#Broil-Mate

[bloodycassian]

Reborn - Reader x Azriel. AN - thank you anon for this great prompt!

Requested - I don't know if your requests are open but I wanted to throw something in just in case.

An Azriel x reader, where AZ and reader have never met before, reader has been tortured and experimented on by the court of nightmares ( Keir ) she could be a shadowsinger, and they're mates, when the reader is in the verge of death for refusing to work with Keir, AZ feels it and begins to grow hectic without knowing the reason,  everyone in the inner court is confused until elain comes out of nowhere and tells everyone that his mate is in danger. ( Vision )

I have this on the back of my mind since reading some of your amazing work and couldn't stop thinking about it.

No amount of masturbation, drinking, or sparring helps the agitation under Azriel’s skin. It’s a constant, burning, itching thing that’s like a fucking disease upon his being. 

Sleep is his only relief, but even then he’s plagued with pain and darkness. It reminds him too much of the dank basement he’d been forced into when he was young, so he stays up. He’s exhausted and brooding and quick to snap at anyone who questions him. He knows he’s being a dick but according to the five healers he’d seen, there was nothing wrong. 

Nothing wrong, just like how his shadows weren’t some kind of magic, according to them. 

He’d refused to believe in healers all that much since the explanation Madja had given him about his diseased pets. The writhing, tentacles of night were a ‘bodily mutation of the highest level, tainted with fae magic’. Tainted. The word felt right for what they were, but that didn’t mean it stung any less. 

“We’ll invade here, and be able to plant our…” There was a beat of silence in Amren’s quick words, then her voice cut through his busybodied task like a knife “Azriel, are you even listening?” 

Truthfully, he hadn’t been. He’d been consumed by the ache again, the broiling sickness beneath his skin that had every muscle flexed in tension. His mind had other battles to fight. 

“What does it matter? You’ll carry out your plan with or without me. Keep talking, make yourself feel important, Amren.” His ill-tempered response came quick and laced with venom. One glance towards the small not-quite-fae female and his mind gave a twinge of regret. 

A lick of her power radiated, filling the room with something vibrant and undeniable. Cassian sucked in a breath, and a word from Rhys had her firey gaze snapping to him instead. “Take your dog from the important business then, High Lord.” Her words were precise, hissed. 

Azriel straightened. The insult didn’t land as well as Amren had wanted, in part because he couldn’t care less, another because the fire under his skin was reaching a peak that he had no idea how he survived every time it came around. He glanced to Rhys, who gave him a nod. Good. Let him free of this cage. 

He flung open the balcony doors with his cursed gift and sprinted off the ledge, launching himself into the summer air. 

+

Rats nibbled at your toes when you slept, scurrying away before you could catch them. Your senses weren’t even close to what they had been months ago. Before, you’d been able to catch at least two a week for extra sustenance. 

You told yourself that they’d learned, that they’d gotten quicker at their biting and fleeing. Truthfully, you could feel your strength waning every day. 

Living was no longer hope, and more of an inconvenience. 

But it was an inconvenience to Kier as well. And that meant you’d keep on living out of spite. 

The next female would appreciate it. 

“Arms up, legs together.” The order came with unnatural casualness that you’d grown used to. If you didn’t follow the orders, you were beaten until you either complied or were unconscious, so complying was really the only option. Especially when you were attempting to stay alive for as long as you could. 

It’s for the next girl. You chanted to yourself when the keeper made the injection. It stung like hundreds of bees attacking the same place, but the pain was familiar. A friend you welcomed before everything went sideways and the nausea rolled in. 

The drug Kier’s men gave was like none you’d experienced outside this cell. An incredible high, with a disastrous low. 

You convulsed on the floor moments later, your body still barely able to take the amount they dosed you with. You’d seen the liquid inside the damn thing grow each week, they were marking your progress with every one of them. So, with each dosing you made sure to put on some dramatics for them. 

The clawing at the throat was false, the sound of your screams only half-forced. The real, unforced reaction though, was always the shade of pallor your skin turned after every injection. The darkness that radiated from you like a bubble, the pain made physical. 

It hovered over your skin like an aura, tendrils of it washing over your forehead when the sweating started. It always started like this, for the first few hours - or possibly minutes, you weren’t sure once you were lost to the pain - they’d observe, and sometimes Kier himself would join, looking like a disappointed mother. Then, once the shaking subsided, and you were able to breathe normally, they’d release a rabbit into your cell. 

The same rabbit almost every damn time. After the first two weeks, you’d grabbed the first one and snapped it’s neck, hoping that Kier would be happy with the accomplishment and you’d earn something. You’d felt awful as it died in your hands, but the pain… if it stopped the pain, you’d kill anything. 

But time after time, they’d send in another rabbit, and though you begged for some kind of explanation of what they wished with the damn thing, they’d only observe. After a few hours of investigating, it’d eventually be removed and you’d wake up alone again.

Kier did not make an appearance today, and after your shaking stopped, neither did a rabbit.

“Where’s dinner?” You croaked, the tears stinging small cuts on your cheeks. Your friend never laughed or spoke, hardly even moved when he was in the vicinity of your cell. It was odd, even for a freak who enjoyed drugging and torturing others.

The male only stared, writing in his little notebook. He could at least humor you and tell you what he was so keenly logging. Some friend.

He opened the door, but instead of the rabbit jumping inside, he stepped forward, past the barrier and wards keeping you from breaking through. Your breathing halted. 

“Your reluctance to learn your gifts has given us no other option.”

+

“Did you lose a fight?” 

Nesta’s words normally bounced and slid right off Azriel, but with how volatile he was feeling, it took all his restraint not to snarl at her.

“Come on Az, where’s that quick wit?” She chided, crossing her legs at the knee beside her sister. 

His eyes drifted to Elain, the warm blush of her cheeks. Her lavender nightshirt made her seem so much more vulnerable than she was. He knew just how lethal the female could be, and admired her for it. His eyes drifted to the soft hair and round features that he’d once dreamt of. How foolish he’d been, how full of hope and bitterness. Now here he was, merely a ghost. A shell for pain to be housed in and nothing more. 

And here he stared at a garden of hope and light. The female who’d haunted his dreams for years. The opposite of the steel bitch that sat beside her. 

A pang of guilt pinched at him. “You’re ridiculous.” Was all he could muster at her. Nesta was trying to help, in her own way, he supposed. She was testing his limits and temper, even while balancing comforting words and attempting to heal her little sister’s mental wounds. Not to mention navigating the strange, untrained gift of Elain’s.

It wasn’t often that Azriel came to the house of wind proper. When he did, he usually confined himself to the dining area and the war room, where the formal dinners and meetings were held. He hadn’t walked the halls into the large internal library in a long, long while. No wonder they both had turned their chairs to face him when he’d cracked the door to find them both here. 

The large windows seemed crowded with the amount of books that surrounded them. The only source of light, aside from the twinkling magic fueled ones above. The room had always made Azriel feel claustrophobic, and now it set him on edge in a way different than it had before. 

Especially when Elain’s eyes bored into his own. His skin felt like it was shifting, pulling and pushing from just beneath. He was beginning to wonder if the healers had somehow missed a parasite of some kind. Something new perhaps, something they’d never seen before.

Elain’s eyes widened, her cheeks going from the pink blush to sickly pale in an instant. Her expression was unfocused, hazy - as if she were drunk. Azriel suddenly felt like he was intruding, like seeing her so vulnerable was something reserved for only those close to her. 

Nesta placed a hand on her shoulder and rubbed her sister’s back comfortingly. It was about as tender as Azriel had ever seen her, even with Cassian. He watched the hands that rubbed the Seer, recalling the intense desire he’d once felt for her. Embarrassment coated his cheeks, distracting him from the physical pain for a moment.

He’d wanted to be that support for her, once. Nesta’s hand seemed to grow in his vision, the embroidered collar of Elain’s nightshirt with it. He blinked rapidly, trying to refocus. The blackness around his eyes did not recede though. His bones ached, and his headache stabbed at him like a branding iron. He rubbed his temple, squeezing his eyes shut. 

“She needs help.” Elain gasped, coughing on a breath. Azriel wavered on his heels, something hard hitting his back, crushing his wings. 

He could barely hear the high strung sound of Elain’s voice. “She needs help, Azriel!”

+

He tore though the court, dragging Kier kicking and frothing with him. He’d received a few severe wounds from the cruel male, but nothing that a few patches of his siphons couldn’t hold together. 

The gushing stab wounds could wait. He had something far more important to tend to.

“You’re a bastard, a low-born inconsequential bastard, Shadowsinger.” Kier coughed as Azriel dragged his broken body with him. The crowd pushed and writhed around them, but his outstretched dagger kept any of the patrons from advancing. Several dark looks, hisses of death closed in around him, but he plowed through them all, working his way to the catacombs behind the stone chair that served as Rhys’s dark throne. 

“I may be a bastard-” Azriel grunted through his pain, now more fevored and intense than before. It was a wonder he’d even been able to make it here, but it did explain his sloppy handling of Kier once he’d found the male. 

“But at least I didn’t sell a daughter off as stock.” He tossed the would-be-king to the locked door of the catacombs, a part of him enjoyed the thunk his head made against the stone floor, even through the intense agony that ripped through him. 

This was not the place to show weakness. If he let his shadows drop, let the air of anything but a cold hearted killer go for even a moment he’d be trampled by the crowd. 

Kier rose slowly, muttering curses while he pulled out a key and slid the door to the side. He sketched a bow, waving Azriel in. Spit landed at Azriels feet as he crossed the threshold, and he hesitated in his step. A hiss rang out behind him, shuffling feet a song as the crowd quickly scooted back. He held his stance there for a moment, collecting the wrath that built in him. It writhed and twisted in his mind, his guts, his teeth throbbing with the urge to tare out Kier’s throat. 

The blistering heat flared again, this time in his jaw and he moved down the hall, towards the cells that an unfortunate assistant to Kier had described. 

He’d made their death quick, painless. 

+

You couldn’t scream, could hardly breathe with the weight that seemed to be growing in your chest. 

Not weight exactly, more like pressure. Internal pressure, like there was lava built up inside you with nowhere to go. And every rattling breath seemed to give it more life. You wheezed, weak with the exhaustion of fighting it. 

Your friend had given you three more of the injections, and promptly left when you began struggling against the binds at your hands and feet. One of them had ripped, you only knew because that was the hand that you’d used to claw at your chest with. 

The blood made going any further too slippery and exhausting.

There were far away sounds, but it all seemed too strange, so disjointed to be real. Screams and sharp clangs of metal, breaking glass and thudding. 

Your eyes slipped closed, and relief washed over you. The pressure eased, and the squeaky hinges of the door opened. Had death finally come? Was this the end of your cycle, and now they were bringing in a new victim to Kier’s experiments? 

There wasn’t much of a goodbye to the world, though. As sad as it was to not be able to see your family again, you were just grateful that the pain was receding. That finally there’d be no injections, no innocent rabbit and certainly no Kier around. 

The sounds were strange, a choking, strangled sound like the first time you’d killed the rabbit. Your eyes cracked open almost involuntarily to see what had happened. 

Outside your cell in a glow of blue light was a winged male, his hand wrist deep inside your friend’s chest. 

+

Blood is hotter than most people think it is. Azriel takes joy in it though, when it’s the blood of the truly vile ones. The male with the syringes and log book reeked of something spiced and foreign, something Azriel’d never encountered before. He would have asked, would have talked to the male if he’d not pulled a knife and threatened to ‘kill her’ as he backed away. 

There were no thoughts after that. And as he fell to the floor, Azriel reveled in the male’s labored breathing. Relief and heat flooded him, prickling him with a soaring joy he’d thought abandoned him long ago. He could laugh, if it weren’t for the absurdity of how it sounded to laugh at this moment.

 He plucked the book from his hands and shoved it into his belt behind him, his chest thrumming with joy.

He’d never been so filled with glee before, so overwhelmed with it after killing… Had he become broken in a sick way? Was he no better than the male he’d just killed? He looked to his hand, twisting it in the low light of his siphons. 

A wet, weak cough echoed off the walls and he spun, knife ready. 

Then the blade was on the floor as he rushed to the bars of the cell door, ripping it free of the rusted hinges. 

The female was gaunt, and frail. Yet his chest sang and though she looked moments from death, he couldn’t imagine more beauty. 

She clutched her chest, the blood there crusted and dry. “Thanks.” She croaked, voice barely a whisper. Shadows mounted around him, enclosing them in complete black. He would have thought he was winnowing if it weren't for the sorry excuse for a bed that stayed beneath her.

Azriel’s lips were moving, but he couldn’t tell what he was saying, even to his own ears. His mind, his body was a rushing river of every emotion at once, all cascading through his mind, to his chest and thrumming in his blood. Her eyes went wide and wild, searching his for a moment. His heart thundered in his ears.

What had his life been until now? Why was this moment such a climax to him so suddenly? All of it, the pain the agony, the stark moments of joy against it all - the brief moments of shared happiness that made it all worth it tore through his body like a flash floor. 

Tears pricked his eyes, and it was a curious thing to see them fall onto her neck and wash away the blood there. 

Then, a wet sigh from her lips, and her eyes stopped searching his. The rush of joy and sense of sanctuary ceased. His blood went quiet in his ears, and the room felt suddenly cold. The room silent around him, not even his shadows dared whisper.

His fingers hesitated over her cheek. When her next breath did not come, he shook her gently. Her eyes remained, staring blankly at the ceiling. 

This was truly a tomb now. 

“No…” He heard his own words that time. The word clattered through the cell like a bell tolling, echoing.

“Take her back.” A shadow hissed over his ear, caressing. 

He shook her again, the tears boiling over now, panic gripping him. 

“We know how.” another said. This voice was different, the same whispered tone and suggestion, but this was not one of his pets. He sent his own shadows skittering away, and a group of them stayed, unbound to him and unmoving from the cell. His heart skipped, fear upon fear pulling him into the icy abyss of despair. 

His own shadows returned, a broken syringe floating to him on their behest. They mingled with the others, reveling and dancing together though Azriel felt that he was slowly sinking.

“What am I supposed to do with this?!” He shouted at them, at nothing. He had truly lost his mind, hadn’t he?

“Save her.” The strange shadows told him. Just like Elain had said, overtaken by her visions.

 A tendril of the foreign shadow wrapped around his hand, locking the glass pieces there and slicing into his palm. The needle aimed directly to her chest, between the ribs, only a few inches from the heart. 

And what did he have to lose? The silence that surrounded him now was almost worse than the pain had been. Wouldn't pain at least be better than complete nothingness? To feel completely blank and unwritten as a being?

With a breath, and a part of his siphon’s power to support the broken syringe, he pushed into her skin. His own blood dribbled down the sides, mixing with hers. Through and through - until he knew that he’d met the same depth of a killing blow to an opponent’s heart. 

+

“Side, block, strike.” Cassian’s orders came out in demanding, practiced tones. Each step, each swipe of your blade met with one of Azriel’s shadows as a shield. 

His were still much, much stronger than yours, even after months of practice with them. Even with him showing you very intimately just how much they were capable of. Your cheeks blushed at the reminder of that. 

“No distractions, keep that shadow talk in the bedroom, Az.” Cassian scolded.

A smirk played at your mate’s face, and he hit you with a surprise swipe at your feet, left unprotected by your own shadows. 

You fell on your ass, cursing. 

Azriel offered a hand, panting at the exertion the sparring had taken. You were proud of that, at least. 

The first six months of training had been dedicated to building stamina, gaining back weight and muscle while balancing training your shadows to obey you. Six months ago, being able to spar with your mate had seemed like a far off dream that you’d never be capable of doing. 

But with his training, and Cassian’s encouragement, you were almost able to take him on stride for stride. Almost. 

So, you took his hand and pulled him towards you for a kiss. Then knocked his knees out from behind with a wave of your own shadows.

You smirked, and offered him a hand while Cassian boomed with laughter.

He allowed you to help him up, but cleaned in close, pecking a kiss on your cheek. 

“You’ll pay for that later.” He said in an intimate tone. A lick of his shadow wrapped around your thigh, snaking upwards. 

“Promise?” Your eyes sparkled at him, and the pain all those months ago had been worth it for this. 

[thestarlightexpress]

Kinktober 2024 -

Day 1: Pussy Slapping - Rhys x Reader

TW: smut, dirty talk, slight degradation, praise, pain, etc.

word count = 1.18k

NSFW under the cut

You should have known that challenging the High Lord of the Night Court in front of the entire Court of Nightmares was generally a bad idea. You also should have known that teasing your mate after the week he’s had was essentially a death wish. Unfortunately for you, you’ve never been one to think before you act.

You suppose that’s how you’ve found yourself in this current predicament. The icy chill of the room drifts over your pert nipples. The searing heat of the ropes tying your legs apart fiercely nipping into your calves, setting your skin ablaze. The humid, broiling heat of Rhys’ breath skirts over your neck as his large hand clutches your stomach, tugging you back against his chest. 

The sharp sting of his teeth biting down on your earlobe pulled you back into the present, leaving you gasping for air and writhing on top of him. “You still with me, darling?” he uttered above the point of your ear, making you throw your head back over his shoulder. His other hand slowly drifted down from its spot on your knee and back to your soaked center. 

Panic and arousal filled your tense body at the thought of the intoxicating blend of pain and pleasure. Your head swiveled around to nose at Rhys’ neck, your whines drifting to his ears. He chuckled darkly into your neck, “You can whine all you want sweetheart, but it won’t get you out of this. You were a bad girl tonight, my love. How will you ever learn if not properly punished?”. His sultry tone had you melting into his chest. 

The pads of his warm fingers brush over your puffy clit before swiping down through your tacky slick that spilled over the globes of your ass and onto the sheets. Two of his large fingers slip inside you, aided by the hours of teasing you had already endured. The digits curled inside you, coaxing more needy moans out of you. “Such a pretty, messy pussy.” he murmured against your ear.

Rhys pulled his fingers away and brought them up to your mouth, tapping your chin to let him in. The sultry taste of yourself on his fingers had the carnal fire in the pit of your belly raging fiercer than ever before. His fingers slipped out of your wet mouth and gripped around your throat, spreading your spit over your sweltering skin. His fangs grazed your earlobe, sucking it into his mouth. “Ready to start again, love?”.

Your eyes fluttered shut as your head nodded against him, “Y-Yes.” The hand around your neck constricted, “Yes what?” he growled. Your vision dotted and your head went slightly fuzzy. “Yes, my Lord.” you barely heard yourself utter. The title made him purr, reverberating through your chest as his grip loosened, “Now there’s my good girl.” 

The hand holding your hips down slid below to roughly squeeze your thighs. “Remember to let me know if it's too much. Can’t rough you up too much, now can I?”, the humorous tilt of his voice made you bristle with anticipation. His hand roamed over your thighs and down to your center. The sensuality of his touch lulled you into a false sense of security that was swiftly stolen away when he struck your clit. You squealed and writhed against him, the pain shooting straight to your weeping entrance. 

His palm soothingly rubbed over your clit to ease the ache. The relief didn’t last long as he quickly moved to slap your swollen cunt twice more. You felt his hips buck up, his solid length pressing into your back, turned on by your hissing cries. Rhys kissed down your neck, leaving blushing magenta marks in his wake. He smirked against the hard column of your throat, “For someone who complains about the pain, you sure do seem to enjoy it.” 

Your back arched as you whimpered, “Rhys… please, I’m sorry.”. You groaned as he roughly bit into your neck, drawing a few drops of blood before rising back up to your ear. 

“Do you think I can’t feel you, love?”, his fingers rubbing your slick over your clit. “You say it hurts but you know that you fucking love it. I mean - shit - your messy pussy is gushing all over both of us. You can say what you want but your body betrays you, darling.”

He used his legs to spread your legs open farther and hold you down, his hand alternating between smacking your cunt and prodding your drippy pussy. “Mother above, you can cum like this can’t you? Such a filthy little slut for your High Lord.” You shuddered in his hold as he continued his ministrations. He gripped your throat again before snarling, “Answer me, can you cum like this?”. 

The possessive hand around your throat broke something within you as you found yourself crying out for him. “Yes! Please keep going, please make me cum.” 

He hummed against your cheek. “Too bad only good girls get to cum.”. 

You gasped within his hold. He was pushing you toward the brink of insanity. Rhys slid the hand by your center up to caress your breasts. “Now, what have we learned, my love?”

Your hips bucked up at the loss of stimulation. “To n-not interrupt you during a meeting.” You felt Rhys smirk against your neck. 

“Good job, baby. You think I can have my good girl back now?” You just whined and nodded in response. 

“Please Rhys, I can be good. Just please let me cum.” Rhys’ hands wandered under your thighs and pulled you further up his chest, the head of his thick cock nudging against your entrance. He slowly pushed into your cunt and filled you up to the hilt. 

“Now, just stay here and let me fuck you and then you get to cum. Alright, darling?”. You sweetly nuzzled your nose into the column of his throat in response, the heady feeling of Rhys inside you stealing the breath from your lungs. His legs hitched as he started to thrust up into you, the feeling of his cock pushing through your tight walls already bringing you close to the edge. One large hand laid against your stomach while the other ghosted around your clit. 

Rhys whispered sweet praises in your ear as he brought you closer and closer to your breaking point. You could tell by the way his breath sawed in and out of his chest that he was getting close. “Come with me, darling.” It was only by the grace of the Mother that you hadn’t finished already with how quickly your cunt was quaking around him. At the same time that he moaned and started to release inside you, he rubbed and pinched your clit and sent you barreling over the edge. As he slowly pulled out of you, all you could see were stars, and could vaguely hear your wet pussy gushing all over both of you.  

He lightly chuckled in your ear, voice dripping with pure male satisfaction. “How about we go get you cleaned up?”

[ailithnight]

Aheem... prompt from @regonold

16 Hours

Danny remembers the first time something shorted out his powers. Vlad with his stupid Plasmius Maximus thing. Well, 'remembers'. Mostly he remembers the aftermath.

Apparently Vlad hadn't known at the time exactly how Danny ended up half ghost. He thought it had been a slower progression like his own development. It hadn't occurred to him that Danny's original death had been much quicker.

Danny remembers a short, light shock. Really, the spector deflector was worse. But this shock... suddenly his muscles were seizing, his heart stuttering, his Lichtenbergs burning. And then, nothing. A blank space in Danny's head that apparently spanned 3 hours.

Next thing he knows, they're in some kind of vehicle. There are sirens outside (a police escort, Danny would later learn). His mom is driving like her life depends on it. And Vlad is giving him chest compressions, looking grieved and panic striken. He's crying. They both are.

"Please tell me you didn't have to kiss me." His voice comes out pained and raspy. Mom almost crashes the vehicle.

"No, Little Badger. Thankfully, you kept breathing. Just your heart that was struggling." Vlad chuckled, guilty yet relieved.

It was another hour before they made it to the nearest hospital from the stupid hunting cabin. 6 more for all the stupid medical tests. "An accident," Vlad told them. "Small shock, but with an already weak heart..."

Any other time, Danny might have argued. Tried to make Vlad admit more guilt. But the whole ordeal had exhausted him to much to care then.

The second time was marginally better. At least with the Fenton Crammer, it was a steady loss. And Danny managed to fix it before his healing factor fully failed. It still hadn't been pleasant, fighting Skulker and dealing with Dash while phantom echoes of his death arced across his body. But he'd managed.

This. This is so much worse. Danny thought it would be like the Crammer again. A steady decline. But it isn't.

And it isn't like the Maximus either, a one then done, pain then nothing, dying then dead, moment.

No. This is more like the blood blossoms. This is torture. This is hell.

The suppression cuffs let just enough of his power bleed through, just enough healing factor, to keep him alive. Alive and in agony for... hours? Days? Weeks? Minutes? Danny couldn't really tell. His thoughts had long since turned to nothing but static and pain. All he knew was that time was passing around him while he was here, suffering on the absolute brink of death yet unable to embrace it.

Oh god he wanted to die. Please just let him die already! It's too much. A death that should only last a few seconds drug out into an eternity. His muscles ached with the strain of being locked up. His insides were broiling from the electric heat. His heart stuttered and stopped and started and stuttered. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts!

He might have been screaming. He might have been Wailing. Or he might he been choking on weak uneven breaths. Danny didn't know. Didn't care to know. Didn't care if he ever found out the details of his time in chains. He just wanted, no needed, it to end. But it just dragged on and on and on. And Danny was lost in it.

Too far gone to even realize when it ended.

.

Batman hadn't been there when the new meta appeared, quite literally materializing from nowhere in the conference room mid-meeting. He had been dealing with a mass Arkham breakout at the time. So he wasn't there. An unfortunate fact which will haunt him for the rest of his life and possibly beyond.

He should have been there. If he had only been there...

He didn't blame his team mates. They didn't know. Who would have guessed that simple power suppression cuffs could ever be an instrument of torture. He'd never considered it possible.

He didn't blame his team mates. How could he blame them? Batman wasn't even the one to connect the dots. Red Robin figured it out. He always was good at stringing together thoughts know one else would think to connect.

Red Robin asked the right questions. He figured out in 5 minutes what the rest of the league and the best doctors -not technically- on earth had been agonizing over for 16 hours.

16 hours too long.

He should have been here. Should have come sooner.

"Don't know, B!" Flash had met him at the Zetas, already rambling at top speed before he could reorient himself after teleportation. Everyone else had gone home, unable to help and needing to tend to their own cities and responsibilities.

"He just- He appeared out of nowhere while we were in meeting. Didn't trip any alarms or nothing. Just popped up. We figured it had to be teleportation, but he'd have to know where the Watchtower was to do that.

So we figured, you know, random kid teleporting into the Watchtower during a Justice League meeting. Not good. Big threat. Bats would tell us to detain. So we did.

But before we could get him to a holding cell, there was this flash of light and he changed or something. He had white hair and green eyes and some sort of jumpsuit on when he appeared.

But after the light he had black hair and a t-shirt and jeans and I actually didn't see his eyes cause he just collapsed on the spot.

Started convulsing or seizing or something. And screaming. God, B, the screaming... So we took him to medbay and...

He's dying B. He has to be. He's got a fever that keeps spiking and dropping, his muscles keep spasming, and his heart keeps giving out...

He looks 14. He looks like..."

Flash had trailed off there, as they reached medbay. Bruce understood his reluctance to complete that sentence as soon as he saw the boy.

He looks like a Robin.

Like all 4 of his sons combined.

Like someone mixed Dick's and Jason's faces and put it on Tim's body at Damian's age.

It can't even be a trick. The suppression cuffs are nullifying his abilities. This is what he truly looks like.

His sons.

In pain.

In agony for 16 hours because Batman prioritized Gotham over an emergency on the Watchtower.

"When exactly did you say he collapsed."

"When we were moving him to a holding cell after we caught him. He was a trick to catch too. He-"

Red Robin cut him off. "Yeah, sure. But when exactly did this start. What happened immediately before?"

Flash was less then pleased about being interrupted, but acquiesced after a look from Batman. Tim had an idea. Tim was on to something. "Like I said, just after we caught him and got the cuffs on so he'd stop slipping away again."

Bruce couldn't keep the growl out of his voice one he realized what Tim was suggesting. Of course he knows it wasn't their fault. He's told all of them as much since. But in the moment...

"Take them off!"

"What?"

"It's the cuffs! Take the damn cuffs off! They're killing him!"

Flash wasted no more time, bolting out of the room to fetch the disabler. Tim didn't bother waiting for the fastest man alive. He had the cuffs disabled before Flash would have been able to swipe his access card into the detainment center storage room. Bruce practically threw the cuffs out of the room in his haste to get them away.

The change had been... not nearly as quick as Bruce would have liked. The heartrate settled out almost instantly, although into something a bit too slow for comfort. But it was steady and Bruce knew nothing about this kid's normal physiology so he counted it a win.

The screaming, of course, had long since choked off. According to Flash's report, his vocal cords failed after about an hour. But his facial expressions still indicated consciousness, though not awareness.

The muscles stopped spasming and unlocked slowly over the course of several minutes. Flash was back by then, looking a bit put out to have lost a race against Red Robin. Batman could not give a single flying fuck about Flash's ego right then.

Shortly after his muscles unlocking was when he finally passed out. Once more, Batman thought about 16 hours. 16 hours and he hadn't even been able to slip into unconsciousness for relief. He should have been here.

The fever was the slowest to break. In that it still hadn't broken almost 2 hours later. Batman had sent Tim and Flash home after Red Robin finished squeezing all the details he could out of Barry. Tim had given him a look before leaving, some mixture of worry and mischief. "Should I tell Agent A to prepare a room?" Bruce just rolled his eyes and shooed him off. Hopefully to bed. Knowing his son, probably not. Tim was most likely still up doing research. Bruce wanted to call Alfred to wrangle Tim to sleep.

But calling Alfred would mean leaving the room so the still potentially a threat meta couldn't hear if he woke up. And Bruce couldn't leave him. Not until the fever broke. Not until he woke up. Not until he knew the boy that looked like his sons would be okay.

Not until he could apologize for being late.

16 hours.

16 hours too late.

[ahoycaptainautumn]

Fated Mates Part 7

Synopsis: you, a vengeful vampire slayer, cross paths with the devious and handsome Astarion. Instead of a stake through the heart, Astarion finds something he thought impossible for vampire spawn. A mate.

Your party moves from the large campsite into the town on your path to the Selunite Temples. Astarion and you search for a cure and find a tether between your minds that begs for more interesting games to be played between you two.

Breathes mingle in the hot air as tension wraps around Astarion and you, thick as rope. You could practically drink in the arousal surrounding the two of you. It coils and snaps in the air as if beckoning the both of you to take it further, to finish what was left undone back in that tavern room. A shaking hand snakes up and wraps around Astarions neck, curling into his soft silver hair. You pull him impossibly closer as your lips just barely brush over one anothers. His red eyes never leave yours as he watches you absolutely enchanted. It's as if the earth is swallowing him whole and his only salvation is to fall into you. Tadpoles or masters be damned, you would be his destruction. The very fibers of his being rewritten to etch your name for forever more. You lean in closer, nose brushing the side of his own. You hold your breath, daring him to take the next step. Your whole body feels like it’s on fire. A flame broiling in your loins and licking its fire to each of your limbs. All you can think, all you can see, all you can feel is Astarion. Your thoughts are nothing if not primitive. Ever since you had drunk that elixir your only thoughts seemed wrapped in Astarion. Missing and aching for his presence the moment you two were apart. You would never admit to how desperate you are. How absolutely needy for him you are. Your other hand reaches up and clicks apart the buttons shielding Astarion’s naked flesh from your own. Your hand flows from his collarbone down, slipping down to his abdomen. He lets out a shuttered breath at your touch.

“Astarion.” You whisper into his lips. He lets out a groan and finally makes contact with your kiss. Your lips mold over one another as if made to perfectly slot over one each others. His arms roll under your body. He pushes his palms up to press your frame to his while his other hand cradles your head. You moan into the kiss as the flame in you grows hotter and hotter. He takes it as an invitation and dives into your mouth. His tongue intertwines with yours in a passionate dance. Though it only lasts for a moment before he whips his head back and away from you. You blink in surprise, already grabbing for him to return to you. You swear you won’t breathe if he stops touching you. You give out a needy whine as you paw at him. He ignores it and brings his fingers up to his lips as if to study them.

“The hells were you drinking before I found you?” He asks, clearly irritated. You rub your thighs together in need of friction and grab at his shoulders. He doesn’t budge at all and awaits your answer. You huff and cry.

“I don’t know! Some ambrosia or something an orc bartender had given me! Why does it matter? Keep kissing me!” You launch yourself up and towards him. He takes you by the upper arms to hold you still.

“Ambrosia?! Do you have any idea what that is?” His irritation only skyrocketing. You just shrug your shoulders, feeling sheepish that you hadn’t even thought to question it. You had wanted to forget, whatever concoction got you there would do.

“Gods (y/n)! That- It’s a lust potion! No wonder you’re throwing yourself all over me.” The hurt buried deep in the elf’s feelings could be heard in his last words. You struggled to find the right words to say to him. You knew deep down that this started way before you put your lips to that honeyed concoction. Hells, even before the night you shared a room. The moment your eyes had met his you felt as if there was some force driving you towards him. You kept lying to yourself that it was for the fact he knew your greatest enemy. That you had finally found that stepping stone to reach your goals. But under all the hurt you had been witness to and the hate of vampires you had grown to wield as a weapon, you found yourself enjoying his company. Enjoying him. The way you became comfortable around him nearly instantaneously. How you could banter with eachother as if you were old friends. That even though it was an enormously big oversight to trust him, you gave it willingly. But to say all that, to let your guard down, especially to someone that was vampire made, made your throat clam up. As if the words got lodged in your throat and you would choke before you could allow yourself to be vulnerable. Astarion watches the anguish and confusion morph on your face and he lets the embers of his rage die down. It wasn’t your fault for this. As much as he wanted to take you here and now, to complete this bond even if you had no idea of it, he wanted it done when you are of clear mind and body. He watches as a tear wells up in the corner of your eye and cascade down your cheek. He lifts a finger to wipe it from your face.

“Come to me when you are sober. When you make a choice and decide to cross that bridge.” He whispers into your skin as he gives a gentle kiss to your forehead. He braces himself against his knees and pushes off to stand. He turns and begins to make his way out of the tent. You latch onto his wrist without a thought.

“Wait! Where are you going?” You ask, frightful to have him leave your side. He gives a chuckle.

“I wasn’t lying when I said I was starving. Off to find dinner.” He explains. You tighten your grip on him.

“Who’s to say dinner isn’t right here?” You grin, lighting the mood. He quirks an eyebrow at you.

“As much as I love to hear you ask and beg for me, I won’t take when you are so clearly… inebriated.” He chooses his words carefully. You can’t help the groan of frustration. This is the time this ass of a vampire decides to be gentlemanly?

“I wish- I wish there was a way you could know what I’m saying is truthful. That this is me and not some elixir.” You grit your teeth. You slam your palm to your head in frustration and it’s then you feel it. A swimming in your mind. A pulsing ache right behind your eyes. Just as you feel it the bond of thought between you and Astarion through your tadpoles opens like a floodgate. Your want of his company, the desire for his bite and the truth in it goes from your mind to his. It flashes in Astarions mind like fireworks. Startled, you look up to Astarion for confirmation that that had truly just happened. He looks just as confused as you are. He goes to kneel next to you.

“Do it again!” He asks feverishly. You shake your head in confusion and lift your hands.

“I- I- I don’t know how I did that!” You stammer. His hands grab yours as if to cement yourself to him, to open up to him once more.

“Come on do whatever the hells you did that time.” He insists. You scowl at him.

“I told you I don’t bloody know what I did! I had slapped my forehead and then- poof!” You try to explain. Without even a second passing Astarion taps harshly on your forehead.

“Alright now do it!” He urges. You bite your teeth at him, rubbing your forehead at the red mark he created.

“I said I don’t-“ you begin but the rest of your words travel from your mind to his. Don’t know you damned idiot!

You learn to talk into my mind and it’s to insult me. Fitting. Astarion can’t help the grin plastered on his face as he responds back into your mind. You lightly punch his shoulder and laugh. He tucks a piece of your hair behind your ear.

“Well you went to all this trouble to beg me to bite you, may I?” He asks, his teeth already poses to strike.

“I did not beg!” You turn your head in offering to him. He only chuckles at your antics before his lips find your neck. His hand comes up to caress the side of your face. He gives a soft kiss into the nape of your neck. His tongue licks flat on your skin sending tingles up your spine. At your sharp intake of breath he strikes. His teeth burrow deep into you as he suckles on your blood. Just as before, you feel sharp ice flood your system. Shock fills your body and your nails dig into the pillows beneath you. Soon enough the icy feeling leaves your body and warmth and comfort takes its place. His body weighs onto yours and pushes you back into the pillows. His other arm wraps around your middle and pulls your body close. Your head swims and stars twinkle in your vision. You fall into his embrace and find only comfort and belonging.

-

The next morning you wake with a dull ache taking your body captive. You can feel a pulsing headache nothing to do with the tadpole and everything to do with drinking far too much the day before. Thankfully your memory is intact and you can't help but feel a bit of shame at how strongly you had come onto Astarion. But as they say, drunk actions are sober thoughts. You turn in your cocoon of pillows to see Astarion as he faces away from you. He is peacefully meditating, breathing slow and relaxed. You admire him in how vulnerable he looks. How soft he looks relaxed in the early morning sun flittering through the tent. Your eyes turn onto the scars lining his back. Without thinking you reach a hand out to trace the scaring circulating his back. On instinct Astarion flinches and draws away. You shoot your hand away and tumble out apologizes to him.

“Sorry! I just, well I was curious about your scars.” You try to remedy. Astarion wipes the deep mediation from his eyes. He turns to face you as he stretches his tired limbs.

“It’s a gift from my old master Cazador. A poem he carved into my skin in one night, with lots of revisions.” You silently ask for permission and after a moment he nods slightly. You gently take your hand and trace once again around the marks. Anger flames at the thought Cazador abusing and harming Astarion. He slaughters your family, abuses his spawns, sketches into their backs, he deserves more than death.

“I can’t wait to see what you give to him in return.” You can’t hide the venom in your words. Astarion chuckles and turns over towards you.

“You wouldn’t try to stop me?” He asks. You give him a confused look.

“I’d encourage it.” You reply.

“And to think, I thought you were the hero type.” You groan and roll your eyes.

“Not in that instance. Not if it’s harm to someone I care about.” His eyes perk up.

“Care? I think that elixir must still be in your system.” He may come off as joking but you get the sense that that is what he truly believes. You lift yourself up enough to rest your head on your hand.

“No, but I would love to show you all the ideas it gave me.” You give a devilish grin. Before Astarion can give some quick witted response you send images through the mind bond. You show him the thoughts that ran ragged through your mind last night. Of his hands tangled in your hair and pulling your head back for him to ravage your neck. Or of his skilled tongue following a path down your navel and into the dip of your hips. His hands squeezing and kneading your plush thighs. Images of bite marks and love bites trailing up your thigh and towards your most needy spot. The image of you bent across the wooden table in his tent with him filing you to the brim is the last image you get across before Astarion growls.

“You, my love, are playing a dangerous game.” His voice is hot with need, barely civil as his words come out nearly feral.

“Well it is my favorite game to play.” You smirk with a wink. Before you can pounce on one another there’s a loud crunch of boots outside the tent.

“Oi! Come on, places to be!” Karlach yells at you both from outside the tent. She quickly marches off you assumed to rally the others.

“Seems you’ll have to have those images keep you company blood sucker.” You jest as you get up. He gives a few tsks your way before he turns and opens a trunk to change. He tosses a few things aside, one among them is that gaudy smut novel with the overly romantic cover. You’re almost curious enough to reach for it to see what romantic novel Astarion would bother reading. But alas you hear Karlach once again yell for you to get moving. You make way towards your tent to get ready for the day.

-

You and the rest of your group had made it back on the road in record time. There would be some time before you hit the next town on your tour towards Selunite temple. You had been taking the time walking to try to sort out your feelings. To get your mind back on the task at hand, tadpoles then Cazador. You were deep in thought as Gale jogs up to you and keeps pace. You don’t notice his presence till he clears his throat. Startled, you look up at him.

“Oh Gale! Sorry, I wasn’t even paying attention.” You apologize.

“I noticed. I was just about to ask you what had you so wrapped up in thought.” He gives an easy smile, all ears. You wish you had someone to confess all your mixed feelings to. How these tadpoles had completely rearranged your life. How Cazador was now the closest to your revenge than he ever has been. Yet, you weren’t following that lead now that you needed a cure. How you think you actually developed feelings for a vampire, a species you swore to cut down. One you have hunted with efficiency for some time. And all it took was one flirty and murderous one to change your whole perspective. As much as you think Gale could understand to a degree, his fling with a goddess definitely holds a candle to your plight, you didn’t want everyone to know anymore of your business. So you go for the easy answer.

“Honestly I guess it’s just catching up to me how strange and time sensitive my life has become with these damned tadpoles. I thought my goals and road in life were clear cut. But now, I don’t know if I’ll get to fulfill those or I’ll wake a mind flayer. I just thought by now I would be getting closer to getting my family their revenge, not farther.” You sigh. It felt good to get some of the weight off your shoulders.

“You carry all this burden, all by yourself. Your tense, that much is easy to see even if you said nothing. I thought maybe, if it’s alright with you, I could add a bit of a magical touch?” He asks. You look over at him with a quirked eyebrow.

“This isn’t the part where you accidentally turn me into a toad or something, is it?” You ask deadpanned. Gale let’s out a hearty laugh.

“I promise, no toad making.” He gives out his pinky to you to intertwine in promise. You can’t help but laugh at his innocent actions and give him your pinky in return.

Your little “charade” with Gale was starting to turn rotten in Astarions stomach. He demanded himself to not be jealous. He wasn’t. Not in the slightest. He just so happen to find Gale extremely annoying at the current moment. Seducing you, befriending you, was his ploy not Gales. He can find another radiant and beautiful woman to try that on. Gale had his goddess, Astarion had his and he was intruding on her.

Gale focuses in on his magic and webs together The Weave of magic at his fingertips gently. You watch in awe as you walk a bit slower next to him. He takes the ball of purple lighted magic and drapes it over your shoulders. Instantly you feel a hum of warmth and comfort bleed into your shoulders and neck. You let out a sigh of relief, the tension in your shoulders subsiding as the magic winds into your tough muscles.

“Gods that actually feels amazing~ Gale.” You praise him as you nearly close your eyes in the enjoyment of the massaging.

“Maybe I’ll just be a masseuse after all this.” He jokes.

“I’ll be your most well paying customer.” You smile, relaxing into its touch.

Well now that was entirely too much. Astarion was all for sexual exploits. Gods know he’s done his fair share of whats in lots of different wheres. But this. This was different! He wasn’t exactly sure how it was different but the way his blood turned to ice he felt it was different. You should be paying him that attention. He should be the one to make you feel good. Not Gale. Just then, a sneak idea comes to Astarion. Keep his outer appearance nonchalant, he opens the channel between both of your minds. It doesn’t seem that you notice. Enjoying idle chit chat with Gale as the magic rolls off in purple puffs down your shoulders. He nearly can’t help the carnivorous smile that slips into his lips. Slowly, he feeds you images of you beneath him the night prior. Of you begging and whining for his touch. Images of his hands trailing down your sides raising every goosebump along its way. He can tell you take notice in the way you nearly trip. Your head whips around to look at him but he just focuses on his nails in a devil may care attitude.

You bit your lip nearly ready to yell at Astarion for the sinful images he sends your way. But as you look he acts coy. As if there isn’t a rising sexual tension growing between your minds. If he was going to act like it doesn't affect him, then you would do the same. You turn back round to Gale and ask him questions on his magic background. Gale is a mess of word vomit, excited to tell his tales to someone that will listen. Astarion immediately picks up on the game you are playing. Once again he creates images of pure carnal lust. Of him playing with your wet folds, slicking his fingers slowly mapping you out. His fingers dance around your clit as it sends shocks of need down your entire body. You can’t help but let out a soft choked moan in real life. You slap your hand over your mouth in shock. Astarion let’s out a low snicker at your sounds.

“You alright?” Gale asks. You give him your best smile, trying to hide the warmth spreading over you.

“Oh yeah yeah. Just you know, enjoying this massage and company.” Gale smiles at your answer as he clamps his hand over your shoulder. He gives it a squeeze.

“I enjoy your company too.” Astarion might actually bite Gale if says even one more word. If he touches you one more time he will murder this magician. Images fly out of Astarions mind to yours of him pressing into your shoulder blades with the heel of his palm. Your face down in the bedroll as he takes you from behind. Your arms flailing forward desperate for something to latch onto. He gives you no adjustment, no coddling, no slow movements. He fucks into you hard and fast, his other hand giving your ass a slap that leaves welts of his palm ingrained into your skin. Just as you feel the images combined ecstasies come forth, Astarion leans over and bites into your shoulder in the image.

You yelp, going frigid on the walkway. Everyone else stops too, looking around as if ready for battle.

“What is it, (y/n)?” Astarion asks, a smile that rivals the Cheshire Cat. You glare daggers at him. Though it is hard to be angry with the need and hunger crashing in your loins. Everyone looks to you for your answer.

“Oh just an annoying rock in my shoe, come on we are just about into town!” You hurry forward, as if to outrun the thoughts that had flooded into your mind. This town was much larger than the previous. There were lots of different sectors, underground dens, and temples all across the area. Once again you all decide to meet in the city square when dusk approaches so you could all go set camp together. The rest of the time spent was for everyone to go do what they wanted. Though it was an unvoiced agreement that the time should be spent looking into different avenues for a cure. You decided to look into the temples on the other side of town. There were a few churches within the city. A couple of temples scattered as well. But the temples a few miles from the city were what intrigued you. There was talk that there was old scripture and tomes hidden somewhere in the ruins of the temples. If you could find these ancient texts maybe there would be something in them to help you all. You made your way into the dilapidated ruins before you came to the mouth of the opening. Old wooden doors barded you from entering. The lock looked ancient and it was magically sealed from the use of magic or violence to break it. You were not skilled in lockpicking whatsoever. Most of your skills came from combat or magic. You stare at the door trying to render out an idea before a cold hand comes to rest on the top of your head. You don’t need to turn to know who it is.

“Here to play more games, blood sucker?” You ask. His hand leaves your head as he walks towards the door to inspect it.

“Just thought you could use my help, and company, little killer.” He responds. He reaches for his lockpicking kit he keeps on him at all times and goes to work. The lock is tricky, a lot more to it than the modern day locks. But after a few minutes you hear the familiar pop of a lock coming undone. You can’t help the shocked look you give him.

“I’m wounded you forget my many talents dear. There is far more than bedroom talents to me.” You roll your eyes at him.

“A talent I have yet to see.” You wave off backhandedly. You walk forward into the temple. The inside is much like the outside. Pillars toppled over, old candles with wax clinging to surfaces all over. Sigils and paintings are scattered across the walls. Depictions of epic fights and of families and lovers. Images of archaic weddings and celebrations. The place is covered in cobwebs with puddles of old rusty water in several places. The front door doesn’t give much light so you cast a fire spell onto all the candles nearby in a radius. Astarion saunters over to your side.

“A talent you are more than welcome to indulge in, just say the word.” He teases. The both of you walk through more of the rooms in the temple. Many times you have to use magic to move old statues or pillars out of your way. Or needing to clear a walkway of abandoned desks or bookcases.

“I tried to just the other night and I was turned away. Must not be that much talent if you're scared to share it.” You bite back. Sparks shoot up inside of Astarion at your words. People can say many things about him, blood sucker, murderer, psychopath, but heavens they could not say a bad lover!

“Maybe it’s that you aren’t ready to experience such euphoria.” Astarion strikes back at you. You busy yourself with undoing traps in a back room as he lockpicks a gate to an underground cellar. You light a ball of flame in your hand as you both walk down the spiral stone steps.

“Have you ever thought that maybe you aren’t ready to experience mine?” You ask. As you come to the bottom of the stone steps a door with a magical symbol guards the final room. You inspect the magic and recognize it from your studies in your fathers libraries. It’s quite old, but thankfully not unknown to you. You cast the spell it looks for and it opens it’s rickety doors to you. Inside is the library you searched for. Walls covered in bookshelves of long forgotten texts. A large stone desk built into the floor stands in the middle. Old wooden chairs with torn pillows sit on each side of it. There are candelabras and candles all over the room. You once again light them as you make your way inside. You cross the room over to the table to examine the sole book left there; opened as if someone was in the midst of reading before this place fell. Astarion walks over to you and places both hands on either side of you and onto the table. He closes the space between your bodies. Your back to his chest, shared breath and warmth. Your heart lurches as you wait for his response. He pulls his lips closer to your ear, his breath tickling the back of your neck.

“I would very, very, much like to experience you. Say the word, and you are mine.” He whispers. Once again that familiar all suffocating feeling returns. The tension rose once more. Your hands enclose over his own. You lean your head back onto his shoulder and look back and over at him. Your eyes meet and there is shared hunger in both of your eyes. You lick your lips before you answer him.

“Take me, Astarion.” You can barely let out. His grip tightens on your own. Carnal lust, and maybe something more, perfuming the halls of the forgotten Aphrodite temple.

Part six here

Part eight here

I promise actual smut the next chapter, I’ll stop edging y’all

[portraitofalinkonfyre]

Heat

Pairing: Hyrule x Reader

Warning(s): smut (mating cycle and all that jazz)

Masterlist

It was hot, so fucking hot that your very bones broiled with an all-encompassing heat, leaving you completely boneless to the whims of your dear husband, his hands gripping your love handles like there was no tomorrow while his hips pistoned tirelessly against your own. Muttered praises spilled from his mouth like a broken faucet, swirling in a cacophony that filled the heated room just as much as the stench of pheromones.

"So good for me," Hyrule's tone was deeper than you'd ever heard it, laced with enough sin to have you wailing from his words alone. Every thrust sent a new jolt of mind-numbing pleasure up your spine, not to mention the absolutely feral screech he tore from you with a savage pinch to your clit. "That's- ah- it—scream for me."

And so you did, moaning when he bent down to suckle your bouncing teat, mouth enveloping your nipple in a sweltering hold. Saliva dripped down the curve of your breast, leaving searing trails across your skin. Hyrule scraped his teeth over the sensitive bud, pace never faltering, and you felt yourself getting close for the how-ever-long-it-had-been time. It was too much and not enough, and the only thought in your head was how the situation was all your fault.

Being partly fae, there were slight differences your husband had from regularly hylians. For one, his control of magic was quite spectacular compared to others, not to mention how using magical items worked ten times better on him. Other notable differences included the fact that he could shrink to the size of a fairy at will... and that, every summer, a phenomenon know as 'heat' ravaged the fairy community in all senses of the word, which is exactly how you ended up with him pushing your legs up and going to town on you. The part about everything being your fault came with the fact that, instead of being supportive of his 'condition', you chose to challenge his half-joking comment about being able to go for days at a time. It became obvious that you were screwed (literally) when he hoisted you over his shoulder, dumped you on the bed, and proceeded to eat you out till you cried, then pushed you into a makeshift mating press that had you seeing stars with every thrust.

"Ah! T-Too—"

"Too much?" Hyrule smirked, unlatching from your breasts to press open-mouthed kisses on the column of your neck, occasionally scraping his elongated canines over trembling flesh. "You can take it," he said, punctuating every word with a particularly harsh thrust. "We're not— mm, leaving until you're full of me inside and out."

Well, if that wasn't the hottest thing you'd heard in your life. The coil in your belly was tighter than ever, leaving your dangling over the precipice. Fortunately, your husband was very familiar with your body's cues by now that he merely jammed his thumb down on your poor, abused clit, slamming in at the same time. You screamed as you came, writhing in his unbreakable hold to escape the merciless pounding that continued into your orgasm. Your hands dragged down his back, leaving deep crimson stripes that only made him fuck you harder.

"S-Stop—" you whimpered, throat beyond sore from all the screaming "I-I can't—"

"You can," was Hyrule's panted response as he drilled into your poor cunt, fucking you even as his own release spurted into your overfilled core. "And you will."

It was when you felt the tips of his canines hovering over the mating mark on your left shoulder did your struggling begin anew. Fae mating was tricky business, especially when a single touch to the mark from him would practically have you creaming. "Wait—"

But Hyrule didn't listen, practically growling as he sunk his teeth into tender flesh. Your body jerked with the intensity of a livewire as a cacophony of moans tore themselves from your throat. "Aahh! Y-You bastard—"

"Only for— mmmh, you," was his response. Another wave of searing cum filled you, and a reprieve finally came in the form of his halted thrusts. You collapsed back on the bed, chest heaving, as your husband took his own break, the both of you panting like dogs. You whimpered pathetically when he pulled his cock from you, drawing a half amused, half exhausted chuckle from your mate. "Regretting something?"

"Go fuck yourself," you hissed playfully, not realizing your mistake until he pulled you close, hardened cock settling between your folds like it belonged there, and sneered in your face.

"Not when I have you here."

2 posts in one day?? I'm on a roll!

[thalialunacy]

[for the @calaisreno May Prompt-a-palooza; cw for bodily functions]

(1) (2) (3) (4) 5: awkward (6) (7) (8) (9) (10) (11) (12) (13) (14) (15) (16) (17) (18) (19) (20) (21) (22) (23) (24) (25) (26) (27) (28) (29) (30) (31)

Sharing a home with someone, regardless of square footage or relationship, involves an unavoidable amount of intimate physical knowledge. As an army mate of John's had once said eloquently, 'Well, I know what your shit smells like, don't I?'

Those things, John is prepared for. Has got used to, even, in his once-and-future living arrangement. He's a doctor, a combat veteran, and a widowed father. He's not exactly squeamish.

And he can personally attest, on several levels, to the fact that Sherlock is not a machine. You can't share a bathroom and not learn a few things about a person.

But… it's like some switch got turned on after their 'moment' in the stairwell.

(Because no, they had not marched back upstairs and worked things out per Mrs Hudson's request. As will shock no one, they had instead gone on their stubborn ways, and are ploughing through their daily lives willy-nilly as long as they can.)

(Which is not very long.)

Things keep happening.

- John, sitting guilelessly at the table, makes to stand just as Sherlock is walking by, and ends up with his nose essentially in the armpit of Sherlock's dressing gown. Which Sherlock is still wearing. After sleeping several hours in it and old pyjamas.

- John, Rosie in his lap, snorts awake to find himself-- well, both him and his daughter-- slumped into Sherlock on the sofa, credits scrolling on the television screen while Sherlock scrolls through his phone. And, unfortunately, both John and his daughter have managed to leave sleep-warm saliva on Sherlock's person, in two round spots on his breathtakingly expensive shirt. Sherlock, who must have noticed, seems unconcerned. John wonders briefly if he's woken up in an alternate dimension, then realises they'd been watching Doctor Who and it must have seeped into his psyche.

- John, now one hundred percent accustomed to wiping his toddler's nose, is so focused on his laptop screen when he hears a sneeze that he doesn't think (at all) before pulling out a tissue and reaching over to the face of the sneezer. That it's Sherlock is only a fact he recognises a split second too late.

- John, brain uncaffeinated, yawns while reaching across Sherlock to grab something off the table, and realises with a start that it's 6am and neither of them have cleaned their teeth. He stares at the mouth so close to his, at the man whose breath is bitter, yes, but somehow not unagreeable, then jerks away gracelessly. 'I'll just--' He points his thumb over his shoulder at the loo, and escapes, face flaming.

- And finally: John, going quietly mad when Rosie gets her first real, frightening fever. His training doesn't stand a chance of overriding his lizard brain, so he spends three days ignoring absolutely all personal hygiene and never leaving his daughter's side. When it finally breaks, when John feels like he can breathe again, he notices Sherlock is there, too, beside him, quietly watching her sleep restfully for the first time in what feels like long, dusty years. And he suddenly realises he must smell like -- well, like a locker room and a crowded pub rolled around in the dirt then pissed off a skunk, probably. And Sherlock is standing next to him as if he smells like roses. This, unexpectedly, makes John's stomach broil under a surge of affection, and he feels his eyes stinging for one horrifying, sleep-deprived moment.

Soon, after so many of these things, he can't help wondering if God or whomever is taking the piss. If fate is having a good old go at John H Watson by giving him the closest, most fulfilling relationship he's ever had-- and making it with the one person who can knock him flat on his arse and keep him there.

He's tempted, more than once, to give the sky two fingers. But he has yet to get around to doing it. He's too busy, for once, actually living.

[❤️]

[chaoticpuff17]

When the Chips are Down

part 27

masterlist

Y/N couldn’t say that she was a big fan of weddings. She hadn’t been too a large number of them, but even counting her own horrible day, this was the worst wedding she had ever been to.

Iyla, for her part, took the ordeal like a champion. She marched down the aisle on Namjoon’s arm with all the grace of a queen and all the wrath broiling within both of them shining in her eyes. While Y/N had spent her own wedding in a haze, Iyla seemed all too aware of what was happening to her. She completed each part of the ceremony with contempt. Each time she was asked to do something, she would pause for an uncomfortably long moment before she would comply, a stubborn tilt to her head and a mocking glint in her eye as though she was daring Hoseok to do something.

Unlike her sister, Iyla still held the belief that there was an escape from the hellscape they had found themselves in. She hadn’t yet been beaten into submission with the knowledge that there was no leaving. Anything that Namjoon and his brothers wanted, they got. This applied to all areas of their lives both in business and in personal matters. Their chosen mates got very little say in any of it, and weddings, from what Y/N could tell, were simply an announcement to the world that they had gotten their way. They were a public claim on their partners, not that any of the boys needed a public claim. Simply the whisper of one of the big bosses having taken a partner would give the woman in question a certain level of respect and protection. No one in the organization wanted to upset the higher ups by disrespecting their wives.

The wedding made things official though. It was a legal binding that many of the boys seemed to crave. You could always leave a partner if the relationship was bad. Marriages were harder to end though. Even if any of the girls ran and managed to stay gone there would always be a legal tie to the boys that couldn’t be undone without revealing their whereabouts. It was a catch twenty two.

The final bows were soon made, and Hoseok and Iyla were announced as a married couple to everyone assembled. It was a traditionally Korean ceremony for the most part, but the plans for a reception afterwards were much more Western in origin. While it wasn’t typical, Y/N’s working theory was that Namjoon and the boys liked to show off. A reception was an excellent way to get caught up with business associates, make connections, and generally boast to the world about their chosen wife. Namjoon had chosen to do much the same thing at their own wedding.

A pang went through her heart as she stood, ready to follow the newly weds to the reception area. Her own reception had been one of the last times that she had seen Jackson alive and well, and she’d been so blind with betrayal and hurt that she hadn’t even talked to him.

It was in these thoughts that she was caught up when the first sound of a shot was heard. She had barely even had time to register it before she was being shoved to the ground, Nara clutched tightly to her chest and Namjoon’s body hovering over the both of them as a shield.

His eyes were wild as he looked at her, scanning her and their daughter for any injuries. “Are you alright?” The words came out in a rush almost as though he was panicked, but Namjoon was so very rarely panicked. He was the leader for a reason. Situations like this weren’t meant to faze him. “Is Nara alright?”

Y/N nodded, stumbling over her words as she let him know that they were both alright. They might have been a little jostled and possibly bruised from the force with which he’d taken them all to the ground, but they were for the most part alright.

“Taehyun!” Namjoon roared, calling out for her bodyguard. “Get them out of here!”

“Wait!” Y/N looked around desperately as Namjoon helped her to her feet. “Where is Iyla? Is Iyla okay?”

“Taehyun is going to take you and Nara to safety.” Namjoon assured her, brushing the hairs away from her face that had been knocked loose when he’d taken them all to the ground. “You’re going to be just fine.”

“What about Iyla?”

He quickly pressed a kiss to forehead and did the same for Nara as well before pushing her into Taehyun’s arms. “If anything happens to them, I will gut you.” Namjoon promised, his tone low and dripping with venom.

“I’ll protect them with my life, sir.”

“What about Iyla!” she cried, as Taehyun began to drag her away, his grip unyielding on her arm as he led them out.

“Keep your head low, buin.” he ordered gently. “Cover Ms. Nara’s head as well.”

Despite her protests, Y/N kept her head low as instructed, and Nara, who was by this point screaming her poor little head off, was tucked into her chest with her head shielded. Taehyun had moved from dragging her by the arm to ushering her forward with his own body half covering hers as they moved. When Kim Namjoon had given the order to protect his family at all costs. He had meant it, even if it came at the price of bodily harm to Taehyun.

Part of Y/N was selfishly grateful for Taehyun’s protection. There were bullets flying across the venue, both from BTS and whoever had decided to crash the event. People were running in every direction, and screams filled the air as everyone tried to find cover.

Y/N tried not to look at the carnage of what had once been a beautiful venue as they went past. Her focus had to be on her baby and getting her to safety. She’d get Iyla too if she could, but she didn’t think that Taehyun would let her go searching, and her first priority had to be Nara. Nara had to get out of this mess before she could truly worry about anyone else.

It wasn’t the first shoot out she’d been in. Marcus hadn’t always been careful about where he brought her and when. Her safety had never been a primary concern for him. She’d taken precautions after that not to accompany Marcus to any parties she deemed particularly sketchy. Her second shootout had been over a year ago when she’d been running for her life in an attempt to escape the estate, her first escape attempt. They hadn’t been aiming for her though. That had been made abundantly clear. So she wasn’t a stranger to shoot outs, she’d just never been in the middle of one before.

“Where are we even going?” Y/N asked, her words coming out as more of a pant.

“To the cars, buin.” Taehyung answered, voice low and not nearly as out of breath as her own was. “Sajangnim ordered me to get you to safety. Once we get to the cars, I’ll see you and Ms. Nar-”

The first thing that Y/N registered was the stinging pain in her arm, almost like a bad carpet burn. She’d had many of those as a child when she and Iyla hadn’t been careful in their playing, and she’d tripped and gone skidding across the floor in their childhood home.

The next thing she registered was Taehyun’s voice had gone abruptly and completely silent, his sentence left unfinished. She didn’t have time to question this change as his form which had been a shelter from the maelstrom around them became a dead weight dragging her and Nara to the ground once more.

Y/N cursed under her breath, checking to see if Nara was okay before glancing over at Taehyun to check and see if he was okay and promptly wishing she hadn’t, her stomach turning.

A pool of deep red was seeping towards her with nauseating speed from the figure next to her. For the most part, he looked as though he’d just tripped much the same as she had. It was once you looked past the shoulders that the damage became apparent. There wasn’t much left of Taehyun after that point to recognize as Taehyun any more. The bullet had torn straight through his skull, destroying all of his recognizable features.

Y/N choked back a sob, scrambling back in an attempt to get away from the carnage though she quickly found herself ducking down to avoid a shot going off far too close for comfort.

Nara continued to scream in her arms, her little wails cutting through the air and making the both of them an all too obvious target for anyone who was looking to get revenge on Namjoon.

“It’s okay, baby.” she shushed, gently bouncing Nara in her arms. “Momma’s going to get us out of here.”

Y/N placed a quick kiss to the top of her baby’s head and began to crawl back over to Taehyun’s body.

He was one of Namjoon’s men. He had to have some sort of weapon on him. Y/N highly doubted that any of Namjoon’s men went anywhere unarmed, at least not foot soldiers like Taehyun had been.

With some rummaging, Y/N was able to find a gun stashed in a shoulder harness. It was a little bigger than anything that Y/N had shot before, but it would have to do given the circumstances, and Y/N wasn’t about to turn away anything that could help keep her and Nara safe. She wasn’t entirely sure how she was going to shoot and hold Nara, but she had something on hand to protect them if worse came to worse, and that made the situation marginally better.

Y/N got up, careful to keep her body as low to the ground as she could as she moved through the carnage. Keep low and move quickly, that was the only thought in her head as she picked her way out of the wedding hall. She couldn’t get to the cars. It wasn’t safe. She didn’t know who was out there and who they worked for. She didn’t know who half of Namjoon’s men were, and she didn’t doubt that the ones she did know were preoccupied with keeping their own wives safe as well as putting an end to the chaos that had ruined the wedding. If she asked for help, she was as likely to ask someone who was responsible for the chaos as she was to pick someone who worked for Namjoon. Along with those two factions were also visiting families and business acquaintances, and there was no telling who of those would help her if she asked and who would slit her throat given the opportunity. She was on her own.

Once she was out of the main hall, there was more room too maneuver and more options of where to go.

Frantically, she looked around, trying to find somewhere to go. What she needed was a place to hide, somewhere secluded and somewhere where she could hopefully form a barricade to keep others from getting in. She found her answer in the form of a supply closet tucked away from the main hall.

Briskly, Y/N made her way towards the door, keeping a careful eye on her surroundings as she did.

“Y/N!” an achingly familiar voice called causing her head to snap in the direction it had come from. Mark was rushing towards her, looking disheveled in his suit as he sprinted across the hall foyer. “Y/N, are you alright?” He rushed to ask, quickly scanning her for any injuries. “Is Nara alright?”

“What are you doing here?” She asked, out of breath as she took in the sight of him.

“We have to go.” He urged, grabbing her arm and pulling her towards the exit. “They’re going to be looking for you soon.”

“How are you here?”

He smiled, the expression rakish and exasperated at the same time. “I promise to explain everything later, but we have to hurry right now.”

“Where’s Iyla? Did you get Iyla out?” She asked, scanning the room for any sign of her sister as Mark pulled her towards the exit.

“Iyla?” He questioned, brow furrowed. “I don’t have Iyla. We barely had time to get you out. This whole operation has been a mess.”

Y/N stopped dead in her tracks, his words playing through her mind. “This was you? You did this?” She asked, hoping against hope that it was a lie. “You shot at my baby sister? You shot at my baby?”

“Y/N, we don’t have time for this right now.” He tried to tug her forward again, but she wouldn’t go. “Y/N, please.”

She wanted to believe that Mark wouldn’t put Nara or Iyla in danger for some hair-brained scheme, but looking at him now, how frantic he seemed- how desperate to get her out of there, she knew that he had. “How could you?”

“Y/N, we have to go.”

Shots went off around them as she remained immobile, Mark pleading with her to keep going, to leave with him, but she couldn’t move. She couldn’t bring herself to leave with him knowing what would happen to Iyla if she left her behind. Namjoon had made the consequences very clear if she should ever try to leave him again. If she was going to escape it had to be with Iyla.

“Let go, Mark.” she ordered, shaking her arm out of his grip. “You need to leave.”

“Y/N, you can’t be serious.” Mark cursed under his breath, pushing them both to the floor as someone fired a gun in their direction. “We have to go now!”

Y/N pushed herself and Nara up from the floor, aiming the gun shakily at Mark as she did, tears pooling in her eyes.

He stared at her incredulously. “Y/N, be reasonable. We won’t get this chance again. Lee won’t agree to help me again.”

“Go.” she ordered, her voice just as tremulous as the rest of her.

“Y/N…”

“I swear to God, Mark, I will shoot you if you don’t leave.”

“You can’t stay with him.”

She shook her head, the tears starting to fall. “I can’t leave knowing what he’ll do to my sister if I do.”

“We’ll get her out another time.” He pleaded, standing up as she rose as well, Nara clutched tight to her chest, her little face red as she shook with little hiccuping sobs. “We have to go now.”

“You have to leave before he catches you.” She kept the gun trained at his chest. “He won’t let you go a second time.” Mark didn’t move. “You have jeopardized everything.” she hissed, the possibilities running rampant through her mind. Namjoon would not be kind if he found Mark here, and considering his actions, she wasn’t feeling too charitable towards him herself.

“Y/N, I’m trying to help you.”

“You shot at my daughter! You shot at my baby sister!” Her eyes scanned his features looking for a shred of remorse. She found none.

“You need to leave.” she hissed, but Mark didn’t move. “Leave!” she screamed.

He still didn’t move. Y/N lowered the gun, aiming at his foot as she fired, and Mark jumped back, letting loose a string of expletives as he did.

“I don’t want to shoot you, Mark,” she began, raising the gun to his chest once more. “but I will if I have to.”

He took a step forward, reaching for her, and Y/N was quick to aim a shot at his leg. The bullet grazed his calf, missing its mark. She was no good at aiming with only one hand, and it didn’t help that she was shaking like a leaf.

“Go!” she urged. “Go before he finds out this was you.”

Without a backwards glance at him, Y/N turned on her heel and took off into the foyer. It was almost as chaotic in entry now as the main hall had been, the fighting spilling out as people ran. her aim was to get to the supply closet she had seen earlier. It wouldn’t be much for cover, but it would be something so long as she was lucky enough to make it there without getting herself shot in the process.

With some difficulty, Y/N was able to make it to the closet. The door had mercifully been left unlocked, giving her access to the small room. It had just enough space for her to crouch on the floor with Nara half hidden behind some packages of toilet paper and paper towels. It wasn’t much, but she was more than grateful for it.

The supply closet only had one entrance for her to guard. If anyone tried to open the door, she had a direct line of sight and therefore fire to defend herself and Nara.

Hiding in the dark room did nothing to settle her frayed nerves. Every sound coming from outside her sanctuary set her on edge though Nara had thankfully settled down. As much as she loved her child, having her screaming while they were attempting to hide would have been counterproductive, and the sound would have worn on her already ragged nerves.

She didn’t know how long they stayed there crouched in the dark. It could have been hours or it could have been minutes. She had no way of telling the time, and her own anxiety made her an unreliable judge of exactly how long they’d been there, but it felt like an eternity.

Even when the noise from outside had died down, Y/N refused to leave her hiding place. She had no way of knowing who had come out on top of the chaos outside, and without that knowledge she was not willing to put herself or Nara in any more danger than necessary.

Her legs ached from her cramped position as did her arms from holding Nara for so long, but she stayed still, waiting for a sign that it was safe to leave, her mind reeling from the events of the day. Her grip remained tight on the gun she’d swiped off Taehyun’s body ready to shoot should someone try to open the door even if her hands were shaking. She’d already shot at someone today, and she didn’t particularly want to shoot at anyone else, but she would if she had to.

Part of her couldn’t believe that she’d shot at Mark. She couldn’t believe that she’d let the opportunity to escape pass her by. She could have taken Nara and ran. She could have had a shot at freedom, but she hadn’t taken it. She’d made a choice that she had never even considered as a real possibility. She’d chosen to stay with Namjoon of her own volition.

Of course there were other factors. She knew what Namjoon would do to Iyla if she’d chosen to go. She also knew that Namjoon never would have stopped searching for her if she’d managed to slip away, and that was a big if. She doubted they would have gotten very far before Namjoon would have found them. Taking their daughter and running, while it sounded nice in theory, would have unleashed an almost unholy fury within her husband. He was already slightly insane when it came to her. She could only imagine the lengths he would go to to get Nara back if she were ever to go missing and the consequences she would face if she had a hand in it.

Y/N was shaken out of her thoughts as the door to her sanctuary was ripped open. Without even thinking, she lifted the gun and fired in the direction of the entry. Nara woke with a start at the sound, starting to cry as she did.

“Fuck!” the intruder cursed, jumping back as her bullet barely missed him, embedding itself into the door frame. “Hyung!” he called, stepping away from the door and keeping an eye on her as he shouted over his shoulder. “Hyung, I found her!”

She stared at the man in the doorway, heart racing and her hands shaking so much that she was afraid she would drop the gun.

She didn’t have a chance to fire at him again as the man in the doorway was unceremoniously shoved aside to reveal a new figure.

She fired again, just barely missing him and embedding a bullet into the other side of the door frame eliciting another stream of curses from both men standing at the door.

Before she could try to steady her hand enough to fire again, the weapon was ripped from her hand and tossed out of the small space.

“No!” she screamed, kicking at the man trying to drag her and Nara out of their sanctuary.

“Jagi! Jagiya, it’s me!” her assailant cooed, wrapping a hand around her wrist to keep her blows from landing. “It’s me.” he said again, keeping his voice low and even. “You’re safe now. You’re both safe.”

Slowly Y/N began to register who was in the closet with her. “Namjoon?”

“It’s me, jagi. It’s me.” He hushed, smoothing away the mess her hair had become during the chaos of the day. “It’s me.”

Namjoon was unceremoniously knocked back as Y/N threw herself into his arms, her free arm wrapped tightly around his neck as she clung to him, sobs wracking her frame as the stress of the whole situation came crashing down on her with the reassurance that they was safe and keeping Nara from harm was no longer her responsibility alone. No one was going to hurt them. Namjoon would make sure of that.

Namjoon wrapped his arms tightly around her, careful not to crush Nara between them as he held them both.

“You’re alright, jagiya. You did so well. You’re safe now.” he murmured into her hair. “It’s all okay. I won’t let anything happen to you.” she shuddered against him, her whole body shaking as the adrenaline left her system. “Jungkook, have them bring the car around.”

“On it, hyung.” Jungkook quickly scampered away leaving the couple in peace.

“Okay, jagi.” Namjoon began, gently trying to shift Y/N away from him slightly, but she clung on, gripping the back of his suit jacket. “I’m not going anywhere.” He reassured her, gently stroking a hand down her back. “I’m just going to take Nara and hand her to Soobin. He’s going to take her to the car while I take you there. Okay, jagiya?” Y/N didn’t move, clutching Nara closer as the infant continued to cry. “You did so good, jagi. You did so good, but you don’t have to hold on anymore. I’ve got you.” Y/N choked back sob. “I’ve got you.”

Y/N slowly released her grip, slipping back and giving Namjoon room to take Nara from her arms. The little one was still crying, pathetic hiccuping sobs that tugged at Namjoon’s heart strings.

With a quick kiss to Nara’s forehead, he stood up, passing her over to Soobin who was waiting to take her to the car.

“I’m going to pick you up now, jagi.” he explained, moving slowly as he stooped to scoop Y/N up from the ground. She went willingly, wrapping her arms around his neck and tucking her face into his shoulder as he strode through the wrecked venue towards where Jungkook had the car waiting. “Rest, jagi. I’ve got you.” 

part 28

[stareiiez]

𝑳𝒊𝒕𝒕𝒍𝒆 𝑴𝒐𝒖𝒔𝒆 --- four

simon ( ghost ) riley x female reader.

content : dark?? ghost. fingering. orgasming. voyeurism. modern settings. mentions of stalking. gore. death. gun violence. graphic descriptions of gore. torture. obsession. drinking. sex. female genitals. unhealthy attachments. violence. blood. implied death. blood. smut in later chapters. dark topics. this is just my version of haunting adeline but for ghost. adult cis female reader. MDNI. 3.8k words. proof read to the best of my tired eyes.

note: another late night update <3 if you're triggered by death/ torture pls don't read! if you do, don't say i didnt warn you! as always, reblogs, comments, and notes are loved and appreciated!!!!

To say soundproofing a basement was a blessing for Simon was a blessing is a severe understatement. Without it, the patrons who were upstairs drinking and being merry in crude ways would be able to hear the gut-wrenching screams and manly grunts over the pain-filled noises that were caused by several weapons of torture and destruction. His favorite had been the cheese grater. A little corny, sure, but god did it do the job to make a man piss himself like a little bitch when it was dragged up the valley of his tender throat. The meaty thwack of blunt force meeting wet skin echoes in the darkened basement. Musty air and traces of liquor tingle upon a twice-broken nose. Bloody knuckles wreak havoc upon the blistered and fileted skin of poor Graves. It's been like this for nearly an hour, the need for releasing pent-up steam and broiling over anger made Simon pull out the big guns and turn the pretty boy into nothing but a bloody sack of crying meat.

Graves was unrecognizable. Both of his once beautiful blue eyes, that you stared at so dreamy-like, were swollen shut. Puffy and purple turning with threats of black eyes and bloodshot irises. Cigarette burns, stab wounds, cuts, and barely forming bruises were littering the bare upper body of the poor suffering sap Simon was torturing half to death. Kidnapping and planned manslaughter were not in his plans tonight, far from it. His plans were innocent. He wanted to watch you and your nightly routine, memorize your little rituals before bed. He wanted to see what you would look like when you were dreaming so peacefully under his watchful eyes that would be at your bedside. He wanted to know what your sheets smelled like, felt like under his rough palms, and get the first touch of pure warmth that radiated off your little body while it was oblivious to his touch.

Now Graves just had to come over on the night Simon planned to. How unfortunate. Truly. If he was any better mate he would apologize for every scream and plea that tumbled out of that broken jaw that once purred into your ear in front of Simon's eyes. It didn't have to be like this, but he had a point to make. He tells himself this when his broad back turns, grabbing at an already stained towel painted red with thick ruby ichor. You were his girl. His pretty baby should be fingered by him and him only. This was only an example for every other son of a bitch you decided that was better to fuck than Simon Riley himself.

"She never even told me she had a boyfriend." cried Graves when he was still pure and fresh-skinned. His eyes flicked down to the dull butcher knife that Simon had been tossing up and down lazily; brown eyes watching the frustration and unease that crept on the other man's face underneath the bleached bone mask of his. "Wouldn't even have thought to touch her, unless she wanted it, and she did want it." Wrong set of words. Yikes.

Rusted metal meets the muscle of Graves' right thigh in one effortless swing of Simon, buried to the hilt. Dark cherry starts to bubble around the plastic handle. Strong metal and even stronger cries of the pretty boy. His head throws back with a growl and a colorful string of curses. Not a very Southern gentlemanly thing of him to do. Very different from the southern hospitality Graves was giving you before Simon got his hands on him. Overly whitened teeth bare out between a grimace and snarl given to the brit. All bark and very little bite. Cute. He'd have fun with this. He always had fun with this type of work, it's why his group always gave him the nitty gritty bloody work. Their hands would be a little cleaner than his, and he could enjoy watching even the toughest get unnerved when they caught the sick glint in Simon's eyes when he brought out new ' toys ' to try out.

Now Graves was on the receiving end of that sick look. Emotionless eyes but smiling lips that peeled a bit too wide under the suffocating balaclava that covered his head and mouth. Bottomless dark pools of his irises reflected the mess of carved-away fatty tissue and the sharp ends of broken bones stretching past the elasticity of human skin. A dead man's masterpiece. Picasso eat your fucking heart out.

The saving grace was the end of a smoking barrel that pressed to Grave's forehead. Hot iron and metal singed away at damp baby hairs and smoothed away the wrinkles of distraught so cruelly. Simon was growing bored of this torture now, he was wasting too much time here messing with a man who had one foot in the grave and the other trying to wedge itself in the doorway of life. He had to make a call and see if his pretty girl was distraught enough for a comforting hand or two to reel her into the snare of his adoration.

"Have we learned our lesson for the evenin' then, mate?" Simon's dark timber of a voice growled into the stale air. The end of his gun prodded at glistening skin for an answer almost immediately. He doesn't have all night.

Grave's jaws couldn't click together enough to help form the bleeding nub of a tongue to form a coherent enough answer to please him. That tongue was cut off with a clean swipe of Simon's blade when Graves still had his energy and was making threats about getting out of there and getting his men to show the Brit how torture worked; then maybe he'd celebrate by fucking 'his' girl all in memorium for his tries. Shame that tongue had to go, he preferred the curses and slew of half-baked 'go to hell's ' Graves let bolster out in the first thirty minutes down here.

He'll settle for a silent answer then. Broken bones popped socket arms and kneecaps would just have to be an affirmative' yes sir ' to Simon. If Dead men can't come crawling back out of their half-dug graves to come to eat some pussy; then mangled ruined bodies of desperate mutts of men can fuck to save their fading souls from descending into the depths of hell.

Thumb cocking back the hammer of his sidearm, pointer finger pressing a little bit too eagerly. The kickback of gunpowder and fire didn't make Simon miss the satisfying spray of pink brain matter, hot blood, and tiny pieces of flying skull shrapnel painting the grungey floor behind Graves.

A mess of gory artistry the man behind the painting would just have to miss being cleaned up and taken out back to be thrown away in a dumpster where all other trash goes to rot away in a marked landfill. The gun of his was tossed next to Grave's bound cooling corpse. He'll get an earful about doing this during working hours of the bar, but he would be damned if he didn't get to release his demons onto Graves before it was too late and his anger chilled to a icy tundra in his chest.

Another cup of coffee, perhaps your fourth of the night cools in your palms again. The caffeine does little to soothe the growing migraine that pounds behind your eye sockets with every microsecond your patience wanes into threads. Angry hornets fester inside your skull, and a jack rabbit's heart inside your chest. Your night is taking years off your life, you can feel it with every monotonous droning of the same questions one of the cops repeats every ten minutes or so. It feels like you're getting nowhere, running on a hamster wheel that'll lead to nowhere and you getting winded in the process. The police make you feel stupid. The moment two cop cars arrived at your residence to investigate the lack of evidence they found from your supposed potential serial killer. They condescended and ridiculed every detail you gave them till your face ran blue and the air in your lungs was nearly gone.

The bloody handprint that was smeared on the greenhouse's wall was already washed away; more than likely absorbed into the greedy grass like a man sucking down water after being in the desert for months. Other than the scratched ' S ' on your porch step there was little to believe you and your cracked-out story. They thought you called just for attention, just to waste gas that was paid for too high taxes. It's been like this for two hours now, repetitive questions and police pulling only yours and Graves' prints off your things and his abandoned truck that was sitting in your drive. Their idiotic conclusion? He was simply lost in the ever-expansive woods. Lost among the shrubbery and shadows, a victim to the unusually cruel predatory gazes of wildlife that watched his every move; ready to strike him down and feast like royalty till their bellies almost popped.

"What did the sheriff make the call on for tonight?"

The cop, who had been interrogating you, turned to address another policeman who was examining your small living room with boredom written all over his young features.

Before the way too young-looking man could answer, an older British voice called out "Why don't you ask 'im yourself, deputy?" The smell of strong cigar smoke suddenly started to assault your senses.

An older gentleman, with ashy brown hair and a thick jungle of facial hair, strode into your home. One of his hands supported the straps of his bulletproof vest, the other held the burning cigar that stunk up the small interior of your home in a matter of seconds. A plume of smoke exhaled out of his nostrils when his beady eyes swept over your kitchenette till they landed on your inquisitive expression. He pressed his cigar to his full lips for another inhale as if he had all the time in the world to stink up your home and trigger your body to sneeze at such an offending smell. "Sorry, sir. " The deputy uttered apologetically, eyes dropping low in embarrassment he was intimidated by such a commanding presence of his superior.

With another exhale of thick grey smoke that makes your nose wrinkle the sheriff approaches you. His right hand extended out for you to shake while he introduced himself to you as if his last name wasn't sewn so neatly into the black fabric of his uniform. "Officer, or sheriff John Price. I don't think we've met." His glove was rough against your skin, but his grasp was gentle while he shook your hand. His free hand plucked the cigar from his lips, teeth leaving bite marks over the damp end he had been sucking on. " Boys couldn't find anything here, miss except for disturbed gravel and prints from the wet grass out back. We can't pull anything significant off those marks, unfortunately. Could have just been a bad attempt of some break-in just to scare a young woman and her guy friend."

Your eyebrows creased, hand slipping out his light hold quickly. Angry hornets in your skull turned into a full-on battalion of those large Asian wasps that had excellent memory. They were banging around against hard bone, buzzing so loud and pissed that they threatened to burst out of your ears and sting every single cop here. Especially Price, they'd sting him right on his stupid gruff face. "But whoever was here, didn't steal anything they just left --"

"The flower behind, yes. The lads at the lab will run it to see if there's any DNA on the stem or even petals. Any clothing fibers or hair strands will be alerted to us right away, but there's nothing we can do. You know how rowdy teens these days are, they'd do anything to scare the grown adults into a heart attack for fun." Price quipped, finishing your sentence.

Your eyes rolled, frustration growing rampant like a disease over your face. An infection that Sherriff Price wasn't so susceptible to being a victim of. One bushy brow rose at your childish irritation from the denial he and his men had rubbed into your face time and time again. "Rowdy teens just don't make a grown-ass man disappear without a trace. Rowdy teens aren't capable of breaking cleanly into my home and not stealing anything of value." Your voice raised, brows pitching up and causing frown lines to crack along your smooth features.

"And rowdy teens don't scare the fuck out of me and make me want to look over my shoulder from now on after tonight. There's someone out there who is taunting me, and I want him or she or them to leave me alone." You're standing by this point. Chair kicked out behind you, your hands slammed down onto your table. Hot black caffeine spills over the dark marble of your dining room table. You're glaring daggers into the older man's eyes and he gobbles it all up without even a reaction to your worked-up outburst. He's not afraid of little girls screaming and trying to embarrass him, he's dealt with all of this before. Not this scenario, but high and haughty women who thought they were number one.

Price blinks, takes a step back silently, and turns his head to address another policeman loitering around; unsure what to do. "Have one of the guys do a stake out for twenty-four hours around her home, if anything is outta place you call me right away." Then he turns his gaze back to you, smiles that forced smile one makes when they're uncomfortable. Eyes crinkled with a lack of warmth that only manages to irk you further than comfort you. Temporary support does little to quell the ball of a bundle of nerves that is your nervous system right now.

"Have a good night, miss." Price dismisses himself. That awful cigar of his shoved back into his mouth and steps back out the front door. His men follow that were lingering inside your space, all except for the deputy that had been interrogating you. That's supposed to be your rough and rugged surveillance system for the next twenty-four hours until you can justify scraping enough money aside to get your surveillance just for this place.

Price exhales a continuous cloud of smokey grey into the night air. His head tipped back enough to trace out a few major constellations in the sky with curiosity, all while the other two cop cars that were parked out front drove off nonchalantly.

Bright teeth, stained slightly yellow from tobacco clamp further into the cigar's end while he fishes out of his many pockets a cell phone. Pretty outdated, the screen is cracked and the little processor moves at a snail's pace. A real piece of shit technology that holds a few private numbers that aren't saved under any typical name.

His gloved thumb jams against the screen a few times on one of those particular contacts and he holds the cell to his ear whilst unlocking the driver's side of his car and climbing inside. Cigar stamped out into the ever-growing ashes of his ashtray, he taps his fingers against the steering wheel in wait. The line rings once, twice, and on the third ring the call is picked up and a deeper British voice answers in a grunt of a ' hello ' to Price.

"You've got one hell of a firecracker there, Riley." Price cracks out, tone joking. "You've worked the little bird up into a tizzy, she seemed ready to jump 'cross the table for me."

The other voice only gives out a scoff, a monotone 'really?' . Price can only picture the hint of a cruel smile curling on the ends of Simon's lips now. "Boys' are none the wiser, I'll tell 'em it was just a bad prank gone wrong. The station will be none the wiser. Poor blokes." He chuffs. The engine of his car starts, and he reverses out of the drive. The silhouettes of his deputy and you awkwardly standing in your living room window bring another good-humored huff out of his ash-riddled lungs. "Don't make me bury your girl under missing person reports if you're too rough with 'er." Price mutters low over the line. Simon only scoffs on the receiving end, like he'd never hurt his precious girl. He'd be damned if you were taken from him by his own hands.

"Jus' keep an eye on her when I can't. " His voice rumbles like thunder in Price's ear, then hangs up the call with a sullen click.

Price sighs, tossing the backup cell in his passenger seat. His dark eyes focus on the lonely road back into the city. His radio in the car is buzzing with life of officer chatter, but he's not paying much attention. He's got to figure out how to stuff this darker piece of work underneath a rug without leaving wrinkles of his involvement behind. The old man was never one for the double life. A charming foreigner passed for a white-collared American who was there for the people at every righteous beck and call of his name. Then a grimy soldier for the kind of men that worked on setting the bastards that cops or other forces of power were too busy or pussy to end the right way; with a bullet in the head and their name smeared in blood as a warning for other bastards to behave or else.

A kind of work he did far before the ' never do no wrong' persona of his was adopted onto him. Now juggling both for one of his boys? Someone that he even dared to be considered as close as family to him? What had he gotten himself into, all for the sake of some weird iteration of what Simon called infatuation and obsession for a pretty little thing he only saw for one night and wouldn't stop planning on when to see her next. Price wanted to call him crazy when Simon opened his mouth and asked if he could do him a favor. Lie. Lie and cover his white English ass as much as he could just till Simon could convince his new obsession to think about him in the same way he thought about her. Convincing was putting it lightly, but Price didn't second guess or even ask. He knew what it was like when the parasitic love bug decided to rear its ugly head and bite you clear on the ass when it wanted to. Back when he was a younger man, back in his prime he had a sweetie. Soft and curvy, supple and sweet under his lips and to his heart. A fond memory he likes to include when he thinks about family from time to time. Something of his past he's left behind for a new rendition of a family that was strong men, sweat, blood, near-death experiences, and bonding over strong liquor after their work.

Anything for them, he supposes while he turns the car towards the station for the biggest sack of shit he could regurgitate out of his aging vocal cords and lets it spill in sticky white lies to doe-eyed men and women who wouldn't think twice to clean record Sheriff John Price.

"If you need anything, here's a walkie. Can't give out personal cells to citizens, but I'll be in range for us to talk." Deputy Dipshit tells you when the loud slam of car doors and the starting of engines signal the squad's retreat along with the Sheriff's.

You frown down at the cold chunk of plastic that was pressed into your smooth palm by the male. You feel immature even to be using this thing. But you don't argue, or say how stupid it is not just to use cell phones for this one dire situation. You accept the stupid walkie with little dignity that was now washed away by telling the police what exactly you and Graves were doing before he was attacked and taken away.

The walkie is tossed onto your neatly made mattress, weariness makes your eyes droop and your hands rub at your face. At least you're alone now, your crappy watchdog is settled inside his vehicle, protected by his sidearm and tazer. Your feet blindly patter against the dark cherry oak of your bedroom floor a ragged breath of exhaustion leaks out of your lungs like a deflating balloon. You pray to whatever gods or goddesses up there in the cosmos, watching over every single little thing with sadistic eyes, that they are protecting Graves. You could never stomach the fact that somehow you managed to get him killed for even touching you or being in your presence. You're not that special or even have that much power to illicit someone to commit manslaughter just because they were jealous or overprotective.

That's something from a fucked up dark romance novel that has mentally ill women squirting over the tall morally grey character that would do anything for their love interest.

Your phone screen buzzes from your bedside table, the obnoxious vibrations and chirpy ringtone of ' Kim Possibles ' phone ringtone blares into the short-lived silence and the even shorter prayer you were making for a man you barely even knew.

" Give me a break!" you groan out between clenched teeth that temporarily bore in a snarl to your lit-up screen. You shouldn't act like that, what if it was your friends reaching out to check in on you? They knew Graves was coming over to visit you and to ' catch up ' in more ways than one, maybe this was them poking their noses into your business and wondering how good Graves managed to fuck you silly five ways from Sunday. If only.

Another deflated-like balloon sigh and you snatch up your phone to see who texted you. Yet as much as you would kill for the spam of messages that would spew from Izzy and Veronica about how well-endowed and lickable Graves was in all his glory, it was far from their girlish text messages. An unknown number glared up at you. The notification on your locked phone screen, which was a picture of you and your childhood dog in your old home smiling at the camera, showed that the random number had texted you.

"Guess the police actually can text you, who knew." You mumbled under your breath, your tone still acidic on your tongue while you unlocked your phone and tapped on your message app to open the chat and read the text without even hesitating to check over the number thoroughly.

"Hello there, pretty girl." the text read.

[izgnanik-a]

CoD ABC’s

NSFW 18+ x Reader Edition - Minor DNI!

Masterlist here

V - Voyeurism (Kyle “Gaz” Garrick (x Johnny MacTavish) x Reader)

Tags: p-in-v, protected sex, praise kink, humiliation kink, squirting, Switch!Gaz

Not beta-read, we die like men 🤷🏽

Prompt: You knew it was dangerous, embarrassing even, but Gaz insisted that Johnny was a heavy sleeper and promised that you wouldn’t wake him.

It was stupidly dangerous. Humiliating if you were caught.

But Gaz insisted that his bunk mate, Johnny MacTavish, was a heavy sleeper and not even the drill call from the Lieutenant could wake him.

So that’s how you ended up in Gaz’s bed, lights out, fucking yourself down on his cock in efforts to fuck the both of you to sleep.

You were quieter than usual, volume down to muffled whines and gasps masked by the gentle creak of Gaz’s bed.

Gaz’s mouth pressed up against your breasts before enveloping your nipple, and you reverted to rocking your hips as you tried to pull yourself together.

He hummed in delight, only the electric light from the digital alarm clock painting you and him blue. He released your nipple to clasp the sides of your neck. “You feel so good.” He said softly against your mouth, and smiled when you rocked deliciously on his cock to the compliment. “I almost want to share you.” He sat up with his arms around your back, suckling on your mouth.

“You’re too jealous to share.” You stated.

“Not when it comes to pleasing you.”

“Yeah?” You gasped as his hand reached under your ass to squeeze his cock tighter.

“Yeah.” He moaned as you lifted up and began thrusting.

The slick sounds of your pussy and the meat of your thighs claps soft enough to echo off the cement walls. Your hands tightened in the short cropped hair on Gaz’s nape, and you suckled on his tongue in feverish strokes as you dragged your hips across his pelvis.

He released you with a gasp, and gazed up at you in awe. “Harder.” He begged.

You knew that any harder could actually wake Johnny, even if he was a “heavy” sleeper, you were both aroused and anxious if he woke up.

Gaz sensed your hesitation and wrapped his arms tight around your waist before dropping you on your side, he hiked your knee into his elbow, and fucked you with a rekindled spirit.

With every slap of his cock against you, you arched into him and clenched your lips tight together as he hammered into that spot that only he could itch. His cock rubbed against your pelvic bone deliciously, and he loved hitting it.

“You close?” He gasped over the side of your slacked face. “Yeah?”

You whimpered, clenching into his hips fucking into you. You tightened your grip on his cock.

“Let me hear you.” He begged. “Let Johnny hear you.” He mouthed into your bared throat. “Let him wish he was fucking you.”

Gaz felt the betraying clench from your pussy around him, and he chuckled darkly. He pushed you on your back, mounting over you, and it broke your silence as his thrusts continued throughout the switch.

You arched against the sheets, clenching onto him for dear life, and letting out ghastly, soul-shattering whimpers.

Gaz slowed his thrusts, replacing them with sharp and slow stabs. “Cum on my cock. Paint me with your cum.” He demanded, searching between your pressed bodies to rub your clit roughly.

You clenched your thighs around his hips as an orgasm rippled through you, and you splattered shocking across Gaz’s cock and stomach. Your squirt dribbled down over his balls as he came, condom filling, and collapsed over your body.

You felt boneless, fucked to the brink of existence. Gaz must’ve felt the same, because his full weight crushed your body.

“Next time you want to fuck your girlfriend. Just ask me to leave.” A voice ripped through the silence.

You felt hot embarrassment broil you alive. Gaz lifted to his elbow, his body still draped over you as he stared into the dark with a smirk. You covered your face, turning it to the cement wall.

Gaz chuckled. “You’re welcome to join anytime.”

4/11/23

[ikemenomegas]

Getou Suguru x Reader

"Somewhere there is a simple life"

or "four sorcerers' day in the world of humans, four years after betrayal"

tw: omegaverse, geto typical murderous mentions? children being cute? hints of past satoxsuguxreader, mentions of pregnancy

Sometimes you wonder if things could have been different, if you could have had this happiness in some other time, in some other place. It doesn't matter now, you suppose. There are no other times, no other places. Suguru has made his choice, and you have made yours.

And you have chosen to have moments of happiness, just like this one, for as long as you can.

Morning light slants early and golden over the table. Mimiko is, as usual, quiet, but she is awake, responding in her breathy voice to your questions and tentatively padding around the kitchen with you. She takes small dishes from your hand and sets them on the table.

The table is filled with them. Many colors and a traditional set up of different kinds of vegetables, broiled fishes, salad, tofu and bean curds.

Nanako had tried to help, but she'd sat down and fallen asleep again with her head against the wall, phone face down on her thigh. She's drooling a bit, so deeply asleep, and it makes you want to laugh.

Mimiko catches your eye and you tilt your head to her sister. She rolls her eyes a bit, smile playing about her mouth and she silently sounds out "playing Ace Attorney" and goes back to working around her sleeping twin, rearranging the plates to her heart's content.

Suguru catches you on the shoulder, fondness in his voice when he says "We spoil them."

"Who spoils them," you raise any eyebrow at him and press your lips to the juncture of his jaw, breathing in his scent, still heavy and warm after taking an early call in your bed.

With Mimiko's back turned and Nanako still soundly asleep, you nip a little at the skin over his scent gland and make a low playful sound in your throat at the spark of mischief and warning in your mate's dark brown eyes.

"Everything okay?" you ask him.

His arm slips around your waist as he sags against your back. "Yeah, just some little remnants that don't want to fall in line. Toshihisa is going to handle it."

"Good. You promised to take a break."

"You promised to take me to ride the boats," Mimiko appeared in front of you and looked up at Suguru.

He crouched down, backs of his pajama pants touching the floor. You missed seeing him like this more often. He was usually in the priest's garb which still made him seem somehow untouchable. It wasn't just the clothes, it was the persona.

You'd never really though of Suguru as an actor before, but now he had a half a dozen faces he seemed to switch between and some of them were less pleasant than others. You never feared he would hurt you, but it hurt nonetheless to see his pain curdled to hatred the way it had.

He ruffled Mimiko's hair. "Soup, showers, sheets," he listed off on three fingers, "then the boats."

Mimiko puffed out her cheeks. She might be the quiet twin, but she was often the more stubborn. Sometimes you thought Nanako just complained for her and that was why she was louder. It was good though to see them loud.

Suguru had told you from the beginning what happened in the village and it hadn't surprised you that both of the twins had been quiet and anxious for almost a year.

"Ah, right, the soup," you murmured and left them to their staring contest.

As planned, once Nanako was awakened and everyone had eaten, the girls had showered, and new bedding had been placed in your room and the twins' room, a load of the laundry started in the washer, you all headed to the park.

The train was not as crowded now that rush hour had passed but Suguru still pressed close to you, a twist to the corner of his lips which he hid in your hair when anyone human brushed by him. You beckoned Mimiko and Nanako close as a pack of students pushed onto the train.

You leaned up to murmur something in Suguru's ear and accidentally caught the eye of a beta woman sitting in one of the seats.

She must have mistaken the stress in your eyes, because she carefully rose and offered it to Suguru.

The transformation was disquieting, the way Suguru's expression relaxed into a sheepish laugh and he tried to refuse.

The beta woman said something about having young kids and Suguru finally sat down, half to shut her up you suspected. Nanako clambered on top of him. You had seen her watch the exchange with attentive eyes and it seemed she had resolved to help Suguru play act.

You inclined your head in thanks to the beta and covered your mouth with your sleeve, laughing a bit at his expense. Suguru gave you a sulky look when Mimiko joined her sister, choosing to stand with her hand braced on Suguru's knee while you pressed close behind her to give the train car a bit more breathing room.

Upon exiting the train at your station, Suguru found a restroom to wash his hands and yours before you all found your way above ground again.

Everyone relaxed once you reached the park. Natural green spaces were places of relaxation and healing and seldom attracted as many curses as other gathering places. If they were present they were usually easily dealt with.

It was a little more difficult to carry your tanto around these days. It was harder to hide the residuals of a cursed tool, and it was dangerous to carry a blade in public. You also typically didn't need it.

Suguru collected so many curses now, you thought sadly. Your grip on his fingers tightened as you walked side by side, watching Mimiko and Nanako run along the paths and into the forest.

One of those curses, a cute thing that looked somewhat like a couch cushion or maybe that footrest from the movie with the singing furniture, chased after them, baring its teeth like a little dog at the birds that fluttered around the pavement.

The twins called for you two to hurry up, dashing back and forth as you made your way to the boats.

They had already chosen a pair of swans - one white and one a pale blue - when you made it to the docks. They were deep in the process of deciding which one of them would sit with Suguru when he went over to egg them on.

You shook your head, smiling while you paid the woman at the counter. She offered you a knowing sort of smile when Suguru grabbed the back of Nanako's collar, preventing her from nearly dashing into the water.

You clapped your hands, holding up the tickets. "Who's going to ride with me first? Ah, you've been giving Suguru so much attention, I think I'm feeling lonely. The kids must not think I'm fun anymore."

Nanako shrugged out of Suguru's grip. "Mimiko, you should sit with them."

"No way," Mimiko said quietly, "you didn't help set up for breakfast. You should spend more time with them."

Suguru looked up at your stunned face and laughed, his brows crinkling together and shoulders shaking.

"You're their teacher," you said to him, putting on a show of being hurt, "shouldn't you teach them better manners?" You put a hand on your chest, "My feelings are hurt, no one wants to sit with me and win the boat race."

"Boat race?" the twins looked up in tandem with the cursed spirit that was still running around their feet.

You sighed, closing one eye. "Hmm. I don't know if I want to anymore. Everyone seems to want a peaceful ride with Getou-sensei. Maybe I should just go find us some ice cream instead."

The sisters looked at one another and you smirked to yourself, meeting Suguru's eyes. Something flashed through them, troubled or melancholy maybe.

Maybe you were laying it on a little thick, imitating the kind of games that used to work to distract Satoru and pull Shoko out of her isolating distance. Now your heart gave a real pang which you brushed aside as the twins seemed to come to a conclusion and flocked towards you, pushing you into the white boat. Nanako had leapt in and was poking around in curiosity.

It had already been four years. You'd only been at the school for three.

A dull bang on the outside of the boat startled you from your thoughts. Suguru leaned through the window. "Do you know how to drive this thing?"

You looked down at the pedals below your feet. "It can't be that hard," you replied.

"And," you grinned at him, "it's not like I was planning on playing fair."

Suguru smiled back. "How funny, neither was I."

It was fun to stretch the limits of your power for once. Since living at Suguru's compound you didn't need to go and risk your life as often. Sometimes you went out to deal with matters that stressed his tolerance for human hypocrisy, but mostly people came to him.

You used your cursed technique to make the boat go faster while Suguru summoned a pair of water-born curses to pull his boat.

The twins laughed and cheered each of you on, clambering between boats in a manner that would have gotten you all yelled at if you hadn't made your way to a quiet part of the river.

Eventually they grew tired and the boats were returned. They were tired enough to be subdued while eating the lunch you brought but the food restored enough of their energy that they clamored to be carried home.

Suguru huffed under Nanako's weight when she threw herself onto his back. "I think it's time to find something big enough to carry everyone. You're getting taller."

Mimiko made the decision to keep a hold of your sleeve.

"Are you sure you don't want to be carried too?"

Mimiko looked up Nanako who grinned at her. When you crouched down, she carefully wrapped her arms around your neck before you stood up.

"Aren't we taking the train back to the temple?" she asked quietly.

You glanced at the back of Suguru's head but he gave no indication one way or the other. He'd do anything for the twins. They'd grown up in the countryside and the Tokyo trains in their massive stations could sometimes still be something exciting for the girls.

"Getou-sensei doesn't want to go down there with all the stinky monkeys," Nanako said, loudly.

"Na-"

"It's alright," Suguru said. "If you want to take a train back."

You felt Mimiko lean her head against yours. The girls were not quite yet nine. They would get heavy if you carried them for long, but you'd carried heavier.

"Let's walk for a bit," you said, drawing up to him so you were shoulder to shoulder, so the twins' knees would nearly knock together if it weren't for your mate's advantage in height. "Manami can come pick us up when we're done."

Suguru purred, in some kind of encouragement you thought, the deep sound rumbling out to encompass the four of you. You knew he hadn't brought it up because some of the curse users who were showing up were making you... territorial. Manami maybe wasn't entirely to blame. She was another alpha and had shown up when the bond-mark between you and Suguru was still new.

But Suguru had since made it very clear that she was lower in the hierarchy of the family than you were, which helped. A little. Enough that you were comfortable ordering her around for his comfort at least.

Manami still passed Suguru a tablet once she found you with a car. When you tried to glare at her in the mirror, he just handed it to you with a laugh.

Opening it filled you with dread. You didn't want to know what he was up to half the time. But it wasn't the worst thing you'd seen. And most of it was - oh.

"This is my project," you murmured, flipping through a document.

It wasn't very detailed. At best it could be called an outline of the information you'd sought, but you could fill in more of it.

Suguru leaned over your shoulder, pulling back from talking to the twins likely unwisely seated together in the front seat. He had rolled up his sleeves at some point and his skin where it brushed yours was very warm.

You glanced up at him, only for him to raise an eyebrow and hum in expectation.

You pressed your lips together and looked back at the tablet, slowly curling up with Suguru around it as he pointed out details and you made notes with a stylus.

He took it back when Manami said something you hadn't heard, but this time you let him, after giving him a stern look. "Nothing stressful," you reminded him lowly. Both of you knew it was more a hope than command, but he took it good naturedly.

He leaned forward to discuss a job with the other alpha and you leaned back, head on the sun-warmed leather seat, pressed thigh to thigh with Suguru, thinking of what was in the refrigerator to make for dinner, of how you would get around the school's - it was still weird to think of that as the marker for the sorcerer world, to be on the other side of "us and them" - monitoring in order to get the project going, wondering if it would be harder or easier to get Nanako to actually go to sleep after the day you'd had.

Who would have thought running off with a condemned criminal would turn out to be so domestic? It wasn't a new thought, but it certainly made it easier to pretend that this was not as bad as it could be. It was not as bad as it could be. Maybe there wasn't only blood at the end of the road.

Nanako called your name and you lifted your head up to see her squishing her head between the seat and the wall, hair all scrunched up against the plastic.

"Hmm?"

"Do you think Mimiko should dye her hair?"

"Does Mimiko want to dye her hair?"

The girls had decided on western style food for dinner and had finally quieted down enough that they were settled in front of the television with the workbooks one of the tutors Suguru tolerated had them working on.

Yet another reason to the move the project forward. For now, the girls had not yet divided the world around them into sorcerers and non-sorcerers. They were still receptive to genuine kindness from normal humans. But Suguru's distaste for the visitors was obvious to you and you didn't want to wait for the twins to start mirroring it to their tutors' faces.

You moved laundry from the washer to the dryer and filled the first machine up again while Suguru pulled ingredients down from the cabinets.

When you got back to the kitchen, it was your turn to sag against him, flopping to the floor and resting your head on his lower back when he went to rummage in the refrigerator for a drink.

"What?"

You let out a helpless giggle, all the thoughts you had quieted while in public rushing back now that you were back at home.

Suguru bit back a wide smile, the sort of genuine smile that reminded you why you'd left, made you glad that you'd followed him.

He sat on the floor at your side, arm propped up on one knee as he popped open a melon flavored pouch of vitamin jelly he'd found.

The sounds of Doraemon came from down the hall but neither of the kids made much noise. Still, you kept your voice low. "We're twenty-one with twin girls. I'm exhausted."

Suguru laughed, leaning over until his head was resting on top of yours. You just breathed in the scent of him, the faint remaining smell of sunlight and fresh water from the park which overlaid the traces of the inoffensive laundry soap you all used and over that his scent, shifting layers of pine and blackberry, mint, and white tea. You would know him anywhere.

You reached up and felt his forehead with the back of your fingers. Still warm, like you had worried it might be.

Suguru pulled your hand away, pressing his lips to your index finger and threading your fingers together on his lap.

"It's fine."

"Let me worry for you," you say. If there is no one else, let me be the one to remember you are human.

"Alright," he says, such a soft affirmation, using his thumb to massage circles on your still captured hand while he humors you.

All the words pile together at the base of your tongue, flooding up now that they are given permission. He's been working too hard - consuming curses from humans that make even you tempted to try your hand at the kind of murder that's more than just business, relocating to this temple in the last year, making sure that the operation is entirely under the radar so that he doesn't get caught before he's ready, managing the incredibly petty squabbling between the chairmen and leaders of the cults he's pulled together under his feet.

And it's not like you're not also stressed. You're not kidding when you say it's hard work parenting when you're technically still on the run. It's easy to transfer money so thankfully you don't have to do something as stereotypical and dastardly and inconvenient as drag actual bags of cash around, but at your insistence there are go-bags in your closet, one for each of you. You know Suguru has made that stupid little worm with the infinite stomach swallow things other than weapons.

Maybe there is money in there. Who knows. But the point is you're not the one that gets hit with dry heats on top of migraines and nausea so bad he can't eat, and you're not the one suffering through them just to make another point in front of the monkeys.

And you miss Satoru. You don't know why you're thinking of him so much today. Maybe because he always found a way to make Suguru laugh and it's getting harder and harder to do that these days. He spends too much time behind the faces he wears when he's in that stupid monk's uniform.

You eye the vitamin pack and Suguru rolls his eyes at you, squeezing more of the jelly into his mouth.

"We don't know if this one is going to go all the way," he reminds you. Which is probably why he picked that and not one of the calpico or canned teas. You swear he eats like an old man (or a child, you recalled Suguru and Satoru picking through bags of candy on the lawn, no middle ground). You'd learned to make shojin ryori dishes as a joke about the priest thing and because doing it calmed you down whenever you started panicking about what Suguru was doing at the rebranded Star Cult and what you were doing waiting at home like his stay-at-home alpha.

"The thing I hate most--" you hesitated but Suguru's clear apprehension spurred you on. "The thing I hate most is seeing you in pain."

He barely hesitates before he's pulled back enough to let you see the slightly licentious look on his face, a growl behind his words when he leans in close to your ear. "That's not what it felt like when you made me come screaming last time."

Immediately your face flares hot, rushing from your chest to the top of your head. You know he's trying to distract you. It doesn't stop you from whipping your head to the door and your breath going silent, shallow and quick. You're praying there are no approaching footsteps to match the rapid pattering of your heart in your ears.

There's nothing. Everything is right here in front of you, one hand clutching his stomach as tears of silent laughter spring to the corner of his eyes.

He's trying to be quiet as you are, cognizant of the kids not too far away, but a peal of laughter still escapes when he goes to take a breath. "Wish you could see your face."

It's very tempting to remind Suguru what his face looked like, flushed and panting, too strung out to look like anyone but himself, but you're not quite that shameless.

You're also not quite detached enough not to etch this face into your memory too. The one that looks like it comes from a different time and place entirely from anywhere you've been with Suguru before. You think that maybe this is what's on the other side of Suguru's poisoned dream.

Someone joyous and terrible, who does not need to understand their place on the altar of the world because it is already known, someone who understands without burden.

Yet it's distinctly immature the way he snickers at you trying to restore a bit of your composure by channeling the heat in your body away.

If anyone ever finds this memory, you will blame the impulsiveness of youth on the way you hiss out "maybe we should actually get you pregnant with twins and see who's laughing." It's not exactly fair to start something you can't finish - you can hear water boiling on the stove - but you can also hear the way the air catches in his throat and see red splashing across his cheeks like you've slapped him.

There's a tingle that goes down your neck when you watch Suguru shiver, even while your hands are already going to your mouth. "Sorry," you squeak out past your fingers.

Suguru coughed out a sheepish laugh, red slowly making its way to the tips of his ears. "Weren't you the one that just said two makes you tired? What are we going to do with four?"

Keep you out of trouble for a year?

"I don't know," you say instead, almost without thinking, still in shock at your own words. "People says babies are cute. We missed the twins' terrible twos so we'd get to do that."

"Who wants to experience temper tantrums?"

At that you scoffed your eyes, "Like you haven't seen someone way older through a tantrum before."

The red was finally fading from Suguru's cheeks as he rolled his eyes in agreement. He sucked thoughtfully on the supplement pack, sitting back against the wall. You knew you were thinking of at least one of the same people.

He stayed on the floor when you got up and dumped a package of pasta into the now roiling pot, stirring it doubtfully. It wasn't what you had grown up eating and even following a recipe you weren't always sure you had gotten things right. The kids seemed to think it was good enough though so you left it after dumping more salt into the water.

You settled back down next to him. So rare were the days when you got him, just him, all to yourself. No robes, no swallowing down bitter curses, no cruel, empty shape to his face when he returned.

The sun was starting to set.

You pressed your forehead to Suguru's temple, caressing his cheek and pulling him as close as he would allow. Something in him fell away, resistance or tension. He gave the vaguest shiver once more when you used your other hand to slip beneath the collar of his shirt and trace your fingers around the bite on the back of his shoulder.

It wasn't a sorcerer's mating. Suguru accepted your distance from the cults' cursework but would not risk the hold on his power. He'd wanted the mark though. You were not sure why.

He still seemed less on-edge when the inevitable scuffle came down the hall and you pulled apart with one last nuzzle.

"Can I have a snack?" Nanako asked, but you could see Mimiko hanging in her shadow for a second before she brought her workbook up with her and set it down on the ground at your side.

Suguru offered Nanako the rest of the vitamin supplement and she just wrinkled her nose at him. His eyes were soft when he heaved himself up with a sigh, stretching to treat you with a flash of his toned stomach.

He just seemed smug when you tsk'd at him and he went to start cutting up an apple for the girls to share.

You brought Mimiko over to the table where you pointed out the correct strokes on her kanji practice.

Dinner was a more subdued affair, children tired but satisfied in their adventures. The twins recount the boat ride. It seems to have satisfied Mimiko's curiosity but now Nanako wants to go back. There's a zoo in your future apparently, but also she likes the water. And clambering back and forth between the boats. She's got a delinquent streak in her, a confident irreverence that makes it all too easy to imagine some other way for how she'd come into your life.

Mimiko cajoles her, already intent on imitating Suguru's surface level decorum. Nanako's power has to do with pictures but Mimiko is the one who watches with sharp dark eyes.

It's disrespectful to the food to be filled with such dark feelings but you again feel a pulse of hate for the villagers you had never met. The ones who had locked such bright young girls in a cage. The ones who had likely been involved in their parents' deaths.

You're not glad that Suguru killed them all but you are glad that they have you now. Spilling pasta sauce across the table and pouring their salad on top of it so they have a hard time finishing both things and all.

More dishes, more laundry, then the children to brush their teeth while Suguru showers and then you do the same right after while he reads to them, telling them sorcerers stories of spirits and old heroes. It's a rhythm that is all too easy to follow. There is always something to do in the house and Suguru refuses "monkey" servants in his living space so you two do it all yourselves.

If you wanted, it would be easy to forget just how far you've stumbled from the life you once thought you would live.

Suguru's hair is so long it is still damp when you pull a comb through it, sitting cross legged on the low bed. It's left a wet patch in the middle of his back and you pull the shirt from his skin so it dries faster. Your knuckles brush the soft skin at the back of his neck when you lift his hair but it's so typical you are in one anothers' space he barely blinks.

How strange to be sentenced to death but, in these moments, no longer feel destined to die.

You twist layers of Suguru's hair around your fingers to keep it from frizzing up while he reads to you, book lying open in one broad palm while he turns the pages with his left hand.

It's a book of poetry. Suguru claims that practicing the careful cadences helps him when he has to speak at the cult. There is something rhythmic and hypnotic, quietly powerful and passionately mad about the speeches he makes to the masses, stepping into that role. But you like listening to him read because he does it without flinching, without forcing himself to passionately hate the hands that wrote the words. He does better when he doesn't see normal people. You've not quite figured out how to bring up the fact that non-sorcerers do most of the producing in the world and you're not sure how he expects modern life to survive the purge.

You suppose he doesn't, expect it to that is.

"-here I choose to dwell, the world in which I live, men have named a 'Mount of Gloom'. The color of the flower has already passed away while I set my gaze on trivial things-"*

His black hair is heavy like silk in your hands when you tug it out of the way to begin kneading into his back. Suguru's always been so beautiful. His shoulders are broad, his arms thick with muscle, his waist is wide too. He has a strong, solid silhouette built from years of fighting. He has scars, including the faded remains of the cross Toji had carved into his chest.

Sorcerers in this world did not often get a life of happiness.

Suguru put down the book in favor of pressing a kiss to the inside of your arm, pulling your fingers away from the scar. "You know having kids hurts, right?"

You buried your face in the back of his neck with a snort, rubbing your face into the soft sleep shirt and his solid back to scent your mate as he stroked the soft skin where his lips had just touched, wrapping both of his hands around yours so it was engulfed in his warmth, dipping his head to press his brow to your wrist. The wrong kind of hurt, masked again by a poor attempt at humor.

With your free hand you pressed circles into the muscle of his lower back and hips. Suguru folded forward with a low hum. He let you go so he didn't pull you over his shoulder, but his hand chased yours, fingers still tangled together for a moment over his shoulder.

"You always get tight when you're stressed and then you get headaches," you murmured. Still the wrong kind of hurt.

Suguru called your name. He lay the book in its nook within his bedside table and twisted around so that he was looking at you.

Looking at you with one of those half-stranger faces, as he often did when he wanted to lie to you. Only for it to become him again, only him, a flicker of something through his eyes.

"I'm fine," he said finally. "We knew that achieving my dream doing was going to be difficult."

You hadn't gone with him to change the world together. You also hadn't gone with him knowing that you could love someone this much. Even through this madness.

His cheek was soft and his lips softer when you kissed him. "I know."

Suguru's soft expression was the last thing you saw before using your technique to turn off the light. He huffed in faint amusement but didn't complain. He had not released you and you did not want to let him go.

You were already half tangled together before you laid side by side in the dark but as you always did, you curled around one another. Even if you did not start out this way, as long as you woke in the same bed beside your mate, it always ended up like this - twined together like choking vines, legs slotted together, arms tossed around one another.

Tonight Suguru hooked you close by your waist. His head you tucked under your chin, slowly resuming running your fingers through his hair, massaging circles at the base of his skull and rumbling in pleasure when he purred low and sleepy in response.

Even though I cannot help you, thank you for letting me take care of you.

You didn't know what mask he would put on tomorrow, but you knew who he was right now. It felt like stealing, all these moments and days when he was just with you, young and laughing and finding out who he was without the weight of a new world on his shoulders. Forgetting for a moment the blood on his hands.

No, most sorcerers did not get a life of happiness, but you would take what you could get and tuck it tight to your chest. No matter if it took longer and longer to find Suguru, no matter if one day you could still lose him.

*the poems are the end and start respectively of tanka 8 and 9 (Kisen Hoshi and Ono no Komachi) pulled by happy chance from the Hyakunin isshu which was an anthology collected by Fujiwara no Teika in 1235 and translated in 1917 by Clay MacCauley.

[ivory--raven]

eh

Michael isn't a pirate. Yes, they command a ship, and a fine one at that, and yes, they do as they please, and yes, they could accurately be said to terrorize people. but Michael isn't a pirate. crucially, they have a letter of marque.

And does it matter, really, how long it's been since they spoke to the Metatron, spokesman of the crown - how long it's been since he confirmed they are carrying out his will (the crown's will, it should be, but who's checking?) - when they always know they're right? Michael does not care to think of an occasion on which they were wrong, if such an occasion exists at all.

"Captain!"

Fools. Can the crew not handle an hour's sailing without them? It's probably a simple dispute between deckhands, and they'll have to discipline up the chain of command. Really, the mates should know better than to come crying to them for every minor incident. They expect to find out about such things through regular reports, not by being yelled for.

Still, they emerge from their cabin, striding onto the deck to find dark clouds rolling over the horizon. This is a storm they can't miss. It's approaching quickly. Too quickly.

Something is wrong. Something is wrong in the sea.

"Get everything taut," they say. "We're going in."

The crew scatters to work as the wind begins to howl. Most of them, that is. One man slinks off, a coward, to go below decks.

"Where do you think you're going?" Michael demands.

"But Captain," he says. He's whiny. They resist the urge to roll their eyes. He's new. Michael doesn't even know his name. "It's dangerous! I'll get soaking wet."

"Get to work or get off my ship."

"Get off? But-" his eyes dart nervously to the broiling sea around them.

"You heard me."

Scowling, he stamps off to join the others fastening the lines and tucking everything away. Michael patrols the upper decks, personally fixing a particularly egregious knot (really, must they do everything? They ought to have a word with the crew about keeping up with the ship) then checks on their helmsman, whose white-knuckled grip on the helm and look of terror does not exactly inspire confidence.

"I'll take over," they say, giving the helmsman a shove on the shoulder and forcing them out of the way. The ship rocks precariously in the water, but the heading must be maintained. The wind changes and howls, the sails groan with the strain of it, and the rain slams into them with enough force to hurt. Still the heading must be maintained.

It's then, in the middle of the storm, that they see land. Rocks, specifically, looming out of the water, and no light - it's treacherous. This is unexpected. There is no land marked here on any map Michael has ever seen. They adjust to dodge as best they can. How shallow does it get? They shouldn't be in danger of running around here. They shouldn't be. Somehow they are.

Something silver flashes in the water.

Some of the crew have seen something. There are men screaming. Michael squints into the depths, finding the darkness quite devoid of life.

There's that silver flash again.

"Captain!" The second mate has fought his way through the pelting rain to the helm. He looks like a drowned rat. Michael is certain their composure is the only thing keeping them from looking worse. "There's something out there."

They thought so. "Reel it in, if you can."

[annoyangle]

Sorry for all the emotional damage, Bill. Here! Have a funky beat.

HAHAH A NEW TRIBUTE SONG! GONNA ADD THAT ONE TO MY GIANT PILE OF STUFF PEOPLE MADE TO PRAISE ME! NO HARD FEELINGS, KID! I'VE BEEN TUNED TO ONE OF MY FAVORITE SUB-CHANNELS OF NEVERENDING INPUT FOR ABOUT TWELVE HOURS NOW: I CALL IT THE "HUMAN FAILURE NETWORK!" I FILTER MY INCOMING FEED TO ALL THE HILAROUS PRATFALLS YOUR SPECIES IS COMMITTING EVERY SECOND! CAR CRASHES THAT SPLATTER THE HIGHWAYS WITH HOT METAL SHARDS! PEOPLE SLIPPING AND FALLING, SPILLING COFFEE ALL OVER THE FLOOR AND EACH OTHER AT STARBLUCKS! PEOPLE BREAKING BONES TRYING TO DO DUMB STUNTS TO IMPRESS POTENTIAL MATES! PEOPLE GETTING HIT BY TRAINS! PEOPLE GETTING INJURED ON CARNIVAL RIDES (YOU WOULD NOT BELIEVE HOW MUCH THIS HAPPENS!!)! PEOPLE JUST STRAIGHT UP KEELING OVER IN THEIR CHAIRS AND DYING AFTER HAVING THAT ONE FATAL HAMBURGER THEIR DOCTOR TOLD THEM TO STOP EATING TO SAVE THEIR CHOLESTEROL, BUT THEY JUST COULDN'T BECAUSE THAT FLAME-BROILED ACTION WAS JUST TOOOOOO TASTY!

WHO COULD BE SAD AFTER ALL THAT?! IT'S A FREE SHOW THAT NEVER STOPS!

[mereelskirata]

tell me your tup and dogma headcanons? *chinhands*

*squishes cheeks* I don't have many headcanons for these two (or anyone else tbh) but I shall share with you what I have.

Dogma is older than Tup and they're not batch mates.

I absolutely adore fics/art where the two were decanted around the same time and were best friends during their cadet years (I mean I've drawn and written about it myself). Lately though, with a certain post about paint on armor, I've come to the start thinking that - while they may have been friends or have worked together now and again on Kamino - Dogma has been alive and a part of the 501st longer.

Dogma received praise from his trainer(s) once and now often seeks it.

This one came to me yesterday while thinking about this ask and again today while rewatching clips from the Umbara arc. This could just be attributed to what the clones are programmed/trained to do or just plain loyalty but Dogma is the only one that I've noticed (and remember) doing so.

The first time we see him, he's exhausted and out of breath and told to go rest by Anakin. Straight away he refuses and continues to stand there as if he's trying to show that he's the best trooper and willing to press on despite the exhaustion. I'm willing to think he's expecting Anakin to recognise this and praise him for being an excellent example of a trooper.

After that he's constantly wanting to seek approval from Krell. Again, this could just be down to pure loyalty to the Jedi, but it's always Dogma (and to some extent and persuasion, Tup). He wants to rat out Jesse, Hardcase and Fives about their unsubordination. He's the one that takes charge of their execution, not a ranking officer like say Appo or Rex as though he had offered up then and there to take charge of the firing squad, just to show loyalty and perhaps sieze praise from Krell.

In a more lighthearted tone though, I do think this need to be praised has gotten him in more trouble than he can count outside of the battlefield and Tup and Torrent have used this against him a couple of times to go to 79s with them or try something silly and reckless.

Also he has a praise kink.

Dogma has trouble recognising his limits and needs a helping hand to stop.

This could broil down to the praise thing or he's just stubborn, but I honestly think Dogma would push himself to the point of him passing out from hunger and exhaustion or even death if given half the chance if no one tells him to stop.

Rex has to order him to go rest after he refuses Anakin and later on in the arc, despite being surrounded and outnumbered by angry troopers who want to take down Krell, and Rex who's giving this whole speech wanting him to step aside and do the right thing, it's Tup who convinces him to stop.

Tup has a low pain threshold/tolerance.

This headcanon only exists because of the chip arc. No reason why or a moment in a scene I can pin point that made me go "AHA. New headcanon!". It just happened. I will say this kinda leans into the next one:

Tup got his tattoo from his batchmates.

So I had seen once a post that had mentioned that the tattoo was something someone got from jail and questioned what Tup would've done to have gotten it, but I liked the idea that he had actually gotten it from his batch mates as a dare.

Maybe he was a crybaby as a cadet and they'd often tease him for crying often over the minor of things like his hair getting roughly tugged or he'd sprain his ankle while training. They would only stop if he "proved" that he wasn't a crybaby by daring him to do something. Sometimes nothing consequential like sneaking into a trainer's room and taking something or standing in the middle of a shooting range at night and letting one of the boys shoot something off his head.

One of those dares would be letting them stick-and-poke him with whatever they wanted and wherever they wanted on his body. Long story short, he'd be wailing in pain, pass out and wake up later sore and a tear permanently under his eye.

[onlyarogue]

Semi-Plotted thing for @snkts about Logan and Rogue clearing the air.

Moving back to the mansion didn't guarantee an automatic fairy tale ending. No, Rogue was in the awkward tentative stage of connecting with her estranged father. A labor which was not so much terror inducing anymore as it was hopeful. When Victor touched her to give Rogue his healing factor, a side effect (aside from a tendency to get a little growly) was that she absorbed his feelings about her. There was no mistaking that she had been flat out wrong about how he felt when he faced down Mystique in the Institute's garden. Was he was furious with her mother? Absolutely. But with Rogue.... knowing the reality gave the southern teen warm and fluffy thoughts she wasn't willing to admit having to anybody. He wasn't quite 'Dad' yet but Rogue wanted to get there. It was like the mention of iced tea to somebody broiling in the summer heat. She could honestly have a dad.

With that possibility making her want to float all day long, Rogue wasn't avoiding Victor anymore. Logan was another matter entirely. Wolverine had no fatherly compulsion or obligation to forgive Rogue for the circumstances of her conception. He didn't need to overlook all the sins that her very existence stood for. It was for the best to just stay out of Logan's way and keep her head down.

Rogue thought he intended do the steer clear too until he managed to catch her headed upstairs on the way to her bedroom. She had been oblivious to his presence or else she would have taken a different route. Like a startled deer in headlights, her green eyes widened. Gloved hand paused its ascent along the polished stair rail as she froze in place on the step. Just in time, the southern gal managed to check herself and not snap the wood in a nervous grip. A good thing too because Professor Xavier would have hated trying to repair what was clearly an original piece of the old mansion.

He wanted her to follow him.

“Sure.” Rogue managed to answer despite the constricting feeling in her throat. Oh god how she didn’t want to talk. To have the mentor that she’d previously admired so much chew her up and spit her out for being a blemish on his relationship with his mate. A lingering shadow he was forced to endure. Still her feet followed.

[farmergilesofham]

The Vanguard Swimsuit Calendar Fic (1)

It began while the Guardian was talking to Drifter, having just flown in from a successful strike on NeoMuna.

"So, kill any Hive Gods lately?" Drifter drawled, with his classic smirk.

"No, not- I mean, wouldn't the Witness' goons count as gods? But then again, they do have that whole thing with the 'woooh I'm not a god I'm a disciple of something greater' or whatever" the Guardian paused for a moment, then "Of course, they're not Hive, but the Hive do worship them I guess, but-- oh who cares. No. But I did punch a Tormentor into a wall," they finished, with a hopeful lilt.

"Well, ain't that somethin'... You got anything else on your mind, hot shot? I don't see you comin' down here to see your ole friend Drifter too often, afterall."

The Guardian looked into the broiling Mote Bank in the middle of the room for a minute before finally relenting.

"I... need an idea. The Eliksni Quarter needs extra funds, but nobody's got any idea for how to do it - you know how the rest of the guardians are, they only really do stuff when there's loot to be gotten. I just... need to think of something really good, like, something that'll get everyone on board, y'know?"

The Drifter said nothing, instead leaning back against the railing behind him and cocking his head to the side, flashing that roguish smile again.

He opened his mouth, probably to make some snide remark, but was immediately interrupted:

"Wait, that's it! I know what we could do! But... ah heavens above this is such a stupid idea"

"What is?"

"I'm... thinking I could get the Vanguard and a few extra people to do a calendar - you know, the type where they're all standing and looking athletically heroic in a photograph for each month's page?"

The Drifter's smile now stretched from ear to ear, and were it not for his kind disposition one would likely suspect him of incoming villainy.

As it stood, what came was mischief.

"What a great idea, Hero. Say, don't you think the people would appreciate it more if there were... special editions?"

"What do you have in mind"

"Oh, me, I ain't got any good ideas. But ole Drifter hears things down in the City, and a looot of people might be willing to pay good money for... shall we say, less than fully covered renditions of a few Tower regulars."

"You're the one who stole my camera aren't you."

The Drifter looked affronted. "Me? Steal your camera? I'd never do somethin' so awful. It is a good camera, though. Wonder why it's got such a good zoom...?"

The Guardian shifted uncomfortably for a moment, their eyes downcast, and mumbled something.

"What's that, Hero? Can't hear you up here"

The silence stretched, grating on the Young Wolf's ears, until eventually:

"I do wildlife photography, okay?!" the Guardian burst out, blush already blooming hot on their face.

"I like birds, man."

The Drifter stepped in, putting a hand on the Guardian's shoulder.

"Alright, alright, calm down buster. I'm just messin' with ya."

"Whaddya say for my plan, though?"

"Arhhh... I can think of three people who'll probably be enthusiastic about the whole thing. As for the rest..." the Guardian sighed, long and low "We'll have to see about the rest. But, you're on the list"

"Wait wha-"

"No arguing, mate. You gave me the idea so the least I can do is force you to take part."

"Now hang on, Guardian, I'm sure we can figure out some oth-" the Drifter stammered, rummaging around in his back pocket for something - but the Guardian had already turned on their heel and, humming to themselves, left to go pester the rest of the Tower.

Drifter stood there, only taking out what he'd had in that back pocket.

"Oh... what has old Drifter gotten himself into now?" he said, sixteen thousand Glimmer's worth of jumpship coolant rods in his hand.

-----------------

End of Chapter 1, I guess?

[cuprohastes]

Tell me Hu-Man, what is this thing you call "Cou-gar"?

Garfield "Garf" Blooms and her pocket Husbeast, Un-Named Male paused while savagely mauling a 12mm Penta-bolt that had managed to prevent her from accessing the cooling lines she was supposedly checking.

"Hey Dave," the Atrix female said to the female Tsin who was working a diagnostic wand into one of 38 inspection ports.

"'Sup. my Graak?" said Dave The Human.

"Well you're officially a human male, so I have a Human question for you." Garf stated, as she tucked Un-named into her pouch using a finger on his snout, pulled her apron shield up and adopted an unladylike stance to put her considerable weight into either shearing the bolt off or demonstrating the superiority of purple kangaroo dinosaurs. "I heard, Grak! Someone being referred to as a Coo-gah. GRAAK! But when I asked what that was, Nnnng MOVE DAMN YOU! GRAK ON YOU AND YOUR ANCESTORS! Oh there we go. Uh yeah so I was told it was a human-male thing. So...?"

Dave The Human, rubbed her chin. "Ah right right... Not a Grak, mate." she said. "I mean officially of course I know, proper Human stuff, that. But unofficially, no Idea."

Un-Named said "Grak?! Grak!" from Garf's pouch. She gave Dave a rippling blue look, and said "Now look. You taught him a dirty word".

Dave adopted a pose of wounded innocence. "Who do you think taught ME?" she said.

So Garf, (Licenced Life Support Specialist, Interspecies nutritionist, and three time Station Yo-Yo champion), Dave the Human (Tsin female and Human male, Class Five structural Analysis specialist, Doctorate in Human studies from Eilwohm Academic) and Un-Named Male (Small, cute) finished making sure that nobody was going to get broiled on one side and flash frozen on the other, put a Self Sealing Stem Bolt into the hole the Pentabolt came out of, had a short but very moving funeral for the Pentabolt before they consigned it gravely to the recycling system.

After that they went to find some Humans to interrogate.

Of course that meant Dave the Human. Banjo and Cowboy were both at the table, And the EVA specialist who called his suit Oscar and docked at port 43.

And because EVA 43 was there, so was Atrix and Atrix. Those three were virtually in each other's pouches, Garf noted.

"Allright dudes?" said Dave the Human and shuffled up the cafeteria bench so Dave The Human could get in and drape her short tail over the back.

Garf and Atrix did the Atrix Stare and flickered a whole bunch of stuff at each other, then got opposing benches and dumped their little guys out onto the table to socialise.

Atrix never sit side by side if they can help it. They like to keep an eye on each other's faces.

Garf tried to recall the EVA 43's name. She was always started when she saw them because that's good old 43 right there, seen them around for years, had a huge face-off at the last Yo-Yo tournament, but if anyone asked for a description, they just never seemed to come to mind.

She was momentarily distracted by Atrix who was running a side-channel of literal colour commentary.

"You picked a name out?" Garf asked casually. Atrix rattled her claw tips on the table, replying, "I was going with Vulva, but apparently it's inauspicious. Dave are you OK? You seem to be choking on your water?"

Dave confirmed that he was in fact OK. Banjo, a dark skinned man with great taste in makeup said he was just checking to see if he'd evolved gills.

"So!" said Garf, "I heard there's a human term: Coo-Gah?"

Cowboy snickered. "Did you ask Dave?" she asked, and Dave The Human nodded. "Yup. Told her it was a Human thing." she said.

Dave the Human and Banjo seemed delighted. "Ah hum, human Cultural Studies!" said Banjo, and Dave the Human added, "This is gonna be a riot."

All five humans clustered up to discuss it.

"It's got to be Stars." Cowboy said and the Daves pulled their communicators out. Dave got through first.

"Stars?" said Garf and looked out the window. Un-Named male said "Grak." and she said "Oh... Stars Like Seeds In The Field?"

"Yeah" said Cowboy "Hang on..."

Dave unfolded his tablet and propped it up at the end of the table so it could see everyone. The Dave Squad chivvied EVA 43 around to sit at the end.

Sars looked out at everyone, did the Atrix Stare at Garf and Atrix. "OK... what's the gig?" she asked.

Banjo was grinning delightedly and put his hands flat on the table. "The brief is that EVA 43..." EVA 43 made a noise of protest but apparently, Banjo couldn't recall their name either. "... is under thirty, single and at a bar." Someone slid EVA 43 a drinking tumbler and they shifted for more of a lean, getting into character.

"Uhuh, Oh got it! OK this will be fun" said Star.

Her voice dropped, getting a little husky, raspy. Garf didn't know how she'd managed that but it was impressive.

"Well hello there sweetie, what's a nice boy doing in a dive like this?"

Garf's eyes bulged and Dave The Human looked stupefied.

"Jsut havening drink... ma'am" 43 stated and swirled his tumbler of water.

Star shot back, "Oh well, Mmm, Mama likes what she sees... maybe you can buy me a drink."

Garf thought she was starting to get it, and shot a look at EVA 43, and was surprised to see his face had changed colour.

Humans, it should be noted, are fascinating to Atrix, partly because they're not a nice dusty purple colour and they always seem to be saying only one thing with the colour of their face. And then they put on cosmetics and sometimes it's just colour, and sometimes it's like a hilarious mis-translated slogan and some poor human is walking around with their face stating nonsense concepts. Atrix face colours are not words, they're more fuzzy, and conceptual. Right now EVA 43 is giving all the Atrix at the table the impression they would like a juicy fruit.

For the next couple of minutes, Stars flirted with EVA 43 in a way that had Dave, Banjo and Cowboy sobbing with laughter, and Dave The Human very bemused. Stars was laying it on thick, and several statements didn't really parse.

"It's innuendo," whispered Dave The human "And double entendres"

EVA 43 tried gamely to keep up but soon was blushing and stuttering. "OK OK, enough! Dammit Stars Like Seeds In the Field, now I have to get an Atrix pin up for my locker."

Stars was very amused. They poped back up their regular speaking voice "Oh any time, that was hilarious. Y'all OK? Someone check on Cowboy, I think she stopped breathing."

"Thanks Stars!" Cowboy said as Dave mimed CPR on her. "We owe you a drink!".

EVA 43 fanned themself. "That woman was writing a check her biology cannot cash." they said and downed the tumbler of water.

Cowboy nodded. "One of the best voice actors in the business, but her first love is stellar cartography." she said proud of her colleague, "Also she did the samples for the station computer system." she added with a cheeky grin. Everyone considered this. The Station's Human Language voice was notably male.

"Wow." EVA 43 said, "That is impressive range."

"Damn' straight." Stars stated and reached to end the call. "See you around, Space Cowboy!"