for him bc I've been imagining virion being SUPER careful and sort of avoidant about physical touch bc of his powers) but then william goes to brush his hand away as he walks out of the room and there's just the briefest moment of skin to skin contact. and it only lasts for maybe a second but virion gets this BURST of williams powers and it's terrifying. he can see and feel and hear and know *exactly* what william just did. it goes away almost immediately but the force of it is enough to throw virion off balance for a second as he processes it and when he comes to again he is just. shaking. and he doesn't say anything to william but he *knows* now and he doesn't know what to do with that information. hes scared out of his fucking mind but he's also. sad. he's REALLY fucking sad his best friend (gay) just had to do something like that. and he's not good with words so he doesn't say anything but he stays there. he stays by williams side despite everything. ughahhvhh

uhhhh final note. pain and suffering. william gets a whole Fucking Complex about sharing a name with david after this. but he still doesn't change it back to wisp because he knows x knows his identity now. which means he doesn't know how many other people could know, how many other people x will tell out of spite as a way to get back at him (<< william wisp paranoia WIN) and it's. LEAGUES better that any potential enemies would come after david and hurt david. (in fact he probably privately wishes for something like that to happen. hed never say that out loud though). using his name as a kind of shield even though it hurts like hell to be connected to his brother like that.

anyway! yeah! wisp-bell brothers torment nexus or whatever!

[guess-that-ship]

S12 Round 3

A Clashing of Elements

cw: spoilers

Water is new to her abilities, viewing them as a gift with which to save people and bring justice. Fire is a veteran, having seen her powers lead to tragedy as a result of trying to help. She wants to teach Water a lesson, cruelly encouraging her to help only herself. Water is disgusted, and vows to take her down. The two violently fight on multiple occasions, narrowly avoiding grave injuries. But everything changes when they learned of how they were tricked, and what they gave up to earn their new abilities.

Fire extends an olive branch to Water, but she is unable to accept it. She no longer hates Fire, but she considers herself unworthy of living if she’s not sacrificing herself to save people. Eventually, this catches up to her. Water loses herself, becoming a twisted version causing rampant chaos. Fire is determined to save her. Even as Fire is beaten up, she continues to call out to Water. Nothing works. Eventually, Fire comments on how much it sucks to be alone. But she is going to be there for Water. With a kiss, she sacrifices herself to free Water’s soul and allow her to rest in peace.

In another world, Water finds Fire again. Water takes her hand and says that her biggest regret is not getting to have more time together. The two of them rest their heads together. It has been a tumultuous road, but perhaps they will be okay.

Old(ish) men one-sided yaoi

cw: spoilers

They are childhood best friends who swore they would always work together and never let the competitiveness for the job they both wanted get in the way of that… until character B gets a girlfriend and gets her pregnant and decides he will give up on that dream for his new dream: marry his gf and be a family man. Character A gets really hurt by this and cuts all contact immediately, swearing he will never forgive him.

Years later character A gets the job they both wanted and goes on to live his life wishing him and character B could meet again, but still being incredibly stuck in the past and hating him all the same. A then meets B's grandson due to work-related reasons and they end up working together but A is so petty that at the first disagreement they have he tries to beat the shit out of him. He later realizes he's just a nice, honest kid who is honestly kind of insane and it reminds him of B, so he let's him leave and decides to visit B.

B is really really exited to see A, who in his head is like "I hate you but I love you and I missed you but fuck you", and then they have a nice hug where A thinks about how gentle and kind B is and feels dumb for how he acted… until A tries to beat the shit out of him. They semi-reconcile and end up meeting up more tho, and B makes it abundantly clear again that he is very happy to reunite with A.

They later team up because they're worried about B's grandson and have a very meaningful talk where B reassures A that overall he has made a good impact on society and is doing a good job. A also realizes that he can't keep dwelling on the past and that B was not evil for deciding to change his plans for the future and go after the love of his now dead wife.

[moderndaypandora]

Starting to feel a little guilty at reblogging with more additions and thoughts on the original post, so branching out to a new “they’re absolutely insane as humans” dreamling post as an extension.

Dream: I’ve always had a great affinity for ravens and corvids in general.

(like that’s a thing normal people say when they’ve got two rescue ravens perched on their shoulders, preening their hair)

Hob: don’t I know it. my mum used to say I was her magpie, always drawn to the shiniest treasure. proven her right, obviously.

Dream: oh?

Hob: don’t get much better than you, love. I’ve seen pearls less lustrous.

Dream: [pleased]

Johanna, deeply disgusted and preparing to lob chips at them: we have TALKED about this.

Hob: don’t be petty, you know you’re going to bugger off with your secret little romantic heart nourished against the cynicism of the world for another month.

Johanna: you take that back right now or I’ll set you on fire.

Hob, cheerfully: you can’t, Jessamy stole your lighter.

Dream: oh, is that what she dropped in my collar?

Hob, kissing Dream’s palm: mhm, Matthew was the distraction. It was when he went for the butter knife.

Johanna, offended: you gave them bits of your sandwich meat after that!

Hob: have to reward that kind of cleverness. Coordinating teamwork with a decoy? Extraordinary.

[xalygatorx]

Unbound | Chapter 13, "Dancing With Devils"

Áine Ts'sambra—a wayward half-drow bard with a painful past—has her world upended when she's snatched up by a Nautiloid ship and furnished with a tadpole to the brain. In her journey to remove the infestation before it can turn her and her newfound companions illithid, she not only finds that their solution has more layers to parse through than she can count, but that a particular vampire in her party does as well.

Unbound is an ongoing generally SFW medium-burn romance based in the world of Baldur's Gate 3 between Astarion and a female OC. Any NSFW content will be marked in the Warnings section. Contains angst, fluff, explorations of trauma, spice, graphic fantasy violence, and a guaranteed happy ending.

For anything additional on what to expect (and not expect), check the preface post.

Summary: A week has passed nowhere near uneventfully. The truth of Gale’s condition comes out when Elminster delivers a message from Mystra. A very worn-thin Áine checks on her companions. Wyll shoots his shot. Áine and Gale, both projecting somewhat, get into an argument. Astarion asks Shadowheart for a favor. Áine shows Astarion firsthand how he looks through her eyes. 

Pairing: Astarion x Fem!OC

Warnings: Angst on angst on angst; fluff; suggestive content and dialogue (mild); mention of fantasy violence (appropriate to canon); lightly proofread; it's a really long one; besties, I struggled through this and I can only apologize so much if it sucks but if I didn't post it now I'd keep messing with it

Word Count: 11k

Listening to: my brain leaking out of my ears (idk White Winter Hymnal again probably)

The next week’s worth of travel brought more heartache than victory for the party. Camping for the night, normally something that at least held a neutral air if they were all especially fatigued, felt strained and the tension in the sweet mountain air seemed to branch from all directions.

Crèche Y’llek had been a mistake. When they’d met Kith’rak Voss and his warriors by the destroyed bridge where Zorru had marked on Lae’zel’s map, they should’ve forgone the idea of venturing further into githyanki territory, if only to avoid having the artefact taken from them. However, Lae’zel had remained adamant after Voss had gone that, despite deceiving him, they still needed to get to the crèche and be purified.

Áine, in retrospect, knew that as their appointed leader she should’ve been more forceful. She’d had a bad feeling about delivering the artefact into the heart of the gith who were seeking it out and she’d had a bad feeling about the zaith’isk too. And yet she’d allowed them to move forward with both. All because she wanted to have faith in Lae’zel and spite their “guardian” a little in the process. Spiting their guardian was petty and she understood that, so she could fault herself fully for that. However, having faith in Lae’zel was the opposite of a mistake and Áine would stand by that until it got her killed.

“Lae, please, get out of there!” 

She could still hear her own scream in her ears, the way her voice had cracked on her plea, swallowed by the roar of the machine as it rattled with its efforts to rend her friend’s mind in two. At seemingly the last second, Lae’zel had hurled herself from the pod just before it and its appendages caved in on themselves. She’d cried hshar’lak, deeming a traitor among the githyanki the only possibility that could explain the zaith’isk’s failure. And still, they’d ventured even further into the crèche to speak with the visiting Inquisitor.

Lae’zel, battered and bruised as much if not more than the rest of them, now sat silently at the entrance to her tent, her stone heart shattering with every doubt she’d taken as a parting gift from their failed venture. Each one was punctuated by the grinding swipe of her whetstone.   

The githyank warrior was scared and she felt disgusting for it. Learned self-loathing pummeled at her chest as if it could crush the shrapnel of her faith back into one cohesive piece. That faith shook the same way her hands had trembled after searching Áine’s mind for the truth of her confrontation with the being inside the artefact. With the “guardian” she still suspected of illithid treachery and not simply because of the heresy it managed to inject into her already scrambled thoughts. Lae’zel had balled her shaking hands into fists and demanded their leave, despite knowing that every one of her kin on the other side of that portal out of the Astral would be waiting to cut them down in Vlaakith’s name.

It had to be a test of her faith. Lae’zel kept telling herself until she somewhat believed it that this had to be a final test of her devotion. Because if it wasn’t, then what had her entire life been for?

Her conflicted gaze lifted from her blade to the approaching bard, wondering if she had it in her at all to bear the weight of company this night. Lae’zel’s gaze dropped back to the hand clutching her whetstone, stilled against the silver. “You must have questions,” she said slowly when Áine didn’t speak first.

Áine sighed and knelt, setting a bowl of soup and a crust of bread near Lae’zel’s knee. “I have dinner that will likely fall short of the usual quality,” she said with an apologetic smile. “Gale understandably wasn’t up for much tonight so I’m afraid you’re left with my cooking.”

“Something ails him?” Lae’zel wondered, relieved that the topic of conversation didn’t immediately fall to her. She set her sword and stone aside but didn’t yet touch the food. Not because she didn’t trust Áine’s cooking, but because she felt utterly hollow after the events of the day and in no way resembling hunger. She would eat—she needed to so she could fight—but it would take her a moment.

Áine slid from her crouched position into a seated one, wincing when she leaned on the heels of her hands to do it and her bad shoulder locked up. Lae’zel noticed but did not voice that she noticed the weakness. Áine was doing her the favor, as Lae’zel saw it, of overlooking her own weaknesses for the time being and she would return that favor. “An old friend or mentor of his perhaps, Elminster, was wandering near the path down the mountain, I guess. He happened to ask after Gale when he saw Halsin pass by with some berries.” 

Lae’zel’s attention caught on the name, her expression denoting surprise. “Elminster?” 

“You know of him?” Áine asked.

“I do,” Lae’zel said, frowning. “However I still wonder why this visit would have caused Gale any ill.”

“Elminster was a messenger this time. For Mystra,” Áine said and she had to make an effort not to spit the name. Lae’zel noticed her rancor and her expression tightened in kind. Áine sighed and ran a hand through her loose white locks. “Gale’s condition…is a Netherese orb in his chest apparently. The magical items he’d needed up until this point, up until they stopped working anyway, were to feed that orb lest it feed on and destroy him. And…everyone around him, it would seem.” 

“I fear I lack understanding,” Lae’zel said.

“I just barely have my head wrapped around it,” Áine admitted. “The orb could and would have acted as a bomb if left untreated, which he failed to tell us.”

“How did such a thing become a part of him?” the githyanki asked, her eyes troubled.

“I don’t know, I…,” Áine paused to sigh, “I haven’t spoken to Gale privately yet. I was upset at being lied to and hadn’t yet absorbed the situation in full, so that is an eventual conversation I’ll need to face.”

“You lost your temper?” Lae’zel guessed.

Áine’s brow furrowed. “Not completely. But I wasn’t as kind as I could have been before I knew the whole of it,” she said, clearly disappointed in herself.

“And what is the ‘whole of it’?” Lae’zel asked, startled that there could be more to finding out one of their companions had the equivalent of a bomb in his chest.

“Elminster’s message from Mystra,” the bard said. “Whatever caused the orb to become one with Gale, Mystra seems to think was his fault, and that was what had caused him to fall out of her grace. And her path to forgiveness that she’s laid out for him is to use the orb to destroy the Absolute. To kill himself.”

Lae’zel’s features twisted. “Elminster delivered this message?” she verified and Áine nodded back. “Hm, well… Even the githyanki have heard tell of the Sage of Shadowdale. Some of his works have been translated to tir’su slate.” Her expression hardened. “That doesn’t mean his every word carries wisdom, however.”

“He seemed devastated to tell Gale,” Áine said, recalling the old man’s tone and face. “He was simply a messenger in this, but I don’t know that I could have delivered such a message, myself. Mystra, for a goddess, seems…misguided at best. And at worst—”

“Near as I can tell,” Lae’zel asserted, “Mystra demands Gale’s faith, but holds no faith in him. Why else would she demand that Gale sacrifice himself and perhaps so many others?” Fired up, Lae’zel began to speak with her hands as well, her long fingers tensing in quick, meaningful gestures to punctuate her words. “Does she not think he can destroy the Absolute with his own immense talents? Does she not know the mighty company that he keeps?”

Áine smiled. “She must not.”

Lae’zel muttered, “Demanding Vlaakith may be, but she acts for the good of the githyanki people. Mystra is concerned only for herself.” A low, annoyed growl turned into a sound of annoyance in her throat. “Chk… Perhaps he would find her forgiveness in a fiery death. But I can’t help but wonder why he’d want it at all.”

“I would hope that he craves it more to better the state of his own afterlife rather than smooth her feathers,” Áine admitted, all the while admiring Lae’zel’s confidence. “She doesn’t deserve a good turn from him for the rest of his years based on what little I know of her. But I suppose he loves magic. He loves the Weave. And therefore he loves Mystra, too.”

“Her lain claim upon magic itself is blasphemy against its very existence,” Lae’zel decided openly, finally reaching down to retrieve the dinner that Áine had brought her. “Magic must have existed before Mystra and it would exist without her as well.”

“I wish you’d been the one to speak to him instead of me,” Áine sighed. “I feel as though I made a mess of things where there was already an abundance of messes.” She rested her head in her hands and gave an agitated sigh directed only at herself. “I should have let you lead us when we first met again away from the Nautiloid.”

Lae’zel watched Áine with a mixture of admiration and pity. “Your humility is what makes you a good leader,” she informed the bard. “We are matched in prowess and I may lead in kind in the heat of battle…however my skills ended at these sorts of dilemmas until I met you.” She offered Áine a faint smile when she lifted her head to meet her eyes. “My people are taught from their birth to forsake softness, to form from edges so jagged that contact alone will cut lethal. Our enemies, our kin too weak to avoid the cull. We are one people taught to claw across our own corpses should it mean our victory. Taught to see a heart as only a soft place for a blade.” Her smile faded. “And what good has it ultimately done me? What good is this heart of stone for it to be shattered?”

Áine felt her eyes sting with unshed tears of empathy. “Stone crumbles. It erodes,” she said firmly. “Your heart is much stronger than that. I’ve seen it.”

“In the past, I would have cursed you for such a sentiment,” Lae’zel said. “I was brought to this plane, my teachings done, only to find I am learning still. You have become another sa’varsh of my life—a teacher.” Her lips pursed. “It has been…eyeopening to learn amongst friends. As a unit without constant threat in the form of my classmates, without barely concealed bloodlust at all times. Save for Astarion.” Áine smirked at Lae’zel’s words. “Even he, with the excuse of being driven by innate instinct, has more in his heart than the warriors I trained amongst. Than I did until recently.”

Áine was touched by Lae’zel’s words. How was it that she’d come down here to console the githyanki and had instead ended up being consoled herself? “You give me a lot of credit, Lae, and I fear not enough credit to yourself,” Áine said. “This side of you didn’t simply happen. This has always been part of you.” Her throat tightened around her next words, feeling that she could stand to lend these very words more toward her own healing than she did. “The circumstances you were born into are part of what has made you, but they are not you.”

Lae’zel gave that some consideration, nodding slowly in acknowledgment after. “I am coming to understand that,” she said.

“Are you alright?” Áine asked at last. “After today, I mean?”

The githyanki warrior offered her a reassuring look. “I will be. Rest is needed. All else will come in its own time,” she said.

“If you need anything,” Áine said, “don’t hesitate to ask. Please. Not just me, but anyone.”

Lae’zel nodded once. “It will be done.”

When Áine crested the slope back to the rest of their tent setups, she noticed that—at least as far as she could tell—Elminster had left and Gale was also out of sight, but had likely retired to his tent after the grueling conversation. Despite that conversation being with an old, dear friend, its topics would have felt heavy spilling from anyone’s lips. 

Áine spent a moment warring with herself over whether or not to seek him out and address how the first leg of the talk had gone, when they’d yet to hear Mystra’s message and she’d only yet had the truth of his condition dropped on her lap. Betrayal had hit her like a flurry of knives and, after everything else they’d endured just in the past few days, it had hit her harder than it had any right to. After all, she wasn’t the one being tasked with a suicide mission from her past teacher, her past lover. Gale was. And yet she’d felt anger on hearing all that he’d kept from her and the rest of their friends.

The question she had to resolve within herself before she tried to speak with him about it was whether that anger was at Gale at all. Was it even anger? The answer to that became less and less clear the more she thought it over. 

When she dwelt on the pain in her chest, her mind offered her images of Gale’s expression breaking at hearing what Mystra wanted of him, her former Chosen. Of Lae’zel’s shattered expression both back in the crèche and down on the cliffside just now when she’d spoken of her “stone heart.” Of turning on the road leading away from the temple to find Karlach doubling over in the dirt as her engine flared hotter than ever with no signs of stopping, and Áine and the others with no way to help her except to get her to Dammon again as fast as possible with infernal iron and a prayer. And then there was nearly losing Shadowheart in the middle of everything back in the underbelly of the crèche. 

At the memory, Áine felt her shoulder ache and she subconsciously reached across her chest to sink her fingertips into the scar-toughened muscle, gritting her teeth. And, despite all of it, still having the yet-to-be ceremorphosed tadpoles wriggling in their heads and no closer to being extracted was giving her a headache that had nothing to do with the little beasts. The truth of Gale’s condition had simply been the straw that broke her back that night. If it had only been his revelation that had turned the tables on them, she may have been able to digest it better.

No, she was becoming less and less sure all the while that what had surfaced during her conversation with Elminster and Gale had truly been anger. If she was honest with herself, she’d had a piss-poor reaction to being afraid for her friends and herself. Because amongst all this, they were still making their way to Moonrise Towers, the symbolic crux of all her past but still-festering trauma. 

Her anxiety often rewrote itself as anger and it was one of her greatest flaws that she knew of. And she owed Gale an apology for that.

A flutter of movement in the corner of her eye caught her attention and she looked down the hillside toward where Wyll was set up, noting with surprise that he appeared to be dancing. Either he was seeking a bit of stress relief or he’d fully lost his mind amidst all the latest developments in their journey, she decided. 

Her curiosity got the better of her and she followed the path down to his patch of camp, noting that he hadn’t been kidding when he mentioned he’d partaken in courtly dance during his days in Baldur’s Gate. He seemed to find renewed energy in its controlled leaps and arcs and the sight brought a faint smile to her face. In his spry movements, she saw what she supposed would’ve been a younger Wyll, when his only duty had been to be the son of a revered duke. Although, she supposed that too would come with its hellish qualities. 

He still looked every bit the part of a noble, she decided, horns and all.

He rounded his steps then and, in doing so, spotted her standing nearby. “Oh, I didn’t see you,” Wyll breathed, startled. “I was a bit lost in the steps I suppose… It’s been such a long time.”

“I couldn’t tell for whatever that’s worth,” Áine said. “You look like you’ve not missed a day of practice. You undersold yourself when we spoke before.”

Wyll chuckled with some embarrassment evident on his scarred features. “I needed the release, I think. It’s been a trying few days, I’m sure you could agree,” he admitted. “I am glad we at least have confirmation that Father is at Moonrise. The rest gives me pause.”

Somberly, Áine nodded. “We’re on the same page then,” she said.

“Well, lucky for you, I’ve properly warmed up and brushed up on my steps a bit,” he said with a cheeky smile as he extended a hand her way. “Woeful would it be for me to fail my new partner.”

Áine smirked and gestured toward her shoulder. “I’m afraid I’ll only hinder you in my current state,” she said. “And I would hate to slow you down.”

“There is no shame in taking things slow,” Wyll said, his voice even and reassuring. His hand remained hovering between them. Áine noticeably hesitated—on one hand, she was tired and sore, but on the other dancing always cheered her up, too, even just a little. The bard’s heart in her won out as she gave him a worn-down smile and took his outstretched hand, accepting his offer for what she perceived as a simple gesture to try lifting her spirits. 

Pleased, Wyll smiled and guided her forward. “I will lead us.”

“Good because I daresay I’m unfamiliar with whatever step you were just performing,” she admitted. 

Despite her words, she easily followed along in his movements and he gave her a gentle spin with her good arm. She didn’t often have physical contact with Wyll, she realized, as she noticed how hot his skin burned now with Mizora’s punishment wreaking havoc on his body. It was nothing compared to Karlach of course, but he was fiery in contrast with her own temperatures. Especially in comparison to the frosty hands she normally touched, adoring each opportunity she got to do so. The passing thought made her smile, a smile Wyll by no fault of his own read as being meant for him. 

He moved them through the simpler suite of steps and it all felt so natural that she didn’t notice how close he’d gotten nor how his arm had moved to wrap fully around her waist until he was right there, slowing them down. It took her until Wyll’s face was just inches from hers for Áine to realize the turn that their little jig had taken and that comprehension then dawned in her expression as well.  

“Oh, Wyll,” she murmured, familiar horror sinking in as she realized she’d once again tricked them both into a situation they may not recover from. How was she so good at reading others and yet so awful at picking up on these sorts of signals? “I'm sorry, I didn’t—I’m awful at picking up on these things, I thought this was just for a bit of fun.”

Reddened with chagrin, Wyll let go of her and stepped back, his expression torn between hurt and irritation. It was a grimace of injured pride. “Why not?” he asked suddenly and Áine felt guilt stab through her stomach. “I simply don’t understand what about me isn’t worth giving a chance. Is it my Infernal appearance?”

“Not at all!” Áine quickly said. “I told you that didn’t bother me and I meant it. I simply don’t see us that way and, well…” She cleared her throat and lowered her voice lest she scare off the very interest she was soon to reference if he was in earshot. “My heart is already spoken for.”

Her discretion didn’t end up mattering much. Embarrassed and reacting poorly, Wyll asked at a raised volume, “Is it Astarion? Because rest assured that trusting in a skillful tryst to become genuine affection will come back to bite you.”

“I mean, he already does that,” Áine said unthinkingly before her own lavender skin darkened with distress. “Sorry, that was meant to be a joke. What is wrong with me?”

In a way she hadn’t anticipated, Áine’s joke had worked some wonders, serving to shock Wyll out of his embarrassment and send him into a fresh wave of chagrin that now had to do with little more than his own ego. The Blade of Frontiers ran a hand down his face. “Áine, I apologize,” he said, surprising her. “Of course, I didn’t mean it. You are both deserving of all you can give each other and I want the best for you. Pride is a fickle thing that causes one to say things that aren’t true. I fear I’m projecting my insecurities and it pains me that it’s fallen on you to weather them.”

Áine hastily shook her head. “I’m sorry for not catching your intentions sooner,” she said in kind. “And it was still nice to dance with you. It’s all okay, you don’t have anything to be sorry for.”

Wyll gave her a bashful smile. “Nor do you. However, your forgiveness is not received lightly. I would be honored to dance again someday with a person I’m grateful to call a very good friend.”

Áine sighed with relief. “I’ll hold you to it. Thank you, Wyll, for being understanding.”

Wyll nodded. “As I said, I’ve been failing to look inward for ways to fix my thinking. Rejection that would, in a past life, not cause my footing to falter now feels harsher than it has any reason to,” he explained. “It is only a burden if I make it such and I have so far. I needn’t take that out on the people I care about the most.”

She smiled. “You have my full support in finding your next happiness,” she said, her panicked heart rate finally coming down. “You’re a good man, Wyll. Maybe the best of us.”

His features softened and he inclined his head. “You flatter this old devil.”

“Oh, come off it,” Áine laughed. “Devil, maybe. Old? Please. I have double your years and half your wisdom and power of self-reflection. Be proud of yourself. Always.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Wyll said with a chuckle and a mock salute, all traces of his earlier hurt gone from his kind gaze.

Áine turned to head back up the hill, passing Volo as she did and giving her head a quick shake at his third offer of the night to amend her “brainworm problem.” The man had finally found his way to their camp after the patrolling party had sprung him from the goblins’ imprisonment and Áine was realizing she’d been a fool to let him examine her eye after telling him about the tadpole in her skull. She’d honestly done it just to see the look on his face, but it hadn’t been worth the laugh. She’d now had to tell him thrice at this point not to helpfully lobotomize her with a knitting needle to get the thing out. Something she hadn’t found charming in the slightest.

The bard was just passing Gale’s tent when she heard him mutter something toward her in passing. Áine stopped and turned to look at the wizard, the shadows of his tent and the book in his hands only holding partial credit for the darkness in his expression. “Pardon?”  

Ever perceptive about almost everyone but himself, Astarion had been watching the way Áine carried herself since they left that crèche blessedly behind them, its halls silenced in their wake. He could tell she was ailing, but it was more than just her shoulder bothering her. 

And he could hardly blame her given how empathetic she was—it hadn’t seemed like any of them could catch a break these past few days and, of course, it was instinct to look to one’s leader when things were going awry. He didn’t envy her the pressure, but it was her own fault for being such a hero all the time. 

Astarion didn’t think such a thing with any of his former vehemence toward her offering to help every stray that crossed their path, but he disliked the toll doing so much for everyone else ultimately took on her. Especially when she, stretched too thin to maintain her usual patience, finally snapped and hated herself for it afterward. Given the unexpected twists thrown their way one after another in the past week, but especially in the past day, he didn’t see how anyone could blame her. Hells, he was still trying to process it all, too, and he was hardly so invested.  

Now understanding how Gale had found his vampirism so easy to digest as a potential liability when he was dealing with the magical equivalent of a bomb in his chest, Astarion had been aghast at not being informed about the extent of the wizard’s condition but likewise couldn’t blame him for withholding the whole truth. He could blame the man for continuing to ogle at and flirt with his lover up until the whole Netherese orb business had sparked a spat between them. 

Instead of indulging either blame, Astarion questioned the state of his priorities if, for him, Gale flirting with Áine ranked in similar standing to a chest-bound cataclysm in the making. He supposed that some of that imbalance branched from how he’d felt over the past few days. They’d understandably had little to no time or energy to carry on what they’d started, save scattered meaningful glances and brief touches in passing. Astarion had trouble with the concept that she wouldn’t just forget or forgo him if he didn’t manage to keep her attention, even though his unwavering interest in her served as more than enough proof that such an attachment needn’t be a full-time job.

An attachment, he repeated in his mind, his expression souring at the word. It was fine and good, but it was swiftly becoming not good enough. 

Scarier than any battle-hungry githyanki or catastrophically combustible wizard—most wizards could be categorized as at least partially combustible due to haywire spellcasting, but Gale’s blast radius put him in a special category—was his growing desire to be more to her than a sometimes-bedfellow. Even knowing that he was already more than that because she’d told him directly still wasn’t quite enough. And not exclusively because he still couldn’t help getting jealous whenever anyone continued making passes at her. If anything, the way his digestion of such a sight had changed was beginning to tell him more about his own fears than the actors he projected them upon. 

At least he no longer bristled at someone looking at her with anything resembling interest, although he did, for example, find himself craving ursine blood specifically whenever he decided that she and Halsin looked a little too cozy during one of their chats. His envy had morphed from a territorial need for her attention into a deeply rooted anxiety that she would eventually figure out just how little she gained from being with him. And then of course, what could she do but leave once she had that epiphany?

As Astarion had grown closer to his other travel companions, it had become easier for him to see their appeal, which also meant that he found it easier to compare himself to them as they’d risen in his esteem. 

While Astarion still found Gale intensely frustrating at times for reasons he couldn’t concisely put into words, he’d gotten used to him at least. He even tolerated him when he wasn’t flirting with Áine and Astarion had more or less learned the difference between when Gale was flirting and when he was just being friendly. More often than not, Astarion found that he was just being friendly. 

And then there was Wyll. Princely, debonair, traditional Wyll. The sort of man that, perhaps in his long-past life before the world had caved in and broken him a thousand times over, he may have pictured himself marrying. A handsome devil of a white knight. He was getting bold lately and he wouldn’t be propositioning her with a quick fling. No, Wyll would offer her his heart and his hand, something Astarion wasn’t sure he could match. 

And who was he to get in the way of such an offer from such a hero if it surfaced? She deserved someone who could care for her.

You can care for her. Better than any of them! a small, ever more present voice rang out in the back of his mind. She wants you, just let her have you!

Astarion grimaced, his gaze sliding to the bard currently cresting the hill on her way up from checking on the githyanki. He followed her lovely eyes skyward as they briefly skimmed the night sky, darkening to reveal thousands upon thousands of stars. Alas, he didn’t know if he could care for her the way she needed, the way she deserved. He was, for all his rallying against the notion, a monster. At the very least, he was far too damaged to do any of this properly. Too broken to love her.

The trouble was that, despite knowing this, he felt himself falling. And it was killing him.       

Something had caught her eye past a small throng of trees and brush and she stepped away from the ledge to go seek out whatever had caught her interest. While she walked, he saw her right hand reflexively clasp against her scarred shoulder, her fingertips pressing into the joint like she could push her discomfort away.

Astarion’s expression turned concerned. Familiar now with her fighting style and what tended to trigger her flare-ups, he knew with little doubt in his mind that it had been the longsword that had done it this time. 

He could still see her clearly in his mind’s eye. After being disarmed and temporarily losing her scimitars amongst the viscera coating the floor, Áine had dived for the first weapon she could scoop off the blood-splattered stonework to defend their downed healer—a heavy githyanki longsword. 

Shadowheart, terrified of wolves, had been sent to her knees by a ball of psionic energy while in the midst of a crippling panic attack, buckling at the sight of the gith captain’s enormous attack hounds. Áine had thrown herself into the ring as she always did to protect her friends and, also as always, she’d gotten battered in the process. She’d succeeded in saving their cleric and cutting her attacker down, but the force she’d used to swing the scavenged blade that was, all told, bigger than she was had done a number on her shoulder.

Shadowheart sat near the fire, dressing a couple of her more minor wounds with some salve and gauze. Bluish shadows lingered under her eyes that he’d learned were telltale signs that she was drained—a tell that they had in common. She’d spent much of her energy healing their party’s worst injuries until, no matter how much she tried to harass each of them into letting her heal them further, she’d been lovingly shooed away to take care of her own wounds or rest at the very least. 

A thought had occurred to Astarion as he’d watched Áine pace away toward Wyll’s side of the campground clutching her shoulder. It was a thought that would possibly open him up to some unwelcome speculation or even embarrassment if he acted upon it. His lips formed a thin line, his cupid’s bow disappearing into it as he deliberated. There was ultimately no question of whether it was worth a bit of potential goading, which he found somewhat freeing as he made his way slowly toward the cleric by the campfire.

By the time he reached her, Shadowheart had looked up to watch his approach, her gaze already skeptical the moment it landed upon him. Astarion had successfully mustered up the courage to approach the cleric but found himself already aggrieved at the idea of asking anyone for advice. Even more so because he was sure she’d needle him over it. Internally, he braced himself.

“Change your mind about having your wounds tended?” she guessed, her eyes narrowing warily when he sat down on the log she was using as a bench seat. “If you’re looking for blood, I’ve barely enough for myself as it is.”

Astarion gave her a chiding look. “I’m not in the market for your blood,” he said, his exhaustion with the direction of the conversation already plain in his voice. “And I’d rather not be ‘tended’ to. I’m halfway healed already anyway.”

“Really?” Shadowheart asked. To prove his point, Astarion adjusted the sleeve of his soft, ruffled shirt to show her what remained of a deep cut she’d earlier tried to bully him into letting her heal up. Lo and behold, when Shadowheart looked upon the cut again, it looked a week old, barely even the thin red line of a new scar left behind after mere hours. By midnight, she imagined, it would be gone completely. “I had no idea vampires healed that swiftly. Quite the perk, I suppose, in a sea of downsides?”

Astarion nodded and rolled his sleeve back down. “A ‘sea’ may be too small a measure, but yes. A quick turnaround on healing is…something,” he agreed.

She could hear unease in his voice and noted the careful way he spoke to her, which immediately made her suspicious. What did he want from her? Something to do with Áine? She didn’t get the impression that he was just trying to be friendly. “Did you want something, Astarion?” she asked more directly. 

His jaw clenched faintly as he worked up what remained of his courage and Shadowheart watched with fascination as emotions flittered just under his surface, his statuesque face roiling with conflict. Finally, he met her eyes and said through his teeth, “I would like to request a lesson in how to tend Áine’s shoulder.”

Shadowheart’s brows shot into her bangs. “You—that’s all?” she asked, still a bit suspicious. She gave him a leering look of amusement that could have only been, he decided, at his expense as expected. “I would have expected the rake, the ‘master seducer’ himself to know how to give a nice massage. How could you skip over such a romantic staple in the manual?”

Astarion waited for her to get her gibes out of the way, only speaking when she fell silent again to wait for him to fight back. He wouldn’t lest he ruin his opportunity to glean the information he wanted, having embarrassed himself for nothing. “I didn’t skip it. I know how to give a massage,” Astarion said with strained patience that was new to Shadowheart and, honestly, new to him as well. “However, my aim isn’t to worsen her condition because I lack the medicinal know-how behind such things and am too proud to seek it out.” 

Shadowheart properly felt like an arsehole for her provocation. Her eyes rounded with surprise at his borderline vicious display of earnestness barely concealed beneath a veil of politeness that cost him whatever quips he could have tossed her way. 

She gave a quiet hmph of consideration before her head slowly tilted in a nod. “Very well. My apologies,” she said in equal earnest. Not thinking, Shadowheart reached toward Astarion’s shoulder to demonstrate only to have him deftly duck away from her touch, his features suddenly tensing as he wondered if this contact was a concrete condition on her part to teach him. Instead of dwelling on the miscommunication, Shadowheart scooped her supply pouch from the ground near the fire and pulled the drawstrings tight, using it as her dummy instead.

As she explained to him what she knew about using massage to aid old wounds, especially those with deep scarring in the tissue, he subconsciously leaned back in, paying close attention to how she positioned her hands on the pouch and how deeply she dug in. Shadowheart found his attention and the boyish turn his features took when he let his guard down alarmingly endearing and she began to worry that she’d severely misjudged the vampire up until this point. 

She’d continued her lesson uninterrupted until a sharp tone from their bard across the clearing caused both Shadowheart and Astarion’s attention to shift to Áine and Gale in the midst of a confrontation.

Even after he spoke up, Gale figured he probably shouldn’t have said anything. He was fully out of sorts and had never felt so existential and dismal and utterly embittered. He was only half-aware of what he was doing, what he was saying. He’d gone into his tent after Elminster had taken his leave just to try and contain the fallout. A poor choice of words, all things considered.

He knew how it looked, how underhanded it seemed and probably felt to them as well that he’d failed to tell them the whole truth before it was told on his behalf. But he also couldn’t help but feel wronged. Ensconced in a negative aura only amplified by the orb inside him. Even dormant now, he could feel its cold, hungry tendrils still swirling paths beneath his skin. It was just no longer leeching from his life force, his power. Now it simply wrapped around his anger, his pain, and his disappointment like a most unwelcome embrace. 

It sat barely stagnated by Mystra’s will all so he could live long enough to die conveniently. But sure, his failure to inform his companions about the dangers they might face due to the dangers he did face was of utmost precedent. 

It was fair to say that Áine’s reaction had bothered Gale the most of anyone who had been present for Elminster’s explanation of his condition and delivery of Mystra’s missive. Perhaps because he’d had the most faith in her understanding his plight out of everyone present apart from perhaps Wyll and Karlach, who were both too empathetic for their own good.

“You’ve put everyone in danger by not telling us. How could you do that?” 

She wasn’t wrong. But Áine had been the one helping him procure items, had fretted over him when they stopped working, and had assured him that they’d figure something out. And now that something was figured out, it was still an inconvenience to her that he hadn’t given her the truth in the first place. He was no longer a danger to them unless his moment to take the Absolute out of this plane with him happened to include their troop in the blast radius. It wasn’t as if he’d wanted any of this in the first place. He didn’t want to die. He’d simply been a fool in the past and he was still that same fool in many ways, he realized. He’d just not thought he was a fool for believing he meant something to them.  

And now, for whatever reason, he was sabotaging himself further by picking a fight with the head of their group on the grounds of what he’d just witnessed down near Wyll’s camp. It had nothing to do with him, nothing to do with the hurt he felt, but he’d said it anyway and now he was doubling down because being angry was easier than being in pain.

“Pardon?” she inquired in response to his muttering that she’d only just caught the gist of.

Gale sighed through his nose and closed the book with more of a snap than was needed, leveling a look at her that made Áine tense. This wasn’t a face she’d seen of Gale’s—it hardly looked like the cheerful, sometimes gloomy wizard she’d come to know. Had Elminster not made dormant the dark energy in his chest, Áine may have started to wonder if this was his affliction looking at her through his eyes.

“I said,” Gale enunciated, “Wyll is right.”

Áine’s eyes narrowed, more in confusion than confrontation. Although she could feel herself bracing for another argument. “You’re going to have to give me a little more context than that, Gale.”

Gale looked at her as if she were stupid. This definitely wasn’t the Gale she’d come to know. Was this all because of how she’d reacted earlier? “Wyll is correct,” Gale said, “in that this—whatever this is—will come back to bite you. He’s already half-bored of you, I’m sure. He’ll get what he wants, be it blood or flesh, and then go on his merry way. As many would, not just him. Meanwhile, others who would stay—”

She failed to stop her hackles from going back up when he dragged her relationship with Astarion into their evidently ongoing spat. “What, like you?” Áine fired back, also tired of him not taking “no” for an answer. Her raised voice was enough to draw the attention of the others, including Shadowheart and Astarion near the fireside. 

“Please, as if I’d want you after all you’ve put me through,” Gale snapped. “After all you’ve put us through. We nearly died back there for your poor judgment and leadership!”

Áine fell silent, shaken by his ire. When she spoke again, it was barely above a snarl. “How dare you. No one has ever forced you to follow me,” she gritted. “And I sure as hell won’t start now!”

“I think we’ve all endured enough conflict for at minimum a tenday,” came a tired voice from the fireside. Áine looked over her shoulder as she and Gale both met Shadowheart’s weary gaze, dark shadows under her eyes. Astarion sat near her, also warily looking between Gale and Áine but more as if he were anticipating a fight than hoping to prevent one. 

Shadowheart gave them both a scolding look. “Tensions have run high enough recently without us all turning on each other… Although if there is to be a fight, at least give us time to get together a betting pool.”

At the commotion, Wyll had come up to stand near the bard and wizard facing off, one hand raised placatingly toward Gale. “If this is truly about what you overheard from our earlier conversation, there’s no need to attack her for it,” Wyll said, a stern edge to his voice but concern in his eyes. “If it’s not…then perhaps rather than fight, we can talk.”

Áine was visibly shaking, meeting her breaking point in full view of her companions and deeply ashamed for it. She avoided Wyll’s worried gaze when it fastened on her, her bleary eyes inspecting the dirt until she said without a single waver in her voice, “You are correct, doubtlessly so, but anything I might say at the moment I will later regret. I need some time.” And she quickly paced away from them both, avoiding everyone’s eyes until she disappeared into her tent. 

Silence lingered after her departure, fragmented only by Wyll’s lowered voice as he tried to talk to Gale and Shadowheart picking back up what she’d been telling Astarion, both finding renewed importance in their exchange given the state Áine had left in. 

Shadowheart had him repeat the kneading pattern she’d just shown him on the pouch they were now passing back and forth. “Good,” she said, watching how he pressed more firmly on the fabric under her instruction. “Assuming she lets you work on it for her—which she will, just maybe give her a little while to cool off—you’ll be able to feel where the tissue is the most damaged. Just gradually work from light to deeper pressure like we practiced and have her tell you if it hurts. That’s really all there is to it.”

Astarion nodded slowly and Shadowheart watched his jaw work again as he drummed up the courage or energy to say whatever he was about to say. She knew this time, however, to wait for him to say whatever it was before teasing him straight away. Cautiously, he said, “...Thank you for this. I appr—I’m sure she’ll appreciate it.”

Shadowheart gave him a humored look but allowed him the out. She only wanted to make sure he knew she was allowing it. “Of course. Happy to help.” The cleric watched his retreat with new consideration, feeling a little more at ease than she had before about the vampire her friend was swiftly falling head over heels for.  

Astarion had given her a quick, exasperated smirk before he’d handed her back the supply pouch and rose from his seat. He glanced toward Áine’s tent before going and settling on the pillows near his own, one pointy ear perked to keep tabs on her resting heartbeat so he could try to catch her before she fell asleep but still give her time to decompress as Shadowheart had suggested.

After having a reason to talk at length with Shadowheart and ask her for something that she came through for him on, Astarion had an odd impulse to find an occasion to do so again. Was this what craving someone’s friendship felt like? He who had oft dismissed the usefulness of friends and scrunched his nose at the level of maintenance those near-useless relationships required? 

Dismally, Astarion supposed he was growing a bit soft and had no one to blame but the bard that had rushed to her tent after being spurned by one of these very friendships. At least, that’s what it had seemed like. He had been so focused on what Shadowheart was saying in the moment that he’d only realized something was happening when Áine’s voice rose. He’d missed anything leading up to it, but from what he could gather, something had happened between Áine and Wyll down by his tent and Wyll wasn’t bothered by the turnout, but Gale for whatever reason was.

Astarion sniffed. That’s what they deserve for hitting on my bard, he thought dismissively, and for getting my hopes up yet again for an exciting before-bed brawl. 

Astarion afforded Áine just under an hour before he set the book he’d been barely skimming aside and rose from his pillows to visit her tent. Her heart rate had lowered but wasn’t yet at the rhythm he’d learned it usually reached in sleep. 

Something close to nervousness did creep in as he approached, however only because the path he was taking reminded him of the last time he’d attempted to visit her while she was upset and had been politely turned away. It would be no matter if she did so again, he told himself. She had every right to. Astarion just found himself very much hoping she wouldn’t.

He was so focused on his destination that a quick whistle from nearby gave him a start. Crimson eyes flickered toward the sound and located Shadowheart sitting outside her tent, waving him over when he made eye contact with her. Scratch had also taken the whistle as an invitation and bounded over to make several attempts to lick her face, which she dodged successfully until the very last one which painted a glistening trail of slobber across the Sharran’s cheek. 

“Scratch, please,” she said insistently, but her features were soft and she gave his head an affectionate pat when he sat down more politely. To Astarion, she said, “Don’t follow his example or we’ll have an even angrier bard on our hands.”

Astarion snorted. “Why even call me over then, darling?” he bantered back, genuinely wondering what she wanted all the same. Perhaps he was finally in for a “don’t break my best friend’s heart” speech.

Instead, Shadowheart held out a tiny bottle of pale yellow liquid. Astarion took it, raising it to his nose and giving it an experimental sniff. Lavender oil.

Running her hand over Scratch’s back as he laid down next to her, Shadowheart regarded Astarion with a conflicted but kind expression. “You’re all set now,” she said. He inclined his head in silent thanks, rolling the bottle between his fingertips as he turned to walk away. “Oh, and Astarion?” Astarion stopped, just turning his head to let her know he was listening. “I’m beginning to think I was mistaken about you… Keep proving me wrong.”

Astarion tsked at her words and carried on his way to Áine’s tent, leaving Shadowheart with a faint smirk playing on her lips. She looked down at Scratch, who met her eyes with his own shiny brown stare. “What do you think?” she asked, laughing when Scratch’s tail began thumping the dirt in response. “I’m starting to think so, too.”

Astarion resumed his route to Áine’s tent and cleared his throat once he was just outside. He heard her quiet “yes?” from inside and he responded in kind, “May I?”

Inside, Áine sat with her lute leaned against her bad shoulder, using the joint more as a prop in its useless state while she plucked at the strings with her other hand. She’d found solace in her solitude, but at hearing Astarion’s voice outside her tent, solitude suddenly didn’t seem so appealing. “Sure,” she said with ease, offering him a smile when he entered. 

Astarion returned her smile, ever alarmed at how swiftly his walls started to crumble whenever they found some time just for themselves. Similarly to how she’d felt when he’d first invited her to spend the night with him in his tent, he was suddenly struck by the intimate notion of coexisting with her in her private quarters. The very air hanging around him smelled like her. It was a kind of bliss. “How are you doing, my dear?” he asked.

“Better now,” she said, setting her lute aside. He first thought she was saying that she felt better after her earlier spat with Gale, but the sweet tilt of her smile made him realize that she was saying she was better now…that he was there. Would he ever grow used to her flirting with him or would it always send nonsensical heat to the very tips of his ears? “You?”

“Also better,” Astarion suggested, sitting across from her on one of the many throw pillows she’d formed into a nest in her tent. “And a bit worse for wear, too, after today, but aren’t we all. How is your shoulder?”

Áine blushed, her hand subconsciously running across the curve of the joint in question. “It’s…well, it’s how I should expect it to be after the stunts I pulled,” she admitted, deciding against playing it off to him. “In a day or so it should correct itself. It just takes time.”

Astarion nodded, suddenly shy about the proposition he’d been preparing for all night. How was it that suggesting they have sex out in a field for the first time had felt easier than offering her a shoulder massage? That they were different forms of intimacy was the answer to that question, but Astarion wasn’t yet in a place to differentiate. “May I try to help?” he asked, the words awkward as they tumbled from his lips.

Áine regarded him with confused surprise and it was all he could do to keep himself from rescinding the offer to protect his fragile ego. His panic ebbed when her expression softened and she said, “If you’d like to. I appreciate you.”

Astarion felt relieved and tried to brush off the sentimentality that bubbled up when she said she specifically appreciated him, not what he did for her alone. He raised himself just enough out of his seated position to crawl forward and settle himself behind her. Áine took the hint and scooted forward to give him space and he couldn’t help but tease her by dodging in to bury his face in her neck. She muffled a yelp that still came out as a small squeak, which was even more embarrassing, especially because she knew that his entire goal had been to mess with her. 

Redfaced, she glared down at his silvery curls as he chuckled against her throat and dropped a kiss across his old bitemarks. Áine couldn’t help the way her glare fell away to leave a smirk in its place, shaking her head at Astarion’s antics. Leave it to him to ease her mind about everything still going on outside her tent. The world still turned and the person swiftly becoming her world turned, too. Turned to settle in behind her and reach around her shoulders to untie her shirt laces, the icy tips of his fingers tracing soothing trails across her still stress-flushed skin as they moved.

Astarion let her shirt pool off Áine’s shoulders, leaving it up to her whether or not she took it off fully. He smoothed her hair away from her scarred shoulder and withdrew the vial of oil from his sleeve, popping the cap with an easy twist of his fingers. When Áine caught a familiar whiff of lavender, she started to ask, “Isn’t that—?”

“Shadowheart’s? It is,” Astarion admitted, his expression guarded even though she had her back to him. His palms and fingertips slick with the fragrant oil, he thought back to the practice rounds Shadowheart had instructed him through on her medical pouch and carefully placed his fingertips against Áine’s scars, feeling her shiver a little under his hands when he did. Silvery brows pulled together in concentration and he murmured, “Tell me if anything starts to hurt, darling.”

Áine was still trying to figure out how he’d managed to pilfer that massage oil from Shadowheart when he started investigating her shoulder, her shiver having more to do with anyone touching her scars than the now-familiar feel of his hands on her body. She nodded in reply to his request, drawing the calming lavender scent deep into her lungs and letting her eyes close as she urged her muscles to relax. Relaxation was a difficult thing to manage in the current climate of their circumstances, but she tried. 

When Astarion began to massage the scar tissue riddling the span of her shoulder joint, Áine noted the similarities in the ways his hands kneaded her aching muscles and how Shadowheart had addressed them on their accidental date. In fact, the patterns that he was carefully pressing into her flesh were almost identical. When Áine realized that, she wondered if—given the fact that he also inexplicably had the massage oil she’d used and hadn’t bragged about thieving it—Shadowheart had supplied him with the oil and told him how to work on her shoulder. 

Curiously, Áine asked, “Did Shadowheart put you up to this?” She felt his hands still, maintaining their pressure but ceasing their movement, and she hastened to add, “I’m just being nosy and you should just ignore me. Just, um, please don’t stop. This is helping.”

She heard him snort softly behind her, but he continued his work after using his pause to stretch his hands. Áine was cursing herself for prying when he surprised her by breaking his silence, his voice a quiet, focused lull. 

“No one put me up to anything, dearest,” he murmured, learning the extent and complexities of her old injuries through touch. “And you should know by now that I’m hardly capable of ignoring you.”

Áine smiled to herself, closing her eyes again and leaning back against his hands. At some point, after her shoulder had loosened up a little from the careful work he’d put into it, Astarion’s hands ran with new purpose over her bared skin. The bard’s smile skewed toward amusement as she adjusted her position so she could face him, getting scooped into straddling his lap by those talented hands of his along the way.

Facing him, Áine found herself simply content to get lost in his eyes and admire the lines of his face, the curl of his hair, the knife’s edge of his jaw, and the dramatic point of his ears. She raised her fingertips to stroke his cheek, trailing them toward his hairline and through his locks, gratified when he leaned into her hand. The corner of his mouth lifted in a coy smirk. “Like what you see, little love?” he purred.

“You know I do,” she said, gently caressing the long elven sweep of his ear in the way she’d learned he liked, eliciting a pleasurable hum from his throat. She’d seen him become gradually more and more comfortable with her, even when he was clearly still combatting whatever hells he’d been through that she’d yet to—or would never—learn of. Áine was proud of him and honored to be part of what helped to heal the wounds in his heart, even if she did end up being just a passing fancy for him in the end.

His crimson eyes searched hers, heavy-lidded with his momentary bliss. “And what is it you see?” he coaxed her, wondering if any of her answers had changed from the last time he’d asked her to be his mirror. 

Her answer had changed, just not in the way he expected. Áine had parted her lips to reply, but hesitated, her features becoming contemplative before she finally asked, “Would you like me to show you?”

“Hm?” Astarion hummed, baffled until he caught where she might be going with this. “You mean to use the tadpole? …Would that work?”

“It’s not a mirror or a reflection, so I don’t see why it wouldn’t unless I’m missing something obvious,” she mused. “I can try if you want.”

Astarion hesitated in turn, his curiosity and vanity both stirring to the surface. He was nervous though. What if what he saw horrified him? He’d never seen himself as a vampire and had endured so long and so much without seeing his own face he hardly knew what he looked like anymore. He knew because he’d been told with varying degrees of kindness that he was what society deemed beautiful, but what had that been worth in the end?

“I can just do what we did before,” Áine offered when he stayed silent and clearly conflicted. “What did we say… Ah, ‘shallow praise,’ as it were?”

He chuckled faintly, but it felt hollow around the anxious lump that had formed in his throat. “No, I… I would like to try,” Astarion said. Suddenly he found himself admitting to her exactly what was unnerving him and it felt like confessing a sin to the only goddess he believed could forgive him. “I’m wary of seeing myself after so long. Seeing what I’ve become.”

Áine’s eyes softened and she raised her other hand to gently cup his face, feeling his grip on her waist tightening as if she were a lifeline. “We can stop whenever you’d like, as with everything,” she murmured. His heart gave a painful pang and only after he nodded for her to go ahead did Áine use the illithid tadpole to open up her mind to him, a little nervous herself.

Astarion felt when she opened for him, her consciousness unfurling like a flower as she closed her eyes to concentrate. He admired her for a moment, having half a mind just to kiss her senseless and avoid his fears altogether. With his hands still rooted to her waist to ground him in the present moment, he let his mind join with hers.

He was startled initially when he was met with darkness, but as he settled into her sentience and his initial wariness of the connection itself waned, he realized that her eyes were just still closed. He could feel the way her lashes brushed against the apples of her cheeks. He could feel her heart beating as if it were in his chest, her lungs filling with air and exhaling in even time. Her calm body managed to calm him and Astarion gathered that she could sense his nerves in kind because it was only after he steadied himself that she opened her eyes.

The pale elf sat bewildered and shaken as he stared into his own eyes for the first time in two centuries. The planes of his face he could only trace with his fingertips and try to make sense of came into focus, a stranger more familiar than anything he’d ever known. His hair didn’t surprise him, so that must have been the same for the most part. Astarion couldn’t quite recall seeing these lines in this face before this moment, but they did little to catch his vanity in comparison to the bright red eyes taking all of this in. 

He remembered how she’d asked him what color his eyes had once been the first time—the only time—they’d talked about the access he’d lost to his own appearance. In mirror and memory. Another thing taken from him. Another thing she’d found a way to offer him back.

He wished he could remember. Maybe it was better that he couldn’t. And when his jaw dropped slightly at seeing just how vividly the red irises shone in the dim light, he saw the points of his fangs just past his parted lips. Astarion curled his lip back to get a better look, the tip of his tongue running along one of the sharp tips with new understanding. They weren’t as big as they sometimes, especially in his early days as a vampire spawn, had felt in his mouth.

“Are you alright?” Áine asked gently through their connection, her voice skimming his inner thoughts like a kind touch. It took him a moment to realize that she was asking him this now in real time and he wasn’t remembering another time that she’d checked on him. He acknowledged with a tug at his chest that there would be plenty of those instances for him to pull from.

“I believe I am,” he replied similarly, although he could see on his own face that he felt a bit troubled. “It’s both as alarming and not as much as I’d expected.”

Áine’s hands had remained gently cupped against his face throughout the process and his gaze left his own features to perceive how her strong yet delicate hands lingered and traced reassuring lines against his cheekbones. He found himself lightly prodding around the vision she offered him, a new question surfacing that made him even more curious and still more wary.

She felt his conflict as he searched the piece of her awareness she’d lent to him. “Something else?” she asked, removing one of her hands from his face to rub at her eyes, which had watered a little from her attempt to limit her blinking while he studied himself.

“I want to see how you see me,” Astarion told her and his expression grew vulnerable in both their minds�� eyes. “Just you.”

That made Áine a touch nervous. She knew what he was asking of her—he wanted her to let the barrier she’d put around her feelings down so he could experience her perception of him in full. She’d originally tried to stow her bias so he could just see himself as he was without her weigh-in, but now that he was requesting that, too, she was worried it would be too much. What if she scared him off? What if he laughed at her? 

Ultimately it came down to a single, simple question that tended to shake her to her core regardless of who it referenced. Did she trust him?

The answer was just as simple, if not just as foolish. She did.

Astarion felt her throat tighten like it was his own right before the barriers he’d been testing were removed. He saw himself precisely as he’d seen himself before through her eyes, but the emotion that poured in with the sight of him this time made his eyes go wide and his jaw fall slack. His chest constricted. There was no sense to what he was experiencing through her, of hers, and yet he was experiencing it in full and in real-time. Her anxiety about baring more of herself to him, her concern for him and whether or not this had been a healthy thing to offer him, a lingering sadness that came from seeing the conflict flitting through his features, and more than all of that…

…ardent care and compassion. So ardent that he could feel it burning in his chest. Shocked into stillness, he could only watch as she gave him a sort of tour of his own features that he’d just been deliberating over in untouched neutrality with only his opinions for reference. Áine traced over the bow of his lips, the currently flushed tips of his ears, the regal line of his nose and jaw, and lastly his soulful, widened crimson eyes. And the more she showed him, the more she admired him, the more unabashed she felt in her reverence.

When finally using the parasite began to feel taxing to her, Áine screwed her eyes shut, letting go of the connection and trying to refocus her vision. She opened her eyes, wondering if all of that had been too much until she met Astarion’s eyes, his vision his own again, and saw the tears streaming down his face.

Áine’s eyes widened and she instinctively smoothed the tears away even as more came, an apology springing to her lips to atone for whatever she’d done. 

An apology he kissed away like a man starving.

Thank you.

Next chapter: Chapter 14, "In Waters Deep"

[kentophilia]

𝒅𝒏𝒊 / 𝒃𝒚𝒇

immediate block: ageless, empty, minor, inactive since 2023 or earlier, shotacon / lolicon enjoyer, ed encourager, spam liker (>3 posts in a row) [yes, i check every single notification]

do not interact (like, comment, reblog, ask) if:

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you do not have your age easily visible displayed on your blog. writing '18+' does not count as it just tells me the kind of content that is on your blog, not necessarily your age.

your blog is not edited in the slightest, the default pfp and header will make me think you're a bot.

your blog is EMPTY. this site lives off of reblogs. same with inactive blogs that haven't posted anything since 2023 or earlier.

you repost art without credit or repost from artists who don't allow reposting. same with writing.

you're homophobic, transphobic, ableist, fatphobic, anti-choice, anti-vax, xenophobic, antisemitic, racist, zionist and/or "apolitical".

you're a rape apologist, ed encourager / pro-ana and/or pedophile and you support / protect these people and joke about it.

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