#His eyes were yellow for a short period of time

[nukteross-al]

The Dragon Prince... Why does Callum Eyes turned yellow for a short period of time ?

[lavenderspence]

Missing the happy hormone | S.R.

Pairing: Spencer Reid x fem!reader

Content warning: emotional reader, period mention, fluff

Word Count: 1.8K

Summary: Apparently Spencer Reid could make anything better - even the emotional disaster of being on your period

A/N: First, huge thank you to the cutie that sent in this request, you literally caught me while on my period so this was born. Also, here’s to my inability to write short fics, this is your only warning that i can make and will make anything long, lol. Also, my titles suck omg. And shoutout to my crazy bestie for making me a Mamma Mia girly, she rocks.

But also, happy one month to this blog! When I carved out this little space for myself a month ago I wasn’t really sure how I’d feel being back here and writing again, but so far it’s been a treat. A huge thank you for all of your support and love and thank you to my mutuals and everyone that interacted with my blog. 💕 Here’s to many more months to come!

Request: spencer x fem!reader on her period/ovulating and shes in tears all the time?? Im ovulating and have been crying for hours and keep calling my mom lmaoo he’d been so lovely and sweet I know it I can feel it in my bones

It was a slow day at the BAU. The most exciting thing in the 6 hours Spencer had spent at work was Rossi’s invitation to dinner the following weekend. 

Paperwork had piled high after their last 2 cases, so every team member was hunched over their desk, writing and revising reports. It was a never-ending cycle - finish a report, close the file, open a new one, and start all over again.

His eyes had started getting tired after four and a half hours, his hand had started cramping and he was down two pens so far, yet there was still a prominent pile on his desk.

He suspected Morgan and Emily might have pushed a file or two from theirs onto his load, seeing as he was getting done the fastest. Regardless, every few hours JJ was bringing even more to pile on top of everything that wasn’t finished, so buried in paperwork they stayed - no matter how fast he wrote or read, or how used to the load he was.

He was just thinking about getting up to prepare a fresh pot of coffee so he could function properly for a few more hours when his phone started ringing. He felt around the pockets of his suit jacket, where it sat draped on his chair, and then pulled it free. 

His display showed an incoming call, a picture of you as he hugged you, hands around your middle and face almost buried into your neck, a soft smile gracing both your faces. A scenery rich with reds, browns, and yellows stood behind you, the beauty of fall was nothing short of spectacular. 

The picture you’d taken last year when the team spent a weekend at Rossi’s cabin in the woods, surrounded by the beauty of landscapes and leaves, nature for miles. 

He accepted the call right away, a small smile on his face. 

“Hey sweetheart.” His voice was gentle, if a little raspy from misuse. He hadn’t talked much in the last few hours - just a distracted short answer here or a hum there. He was happy you were calling, though, welcoming the reprieve from the most recent report. 

It was silent for a few seconds, and he wondered absentmindedly if maybe you hadn’t called him on accident, and then there came a tiny little sniffle from your side. 

“Sweetheart?” He prompted, “Are you there? What’s going on?” Worry was starting to creep into the base of his spine, but he still remained calm and kept his voice gentle. 

“I’m here. Hi.” Another small sniffle, “All’s good. Just…I was just wondering how much longer you’d be gone.” Your voice was small,like you thought you might upset him by asking, and a little crackly, like you yourself were upset about something. 

His eyebrows furrowed, and he checked the time quickly - 3:57 pm. 

“Probably about two more hours, there’s a lot of paperwork we need to go through.” His eyes met Emily’s as she sent him a curious, questioning look. 

“Oh, okay.” The resignation was clear in your voice, “I’ll see you later then.” The call ended abruptly, and it took him a second to catch up.

He couldn’t help but feel like not everything was as good as you claimed it was. For one, you rarely called to ask when he’d be home - you knew his work could span into the late hours, or even stretch for days. You let him update you on any changes in his work schedule. 

In your interactions, your voice was usually upbeat and teasing - especially on the phone. Your kindness was always evident in your voice, as was your mood. You were a sunshine person, if he ever met one, that’s probably why you and Penelope formed such a close bond upon meeting. 

There was something that nagged him - a change in your mood he could pick up on just by your voice - too low, too small, and the cracks that he could now identify as he replayed your conversation in his head. You were keeping yourself from crying out, and yet there was nothing more apparent than the tears in your voice. And that made him worry. 

“Reid, are you okay?” Emily’s voice snapped him from the hard stare he’d been giving his phone in the last several minutes since the call ended. 

“I…I don’t know.” His eye twitched, and he cleared his throat before he tried and failed to articulate exactly what was happening - he himself had a hard time understanding. One thing he knew was that he needed to get home. “I..um, I need to go. Can you, please?” He asked, gusting at the remaining three files on his desk before he pulled his suit jacket on and grabbed his satchel. 

Morgan and Emily shared a mildly concerned look before they both nodded their heads, “Yeah, go. Text to let us know if everything is okay.” Morgan reminded him before he exited the bullpen with a fast step and tried to keep calm.

He was aware the situation wasn’t anything that he needed to be incredibly worried over - if something was really wrong, he knew you would have let him know. Yet, he couldn’t help the way his heart constricted by the sound of your voice, or the overwhelming desire to come home and gently hold you, see what could have caused this behavior. 

You were curled up on the couch, watching as Donna helped Sophie get ready for her wedding, the gentle melody of “Slipping through my fingers” filling the empty apartment. Your eyes were watering, to the point that everything was starting to get blurry. A shaky exhale left your lips.

Today has simply been a rollercoaster. Kissing Spencer goodbye this morning was the highlight of the day. What followed was nothing short of an emotional disaster. 

You’d teared up during breakfast, images of picking berries with Spencer flying through your mind. The desire to make it a reality was strong. 

Following that had come the overwhelming urge to bawl your eyes out, for no apparent reason whatsoever. Just cry and cry until you had it all emptied out and you could take a deep breath and continue with your day. So, cry you did, and then you’d finished with your chores for the day. 

Apparently letting it all out and emptying your tear supply hadn’t happened. Seeing as around 3:30 you’d started missing your boyfriend so much, the need to hear his voice had won out, so you’d called him. You felt the need to have him home to hold you because this month’s visit from mother flow was making you feel like a crybaby.

But then there was disappointment at the notion that you needed to wait close to 3 hours before that could happen. So you quickly ended the call before he could pick up on the tone of your voice, and then you shed a few tears. 

Now here you were, rewatching Mamma Mia because you really needed a pick me up, and once again, eyes shining as the tears started falling. At this point, it was a losing battle, so you let them fall, humming to the song with a broken voice. 

That’s exactly how Spencer found you, not a minute later. His keys were in his hand, the satchel on his shoulder, and he was just a little bit out of breath. 

The moment his eyes met you, they softened as he dropped everything and sat down next to you. His hand reached up and he cradled the side of your face, wiping your tears away. 

“Hey, sweetheart. What’s wrong?” He asked in a whisper.

“Look at Donna painting Sophie’s nails, it’s...” You hiccuped, another wave of tears washing over you. “And you’re home, why are you home?” Your question was met with a furrow in his brow, as his thumbs continued wiping underneath your eyes. 

“You called.” He answered simply. 

“But you said-” He stopped you before you could finish your sentence.

“I did, yes. But you sounded off and sad, so. Want to tell me what’s going on?” He prompted you gently as he pushed your hair back and pulled you into his lap after, feeling like you needed the physical contact. 

You weren’t ashamed to admit it, per se, but you were ashamed that your hormones had caused him to leave work and race home to be with you. 

“It’s my period,” you mumbled, hands wrapping around his neck as you hid your face in his chest, too tired to prevent your eyes from watering again. “It’s been going on all day. Randomly, I’d just get so emotional, and the tears would start. I was missing you so much too, and then hearing the song, bam, tears again. I’m so done with this Spence.” You sounded barely coherent, with your face pushed as close to him as possible. 

It all made sense now, you’d been cranky a few days ago, and then you’d told him last night your cramps were unbearable, so he knew you were on your period, but right now he felt like an idiot for not figuring it out himself. 

“It’s okay, everything is fine. The drop in estrogen and progesterone, following your ovulation triggered this. This in turn reduced the production of serotonin, your happy hormone. So, we just need to boost it a bit.” He whispered into your ear as you played with the hairs at the nape of his neck. 

“How?” You sighed into his chest, almost being able to pick up on the sound of his heartbeat.

He got deep in thought for a few seconds as you breathed in his scent, and a sense of calmness slowly overtook you now that he was home and holding you. One of his hands was running soothing circles on your back as the other held your hand, fingers interlocked. 

“How about we take a trip to the store and get you some snacks? We’ll pick up dinner on the way home and then I'll hold you some more and you'll pick a movie for us to watch.” He suggested, kissing the crown of your head once, twice, and many more times until you gave him an answer. 

“Yeah, yeah, I think that would help, but just having you here has done wonders.” You finally laid your head against his chest, looking up to meet his eyes. He smiled, and so did you. Having him here really had helped immensely, and when had it not? He was your other half, your rock, and even when your emotions ran rampant or you were feeling down, just his presence, his touch, and his understanding were enough to make it all okay. 

Later in the evening, Penelope sent you a photo of Sergio sleep-hugging a little plushy you’d gotten him, and the waterworks started all over again. Luckily, Spencer was there, wiping your tears and kissing your head, saying a thousand things without actually speaking a word.

Comments and reblogs are greatly appreciated!

Requests are open for both Spencer and Hotch if you want to send any!

[midnight-pluto]

SAY ON SKIBIDI — damian w.

After an unfortunate incident involving a ball and your kneecap, you get sent to the nurses office with Damian in tow. In the isolation of the office, Damian tells you something that makes your mind short-circuit, and proceed to make him say that he means it.

contains: bsf!damian x reader, fluff, brainrot, swearing, humor, they're in middle school — both 14 years old, mention/description of injury, reader doesn't know damian is robin, short fic

a/n: this is the most brainrot thing i've ever written but i found this idea hilarious so i had to write it out

P.E. IS A stupid elective to have is what you've concluded. Sure, you've always thought that but you were normally able to sit out of most of the activities since all they cared about was the no phones rule and sometimes cared about what shoes you wore. You were content with that though.

You could spend the whole hour yapping Damian's ear off and he never objected to it all throughout the countless amount of times you did so. That was something you were thankful for since he was surprisingly a fantastic listener despite himself also being a yapper.

However, the one time a game has mandatory participation in P.E. is the one time you get hurt. What was the game? Dodgeball, because of course it had to be dodgeball along with the kids with the super good aim for some reason all being on the other team. Minus Damian, mainly because you begged him to stay.

Was it a good call though? Not sure since he'd end up by your side regardless of what team he was on, in the nurses office.

"What was the name of the boy who hit you?" the nurse asked, walking through the door, ice pack in hand.

"Dunno," you simply responded, gently taking the ice pack from her. Nodding your head in thanks, you wince a little at the contact with your ugly purple bruise and the sheer coldness of the ice pack.

"You both can stay here for the rest of the period which will end in," she cranes her head to look at the clock behind her, "roughly fifteen minutes or so."

"Thanks."

"Thank you," Damian nods.

The nurse smiles in response. "It's not a problem," she says before she exits through the door and closes it halfway.

Once he could no longer hear the soft sound of her shoes stepping on the cold tile floor, Damian lets out a sigh. "That dude really needs to watch how hard he's throwing things."

"I know," you scoff, gently pressing down on your bruise with the ice pack, "But it's whatever I guess, he didn't intend on seriously hurting me anyways. I don't think so at least."

He merely tsk's at your statement. "How can you be so nonchalant when someone hurts you? Intentionally or not, how can you act so normal about it?"

You tilt your head in confusion at his words, "What do you mean by that?"

He just looks at you for a moment before shaking his head. "Never mind, I just don't want to see you hurt. Physically or emotionally."

"Is... Is this your way of saying you care about me?"

"Do you really need me to say it out loud for you?" Damian sighed.

"Yes," you eagerly nodded, a smug smile on your face as Damian ran a hand through his black strands; head hanging low as he slouched against the wall he was leaning on.

"I care about you," he lifted his head to look you in your eyes.

Your smile soon turned into a wide-toothed grin at his words when a brilliant idea popped into your head. "Say on skibidi."

"Excuse me?"

"Say on skibidi. Say on skibidi that you care about me," you repeated.

"The brainrot has gotten the better of you, you're going to need more than just that ice pack," he deadpans.

"Wow! That's so mean," you gasp, lifting the ice pack slightly to glance at the bruise which has now turned into an icky yellow color. "C'mon, just say it."

"This is shameful," he says exasperatedly. "On skibidi," he visibly shudders, spitting out the word as if it were profanity, "I care about you." His head was turned away, facing the nurse's bathroom door instead of you with his hands stuffed into his pockets.

"Yipee!" you laugh at his facial expression when he turned his head back towards you, Damian's lips curled into a frown as well as an eyebrow twitching in annoyance. "See? It wasn't that hard to say."

"My pride has taken irreparable damage, I will never recover from this experience," he monotonously said.

"Now you're just being dramatic!" you huff out, "Are you really incapable of being silly?"

He pauses for a second as if in thought, "Maybe."

Truth was, it was a reoccurring thought that passed through his mind multiple times whenever he hung out with you. Being so carefree and open was never a luxury he got to have, even when he moved in with his father he still felt some form of obligation of stoicism in the manor.

"Wow, we really need to find a way to heal your inner child," you mention offhandedly paying more attention to your knee, not noticing the way Damian's eyebrows rose.

"Maybe," he muttered, barely audible enough for you to hear. His inner child, huh? He didn't know if it was still there at this point but your antics made him self-aware of the reality that he's a child soldier, his childhood wasn't the same as his peers and he knew there would always be a disconnect.

Though, maybe he could finally live as a child instead of a soldier around you.

a/n: turned more into a character study at the end there and it was kinda bittersweet but womp womp

[hoejosatoru]

Our Pet

A follow up to my Karaku pussy eating Drabble. Part one can be found here.

Warnings: I call the clones brothers in the fic bc it just sounds better in conversation, 5some with demons lmfao, reader is a lil scared but into it, oral (m receiving), dacryphillia, pussy job, p in v, p in b, double penetration (one in front one in back), degradation, praise, cream pie, light choking, squirting,  just pure filth I fear, not proof read. MDNI

You were thrown over Karaku’s shoulder in a flash. He carried you like you were nothing, running through the trees. But running wasn’t the right word. He was moving so impossibly fast everything blurred around you. You had to close your eyes so you wouldn’t get dizzy.

“Good, all my brothers are home,” Karaku said as he finally slowed to a walk. “Better be good for them. Won’t be happy if you make me look bad.” 

You finally opened your eyes, in disbelief at how far you came in such a short period of time. You were up in the mountains near your village, farther up than you had ever been. Karaku gripped you tightly as he led you into into a hidden little cottage.

The second you walked through, 3 heads whipped to your direction. “Why the hell did you bring a human here?” a red-eye demon asked. He was identical to Karaku, save for the red eyes and angry expression etched on his face.

“Relax, Sekido,” Karaku replied, his fingers trailing up and down your side. “I brought us a little snack.” Your breath caught in your throat.

Another demon, this one yellow-eye approached. “You’ve got good taste, Karaku, I’ll give you that. This one will look pretty on my cock.”

“Urogi! You’re going to scare her,” reprimanded the final demon. His eyes were blue and had a certain softness in them you didn’t think was capable for demon.

“You’re such a baby, Aizetsu,” Urogi rolled his eyes.

Karaku snorted. “She wasn’t scared when fucking my face. Said she didn’t want demon tongue in her pussy, yet creamed on me like a slut. isn’t that right, y/n?” Your face went red at his words. “She thinks it wrong for sweet little humans to fuck demons.”

Sekido scoffed. “You fucking humans are the disgusting ones.” He approached you, gripping your jaw tightly, making you look into his eyes. “You don’t deserve  my cock in you. But I’ll allow you to suck it.”

Karaku ripped your kimono off, leaving you completely naked before the 4 demon. Your face heated as you tried to cover yourself; it was no use, Karaku gripped your wrists and held them up.

“Fuck,” Urogi groaned, “if you don’t wanna put your cock in her, Sekido, I will.” Karaku gave you a little push forward, making you fall on your hands and knees in front of the red-eyed demon. He looked at you with contempt, but you could see his erection pressed against the fabric of his clothes.

“Get on with it.” You did as he asked, not wanting to upset this one in particular. You slipped him out of his clothes, his dick thick and heavy in your hands. The tip red and angry, much like him. You gave a tentative lick of his tip. He tsked. “I haven’t got all night.” 

You licked a stripe up the bottom of his dick, tracing a little vein. You took him in your mouth, as deep as you could go, getting him nice and wet. You used a hand to squeeze the base, as you swirled your tongue over the tip.

As you did this, Aizetsu slid behind you, admiring how your pussy fluttered as you sucked off Sekido. His cock was aching in his clothes and he could wait. You startled as his hands gripped your hips, angling them up to him. “Can’t wait, wanna play with your pussy.” 

Suddenly you felt something thick and hard between your pussy lips. Aizestu let out a sigh as he slid his cock through your wetness. He was so sensitive and too nervous to go in all the way. Instead, he gave himself a pussy job, rutting his cock against your heat. You moaned on Sekido’s cock as Aizetsu’s head brushed against your clit. Each bump made your pussy wetter, aching to be filled.

“Fuck, feels so good,” Aizetsu whined.

Sekido grumbled. “You’re distracting her.” His hands gripped your hair, nails scraping your scalp. “Take me fucking deeper.” He thrust his cock into your mouth, making you choke on him. He let out a loan groan as your mouth tightened on him. He continued to snap his hips against you, turned on by how you struggled to take him. “I didn’t see it when Karaku brought you in, but now that you’re crying on my cock I have to admit you’re pretty. For a human.” A thumb brushed a tear off your cheek.

Meanwhile, Aizetsu was desperately rutting himself against your pussy. He was moaning and whimpering, feeling your arousal drip down his dick. His cock head hit your clit particularly hard, suddenly tipping you over the edge. You moaned on to Sekido, vibrating his cock. The sensation finally sent the demon over the edge, spilling his hot cum in your mouth. 

“Fucking take it, swallow it all,” he grunted, with a few finally thrusts in your mouth.

No soon did he finish did you feel warmth squirting over your pussy and dripping down your thighs as Aizetsu came. “Oh fuck, y/n,” he whined, “Fuck your pussy your looks so pretty covered in my cum.”

Urogi pulled the blue-eyed one away. “You can admire her after I’ve ruined her.” 

Karaku appeared in front of you, smirking. “Wadda ya think Urogi? Think she can take both of us?” Urogi had you sat on his lap, squeezing your boobs. Karaku watched, licking his lips. 

“I think we should find out.” He squeezed your nipples, making you yelp. Both demons laughed. You could feel Urogi’s stiff cock pressing against you. “I want her ass.” 

Before you could say anything, Karaku’s lips were on yours. He kissed you while he undressed himself, taking a pause to squeeze your tits on occasion. Urogi licked and nibbled at your neck hit hands trailing down your back. 

Once he was naked, Karaku pulled you on to his lap. He wasted no time lining his long, hard cock up to your pussy. He pushed into you with as hiss. “So fucking tight.” He gave a few experimental thrusts, loving how you gasped and gripped his shoulders. “I don’t know if we are both gonna fit.”

Urogi snickered. “Oh, I’ll make it fit.” You heard him spit into his hand. He brought his hand to your ass, massaging the tight ring. “She’s so fucking wet and sloppy I didn’t even need spit.” He pressed a finger into you, the sweet, stretching sensation making you gasp.

“Fuc-nngh!” You cried out as the golden-eyed demon pressed the g-spot in your ass.

“Mmm, what pretty sounds you make,” Urogi purred. “Keep em coming.” He pressed another finger into, making you gasp. Karaku kept thrusting into you, making your whole body shake.

“Shit, she really likes that Urogi,” Karaku groaned. “Clenching on me like crazy.” 

“Fuck I can't wait any longer,” Urogi grumbled, “Hope you’re ready. Gonna fuck you dumb.” Your pussy flutter with anticipation. You felt Urogi’s cock at your hole, slowly pressing until he was able to slip inside you.

“Shit, oh Urogi,” you gasped. He pressed into further, hissing as your body just barely gave way to him.

“God she really is fucking tight,” Urogi said through gritted teeth. He bottomed out in you at the same time as Karaku. You felt so full you could barely breathe. Both demons began to rock their hips into you. Your head fell back on Urogi’s shoulder as you tried not fall apart. You’d never had two men inside you, and these were no ordinary men. They were demon. Everything in your rational mind told you this was wrong, that you should enjoy it. They were cold blooded killers. Evil.

Yet the ecstasy you felt as the moved inside you was undeniable. The sensations of two cocks rubbing your more sensitive spots drove any rational thought out of your brain. You moaned and gasped as the pleasure built impossibly more intense.

“Looks like she loves demon cock, doesn't it, Urogi?” Karaku mused. He wasn't even out of breath as he fucked into you.

Urogi grinned wildly. “Creaming on me like slut. She fucking loves it. Don’t you, y/n? You love demon cock?”

You were breathless as you chanted, “Yes, yes- fuck, yes.”

Urogi, gripped your throat, giving it a little squeeze. “Wanna hear you say it. Say you love demon cock.”

“I- I- nngh- I love demon cock.” All four demons laughed at how fucked out you were. You almost forgot the other 2 were there. When you looked over at them, you could see they were hard again, looking at you like they wanted to eat you.

The demons inside you were spurred on by your words, thrusting even harder into you. You were sandwiched so tight between them that your clit brushed against Karaku’s lower stomach with each thrust. The coil in your stomach snapped and pleasure like you’d never felt flooded your body.

Unintelligible moans left your mouth as you came around two cocks. “Fuck yeah, that it,” Urogi groaned. Urogi’s hips stuttered as he fucked into you fully. He let out a near growl as he filled you with his seed. The sensation of his cock throbbing in your ass pushed your orgasm further. 

Your pussy tensed then released, squirting on the two demons. “Such a good fucking slut,” Karaku moaned. His own orgasm finally reaching him. He spilled inside you, rutting his hips until you’ve milked his cock dry. 

The two demons slipped out of you and you collapsed back onto Urogi. Your whole body was shaking and you could barely catch your breath. All four demons drank in your fucked out and ruined appearance. 

As your body started to come down, fear settled over you. They'd used you for what you wanted, would they kill you now. “A-are you going to hurt me?” you squeaked out.

Karaku laughed at your fear. He took you jaw in his hands. “Don’t worry, you’re going to be a our pet now. And we treat our pets very well.” 

[moonydustx]

Part 2 from this request (thank u again @cartoonykat )

Mihawk, Lucci and Crocodile x F!Reader.

In short: how they would react to F!Reader saying she was pregnant, how they would deal with the child.

(get ready to read, the stories are a little long)

PART 1 HERE - Luffy, Zoro and Ace x F! Reader

Warnings are placed individually in each history.

requests open | one piece masterlist

Mihawk

warnings: fluff. Mihawk and f!Reader are married and want to have children. Mentions of F! Reader be a cook. Very brief mention of abortion (but it was in the past). Content a little spicy, nothing detailed or explicit. Mihawk speaks Spanish a few times in this one (I just couldn't help it). Princesa: princess. Cariño: kind of "Sweetheart"

You had already arranged your sundress countless times, as well as your hair, as well as the entire dinner table. You couldn't sit still, anxious for your husband's arrival. Today you celebrated three years of marriage and you knew that after a long two months, he would return home. You knew his temperament well enough to know that there were high chances of finding him in a bad mood, he hated spending long periods away from the castle and this had been the longest time of all. Of course, your anxiety had nothing to do with the little box hidden in the kitchen.

"Cariño?" You heard his voice from downstairs and in a matter of minutes you already had him in your field of vision. His expression lit up when he saw you and lifted you into his arms. "How I missed you!"

"Me too darling." his hat fell back as you peppered kisses across his face. "My God, how can you stay away all this time?"

"Problems, cariño, a long list of problems." your feet touched the floor again after the long hug. "And what amazing smell is that?"

"Let's just say I used my free time to prepare something special for both of us."

"You should be resting. Last time we spoke, you weren't well." his smile faded, replaced by an alert tone.

"I promise I'm okay." You tried to make conversation just like the day he called you and said you didn't look well. You were talking through a den den mushi, how could he realize that?

"Just give me a few minutes and I'll meet you in the dining room." he asked and placed a quick kiss on your lips.

The minutes of waiting seemed like endless hours, just like dinner itself. You were willing to listen to him talk about how complicated the days at the Cross Guild were, about the news in the world outside your little dome or even how delicious the dough you had prepared was. Your fingers intertwined with his and despite the physical proximity, your mind wandered on how to get to the subject naturally. You had already tried a few times, you had already lost once without even knowing that you expected it, you wanted - and needed - this time to be special.

"Princesa?" he called you, looking towards the cup in front of you. "You didn't like the wine I chose?"

"It's one of my favorites actually."

"Yet it remains untouched." he observed, noticing your hands restlessly hitting the table. "Is something going on?"

"First, I'll get this." You took the wine cork. "Second, wait here for a while."

Twisting the small piece of cork between your fingers - the one you would make sure to keep, you reached for the small box in the kitchen and before long it was standing in front of Mihawk.

"To what do I owe the honor of being presented like this, out of nowhere?" he began to undo the bow, setting the wine glass aside and using both hands to undo the wrapping.

Inside, there were some pregnancy tests, in your desperation to know if it was correct, you took a much larger quantity than necessary. Next to them, a small hawk plush. You had searched the nearby town while picking up fresh items for dinner. At first your idea was to just talk to him, but the stuffed hawk with yellow eyes stole your attention.

"How could I not notice?" he murmured, as if a thought had been spoken aloud. "That means it worked…"

"If you talk about all sex without a condom, without any protection… Drac!"

He pulled you from the chair onto his lap. The hands on your back served as much support as your arms around his neck. Your laughter echoed throughout the castle while Mihawk almost sloppily distributed kisses to any part of your face that he could find.

"How long have you known?" he asked euphorically, a type of state that was rare to find in hawk-eyes.

"A few weeks ago. No, I would never tell you that on a phone call." you interrupted him before he could complain.

For a few minutes, the two of you remained there. Swears like "I love you" "You just made me the happiest man in the world" they were uttered and kisses spread across your face. His hands, accustomed to the weight and brutality of swords, touched you gently. Not like you were something about to break, but rather like something he valued so much. As if he wanted to record every moment of that moment in his memory through the drawings of his hands on your body. The yellowish eyes practically penetrated your soul as you watched Mihawk.

"May I know what's going on in your beautiful head, my princess?" Mihawk's nose caressed your neck, earning a smile from your lips.

"Now you know. It was a low blow to choose my favorite wine." you mumbled, adjusting yourself in his lap.

"No alcohol for you from now on."

"Not for a while now. God, I'd kill for a full glass right now."

"Maybe I have a little idea of ​​how to satisfy that desire of yours."

"What do you say, hawk eyes." Your attentive eyes followed him as he brought the glass of wine to his mouth and slowly drank the drink, in silent provocation. "Are you capable of being so mean to your pregnant wife? I thought it was to satisfy my desire."

"Don't put it like that." He returned the cup to the immense table, his agile hands slid across the bare skin of your thighs. "I just want you to taste it in a new way."

The taste of wine invaded your lips when Mihawk trapped you in a kiss. His tongue opened space in you, eliciting a moan from you when you felt the much-desired taste invade your palate. In an improvised juggling act, without taking your lips off his, you adjusted yourself in Mihawk's lap. Before now your legs dangled around his body, looking for some kind of friction.

"Babe, I need you." you murmured against his lips and his hands held you even tighter, feeling his intimacy harden against yours. "Please, it's on my craving list too."

"Who knew what a little of the taste would do to you." his hands slid over your skin, he could clearly see your skin crawl. "It also seems like you're more sensitive, this is interesting."

"Why don't you take it off and find out?" you pulled his hands down to the hem of your dress.

"Do you want to take this upstairs?" he asked and instead of using words, you just took off the dress you were wearing, throwing it across the kitchen.

You didn't need to shout the news from the rooftops, that night it was enough for Mihawk that you screamed his name, that he valued the body that would be home to your two long-awaited baby. After eliciting screams, nectar and sweat from you unlike many other times when you spent hours caressing each other and talking, you remained awake for a short time. Then Mihawk could notice the small difference in your belly, how it seemed firmer and pointier, different from the last time he had ventured across your body.

"Sorry about the time out." he first made sure you were asleep and then leaned down to whisper against your skin. "I promise to make it up to you. Both of you."

You could notice the different way Mihawk looked at you and not that he didn't do it often, but it became more and more common to hear him say "You look amazing." "You are so beautiful." Soon after the discovery, you also discovered how your husband could go into hyperfocus and the time was to find a perfect home for you. It still hurt you to leave the castle behind, even if for a brief time, but he knew he had tasks to fulfill with the Cross Guild and because of that, he would need to spend more time away from your island home.

The small arranged mansion was also isolated and was a result of Crocodile's help. Despite having little contact with the main part of the island, it was much less minutes away than the old house. At least you would have space to redecorate the entire room to your liking.

"Woman, you really want to spare me from living a long life." Before your protests, you felt his arms wrap around you and take you off the ladder that you were balancing on to finish painting the room. "If this child turns out to be half as stubborn as you, I will be in big trouble."

"Baby, don't listen to your father's nonsense." you mumbled to your belly bump. "And you, did you manage to assemble the crib?"

"No." he practically whispered and as a way of irritating him, you pretended not to hear. "I'm going back to the city, I'm sure there must be something already done."

"You men, with your little swords, can't handle a new toy." You stood on your tiptoes to place a kiss on his cheek. "Let's switch tasks."

"You women and your kitchen knives." he grumbled, watching you leave and then return only to look at him with judgement. "Okay, I've been an asshole now."

The light shade of yellow had just finished filling the walls when a bang took the eagle eyes' attention. Hearing you swear, it only took seconds for him to be on the doorstep, watching you contemplate the collapsed crib.

"What were you saying about swords?" he teased but your furious look made him change his mind - he swore he saw something red shine in your iris. "Tomorrow we'll go to town together and get one ready, what do you think my love?"

"A great idea."

"And for now, how about a hot bath, some music and grape juice." well, at least that was the way he had found to prevent you from drinking wine.

"Can we include a massage in the package?" you took advantage of the fact that he was behind your body to lean on him.

"Whatever my dear wife wants."

The house was already ready, toys, clothes and gifts from the most different friends were piling up and by a pure coincidence of fate, Luna arrived into the world on a full moon night. You would carry it in your soul when Mihawk's eyes - golden when they touched the moonlight - met the small pair of irises identical to his.

"My little Luna, you chose the right day to come." he whispered, pacing the sleeping girl from side to side. "You are so perfect."

"Just like her daddy." you answered.

In other situations you would end up in two camps: Mihawk would play the opposite and say that the most beautiful thing in the relationship is you or on days when he was really in a good mood, he would say how lucky you were to have him. That night, he just smiled at your comment. Not a provocative smile like most of the ones he had given his entire life. It was one of those that made the hawk's eyes become just a detail on his illuminated face.

"Thank you my love." he replied to you. "Thank you for bringing me a little piece of heaven, of all this infinity above us. Mi preciosa Luna."

When little Luna wasn't within your reach, you didn't need to make an effort to find her, she would be in her father's shadow. Whether in the moments he took to read or even in some Cross Guild meetings. The other two men didn't seem to mind the little girl's presence, who was always busy with something.

"I think we can… Hey, what's this?" Buggy screamed as he saw the girl climb over him. "Mihawk!"

"Let the girl have some fun. That's what clowns are for, aren't they?" Crocodile responded in a gentle tone while Mihawk kept his eyes on Luna, who without hesitation pulled one of Buggy's ears and sat on the couch next to him.

"You little brat!" the clown made to take the ear from her hand in an almost brutal way as he felt her digging the almost non-existent fingers into the cartilage of the ear. "That hurts."

"I wouldn't want to have to remove your other ear, permanently." Mihawk spoke calmly, as if he had just commented on an everyday fact.

"Sorry to interrupt." You walked into the room, attracting looks, especially from a certain little girl who realized that your ear wasn't that interesting anymore.

"Mami!" Luna immediately started throwing her little arms towards you and even though she tried to at least hide it in these situations it was impossible not to see Mihawk's eyes light up.

"She just took down a Yonkou, I'll be saving a spot on the team for her." Crocodile laughed when he saw your dissatisfied face. "Okay, I guess I'll have to settle for just a single hawk's eye."

On the same day, after a few long hours of meeting between them, you thought that at least your husband would want to rest, to remove any idea of ​​work from inside the house - despite his choice to have brought work into the house while the Luna was still small. Of all the places you expected to find yourself, you didn't expect to find Mihawk with little Luna on his lap, in front of them a large Cross Guild poster.

"Who's that?" Mihawk pointed at the figure.

"It's a crocodile." The word was slurred, but Luna said it anyway with a certain confidence. Again, the man asked, pointing to the next image. "The clown."

"And who is this?"

"Dada!" she cheered, making him laugh along and, consequently, you, happy with your little family.

Lucci

warnings: Lucci is a warning in itself. A lot of angst with a somewhat happy ending. F!Reader was also an agent, she had the fruit that transformed her into a kind of cat. Slightly troubled relationship between him and F!Reader. Completely based on the fact that Lucci is not a complete psychopath (I mean, egghead spoilers ahead: him asking for Kaku's life, how can we not love him? Besides the CP9 cover stories).

A few days had passed since the last time you and Lucci had seen each other in person. The voices demanding mission reports seemed distant as you watched him from the other side of the table and you had known him long enough to know that even though he seemed focused he was still able to see him glance casually in your direction and no one noticed.

You wished the brief meeting could have lasted longer, given you time to think more about what words to use, to fantasize that Lucci would be happy with the idea, but chills ran through your body just thinking about it.

"Hey, meow girl." Kaku nudged you with his shoulder, pulling you back to the real world. "I heard you got into trouble."

"You have no idea." You laughed heartily, pushing him back. "Call me meow girl again and I'll wring your huge neck."

"Hey, I'm just being nice."

"I bet you are, big guy." You pinched the tip of his nose, leaving him grumbling.

"Need to talk to you." Lucci's voice interrupted the two of you, stopping Kaku's laughter and complaints. The man just waved and walked away, leaving you and Lucci alone. "Not here."

He took the lead, his firm steps and serious posture didn't let anyone think anything other than that you - who followed him without the same grandeur - had gotten yourself into some kind of problem. The solid wooden door closed behind you as you noticed Rob Lucci walk through the space, filling two glasses of brandy and handing you one of them. The drink danced through your hands, but never reached your lips.

"You were restless today, pupils dilated, sweat on your face." He touched a temple, noticing the moisture. "What kind of problem did you encounter?"

"I'm pregnant." You ripped the band-aid off at once, with no time to let the thoughts flow through your mind.

The man took a few steps back, looking you up and down and then looking around the entire room. The small shot of brandy in his hand was downed in moments and he took the one you were holding from you, the liquid meeting the same fate.

"And what do I have to do with it?" you already knew his cold temper, but you didn't expect to hear such rude words.

"What do you have to do with this?" you snapped, approaching him. "What do you have to do with this? Use your fucking brain Lucci."

"What's wrong? How can you guarantee that this is my doing?" His tone dropped, becoming threatening. "I have nothing to do with this."

"I knew you could be an asshole, but after all this time?" you gave him a push Lucci didn't react, just letting his body move away.

"We had one night and that was it. This could be anyone's business."

The lie that came out of his lips hurt more than any blow you've ever taken in all these years fighting alongside him.

You threatened to push him, but this time he reacted by guiding your body to the wall and enclosing you in his arms. Your body contracted as you saw him punch the wall next to you and some pieces of concrete fall.

"Get out of here." his tone became a whisper and if it weren't for the argument you were already having, it was impossible to tell he was mad. "You get out of here and ask to leave Cipher Pol today. Ask or I'll throw you out."

How could you have been stupid to think that would lead anywhere? You thought Lucci could have changed something, all the times the two of you could have had some connection felt in vain.

Swallowing your tears and not giving any justification to anyone, a few days later you managed to free yourself from the organization. You knew they would keep an eye on you, but at least now you wouldn't be the target of Lucci's hatred.

A few months later you had already found a new home on your home island, a new spark of hope that everything would work out, even without him. That week you would be six months pregnant and you were already used to the affection and closeness of your neighbors and colleagues. What you weren't used to was strange noises in your house in the middle of the night.

Reluctantly - and against any recommendation from your doctor, you assumed the form that your devil fruit allowed. A completely black cat. You still remembered Kalifa's laugh when you two and Kaku acquired your fruits and she claimed it was curious that you also turned into a feline.

The image of the man you no longer imagined seeing in front of you was there, standing in your kitchen. You wanted to return to your human form and ask what it was about, you wanted to at least feel him again, but the hatred inside you spoke louder. Shooing away the pigeon that accompanied him, you jumped at Lucci, climbing up his suit with your fingernails.

"Stop this." Lucci tried to hold you back, but you kept throwing small kicks at him. Damn the time you trimmed your claws, the damage wouldn't be so great "Stop!"

Fatigue soon hit you and you returned to your human form, even so you continued attacking him, this time with weak slaps.

"You practically called me a bitch." you snapped, having your hands trapped by his. "You humiliated me and now you have the nerve to show up here."

"You need to calm down." you lunged at him, even though your hands were practically tied by his hands. "You're going to hurt yourself, sweetheart, please."

The calm tone of his words hit you before your brain even processed his arms trapping you in a tight hug. It took a few seconds before you actually gave up trying to free yourself.

"Calm down, please." he asked once again, pressing you against his body.

"You left me." hurt replaced the hatred in your voice, this time you were able to let go of him, now calmer.

Noticing that your clothes were gone with your transformation, you turned your back and went to your room, reaching for panties and a robe. Sitting on the edge of the bed, you closed your eyes, trying to regain the lost air and dealing with the weakness that took over your body.

"There are big differences between the anatomy of a cat and a human, even more so when they carry their kittens." Lucci leaned on the doorstep and realized that you still hadn't turned your attention to him. He soon bent down in front of you, taking one of your hands. "How can I help you?"

"You sent me away." the hurt was almost palpable in your voice. "My life was good here, I got a job even though I was pregnant, I started making friends. Why are you here after so long?"

"I couldn't stop thinking about you two." Lucci gave up and sat next to you. "That day I had to lie." he confessed and your attention quickly turned to Lucci. "I saw Yuro following us, him slightly pushing the door to hear us. He was interested in my position just like he was always interested in you. What do you think he would do when he connected the information?" The question remained in the air for some time, long enough for you to feel your heart soften a little. "That's why I asked you to leave, I didn't know how well the little act had worked."

"And how did you find me here?"

"I never lost sight of you." the answer was almost obvious to you, yet it was good to hear. "Besides, even if I wanted to, that annoying giraffe wouldn't leave me alone after I told him about the child." a light laugh dared to cross your lips. "I'm sorry for this."

"I know you meant well, Lucci, but it still hurts anyway." you made to touch his arm, but you flinched. "It doesn't mean that I don't miss you, that I don't want to see you."

"I figured that. As long as you accept me here, accept me in this child's life, I want to stay." he, contrary to what you had done, allowed his hand to touch your skin, turning your face towards him. "And what you want?"

"Can we just cuddle for a bit, please?"

Lucci opted to just pull you into his arms and drag you to the bed, laying down comfortably and allowing you to snuggle into him. Feeling a little wary of how you would react, his hand lightly touched the spot on the back of your neck that you loved being stroked. Surely your cat form would be purring. For a long time, it was the kind of physical contact you had.

The residents of the small village were initially surprised by the man's presence. He didn't stay for long and when he stayed on the island, he only left the house a few times and had a serious expression on his face, not allowing anyone to feel free to talk. And when it was extremely necessary, he preferred to use Hattori for that role.

The little child arrived into the world on a rainy night. Leo was an almost identical copy of his father, except for his eyes that were the same as yours. Lucci only returned to the island two days later and few things could surprise him more than finding you sitting on the bed with several blankets around your body, while you breastfed the little baby.

"Hey." you limited yourself to saying, not wanting to speak more or louder so as not to take away the child's peace.

"Are you cold?"

"I just need to keep the nest… the bed warm, make our little Leo comfortable." You looked at the little one, who was still focused on eating. "Want to see him?" You nodded to the space next to you on the bed.

Lucci got closer and could notice every feature of the baby it was like looking at a small version of him. Until the small eyes found the man's direction and he understood that everything bad that could exist in him, in Lucci, would be compensated by everything good he had in you. A strange feeling took over him, something like possession, like pride, something that if he needed to put into words he wouldn't be able to.

His hands first lowered the cover from your back and then lowered the strap of your shirt. Before you could complain, Lucci started distributing kisses and rubbing his face against your skin, in a strange affection that you gladly accepted. In anyone's eyes, it would be like seeing two cats taking care of their pup.

Lucci was right in his little mental gamble. Leo was a physical copy of him, but he had your personality. Cunning, agile, but kind, a soft heart that accepted anything. Well, almost anything.

"Daddy!" the boy shouted as soon as he saw Lucci enter the small yard after almost two months away. The man just bent down and allowed him to jump into his arms. When Leo was just a few centimeters away, Lucci watched the boy scream in horror and walk away. "Hattori!"

The pigeon landed on Lucci's shoulder and that was enough to explain the story. Ever since baby Leo woke up with the pigeon watching him, the now three-year-old boy was terrified of any bird and poor Hattori was included - and was the main reason.

"Son, I already told you. Hattori is good." you caught up to them, sitting on the floor so you were at Leo's level.

"No, it is not." he grumbled, hiding in the back of your neck. "Get him out of here."

"You need to get used to it." Lucci would once again try and knew he might fail. "Look at me."

"I don't want."

"Leo…" the warning tone caught the boy's attention, who just gave him space to see, not letting go of you. "Look, Hattori is a good friend."

Lucci let the pigeon land on his fingertips. Fulfilling the small unspoken agreement between the two, Hattori remained quiet, accepting Lucci to stroke his head.

"See? Your mom likes him too." Lucci passed the pigeon to your finger and more docilely you caught it.

"Come here." Lucci picked up the boy and whispered something in his ear, probably some promise to the boy. Leo, with his small trembling hand, stretched out his finger and let Hattori land. "See? He can be a great friend."

"He can?"

"Coo, yes sir Leo." As soon as the dove spoke, Leo screamed in fear again, letting the bird fly and throwing himself at you.

"Maybe that was too soon." Lucci commented, helping you stand with the boy on your lap.

That time, Lucci spent about a month with you and you were already suffering from the night he was leaving. Partly because of your longing, even if you hadn't gotten back into the relationship, you couldn't deny how you felt about him. In addition to suffering for little Leo. He admired his father, even though he didn't know what he actually did and even though he maintained a more serious behavior, you knew that Lucci adored the boy.

"Dad…" you watched Lucci put Leo to sleep, with the boy practically with his eyes closed. "You will return?"

"I promise you I will."

"What if I cry just this little bit." he pointed at the small space with his fingers. "Will you still love me?"

The question seemed to take him by surprise. You noticed that Lucci didn't respond immediately and you wondered how many memories were going through his head, of all the death, chaos and hatred that he had carried since childhood. You knew that it was difficult for Lucci to express - and even nurture feelings that were reserved for few people, the bond with you and Leo was unique.

"Absolutely," a rare light chuckle escaped him. "You're my best friend, remember?" Lucci finished covering the boy. "Now sleep."

You blew your little boy a kiss from a distance and closed the door to his room. Like something magnetic you followed Lucci to the small room of the house you two sort of shared.

"Need to talk to you."

"I'm listening." you crossed your arms, bracing yourself for something bad, something like "That was the last time I showed up."

"I'm leaving Cipher Pol." he took a small letter from his pocket. That seal was familiar and the last time you saw it was when you gave up.

"Explain this to me properly"

"Even on a mission in Water 7, being a shipwright wasn't that bad." as he spoke, you felt even more lost. "I've always had my goals. Little Leo wasn't one of them, but I can't ignore him."

"You know you don't have to do that. Our little arrangement has been working." you tried to argue, but Lucci was irreducible, as always.

"I don't really need it. I want it." he spoke firmly. "I'm just going to carry out this mission more."

"Something important?"

"I need to go to Egghead, deal with Vegapunk." he limited himself to speaking, not wanting to go into too many details. Despite asking, your mind was still stuck on the idea of ​​having Lucci always there.

"Promise to come back." the words came out like an order. "Promise now Lucci, please."

Lucci just hung his face, trying to understand where that plea had come from. You always warned him to make promises to Leo, after all, life as an agent and director of CP0 wasn't the safest. Those words didn't usually come out of your mouth.

Ignoring the mix of sensations that accumulated in your chest, you practically threw yourself towards Lucci, taking his lips for yourself. His lack of reaction only lasted a few seconds and you only had to press your body against his for his hands to find your legs and lock them around his waist.

"I promise." he said amidst sighs and footsteps towards your room. "As long as you promise to come back to me, to be mine again."

"I promise."

Crocodile

warnings: angst, but with a happy ending. Crocodile and F!Reader are married, there are mentions of blood but nothing much. Mentions of Cross Guild because I absolutely love the existence of this trio.

Long years, long disputes and problems ago, Crocodile found you lost in Alabasta. Fleeing from a crew that chose to only use you, you found yourself without any direction and when demonstrating your skills to escape some thieves, he saw something interesting in you.

This interest lasted through the years, even into the fall of his reign in Alabasta, even into the time he was trapped in Impel Down, he knew that once he found you again, he wouldn't let something so good slip through his hands like sand in the wind.

That's how the small ring with green details found your hand, which you passed from Miss Honeymoon to his wife. Very little time had passed before you had to face the countless positive tests that piled up in front of you.

You tried to go back to bed in silence, the goal was not to wake Crocodile and over time, find the courage to bring the news to him. However, you failed miserably. As soon as the bathroom door opened, you found Crocodile waiting for you.

"You've been out of bed for a while. Is everything okay?" he asked, leaning against the wall next to the door.

"Y-Yes." Your voice betrayed you, giving away that at least something had happened in there and you knew Crocodile enough to know that he would turn everything over and discover your little secret. "Can we talk?"

"It's a little early for that, isn't it, my little one?" The serious expression on your face told him that the matter couldn't wait. Without asking, he took your hand and guided you back to the bed, placing you in a sitting position. "What happened?"

"I h-guess. I mean." you took a deep breath, the huge room seemed to compress next to you. "I'm pregnant."

Silence prevailed for a few seconds - it seemed like ages between the two of you. You looked for any reaction, for anything, but Crocodile was far away. It was just a physical form in front of you.

"Rest, there's still a long way to go before dawn." he just said, turning his back and heading towards the bathroom.

It didn't take long for you to see him leave, hair wet, steam everywhere, no more words left his lips and the first rays of sun appeared on the horizon when he disappeared from your field of vision. Almost two weeks passed like this, only essential words were exchanged between the two of you, Crocodile spent most of his hours away from home or locked in his office. According to Daz, the boss had problems to solve.

That was it, this would end the relationship that you two had worked so hard to achieve. Without saying anything, you packed your bags, even so you couldn't leave without at least looking at his face. Opening the office door without any kind of ceremony, the first thing that caught your attention was the blood that was staining him, only then did you notice the cut that he was finishing stitching.

"Crocodile!" You got closer, trying to touch the wound, but he pushed your hand away. "Are you okay?"

"It was just a superficial cut." he simply responded, finishing the last stitch and using gauze to cover the wound.

Despite your concern, you would not let your recent decision shake you. Crocodile watched with surprised eyes as you took off the ring you were wearing and with shaking hands left it on the table.

"What is this about?"

"Given the distance, the way you've been treating me, I don't think you were happy with the existence of a baby." You started, trying to make your voice steady. "But I am and it's okay that you don't want to have a child, but I do. I just don't want to have to deal with this indifference, this distance. You don't talk to me, you don't sleep in our bed…"

"Calm down darling, please." he asked, his unshaken tone quite contrary to the worried expression on his features.

He took your hand and gently made you circle the table, standing next to him. Crocodile then took three brown folders from a drawer, each of which had a name and a photo of a guy.

"Do you remember them?" you still remembered the faces, before settling on the new island, the two of you evaluated how the entire system worked.

"The three main leaders here on this island. This one is responsible for the bandits." You pointed to the first photo and then to the second. "This one was a pirate too, as I remember."

"And this one works in the slave trade." Crocodile took a pen and crossed out his photo, just as the first man's photo was also crossed out.

"And what does this have to do with what I told you just now?" you tried to move away from the table, but the hand on your waist stopped you.

"As we once talked about, I planned to calmly find a place for my business, maybe some partnerships…" he put the folders aside, turning his attention completely to you. "Now with this. With our baby on the way. I can't allow there to be threats of this level around."

"What do you mean by that, my dear?" the endearing word involuntarily escaped your lips, a clear sign that you couldn't help but have love for Crocodile, even with the hurt.

"I needed to speed up my business, exclude some of these faces." He held your face and pressed his forehead to yours. "I can only be happy with this news when I know you two are safe."

"Crocodile…"

"I'm going to be the happiest man on this island when I can walk around showing off my beautiful, shiny, pregnant wife, carrying my little one. I don't want our children to have to see the terror we've both experienced throughout this life."

"I thought you didn't want me anymore." you let your hands wrap around him and his found a similar path around your body.

"I'm a man of my word and when I said I want you for the rest of my life, I really meant it." His lips traced their way across your face. "Please give me just a few more days and I will allow myself to be happy with this news."

It took another week before you woke up in the middle of the night, feeling something you hadn't felt in time. The icy contrast of his hook revealed that Crocodile had accidentally slept in that position. Head and one hand resting on your belly, in a protective mode. Apparently, the day had finally come for him to allow himself to be happy.

The months that followed were calmer, with the full-time man being your shadow, even on the tireless afternoons of shopping you did, Crocodile was there. At least he considered himself lucky and rewarded, since your raging hormones acted in a somewhat pleasant way for him - which made Daz find the two of you in a vulnerable way in the kitchen.

The best doctors from across the island gathered in the grand mansion when Ella was born. An identical copy for you, much to Crocodile's happiness. You knew that Crocodile would dedicate himself to being a father, even if it didn't work out, however, you couldn't be more wrong. On many nights, the girl was only able to stop crying when she found her father, or afternoons became calmer when, while the two of you talked and made plans, little Ella was distracted by the piles of sand that her father was. capable of producing. Apart from the fact that he had decided to give a baby Bananawani as soon as she turned her first birthday or when he made a replica of the hook he had for the little girl, everything was going well in the relationship between the three of you.

Despite being your copy in terms of features, her personality was much more similar to her father - and she was extremely close to him. With a cunning capable of convincing everyone, it didn't take long for Ella to be able to soften even Daz's heart. There wasn't a thing the girl asked for that Crocodile's faithful partner wouldn't go after. Cross Guild mates were also victims of Ella. In this case, just one of them. Mihawk thought it was funny for someone so small to have such an irreverent stance as Crocodile, despite almost getting him expelled from the Cross Guild when he was caught letting Ella play - or at least try - to manipulate Yoru. As for Buggy, Ella preferred to keep her distance. One of the few things the girl couldn't deal with easily was the existence of clowns.

The scream of horror that crossed the corridor invaded your ears, as well as those of the other two men who were next to you. Recognizing the voice, you and Crocodile jumped to your feet, quickly heading to where you thought the source was. Arriving in the kitchen, Crocodile barely had time to balance himself when he saw Ella hugging his legs, looking for some kind of help.

"A monster daddy, a big monster." Crocodile picked her up and felt the girl's heart racing even with all the fabrics separating him from her skin. "He's right there."

"It's okay, sweetie." your voice reached her ears, which were practically the only possible point of contact. Her eyes were sunk into her father's shoulder, her small hands almost pierced the fabric of his overcoat.

"I have my suspicions about what this monster is." Mihawk, who you hadn't noticed following the two of you, spoke up. "And I agree with you Ella, it's a pretty ugly monster." the cynicism was clear in his voice.

"Look at your father, my little one." Crocodile asked and found two orbs damp with tears. "Was it a monster with an ugly, red nose?"

"You lizard, you don't talk about my nose." Buggy practically rolled out of the pantry, eliciting another scream from the girl who went back into hiding. "She who appeared out of nowhere here."

"He's harmless, Ella." you tried to catch her, but the girl refused to let go of her own father.

"She's in her house, she has the freedom to do whatever she wants." Crocodile's threatening tone didn't go unnoticed. "You know what awaits you, don't you, clown?"

"Hey, I didn't do anything." he grumbled, approaching you already knowing that Crocodile would scalp him soon. "Look here, pretty girl, Uncle Buggy is your friend."

"Everything is fine." you interrupted the clown, who only scared your daughter more. You knew that the two of them probably just bumped into each other in the kitchen, but little Ella's fear spoke louder in these moments. "You are not going to do anything." you muttered to Crocodile and turned to the clown in question. "And can you stop this, you're only scaring little Ella more."

"Let's get out of here, my little baby." your husband grumbled, turning his back and going in front, you couldn't make out exactly what he was saying, but he seemed to be trying to reassure Ella, who was just sniffling now.

The sniffles were replaced by a small laugh, when you looked to the side the reason made you laugh too. Mihawk had turned the blunt side of the sword and hit Buggy a few times, who grunted back.

"We don't scare little girls here, we only scare bad mariners." Mihawk repeated the gesture and you knew he wasn't using any of the full strength he had. "Don't scare little Ella."

The hawk's eyes blinked at the girl, who continued laughing - much to the reassurance of Crocodile, who was already thinking of methods to torture his fellow Cross Guild member. No one scared his little girl.

[tadpolesonalgae]

Can’t Bring Myself To Hate You - Part 15

Azriel x Third-Oldest-Archeron-Sibling!Reader

a/n: I became suddenly ill about three days ago and my brain is still quite mushy so I think this has been proofread but there might be some errors here and there I’ll try to iron out once I’m better!! Sorry for any scruples and I hope you enjoy!! 🧡💛

warnings: angst, general depression, violence (self-attempted)

word count: 16,175

-Part 14- -Part 16-

——————————————————————————————————————————————

Azriel catches her eye from across the room, weary hazel locking with bright amber that swirls in the faelight of the living room.

His tension is more palpable than usual, the conversation from yesterday with the golden-eyed male only further contributing to the death knell gonging quietly at the back of his mind, creaking through his knees, echoing in each footstep—each breath he takes. Time seems to be dripping by faster, even more so than usual. In the cobwebbed chambers of his mind he’s able to recall a time where days were his chosen measurement, where a twenty-four hour period contained beginning, middle, and end. But as he’d grown older, those chunks had grown with him, his perception of time shifting the more of it he lived through. Soon enough weeks were his days, calculating how much could be done over the period, sleep a small break to be indulged in between work. Then it had shifted to months—twelve to fit everything into, nights morphing into short naps.

Now years feel like days once had, time no longer a steady drip of water from the roof of a dark cell ceiling where he’d been kept locked away from the light, but a steady trickle as it carves its way through stone.

Shadows conceal his absence from the laughter-filled room, removing himself from the uncomfortably bright corner to a place of familiarity, shifting into the darker hallways as he sighs, feet positioned instinctively equidistant, weight spread evenly, fearing one lapse in discipline might bring him back to those days where he knew nothing of fighting, nothing of how to defend himself. To those days where he had to learn relentlessly, practice until his body couldn’t move in desperate attempts to cover the ground he’d lost years to.

Mor enters into the darkness, coming from the yellow-orange light that’s spilling into the blue-purple hallway, heels effortlessly silent upon the floorboards as her nocturnal eyes seek him out. Her features are already serious, easily picking up on his mood despite his efforts to conceal it. The depths of it, at least.

“Az?” Mor asks quietly, expression curious but solemn.

“She’s gone,” he murmurs shortly. Mor’s eyes flash with alarm at the revelation, before her brows tuck together. “What do you mean she’s gone? Where?”

“I don’t know,” he admits grimly. “I paid a visit to one of her friends afternoon yesterday, but he refused to answer anything.”

“What do you mean, she’s gone, Az?” Mor hisses, disbelief sharpening her muffled tone. Azriel grinds his jaw, but relents—this is more important. “I mean, she isn’t at the House of Wind. She left a note saying she would be at Bas’, and would be back but she wasn’t. When I went to get her, she wasn’t there either,” he summarises, expression sombre.

“What else?” Mor asks sternly, the brightness about her having faded faster than a flame extinguished. Azriel licks his lips, bracing himself, before explaining: she has magic but it’s been giving her trouble, she’d wanted to try using it without anyone else knowing and he’d let her, Elain’s vision prophesying his death at her hand.

To Mor’s credit, her features don’t drain entirely of colour, and it takes her no more than a few seconds of heavy silence for her to muster up a response. “What magic?” Mor asks first, keeping her tone quiet but clipped, judgement clear enough she doesn’t need to voice it. And Azriel won’t address it, either. “Her hands could glow a little around the fingertips. We didn’t know what it did, though.”

“And the trouble?”

“It dried her skin out, among other things.” Mor’s lips part, eyes closing briefly as she sighs. “The gloves.” Azriel doesn’t need to provide confirmation for her to have connected the dots.

But then her eyes open, slowly sliding to his, an edge of viciousness underlying their amber cut, one he withstands reluctantly. Mor swallows, jaw tense, watching him. “How long have you known about this?” She asks, lethally softly. Not how long has she had magic, how long has he known. And not told them. “About a fortnight.”

Mor’s eyes gleam with hostility, and his features become stony, walls raising up as she watches him silently. Judgement falling heavy on his shoulders. “Why tell me now?” She asks shortly. She isn’t chewing him out, nor is she outwardly rancorous. Not good a good sign. “Bas won’t tell me where she is,” he replies neutrally, Mor’s eyes flaring as she puts it together. “You want me to ask him.” Azriel nods, despite her already knowing.

She glances at him reproachfully, another look he withstands passively, and then she’s turning sharply on her heel, making back toward the light, back toward the laughter. Silent as a shadow, Azriel catches her upper arm, having to exert surprising force to keep her still. “Where are you going?” He asks coldly.

“Where do you think?” She counters sharply.

“They have enough on their plates,” Azriel mutters. As if on queue, Nyx’s laugher giggles through the halls, a stark contrast to the gloom lurking just beyond the light’s end. Mor snatches her arm away. “You have enough on your plate,” she says lowly, eyes glinting as they cut through him, “we could have made room. You should have told us.” But Azriel stands his ground, not giving an inch. “It was the right call.”

“You have no idea where she is,” Mor counters. “No idea where she is, or what state she might be in. What makes you think that was the right call?”

“You’re questioning my judgement?”

“Yes, I’m fucking questioning your judgement,” she hisses back lowly.

“She told me she didn’t want any of you to know,” he counters coldly, “she’s reclusive anyway, suddenly outing her wouldn’t have done anything helpful.”

The wording seems to strike something in Mor, ire banking, eyes shuttering briefly, before she’s gritting her jaw again. “You should have told us.”

“She barely managed to tell me,” Azriel states, “Elain didn’t even know until the vision that her sister had magic.”

“You know you should have told us.”

“And betrayed her trust when she chose to tell me?” Azriel asks cooly. “You didn’t see how scared she was.”

“Maybe she wasn’t scared of us finding out but of speaking with you.”

Azriel blinks, the only sign of his falter he’ll allow, caught off guard by the accusation. She’s never shown any fear of him before… “She has no reason to be scared of me.” He says finally.

A look of frustration flits through Mor’s amber eyes. “She’s young. This is probably the first time she’s experiencing strong feelings toward someone else,” she says lowly, “surely you can remember what that’s like.” Azriel bristles at the pointed look, the insulting comparison between his past love for Mor and the affection being unwelcomely pushed his way. “She’s infatuated. It happens,” he replies tersely, not taking kindly to the manipulation. “And she went through the war too—she isn’t that unaware. You’re doing her a disservice.”

“The disservice here is you not affording her the care she needs—to the point she’s chosen to run away,” Mor practically spits.

Terse silence stretches between them, sour and resentful.

“We aren’t going to come to an agreement,” Azriel says at last, tone clipped, but both of them know it’s better to move on for now. They can fight it out later, once things are resolved and taken care of. “You speak to Bas first, then we can find out who she’s gone to. She could be anywhere in the Night Court, knowing him.”

“We tell Rhys and Feyre first,” Mor demands lowly. But Azriel shakes his head, “if you want to be the one to tell Feyre her sister is missing and we don’t know where she is, be my guest.”

Silence stretches further, growing tauter by the second, until Mor sighs sharply. “Fine,” she grits out. “Bas first.”

Azriel nods, making to turn around, heading for the door.

“But you are telling Feyre,” Mor hisses lowly. “Whether we find out or not. Tonight.”

Azriel pauses, jaw tightening. But gives a sharp nod.

————

Once again he slinks back to the male’s house, the bright sun lost to winter’s oncoming grip, dark clouds shielding the stars from view.

Despite the silence between them, he can feel Mor’s judgement pressing into him, but he has no time to argue or persuade. After the…discussion, with the male the other day, he’d needed time to plan, regroup his thoughts. Time. Seemingly so sparse, as of late. He could afford little more than twenty-four hours of inaction before a decision would have to be made—he hadn’t come this far by sitting around aimlessly when faced with a hard choice. It seemed the only reasonably way forward would be to acquiesce to the male’s demand, as much as Azriel despised so. It was the smarter option.

The other would have been to lay hands on him, and no matter how urgent the matter was, the male was still a civilian, and untrained for war, at that. Violence was entirely out of the question.

He knocks thrice on the door, sharp and punctuated hits to alert the male of company, before stepping back to allow space for Mor.

Gleaming golden eyes pierce out into the darkness, and Azriel knows he doesn’t miss the hint of smugness in their gilded depths as he marks the presence of another, as he’d requested. To verify his claim that there were indeed urgent matters afoot. Azriel refuses to show even a hint of irritation, keeping his face cold and passive—Bas won’t get the satisfaction of seeing him riled. He’d have to work much harder for that.

“You’re back late,” Bas drawls from the warm glow of his house, once again leaning cockily against the broad wooden frame, ankles crossed, one foot keeping the door held to—away from prying eyes. “And you’ve brought company,” he muses, glancing to Mor at his side. The female steps forward, the yellowy-orange light from inside making her glow as she offers a tight smile. “Bas, correct?” Golden eyes sweep over her analytically, before he nods, shifting slightly. “Mor,” he acknowledges, “she mentioned you, too.” No signs of surprise mar her open expression, kept sealed beneath that deceptive mask she can wear to charm at any time.

“That’s why we came to see you, actually,” Mor begins calmly, straightforward. “I’m of the understanding you know her whereabouts, but are unwilling to disclose them for various reasons.”

“That’s right,” he replies slowly, expression shifting to something more wary. His provocative nature shying away from perceived earnestness. “She doesn’t want any visitors.”

Mor nods her head gently, understanding shimmering faintly in amber eyes, threads of her hair catching the golden glow of inner light, glinting with the motion. “I can understand that, but this is very important,” she says sincerely, worry shining in her face Azriel know she doesn’t have to fake. Still the male remains cautious in the doorway. “Azriel wasn’t lying when he told you this conflicts with Court matters,” Mor begins slowly, and the shadowsinger tamps down on the urge to glance at her warily. Though he knows she won’t reveal anything, there’s no need to offer scraps. “I’m afraid there’s little I can honestly tell you due to their private nature, but nonetheless I would like to speak with you about her. She is a part of our family, and we are deeply concerned about her. I’m sure you can understand our worry.”

Quiet pauses long enough to take a deep breath, before resuming to its consistent noise.

Eventually, Bas nods his head, standing straighter. A grain of tension is released from his shoulders as the male opens his door, yielding to a conversation. He makes to step forward, but sharp golden eyes flick to him, piercing and accusing in their nature. “I’ll speak with Mor, and Mor alone,” he states clearly, an edge of provocation creeping back into his features, though the Shadowsinger doubts its sincerity.

But Mor nods her head, “that’s fine,” she answers, brushing past his side, pulling the cold night air with her, a whisper of icy breath grazing his side as she moves forward, leaving him out in the dark. “Don’t move from here until we’re done,” Mor instructs from over her shoulder once Bas has disappeared from the entrance hall. Azriel nods, understanding the implication.

Listen in from outside.

————

The room she follows Bas into is cozy, well-kept. Clearly lived in.

The pillows of the sofas are slightly worn, slightly faded in colour, waned down to more earthy tones that compliment the pale terracotta of the walls. Fire crackles from the hearth, dried rosemary hung from the ceiling beams, as well as other dried herbs and plants. On the wall are some paintings, mostly stills, but they’re watery around their edges, faded colour bleeding over fine, distinct ink lines.

Bas takes a seat that seems to fit him comfortably, likely one he usually chooses, while Mor opts for one nearby, a quilt thrown over its back, squares of purple, blue, turquoise, and magenta knitted together, and she can make out small patches in the yarn where its been run thin and had to be darned with slightly mismatched thread.

“So,” Bas starts, quieter than she had expected, sitting forward in her chair, attentive. “You’re worried about her. Why?” It’s hard to conceal her frown at such a strange question, but she doesn’t really try to. She doubts she’ll get anywhere through masking her reactions. “She’s part of our family,” Mor replies, “why wouldn’t we be worried about her.” Bas settles deeper into his chair, hands braced on arms, head tilted back into the pillow as he watches her intently. It’s not an expression she’s unfamiliar with, but not one she had expected to encounter here—something wary and deeply protective.

“She doesn’t speak much about any of you,” he hedges slowly, keeping his posture relaxed. “But it’s enough. You aren’t as close knitted as family.” Mor opens her mouth to speak, but he continues. “Even if you try to be,” he says, nodding, “she isn’t easy to get to.” Mor closes her mouth, lips pursing in a tight line. He sighs, shifting in his seat, pushing a thick loc of hair from his face, hooking it over a thoroughly pierced ear. “I believe that you’re concerned about her, and that you truly want to help,” he says heavily, attitude shifted from how he’d been outside, and Mor wonders what Bas might have been told about the Shadowsinger to warrant such ice.

“We do,” she urges sincerely, and Bas nods again, hearing her.

“What I…worry about,” he starts hesitantly, forming the words carefully, considering each one. “I worry you don’t understand her enough to make an informed call,” he settles on, and Mor bristles a little. How long has Bas known her for? Does he know her more than Mor does? “What leads you to that way of thinking?” She asks, keeping the stiffness from her tone.

“I know you don’t see her much,” he replies simply, and again Mor’s lips purse. “She doesn’t enjoy…full, settings. That doesn’t mean she doesn’t care, though.” He sighs, eyes briefly closing, before reopening with a fresh intensity, sitting upright in his chair, forearms braced on his thighs. “Do you know how we met? Me and her?”

Mor’s brow dips, but she answers anyway, curious where he’s going with this. “Through Nesta, right?” Bas nods, something passing through his eyes at the right answer. “Right,” he confirms, “making time to visit those stuffy inns, filled with groping hands—she hates places like that.” Bas sighs again, hand rubbing one side of his face. “I don’t even know if it helped at all, but I know she felt it was all she could do. Even if it was just company, and nothing material. Even if it might not’ve had an overall impact, that was her way of trying to help.”

Mor remains quiet, not seeing what he’s trying to say.

Bas shakes his head, as if telling her to forget about it, again rubbing a hand down his face. “Look, I don’t even know if I can speak on her behalf, and I like to think we’re fairly close with one another,” he admits, sighing heavily. “I don’t want to mislead you.”

“So you’ll let me where she’s gone?” Mor asks, concern heavy in her voice, making no effort to conceal her worry. She watches as the pads of his fingers rub over his eyes wearily, as she wonders if this is straining on him more than he’s letting on. “Try to understand her, when she talks,” he requests quietly, eyes still shut, fingers rubbing faintly. “She still confuses me sometimes, and she never shows if it bothers her, but I can’t imagine someone being okay with being misunderstood.”

“Bas,” Mor urges gently, sensing he’s on the verge of telling her whereabouts. “Please tell us where she’s gone. We don’t want her to feel alone.”

Bas doesn’t look up, face still covered by his hands, but Mor can make out the tightness of his brows, torn between his decisions. So close to cracking open.

“I don’t know,” he whispers.

Mor blinks, eyes locking with gold as he looks at her through his fingers, fatigue obvious beneath his gaze, the lines more pronounced as the flame casts the shadows of his digits across his features, deepening the half circles that have appeared.

“What do you mean you don’t know?” Mor asks, biting down on shock, clearing it entirely from her voice. “She didn’t tell me,” he answers quietly.

Silence stretches, and even in the haze and confusion that’s been stirred up she has enough clarity to feel the piercing weight of a glare through a window, heavy and accusing. Tension crackles in her spine, flipping her golden hair over a shoulder, a subtle message to piss off to the shadows that are watching from outside.

She sighs heavily, meeting the golden eyes of the male opposite her, now sat back in his chair as he was before, but his back is slumped, as if containing all that worry had been stretching him taut. Relieved to no longer be the sole barer of her secrets. “Do you—…” Mor eases in a sharp breath, settling the worry and gradually increasing panic that’s tightening around her throat. She swallows, pulling herself together. Recomposing herself. “Do you have any idea where she might have gone?” She asks calmly. “Anything could help.”

But Bas shakes his head, guilt clear in his golden eyes. “She didn’t give me any hints. But she had a bag with her, so I’m guessing she had somewhere in mind and didn’t just aimlessly wander off.”

Mor nods, getting to her feet, golden eyes tracking her movements. “Thank you for telling me,” she says sincerely, before turning for the door.

“I know that leaving in the middle of the night without telling anyone where you’re going seems rash—maybe even a bit stupid,” Bas says after her, voice a little clearer to catch her attention. “But she’s smart. I’d wager it was probably something she’d had in the back of her mind for a while.”

Mor swallows thickly, the possibility not sitting well with her, but nods nonetheless.

“I’ll let you know when we find her.”

————

Azriel waits sullenly in the front garden for Mor to exit the male’s house, darkening the doorstep he’d been instructed to remain in until she was done.

He watches the door open and close, Mor stepping out into the night air, latch clicking softly as it locks behind her, and the two make their way silently at first down the garden path, back into the street before they begin communicating. “That certainly didn’t take long,” he muses lowly, glancing at her sidelong. “I take it you heard everything?” She asks quietly, tension clear in the cold bite of her usually honeyed voice. Azriel gives a brisk nod, and Mor sighs. “What now?”

“There are only so many places she could have gone to,” Azriel replies smoothly, mind already running through the possibilities. Honestly, Bas not knowing almost helps more—it has to be someone she knows. There are only two places she could have possibly run off to, though neither of them seem particularly believable. That being thought, he knows where he’ll check first.

“You have an idea?” Mor asks tightly, a bit of a bite to her question. Azriel nods grimly, “Elain mentioned a fox in her vision,” he explains, “apparently they grow close—enough to make a bargain of some sort, anyway.”

“Elain saw the bargain in her vision?” Mor questions. Azriel nods. “We don’t know if that’s symbolism or not,” she mutters, “we have no idea how accurate they are, either. Nor how soon they’ll come to pass.” Her tone softens toward the end a little, but Azriel isn’t willing to speak about that part of the prophecy yet. That he will be dying. Probably soon, going off how vivid Elain’s descriptions were—as if it were urgent. Impending.

“And you’re sure Elain doesn’t know where she’s gone?” Mor asks, keeping her gaze ahead, brows pulled together in concentration, a glint in her warrior’s eyes. “She might do,” Azriel sighs, “they are close, after all. And the fox…”

“Could be Lucien,” Mor finishes heavily. “You think she’s run to the mortal lands. Back to her home.” Azriel remains silent, keeping pace as they return silently to the River House.

Piercing amber eyes dig into the side of his skull, the intensity of her attention almost startling if he hadn’t had centuries to grow accustomed to it. He senses the question, just as she could sense he was holding something back.

Azriel doesn’t look at her as he speaks, “there’s only one other person the fox might represent.”

Even without visuals, he can hear how her pace nearly falters, then comes to a stop. He pauses with her, at last turning to face the golden haired female. Her skin is paler, even taking the silver of the moon into account. “You think she might have gone to Eris?” She asks, voice thick, but quiet. No more than a breath of wind. “I think it’s one of the two. There’s no one else it could be.”

“She’s only met him once,” Mor snaps lowly, nails digging into her palms. Azriel makes a show of shrugging his shoulders nonchalantly. “It’s one or the other,” he says calmly, “if she isn’t in the Mortal lands…”

Mor stares at him, amber eyes drained a little. “You really think there’s a chance he could have…taken her?” She practically spits, unable to keep the hiss out of her voice. Because when it comes to that long ago trauma, her only responses to fall back on are fear, or anger. He doubt she’ll allow the vulnerability of fear right now. Not with the tension between them. “I think it’s better to question Elain first to see if she knows anything. If she doesn’t, I’ll make my way down Prythian.”

Mor blinks, realising the situation. She had demanded Azriel be the one to tell Feyre, regardless of whether they find anything or not. But with the new possibility of her having somehow found herself in the Autumn Court…Mor’s throat rolls heavily. She can’t bring herself to go there. Even now, the thought alone…she pushes against the urge to settle her palm over her abdomen. “We question Elain first,” she manages quietly, and Azriel can see how she’s gathering herself back together.

Instinct is the closest it comes to, that feeling she’s somehow run off to the Autumn Court, like a tug toward the unfamiliar land. Surely Elain would have mentioned something to him about a plan for her sister to leave when she’d been telling him about the vision. It’s the option that makes the most sense, for her to have spoken with Elain, and used a tunnel to reach the border quickly. With all the books she’s read in the library…the kind of things they contain, he doesn’t doubt she’d be more than capable of figuring a way to sneak out of the Night Court. To sneak out of Prythian if she set her mind to it.

Mor nods, and Azriel redirects his attention to the street, continuing the pace. “Question Elain,” she murmurs, “then head to Autumn first. If she isn’t there, go to the Lower Lands. Be as quick as possible.” He nods, admittedly relieved he won’t have to yet face Rhys for the mess he’s inadvertently caused.

————

“Eris, I’m tired,” you sigh, hands aching, sitting dejectedly on a tree stump.

As much as you’d protested, he’d dragged you back out into the forest, where everything feels encased in a glass bubble. It’s hard to explain when you think about it, but it’s like being in another world, how easily the trees sweep away and redirect noise. Hairs prickle at the back of your neck as you remember the giant, boar-like creature that had rampaged upon you mere days ago. The sight and smell of steaming blood as skin slid from flesh, melted apart.

“You haven’t even done anything,” he mutters, watching. “Get back up.”

You sigh heavily, reluctantly getting to your feet, then blinking heavily, suddenly crouching down as you press your palms to your eyes, trying to steady yourself from the abrupt dizziness that had ballooned into your head. Lips part as you try to concentrate on your breathing, wishing away the sudden feeling of unevenness beneath your feet. Eventually it passes, a few extra moments spent crouched for good measure, before you slowly stand back up, hand pressing to the side of your head. Cutting whiskey and amber eyes are piercing into you from across the clearing. You scowl back.

“What was that?” He asks, disapprovingly, your scowl deepening at the tone.

“I told you: I’m tired,” you snap, but it lacks the bite you’d wished for, fatigue building into a slow but heavy pulse inside your head, just above and behind your brows. A yawn rises from your chest, and you cover your mouth as it stretches you open, eyes squeezing shut, watering a little before you slump back into your usual posture, no longer pulled taut by your muscles.

His sharp eyes narrow accusingly, and you bristle at the look, trying to summon up the energy to glare at him. “Did you eat breakfast this morning?” He asks sharply, and you grimace, knowing he won’t approve of the answer. But you really don’t have the energy to lie, either. “No, I didn’t,” you sigh, “I was feeling sick.” Something flickers behind his eyes, but it’s gone too quickly for you to even attempt to recognise. “You were probably feeling sick from hunger,” he mutters, as if it’s obvious, arms folding over his chest, leaning back against a tree. “Using magic can take up a lot of energy, even if it doesn’t feel like it. You should have—”

“I know the difference,” you hiss, lip twitching up in the beginnings of a snarl, before once again flattening out, and you sit back on the stump, uncaring if it pisses him off. You hope it does.

“Do you?” He muses, a bladed edge to his tone that has your stomach tightening, glancing at him warily from across the clearing. You tense as he pushes off from the tree, then vanishes, and you jump as he appears on your other side, peering down at you, unimpressed. “You know how to tell when your magic is draining you? Because those are some pretty big steps to have made seemingly overnight.” Your lips purse, averting your gaze, sullenly looking away. “That’s what I thought.”

“I know the difference between hungry sickness and—” you falter, but manage to finish the sentence, “…and being unwell.”

Eris pauses, and you want to meet his gaze and glare at him, but your head just feels too heavy on your shoulders, and the general fatigue hasn’t been aided by the light sheen of sweat that’s been layering your body each morning, before you’ve wobbly stumbled to the washroom, clutching your stomach. You’ve yet to actually regurgitate anything though—your one blessing. It’s like those initial months after the Cauldron all over again.

“Look at me,” he instructs, and you glare at the ground, irritation growing in your chest. It wouldn’t hurt him to be a little more gentle with his attitude. His demeanour, in general. A curse sits, unspoken, at the tip of your tongue when he grips your jaw, angling your chin upward so he can examine you. Again your lips twitch in a slight snarl, but the energy fails quickly. Amber eyes sweep over your features, and you avert your gaze when his own settle intensely on yours. He releases you after a too-long moment, allowing you your space again, and you glare at him. “What was that for?”

“You look worse than usual,” he answers flatly.

You glare at him resentfully, unable to muster up the laugh you usually would whenever he makes a comment like that. Instead you just feel irritated. His brows narrow further, “how much have you been sleeping recently?” He pushes. You shrug, briefly glancing away.

“A normal amount. I’m fine, just let me sit down, it’s not that big of an issue if I’m not standing, right?”

“Are you coming up for your cycle?”

The bones in your hands creak, groaning with strain and you hiss as pain flares weakly beneath your gloves at your fingertips. You tuck your hands under your arms, trying to soothe their sting as you glare at him. “Do not ask me that,” you snap, legs crossing on the tree stump. You half expect his lips to quirk at the easily given reaction, but his brow dips a little. “You don’t have to give me a direct answer,” he says at last, a touch gentler than before, but still stern. “Just answer if it could be related.”

You hesitate at the tone, jaw still tight with tension, but you swallow thickly. “No,” you manage quietly, “not for another few months, at least.”

“Then as much as you disagree, it would be a good idea to eat first, then see if you improve,” he replies, back to his usual drawl, laced with distaste. Enough to almost have your lips curving a little at their edges. “So we’ll be going back to have lunch right this second,” you muse, glancing up at him, “and you aren’t going to set some stupid challenge for me to fulfil beforehand. Right? Because that would be very impractical.”

His amber eyes glint with something you’ve decided is the closest he’ll get to open amusement, brow raising slightly. “Why waste a good motive?” He counters, “looks like you’re catching on.” You force a groan, if only in attempts to lighten the mood from whatever dark grave it had settled into, and you reluctantly get to your feet, taking it slow incase your head starts swimming again. “What is it this time?” Eris nods to the tree that looks to have been recently cut down, the counterpart to the trunk you’re sat upon. “I want you to try touching the bark,” he instructs, and you look at him quizzically. Seems easy enough.

You watch him questioningly as you stand and make your way over to the tree, putting your hands down.

“Done?” You say slowly, confusion blatant in the furrow of your brows as you stare at him.

Eris stares at you blankly, before raising his palm to cover the lower portion of his features, concealing his mouth. “Using your magic,” he adds disbelievingly, mouth still covered.

You blink, then flush with embarrassment, hand covering your own mouth as laughter bubbles up from your chest. “Oh,” you manage, shoulders shaking lightly, not helped by the matching amusement reflecting in his amber eyes—amusement he’s struggling to conceal. “I thought—” you break off, a smile stretching wide behind your palm, chest stuttering with mirth. “I thought you meant I just had to touch it.” He shakes his head, seemingly beyond speech. “You want to see how the bark reacts when I touch it with my magic,” you clarify, nodding your head, still trying to tamp down the laughter that’s heating your eyes faintly. He confirms with a slight nod of his head, and you take a deep breath, trying to sober up. “I see,” you nod again, at last recovered enough to lower your hands to remove your gloves, a smile still faintly curving your lips. “I’ll give it a go.”

“Why would I ask you to touch a tree?” Eris asks from somewhere at your back, tone almost settled back to his usual drawl, dripping of disapproval. “I’m tired,” you reply, not nearly as practiced as he is at keeping your tone neutral as you glance at him over your shoulder, “you should have clarified better.” Eris shakes his head, before nodding to the tree trunk.

You take in a breath, returning to look at the bark—what would happen if you touched it?

Closing your eyes briefly, you steady out your breaths, inhaling slow and deep, feeling your shoulders lose their tension before reopening your eyes. Focusing on the bark again now that you’re settled. “What should I do?” You ask, not taking your gaze from the tree or your hands.

“Try thinking about different things, exploring how they make you feel,” he replies steadily. How helpful, you think, but leave the comment unvoiced—you’re trying to concentrate. You think about how the light had appeared before, when he’d gotten you to briefly sustain it. It had hurt at first, you’d had the chance to realise, but after the initial rush of pain, the creak of bones and your groaning carpals, it had faded more into a slight tingle, like your fingers had fallen asleep, wrapped in a vague warmth.

You swallow thickly, thinking about the flat-topped ring in your pocket, the absence of weight in your ears, how they correlate. You don’t regret the decision to sell them off, to your slight surprise. More indifferent to the change, if not slightly excited at your choice. Doing something for yourself, on your own, that nobody knew about. It’s nice, having secrets.

“Now press them to the bark,” Eris instructs, and you look down in surprise to spot the faint greenish-gold glow weaving between your fingers—almost like fish slowly weaving throughout water as they struggle upstream, but less frenetic. Slowly, keeping your breathing steady, you press your palms against the bark, palms shaking slightly as the light flickers, almost flinching slightly as it hesitantly makes contact with the new surface.

You jerk away when something lances up your wrist, stinging pain spearing beneath your skin as the tang of copper bursts in the air. The magic extinguishes in an instant, snuffed out with a single recoiling thought, and your breathing loses its pattern as you glance down at your right palm. What looks like a popped blister sits on the heel of your hand, except the liquid that gleams had a red tint to it, mixed with blood. You sigh heavily, left hand holding your right wrist lightly, thumb pressing the flesh just below the blister, watching as blood rises to the surface. The skin around it is flakier than before, a little discoloured, and you spot a mole at the knuckle of your little finger, poking meekly out from the skin, as if worried over being spotted and pulled away.

Eris walks up to your side, glancing down at the bark, the absence of any sort of change. It looks exactly the same. “I guess nothing happened,” you hedge, glancing warily down at the tree, searching for some kind of change.

Eris is quiet, and you at last turn to peer up at him, wondering what he’s thinking. His silence is waring. Amber eyes latch with your own, narrowed and slightly impatient, before the emotion is swiftly wrapped away. “I had hoped to make more progress,” he muses lowly, and you regard him with caution at the hushed tone. His eyes gleam with something you can’t figure out, wariness intensifying as he pulls something from his pocket—a small silk pouch.

You tilt your head, brows furrowed, “what is that?”

His lips sharpen at the edges, and tension coils beneath your skin—that type of expression is never good. “Open it,” he instructs simply, and you cautiously take it from his fingers, eyeing him again before carefully pulling the strings open, tipping the contents out into your palm. You blink as you take in the smooth band of metal, silver and gleaming against the flaws of your skin. “A…ring?” You ask, peering up at him questioningly. He nods, and you suppress your jolt when his fingers brush over your knuckles, plucking the band up and watching you intently as he smoothly slides it down to the base of the pointer finger on your left hand.

His demeanour has noticeably shifted, and your brows narrow further, suspicion roiling in your gut.

“It’ll help with keeping your magic calmer,” he explains lowly, secretively, and you manage a nod, confusion running rampant in your blood stream. “How so?” You ask, glancing down at the band, his fingers still wrapped around your wrist to keep you from moving. “You have a habit of straining yourself to keep the full force of your power from coming out,” he answers, thumb brushing your knuckle, and this time you glare up at him. His mouth only sharpens, amber eyes glinting with something that has the hairs raising at the nape of your neck. “I’m sure you’re familiar with how the Illyrians use siphons—so their raw type of magic doesn’t destroy everything around them?” You nod, tension lessening, again glancing down to the band. “Think of it like that—now you don’t have to waste concentration on keeping it all in check.”

He releases your hand, and you pull it closer to look at the silver, angling your head a little, understanding this must have been what that exchange had been about, when he’d gone down that dim, dark alleyway into the hidden chamber. “So it’s…a magic ring?” You ask, brows scrunched together as you look up at him. He raises a brow, “how astute of you.” You glare, lips curving faintly at the familiar intonation.

You swallow, stepping back a little, nodding your head. “I guess…” you breathe deeply, “as good a time as any.” You pull the flat-topped ring from your own pocket, and extend it toward him. “I saw this the other day in the market,” you say honestly, watching as his expression shifts, brow raising as he opens his palm. “It reminded me of you a little, and I probably won’t see you over the solstice anyway, so might as well give it to you now.”

Eris takes the ring, examining it, the small carving of the fox set in sterling silver. “A rather unique gift,” he muses, making the edges of your mouth curve.

“If you hate it, you don’t have to wear it,” you say, smiling lightly, “I just wanted to get it.” Though to your surprise, he doesn’t seem to despise it, sliding it over the thumb of his right hand—it seems to actually fit.

That viper’s smile returns to his sharpened mouth, eyes glinting again. “I don’t think your family would approve of a gift like this,” he drawls, more clearly than before, causing you to cock your head in question.

Lips fashion themselves into a razor-sharp grin, the expression more vulpine than fae.

“Isn’t that right, Shadowsinger?”

————

Eris raises his gaze to the forest, how the trees had whispered to him, calling out about the figure stalking their movements. Really, the shadowsinger should know not to hunt outside his own territory. The hulking, shadowy figure steps silently out into the clearing, with a quiet that’s been well-earned by the Spymaster of the Night Court.

Powerful wings are pulled to his body in traditional Illyrian fashion, save for the darkness wreathing the gleaming talons at their peaks, cold hazel eyes clashing with Eris’ own. Marking what the Spymaster has come for. It’s proximity to the male he hates viciously, bloodily, gruesomely.

“Shouldn’t you know not to sneak around in the shadows by now?” Eris drawls, hands settling around its shoulders, feeling stone-tight tension beneath his palms. Its magic fading, unable to winnow two people away, so left trapped in the clearing as the male prowls closer.

“Eris,” the Spymaster greets coldly, darkness unspooling upon the ground he treads, coming to a stop at the edge of the clearing. Not close enough for hand-to-hand combat, but too nearby for a proper display of magic. At least he’s smart enough to recognise he’s at a disadvantage in a foreign court—uninvited, at that. “Shouldn’t you know the consequences of displacing a member of Rhys’ court?” The Spymaster questions, lethally quiet.

Tremors flutter beneath Eris’ hands, still gripping her shoulders to keep her in place, and he glances down, only to find her already watching him. If it weren’t for the tremors, she would be as still as death. Her brows lifted and slightly curved, mouth pointed down at the edges. Betrayal stark in her normally bright eyes.

“You’re clearly uninformed,” Eris muses, pulling away from her scared eyes to meet cutting hazel. “This is a perfectly amicable meeting, isn’t it, cygnet?”

The Spymaster’s canines flash at the pet-name, the blatant taunt, the insinuation he’s made that she would choose himself over the Spymaster. That well-concealed wrath suffers a blow when she raises her hands to grip his wrists, nothing demanding about the touch—it’s a weak hold. As if asking for attention.

“Amicable or not,” the Spymaster says, expression stony, “you’ll return her. Unless you want Rhys to know about this abduction?” Eris shrugs, amusement sharpening his mouth as he selects his words carefully, “I’m not her keeper. She will return when she likes.” By the looks of it, the arrow lands, pupils constricting as the Spymaster takes a menacing step closer.

————

Your ears have hollowed out, stomach swallowing your heart. A quiet kind of panic tightening through your chest, pulse spiking. Dread sluicing through the rope holding you taut.

You’re staring up at him, holding on with as much strength as you can manage as a strange emotion rushes through your blood, softening your muscles until you’re struggling to stand, pushing every pleading word you’ve ever read into your eyes, silently begging for him to do something. To keep you from facing him on your own.

You know how easy it is for him to shatter you.

Amber eyes lower to yours, walls risen against Azriel’s presence, and your fingers stutter over the cuffs of his tunic, before the last of your strength drains. They’re glinting again with that challenge, and in the very back of your mind you can understand he’s using this as just another training exercise, but it’s hard to focus on through the ringing in your ears, that strange quiet that’s so loud it drowns out every other thought, like a thousand whispers hissing instructions too swiftly, too viciously for you to make them out, coming together in a swirling spiral that’s pulling you under.

Eris’ mouth is moving, eyes peering at something behind you, but you’re fine not hearing. Would prefer to fade from the world, to slip away quietly, unnoticed and un-missed. But then amber again returns to you, and with it sound comes crashing in too. “Pack up,” Eris orders, and you blink, his hands tightening on your shoulders as he feels the slight sway of your body.

“She’ll take a while,” Eris drawls, glancing back at the Shadowsinger—your stomach lurches—who remains a heavy presence at your back. “You may be unwelcome, but let’s not waste this opportunity. Using your General’s absence as an excuse not to meet has lost its worth. You will suffice.”

————

You feel half-awake as you pack your things, watching from some far away place as you fold clothes meticulously, with much more care than you usually would, taking your time gathering the few items you brought.

Clothes, an empty blue box, the thickly bound volume. A thin wooden box about the length of your arm, a note attached atop.

Use it wisely.

You pack the box in your bag, recognising the elegant script.

————

Azriel had followed silently, concealed within Eris’s shadow as he’d strode through the stretching hallways, leading the way to his own chambers, where they will be able to speak freely and most importantly, privately. Tension had simmered beneath his war-roughened skin the entire time, disliking even having to blend his shadows with the heirling’s, but it’s an intimacy he’s forced to yield.

The room Eris takes him to is big, to say the least, and open, with a large bed against a wall, a wooden chest at its foot, his desk adjacent so natural light fills the cavernous room—one that’s above ground. It’s here he emerges from shadow, filling space just beside the large wooden chest, an unlit fire quite a way to his left. Eris takes his time walking around the desk, sitting down comfortably, having the nerve to look relaxed—prick.

“So,” Eris begins, and Azriel bites against the urge to grind his teeth at the smug tone. “She ran away from you. Took her long enough.”

“How long have you been planning this?” Azriel asks coldly, completing a triple check of the room, making sure there’s no one else around. “You act like it was my idea,” the autumn heir drawls, successfully snaring his attention, something foul rising at the back of his throat at the implication. Likely the confirmation he needs that she had indeed left of her own volition. A muscle ticks in his jaw.

“You want me to believe she came all this way on a hope that you’d provide temporary asylum?” Azriel asks, rooting deeper. “She has a smart head on her shoulders,” Eris drawls, amusement glinting in sharp, amber eyes, “she knows how to bargain.”

His blood ices over, skin turning cold at the wording, demeanour plunging as his shadows deepen. “You made a bargain with her?” Azriel growls, pulse spiking. If a bargain has already been made… But Eris waves his hand, enough of a light dismissal for Azriel to figure she hasn’t mentioned Elain’s vision to him. One small ray of light amongst the storming thunder clouds she’s already brought upon herself.

“Do you find it so unbelievable that she might be capable of making arrangements on her own? Why do you assume I had any hand in it?” Eris drawls, making that glittering rage sharpen into razor-tipped icicles, poised to carve and slice. “You’re a conniving bastard,” Azriel says lowly, violence glinting in his hazel eyes, “she wouldn’t have come to you without some prompting.”

“You think I tricked her?” Eris muses, a trace of humour in his tone, Azriel’s brows narrowing with detestation. “What would I get out of that, unless she was complicit? I have no way of forcing her magic out of her, she has to want that on her own—as much as that might irritate Rhys.”

Loathing simmers in Azriel’s chest, but he remains quiet, allowing Eris to talk so he can gather as much information as he can from both sides. So he can compare her side with his later.

“I’m sure after Nesta Archeron, Rhys would be eager to find out what other weapons he might have at his disposal.”

“She isn’t a weapon,” Azriel snarls lowly, fury held back by straining iron manacles.

“But she could become one,” Eris counters, tone shifting to something more serious, and Azriel stiffens. “The timing’s a bit strange, don’t you think? Her magic only now coming through? After two years?”

“That’s not for you to speculate on.”

“Even without an alliance, it is a matter of concern,” Eris growls, brows narrowing as ire blazes in his eyes, glowing like freshly forged steel. “Why doesn’t she know anything?”

Azriel growls in warning, violence itching at his fingers, fists aching to slam down. Sparks crackle in the air, his own intentions seemingly reflected in the male before him. “You don’t have the luxury to ignore this pathway,” Eris growls lowly, “choosing to turn a blind eye would be damning.”

“She has her own problems to deal with,” Azriel snarls lowly, “you do not get to make that call.”

“I will make the call if Rhys doesn’t,” Eris snarls back, canines flashing viciously, “she could use some toughening up.”

“You don’t know enough to make an informed choice,” Azriel mutters coldly.

“Then Rhys had better hurry up. It’s not as though he’s unaccustomed to having to make decisions like this. What’s taking him so long?”

Azriel keeps still, features neutral, refusing to let even a hint of emotion appear in his blank expression.

Eris’ eyes narrow, sensing he’s being denied information. Vulpine senses picking up on a weak spot. Unnervingly keen. Then he blinks, leaning back in his chair, torso losing tension. “You haven’t told him.” Despite the utter neutrality, Azriel knows he’s figured it out. The heirling nods, a cynical curve to his sharpened mouth. “She didn’t give the impression she’d willingly display her failures to you.”

“They aren’t failures,” Azriel mutters, ice burning in his eyes as he watches Eris with a glacial look.

“No? Because the control over her magic was pretty pathetic to me,” Eris replies lowly.

Azriel snarls, low and threatening, shadows concentrating into a darkness worthy of the Night Court’s Spymaster, deep and deadly as they writhe in warning. “I didn’t realise she had you so tightly wrapped around her flaky little finger,” Eris croons, and darkness rears back, preparing to strike, when three quiet taps are landed to the door, meagre and unimposing.

————

You peek your head into his chambers, bag slung over your shoulder as you pause on the threshold.

Tension is blatant in Azriel’s shoulders, wings slightly flared, an icy emotion tucked between the stern set of his brows, shadows darker—more frenetic—than they usually are. Looking over to Eris, you can see how he’s leaned back in his chair, that taunting glint in his naturally piercing gaze, and you can guess fairly easily the conversation they were having was not a friendly one—even without the aid of body language.

Maybe they were discussing Court matters.

“I—…Should I wait out—”

“Come in,” Eris orders, cutting you off, and your brows narrow a little at the tone, before softening out again, remembering who else is present. You shut the door behind yourself, turning your back to them to make sure it clicks shut quietly, then walking further into the room, stood a little distance from Azriel, not wanting to encroach on his space while he’s surely furious with you. At the very least immensely disappointed.

“Took you long enough,” Eris drawls, bringing your attention away from Azriel to meet his cutting gaze. Well, your eyes meet his. It’s practically impossible to not focus on the male at your right. You’re not sure if you're imagining the displeasure rippling from him, but you can only hope Eris hasn’t intentionally stirred things up. You know you won’t be able to protect yourself against whatever words he has for you after your abrupt departure.

“You haven’t left any tatters behind?” Eris asks, and a slight scowl dips your brows.

“I have everything,” you reply, readjusting the strap of the bag on your shoulder.

“Excellent. Then you can leave.”

You blink at the abrupt dismissal, glancing at him warily. “Weren’t you discussing something?” You ask Eris hesitantly, cautious about prodding where you aren’t welcome. “We were,” Eris replies, a viper’s smile on his sharp lips, amber eyes cutting to the male at your right. “But it appears your Spymaster doesn’t think you’re trustworthy enough.” It’s obviously a manipulation of truth, but that doesn’t make it easy to hear, heart hollowing out, spine losing a bit of rigidity.

“And who could blame him,” Eris continues, “you haven’t exactly been particularly honest with him, have you, cygnet?”

Your lips purse, averting your eyes from both of them, peering at the floorboards to your left, shame tightening around your throat. “Seems logical enough,” you say quietly, managing to keep your voice steady. You’d rather vanish right then and there, wiped clean from memory and existence than allow a tremor into your voice.

You’ve gotten yourself into this situation. Self-pity won’t fix anything.

“Then that is that,” Eris muses, pulling you from your thoughts. Azriel shifts, not saying another word to either of you as he makes for the door, and you glance at Eris a little longer, searching for a way back. He quirks a taunting brow, resting his jaw on his right hand, the flat-topped band of sterling silver catching the light with the motion. Your thumb brushes the ring on your own finger, before you turn, making for the door where Azriel’s waiting to take you back.

Back to the Night Court.

Back to Velaris.

Back to your family.

Back to be judged.

————

It was unnerving how alone you’d felt on the way out of the palace. Even knowing he was present, slipping through shadows, you couldn’t sense a single thing, and on more than one occasion had glanced around, worriedly trying to find him—but nothing.

It wasn’t until you passed the walls, heading out into the forest again that he emerged—silent and looming—unable to hear his footsteps even when he was right beside you. Unnervingly ghost-like.

You wait for him to speak, to say whatever it is that’ll inevitably bring tears to your skin, but he’s completely silent, leading the way. Knowing you’ll follow behind. Knowing you won’t speak to him until he initiates.

You’d been brought here by winnowing, but he makes no move to wrap either of you in his shadows, and a small part of you whispers that he wouldn’t want you to contaminate them. You try to ignore that part, but even the quietest voice will be heard over silence. Instead the tales spin deeper, that he hadn’t even wanted to retrieve you, content to have you out of the way, out of the Night Court, away from his home. At least that way there’d be no chance of his prophesied death coming to pass.

He’d be safe, and you wouldn’t be bothering him.

Wouldn’t be bothering any of them.

He walks deeper into the forest, silent and steadfast, while you watch as his boots tread through the fallen leaves, not daring to look any higher in case it disgusts him further. You have no concept of how long you follow after him for—long enough your feet begin to ache lightly, but you push through it—silently waiting for the conversation to start. For the first question to be asked. For the first blow to be landed.

Azriel doesn’t stop when you try to shift your bag to the other shoulder, your right one aching, and something in your stomach drops when your pace slows but his remains constant, so you hurriedly finish the switch, and make an effort to catch up, careful not to trip. Hunger gnaws at your bones, but you keep quiet, not wanting to interrupt his pace. It’s not until your stomach audibly protests that he comes to a pause, glancing over his shoulder to you, and you swiftly duck your head, averting your eyes from his painfully familiar hazel set. Breaths deepening as you come to a stop with him.

“When did you eat last?” He asks. The first words he’s said to you.

“Yesterday,” you answer quietly, pressure tight across your chest as you try to keep your breaths quiet but even. “Do you have food on you?” He asks. You nod. You’d wrapped up a pastry from breakfast, it being the only thing you’d be able to savour. Even years later, the habit of not wasting food still remains prominent.

His boots shift, turning to face forward as he begins walking again. You follow silently, seeing no point in nodding or replying. It’s not like you’re going to do anything else. “There’s a clearing up here. You can eat there.”

Azriel pauses beside a particularly large oak tree, and you swallow, and you habitually consider where the least offensive place to sit would be. So you’re nicely out of his way. The ground is muddy, so you’re forced to follow beside his footsteps to the oak, setting as silently as you can on one large branch that’s gnarled and shoved through the earth to curl into a large seat.

Your pulse spikes, wondering if this will be where you have the one-sided discussion, perching the bag on your legs, searching through for the little pastry. It’s made harder by your bare hands, how every piece of fabric seems to bite at your skin with each brush, piercing painfully as you search, until you spot the orange scarf, pulling it out to find the pastry wrapped in a napkin.

He doesn’t say anything, but you feel like you’re wasting time.

You peer at the pastry in your hands, not particularly keen on eating it. You’re close enough to nausea as is, and don’t want to tempt fate with giving your stomach something to regurgitate. But it would be weird to put it away now, so you’ll just have to take small bites. Hope that you can stomach it. A few minutes pass, but you’ve hardly made a noticeable dent in the food, guilt weighing on your bones, pausing between each mouthful to peer around the clearing dully.

Your fingers fumble a little when Azriel moves, settling on the root beside you, your muscles stitching themselves taut, and you hastily shift yourself tighter so he has his space. Almost dropping the pastry in your stuttering movements.

He’s quiet for a bit, and you swallow thickly, attempting to focus on the food before you so as not to stare, but internally you can feel the beats passing, heart ticking tighter…tighter…

“Why did you leave?” He asks quietly.

You still, able to feel the narrow wooden box digging into your thighs. Pausing as the tension abates a little, like how you imagine it would feel to watch an arrow loose from a bow, watching it arc in the sky, then slowly plummet down, seeking out its target. The breath that would breathe out in relief once it embedded itself in flesh, those few, stretching moments at last having come to an end, and one can relax into the clarity of the pain. The certainty of the wound.

“I wanted to get out,” you mumble thickly, keeping the shake from your voice.

“So you went to him?” Azriel asks. You head lowers a little in sorrow.

Where else were you supposed to go?

“You could have asked to be taken somewhere,” he says quietly, and guilt tightens itself around your throat. Is there any way to explain to him why you’d left when you hardly understand it yourself? It had been a crescendo of nerves, of bottled up worries tightening with pressure, like air being blown into a brown paper bag until it burst. Is there any way to tell him you’d like to be able to ask things of him, but in truth you’d rather be slowly pulled apart by pressure than worry him with pointless tasks that only serve your benefit? How can you ever hope to speak with him honestly, when your very heart seems to be the thing warning you away—that same heart that wants to press into him, to beg and cry for forgiveness and reassurance.

“At least have the decency to answer,” he says quietly when you don’t respond, and you feel the small tremor that shudders up your throat, fearing the oncoming disaster. “I wanted to go on my own,” you get out, words softer than a whisper.

He’s quiet, and you wonder if that’s the end of the discussion for now.

But, “did you think at all about what the consequences would be from going to him?” He asks, gaze ahead, but attention pressing down on you. “Or did you forget you have people around you, that your actions impact.”

Your grip loosens on the pastry, choosing to wrap it back up in the napkin, fingers shaking slightly. A lump rising in your throat.

“Answer,” he murmurs, promptingly.

“I just wanted to go,” you whisper hoarsely, fingers wringing together. “I thought—… I thought it would be better if I was fur—… If I was gone.”

“Are you going to tell Mor where you went?” He questions softly. “Or did you not think about that part either?”

“I made progress,” you try, raising your gaze to his. “I can summon it, if I concentrate.”

His lips remain unmoving, but his eyes…gods, his eyes. You betrayed her, you know. All of them.

Breath catches in your throat, and you have to look away. Unable to face him. It. Any of it.

“Why is it so bad?” You ask quietly. “All I did was leave for a little under a week. I was trying to get better.”

“Stop. Lying,” he mutters lowly, blood freezing in your veins, fingers wringing together. Silence ticks by, and you wonder if he can hear the humiliatingly loud pulse of your heart, erratic and stumbling as it usually does around him. You don’t think he’s ever so obviously shown what he’s thinking, how he’s feeling.

Why is this the first way you see it?

Why is this the first time he allows it?

“Just tell me what you want,” you ask quietly, voice faltering as you stare at him helplessly. “You’re never happy with anything I do,” you manage, trembling with growing turmoil, “so please, just tell me what you want, and put me out of my misery.”

He exhales harshly, leaning back into the trunk, lips tugged down at the corners, reproach tucked between his brows, so rarely softened by charm anymore. At least not while you’re around. Almost never when you’re around.

“I don’t feel I should have to tell you how you fucked up here,” he replies lowly, and you push back on the flinch at the crude wording. “You made a bad choice.”

“Imagine how much worse the others were,” you reply lowly, a hint of resentment—not directed at him—present in your tone. He stiffens at your side, then his gaze slides slowly over to you, lethal and condemning, but it’s like you can’t look away. You physically can’t duck your head, or shy away. “You’re really joking at a time like this?”

You meet his eyes fully, presently, taking him in against the darkening sky, winter sun already on the way out for the day, the chill more than prominent, but you don’t dare reach for the scarf in your bag. “Tell me what you want,” you repeat softly, no louder than a last breath on dying lips.

“I want you to be honest,” he replies, brows narrowing, “for once, apparently.”

“About what?”

“Why you went to him.” He nearly spits, unable to entirely keep his ire at bay, something passing behind his eyes.

You’re quiet. Silent.

Then you lean back into the trunk of the tree, head tilting back into the rough bark, hands settling numbly in your lap. Shoulders slope, and you peer up into the grey sky, gloomy and heavy with unshed tears. Thick and thunderous. Fitting for the storm that’s on its way.

“Please don’t be angry,” you whisper, hardly a breath from your lips, a prayer whisked away by the static air. He’s silent, and your throat closes up. “Azriel,” your murmur, swallowing thickly. “Please.”

Moments tick by, stretching and warping as your heart thumps heavily in your chest, utterly bewitched, utterly at his mercy. It’s exhausting.

He sighs, and you try not to stiffen as he glances over to you, feeling that familiar prickle of skin as lovely hazel settles on you. A few warm rays making it through the dim clouds before being frozen off by the icy breeze. Winter’s most definitely on its way.

“I won’t be angry,” he murmurs softly. “Just…talk to me. Like you used to.”

Your arms fold over your chest, closing in on yourself, feet pressing together as you hunch over the bag in your lap, peering at the muddy ground. The smell of parchment rises from your memories, dusty and familiar, but lacking the warmth of nostalgia. Like the bitterness of a tea left to steep for too long, so it dries out your throat, eyes watering from its ticklish bite.

“I couldn’t do it on my own,” you admit quietly. Fingers brushing your knuckles. Raw and flaky.

The thoughts swirl in the back of your mind, ready to roar and rage, becoming so loud they’re deafening, suddenly cutting quiet so fast you have no desire to understand what it means when the waters draw back. What it means when the sea itself shrinks away, leaving a barren and washed-up beach.

“But, the idea of trying in front of you…any of you…and then falling flat at such a small hurdle…” You look to your left, away from him, pulling tighter into yourself. Can anything good come of this kind of honestly? With him?

“I don’t have much anymore, Azriel,” you breathe lowly, struggling silently with the humiliating vulnerability. How bare you are, just waiting for steel to pierce your skin. Like tossing yourself over a cliff and hoping the jagged rocks far below will soften your fall.

“I just wanted to keep my dignity. The scraps left of it after…what happened…”

Your toes curl in your shoes, feet crossed, feeling as though your heart is trying to cave in on itself, swallowed by a vacuum suctioning you back down with the force of a flooded spring river.

“So it was better to fail in front of Eris?”

“But I don’t owe him success,” you argue uselessly, eyes squeezing shut in attempts to keep the tears at bay as your head falls into your hands. “I don’t—…I don’t owe him anything.”

“You don’t owe us anything either,” he replies.

“I owe my entire life to you,” you nearly hiss, spine curving in as your brows cramp together, jaw wound so tight you feel like a tooth might crack beneath the intense pressure, nails pressing into the soft skin of your brow.

“Feyre was the one who saved the three of you,” he reminds quietly, slowly, but you’re shaking your head. Staring down into your lap, tension rippling so clearly from your bunched up form Azriel considers laying a hand on your trembling shoulder as if to pull you from a trance. “No. I know, but…” Your fingers press into your eyes, unable to articulate what you can feel in your stomach. “If she hadn’t gone to Night,” you breathe heavily, shakily, “if she hadn’t gone here, we’d still be back there, entirely human, and I—… I wasn’t going to last much longer there.”

Azriel pauses at your side, taking on the information silently. “You were ill?” He asks softly—he’d had no idea about that. Your shoulders shake, and he can’t tell if it’s with laughter or muffled sobs. Maybe a little of both.

“Maybe,” you whisper, “I don’t know enough about medicine to say, but I…” You shake your head again, and he’s able to sense that’s as much as he’ll get. It’s been over two years, and this is the first he’s hearing of it even in vague detail—he knows this isn’t something he can press.

“It doesn’t matter now,” you say with rueful conviction, palms pushing wetness from your cheeks, spine straightening before collapsing back against the trunk. Tired and exhausted. “We’re out. I don’t need to do anything now.”

Azriel’s brow furrows. “You’re content to stay in your room and rot away?”

You rest your head in your hands, leaning over the bag, staring down into its contents. What else is there?

“You could spend time with your family, for starters,” he replies and you aren’t sure if you imagine the note of impatience in his voice. “Your sisters worry about you a lot. It’s not good for you to be up in that room all the time.”

“Well it seems every time I come out of that room I somehow end up getting in your way.”

“Is that what this is about?” He asks abruptly, and your lips press together, lower one curving over. “I thought we sorted that out,” he says quietly, calming the sharpness of his tone, hearing it even in his own ears, glancing over your hunched figure. “We did,” you reply, muffled by your arms, voice turning watery as you ease in a short breath. “We did.”

A beat passes, then tension stutters in your chest as he gently lays his palm over your shoulder. “Please just talk to me,” he says softly, and you struggle to keep your breaths even as your lungs shudder beneath that touch. After spending so long wanting it…craving it…convinced feeling how gentle his touch could be over and against your skin would fix everything…even temporarily… You try to swallow the lump in your throat. “If not me, then Elain, or Feyre, or Nesta,” he pauses, “…Bas.”

You aren’t paying much attention, though, thankful for the way your mind melts beneath the warmth of his palm. How heat is sinking into your skin, slowly spreading through your shoulder as your muscles thaw. Pressure is lessened, and the tension that had been stitching the tendon taut loosens, allowing breath the ease in and out of your lungs with tiring relief. You could deflate with fatigue. Just turn limp and boneless, better for absorbing impact than having it crack against you.

“Just talk with us some more so this doesn’t happen again,” he urges quietly. “Come down to the river house—you know Feyre keeps your room open—or join us for dinner. At least try. If that doesn’t work, we can find something else.”

You don’t reply. Just remain tucked away from the world. Content to remain within your small shell as long as you can keep that warmth on your shoulder.

The pressure lightens, and your heart hides away as his hand slips from your shoulder, leaving your skin starkly cold with the absence of his presence.

“I’m sorry for what I…for how things transpired. Between…us,” Azriel murmurs, unsure how much to say, to not bring up past pains, especially if they aren’t as healed as you’ve led him to believe. He’s starting to become unsure what to believe about you—he hadn’t ever considered you might run from them. How bad things might have become to force you into that position. Are things that bad?

“I’m sorry, too,” you mumble, voice a little hoarse, and Azriel listens attentively. “I shouldn’t have told you how I felt, in the library. I shouldn’t have made my feelings your problem.”

“They aren’t,” he says softly, but you shake your head as if you haven’t heard him.

“I’m sorry.”

————

He tries speaking twice more on the way back, but the conversations lead nowhere, no longer flourishing as they had, once upon a time. So long in the past they feel coloured by age. Turned stiff and yellow at the edges.

He tries slowing his pace so she’ll walk at his side, but she just drops further back, silently pressing between his footsteps as she trails, head kept down to remain focused on taking one step at a time. The shadow that is cast across her face from the down-tilted angle of her head is deeper than he would have expected.

When he hears her shifting the bag across her shoulders for the third time, he quietly plies the straps from her hands, relieving her of the physical weight. She makes no obvious protest, aside from the stiffening of her body at his approach, but he can spot the relief when he takes the bag. Moving it to his own shoulder, he can make out what feels like a wooden box, the kind made to keep a weapon from being damaged. The thought gives rise to instinctive alarm.

Why might she have a weapon in her bag?

His shadows subtly shift at his back, rising secretively to examine her. Questions begin rising to his mind: unkind, unfair questions that are habitual in his line of work. He tries to shake them off, but they remain firmly rooted in his mind, burrowing deeper with each stride that has the narrow box digging into his side, as if already trying to burrow into his flesh.

How did she know Eris would take her in? How could she possibly guarantee making the trek across Prythian over night would pay off? It’s an absurd risk to take, regardless of circumstance. He can think of answers to those questions, but they don’t sit well with him. An answer to why she might be so familiar with Eris supposing they’ve spoken less than a handful of times. A certainty she must have possessed to take the risk that isn’t one she would have from that little contact. And if she’s hiding how much contact she might’ve had with him…

She was already hiding her magic from them…then there’s the prophecy too. Bas, and the illness. Why were these things she hadn’t mentioned? He can understand the recent silence, but why not before…? Regardless of immediate relevance, it shows she’s prone to secret-keeping.

Azriel eases in a steadying breath, descending into a calm, cold mental state. Sinking into indifferent objectivity.

She isn’t stupid. Far from it, having spent so much time in the library, where there’s all kinds of information just ripe for the picking. And Eris isn’t stupid, either. If he saw a weak spot, he’d go for it. And if Eris went for her, would she be able to resist something she was unable to see for what it truly was?

Azriel’s skin goes a little cold, reminded of the prophecy.

He will die, and it will be by her hand.

He supposes he can only control how much impact it will have on those around him. If Eris has managed to wrap her up in some slow-moving scheme…but that’s just speculation. Still, his instincts are telling him something is wrong with the narrow wooden box, one that must have come from Eris. A box fashioned like those to hold weapons. From Eris. To the female who will kill him.

He should ask her what it is.

Azriel would’ve shaken his head if those habits hadn’t been crushed out of him centuries ago. He can’t just ask her if she’s planning to kill him.

But it would allow a chance for her to explain what’s in the weapon case.

But it would alert her to his knowing about the blade inside her bag. She’d wanted to hide her magic from the start, and earlier she’d mentioned she’d gotten further…how much further? If it’s magic any similar to Nesta’s, it would be unwise to have a confrontation here, alone. Still within Autumn Court territory.

But it would be more dangerous to bring her back to Velaris. To bring her back into the beating heart of the Night Court where her detonation would be fatal.

Azriel blinks, and returns back into the waning light of day—it’ll soon be night.

What can he do, really? If he’s destined to die….who is he to try and get in the way of the Mother? Would he kill her to save his own life? Is that what he would do in order to live a little longer, before a new threat looms to end him? He wants to kill her no more than he desires his own death.

But if it came down to it…what would he choose?

His shadows observe her silently, as they had been throughout his internal struggle. He focuses on what he can see, discarding the lens of suspicion that’s been embedded in him as Spymaster, centuries of limited trust having an impact on his mind.

All he sees is a young woman walking through a dark forest, following him off the pathway.

Internally, he sighs—there always seems to be a constant flow of problems as of late, and peace seems to be persistently remaining just out of reach. A few more years, and then there will be peace; a few more political aggressions to navigate, and then they can rest; just one more person to heal, and then they can be happy. When will the peace truly arrive, though? Is it all wishful thinking? An imagined utopia that will make every sin he’s committed acceptable? Is it just his mind finding more excuses to justify the things he’s done in the name of protecting his family and court?

She’s just one more disturbance, keeping peace from settling.

Azriel swallows, thinking heavily. Even if she was out of the way, there would still be everything else to deal with. Will this problem be the last one, or will a new threat fall in to fill the space of the old one? Hasn’t it been long enough, by now? Hasn’t he done enough?

Shadows check on her again, her head hanging silently, those once bright eyes dull and dark as they follow numbly in his footsteps. The female with whom he’d spent so many afternoons with discussing things in the library…where is she? Is he at fault for her disappearance?

Closing his eyes briefly to relieve the ache that’s been slowly building just below his brows, he allows himself to ponder.

Is it pointless to try and salvage their relationship?

Would it be better if she did kill him?

————

The storm clouds have gathered, full and swollen with rain and thunder. No lightening though. Lightening would suggest some kind of magnificence, and there’s nothing magnificent about the cool temperature of your blood, nor the dull buzz in the back of your mind. The overwhelming grey of your surroundings as you emerge from the tunnel.

The air is drier in the Night Court, you vaguely realise. No dampness nor humidity that you’d grown subconsciously accustomed to from less than a week’s stay in Autumn. A small break of sunshine between the dismay grey you’d all grown so accustomed to for the first few months of the year, back when you were human. Weak, fallible humans, but simpler. Quiet and peaceful, even if that silence was from the constant prowl of starvation. It had been easier to bear.

You don’t wait to see if Azriel will try to speak again once he’s flown the both of you back up to the House of Wind, silently turning your back to trace the familiar halls of the House, moving without awareness, muscle memory guiding you down the corridors, past the tables littered with napkins and cutlery, past the shelves displaying pale crockery and silver chalices, past the chest with a few discarded daggers atop, arrowheads littered haphazardly across the surface as if someone had cast them down carelessly.

The room is greyer than you remember, too tidy to be a lived in space, but it has those reminders—the gifts you were given, and you absently touch your earlobe, squeezing it between your finger and thumb.

Azriel pauses at the threshold, taking the bag off his shoulder. Does he know you sold the earrings? Those pretty, pretty earrings? Probably some of the nicest things you could have believed to be your own.

They must be getting tired by now. All of them.

Blonde hair and sparkling eyes pass dully through your mind, and your heart dies a little more, understanding how you’ve ruined the small blessing. There’s no coming back from what you’ve done—not without significant work, at least, and you’re so tired. In your bones, in your eyes, in your mind. You’ve lived through a lot, but thanks to immortality, you have no choice but to live through more. A body being dragged through the mud, carried towards a grave that was never dug.

Azriel’s mouth is moving, has been moving since he removed the bag from his shoulder, but you haven’t been hearing. Mind too tired and numb to manage focus, grasping only basic colours and lines.

He’s looking at you, and you’re looking back, but not into his eyes. His words pass through your mind meaninglessly, and you wonder if you’re real. A strange pressure is wrapping its tingling fingers around your skull, squeezing like you’re wearing a hat that’s a little too tight. It will take a lot of work to fix what you’ve done. A lot of work you can’t manage. A debt that deepens faster than you can repay it. A sink draining faster than you can fill it. Blood cooling faster than you can stop it.

Maybe it would be better to let it cool, for a while.

————

Azriel doesn’t feel comfortable leaving her in the House alone, with that dull look in her eyes.

He had planned to fly back down to the River House, to let Rhys and Feyre know she was back, and she was safe, to give her some space maybe for an hour or so to let her get her bearings again. Not too long alone, though. That look hadn’t been bright. Instead he ends up slumping into one of the boney, wooden chairs in the kitchen, the House already brewing two cups of tea. He reaches out for Rhys, mentally feeling for the hidden bridge kept open. He finds it almost immediately, and an icy wind slams into him in greeting. Cold, swift, and perfectly telling to his brother’s current temperament.

You’re back.

Azriel bites back on the cringe at the ice in his High Lord’s voice—belying fury. He should have put together Rhys would be furious for Feyre, too, for stirring up this kind of stress for his mate.

She’s with me. How is Feyre?

More furious than I am, though I doubt she’ll show you.

There’s a pause, and Azriel steadies himself.

How is she?

It would be good for her to have company. Preferably in the River House, but if not, then having people up here. This time Azriel pauses, before adding, I think the ward on her room should be removed. So she’ll be able to hear that people are around, should she need them.

He’s met with silence, and Azriel wonders if Rhys is repeating the message back to Feyre, or if he’s simply that furious. A small part of him feels resentment at the constant speculation, that if the matter had been left between him and her then it wouldn’t have gotten so blown out of proportion.

We’ll be up in ten minutes, comes the clipped reply, before the mental bridge is severed. Leaving Azriel no choice but to wait in silence. It will likely be Rhys and Feyre coming up then—knowing she isn’t ready to see all of them so suddenly, though they’ve yet to learn where she’s been.

Feyre will go and speak to her sister.

And Rhys will be the one to speak to him.

What a mess.

The tea has a few minutes left of brewing, and he wonders if the House will demand he be the one to take the mug to her, or if it will be delivered on its own. He’s not sure she would appreciate being disturbed right now.

As if his thoughts summoned her however, he hears quiet footsteps out in one of the hallways, reaching his sharp ears even through the closed doors and secure walls. He listens carefully, but she seems to just be pacing around, not coming toward him, or even really going in any particular direction. They pause, the silence heavy, and Azriel pays full attention. Another minute passes, then another, and another, but he couldn’t have missed those familiar footfalls.

After a fourth minute, he hears them again, ever so slightly heavier than before, and then they cut off abruptly. Sound sliced in two as she closes the door to her room.

Azriel glances over to the brewing tea, then blinks when he realises the House has set it on the table within reach. Just one cup, made with milk and sugar—not the way he likes it.

Looking over to the countertop, his mug remains steeping, steam trailing up from the hot liquid. The House seems to be demanding he take her the tea now.

Azriel shifts in his chair. It isn’t a good idea to disturb her again. He’s trying to give her at least these few minutes to herself, before Feyre arrives with Rhys—and that’s a conversation that might very well stretch hours. There’s a lot to discuss, after all. She’ll need her energy, and he’s probably the last person she wants to—

The mug slams down on the table before him, hot liquid spilling over with the force that it was dropped onto the surface.

He stiffens, watching the mug tensely as if the House might spill it onto his lap. The liquid ripples in the mug, splashing from side to side for longer than it should, before reluctantly calming.

Blowing out a breath, Azriel wraps his hand around the mug’s handle, reluctantly standing from the kitchen table.

If the House is being so adamant about giving her the cup, then he supposes he’ll just have to follow.

He still finds it a little strange, how the House came alive after Nesta lived inside it.

————

Silence hums in your ears, so quiet.

You’ve caused them so much trouble. Irreparably ruined your ties to the people you hadn’t wanted to hinder.

Silently, quietly, you move the bag to your bed, able to even hear the stretch of fabric as you raise it from the unnaturally clean floorboards. Opening it, you begin pulling the first thing you see out—the orange scarf form Autumn that has some small crumbs tucked between its folds, smelling faintly of pastry and something damp. One piece at a time, you make the slow trek to and form the wardrobe, feet unfeeling as they tread numbly across the smooth grain of the wood, mindlessly repeating the to and fro, the mechanical movements of unaware motion, folding fabric and hiding it away.

Your fingers bump the box, surprised by the hard collision, having expected to find more fabric, but are instead confronted by the narrow, wooden box. Use it wisely, written on the note in a neat and elegant script. Raising it from the bag, you sit down, hands resting over the surface before slipping your fingers into the indentations for ease of opening, cracking it open to find what’s inside. Eyes ease across the narrow length of wood tucked inside, the softly flared end for it to whistle through the sky.

The world disappears around you as you fall into thought, suctioned inwards by a gentle riptide as you dissolve into your mind. Imagining the blank look in Mor’s eyes when she finds out what you’ve done to her, the wall that will rise up as she sections you off from her life, rightly so, brings a quiet kind of sadness into your chest. A longing that has been numbed and dulled, desaturated by hopelessness. Imagining the dinners, voices chatting merrily around you but never at you, the way she won’t look at you. They are all immortal, and their disgust will reflect their lifespan.

You’ll be stuck. Endlessly dragging you feet after them in attempts to make amends. Stumbling and fumbling carelessly trying to make reparations, but smashing more pieces in your frantic hurry to clean the mess you’ve made. Gazing up from the pit of a well as the icy water slowly drains in, the small pin-prick of daylight so far above there’s no hope even trying to scale the wall. It would be more honourable to drown.

To wipe yourself from memory.

It would be better, you understand. To snuff out your own dwindling light, than force the trouble on them of bearing your sputtering flame.

You walk out into the hallway, quietly, silently. Passing the table with napkins and cutlery set, past the shelves with crockery and cups, past the chest with dull steel and blunt arrowheads. Passing further along, until you pause before the large mirror that’s mounted on the wall. You peer dully into the reflection, deciding to look upon and assign shape to name for what’s been causing all these problems. To see what they think of when burdens are mentioned, to understand where the impatience is directed.

You peer higher, the reflection skewed as you meet your own eyes in the blade’s polished steel, held above the mirror’s frame.

Time warps, and you look through the drawers. A few daggers, some unused sketchbooks, a piece of yellow wool, a ball of string. You check the second draw. Some folded napkins, more arrowheads, a shard of porcelain, a thimble, a discarded marble. You check the third draw. Some salts, spices, dried leaves, matching Illyrian blades, pots of ink, a copper coin. You check the fourth draw. Crisp bedsheets, off-white pillowcases, a dented metal mug, a small container of some kind, one arrowhead, a crossbow.

You return to your room with the ball of string and the empty crossbow.

Swallowed in the silence of the bedroom, hidden behind the wards.

The snare is easy to set up, directions still vivid in your mind and for a few short moments, you allow yourself to settle into the certainty of following through with those instructions. Encountering a bit of trouble with how to keep the tension of the string with no earth, but your mind works quickly, weighing the string taut with the one book from your shelf, and a square box containing a mechanical universe. Making sure the string is just tight enough so the faintest touch will snap the tension loose.

You glance at the string on the floor, eyes catching on the small painting on your desk.

You slot the arrow into the crossbow with a satisfying click.

The ash stings your fingertips.

You stand with your back to the door, facing the crossbow head on. Your heart bleeds a little, tears at last dripping slowly down your cheeks, but it will be better this way. Easing in a deep breath, you relax into that feeling deep in your chest that’s telling you this is the right thing to do. It was always going to happen, there was never a path you could have taken that wouldn’t have lead you to this one way or another. It’s a feeling almost like relief: there’s finally a way out.

One perfect, swift, execution. An ash arrow to your heart, splitting the muscle and ending its relentless beat. Your breathing increases to a stuttering pulse before calming, and you swallow, glancing to the windows. You know you’ll cause a mess.

Fingers open the latch to the window, fresh air gently rolling in, and your breathing stutters again. You’ll be irrevocably gone.

Peering about the bedroom, one you hadn’t felt was truly your own, but had stayed long enough to begin putting down roots—the bookmark laying beneath the pendant on the desk beside the painting, the jigsaw still wrapped in a bow beneath the bed, the sealed nail polish and briefly used lip tint within the cupboard. Sobs shudder through your chest strangely.

A part of you doesn’t want to leave yet.

A small, human part, that still fears solitude despite your chosen loneliness.

You step toward the book, body caving in, heart collapsing in on itself, the emotive feeling similar to the convulsions you’ve experienced after vomiting. A vacuum hidden inside of your chest, finally imploding. You should end it now.

The door creaks behind you, and you flinch from terror at someone witnessing your vulnerability.

Hazel eyes meet your own, at once scanning the room out of habit, and those lovely eyes widen as you recoil on instinct, foot knocking into the book.

————

Given the pleasure of time, he had been allowed to ponder the impossible question: to choose between his death and her own, each equally impossible. How is anyone to make a choice like that?

But, caught in between precious moments, there’s no time for thought or debate. It’s easy to declare gallantry, to flippantly comfort a companion with those easy words—I’d take an arrow for you.—but it’s an entirely different matter when the arrow is whistling straight toward them.

And yet before the mug has even hit the floor, he feels the familiar, burning pain as the arrow pierces through his flesh, slicing him open as the wrongness bleeds into him, swiftly poisoning his blood, draining the inherent magic from his body.

————

You stare up into wide hazel eyes, agony etched across his delicate features, the very tip of the arrow lightly piercing your skin from where it’s shot straight through him, caught in his flesh.

He groans lowly, his weight falling more heavily on your shoulders where his hands had grabbed you to switch your positions, and you’re helpless as his knees give out from pain, dragging you down with him as he collides with the ground.

Horror pounds through your body, heart beating a thousand times a second until it’s risen into your throat, hands shaking violently as you try to hold him steady, stinging with the burning heat of blood from his side.

Mother murder you.

“Az,” you stammer hoarsely, staring at his twisted features, brow furrowed deeply, breathing ragged as it puffs against your skin. The familiar scent of blood filtrates through your system, undiluted and metallic, and he’s dying he’s dying he’s dying—

His hand weakly grasps the back of your neck, grabbing your attention as your hands fumble, trembling with uncertainty and despair, fingertips beginning to sizzle as panic floods your veins, tossed into the rapids, utterly out of control as your mind unravels, regret stabbing through your heart.

His lips are moving but your ears are ringing, itches burning at your skin, a streaking noise piercing through your head like the screaming from those bloody fields. He’s speaking and you try to read his lips, but your eyes aren’t focusing, tears blurring your vision as sobs heave in and out of your chest, burning at your throat and lungs. You had tried to stop it! You were so close to preventing it!

Your hand settles on his cheek, already feeling cool beneath your burning, burning, glowing—

Feyre and Rhys, his lips form, and you shake. Eyes scanning his features frenetically. His own flick to the door, and you understand them to be here? You stare at him helplessly, hopelessly—it won’t matter how you scream or cry for them, not even if you bled your throat raw. The ward against noise that you’d been so thankful for, that Feyre had given in attempts to help, to remedy a wrong.

Something so small, yet so immoveable. Impossible to defeat. Felled by your own, stupid need—

He’s going to die.

Neither you nor Azriel have a second to prepare as the power wells up inside of you with the force of a damn broken loose, that internal wall shattering entirely, blown to bits as you feel the staggering pressure swallow your brain, crushing in intensity at the rapid division of cells, splitting atoms colliding as the explosion blows you apart.

Brilliant green light detonates, silence settling for a second before the noise crushes back down, the room blown to pieces.

The ground shakes beneath you, floorboards cracking and splintering as a hole is torn through the side of the House, tearing through the wards as the noise thunders above the city, sweeping across Prythian with the force of the Cauldron that had torn down the Wall.

One final surge of magic before the life is taken from his body.

Pain lacerates through your figure as something fundamental cracks open inside of you, all at once draining the agony that had beens steadily building up, all of it gushing out, skin resplendent with a sickening golden-green light, radiating your flesh.

Then you collapse, falling into the pool of steadily cooling blood surrounding Azriel’s body.

The prophecy having come to fulfilment.

——————————————————————————————————————————————

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[fiendishfables]

Alternative Medicine 🦆

pairing: Lucifer Morningstar x GN! Reader

summary: 𝕃𝕦𝕔𝕚𝕗𝕖𝕣 𝕙𝕒𝕤 𝕒 𝕥𝕖𝕟𝕕𝕖𝕟𝕔𝕪 𝕥𝕠 𝕙𝕚𝕕𝕖 𝕣𝕦𝕓𝕓𝕖𝕣 𝕕𝕦𝕔𝕜𝕤 𝕒𝕣𝕠𝕦𝕟𝕕 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕙𝕠𝕦𝕤𝕖 𝕨𝕙𝕖𝕟𝕖𝕧𝕖𝕣 𝕪𝕠𝕦 𝕔𝕠𝕞𝕖 𝕙𝕠𝕞𝕖 𝕚𝕟 𝕒 𝕓𝕒𝕕 𝕞𝕠𝕠𝕕

warnings: fluff, Luci is a five star husband, suggestive themes near the end,

words: 878

a/n: this was inspired by that imagine I made a bit ago; I promised to turn it into a oneshot, so I have delivered-

You'd stormed into the bathroom, not even bothering to shut the door as you stood in-front of the mirror, a heavy sigh leaving your lips. Running your hands over your face, you sniffled. Your hands came down to grip the edges of the pristine sink quite roughly. You looked like a wreck. That seemed to be becoming more common amongst other things as the days progressed.

In short, it had been a really rough day in Hell. Those ALSO seemed to be getting more common recently. Who would've guessed, huh? Not like you were expecting sunshine, rainbows and maybe the occasional kitten, but at least a little slack from the universe would be exceptional here and there. Nope. You were getting absolutely nothing.

But in response to your bad days, certain things had started becoming more common within your own home, too. You chose to not pay much attention to it at first, but after some time it got quite hard to ignore at all.

These certain things: also known as the little rubber ducks that somehow managed to find themselves in the same room as you whenever your mood turned sour. At first, it had ultimately confused you to no end. Then, it started becoming more apparent. You would start finding little rubber ducks everywhere you looked; in the cabinets; in your dresser drawers; in your pillowcases; in the bed you and Lucifer both slept in.

It hadn't took you long to figure out that the culprit responsible for distributing the ducks around your home was the same man who you slept beside every night; the same one that reined Hell itself. The thought alone made you smile widely.

This one, you had spotted just barley peeking out from behind the shower curtain. Allowing yourself to emit a lazy sigh, you walked over to the side of the tub and precisely plucked the duck off the edge of the bath. You squinted your eyes as you closely examined said duck, looking to see what made this one different from the others; none were ever the same, you had come to notice. This one was colored the same natural yellow as all the rest, but its features almost looked familiar.

Almost like...you.

A smile would then grace your lips as you turned the duck over; on the bottom there would be a little scribbled message, Lucifers handwriting distinguishable, as you would know the handwriting of your husband apart from any other filthy sinner in this hell hole.

"ᗰᗩᗪE YOᑌᖇ ᖴᗩᐯOᖇITE ᖴOᖇ ᗪIᑎᑎEᖇ. I ᒪOᐯE YOᑌ." ~ ᒪᑌᑕI

You lifted your head, a smile now playing on your lips. Your eyes lifted in tune as well...just in time to catch the short man himself peering at you like a lost toddler from around the corner of the bathroom door. You let out a genuine laugh as he ducked out of sight with a flustered expression. Still keeping the duck cupped gently in your palms, you exited the bathroom, only to see your husband had now migrated to the kitchen, most likely in an attempt to busy himself (or at least seem like it, after you caught him watching you).

You smiled softly as you entered into his proximity, causing him to turn to face you with a dorky smile on his own lips.

"Thanks for the duck, Luci. It made my evening." You spoke softly, not wanting to startle his own good mood, as he continued looking on at you with the look a puppy might have after getting to see their owner after an extended period of time.

"Ah- no problem dear. Did you read the note on the bottom?" He asked, smiling with excitement. He may as well have been bouncing on his feet at this point; he looked close to quite literally exploding if his toothy grin stretched any further.

You chuckled and turned the duck over in your palm once more, looking at the scribbled message on the bottom of its plastic surface with a smirk.

"I did, indeed. I could never miss it. They're always my favorite part."

You grinned at him and chuckled. "So, about that dinner..."

He instantly was by your side, a knowing smirk on his face that made your heart beat a little off pace.

"I was thinking the dinner could wait until later. For now..."

He trailed off, snapping his fingers, as a bottle of expensive looking wine appeared in his clawed hands.

"I know you're having a rough day, darling. A rough week, to put it out there. I wanted to treat you to something more...exquisite. Something only you out of all the sinners in Hell gets to experience."

You raised a brow, but a curious expression twisted your face, yet it held a knowing aspect he was familiar with. You knew what he was hinting to. And boy did it arouse him.

And by any and all the Gods, you were not about to complain. Especially as he took your hand in his and hastily led you back to your shared bedroom, where more magic than just randomly appearing a wine bottle was bound to happen.

Following the next morning, its safe to say that you were very sore, but in a much better mood.~

[nyarlathotep-thecrawlingchaos]

Next chapter incoming

I didn't except it this soon, either.

It's still writing itself and dear GODS I hope this momentum continues.

Flight Risk

Young!Mihawk x Marine!AFAB!Reader

Ch.8 of who even fcking knows like maybe ten-ish...? First Chapter Link for newcomers, will update with other chapter links soon

Brief summary of The Story So Far: Your mission, as a Marine and Zoan type devil fruit user (gray parrot), is to gather intel on Dracule Mihawk, a pirate on the Grand Line who has become a thorn in the Marines' side over a relatively short period of time. You're his prisoner now, and you have no real hope left that you can see aside from his acceptance of the Warlord proposal.

We're venturing into NSFW territory in this chapter. So Warnings for that, and continued Yandere stuff.

Wordcount: 3588

Taglist: @i-am-vita, @browneyedhufflepuff, @h0n3y-l3m0n05, @littleleelee, @nerium-lil, @dragon-bubs , @animefreak818 , @byysandra , @lufemia , @gizamalblythe, @lufemia @schanwow

You guys are all amazing tysm!!!!!

The first time you had awoken in the castle on Kuraigana Island, you had jumped so badly you had very nearly reverted straight out of your devil fruit form—and that in itself would have marked the end of your mission before it had even truly begun, given you had fallen asleep perched on Mihawk’s shoulder.

You jolted awake just as violently this time, and the first thing your gaze fixed upon was his sharp yellow eyes. You did panic for a moment, attempting to shift back into the avian form you had grown so accustomed to over the past two months, before remembering exactly where you were—lying across the cold stone floor of the dungeons.

Exactly how you had come to be here—by making the mistake of sneaking about in the middle of the night to call Bogard and inform him that you had no choice but to shift to plan B and propose the offer of Warlord status to your target.

Your target, who was seated in a chair in your damp, dark dungeon cell, staring down at you with a speculative frown.

“Awake at last.”

You winced as you strained against the floor to pull yourself up into a sitting position, too groggy for a moment to register why you were having such a difficult time, until the seastone shackles around your ankles clinked and rattled with your movements. Right. He had made completely sure that you wouldn’t be capable of escaping.

“You chose a particularly inopportune moment to faint earlier,” he commented, crossing his arms. “We were discussing this Warlord offer your superiors are considering presenting me with.”

You only vaguely recalled bringing it up—it must have been in the moments just before you lost consciousness. It was clear he had left you alone at some point during your slumber. He now had his open trench coat draped around his shoulders, his sword leaning against the corner of the cell. He traced your line of sight over to it and gave a small chuckle.

“Don’t worry yourself, dear. I simply prefer having my blade close. Though I’m sure you know that. You know a great deal more about me than I do you, after all. But I’m sure,” he went on, standing from the chair. You pressed your back against the wall as he approached you slowly, the toes of his boots coming to stop mere inches from your bare feet as he looked down at you, “that will come to change in time.”

He held his hand down toward you. You stared at it for a moment, before slowly lifting your hand, your breath catching as he took it in his with an almost gentle grip, this thumb tracing across your knuckles for a moment.

“You don’t have a fighter’s hands,” he said, turning your hand over, his much larger, rougher fingers tracing across your smooth palm. “Have you trained in anything aside from subterfuge?”

“Basic combat,” you said. “I’m best with throwing weapons and small blades.”

“Ideal for your stature and talent in stealth operations,” he commented.

He gave a small, thoughtful hum—then wrapped his hand around yours and pulled you to your feet, grabbing you by your hip before you could stumble straight into him. He turned with you and moved a hand to your shoulder, pushing you down into the chair he had just vacated himself.

“And, purely out of curiosity, what of your knowledge in birds?” he asked, pacing around the side of the chair slowly. “I can’t imagine you learned any of that from your Marine comrades.”

You shook your head, swallowing as his shadow fell over you from behind, glancing over at his hand resting against the back of the chair. “M...my mom,” you said quietly, your stomach churning at the sudden thought that you would probably never see her again. “She’s an ornithologist. Specializing in parrots and corvids. She runs a rescue service for them. I learned everything from her.”

“And yet you chose to join the Marines?” he said, amused. “Perhaps your father’s influence?” You gave a short nod. “Of course. Could have stayed at home on the farm, safe and sound, and yet...here you are. But I suppose it did give you the experience necessary to utilize your devil fruit to its fullest effect. I can see why your superiors chose you for this task. Not many could have pulled it off as well as you did.”

You felt the chair creak behind you as he leaned down against it, sending a cold chill down your spine as he reached up to brush your hair behind your ear, to tilt his head and fix you with an amused smirk as your shoulders grew stiff as stone.

“That was a compliment, little bird,” he said lightly, tracing his index finger slowly down the curve of your neck. “What do we say when someone compliments us?”

“Th—thank you,” you forced out, swallowing. “S-sir.”

“Good girl,” he lilted softly, close to your ear.

You thought you might faint all over again when he briefly pressed his lips to your temple before straightening back out and lightly ruffling your hair. As gentle as his actions seemed, they were laced with a thinly veiled threat—a threat that if you did anything other than what was asked of you, what he expected of you, there would be swift and severe repercussions. He didn’t have to say it for you to know it to be true.

“Are you able to provide me with the full details of this whole Warlord proposal?” he asked, moving around to the other side of the chair. He stopped in front of you, crossing his arms. “Or will you need to contact your superiors?”

“They would know more than I would,” you said quietly—and that wasn’t a lie. You had been given the basic details, but he would need to speak with someone of much higher rank than you to garner any further information. “I—I can call them. They’d likely want to set a meeting if you’re interested—”

“Let’s not get too ahead of ourselves,” he said. “I’m interested to hear more of what the World Government might consider a mutually beneficial arrangement between pirates and Marines. I haven’t said I’m interested in the offer itself yet. That being said…”

You shifted back in the chair when he knelt down in front of you, reaching into his pocket—but all he pulled out was a small ring of keys. You recognized the Marine insignia etched into the metal ring before he lifted your foot and turned one of the keys in the shackle wrapped around your ankle.

“I am interested to speak to your commanding officers,” he said, lowering your foot back down. He lifted the other, and paused with the key in the lock, his sharp eyes darting up to meet yours. “You will accompany me to the study in the tower below my bedchambers. Should you make any attempt to escape or use your devil fruit ability, I don’t think I have to tell you what will happen.”

You swallowed, nodding quickly in understanding. “Y-yes, sir.”

“Very good. I was fairly sure you’d understand.” You bit your lip as he slipped his hand slowly up the length of your calf, his palm coming to rest against the side of your thigh just above your knee, his eyes remaining on yours as he turned the key and pulled the shackles away from you. You flinched as he lightly squeezed his hand around your thigh, keeping his hand there as he stood and rested his other hand against the back of the chair, hovering over you. “You’ll stand slowly, and you’ll walk in front of me. I don’t think there’s any need for me to hold your hand like a child. You ought to know your way around fairly well by now.”

“Y...yes, sir,” you repeated weakly.

Hundreds of thoughts swam through your head as you lead the way from the ground floor of the old, expansive castle to the eastern tower—whether you would ever see or speak to your mother again, how Garp and Bogard would respond to the news that you were compromised, whether or not you would even live to see the light of the next morning, why Mihawk was being so gentle with you, why you felt a flutter deep in your stomach every time he touched you.

Why, for the entire duration of the walk up to the study, with him even stopping once to allow you to venture alone into a small bathroom to clean yourself up and tend to any other personal needs—why you didn’t once consider the possibility of a potential escape plan.

He expected you to comply—he wouldn’t expect you to shift into your devil fruit form at the nearest window and take flight off into the quickly darkening evening sky.

Yet the thought only crossed your mind once he sat in the armchair behind the desk in the study, the thought of why you hadn’t considered the possibility. Before you could consider it any further, he lifted his hand and motioned for you to come over, leaning forward to pull the den den mushi across the desk toward him.

“You’ll call your superiors,” he said, his gaze not once leaving you as you slowly crossed the room. You nodded, stopping in front of the desk and reaching for the device. “No.” He pulled it further out of your reach, motioning for you again. “Come here.”

You tensed at the sharpening of his tone, and moved around to the opposite side of the desk with a little more urgency, stopping a few feet away from him, your eyes flickering between his yellow irises and the snail.

Closer, when he motioned for you again, stopping at the side of the chair, staring down at your feet as you shifted your weight between them.

You glanced up when he lifted his head again, pointing down at the floor and making a small, tight circular motion. “Turn,” he instructed.

You obeyed immediately, turning around slowly, arms crossed tight across your churning stomach.

“Better. Now…”

Your eyes clenched shut when he wrapped his hand around your wrist, gasping in alarm when he pulled you down, down onto the chair with him, your back against his chest. His hand left your wrist to brush against your hair, tucking the strands behind your ear and your shoulder.

And they shot open again when you felt him lean forward behind you, his broad torso pressed against your back, watching him grab the receiver of the den den mushi.

“Make the call for me, pet,” he said, handing it to you before pulling his arm tight around your waist, holding you against him as he leaned back again. “And keep quiet unless I say otherwise. Is that clear?”

“Y-yes, sir.” You couldn’t speak in anything more than a strained whisper, your face flaring with heat, immediately reaching forward to dial the number at his command and holding the receiver between his ear and your own.

You shut your eyes again when you heard a familiar, gruff voice answer.

“Vice Admiral Garp. If you have this number you know what to do.”

“Vice Admiral Garp,” repeated Mihawk, sincerely surprised. “Garp the Fist. Hero of the Marines. My, my. I suppose I should be honored.” You drew in a sharp breath as his fingers curled lightly, possessively around your waist, as he turned his head and rest his forehead against your temple, his voice soft and warm against your ear. “I had no idea the adorable little pet you sent me was so important.”

You flinched at the sharp static that came through the other line for a moment, as if the old vice admiral had tightened his hand considerably around his own den den mushi.

“Dracule Mihawk,” he growled in response. “Where the hell is she?”

“Safe,” he responded. “Unharmed...relatively. Though I imagine she must be quite frightened, wondering what I plan to do with her.” You nearly whimpered when he reached across, curling a strand of your hair around his index finger. “Quite the gifted little spy. I might never have known what she truly was had I not overheard her conversation two nights ago.”

“Dammit, kid…” you heard Garp grumble under his breath. Then, louder, in a more commanding tone, “You’ve got two options, Hawk-Eye. You can let her go, or I can come get her myself.”

“With an entire armada of Navy vessels in tow, I presume?” he responded, sounding as if the idea bored him. “You’re not really in the position to be making threats, old man. The cadet is unharmed...for now. And really. You send me such a pretty little pet and expect me to sen her right back before I’ve even had any time to enjoy her company?”

You held your breath as his hand drifted down from your waist, his fingers brushing against the top of your thigh just below the hem of the over-sized shirt he had given you to wear.

“Call her your pet again, you sick son of a b—don’t—let go of that—”

“Mmm?” Mihawk hummed quietly, curiously at the sound of the brief scuffle at the other end of the call. You were fairly certain you knew what it meant, and...it was probably better that Garp didn’t handle this. Your suspicions were confirmed a moment later when another voice came through the call, far more curt but just as familiar to you.

“Read Admiral Bogard. My apologies for the vice admiral’s boorish behavior. He doesn’t handle negotiations well when it concerns one of our own. I presume this is a negotiation and you didn’t simply call for the sake of gloating?”

“Your presumption would be correct,” said Mihawk. “Though I admit, it was also to sate my own curisoty. I couldn’t help but wonder what sort of supposed men would send such an innocent, vulnerable young woman on what could easily have turned out to be a suicide mission.” He rested his chin against your shoulder, trailing his dingers slowly back up the length of your thigh, smirking as you pressed your legs together tightly and tiny goosebumps raised across the surface of your skin. “I guess I have my answer.”

“I take it you have no intention of returning her without hostile measures being taken,” said Bogard, ignoring the taunt from the pirate. “I will ask yhat you allow her to speak so I can ascertain for myself that she is, as you claim, unharmed.”

“Oh, but of course,” said Mihawk, his voice low and dripping with mockery, his mouth nearly brushing your ear. “She’s right here, after all. Go on, pet. Speak.”

“I’m not hurt,” you said quietly.

“You’re sure?” You gave a quiet affirmative hum in response to Bogard’s question—and then jumped in alarm when Mihawk jerked the receiver from your hand, only to push it into your oposite hand. You swallowed, keeping your eyes turned down to your lap, to his hand splayed across your stomach. “Am I correct in assuming he’s listening?”

“Y—yes, sir.”

It became immediately clear why he had moved the receiver to your opposite hand, to the opposite side of your head—you pulled in a small, sharp gasp as his mouth touched the shell of your ear.

“H-he can hear me,” you added quietly, clenching your eyes shut as his hand clenched around the thin material of his shirt that covered your stomach and half of your thighs, tugging it a few inches higher. You could feel his lips curl into a smirk against the edge of your jaw.

“I wonder,” he murmured, “how long you can keep your composure, pretty bird.” He chuckled lightly at the shiver his voice sent through you—a shiver that, no matter how much you wanted it to be, wasn’t entirely in fear.

“Does he have any intention of harming you that you’re aware of?” asked Bogard. His tone was lighter now, but still kept its usual air of authority

“I—I don’t think so,” you said, fighting to keep your breath level as Mihawk trailed his lips lightly down the length of your neck, lifting his free hand to your jaw, urging you to lie your head back. You obeyed the silent command, your shoulders tensing as the back of your head fell back against his shoulder. “H—he-he wanted more details on the offer. The—the Warlord—”

“I’m sure he does,” said Bogard curtly. “And I’m more than willing to discuss it with him. Our immediate concern at the present is your safety. Are you able to tell us where you are?”

“I…”

“Go ahead, little cadet.” You swallowed at Mihawk’s low, amused murmur against your neck, his words affirming that he could still hear both ends of the conversation. “Tell Mommy and Daddy exactly where you are.” You bit back a whimper as he nipped lightly at your neck, his hand at your chin drifting down the column of your throat, stopping to circle a finger around the top button of your shirt.

“A study in one of the towers in the castle on Kuraigana Island,” you forced out quickly, tour words pressing together as he lifted you by your hip and shifted your position, pressing his knee between your thighs to push them further open.

“Alright. Good.” Bogard’s words sounded more distant to you with every passing second, your focus shifting to Mihawk’s hand slipping open the top button of your shirt. “You sound weak.”

“S-seastone,” you said quietly, fighting to keep the tremor out of your voice as the second button came loose, revealing the top of your plain white bra. You bit your lip, watching him push the shirt open enough to trace his fingers along the edge of the undergarment. “Seastone shackles. So I can’t use my devil fruit ability to escape.”

Even though he had removed the shackles before leading you up here, it was the first explanation that jumped to your mind to account for the low, trembling quality of your voice.

“Seastone. Of course,” Bogard said coolly. “Should have guessed. Wouldn’t have been difficult to salvage from one of the hundreds of our ships he’s destroyed…” He let out a sigh. “Do your best to stay safe. Do not attempt to escape on your own. Is that understood?”

“Mm—mm-hmm,” you hummed, almost whimpered, biting down on your bottom lip as Mihawk tugged the last few buttons of the shirt open, moving his hands to your shoulders to push the material down.

“Off,” he murmured against you jaw. “And you’ll hand the phone back to me.”

“H—he wants to—”

“Then put him back on,” said Bogard.

You quickly shifted the phone back to your other hand, and Mihawk plucked it away, holding it out at arm’s length as he briefly leaned in, his lips brushing the corner of your mouth as he commanded once more, “Off, pretty girl. Let me see you. I won’t ask again.” He pulled the receiver to his ear as you complied, trembling as you slowly shrugged the material away from your shoulders, pulling it free from your arms. “Bogard, was it?” you heard him say. “Oh, yes. I am very interested to hear more of how your people think any pirate might be inclined to consider becoming a government lapdog.”

He tugged you back against him again the moment you were free of the shirt, his fingertips tracing leisurely circles over the plane of your stomach.

Drifting higher and higher, playing against the edge of your ribs.

Slipping just beneath the lower edge of your bra, his lips curling into a smirk at the way you tensed against him, in some mix of anxiety and anticipation, growing less and less able to differentiate between the two.

Clenching your eyes shut and biting your tongue against a small whimper as he pushed his hand higher, cupping the swell of your breast in his palm, squeezing his fingers lightly around the pliable flesh.

You could hear his voice as the conversation dragged on, his tone as curt and professional as Bogard’s, but you could scarcely make out a single detail of his words with his rough hand brushing across your breasts, occasionally rolling around the sensitive points of your nipples, forced to use every ounce of your will to keep yourself silent—to pull your own hand up to cover your mouth and muffle a small cry when he lightly pinched one of the sensitive protrusions near the end of the conversation.

“Well, that’s all very intriguing,” he said with a light chuckle as he pulled you tighter against him. “I’ll have to take a bit of time to consider such a tempting proposal. I think...oh, forty-eight hours? Well, if that’s acceptable for you, then it’s more than acceptable for me.” You tensed as he shifted his hand beneath your bra, whimpering as he pinched your nipple a bit harder. “Ten o’clock, two days from now. Perfect. And be sure to inform your vice admiral that I’ll take very good care of our little cadet in the meantime. Oh, of course. No harm at all.”

He lowered his head, continuing in a murmur against your ear, his breath hot against your neck.

“She might not even want to return to your command once I’m through with her.”

[beefrobeefcal]

Like a Cigar feat. Max Phillips x menstruating!f!reader

Summary: You have cramps and Max has a holistic way that might help.

Pairing: Max Phillips x f!reader | Rating: Explicit 18+ (MDNI) | Word Count: 3,879

Content Warnings: dubcon (bc vampires and their hypnosis), reader is a menstruating person, period sex, poor managerial skills, if he were her boss there would be hr concerns, p in the v sex, neck biting, blood

Author's Notes: This came about from a discussion about periods on discord and this is dedicated to @noxturnalpascal and @strang3lov3's cat, Gizmo.

Thank you to @strang3lov3 and @noxturnalpascal for cultivating this with me, and to @bitchesuntitled and @jennaispunk for their eyes and love.

No more tag lists - follow @beefnotes + turn on notifications for fic updates!

“Dammit.”, you swore under your breath as you dug around in the cabinet under the bathroom sink.

Only one regular tampon and one panty liner were not enough to get you through the night. The iron-rich flood that was about to destroy your underwear had arrived and you were not prepared.

Moving out of your ex’s apartment and having to start again in a city you didn’t know was hard enough, but realizing at 2 am that you had no period products when all the signs and your health app had warned you this was coming nearly had you on the verge of tears.To top it off, you had nothing to dull the twisting aches of pain but an old sock and maybe some rice to MacGyver a heating pad. 

You hastily shoved in your final tampon, slapped the panty liner in your underwear, put on some old sweatpants, grabbed your keys and headed out to your car.

+++++

The speakers in the 24-hr Walgreens were blown out, causing John Dever’s Suzanne’s Song to sound like two sick frogs singing along to a car occasionally backfiring. 

The cramps had really hit you hard en route, and you shuffled slowly to the Feminine Hygiene aisle. Turning the corner down that aisle, you saw a man. An extraordinarily well-dressed man at 2:16 am in a Walgreens. 

You’d assumed that you would have seen a staff member or maybe another uterus-haver being in the aisle, but not this. The man turned from examining a pack of ULTRA tampons in his large hand and smiled wide, toothy grin and nodded at you. If you weren’t so exhausted and hurting, you would have been creeped out, or at least slightly unnerved, but in your iron-deficient and cramp-fueled haze, you nodded sluggishly and turned to face the wall of catch-it-all and plug-it-up products. 

Your brain ignored the man and focused all your energy on picking the products you needed, bending slightly forward to try and lessen the pain in your abdomen. It wasn’t until you heard the deep inhale beside you that you clued into how close the man was standing to you now. 

“Can I help y-”

“You’re bleeding.”

His tone was low and blunt, and carried the sound of the grin on his clean shaven face. 

“Excuse me?” You turned to him with a wary scowl, feeling the inherent feminine rage start to boil up at his audacity. 

“I said you’re in pain.”, he responded in the same blunt, grin-fueled voice.

You narrowed your eyes at him. It was then you realized just how well dressed he was; a light gray three-piece suit with a butter-yellow dress shirt underneath the vest. The gold cufflinks and rings styled him expertly and his hair was perfectly coiffed in a short, neat cut. He was extremely overdressed for the occasion of meeting you amongst the pads and tampons at this time of night.

“Who the fuck are y-”

“A period expert.”, he said while flashing a perfect smile at you.

You felt like you were about to be sold a used car with sawdust in the gas tank.

“A period expert?”

“Well, more of an expert in blood, but periods fall under the umbrella. And guessing by your being here at this hour, and you-”, he raised his brow and looked you over, his eyes darkened as he subtly flicked his tongue and wetted his bottom lip. “You look to be in the throes of Mother Nature’s cruelty.”

You took the lord’s name in vain under your breath and turned back to the neon coloured boxes of overpriced and taxed tampons, and clenched your jaw. You were not in the mood.

“I can help.”

“I’m sure you think that.”, you grunted through your clenched teeth. 

You heard him hum a slight laugh; whether it was authentic or not, you couldn’t tell. What you could tell was that he was getting closer. As you squatted down, trying to alleviate your cramps and scope out the bottom shelf, his shoes stepped into your peripherals. 

You stood up with an irritated sigh, and as you were about to turn to face him, to tell him to back the fuck off, you stopped. Or you were stopped. Stopped by some unseen force, making it harder to access your freewill. 

“I can help.”

The smooth, deliberate tone was behind you and close enough that each syllable came with a breath that moved the hair at the base of your head, causing your body to erupt in a wave of goosebumps. Any and all irritation faded, and your senses dulled slightly. A warm, euphoric haze curled itself around you and all you heard was his words I can help bounce softly around your skull. From the corner of your eye, you vaguely noticed his hand moving in a slow, twirling motion. 

His hands softly held your arms, just below your shoulders, softly squeezing and rubbing them soothingly, and he leaned in, taking in a deep breath. 

“God dammit, you smell good. You smell like you’re in desperate need of some help and I am just the guy for you, sweetheart.”

“What are you - a… a gynecologist?” Your words were slightly drawn out, and to you, they sounded like they were spoken into an echo chamber.

“No. Not at all. Not a medical professional, but you could say I take a holistic interest in all things blood. And you’re full of it.” His voice sounded like it was eons away, echoing through space and time towards you, but based on his touch and the breath on your neck, you knew he was close. But the fog you were in made it easy enough for you not to care. 

“My name is Max. Max Phillips, and I am going to help you, sweetheart.”

You sluggishly opened your mouth to say your name but he tsk’d you. “No… I don’t care about your name. I care about the current state you’re in.”

Max’s hand moved around your front to your lower abdomen and he pushed down with his palm. You let out a long, slow breath mixed with a groan, and he huffed a low chuckle into your ear. 

“I know, sweetheart.” The mock pout on his face came though in his voice. “ It hurts, but I’m gonna fix this for you.”

His voice, his words, and his weird twirly hand movements had you sink further into the fog and it felt like a fever dream. Max seemed to move faster than your eyes could process it, flitting to the front and returning with a shopping cart, then loaded it up with what seemed like one of every kind, size, colour, and brand of period products - a smile on his face the whole time. You watched as Max walked behind the pharmacy counter with no objection from the staff, almost like they couldn’t see him, and he loaded up a white, prescription paper bag with several large scoops of acetaminophen and ibuprofen tablets. He then led you to the till where he paid for a ridiculously huge variety of pads and tampons, and some cheap chocolate from the impulse area by the registers.You carried a paper bag full of the painkillers as Max ushered you out into the parking lot, towards the backseat of his vehicle. But the whole thing felt like you were watching it unfold from above your own body and not actually participating. 

Once you were seated in the back Max got in on the other side and flashed you another megawatt smile. 

“Okay.”, he said with a gusto and slapped his hands together. “Let’s get started.”  

He pulled the sack of pills out of your hand and tossed them into the front seat, along with the bags of items. In one swift motion, he grabbed your calf, turned and pushed you down, and your neck and head were at an awkward angle, butted up against the door handle and window

The haze that had enveloped you was lifting and the reality of the situation you were in was drawing on you. 

“What the fu-”

“You’re fine.” Max’s tone was as sharp as the pad of his finger pressed into the crotch of your sweatpants. 

“You’re fine, sweetheart. I’m just helping.” His dismissive and snide tone began to push you back into that fog, but this time, you tried to fight it. 

You tried to sit up, but his deep brown eyes seemed to darken into the shadows the streetlights threw over him. You stilled, your limbs feeling heavier as you stared into his eyes, dulling your senses so you could only focus on him. A car honked loudly at the intersection in front of the Walgreens’ parking lot, but to you, the sound of it was muted and dulled, and far away. You laid back again, neck and head squished up against the door, as he maintained eye contact.

“That’s a good girl. No need to fight it. I’m gonna make it all better.”

And you trusted him to do it. For some unknown, god-forsaken reason you trusted him. 

In one quick movement, your sweatpants and underwear were down to your ankles. He hummed and his tongue jutted out the corner of his mouth as he struggled to get the second pantleg over your Birkenstocks. 

“There we go.” Max tossed your clothing into the front seat and looked down at your core. 

He reached forward and gave the now-rust coloured tampon cord a tug, seemingly trying to gauge how easily it could be removed.

When you made a small noise expressing your concern, his eyes darted up to yours. “Knock it off. I’m helping you, remember?”

His hand moved up your thigh, roughly digging his fingers into your skin to keep you still, and his other moved back down between your legs then tugged the tampon out of you. He smiled as he held it up, noting how weighed down it was already with your blood and he placed it on the centre console. His finger then came in contact with your copper-toned nub. Rubbing small circles, he looked up at you and leaned in slightly, his non-occupied hand moving in a slow circular motion in the air.

“Fuck…”, you managed to breathe out. Your own voice once again sounded foreign and far away.

He smiled at you with a tooth-filled, smug smile, and you watched as fangs appeared, lengthening his canines, and your immediate slight panic was tampered down by a well duh! feeling. Between the fog and his cool finger pad drawing tight, soft circles on your clit, you let the ebb and flow of the situation take over.

“Good. You got it. Just helping you out, sweetheart.”

Max pushed his middle finger into your wet, hot heat, eliciting a gasping soft moan. 

He smiled and wiggled the tip of his finger inside you. “You’re too easy, Bloody Mary.”

Before you could answer, he pulled his finger out, pushed you further up against the door and crowded himself up against you; the angle your neck was at should have hurt, but whatever spell he had you under had you not caring about your current circumstances, and it also seemed to be dulling your pain. He pressed his body down on yours, his nose buried into your neck, and inhaled again. He groaned, his eyes rolling up into his head, then took one of your ear lobes into his mouth, gently sucking it.

You let out a sigh that made your body feel like a deflated mylar balloon, just barely floating along. But as Max became more engrossed in your scent, specifically your out-in-the-open penny-flavoured pussy, his control over you began to slip. The feeling of him sucking and licking and nipping at your ear and neck started to lose its muted sensation, and the haze that had wrapped itself around your mind was lifting. The clarity you suddenly felt as more than one of his fingers pushed into your hole made you suck in a staggered breath. He lazily pumped his fingers in time with the licks and sloppy open mouth kisses he lavished your ear and neck with. 

Despite that clarity, you couldn’t stop him. He sounded so… euphoric. His moans and his grunts and his groans, hums and small huffs of delight were hypnotic all on their own. That and you had never had someone seem so engrossed in having you lay starfish and make you cum. At least, your ex wasn’t like that - he’d haphazardly finger you with untrimmed nails and rub your clit raw, spend three minutes panting and whining in your ear as his dick missed your hole like a fly not being able to find a window and then crowed like a rooster when he came… why did I stay with him? you thought.

Max seemed to sense your mind wandering to past events and he lifted himself, hovering over your cramped up torso against the car door. His furrowed brow seemed exaggerated by the shadows being draped over him, and the dim light of the streetlight outside casted eye shines on his black orbs. His fingers continued to piston in and out of you harshly. The discomfort of his rhythm paled in comparison to the outright pain of the cramps that had your uterus in a vice. 

“Turn off your fucking brain or I’ll do it for you.”

You swallowed and nodded as best as you could with your chin crunched down against your chest, and he lowered himself back down, resuming his mouth’s work on your neck, and you felt a slight sting. You let out a soft moan, and in response he licked where his teeth had grazed you then hummed and  grunted as he kissed and sucked the spot, the vibrations adding to the stimulation on your neck. As soon as you started to let yourself get lost in euphoria, you could feel your orgasm building. 

“I can feel it”, he hummed, bringing his face to yours. “Can feel her quivering and shaking…”

You let out a panting mewl as his breath huffed over your face in a laugh. You clenched on his fingers and wanted to grab him to ground your body, but you couldn’t. It was like you had no control over anything but your breathing and everything was tingling with pins and needles, completely useless to you. 

“Good… finally. Jesus, took your fucking time.”, Max said, rolling his eyes. He pulled out his fingers and shoved his fingers into his mouth, humming satisfied, and closed his eyes in relishment.

It was so abrupt. He took away his hand before you had fully come down and you looked up at him confused as he sucked on his fingers. His brows raised and his other hand came up, making a circular motion, telling you to get a move on with… something?

“Wha–”

“My fucking pants! These are a cashmere-wool blend and I saw the Wal-Mart brand, multipack underwear you were wearing, Bloody Mary - I know you can’t afford my dry cleaner!”

You stared up at him like he had three heads, not putting the pieces together.

He leaned forward and his voice dropped into a low, menacing tone. “I am not going to fuck you with my pants on, Bloody Mary. My hand is a fucking mess because of you so make with the no pants.”

“Shit…”, you muttered as you sat up, shaky hands pulling open the dark, expensive looking belt. “Do you want to have anything else taken off? Like your shirt or vest?”

He rolls his eyes and shrugs off his overcoat, then his suit jacket, then muttered, “You deal with the fucking buttons.” He opened his hands to indicate he was talking about his vest, impatiently raising his eyebrows to tell you he was waiting.

With your shaky fingers on his buttons, you clumsily opened one at a time. The bliss from your previous orgasm had subsided and the cramps in your abdomen came roaring back along with a wave of hot nausea. Max groaned in irritation and impatience, watching your face contort. His hand snaked around to the back of your head and gripped your hair.

Yanking down, he forced your face up to look at his. The shadows cast across this face seemed deeper, highlighting every crease and fold in his skin as he scowled at you. “Focus. I’m doing you a favour, sweetheart.”

You felt the warm, liquidy feeling begin to ebb and flow over your mind again as you stared into his eyes and your hands seemed to be under his control, deftly unbuttoning his vest and dress shirt. He still held you by the back of your head, hair scruffed like you were a feral cat and not a docile, hypnotized, bleeding human.

Once Max had his smooth abdomen on display, your hands moved back down to his pants, unbuttoning them then pulling the zipper down, getting a peak at the pair of dark blue - with little red umbrellas - European style briefs underneath. Under his control, you tugged them down, showcasing the impressive outline of his semi-hard cock. You raised a brow as you gazed down from the awkward angle from which he held your head and made a complimentary ‘huh’. Even if the circumstances were different, you’d have a hard time kicking him out for eating crackers in bed. 

“Take a fucking picture next time, Mary.”

Your eyes jumped up to him and he scowled at you impatiently. 

“My dick could be out, rammed into your bloody slash, kicking your cramp’s ass, but you’re being pretty fucking ineffective with your and my time.”, Max snarled. “So knock off the ogling and get back to work!”

The tone at which he barked reminded you of the manager you had when you were 15 with your first summer job at McDonald’s. He had chastised you for cooking the fries too long and berated you in front of the entire crew on your shift, and left you in tears, sobbing on the dirty staff bathroom floor. This time though, the beratement made your hole twitch and ooze, and heat bloomed in your pelvis. 

On your own volition, you pulled down his underwear to where his pants had landed mid-thigh and tugged both the rest of the way to his knees. Even though you were working as quickly as you could given the cramped conditions and the weird hold he had on the back of your head, Max still seemed to think you were moving too slowly and he shoved you back against the door and grabbed your leg at the knee, yanking your crimson core towards him. 

“Finally.”, he grunted as he lined himself up and sunk into you. He wasn’t the biggest you’d had but he was thick and it felt amazing juxtaposed to the cramps. He let out a deep, low groan as his dick disappeared into you, feeling the hot, slick grip you had on him once he was fully seated in you. 

“Please… fuck-move…”, you moaned, you eyes closed and brows pinched.

“Thank fuck you have manners.”, Max muttered as he started to slowly pull out and then push back in.

He kept the slower pace and at first you thought it was for your benefit, until you opened your eyes a crack then jumped - Max was staring at you intensely, mouth pulled into a tight frown. He looked like he was concentrating hard on something. He noticed you looking at him and he narrowed his eyes.

“Pacing yourself is important.”, he grunted out through clenched teeth. “It’s a good strategy in 

not overwhelming yourself… and- fuck…” He stopped and worked to regain his composure. “And it’s effective to do something at a steady speed so you don-don’t get tired.”

Beyond the steady, rhythmic pace at which he repeatedly impaled you, his words made you want to recoil from him. He sounded as if Patrick Bateman wrote a ‘how to’ guide for managerial sex. It was clear he was enjoying this far more than he wanted to let on and his ‘pace’ was him trying not to blow his load quickly…

Which lead your thoughts down a tangent: do vampires have loads to blow? Is it like you imagined Edward Cullen’s cum being glitter glue-esque when you were 18? Was it like that neon green slime you saw at the Dollar Store? Was it just like regular cum but maybe Count Chocula flavoured?

Your thoughts were interrupted by the pinch you felt on the inside of your thigh and you caught Max glaring to you while he kept pace, 

“Am I boring you?”, he spat out venomously. “I’m doing this for your fucking benefit, you know…”

You started to get lost in his eyes again, missing out on his face contorting as his features became gargoyle-esque. You only noticed when he began to quicken his thrust, becoming harsher and he leaned down almost nose to nose. The menacingly intimate proximity made your cunt tighten and flutter, bringing you right to the edge of another orgasm.

Before you could react, his face moved fast to your neck and he bit down. That was all you needed to set off the stick of dynamite in your pussy and you came hard, flooding any crevice or space that existed between you with your crimson tide. 

Max released his bite and pulled back, mouth red, wet and dripping.  “I bet you’re one of those leftists who just fucking loves unions.”, Max growled lowly, keeping up his brutal pace as he fucked you through your orgasm.

You have no idea why, but you nodded in response, panting a breathy, pained “Yes!” as you shook and cried out. His eyes rolled back and let out a groan turned high-pitched whine and stilled as he arched his hips into you, unloading whatever mystery goo vampires jizz. 

Whatever vulnerability you thought might come post-vampiric sex never came, and before you could crawl out of the haze your mind was in, Max was wiping his crotch with your discarded leggings then fixing his pants and dress shirt. Then he was shimming your panty liner-saddled underwear and now-sticky leggings back on you. He opened the car door behind him, got out and walked around the vehicle. The door you were butted up against opened, and you fell back against him, and Max’s arms hooked under your shoulders and pulled you out, unceremoniously dropping you on your ass. He turned back to the car, pulling out the bags of pads and tampons he'd gotten and the paper bag of painkillers and threw them at you.

“There. All fucking better.”

Stunned, you watched him get into the driver’s seat and made the engine roar to life. He hit the gas and drove forward to the end of the lot then turned around. As he passed you to get to the exit, you watched as he picked up your bloody tampon and put it in his mouth like a cigar.

****

A month later, you woke up to the telltale twinge that heralded your period and as you rummaged under the sink through the ridiculous amounts of period products, you wondered if you should make a trip to Walgreens. 

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[lovelyiida]

INSIDE JOKE ➤ TENYA IIDA X GN! READERミ★

IIDA NOTICES HOW YOU’RE ALWAYS LAUGHING AROUND HIM. YOU TELL HIM IT'S AN "INSIDE JOKE"; AND HE WANTS IN.

➜ masterlist

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➜ words: 1k

WARNINGS ➜ bullying?

“So that’s why he walks like that?”

Snickers, a chuckle, and a giggle or two sound off on the right of Iida’s ear. This wasn’t the first time he’s involuntarily heard in on you and a couple of students’ “gaggle-fests” as he would name it.

sometimes they’d range from short snorts to full-out laugh attacks. He’d watch in utter confusion as he’d watch you curl on the floor, eyes brimming with tears as you fell weak from hysterical laughter.

Whenever he comes to your aid (because you’re so weak you can’t stand) you breathe out. “It’s an inside joke.”

“An inside joke? I see.”

Iida would come to terms with that for a short period of time. Seeing as your laughing fits bring a certain air to the classroom. The feelings of an educational-based professionalism flew right out the window whenever a tiny giggle passed through your lips.

Seeing you get sent out the room to finish your fits of laughter by yourself. You somehow made things less…tense?

Iida didn’t mind your inside jokes, but he wondered why most of your “jokes” were in fact “inside”.

…hm

He also wondered why as soon as he turned to you, you’d burst out laughing. And he also wondered whenever he’s interacted with you; you always seem as if you’re bound back by a giggle.

And he also, also—wondered why whenever he’d pass you by in the halls you’d hold back your laughs and go into a hushed whisper.

Why was Iida always at the scene of your humorous crimes? Why was he never committing the crimes? Why was he never an inside whiteness?

“So you’re telling me…you think you’re being bullied?”

“Yes, I believe so.”

Midoriya pulls a thin line onto his lips. “Well, then we have to contact Aizawa sensei at once. Bullying isn’t nice; trust me I’d know.”

“Right, let’s go— wait!” Iida halts his steps and ponders for a moment. Turning to the green ball of hair, he frowns.

“Well we can’t base our accusations just off of a hunch, I need full proof evidence.” The raven-haired man pushes his crafted glasses up to rest a little too snug against the bridge of his nose.

“And how would we do that?” Midoriya questions (a twinge of sass in his voice). The two men sit in silence for a while, at least while that was happening one of them was thinking of solutions.

“I think I’ll just confront them about it,” Iida says.

“Yeah, I think you should.”

Giggle, chuckle, snort, cackle—today was the day he’s had enough.

It wasn’t just your gaggle-fest that sent him into an internal frenzy. Iida was currently trying to process his current bi-weekly progress report. This was created by himself, of course.

Iida’s currently realized that he’s 20 points down from his last mark. He’s supposed that he was in due for an upgrade on his engines. But he also noticed that he was marked off by sensei during sparring for doing an illegal move.

“Too dangerous for your caliber.” Or whatever.

He’s also noticed that it takes a little bit longer to finish his homework. His hair has grown exceptionally longer than he’d like. Due to this, he’d constantly have to move his hair out of the way and readjust his glasses.

So his academic performance is deducted by some points.

Great. Now he’s down 30 points. This is his all-time low—

“Shut up!”

You cackled.

As loud as ever, of all days. It had to be today.

Shoulders growing stiff, eyes going wide, and hands becoming pin-point sharp. He snaps.

“Y/n, we need to talk!” His voice rang loud, echos bunching off the four corners of the classroom. Usually, the classroom would be unfazed, but this time everyone jumped (or at least turned their way) to look over.

He was yelling at you.

He watched as the yellow-haired goober silently cackled next to you. But this time IIda looked at you dead in the eyes. And you weren’t laughing this time.

“Okay”

“You’re going to report me to Aizawa—for bullying?” you grimaced.

“Yes.”

“May I ask why?”

“…Yes.”

“…Why?”

“Well…”

Iida began his rant to you. His feelings of always being the butt of your inside jokes without him knowing. He always felt as if he was purposely put out of the loop. He just wants to be included, he wants to know what makes to giggle…

He wants to know what makes you topple off your chair and clutch your stomach crying-laughing for dear mercy. He wants to make you smile in a more wholesome/genuine way. Not a knifing smile you show him when it seems you’re obviously talking shit about him.

He just wants to make you smile…well sounds a little more like a personal goal–

“Iida” you deadpanned.

“Yes! Sorry for the ramble.”

“I feel as if you’re expressing something a little more than what you want to express.” You show a smirk at him.

“W-what?” Iida grows nervous as the conversation has gone from confrontation to interrogation.

“But it’s okay, because you’re right” Your tone sounds defeated, a little disappointed. Iida’s eyes widen.

“Of course! Like I said; you must be reported to Aizawa–“

“Do you wanna know what the inside joke is?” You asked, a twinge of sassy anticipation trickles through your words as your smirk grows into a smile.

Pushing his glasses out, he lets out a hum. He really wanted to hell out his answer, but chose to keep his composure last minute.

“The joke is…you’re just so clueless! Plus you’re cute.”

Plack! Iida’s glasses dropped.

“Excuse me?”

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[corroded-hellfire]

Passing Through - Eddie Munson x Reader

Summary: Being the new kid in a small town like Hawkins is tough. One late October day though, you meet Eddie, and he’s always looking out for those lost sheep.

Note: Happy Halloween 🎃

Words: 2.8k

In the great game of life, you have been given a shitty hand of cards to play this round. Starting at a new high school for junior year is an agonizing yet hazy experience. You have to start over in a place where cliques have already formed, and most people have known each other since kindergarten. The best shot you have at making friends is praying there are souls kind enough to include you in their group. Or maybe there are other pariahs you could collect along the way and have your own island of misfit toys.

On the other hand, even if this experience is completely horrible, it’s only a short two years that you have to endure it. It will feel like a lifetime, but maybe you could keep your head down and push through. 

School has been in session for about two months now. The leaves are changing to the browns, reds, and yellows that always accompany the smell of fireplaces burning for the first time in months and the sickly sweet scent of apple and pumpkin permeating everything. 

Late October is always a nice chance to wear comfy sweaters and cute scarves, bundling up as you take in the views of this time of year. Jack-o-lanterns litter the sidewalks, a few even placed around the high school campus. Children laughing and jumping in any pile of leaves that would permit them to make a mess. The outside aesthetic clashes with the churning, icy storm inside of you. 

There are a few people you’ve met that you’d consider friends, yet not anyone you feel you can confide in about how alien you feel around the other teens of this small town. 

Of course, there are mean girls everywhere and they never miss a chance to pounce on fresh meat. You’ve lost count of the things you heard said about you, but some of them even made you laugh. You wish you were cool enough to be here because your family is on the run. At least it would be something exciting. It’s also better than the other rumor that you taxidermy animals in your basement and now you’re looking for people to practice on. Someone obviously watched Psycho the night before they came up with that one.

Once in a while you’ve tried to sit with some of the friends you made at lunch, but you always felt out of place. You decided to start exploring the school during your lunch period instead. Sometimes you’d have your sandwich on the bleachers in the gym or have your cup of noodles under the large oak tree next to the science building. 

Today, there’s a gentle breeze and, bundled up in your soft brown sweater, you decide to perch yourself on the short wall in front of the school. You settle yourself on the sun-faded bricks and open your lunch on your lap. Students go by, some of them in a hurry, some of them looking like they’d rather be anywhere else. It’s nice to people watch; sometimes it makes you feel less alone. You take a bite out of your peanut butter sandwich and let your eyes slip closed. The wind ruffles your sweater and brings a smile to your face as it kisses your skin. When you open your eyes, you’re greeted by a scene of two basketball players seeing who can burp the loudest. 

With a sigh you take another bite of your sandwich. Is there anyone at this school that will just get you?

As the thought crosses your mind, you feel a heavy weight plop down next to you on the wall. You turn your head and see the cutest guy you’ve seen yet in Hawkins. His curly hair is frizzy, but in the most endearing of ways. The brown of his eyes perfectly matches the atmosphere of autumn around you. But it’s his smile that has your heart racing. It’s big, bright, and most important of all, it’s genuine. 

“Ah, I can spy a fellow Hawkins outcast when I see one.”

Warmth burns your cheeks simply by making eye contact and having this man speak to you. The air around you might be getting cooler, but your body is heating up. It makes sense; he’s really cute. 

“Uh, yeah, I guess that’s me.”

“New kid?” He leans back and narrows his eyes slightly, as if he’s appraising you, but in a joking manner.

“As I’ll probably be referred to until I graduate, yes,” you admit with a breathy chuckle. He laughs in return, and it sounds like music, the melody of it being swept away by the breeze. 

“I was known as the ‘freak’ to most people. You’d think ‘Eddie’ was merely a suggestion of what to call me, not my actual goddamn name,” he says with an overdramatic shrug of his shoulders. “Didn’t really bother me after a while.”

“I wish I didn’t let things get to me as much as they do,” you admit. Why? You’re not sure. Maybe because this is the first person in Hawkins that seems to be interested in what you have to say. Eddie smiles and shakes his head, eyes turning down to gaze at his lap. 

“The assholes aren’t worth it.” Eddie waves a dismissive hand in the air, multiple chunky rings glinting in the afternoon sunlight. “But trust me, you find the right friends, and everything will be smooth sailing. They’ll have your back, and you’ll have theirs—none of the other shit matters.”

“You’re pretty wise, Eddie.”

“Don’t know if I’ve ever been called that before,” he tells you through a guffaw of laughter. 

“Well, it’s fitting,” you say. 

“Eddie the Wise,” he tries out the name, but wrinkles his nose and shakes his head. “Nah, doesn’t work.”

“I like your pick necklace,” you say, just trying to keep talking and have Eddie here for as long as you can. 

“Huh?” He looks down at it. “Oh, thanks. You like music? Good music, I should say. Because I’ve got the all-time best band right here.”

Eddie shrugs off his denim vest layered over a leather jacket, your eyes trailing every movement his body makes. Bare, pale arms come into view once he’s finally rid himself of the article of clothing. Your eyes are immediately drawn to the dark ink that contrasts against his alabaster skin. A small colony of bats taking flight. 

“Ta-da,” Eddie says, presenting his Metallica t-shirt to you and bringing you back to reality.

“Not bad, not bad,” you acquiesce, once you’ve refocused.

Eddie just grins and puts his layers of clothing back on. 

A couple of cheerleaders walk by and look you up and down, trying to be as obvious as possible about it. Because they know it will get even more under your skin, they lower their heads and start whispering together.

Eddie gives them a saccharine smile and flips them off as they go by. It makes you giggle, and it brings you satisfaction that those girls didn’t rob you of your happy afternoon. 

“Take it from me,” Eddie says with a sigh. “You’re gonna be just fine here in Hawkins. This school is a shit show, but it has its bright spots. Friends mostly. Clubs—you should look into those for sure. Some teachers aren’t half bad either. Take Mr. H. He’s a bit of a smartass, but he’s a good guy.”

“Yeah, I have him for physics and he’s great.”

The corners of Eddie’s mouth quirk up in a smirk and he pushes himself off the wall.

“Well, as much as I’d love to stay and chat with you—and seriously, I really wish I could—I’m not even supposed to be here right now.”

“Oh, you don’t have this lunch period?” you ask.

“Nah,” Eddie says as he slides his hands into the pockets of his leather jacket. “I’m supposed to be somewhere, doing something, I don’t know.” Eddie’s lackadaisical nature makes you giggle. “But I saw a pretty girl sitting here all by herself and I took a detour.”

His words make you feel flushed and flustered, unable to come up with anything to say in response. Eddie goes to walk away but turns back and gives you a smile; almost as bright as the very first one he gave you. 

“Everything’s gonna be alright. This is your year. I can feel it.” He offers you a quick wink then he’s on his way.

The bell rings, breaking you out of your daze watching Eddie walk away. You hasten to clean up from your lunch so you can make it on time to your French class on the other side of campus. 

When you’ve got everything situated and ready to get to class, you look around but there’s no sign of Eddie. No curly hair, no dark delicious eyes, nothing. 

In class, it’s a fight not to tap your pencil against your desk incessantly. You’re itching to ask someone, anyone, if they know Eddie and where you can find him. At this moment more than ever you wish you’d made better friends here already. 

Screw it, you think as the bell rings to signal the end of the class. I’ve got to ask about him. 

“Mrs. Daaé?” 

Your petite French teacher gives you a kind smile. “Yes, dear?” 

“Do you know a student named Eddie?” You feel so stupid asking this; asking a teacher if she knows anything about the cute boy who came and talked to you.

Mrs. Daaé thinks for a moment, her long mauve fingernails tapping against the top of her desk.

“I don’t believe I do,” she says with a sympathetic smile. When you’re the new kid you get used to people giving you that look very quickly. 

“That’s okay,” you say, eager to be out of there. “Thank you anyway.”

It’s the same answer from everyone you talk to. The few friends you’ve made, people who sit near you in class, even your teachers. No one seems to know who this guy is or have any idea what you’re talking about. 

By the time you get to your last class of the day, you’re half convinced that you’re crazy. Gone mad, absolutely bonkers. 

Physics isn’t your favorite class, but it does have your favorite teacher, so that’s something. 

You pay enough attention to get by, but your mind constantly wanders back to the only person to make you feel welcome in this town. 

The sound of your name jars you out of your thoughts. You look up and realize the last students from your class are walking out the door. Now that you think about it, you did hear the final bell ring, it just didn’t register. 

“Sorry,” you say, but you’re not sure who to. Your teacher who snapped you out of your daze? The students you’ve been bombarding with questions today?  

Maybe you should ask this teacher. It’s the last one of the day, you might as well. But you also don’t want to look like an idiot again. 

“Something I can help you with?” The soft voice and kind smile shake you out of your thoughts. You’re the only student left in the room.

“Oh, no, I’m sorry,” you repeat the apology. As you step out the door, you change your mind, remembering Eddie referenced “Mr. H.” Taking a deep breath, you turn around and walk back into the classroom. “A-Actually… Can I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

“I talked with this guy today, outside while I was eating my lunch. He was really nice—nicer than any of the other kids have been since I came here, honestly. But when I’ve asked around about him, no one knows who he is. He seemed to know you, though.”

Your teacher’s eyebrows furrow together, and he sits down in his chair behind the desk. “What’s his name?”

“Eddie.”

He shakes his head as he thinks. “I don’t know if we even have an Eddie in this school. We’ve got Ed Sweeney, the football coach. But I doubt it was him.”

“No,” you say with a disappointed, but not surprised, sigh. It’s the same answer you’ve been getting all day. “This was definitely a student. Curly hair down to his shoulders. Big, infectious smile, a dark red pick on a chain around his neck…”

Your teacher’s eyes widen exponentially, and you must give him an odd look without realizing it because he quickly composes himself and clears his throat. 

“Did he, um, have any tattoos?” the teacher asks. 

“Yeah!” You get excited, this being the first real hint of someone knowing what you’re talking about. “He had a bunch of bats—”

“On his right forearm?”

“Yes! That’s him!”

Your teacher slumps back in his seat and rubs his hand over his eyebrows.

“Holy shit,” he mutters under his breath. You’re surprised to hear that kind of talk from a teacher; you’re not even sure if you were meant to hear it or not. 

“Is everything okay?” you ask timidly.

A grin from ear to ear looks back up at you and your teacher leans forward on his desk, resting on his elbows. 

“You talked to him today?”

“Yes. I don’t understand, what’s–”

Before you can finish your question, he’s shuffling in his pocket and pulling out his phone. Frantically, he starts to look for something on it, obviously searching for something he deems as important as his fingers tap against the screen. Evidently, he finds what he’s looking for because his search comes to an end, and he takes a deep breath. The phone clacks down gently onto the wood of the desk and he slides it in your direction.

“Was this him?”

You take a few steps closer to the desk and peer down at the screen. Looking back at you is Eddie, tongue sticking out and hand held up in devil’s horns, standing beside your teacher–only much, much younger.

“W-What is this?”

“Is this him?” His voice is firm, but not aggressive.

“Yes, but I’m confused.” If you thought your brain was already jumbled up from no one knowing who you were talking about today, now it feels like it was put in a blender and puréed. 

“This is unbelievable,” your teacher mumbles, a smile starting to appear on his face once again. “Still taking care of lost sheep, huh?” The question is obviously not directed at you.

Confusion is starting to turn to irritation, and it isn’t like your favorite teacher to not answer your questions. He’s always willing to explain things as many times as needed in class.

“Mr. Henderson, what’s going on?”

The initial response is a chuckle and shake of his head, clearly amused by something.

“Eddie Munson. He, uh, used to go here.”

“Did he graduate?” You try to hide the pang of disappointment in your voice that he isn’t a fellow student anymore. 

The smile on Mr. Henderson’s face turns melancholic.

“Yeah. Yeah, he graduated.” Your teacher is clearly lost in a memory, and you can’t tell by his expression if it’s a happy one or a sad one. 

Now you can’t help but feel a little petty and whiney about the one person who seemed to understand you not being around. In spite of yourself, you frown and cross your arms over your chest.

“Why was he here?” you can’t help but ask, poking the bruise.

Mr. Henderson seems stumped by this question at first. He thinks for a silent moment, then his eyes spark as if something just came to him.

“Probably here to give me a message.” He doesn’t elaborate on that before looking back up at you. “Eddie doesn’t…live around here anymore. He was probably just passing through.”

“Somehow he could tell I was the new kid,” you say with a slightly embarrassed shrug—as if being the new kid is something people can smell on you.

“Yeah, Eddie always had a knack for finding new kids. Even kids who’ve been here for years but didn’t have many friends.”

“He definitely came to the right person then,” you admit sadly. In front of anyone else you would feel stupid speaking these thoughts out loud, but Mr. Henderson has seemed like a safe place ever since you arrived at Hawkins High. 

The man tilts his head and gives you a look of understanding—but not sympathy, like everyone else.

“Making friends can be hard. I was lucky I had friends coming into this school with me. Even so, I’m glad that Ed—uh, this upperclassman took me under his wing. Made a world of difference. Joined a club and made tons of new friends.”

The words spark a memory from your earlier conversation.

“Eddie mentioned that, actually. That I should join a club or something.”

Mr. Henderson chuckles softly to himself and mumbles of course he did under his breath. You’re not sure what’s so funny but it seems impolite to ask.

“I think that’s a great idea,” he says. He stands up from his chair and narrows his eyes. “I think I have a pretty good recommendation, too. Tell me, do you know anything about Dungeons and Dragons?”

[silvermoon424]

Hi Katy, I have a question, do you happen to have images of the prototype Outer Senshi? Yellow Sailor Saturn or Sailor Uranus with big eyes and black hair? I must suck at searching because I can't find them anywhere u.u

omg it's not just you, it took me forever to find these pics even though I know EXACTLY what you're talking about and exactly who drew them! Thankfully I was able to dig them up on Reddit:

To give background: This art was drawn by Fukano Yoichi. While not actually an animator for the 90s Sailor Moon anime, he was heavily involved in both its pre-production and production and did a lot of promotional artwork.

Some people may also know him for his alternative design for Eternal Sailor Moon, known as "Sailor Moon La Cygne" ("Sailor Moon Swan") or "Fukano Moon" informally.

Anyway, I've seen speculation that this artwork was from the time period when Naoko Takeuchi was still hammering out the designs of the non-Pluto Outer Senshi. The fact that Saturn is yellow here is a nod to how Saturn's fuku was originally supposed to be "ochre" (a shade of yellow). As we can see, Hotaru/Saturn and Haruka/Uranus still have the same basic design, there are just color differences.

I think some people forget this in hindsight, but the 90s anime and the manga were literally running neck-and-neck at the time; there was an extremely short turnaround time, and designs by Naoko often weren't colored until later on.

[diejager]

big brother simon with little sister reader who’s on her period???? :o

Big Brother: Cramps Cw: period, blood, cramps, fluff, tell me if I missed any.

He knew cramps were painful, the hot pulse in your core breaking you down until all you could do was lay down when you didn’t have any pills, and it just so happens that you were out, every bottle given to those that needed it more than you deemed yourself worthy of. Every wounded soldier had received their own bottle with a prescription, even he had his yellow cup and white cap, but you wouldn’t take the last few of his pills knowing he came out of surgery and needed them.

He watched you grumble and wince, rolling on your bed as he worked through paperwork on his desk, his yellow lamp acting as the only light in your dark room. You excused yourself a few dozen times, apologising for the small curses and murmurs that slipped from your mouth in the calmness of the room. Every groan and every hiss tugged at his heart, it pained him to know that there wasn’t anything he could do besides watching since you wouldn’t accept any help from him. He couldn’t work with how much he has to listen.

He called your name once, receiving a short and irritated answer, curt as you curled into yourself.

“Look at me,” he moved to sit beside you, your bed creaking under his weight, “You need something, you can’t keep doing this.”

You pondered on his tone, biting down on your lip, fighting yourself to agree with him. You reached out for him, fingers intertwining, you were seeking for comfort, one that you could only get from Simon. He lowered himself, unmasked face looming over your tried ones, his pretty blonde lashes fluttering worriedly at your sunken eyes. He cradled your face, his warm palm against your cheek, brushing the darkened bags under your eyes with the gentle swipe of his thumb.

“Tell me, Sweets.”

You murmured, sinking into his hand, eyes closing for a second to embrace the warmth of his body. He’d always been stronger and broader, the permanently, protective presence in your life.

“A heating pad would be appropriated,” you gave him a small smile, something he could eat up and never stop. He would be grateful for every second spent with you. “And a cuppa.”

“Jasmine?”

“Please.”

Taglist: @sae1kie @yeoldedumbslut @bvxygriimes @distracteddragoness @konigsblog @havoc973 @im-making-an-effort @daisychainsinknots @0alk0msan @danielle143 @dont-mind-me-just-existing-sadly @tuttifuckinfruttifriday @kaelysia @notspiders @velvetsoulweaver @petwifed @aldis-nuts @randominstake

[jexnkookie]

The Law of Attraction (Lawyer! Jung Kook x Reader) [Part 9]

Story Synopsis: Throughout his life, Jung Kook has only ever loved one girl. Despite her being out of his league and of an elite class that he wasn't born into, he fell hard, keeping his feelings a closely guarded secret. When they parted ways, and Jung Kook pursued his law career, he did so with the intent of moving on. But when she unexpectedly arrives back into his life, Jung Kook finds himself once again face to face with his own insecurities, and the girl of his dreams.

Story Rating: M (18+) [Language, sex, depression, alcoholism]

Genre: Angst, Fluff, Smut

Characters/Pairings: Lawyer! Jung Kook x Reader (feat. Jimin x Reader)

Chapter Word Count: 2.1k

Taglist: @cassies-cookies @crisle19 @dream-cvtcher @jimincrystal @jksusawife @jk-190811 @khadeeeeej @kooklovee @lalataegi @lallataegi @mukeovernetflix @rispwn @shellyyy177 @smoljimjim @taetaecatbo @user-190811 @whoa-jo @11thenightwemet11

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Series Masterlist

“Alright, let’s get started.” 

The buzzing fluorescent lights in the closed room were annoying to Jimin’s eyes, but he sat still and focused on the woman in front of him, who introduced herself as Wendy, rather than going by Dr. Moore. Her short, red-painted nails stayed locked around a ball-point pen, ready to scribble notes on her yellow notepad. Her glasses fell to the bottom of her nose, and her black hair with grey at the roots revealed her older age. Jimin wasn’t sure why he felt so nervous. This is what he signed up for, after all; to learn whyhe has a problem, so he can stophaving a problem. He kept reminding himself that you’d be proud right now as he sat on the small sofa of her office, getting comfortable among the piles of pillows.

“Ok.” He responded. Every inch of his body revealing the reservations he had. 

“Can you share a bit about why you’re here?” Wendy invited him to speak. 

“I drink a lot. Sometimes.” Jimin said shyly. 

“Ok,” She said warmly. “Did something happen while you were drinking that brought you here?” 

“Yes.” He answered, nervously playing with the fabric of his sleeves. “I fought with my fiancé, Y/N, in our hotel room and I….” 

It was a struggle for him to admit. The memories of crying, broken glass from his phone, the way you looked so scared of him all replayed in my mind, haunting him.

“It’s ok.” Wendy said. “Please, take your time.” 

“Thank you. I… I threw my phone, not really at her but at the wall behind her. The screen shattered, and it scared her, so she called someone.” 

“Thank you for sharing that with me.” Wendy said, appreciating his honesty. “Let’s start with getting to know you a little bit, Jimin. Can you tell me about your family?” 

“My parents?” He asked, watching her nod in response. “My father was CEO of our family business, Park Tech, until he recently retired and I inherited the company, and my mother was a stay at home mother.” 

“What does she do now?” Wendy asked. 

“She passed away several years ago.” Jimin responded, his voice giving away his sadness at the subject. 

“I’m sorry to hear that.” Dr. Moore said, making genuine eye contact with Jimin. “How would you describe your emotions around that time?” 

Jimin looked away from her, down to his feet, and shrugged his shoulders. The only person he had ever reallydiscussed his mother with, was you. But even then, he struggled to be truly vulnerable. It just became too difficult to muster up memories of that period of his life, let alone genuinely open up, so Jimin opted to reject it altogether. But as Wendy looked at him, and gave him space to collect himself, he wanted to try for once. For the sake of his relationship with you. 

“Angry.” He responded. “I was angry.” 

“Angry with her?” Dr. Moore clarified, and Jimin nodded. “May I ask why?” 

“She left me.” Jimin answered, still unable to make eye contact. His arms were crossed at his chest, posture defensive and guarded. “She left me alone with my father, and I had to deal with him by myself.” 

“Why do you find your father difficult to deal with?”  

“He’s just…” Jimin’s words scrambled in his mind, unable to be organized in a way that could effectively explain his complicated relationship with his father. “He’s critical. Everything I do seems to be a mistake, and he believes that I can’t handle anything. I try to make him happy, but he never is.” 

“Was he like that before your mother passed away?” 

“A little. He’s gotten worse.” 

“After your mother passed, is that when you started drinking?” She asked gently, and Jimin nodded. “A way to cope.” 

“You could say that.” Jimin said. 

“Is your father upset by your drinking?” 

“Very.” Jimin chuckled sadly. “He says I’m an embarrassment, that I’m ruining the family reputation and the value of the company. He says that I’m lucky Y/N agreed to marry me at all, since I’m such a mess.” 

Dr. Moore wrote down some notes, and took a moment to look at Jimin. He felt studied, and began uncomfortably shifting in his seat. 

“I think you did a lot today.” She said with a smile. “Thank you for sharing so much with me. I think we’ll end early, but I’d like to leave you with one thought before you go.” 

She took off her glasses, sitting them on the desk beside her, and then placed her notepad and pens on the same spot. She leaned forward, drawing in Jimin’s attention, and kept a warm demeanor to her, allowing him to be pulled in. 

“I think that so often, when we do things to hurt others, we end up hurting ourselves the most.” She explained. “It backfires. The person we were trying to hurt with our actions, isn’t nearly as affected as we think they are. But rather, it’s us who take the hit.” 

Jimin nodded, trying to make a connection to something he had said. The timer beeped, letting them know they were finished for the day. 

A few hours later, you enter through the hallway of the treatment center to meet with Jimin at a private table. His eyes, and his entire world, lit up the moment he sees you. His posture becomes straighter, and his lips turn upwards into a smile. 

“Hi, honey.” He stands to greet you, giving you a quick peck on the lips before noticing the bag in your hand. “You brought me something?” 

“Mhm. Jungkook and I made noodles this morning for our lunches, and I made extra for you.” You explained nicely. 

Jimin bit his tongue, but internally, he loathed imagining how you spent your morning cooking with Jungkook, in his kitchen, in his apartment.

“Thank you, honey.” He said softly, leaning in for another, slower, kiss. “So sweet.” 

You two sat together and ate, and you asked Jimin enjoyed the noodles the best he could, as you asked him about his day so far. He gave vague answers, said that therapy was good, and that for what it’s worth, he doesn’t hate it here. Jimin asks you what you’ve been up to, and that’s when you tell him about the book store and the red pandas. The more you talked, the happier you seemed. Jimin felt incredible hatred towards himself, because he hated it, knowing he wasn’t the reason. 

“Jungkook really has been so nice.” You said, taking another bite of your noodles. 

“Yeah, you two seem to get along very well.” Jimin’s voice sarcastically quipped. You furrowed your brows at his tone and attitude. His face was stern, clearly upset by something you said. 

“Baby, what’s the matter? You know it was just-”

You reached out to touch his hand, to console him, but when his eyes glanced down at your finger, his composure cracked completely. 

“Your ring is gone.” He said, shock and panic evident. “Honey, where's your engagement ring? What’s going on?” 

You knew the many answers and explanations to that question. The ring inched off your finger slowly, with every sip of alcohol he took, with every empty promise, and with every fight that ended in fresh tears. When your father voiced his concerns about your future with Jimin, the ring suddenly felt heavier than it ever had before. It felt like a wake up call, that this bad dream you had been subjected to couldbe over, despite it being painful to imagine. But you dared to imagine it, just briefly, and when you slid the ring off, it was like a breath of fresh air in your lungs. You felt free. 

But, as you stared at Jimin’s gorgeous features slipping into sadness, you didn’t have the heart to explain, or to answer. So you sat there, silent. Somehow, that was all the answer that Jimin needed. 

“Y/N, you can’t leave me, please.” He begged, holding on tightly to your hands with tears spilling down his face. “I’m trying. I’m really trying. I’m here, doing this for both of us. Please, angel, you have to stay with me. Please. I love you. You’re the love of my life, Y/N, you know that. Please. Please don’t go. I’m trying.” 

Jimin rambled apologies and begged for you, like a scared child who had their safety blanket taken away. It was like his ccomfort, his usually stable foundation, had been shaken. He was unprepared, and for the first time in his life, Jimin was truly, deeply afraid. 

“I know you’re trying.” You say, holding onto his hand as your own tears spill. “I’m trying, too.” 

——————————————————————

When you arrive back to Jung Kook’s apartment, the tears hadn’t subsided. If anything, time in the backseat of the SUV gave you ample opportunity to think, which in turn, just made the tears flow more freely. You had never felt so guilty before, bruising a heart that you had learned to call home. Jimin’s sweet, whispered words, his charming laugh, his tender touches, his morning kisses. They all seemed like things that would be impossible to even imagine going without. 

But his unstable nature, his unpredictability, and the seemingly never ending spinning loop that he had you on. These things seemed like things that would be impossible to even imagine spending the rest of your life with. When you took Jimin, you took all of him. But if you turn him away, you turn away all of him, too. It’s all, or it’s none. There is no in between. 

Jung Kook was on a call when you entered through the front door, the iPhone pressed up to his ear as he looked out the living room window.

“Yes, I’ll have your case on my desk for review tomorrow morning.” Jung Kook spoke, not yet aware of your presence. “Yes, Mr. Kim, please feel free to stop by tomorrow morning and we can look over your options. Thank you. Have a nice night.” 

He hung up the call, and turned around to see you with red cheeks and red eyes. He knew it had been your first granted meeting with Jimin today since he checked himself into treatment, and he imagined it would be a hard day. But seeing how devastated and small you looked in that moment, he could tell it was much more than a ‘hard day.’ But he didn’t want to waste time with questions, exhausting you more. Jung Kook walked over to you, and wrapped his arms around you in a comforting hug. 

Feeling him around you allowed for the dam that had been holding back some of your emotions to completely shatter. You sobbed, wrapping your arms around him as well and shook as you cried. Jung Kook just held you close, hoping it would be enough to keep you together as best as he could.

“Shhh, it’s ok.” He whispered, tucking your head into his chest, his lips rested at the top of your head, letting you cry into his hoodie. “You’re ok. I’ve got you.” 

“I just don’t know what I should do.” You said with words shaky through your unsteady breathing. 

“You can talk to me about anything, you know that, don’t you?” Jung Kook asked. “If you need to talk about it, you can.” 

You nodded, and kept your arms around him as you told him about the conversation that had happened. Jung Kook was stunned by what he heard, but there was a question that he couldn’t get off his mind, and that he knew he needed an answer to. 

“Can I ask, why did you take off your engagement ring?” 

“I was having doubts about… us.” You admitted, your chest bursting at the seams with guilt. “I love him, but I just don’t know…” 

“Hey, shhh. I understand.” Jung Kook hushed you gently. He pulled you ever so slightly away from his chest, just enough to make eye contact as he spoke. “You know what I think? I think you’re a lot like me, in that you try to take care of the people that you love, sometimes to your own detriment. Eomma used to scold me about that, and she told me that sometimes, you have to put your needs first, so that you can be the best version of yourself when you show up for those you love.” 

“I… I don’t know if I can do that.” You sniffled, wiping your years. 

“It is hard. Trust me, I know.” He admitted. “But, I think you should… Because I know that you deserve to be happy.” 

[stephstars08]

Haters to Mates

Neteyam x Omaticaya!Reader

Warnings: Fluff with a tiny bit of Angst, Neteyam getting Wounded, Reader almost getting killed by the Sky People, Anxiety and Maybe Grammar Errors. (Don’t Think I Forgot Any)

Summary: Y/N and Neteyam’s parents want them to become mates when they grow up but growing up Y/N completely despised Neteyam until they became teens and Neteyam saved her from an attack by the Sky People. Ever since that day she saw Neteyam in a whole completely different way!

Word Count: 1,215

Author’s Note: I am so sorry that this short and I am so sorry I kept pushing the release date of this story. I had a bit of a hectic week last week but everything is back to normal so thank you for your patience! Hope everyone had a good holiday weekend and hope you enjoy this short story! Also all photos in the cover are from Pintrest so credit to the Pintrest users for these photos!

Y/N and Neteyam were both born into the Omaticaya clan during the same time period so of course they were destined to mate with one another since Y/N’s parents grew up with Neytiri so when Neytiri’s first child came out as a boy it was a dream come true. Neteyam is only a couple days older than Y/N. Which he used a lot against her while they grew up side by side one another. When they were little, they completely despised each other. Y/N and Neteyam would constantly fight about every little thing.

When Kiri was born Y/N became very close to her. When Kiri got older Y/N would always hang out with her. When Y/N would be out in the forest playing a game with Kiri or just hanging out talking about girl stuff, Neteyam and his little brother Lo’ak would pull a prank on the them.

But turns out the reason why Neteyam would pick on Y/N is because he has feelings for her. Like every young boy he didn’t know how to show his feelings for Y/N in the right way. He just always wanted to have her attention.

Y/N didn’t always have feelings for Neteyam till he saved her from an attack by the sky people. When Y/N and Neteyam hit their teen years the sky people had returned to Pandora. Y/N was almost crushed by a falling tree till Neteyam came flying in on his Ikran. Neteyam grabbed her by one of her arms and helped her climbed up behind him onto his Ikran. Ever since that day Y/N has looked at Neteyam in a whole completely new way.

********************

Y/N was sitting in her hut with her mom helping her make supper when Lo’ak showed up. When Y/N looked over at him standing in the doorway, she could tell something was wrong. “Lo’ak, what’s wrong?” Y/N asked him with worry in her voice as she stood up. “Neteyam got hurt today during battle.” Lo’ak told her which immediately made her heart rate speed up. “What?” Y/N said as her nerves started to pace. “Is he going to be alright?” Y/N’s mother asked him with concern in her voice. “Yeah, he’s getting patched up by Kiri and our grandmother.” Lo’ak reassured but Y/N and her mom could still see the worry look in his yellow eyes.

“Can you please take me to him.” Y/N asked him. She knew seeing Neteyam would help calm her nerves down. Lo’ak just gave her a nod. Y/N told her mom that she’ll be back by the time supper will be done and followed Lo’ak to the medical hut.

When she followed Lo’ak into the hut she saw Mo’at and Kiri attending to wounds on Neteyam’s back. Tuk and Spider were hanging outside the hut. She figured that they wanted Spider to keep Tuk busy since she is the baby of the Sully’s and shouldn’t see her older brother in this state.

“Oh, Neteyam.” Y/N said in concern which made him look up at her and Lo’ak. “Lo’ak, I told you not to go and bother her!” Neteyam said with frustration in his tone as he shot a glare at his little brother. “She deserved to know that you got hurt!” Lo’ak told his stubborn older brother with sternness in his tone. Neteyam knew Lo’ak was right. “You didn’t have to bring her here.” Neteyam said looking away from Y/N and his brother. Y/N spoke before Lo’ak could. “I insisted for him to bring me.” Y/N told him. Neteyam just stayed silent as he looked down at the ground.

“He get’s really moody when he’s in pain.” Kiri told Y/N giving her a sly smile. Neteyam let out a hiss of a mixture of frustration and pain from the medicine Mo’at was putting on his back. “Told you.” Kiri said which made him roll his eyes.

“You go wait outside with Tuk and Spider.” Y/N told Lo’ak since she can tell that he’s got a lot going on in his head and seeing his older brother wounded isn’t helping. Lo’ak just gave her a nod and walked out of the hut.

Y/N walked over to Neteyam and sat down next to him. She took one of his hands into hers which made him look up at her. “Just give my hand a squeeze if it stings.” Y/N told him with a comforting smile. “Okay.” Neteyam told her with a nod.

Y/N stayed there till Mo’at and Kiri were done and then she left back to her hut to eat supper with her parents and little sister.

********************

After Y/N finished eating she went to the Sully’s hut to check up on Neteyam but he wasn’t there. Kiri told her that she heard Neteyam say to Lo’ak that he was going to take a fly on his Ikran. Y/N got to her Ikran and decided to sly over the forest to look for Neteyam since she wants to check up on him. When Y/N spotted both Neteyam and his Ikran she landed down next to his Ikran. She hopped off her Ikran and walked over to him. He was sitting on a log. Y/N sat down next to him.

“You know you should be resting.” Y/N told him in a stern tone. Neteyam just stayed silent as he stared out at what was in front of them. “Why didn’t you want me to see you?” Y/N asked looking at him with a soft look in her yellow eyes. “I didn’t want you to see me in that state.” Neteyam told her avoiding her soft gaze. “Neteyam, do you think that I would think that you are weak because you got hurt during battle?” Y/N asked him. Neteyam just stayed silent. “Neteyam.” Y/N said taking one of his hands which made him finally look over at her. “Do you?” Neteyam asked her. “No, I would never think that you are weak.” Y/N told him in a reassuring tone. “You saved my life.” Y/N reminded him. Neteyam just nodded looking away from her, but Y/N let go of his hand and turned his head back towards her, so he was looking at her again.

“I see you as a hero. Not just a hero to me but a hero to our whole clan.” Y/N told him. “Do you see me as anything else?” Neteyam asked her as their eyes locked onto one another’s. Y/N gave him a nod as her response. “And that is?” Neteyam asked her in a curious tone. Y/N decided to show him instead of telling him, so she leaned in and connected her lips with his. Neteyam was taken by surprise by the kiss, but he still returned the kiss. He felt like he was in a dream since he’s been waiting for this moment his whole life.

When they pulled away from the kiss, they rested their foreheads against one another’s. “I also see you as the man I’m excited to spend the rest of my life with.” Y/N told him as her lips curved up into a smile. “I like that better than the hero.” Neteyam told her with a big smile on his face. Y/N couldn’t help but let out a giggle as she continued to stare deeply into his eyes.

[thetempleofthemasaigoddess]

With a kiss we will paint a flawless view (part 1)

Dracule Mihawk x reader. This is part one of two. NSFW!!

This fic is dedicated to @madbadpadawan. 

This fic is part of the Beast in Black series, and the sequel of Come close and whisper my true name.

*****

“Something is troubling you.” your lover murmurs as he turns to kiss your naked shoulder; you smile, forcing yourself to hide the stab of pain those words have evoked in your heart, an unpleasant interruption in such a pleasant afternoon.

“I’m fine, Mihawk.”

“That was not a question, and you are not.”

Silence returns between the two of you, barely stirred by the gentle murmuring of the waves. What remains of your picnic lays on the blanket in front of you; Mihawk sits by your side, his left hand resting on the sand behind him, his lovely yellow eyes only apparently focused on the sun setting on the horizon. He doesn’t insist to know more, he doesn’t point out that this morning he has seen you stare out of the window for almost an hour, silent and unmoving, lost in who knows what sad reflection, nor does he mention the vague, impalpable but persistent melancholy he has perceived around you for the last month at least. He remains silent, content to sip the content of his glass (his favourite red wine, that you have bought and brought especially for this occasion) as the breeze plays with his dark hair. 

It’s not like he doesn’t care; nothing could be further from the truth. You’ve been together for years, and while Mihawk is not the most effusive of men, you know well how much you mean to him, how much he cares about your physical and mental well-being, and that he wants a future with you. Whatever problem or worry you may be dealing with, you know your partner will listen to you, respect it, and do his best to help you overcome it, just like you would do for him; on the other hand he respects your privacy and desire for independence, and the last thing he wants is to treat you as if you were a child who needed an adult to protect and decide for her. 

I don’t demand to know what you’re going through, but if you want to tell me, I’m here; this is what he’s telling you, without the need to utter a single word, and you love him for it; this is not an issue he, or anyone for that matter, can help you with, and lingering on it means wasting the time you are spending with your lover, but no matter how stupid and pointless it is, you can’t stop thinking about it…

“I have entered menopause.” you confess in the end, actually feeling as if you were sharing a crime you had committed rather than a natural, albeit untimely, development all women go through sooner or later. Mihawk, who clearly wasn’t expecting something like that (and how could he?) turns to look at you.

“You’re too young for that, surely?”

“Not necessarily; my mother was only two years older than me when it happened to her, and my grandmother had it early as well. I haven’t had my period for at least two months and I did think the last one I had was unusually light and short, so…”

Silence falls again; a minute later Mihawk’s glass has been placed back on the tray and his arm has circled your waist, holding you close to his body.

“What did your doctor say?” he asks softly; his gaze is now turned in your direction but now you are the one avoiding him, despite the love and intimacy you share too ashamed and embarrassed to face his reaction.

“I haven’t told him. I’ll mention it on my next routine visit in two months, but there’s no need really, I’ve just been feeling a little tired, but thank all the Gods the women of my family don’t usually experience hot flashes…”

“(name).”

You rest your cheek against his shoulder with a sigh. “I’m being stupid, aren’t I?”

“You know I could never consider you stupid; and being a man I am completely unqualified to judge what you’re feeling, even if I wanted to.”

“I’m glad to hear that. It is stupid, because I was almost sure it would happen soon and my period has been nothing but a nuisance for years, but…”

“But?”

“I hate it.” you admit as you finally turn to look at him “I hate myself, and I hate my body, as if it had betrayed me. It doesn’t make sense, because I already knew I couldn’t have children and I know I’m still young, but… I feel old and weak and… and useless. I feel empty.”

You you hate crying, especially when there is someone there to witness your tears, and as a matter of fact you’re not crying now, but you still hide your face against Mihawk’s chest as he embraces you, holding your body (your pathetic, inadequate, withered body) as if you were something precious and delicate he wanted to protect.

“I’m sorry.” he murmurs; you’re close enough you can perceive his scent, slightly sour and deliciously masculine, but even that can’t make you feel better in the state you’re in “I hate seeing you in pain. I wish there was something I could do to help.”

“Don’t; I’m just emotional, I should get a grip instead of wasting our time together whining.”

“The time we spend together is never wasted; and since your body is changing it’s perfectly normal if your mind reacts to it.”

He holds you close, peppering kisses on your hair and brow as he murmurs your name, and in the end, almost reflexively, you feel your body abandon itself in your lover’s embrace, tension leaving your muscles and bones even though grief lingers. 

“Do you love me, Mihawk?” you ask in the end, lifting your gaze to meet his; all of a sudden you feel unworthy of his love, well aware that what you share could never change simply because you won’t be bleeding four days every twenty-eight anymore, but the most fragile part of you feels he would deserve better - a younger, healthier woman, capable of giving him the child you both wanted.

“I do.” Mihawk murmurs; he presses his forehead against yours, holding you as if he never wants to let you go “I always have, and always will, until my last breath. I promise.”

You remain locked in an embrace as you both observe the sun setting beyond the horizon; your lover holds you close as you listen to his quiet, steady heartbeat. Neither feels the need to talk, or to move; to worry, to feel sad, is completely impossible when the two of you are together.

*

A couple hours later Mihawk receives a call from the Marines HQ - an interruption during your time together your lover appreciates as much as an invasion of locusts. Alone in the kitchen as you wash the dishes and glasses you used for your picnic, you distantly hear your lover talk, and then argue, and finally almost shout, over the Den Den Mushi; you wait until he has ended the call, and then you join your lover in his bedroom, carrying two cups of his favourite tea.

“Bad news?” you ask as you offer him a cup that your lover, now sitting on the bed, accepts with a nod of thanks, his expression still sombre.

“I’m afraid so; the Marines need me, and the other Warlords, for a mission in the Shima Peninsula.” 

“That’s pretty far away.”

“I’m aware; there is a war going on in the area, that the Marines unsurprisingly can’t put an end to it by themselves.” Mihawk explains; he seems pensive, even worried, which surprises you, since your lover, almost physically unable to feel fear, is usually dismissive of or even bored by the missions the Marines entrust to him “I read about it in the paper, it’s quite a complicated situation. I might have to remain there for weeks, even months.”

Ah; so that is what he was worried about. “Well.” you murmur, careful not to spill your tea as you go sit on his lap “I don’t need to tell you I will miss you…”

“And I you. (name)... I’ll probably be asked not to use a Den Den Mushi while I remain in the area, for security reasons; I might not even be able to write to you.”

“... oh.”

It’s worse than you expected. While you and your lover are both adult, independent people, each with important duties that occupy your time and who don’t even live together, you have always kept regularly in contact, both by letter and Den Den Mushi, and are used to meet each other regularly, either on your island, on Kuraigana or in some other place you decided to visit together. To remain apart, to be unable to call and write to your lover and to hear from him, for weeks and even months, sounds honestly unbearable; but refusing the call of the World Government will bring nothing but troubles for Mihawk, you reflect as you sip your tea, especially if this task in Shima is especially important.

“You need to go.” you murmur in the end, resting your back against his chest “I know you don’t like being ordered around by the World Government, but if you refuse there might be… repercussions.”

Mihawk sneers. “You think I’m afraid of them?”

“Of course you’re not, but it can’t be a bad thing to keep the Marines happy; at the very least, if you help them with this task they’ll leave you alone for a while afterwards… and you can come visit me for a few days.”

You bat your eyelashes at your lover, who looks at you, more amused than he lets on. “On second thought, I might decide to remain on Shima for a while after my mission is over.”

“Oh, you are horrible…”

Mihawk grins; you see him take a longer sip of his tea before placing the cup on his bedside table. “I’ll have to make sure no one else sees me shift.” he considers, which immediately turns you serious. Only six months have passed since you shared your gift with your lover, and while he has already learned to control it seamlessly, turning in a werewolf on command and avoiding doing it when he mustn’t, like all of you he can’t help shifting on full moon nights - an easy situation to manage when one lives on an otherwise deserted island, but that might represent a problem if he’ll be surrounded by Marine soldiers and officers, especially considering that while werewolves are mostly considered the stuff of legend, the World Government never formally abrogated an ancient law that ordered them to be killed on sight. 

“I have put you in danger.” you murmur, immediately alarmed, which your lover resolutely denies shaking his head.

“You haven’t; I knew the risks when I asked you to turn me.” he points out “It’s only one night every twenty-eight; I’ll find a way to shift without anyone seeing me.” 

“I hope so. Bring the draught I prepared for you, will you? You have learnt to control the shifting faster than any adult I know, but you never know when you might need it.”

“I promise.”

“Good. You need to go soon, don’t you?”

The barest trace of guilt visible in your lover’s eyes is answer enough. “I’m expected at the Marines HQ tomorrow at sundown at the latest; which means I’ll have to depart in the morning.” Mihawk points out softly “I’m sorry, (name); I know it wasn’t easy for you to carve out a few days for us.”

It wasn’t, and it’s so frustrating it makes you want to scream - not against Mihawk, of course, and not against the Marines either; you felt better, lighter, after sharing the matter of your menopause with your lover and being comforted and reassured of his love for you, and now fate conspires against you both, separating you from Mihawk when you need him the most, after a single day spent together.

Sometimes you wonder if your lover will ever decide to come live with you on your island; no matter how content and satisfied you both are with your current situation, this would allow you to spend as much time together as you want, or at least, considering your duties towards your people and his as a pirate and a member of the Seven Warlords, you wouldn’t have to plan any single meeting in advance and then sail for almost a whole day, since you’d be sleeping in the same bed and dining at the same table. It would make things much easier, and you know your lover misses you as much as you miss him when you’re apart. On the other hand, you can’t move with him, since you’ll one day be expected to become the ruler of your island after your mother, so it would be hypocritical of you to ask him to pack his things. You have talked about it several times, and you don’t want to rush Mihawk into something he doesn’t feel ready for; you know he loves you, and that wherever he goes, no matter how far away he’ll be, he’ll always return to you. That is enough; it has to be.

“I’ll miss you.” Mihawk murmurs, exactly as you considered the same sentiment in your heart. You smile, and 

“Well, I hope so.” you murmur; a moment later your tea, by now gone cold in the still half-full cup, is placed on the bedside table next to his, and you’ve turned in your lover’s embrace, straddling his thighs with your arms now resting on his shoulders. Mihawk grins despite himself, his hands rising from your waist to gently, possessively cup your breast. Recently it feels oddly tender, and heavy, you reflect vaguely; since you are obviously no longer a growing girl, it’s probably a side effect of the menopause.  

For once in the last three months, you’re able to quickly banish the unpleasant thought from your mind, as you look at Mihawk under your eyelashes, innocently resting your hand very high on his thigh as if to stabilise yourself “Maybe I should go, let you rest tonight so that you’ll be at full strength when you’ll have to sail tomorrow…”

“You’re fooling no one, (name).”

“I really don’t know what you mean. Let me go, I’ll sleep in one of the empty bedrooms…”

Your mouth meets his in a soft peck, seemingly chaste if not for the quick dart of your tongue against his bottom lip, before you start to stand from his lap; Mihawk growls, and his arms cage you against his chest as he turns on the bed, pushing you under him.

“Seriously, darling, I was worried for your health and this is how you repay me?”

“Oh, I’m gonna repay you alright…” 

Your lover grins as he looks at you, still caged between his legs, and at the enticing view of your chest rising and falling in rhythm with your breathing; a moment later he has lifted your skirt, exposing your body from your waist up. He slips his hand under your underskirt, his fingers brushing over your flesh, and for a moment it feels different - softer, somehow, and more prominent, as if you had gained weight, even though not to the point one could notice just looking at you. Mihawk vaguely wonders if there’s a specific reason; you’ve always been a lover of good food but not someone who overeats, and it should be easy for you to keep in shape, given your active lifestyle and the time you spend regularly in your fortress’ small gymnasium. Perhaps the recent development, and the grief and shame it filled your heart with, led you to seek comfort in eating…

“Is something wrong?” you ask, unaware of your lover’s thoughts, and he hurries to shake his head; one doesn’t need to be an expert on women to know that telling one’s partner she has gotten fat would hardly please her, especially while her body is already a source of shame and grief for her, and he doesn’t want you to think he finds you less desirable now that you’ve gained a few pounds. 

Because he doesn’t. At all.

“Nothing. I was just reflecting on how… appetising you look.”

You smile, unashamedly flattered. “I’m not a food you can eat, Mihawk.”

“Maybe not, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to devour you.”

“Hmm, you surely talk a good game…”

Your kisses chase each other as you take care of your clothes; you make quick work of Mihawk’s shirt and pants, while he spends a few minutes unsuccessfully struggling with the lacing of your dress before giving up with a frustrated sigh. “It’s worse than a chastity belt!”

“I’m sorry, my seamstress insisted it was more elegant than a zipper…”

“Clearly your seamstress wants you to wear this dress for the rest of your life.” Mihawk mutters; then, with a grin, he helps you lie on the bed and lifts one of your legs over his shoulder “Then I suppose I’ll have to fuck you while you’re still wearing it.”

A moment later your panties and underskirt are lying on the floor, and you sigh as your lover’s hard cock penetrates you; after so many years you’re like a lock and the key made to open it and he knows what you can handle without feeling too much pain, but he’s still gentle, still patient and attentive, as he fills you and then slowly starts to move. He hated seeing you suffer, especially because yours was not the sort of grief one could process rationally either by yourself or thanks to the support of your loved ones; he could swear and insist your menopause makes no difference for him, that you’re still beautiful and strong and clever, a desirable partner and a talented bounty hunter, and it wouldn’t necessarily help. He knows you have to deal with the changes of your body on your own, and that you can, and that you will; you don’t need to be protected, or reminded that your value as a person and as a woman has nothing to do with your menstrual cycle, if you are in pain, no matter how unfounded or inconsequential, and he would give his blood to make it go away…

How can he survive weeks, even months, without you? Without even hearing from you, and the reassurance you’re alright and still thinking about him? He’s not afraid you could look at other men, and he knows you are more than capable of taking care of yourself, but he’s already regretting the mission he accepted taking part in. He misses you already; and he knows he’s going to regret every single day you don’t spend together. 

He holds you in his arms as he changes position once more, fucking you against the matress as he stands on the side of the bed, your legs locked around his hips. He can feel you claw at his back, possessive and even hungry for him, and he loves it, pain and pleasure mixed in such an arousing paroxysm of desire; every inch of him, flesh and bone and blood, his body and his mind and his soul, are vibrating with you, so close he can no longer perceive where he ends and you begin. He never thought it was possible to feel like this, or at least that he would one day experience such a perfect astonishment; but for once in his life, Dracule Mihawk is happy to admit he was wrong.

You share a smile, soft and intimate, as he pounds against you, his pushes deeper and more forceful as he feels your warmth enveloping him. Just like this, darling, you murmur, gazing adoringly at him, and oh, you’re so big and strong, and it feels good, so good, to know he’s taking care of your needs, fucking you nice and well, better than any other man ever could. 

Mihawk hears you pant his name, the warmth of your body as enticing now as it was on your first time. “I love you.” you murmur; he smiles, and kisses you once more.

“Promise you’ll wait for me.” he tells you “Promise me, (name).”

“I promise I will wait for you till the end of time.”

*

Mihawk has never been in the Shima peninsula before. A nice place, he has been told, a once popular holiday destination famous for the production of precious fabrics and the vast quantities of gold hidden in the depths of its mines; nevertheless, he only needs to take a look at Shima to know he’s going to hate it.

It’s not because the country has been ravaged by war for almost a decade now; while the chaos and destruction wreaked by the invading army he and the other Warlords have been sent to oppose don’t leave him completely indifferent, he has seen plenty of scenes like that in his life, plenty of death and grief and devastation, and is now able to put some distance between him and the slaughtering taking place all around.  

What frustrates him, and makes him regret ever saying yes when Garp called to request his help, is that he is doing nothing, spending most of his time twiddling his thumbs as days and weeks and months go by without the conflict moving a single step closer to resolution. 

The situation is delicate, the Marines commander at the head of the whole operation -Mihawk hasn’t bothered to learn his name- tells them; the country whose army has invaded Shima is not affiliated to the World Government, but the authorities still hope for a peaceful resolution, which means they cannot simply send their armies, or the Warlords, to cut down the enemy troops. The two contingents are on standby, their encampments separated by a quarter of a mile of no man’s land; emissaries and ambassadors meet regularly, they argue and threaten and beg, and occasionally either Mihawk or one of his peers is sent to wreak havoc through enemy lines, or to face the paladins the opposing generals have sent to convince them to retreat. Neither party is able, or even fully willing, to best the other; they prefer to wait, hoping to wear the other party down or for some internal development that forces the enemy to withdraw.

If Mihawk thought he had known boredom in the years since he had last faced an opponent worthy of fighting him, it is nothing compared to those four months of inertia; he keeps busy training, and reading whatever paper and book he can put his hands on, but the encampment is barely large enough for a brief walk to stretch his legs, and he’s not the sort of man capable of making friends easily, not even if the alternative is dying of accidie.  

Lying on his bed in the tent he shares with three of his fellow Warlords, he stares at the ceiling wondering what (name) is doing at that moment, whether she is sitting in the fortress’ audience chamber next to her mother or is preparing for a stakeout, her faithful derringer already aimed at the back of the head of the unsuspecting victim. He knows in his heart that wherever she is, his partner is thinking about him, hoping to see him return soon, but that is not enough; he has never missed her so terribly, her presence and her smile and the sound of her voice and, why deny it?, the warmth of her soft body as she lays naked in his embrace. He thinks back to that time Shanks told him he could still perceive the presence of his missing arm, years after he had lost it; what he feels now is at least partially similar, the lack of a part of him (not a limb, but a person who has become too important and precious for him to feel whole without her) becoming more painful, and frustrating, with each passing day. They have never been apart for so long since they became lovers, but that’s not all: there’s another reason, something Mihawk couldn’t explain but that is too intense to deny or dismiss it: the sensation that his lover needs him, but not because she’s in danger, or saddened and in need of comfort. Something is happening to her, something important that concerns him as well, and he should be there to share it with her…

The most maddening thing is that he has no way to know for sure. Even though he is busy for, on average, maybe two hours per week, he has been forbidden to leave the peninsula, even for a few days only, in the event that a sudden emergency arises and the Marines need their strongest allies to fight their battles for them, which means he is virtually prisoner on Shima, kept idle but not allowed to make use that wasted time. Many are unhappy with that situation, especially the other Warlords, who protest they haven’t accepted the alliance with the Marines to be kept in the backlines, but even their complaints fall on deaf ears.

If only he were allowed to at least communicate with the outside, but Den Den Mushi have been rendered unusable on the whole peninsula, in order to block transmissions between the invading army and its king; even the Marines commander receives his orders via carrier bird. Mihawk has sent a letter to (name) every time he had the opportunity, but he’s uncertain they will reach their destination, and even less hopeful he’ll be able to receive a response. At least, (name) will learn he’s still alive from the papers, which will ease her worries; still, there is nothing he wouldn’t give to hear her voice, or at least to read a letter in her elegant handwriting, for the first time in so long…

As his lover expected, the full moon nights are the trickiest, and the most dangerous, given how hard it is to find the necessary privacy to shift in an encampment inhabited by hundreds of people who must remain in the dark regarding his secret. Mihawk shifts for the first time nineteen days after his arrival on Shima; he has no way of knowing, but on that very day (name) has requested a visit from the fortress’ doctor after a sudden, violent bout of nausea as she woke up. He’s already feeling the pull of the rising moon as he slips out of the tent and then of the encampment, almost running towards the flat stretch of countryside that separates it from the closest town; a wood would have been better, the presence of trees and preys to hunt a more appropriate place for the wolf to run and feel at home, but at least he doesn’t run the risk of stumbling on some unsuspecting Marine recruit who had stepped out to relieve himself. He leaves his clothes behind a boulder and stands, stretching his muscles as he feels the moon’s soft light bathing his skin. The wolf has already raised its head inside him, ready to take over, and Mihawk lets him, the by now familiar sensation of fur covering his back and his bones changing shape enveloping him. A few minutes, and the large black wolf has taken his place; he chases after a few terrified mice, more to stretch his legs than because he’s hungry, and then he lays in an uncultivated field, looking at the moon above and thinking about his mate, who must have shifted as well but who is far away, too far from his howling to reach her.

The stalemate has been dragging for four months when one day Mihawk, and by coincidence the other Warlords as well, suddenly decides he has wasted enough time as it is. After a brief discussion, they march out of the encampment, deaf to the Marines asking and then ordering (as if!) them to stop, cross the unclaimed strip of desert separating them from the enemy, and swoop down on the invading army. To their credit, the invading troops are quick to react, their soldiers immediately falling in formation to oppose the small but deadly band of pirates. Mihawk has warned his fellow Warlords not to stand in his way, but beyond that he doesn’t care what they do, like he is completely indifferent to the opponents he finds on his path; he wields Yoru as he makes his way through the enemy lines, destroying anyone who is unfortunate enough to face him, nameless men and women who fall around him like sheaves of wheat cut by a scythe. A few swordsmen try to oppose him, and whether they’re driven by patriotism or thirst for glory, none of them is able to land a single blow on him; he’s no longer a wolf, but his ferocity, his ruthlessness and thirst for blood are characteristics any predator would approve of.

The unsanctioned assault is as quick as it is deadly; dawn has barely raised when the 

Marines’ commander is called out of his tent, and finds himself face to face with the severed heads of the enemy’s generals thrown at his feet, their respective next in lines bound and gagged behind them, ready to concede defeat and beg for a peace accord, in order to avoid another bloodshed. 

The commander is highly disgruntled, since the Warlords acted of their own accord, without seeking permission and defying every order they had been given, but those seven did in less than two hours what the Marines couldn’t in six months. He has no choice but to accept the enemy’s surrender, begin the peace negotiations, and write to the Fleet Admiral to inform him of the latest developments. 

The Warlords depart, mostly confident the Marines can take it from here and there is no longer need of their services, once again without asking for permission. Mihawk has not been at home in four months, and his last bath dates back to then; part of him is unhappy he’s going to present himself to his lover in that state, but he knows that she would never forgive him if he lingered for such an inconsequential reason, even for just an hour more.

He wastes no time with good-byes; he retrieves his bag from the tent and reaches his ship at the harbour, where a favourable wind is blowing. Mihawk is soon leaving the Shima peninsula behind him, without looking back and hoping he will never have to set foot on that blasted place again.

*

“My lady?”

“...”

“Please wake up, my lady…”

“Hmm… no…”

“I’m sorry to disturb you, my lady, but you really need to wake up…” 

“For the Gods’ sake! Am I not allowed even a moment of rest?” you exclaim as you finally open your eyes; it’s not like you to react so impatiently, even and especially if the person talking to you is one of the servants, but the nights you have slept soundly in the last four months have been far and between, and naps like the one you had been taking on the sofa in your study (a new piece of furniture, that you had moved there especially for occasions like this) have literally saved you from going insane, and being forced to wake up feels like torture “I just wanted to sleep a little…”

“Forgive us my lady, but…” the two men in livery in front of you share a glance, suddenly unsure they’ve done the right thing deciding to disturb your sleep “Lord Mihawk is back.”

For a moment you fear you’re still dreaming. “... what?” you ask as you struggle to move into a seated position, your movements made clumsier by the added weight on your belly “Are you sure?”

“We’ve been informed his ship has docked at the harbour; the portmaster offered to call the fortress to have a carriage sent for him, but he preferred to borrow a horse to save time. He should be here in a few minutes. What would you have us do?”

“I…”

You bite your lip as you stand, your hand immediately rising to hold your belly, a habit you have gotten into ever since you learnt of your pregnancy, as if fearing even the most careful movement could put your baby in danger, and the presence of your arm were enough to shield them. It’s illogical, you know it well; but given the upheaval your life has experienced in the last four months, you might be forgiven if at certain moments rationality escapes you…

Your pregnancy. Your baby. Three months have passed since the doctors confirmed what you had already started suspecting but didn’t dare believe, and you still struggle to convince yourself that it’s true. You’re pregnant, and you’re gonna have a baby… your lover’s baby, a son or a daughter, who you have conceived together during one of your many nights -and mornings, and afternoons…- together, and who grows in your belly, becoming heavier by the day. A normal, perfectly natural development, that millions of women all over the world experience every year, but that you never expected might concern you, not after what happened on that terrible night so many years ago, when you lost both your father and your child. You had been assured getting pregnant again would be impossible, and in fact it never happened, nor when you still slept around hoping to give an heir to your feud, nor in the following years, despite the -err- very passionate relationship you share with your lover. 

And you thought you had entered menopause, and were sad because of it! How foolish you have been, especially considering this is not your first pregnancy, but how could you imagine it, so many years after you had ordered yourself to stop trying, to stop hoping, and to resign yourself to never becoming a mother?

You have been visited by the most capable and experienced doctors of the kingdom, and none of them has been able to explain it. It’s nothing short of a miracle, my lady, one of them has commented as he washed his hands after examining you, and you thought that maybe you didn’t need to know how, but only to be reassured that it was true, that it had happened, and it had happened to you.

And now this. Mihawk is back, which you did expect, just not yet; you have read about the end of the conflict on the Shima peninsula in yesterday’s paper, but while the pictures showing your lover safe and sound, and victorious, made you heave a sigh of relief, you expected him to be busy for a while longer before he could come back. But years after you became lovers Mihawk is still able to surprise you… just like you’re gonna undoubtedly surprise him, when your lover sees the state you are in. 

The servants are still looking at you, patiently waiting for your orders. You sigh, rubbing your eyes as if that were enough to clear your mind. “Forgive me, that was discourteous of me.” you apologise “Please take care of lord Mihawk’s needs when he arrives; I’ll be waiting for him here.”

“Very well, my lady.”

They bow out; now alone, suddenly nervous as if you had not been as close as it’s humanly possible for two people to be for years, and even though you have every reason to think he’ll be happy to hear about the baby, you consider the possibility of changing your dress, or to move to the adjoining bathroom to check your hair and make up, before realising nothing of it is necessary - not from you, not with him. With nothing else to do apart from waiting, you sigh and sit back once more, both of your hands resting on your belly as you stare at the room’s door and wait to see it open. 

Mihawk’s heart is pounding as he climbs the steps that lead to (name)’s apartment, alone, no longer needing to be accompanied as he walks through the fortress he by now knows as well as his residence on Kuraigana. As he reaches the floor he stops, feeling suddenly… Insecure? Shy? Anxious?

It is odd, first of all because those terms have been banned from his vocabulary ever since he was a teenager, and equally important, because this is (name), his (name); Mihawk would bet his life she’s going to welcome him with open arms -and legs, hopefully; after four months with only his right hand for company, he can’t wait to bury himself in his lover’s tight and warm pussy and show her how much he has missed her- happy and relieved to see him safe and sound. After all his lover knew he would be gone for a long time and have difficulties keeping in contact, and they have always supported each other’s endeavours as a pirate and a bounty hunter respectively; even in the event she didn’t receive his letters, she has no reason to complain because of his long absence and the fact he didn’t call. 

So no, the welcome that awaits him is not the reason for his current anxiety; what is, then? The lady Veressa, who he met briefly as he arrived at the fortress, assured him (name) is alright, so he has no reason to worry in that regard; on the other hand, the older woman seemed… what? Not exactly worried, or scared, but somehow anxious, and she has urged him to go to her daughter immediately, as if there was something important he had to see, or to discuss about with (name). 

What the hell is happening? Mihawk keeps asking himself as he stares at the door of his lover’s apartment, the pounding of his heart almost deafening; part of him wishes he could take a bath, and change his clothes, before presenting himself to (name) for the first time in four months, but Mihawk considers that thought only for a moment before dismissing it. Right now all he needs is to make sure she’s fine, and to kiss her; and then perhaps they can take a bath together.

He knocks. “(name), it’s Mihawk.” he announces as he opens the door without waiting for an answer; he steps into the room and his gaze immediately falls on the woman sitting on a sofa (a new piece of furniture, he vaguely reflects, strangely out of place in her study) without a book to read or her derringer to clean, simply waiting - for him.

She smiles at him, radiant and more beautiful than ever, and Mihawk thinks he would have endured any hardship, and stayed away for years rather than months, if it meant being welcomed back like that. “My love.” he murmurs, his heart overflowing.

“You’re back.” (name) whispers, the tone of a woman who dares not believe her eyes; she stands - or at least she tries, oddly awkward and cautious as she grabs the sofa’s armrest to heave herself up, an arm wrapped around her middle. Mihawk is immediately concerned; is her lover sick after all? Why does she move like that? And what is she wearing…? “You’re here; I wasn’t expecting you yet, I thought you’d have to stay longer on Shima…”

“I came as soon as I could; I wasted enough time in that blasted place already.” he explains quickly as he reaches her; his hands find hers, and a kiss is pressed to her knuckles “My darling, are you alright? You seem..”

“I’m fine, Mihawk; really. But…”

She bites her lip, looking expectantly at him as if waiting for a response to a question Mihawk has not perceived; reassured but still confused, he follows her gaze down her body, to the soft protrusion of her belly, and one does not need to be a midwife to comprehend the state his lover is in, but like her, Mihawk has ordered himself to stop thinking about the possibility ever since they have discovered (name) is infertile, and even just considering what is evident and clear and real in front of his eyes requires more courage than for a moment he can gather.

He’s staring silently, his mouth half-open, until with a soft smile (name) takes his hand and gently places it on her belly, his fingers instinctively spreading to feel, gauge, and this is different from any body he has ever known, not the softness of fat nor the luscious curves of her femininity, it feels hard - almost like a shield, a shell, protecting the fragile treasure inside.

“I thought you had put on weight.” he murmurs, more to himself than to her.

“Excuse me?”

“The last time we have been together; as I caressed you I… I thought you had gained a few pounds, and I thought it odd, because you have never been a big eater…”

“Well, I hadn’t; it’s another sort of pleasure I have indulged in, rather than food.” she confesses, a tiny smile blossoming on his lips; Mihawk looks at her, for once in his life stunned beyond words, but (name) knows and loves him enough to perceive what he wants, what he needs, and smiles as she rests her hand on his over her belly.

“I’m pregnant.” she declares “Mihawk, you’re going to be a father.”

*

Mihawk looks on, fascinated, as the drops of water dripping from the fingers of his raised hand fall on (name) heavy belly, slipping down sideways or pooling around her belly-button. He’s sitting behind her in the large oval bath-tub, her back resting against his chest, (name)’s body snugly cradled between his legs; they have already washed and cleaned each other (“I’m sorry, I am covered with sweat.” “Don’t say it; you know I like you hot and bothered.”) and now they’re enjoying the first precious moments of intimacy after four months. Mihawk rubs his lover’s back gently, and feels her relax in his embrace; knowing that she had to deal with all of it by herself because he had left her alone fills him with guilt, even though (name) assured him she could never resent him given the circumstances, but Mihawk is determined to make up for it. He’s never leaving her (them) alone again; and he’s going to protect them with his life if need be.

The tub is filled to the brim, (name)’s belly emerging like an island in the middle of the sea; the thought brings a smile to his face. 

“How is it possible?” he murmurs; he doesn’t really need to know, since the several doctors his lover has consulted have agreed her pregnancy is going well and she has every reason to be optimist, but he can’t help wondering “You told me it was impossible; and we have been having plenty of sex for years now, you never got pregnant.”

“I have no idea.” (name) admits; she’s writing her and Mihawk’s names with the tip of her finger on her belly “None of the doctors can explain it; maybe… maybe it’s precisely because we have done it so much that it happened? If you plant a seed a million times, sooner or later it will take root, no matter how barren the soil is.”

It’s as good an explanation as any, and they both reflect on it as they hold each other. (name) shivers when Mihawk’s strong hands cup her breast, the touch gentle and cautious but confident as he fondles the soft flesh and stimulates her erect nipples. Her chest has gotten bigger, and Mihawk can feel himself growing hard under the water; he has considered the possibility that her state has affected (name)’s libido, but he’s pretty sure there are no particular contraindications to a pregnant woman having sex, and he wants her at least to know how absolutely ravishing and irresistible he finds her…

(name)’s moans of pleasure are music to his ears. She rests her head against his shoulder, arching her back as if to lift her chest and offer her body to his ministrations. “Are you happy?” she asks when their eyes meet. 

“Do you really have to ask?”

“Well, I know it saddened you when you found out I couldn’t get pregnant, but it was years ago, and at the time we weren’t in a relationship; it’s also possible to start having second thoughts when something you had until now only discussed suddenly becomes real.” 

Mihawk grins, determined to reassure the woman who has now turned her head to look at him, looking even more unsure than she sounds. He kisses her temple as he starts caressing her belly, a soothing, protective circular movement.

“I’ve never felt so happy in my life; truly, I… I didn’t think I could feel so happy.” Mihawk confesses in a whisper “I was yours already, and felt blessed to be your man, but now… I love you so much, (name); and I’ll always be here with you, and our baby. I promise I will never leave you.”

They share a kiss, sweet and deep and passionate; (name) turns cautiously in Mihawk’s arms until her belly is lightly pressed against his, and now they’re all locked in an embrace: him, his lover, and his baby. He’s going to be a father; Mihawk still can’t quite believe it. His life is going to change forever -technically it already has, even though Mihawk still can’t see how; for a man used to having full control of his life, to taking care of his needs alone and to not having to worry about anything, and anyone, else, it’s quite a big change, but the swordsman is all but disgruntled. He is elated, and can’t wait to meet his baby, who will be born…?

“When are you due?” he murmurs as he holds his lover in his arms, and it’s like that first question has opened the gates to all those that follow “Do you know whether it’s a boy or a girl? Have you started preparing for childbirth? Should we think about names?”

(name) laughs gently as her damp fingers play with his hair. “It’s still three months before the baby is born, so we have all the time to prepare for the big day. I asked the doctors not to tell me their gender because I didn’t feel I needed to know; do you?”

Mihawk thinks about it for a moment; in his heart he’s mostly indifferent to the whole matter, as long as the baby is healthy and the delivery is as quick and painless for (name) as it can be; he knows there is absolutely nothing he can do about either matter, and the knowledge does scare him a little. If something were to happen to her, to them, and he was powerless to help… “I… don’t, no; let us find out on the day they are born, shall we?”

“Good idea; which means we should have at least one name ready in either case.”

(name) rests her cheek against her lover’s shoulder, looking up at him in a way that makes the usually restrained swordsman’s head spin. “Should we have a girl… do you want to name her after your sister?”

“... you would be alright with it?”

“Of course. It’d be a way to have her back with you, in a way, and to remember everything she has done for you.”

Mihawk considers the offer for a minute, less enthusiastic than many men -and brothers- would be in his place. The truth is, while he will never forget his sister and will forever love and miss her, he’s not sure he wants a constant reminder of her around him, day and night. So many years after Yoru’s death, he still feels pain every time he thinks about her, the guilt for not having been there to protect her when she needed it and after she had sacrificed her happiness to raise and protect him so intense and overwhelming he sometimes can’t bear to look at himself in a mirror. He knows (name) means well, and he loves her for that, but what if history repeats itself? What if he ends up failing his daughter, and her mother, like he had failed her namesake? What if one of his enemies threatens baby Yoru, and once again he’s not there to protect her?

He has never believed in fate, nor doubted his strength; but when his child is concerned, Mihawk is not willing to risk it.

“I’ll think about it.” Mihawk murmurs in the end as he forces himself to smile, not wanting to ruin the happy moment he and his lover are sharing; thank all the Gods (name) doesn’t seem to perceive his distress, or more likely she does but wisely decides not to comment. She offers her mouth to Mihawk once more, and he happily kisses her. 

“If we have a boy then we could give him your father’s name.” he suggests a moment later. The water is getting colder, which means they’ll have to leave the tub soon, and at the moment no one, no enemy, not the Marines, not even a God descended to earth, could ever tear him away from his lover, but he’d gladly remain here forever… he, (name) and their child, both in his arms, his to protect and love.

(name) smiles; it seems easy for her, even though she surely loved her father and mourned his death as much as he did with Yoru’s, and Mihawk envies her. “His name was Sargol; not a name I would inflict on an innocent baby. Father always said the other children made fun of him because of it.”

Mihawk is ready to bet their child will easily dispatch any bully who tries making fun of them. “Then let’s both think about it.” he suggests; he sees his lover shiver, and starts rubbing her arms to warm her “It’s like you said, we still have time. This name will be our first gift to our baby, we will have to choose it wisely.”

They leave the tub soon after, quickly drying themselves before walking naked to the adjacent bedroom, hand in hand; they reach the bed, Mihawk insisting on helping (name) to lie on her back before curling protectively next to her. “Are you sure you’re not cold?”

“I’m fine.” she reassures him with a smile “Tell me about Shima. Given what has been written in the paper it seems that if you and the other Warlords hadn’t intervened the conflict would have lasted for another decade.”

“Probably; it was all very stupid, the Marines had us come and then kept us on the sidelines, doing nothing.” Mihawk confirms; the longer his collaboration with the World Government lasts, the more he regrets having accepted their offer “Next time they can deal with their crisis on their own, I’m not wasting any more time.”

“Well, I’m proud of you; you helped stop a bloody war.”

The swordsman grins; he would be lying if he said that he doesn’t feel flattered by his lover’s admiration. “I just wanted to come back to you; I didn’t know about your pregnancy, but I felt I had to be here as soon as I could.” he explains; his fingers brush against her cheek “Gods, you are so gorgeous.”

“I’m fat, Mihawk. I have started waddling like a duck, and I’m not even sure my lady parts are still where they’re supposed to be, because my belly covers them.”

Mihawk’s grin grows wider. “Allow me to check.” he offers innocently, and a moment later his hand has slipped down his lover’s side towards her buttocks and then between her thighs. (name) gasps. “Mihawk! I’m six months pregnant!” she points out, almost appalled, but she’s smiling as well, and her legs have opened slightly, allowing him entrance.

“I’m well aware, my darling. And this would not be our first time either.” he considers; (name) had been pregnant already the last time they slept together, on Kuraigana, and the previous one as well, when they spent a week on an exclusive resort island, far from duties and concerns of any kind, free to focus on each other and on the way their bodies could make each other sing “And to think you thought you had entered menopause…”

“Well, i-it was a much more reasonable explanation than a pregnancy, that’s -hmmm- that’s for sure.” 

“I’m aware, but it’s ironic, is it not?” Mihawk insists, as his middle finger disappears inside his lover’s warm cavern “You felt as if your womanhood had withered, and instead it was flourishing. You felt empty, but you were fuller than ever…” 

Finally, (name) grins back at him; she arches her back, shamelessly opening her legs, and reaching towards his already hard cock. “I missed you, you know? I missed your presence and your voice and your kisses… but I think what I missed the most was this.”

“Oh? So this is what you want me for, to warm your bed and nothing more?”

“If it’s any consolation, my bed has never been warmer than since you have started sleeping in it…”

Mihawk says he’s glad to hear it. He moves carefully as he pulls his hand back, making (name) whimper in protest, and kneels between her legs, looking at the woman waiting eagerly in front of him - waiting for him, and for the pleasure and satisfaction he can give her. How beautiful she is, so soft and warm and feminine, her already gorgeous body made fuller and more curvaceous by her pregnancy; he never found expecting women attractive, but this is different, she is different, she is his and he has put a baby inside her, and while he can’t wait to meet their child, Mihawk wouldn’t complain if his lover’s pregnancy lasted for a while longer…

“Tell me if it hurts, or if you feel uncomfortable.”

“I’m not made of glass, Mihawk; and I want you so much.” 

“I want you too, my beauty.” Mihawk murmurs, and a moment later he has lowered his face between her legs, licking and sucking as if his life depended on it; he feels (name)’s body spasm, her hands clawing at his shoulders as if the woman feared being swept away, and suddenly she’s screaming, loud enough for the whole fortress to hear, and Mihawk is kneeling on the bed, his arms tight around his lover’s thighs as he kisses her core, panting into it. They have both been waiting for this for four months, but Mihawk still feels he has much to make up for; because of this he waits to make her come twice before gasping for air, his well-trimmed beard wet with her fluid.

“You are… an animal.” (name) pants as they both catch their breath; she smiles as her lover lies by her side, as she uses her finger to tenderly clean his mouth “That was the filthiest thing… I fear I will never feel clean again in my life…”

“Meaning you didn’t enjoy it?”

“I absolutely loved it; now let me reward you, please?”

Mihawk smiles as he bends to kiss her. His hand is caressing her stomach, but his yellow eyes are fixed on hers, on her beautiful face; he can’t wait to meet their child, but (name) is much more than simply the mother of his baby, she is his partner, the woman he loves, his mate, and he wants her to never forget. “Would you prefer to stay on top?”

“I’ll squash you.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, you’re not that heavy. You’ll tire yourself more, but perhaps you’ll be more comfortable without me pressing on you.”

The reasoning seems to convince her. A moment later they have switched positions, Mihawk lying on the bed as (name) sits on his lap, doing her best to weigh more on her calves than on him; he’s painfully, amazingly hard, the perfect beauty of the long, thick member as usual stealing her breath away. She doesn’t doubt her lover still finds her attractive, and more importantly that he’s happy he’s going to become a father, but she still feels clumsy, heavy and graceless as he takes him in her hands, stimulates him like she has learnt he likes, and slips it inside her. Mihawk’s hands are holding her hips, his pretty mouth moaning her name in an endless litany; the moment the tip of his cock presses against her core, (name) hears him sigh with a naked, almost visceral relief, as if his lover had been allowed a single breath of pure air after a lifetime spent underground. “Yes…” he hisses, grabbing more forcefully at her “Like this, darling… take me, take all of me, it’s all yours…”

She seems to take his word for it, because a moment later Mihawk is the one groaning as his lover’s warmth envelops him; (name) stretches over him, her forearms resting above his shoulders as she finds his mouth for a kiss. “Mate.” she purrs, and it takes Mihawk all of his ample self-restraint not to explode there and then; she lets his hands slid down (name)’s back until they are grabbing at her buttocks, and then she has started moving, fucking herself on his cock, and he has missed this so much, the perfect syntony between their bodies, enough that he has become addicted to it, enough that he knows he’ll never be able to live without it. 

“I love you.” he moans, and (name) smiles as he kisses him once more.

“I know.” she answers primly, and Mihawk glares at her, incredulous, as the woman sits up, her lovely breasts bouncing with every push. For a moment, even frustrated as he is, Mihawk can’t help staring.

“(name)...!” he hisses, the threatening tone somewhat ruined by the fact that his eyes are pleading, begging for an even more powerful relief than the one he’s soon to find in (name)’s tight little pussy “Don’t play with me…!”

She giggles, and then decides to be merciful. “I love you too, Mihawk.” she murmurs gently as he bends once more to peck at his lips “And I always will. Now be good and let me fuck you.”

Mihawk obeys.

*

You’re having a bad day.

Which is surprising, considered that the last two months have been, if not exactly the easiest, the happiest of your life. 

Your lover has slept by your side every night since his return; this is by far the longest period you have spent together, but unlike what happens with some couples, no matter how close, you rarely argue, and spend most of your time together in complete harmony. Yes, it’s almost like being on a honeymoon… if only you wouldn’t feel more and more alike to a pachyderm with every passing day, with your own body rebelling against you.

No matter how excited you are that you’re soon going to meet your baby, and reassured that according to the doctors everything is going well and by the constant presence of your lover and your mother, you must admit being pregnant is harder than you expected.

Your belly seems to grow bigger every day, which is of course a good sign; on the other hand, having been used to an active lifestyle since you were a little girl, it feels weird, and frustrating, having to spend most of the day simply resting, and feeling tired even after half a day spent lying on a sofa or at most sitting at your desk - behind which you no longer fit, incidentally. Your mother has reminded you more than once that the lack of energy and constant fatigue are a normal experience for women in your state, since your body is now working for two and your baby, no matter how small and inert, drains a good percentage of your energy, and you’d obviously spend the next year lying still on your bed if it meant making sure your child is safe and well looked after, but there are moments, and sometimes days, in which it’s hard to keep your frustration under control.

You’ve been strictly forbidden from using your gun, and from training in any way; you’ve tried explaining to your doctors that while using the fortress’ small gymnasium is obviously out of the question, a few hours spent with target practice would only do you good, and you’d be more careful than ever handling your weapons, well aware of the dangers for you and your baby. The answer has been unanimous: out of the question; until the birth of your child, you’re not even to even glance at your collection of rifles and guns, including your beloved derringer. You’re encouraged to take a walk in the gardens, preferably not alone and avoiding the warmest hours of the day, and to attend the various meetings and audiences you routinely share with your mothers, with your rump firmly placed on a comfortable chair, but any physical effort beyond that must be avoided at all cost, which is easier said than done.

You hate feeling idle, especially while everybody around you looks more active than ever. Your mother seems to have grown twenty years younger ever since she has known she is going to become a grandmother, and especially after Mihawk, who she has always been very fond of, has joined you at the fortress; everything you can no longer do, either because the doctors forbade it or you’re simply too tired, falls on her shoulders, and while she’s still in excellent health and more lively than many your age, being reassured you can remain in bed, resting in your lover’s arms or at most writing letters or reading while she takes care of everything, fills you with guilt. You’ve been raised surrounded by unconditional love and support, but now that you're an adult and she’s not as young as she used to be, you should be the one taking care of and supporting your mother, not the other way around!

Mihawk is also impeccable in his taking care of you. While you’ve told him more than once that you could never hold the months he wasted on Shima against him, since it was a very important mission and at the time neither of you knew you were pregnant, your lover is clearly determined to make up for the time you spent apart. He accompanies you at all your doctor’s appointments, is always ready to support you every time you have to exert yourself, and insists on keeping several blankets in your -now shared- room even though the nights on the island are quite warm at this time of year and, you’ve pointed out innocently one night, you’d receive more warmth if he kept you in his strong arms. 

Not the type to fuss, not least because he knows how careful you have been since you’ve become aware of your pregnancy, he nevertheless remains by your side constantly, as if to protect you from any danger or threat you might stumble into. His hand is always resting on the small of your back as you walk, he makes sure you always have a chair, and a blanket, and a glass of water, wherever you go, and he has even started giving you foot massages - not very sexy, perhaps, but your poor lower extremities appreciate it very much. At night, he spends hours talking to your child, his cheek resting on your chest as he tells them how much he loves them already, how he can’t wait to meet them and hold them in his arms, and that whatever happens he’ll be always proud of them, and ready to defend them with his life. Then his gaze meets yours, and a softness you’re ready to bet no one else in the world has ever witnessed fills his yellow eyes. “How will I ever thank you enough for this splendid gift?” he murmurs before he moves to kiss you “I love you so much, my darling; you’ve made me happier than I remember ever being.”

He’s sweet, passionate, no matter how unattractive you feel in your state, and protective, he has always been, and you know he will keep all the promises he has made to you and your baby; because of this you do your best to be strong when you’re together, to keep your fears and griefs in the depth of your heart in order not to worry him. 

You don’t tell him how hard the first stage of your pregnancy has been for you, when you felt so alone; you had your mother, yes, and so many other people ready to support and help you, but you missed your lover terribly, more acutely than you ever had since your relationship had started. It wasn’t like you felt the need to be protected; rather, you had the impression something around you was wrong, as if you had lost your way while walking on a path you had known your whole life. Why wasn’t he with you? That was his place, with you and the child he had put inside you and who grew with every passing day; you knew rationally it wasn’t his fault, that refusing the call of the Marines could bring trouble and he didn’t even know about your state when he had left. Resenting him for having abandoned you would be stupid, petty, and unfair, but in those first few weeks, as you were tormented by nightmares and you woke up screaming in the middle of the night, already convinced to find blood on your sheets as your baby died just like it had happened to his half-sibling years ago, it was hard not to feel yourself abandoned, alone with a child you felt unable to protect, while his father was away, free of worries. As Mihawk had warned you, contacting him via Den Den Mushi had proved impossible, and the letters you had tried sending him had been returned to you; you didn’t doubt he had also attempted to write, and thought about you constantly, but you spent so many nights crying, and feeling alone, small, fragile, certain that the miracle you had experienced would not take root, and your baby would die leaving you powerless, and empty, once more.

These fears have gradually subsided, since you have entered your second trimester (which meant, as the doctors explained, that you had left the period in which there was a higher risk of miscarriage) and especially since your lover has returned, but you still can’t leave them behind you completely. You still wake up in the middle of the night, protectively held in Mihawk’s embrace but unable to find comfort in it. You know that while older than average for a woman at her first pregnancy you’re healthy and strong and there is no reason to doubt both you and your child will be fine, but once again, your heart is instinctively scared while your mind is rationally optimist, and it’s easier to give in to fear than to hope.

The only moments you are completely at ease it’s on full moon nights; as you turn, the baby shifting with you in your womb, you feel an enormous weight disappear from your chest, leaving you free to breathe for the first time in twenty-eight days. While well aware of her state and excited she’ll soon meet her cub, wolf-you doesn’t know fear and anxiety; surrounded by her friends who play and howl, she lies on the grass, letting the moon’s soft light bathe her as she munches on a prey her mate or her mother have hunted for her, and listens to the tiny heartbeat matching hers, dreaming of when her pack will be complete.

Her pack…

There is one topic you haven’t had the courage to broach with Mihawk, namely where he is going to live once the baby is born. The current state of affairs (you on your island and him on Kuraigana, visiting each other regularly to spend a few days together) may have worked for the two of you until now, no matter how hard it still is to say good-bye, but the arrival of your child is destined to change everything. Given how attentive he is to your needs and excited for the birth of your baby, you are confident Mihawk will want the three of you to live together; there are pirates who leave their partners and children in some harbour town and visit once in a while -or depart never to return- but he is not that sort of man. The choice seems obvious: Mihawk knows you cannot leave your island, that you have duties here, he has developed a good relationship with your mother and has even spent two full moon nights with your pack. Despite his introverted nature and strong preference for his own company (and that of a few accurately selected people, like you or his friend Shanks) you know your lover would be happy living on your island permanently; he wouldn’t be forced to share your duties as the lady’s consort, and could continue his business as a pirate as he wants.

You haven’t discussed the matter in a while but you’re well aware you’ll need to do it soon, preferably before your baby is born; nevertheless, every time you have the chance to address the subject (as you and your lover take a night stroll in the gardens, or while you are in bed, his cheek resting on your chest as you play with his dark hair) your courage fails you.

Why does that happen, again and again? Even though your lover is a predominantly taciturn man, you’ve always been able to talk openly, both of troubles one of you was experiencing and about matters that could potentially create friction between the two of you - which fortunately never happened. Then why do you hesitate? You have never been as close as you are now, both physically given the two consecutive months he’s been sleeping in your bed, and emotionally, but something stops the words in your mouth every time you try to broach the subject. Do you feel guilty because you’re basically asking him to move in with you, having refused to do the same for him? Do you fear that he could refuse, too jealous of his privacy and independence despite the deep love for you and the new life you’re soon going to deliver? 

The last thing you want is for your lover to sacrifice his happiness for you, but becoming the lady of your island is your destiny, what you’ve been prepared to do since you were born, and even though your mother is still in excellent health with many years in front of her sooner or later the moment will come for you to take her place, a moment that will also influence the lives of the people closest to you. You want your child to be your heir, which means they will have to be raised on the island, and Mihawk knows it, but…

You need to do it; and you will, you decide one day as you see your lover reaching you on the bed, his dark hair still damp after his bath, naked save for his sleeping pants. “Are you comfortable?” he asks in a murmur as he lies down next to you, smiling as he sees you snuggle against his side “Shall I fetch a blanket?”

“Since you’re here I have all the warmth I need.” you reassure him with an adoring smile; corny, perhaps, but that doesn’t make it less true. Tomorrow you’ll talk, you promise yourself as you share a few lazy kisses with your lover, the gentle caress of Mihawk’s hand on your by now huge stomach gently lulling you to sleep; you will make sure you’re not disturbed, discuss calmly about both the matter of his residence, and together you will find a solution. You always do. “Shall we sleep? I’m quite tired.”

“Of course. Good-night, my love.”

Mihawk lies on his side, his arm draped around you; he seems… pensive, somehow, as if he had something important on his mind, but not worried, which reassures you. Tomorrow, you think; tomorrow you’ll talk, but until then you’ll treasure the delicious sensation of his body next to yours.