#How To Make Heat Protection Spray At Home

[ladykailitha]

Paper Hearts Part 4

I finished it!! It will have 8 chapters. I'm excited for you guys to see where this goes! I'm still working on Sweet Home Indiana and will be focusing on that until ITS done. Then we'll be back our regularly schedule WIPs.

We have Eddie's big plan and Steve gets his flirt on.

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3

****

Steve slipped into the kitchen and there in his mother’s neat handwriting was a note telling him that there were leftovers in the fridge and that they would be home again next Friday.

He sighed and opened the fridge. He immediately closed it when he saw what the leftovers were.

Boiled cabbage with chopped bacon and carrots. It wasn’t bad if it was made correctly, but his mother boiled any flavor and nutrients out of the poor vegetables and then tossed in cooked bacon to hide its sins.

He opened the cupboard and pulled out a small can of Campbell’s chicken noodle soup and made that. He was craving the sodium. Eddie’s beef was good to get his body to stop shaking, but he had sweat so much he needed to replenish the salt he’d lost.

Once Steve had eaten and drank another glass of water he went to go get a shower and get ready for bed. It was no use trying to get back to his homework now. He had managed to blow up his whole evening by getting lost.

He had no idea how he got to Forest Hills or even why his feet carried him there in the first place. He could feel the weariness seeping into his bones from running for so long.

He undressed and got under the scorching water, letting the heat carry away his pains. His mind ran through all the things that Munson had done for him. The guy had no reason to be nice to him, but he had been more than gracious.

Then it hit him. Munson had called him Stevie, and without thinking Steve had called him Eds.

Eds.

Where the fuck did that come from? They weren’t friends, they could barely be considered acquaintances. Was his brain reaching out to the guy subconsciously? Is that why he ended up at the trailer park? Everyone knew that’s where Munson lived. Who knew how many times the guy had been called trailer trash, but the older teen seemed to rise above the insult.

Steve shook his head, spraying water everywhere. Just because Munson picked up lost sheep, didn’t mean he’d be willing to taken in an injured wolf. Because that’s what he was, reformed or not, Steve would never be a sheep. He would always be a wolf. A predator.

But at least as a wolf he could protect those kids with everything he had. And he would, even if it killed him.

The water had long since turned cold by the time Steve stepped out of the shower. He completed his after shower routine mostly on autopilot as he kept going over his interactions with both Munson men. He didn’t really have good interactions with dads or in this case uncles. But Munson’s uncle Wayne treated him with kindness and he could see where the older boy got it from.

He dressed into his pajamas and slid under the covers. He rolled over on his back and tucked one arm under his pillow, staring up at the ceiling.

Steve thought back to the apology. One Munson really didn’t have to give but did anyway. He thought about the other jocks that bragged about hurting his hand. He held it up and looked at the fading bruise. It wasn’t as though he was even basketball anymore. Hurting his hand wouldn’t do anything but make it hard to do his homework and all he had to do is show his teachers his hurt hand and he’d get extensions for that. Like he had for his concussion last November.

But then again Tommy H. never had reasons for the people he hurt either. He just liked the power he got seeing the person helpless.

He placed his hand over his heart and let himself drift off the sleep, brown eyes and dark curls haunting his dreams.

****

Eddie had originally bought the red heart for himself like he had told the two juniors. But staring at it now, he had a better plan for it. Because that last wall, that last bastion of defense crumbled to ashes when he realized that despite the fancy car, the big house, and the expensive clothes, Steve Harrington was more like Eddie than he thought possible.

Wayne’s approval of the boy cemented that for him. Because if he could take one look at Steve and decide he was worth saving, then Eddie raring to go full steam ahead for a rescue mission.

Eddie could tell that the hearts were made from simple construction paper, like the kind found just about anywhere. He knew it would be technically cheating to just simply make more instead of buying them, but he had no intention of contributing to a dance he was never going to go to because one, it wasn’t his year; two, the whole gay thing; and three, the one person he would want to go with if the gay thing wouldn’t get him hate crimed, wouldn’t give him the time of day.

Well, all right, that might have changed with the whole rescuing him from wandering alone in the dark thing.

He forgave Eddie about being a dumbass, so maybe there was hope for, at the very least, a vast decrease in hostility. And he was willing to take what he could get.

He decided to wait until tomorrow after school to get the construction paper and hope that the high school hadn’t bought up the town’s supply.

On his way out the next morning, Wayne stopped him.

“You don’t have to tell me, son,” he said gently, “but you got feelings for that boy?”

Eddie froze and turned slowly to face his uncle. “What gave you that idea?”

Wayne chuckled and shook his head fondly. “Boy, when you’d go on rants about the Harrington boy, you’d describe his floppy hair, his hazel eyes and how unfairly good looking the kid was. I didn’t say anything because it did sound like he’d been a bit of an ass. Only after last night I got to thinking and was wondering is all.”

Eddie closed his eyes and opened them slowly. He let out a long shuddering breath, his bottom lip quivering.

“I–I don’t...” he closed his eyes again. This wasn’t Al. He wasn’t going to get beat for admitting it, but still it was so hard to say. So he just nodded.

Wayne came up and wrapped his arms around his nephew. “It’s a hell of a lot tougher batting for the other team, but I trust your judgment. Just promise me that if he shows signs of liking you back, you take the chance to tell him how you feel because...”

“You miss one hundred percent of the chances you don’t take,” they said together.

Eddie dropped his bag to the floor and hugged him back. “I know, old man. But I promise if there is a chance, I’ll be brave enough to take it.”

“Get going,” Wayne said, voicing cracking with emotion.

He pulled back and nodded. He reshouldered his backpack and got in his van.

He had a lot to think about and that really wasn’t conducive to paying attention in class or to his friends as they talked about their upcoming D&D session.

Gareth kicked his shin causing him to yelp.

“What the fuck, dude?” Eddie hissed.

“What the fuck is up with you?” Gareth hissed back. “You’ve been going on and on about the mind flayer for weeks and now that it’s literally this weekend, and you’re off in some other realm.”

Eddie blinked at him for a moment before his brain came back on. He shook his head to clear it.

“Yeah, sorry, man,” he said around a pretzel. “Weird night last night.”

“What happened?” Jeff asked, tilting his head to the side.

So Eddie told them. “He was like a ghost, guys. If Wayne hadn’t seen him too, I would have thought I was hitting Mary Jane a little too hard, you know?”

“I didn’t realize he was getting bullied,” Brian said, frowning. “I would have thought with Hargrove giving the dude a wide berth, that everyone else would have too.”

“Untouchable,” Jeff agreed. “The fact that jocks are now splintering into factions tells you what kind of control Steve actually had on them.”

Eddie rubbed his chin. “I don’t know how true this is, but if Harrington wasn’t lying, he’s a real sweetheart, too.”

Then he leaned forward and explained about the pink heart scheme.

“So,” Gareth said, steepling his fingers and resting his chin on them, “you’re telling us is that we have been seriously remiss in our duties in collecting lost sheep.”

The older teen sighed and shook his head. “I’d like to collect him, but I’m afraid the wolves might decide to rip him apart before we got him to safety if we tried.”

Jeff winced. He knew what Eddie was talking about. Steve Harrington wasn’t the usual lost sheep. He might be bullied now, but as King, Harrington had run far too long with the wolves to think that they could protect him one hundred percent of the time.

“So what are we going to do?” Brian asked. “Because if we let this slide, we’re throwing our lot in with the bullies and that’s something I refuse to do.”

A grin spread out over Eddie’s face, closed lips and dimples entrenched into his cheeks. “We’re going to make the school think that he’s just as popular as he ever was.”

The other three boys looked at each other in confusion.

“So what have you got?” Gareth asked, his own grin starting to take over his face.

****

Eddie made sure to get to class early so he could see where Steve was going to sit. He tried to tell himself it was about the dude’s hand, but it wasn’t working. He wanted to see if the former Hawkins royalty would chose to sit with his old friends or by him again.

He didn’t have long to wait. Steve walked in not long after he did, just as the bell rang. He didn’t even look at his old desk near the front and beelined it for the chair he had sat in on Friday.

The teacher picked up on the change immediately and wrinkled her nose. “I am to suppose that you are taking up permanent residence in the back with Mr. Munson, Mr. Harrington?”

Steve half shrugged as he began to pull out his things for class. “I got more work done, Mrs. Dixon and I really want to graduate on time.”

Mrs. Dixon nodded. “Agreed and as long as you continue the level of attention from last week, you are permitted to stay there.”

About half way through class while Mrs. Dixon was grading papers, Tommy H. turned around and kicked Steve’s chair. “Suck up,” he hissed.

Steve puckered his lips and wagged his eyebrows. “Why? Do you want to be next?”

Tommy turned back around, his face bright red.

Eddie raised an eyebrow and cocked his head to the side as he considered everything about that interaction.

A little blossom of hope sprouted in his chest and he fought to keep it down. Steve had insinuated that other people were gay for years, but to Eddie’s highly trained gay ears, that sounded like Steve was offering to suck Tommy H.’s dick and that Tommy didn’t exactly turn him down.

Curiouser and curiouser, he thought tapping his lips thoughtfully. More research would have to be done.

He pulled out a different notebook, the one he used for campaign notes and song lyrics.

He wrote girls over one column and boys over the other and began tallying what he knew about the former King of Hawkins.

A shit ton went into the Steve liking girls column, but there was surprisingly more in the liking boys column then he would have thought possible. He looked up to catch Steve smirking at him.

Eddie quickly covered his notebook and stuck his tongue out at Steve.

The other boy shook his head and went back to doing the assignment. Eddie was more careful about what he left out in the open because he didn’t want Steve teased for it nor did he want him to see that Eddie was trying to figure him out.

The bell rang and the notebook was suddenly whisked off his desk.

“Hey!” Eddie cried, looking up to see Steve dancing away with the notebook teasingly. “Stevie!” He grabbed his bag and chased after the other boy. But the other boy was a jock and Eddie was wheezing for breath by the time he caught up with him at his locker.

“Give that back,” he huffed.

Steve gave him a bright smile and handed it back. “I just made a minor addition.”

Eddie frowned as he flipped through the pages but didn’t see anything. Steve took it back and turned to the correct page and leaned close so that only Eddie could hear.

“I trust you’ll keep my secret,” he whispered and then dropped to one knee to start getting into his locker.

Eddie gulped at the sight and turned to the paper to avoid saying something stupid. There in bold capital letters under his girls/guys columns was the word BOTH.

He looked up at Steve who had stood up. Steve winked at him and then walked away, leaving a shocked Eddie behind.

****

Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8

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[ellesthots]

Fateful Beginnings

XV. “mutually-assured destruction”

parts: previous / next

plot: Bruce elicits your help in a desperate bid to validate his sanity, but the both of you reach a permanent standstill.

pairing: battinson!bruce wayne x fem!reader

cw: 18+, arguing, anger, fear, hopelessness

words: 2.6k

a/n: I love when they bicker lmfaooooo, here’s a lil scene for the enemies to lovers crowd 😌

You tried to be subtle with your double-take. His hair was so much darker when it was soaked from rain, and he was nearly unrecognizable in such oversized, bulky clothing. Your eyes wandered to a notebook clutched tightly in his hand. Is it slippery? His knuckles are white.

He pulled you quickly toward him and the gentle spray of what would have been an outfit-ruining tsunami grazed your ankles. As quickly as the car passed he let go and began walking across the street. "Follow me." Too curious for your own good, you followed. Only when you reached three blocks from the hotel did you stop and question the affair. He gave a gruff response to asking where you were headed. "It's only a few more blocks." He continued walking until he realized your footsteps weren't following, and hesitated to peek over his shoulder. Of course you wouldn't follow him. Of course you had to make this difficult. He very nearly pressed on without you out of spite.

He was unrecognizable to you from behind. His wet hair splayed in a haphazard frame around his face, this wasn't what a billionaire looked like. A glimmer of curiosity captured you. Why would a billionaire want to dress himself down like this? It was decidedly less glamorous when he was outside of the suit, and less pathetic than when he wore baggy black clothes to walk around his empty home. You remembered you were in seclusion in downtown Gotham with a rich man, a man so rich he could ruin you without a second thought; and even though you knew his secret, you didn’t know him. He could do anything to me and the world would let him. The possibility alone petrified you and you resigned to stay back.

He picked up on that resolution (though he thought it wasn't self-preservation but resolution to his dissolution) and turned around, glowering at you. He noted that your feet were particularly dug into the gravel, your arms stiff to your sides. The chill of the evening air outside of your lips was the only evidence you weren't a statue. "It's just a few more blocks."

"I heard you." You crossed your arms to protect your chest and you saw his eyes track the movement. Heat rose in your chest. So fucking perceptive. It's like I'm prey.

"Are you coming?"

"No. My parents are expecting me back." He was just a random guy. Your mother was sick, your dad was probably unable to figure out how to work the remote and move from HDMI 1 to HDMI 2. You grit your teeth and he, of course, noted the subtle movement in your jaw.

What are you, twelve? He bit down on his tongue with a sliver of shame. You were just a random woman. Someone who had parents to get back to, parents that were waiting on you, parents who would be concerned if you were back too late, parents to spend time with, parents to see you, to know you...

A story was flashing across his eyes, even in the dark, but you weren't staying to figure it out. "I'm sure Alfred is waiting on you." You spun on your heel but didn't make it two steps before he retorted. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means you should spend time with him instead of stalking girls on street corners."

He didn't need you. You didn't know what you were talking about. "Don't act like you know anything about him." He wasn't letting you get out of earshot before defending himself. You don't know a thing about Alfred. A possessiveness snuck into his tone.

You spun around, your hands lazily following until they slapped against your thighs. "I got a good sense of your hospitality while I was there, you're ridiculously antisocial." You emphasized your eyeroll.

He huffed so firmly clouds of warm air obscured his face, making him for a moment a total shadow. "My apologies for not wanting a stranger loitering in my house that just threatened to blackmail me!" His voice had risen, but it wasn't quite enough for you to call him out yet.

You put your hands up in the air, dressing your words in as much syrupy sarcasm as they could hold. "God forbid someone stay in the giant empty mansion of the person hoarding all the city's resources for three days."

He turned around swiftly, menacingly. "I'm doing more for this city than anyone else."

You didn't bother to temper your scoff. It echoed off the wet brick. "Your ego is fucking insane."

He barked back. "What has anyone else done?"

You thought of your father who had so many aches and pains he couldn't count from his endless career work. The farm workers working in nearly inhumane conditions for meager paychecks, paychecks the Wayne family spent in a day even with just one man and a butler, the people putting food on Gotham's table. You thought of all the houseless people you'd walked past on your way here and couldn't help but laugh, but it was filled with so much tension it was painful. "You picked up a voluntary night shift, congrats, what cookie do you want?"

His chest constricted like his ribs had been welded together. "This is ridiculous. I don't know why I thought you'd be any help." He moved to turn but you ensnared him with another biting accusation.

"You are sitting on a mountain of wealth while people rot in the streets."

He rolled his eyes and committed to the full turn of his back to yours. "I'm not talking about this."

You scoffed again, your chest constricting with the beginning of adrenaline. "I made a point that you don't know how to respond to because you can't. And you're just leaving! Some fucking savior!"

God, who did you think you were? He spat the words out on the pavement with his back turned, eyes narrowed to slits. "You came here just to shit on my city and—"

"It is not your city. You are just a rich kid whose parents happened to live here. And you've done nothing besides saving counterfeit checks and people who have no other choice—"

"Oh, not this again." His smugness brought you right back to running to the city hall bathroom. He didn't know how easily he could massacre someone with his tongue. "Some of the people you take so much pride in scaring the shit out of are already scared. I guarantee if you just gave everyone food, shelter,"

"Money doesn't save everything." You. Didn't. Get. It.

"How can you possibly know even a fraction of the value of a single fucking dollar when you have billions in your bank acc—"

"I'm already allocating." He increased the distance between you two.

You snapped at him, seething at his audacity. "Don't you dare interrupt me."

"Money gets you shot dead on the streets." He continued without a care in the world.

"Don't fucking interrupt me."

He turned his head to peek a touch over his shoulder. Your sharpness has rustled him. He wanted to speak up again but your chest was heaving and splotchy red. Your hands were in trembling fists at your side. He averted his gaze and looked over at the wall while you both stood in silence. His heart was racing, but it wasn't showing—blood making a racket in his ears and practically drowning out all sound. He waited, and waited, and waited more, the adrenaline steadying him and giving him clarity. No one had ever been this mad at him outside of the suit... it was weird. It felt like he should be in armor, ready to dodge a punch and land one square in the jaw. He hated the way his eyes lingered on your jaw, nose, and the bottom of your ribcage. An enchantingly strong sensation of shame erupted from it. More combatant than human.

You noted his features softening, and with it yours slowed to simmer. It was impossible not to notice how sad he looked, and that pissed you off. Why do I give a shit what he's feeling? It was like there was a small box sitting in the corner of your chest, a slim panel hidden in the back of your mind. It contained something you couldn't reach. Every time you were around him it began to glow, but it was too hot. It burned your eyes if you ever tried to look right at it. Frustration had created a mist in your mind to try and distract you, convince you he was nothing of importance; Bruce Wayne could go fuck himself. Another part leapt out and tried to tell you, right then, your empathy was pure socialization. It's a woman's job to soothe, after all. Be easy, after all. The world catered to men, and here was the stereotype and living idol to the alpha male archetype. It repulsed you. Your eyes flit down to his journal as it slipped ever so slightly on the pads of his fingers. You squinted. Curiosity. That's what's coming up. You recalled Dr. Vry on the first day of your first journalism class. She'd opened the class with a speech.

You are all here because you were curious. Curious about this class, curious about writing, and curious about interviewing. I want you to hone in on that feeling; if you have a curiosity about something, anything, anyone, this unintelligible itch to figure it out, it's the sign of a story. A truth needs to be witnessed that you might be the only one capable of seeing. A truth you need to share with the world.

His eyes were the story; it elicited such a feeling of curiosity, his eyes. They were angry, and dark, and sad, and in a position unique to one in 8 billion. You were curious. You were curious about Bruce Wayne, and you hated him. You hated his clothes, his voice, his face, his gait, his position, his quiet arrogance. It clashed so hard with the embers of sympathy for his emotional darkness you felt you could burst. Still, you weren't about to follow him into the black abyss. "Why do you need to talk to me?"

Bruce's reaction didn't quite help you feel safe; he bristled at the question. There was something he wasn't telling you, that was obvious enough, but he refused to give any of it away. "I can't talk about it right here."

"I don't trust you."

He sighed. It made sense, as much as he hated to admit it. He wouldn't follow just anyone out into the corners of Gotham at night either. He shrugged over at you, opening his arms to flap them back down. "Want to check for weapons again?"

Again. You'd been genuinely petrified back in his basement; up until Alfred had arrived, you were certain you would have been meat to string along the ceiling for the bats to feed off of. It still didn't feel quite right, and you didn't feel quite safe, but you felt safer. Safe enough to not be agreeable, safe enough to not run away the second you saw him, but not safe enough to revoke suspicion. The thing on top of your mind now, taking up so much space it hurt, was hypervigilance. Every movement of his hand, his eyes, even the rhythm of his breathing was being tracked and gauged. You didn't know why this question came up, but it fell out of your mouth when it opened. "Do you really trust I won't tell anyone?"

Damn. He didn't, in truth. He'd said so back at the airport because it hadn't fully sunk in that someone knew. Now that he'd had to begin constructing this new persona, now that he had realized how someone could see past it, he was terrified. Almost imperceptibly he shook his head. "No."

It made you a bit afraid hearing that, not that him saying yes would've made you believe him. How could he trust you? If the roles were reversed, you wouldn't. "I don't trust that you won't hurt me."

"How can I convince you?"

Before you could answer your phone buzzed. It was your dad.

"Hey hun, everything good down there?" He sounded like he was munching on the hideously expensive bag of chips that had been provided by hospitality. You nodded before realizing he couldn't see you and your cheeks burned with heat at Bruce having seen it. "Yeah, I just got caught up."

"Caught up? Is that code for something? Do you need me to come down there?"

You glanced over at Bruce who was staring down at his shoes. He slowly looked up at you and lingered in eye contact briefly before looking down to kick at a pebble. Bruce Wayne kicking pebbles on the sidewalk. Get the paparazzi over here. "It's fine, dad. I'll be back in a few minutes."

He didn't miss a beat before a small shuffling and you heard him whisper. "She must have met up with that Wayne guy. Probably doesn't want to tell me." He came back to the line and you thanked god your speaker was off. "No it's, I'll be back soon. Bye." You hung up even though you could tell he didn't quite buy it, which made you have to hurry your exit even more. You plunged your phone in your pocket, avoiding eye contact. You answered him. "You can't convince me."

You both stood there in total silence, not even a car driving in background noise. Finally an ambulance mauled past and he let out a deep sigh. "How do we level the playing field?"

You shrugged, your mouth drying up. You rolled your eyes and sighed out some tension. "Mutually assured destruction, I guess." You didn't particularly like that, the threat of violence from him ever-present in your mind. He didn't like that either, in fact, he felt like he could vomit the second you said that. "I won't hurt you."

"I don't believe it."

"We're at a standstill, then." He straightened his back. "You could say we're even." God, it made him ill that he saw no route to convince you. Another reminder of his status, another reminder of how inhuman he was. You probably looked at him like his veins were thick with gold. He felt the need to give you another reminder, not wanting to hide behind the cloak of assumed violence for another second. "Even if you wrote that, I wouldn't hurt you."

Playing the nice guy, huh? You crossed your arms and shook your head vigorously, the cold chill starting to get to you. You needed to get home and couldn't have this conversation much longer. "You can't convince me, you just can't."

You still felt a twist in your stomach at how much privilege he didn't even realize he held, so much wasted opportunity and ignorance, but you nodded. How could you explain to someone that was born into it how much power he held? Was he actually ignorant of it, or did he just want people to think he was so they would get comfortable and let their guard down for him to strike? It still felt uneven, massively so, but you reassured yourself that you would be out of his reach soon enough. Your parents were waiting, your mom was sick, and you'd be gone in the morning for good. You spun around on your heel without a look back and sped on back to the hotel. Bruce glanced down at the journal that was nearly melted into a puddle in his hand and groaned. Whatever. Mutually-assured destruction.

[girlactionfigure]

🟣 ISRAEL REALTIME - Connecting to Israel in Realtime

Morning Report - Monday

⭕ BARRAGE OF HAMAS ROCKETS at near Gaza towns (20) from Khan Yunis.

▪️MORE WAYS TO READ.. for those who prefer X or Facebook, we are now there:

🔸X (twitter) - https://x.com/IsraelRealtime

🔸Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61558471625976

▪️HAMAS WEAPONS MAKING VIDEO.. The military arm of Hamas is trying very hard to show that it continues to produce explosives even during the war, by showing someone spray painting Chinese HEAT warheads and attaching instructions in Arabic.

▪️RELEASED TERRORISTS.. this morning the IDF released the director of Shifa hospital aka Hamas HQ together with 50 captured terrorists.  Speaking out about the release were both opposition party leader Israel our Home MK Liberman, and coalition party leader Otzma Yehudit MK Ben Gvir, who both had harsh words for releases while our hostages remain held.  Various other MK’s and ministers are FURIOUS that the IDF and Shin Bet made this release.

(Amit Segal commentary: ) “If it turned out that the manager of Sheba hospital in Tel Aviv was hiding hundreds of drug dealers in the institution, he would go to prison for the rest of his life.  So why is it that when the director of Shifa in Gaza hides thousands of terrorists, and he is released after 8 months?”

▪️PROTEST - ANTI-GOVT.. Demonstrators against the government block highway 40 near Magashim intersection.

▪️PROTEST - ANTI-DRAFT TURNS VIOLENT.. Jerusalem: arrests for attempts to harm the police officers, the police arrested 5. Two for attacking police officers and 3 for throwing stones or objects. 

▪️RETAIL - EV CARS.. The purchase tax on an electric vehicles will jump in January, but no one knows by how much.

▪️POLITICS - NEW PARTY FOR THE WIN?  Initial polls show a potential party of Israel our Home MK Liberman + former PM Bennett + former Mossad head Yossi Cohen would be a winner!   Early reports say leadership terms are difficult - the party may not happen.

▪️HIGH COURT CASE - ISRAEL MUST TAKE WOUNDED GAZANS?  Moked for the Protection of Individuals and Doctors for Human Rights petition the High Court to obligate Israel to evacuate wounded Gazans into Israel.  

▪️NEW NUKES.. “It is estimated” that Israel invested over a billion dollars in nuclear weapons in the last year (2023) according to the fifth annual report of the International Movement for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons and “it is estimated” that Israel has 90 nuclear weapons, putting it just behind India and Pakistan in nuclear arsenal… on the basis of “estimates”.

▪️ON CHAREDI DRAFT.. The head of the Council of Torah Sages, Rabbi Moshe Maya: “If military frameworks are established following the advice of the rabbis, which will certainly protect every ultra-Orthodox recruit and with legal validity - those who do not study can be recruited.”

♦️US DESTROYS 3 SUICIDE BOATS from the Houthis in the RED SEA.

⭕ ANTI-TANK MISSILES from HEZBOLLAH at Metulla.

⭕ SHIA MILITIA IRAQ CLAIM ATTACK ON EILAT.. no such attack known.

[passivenovember]

don’t leave me waiting with all this love

--

A two-bedroom apartment falls out of the sky and into their laps because with the pooled weight of their hush money, they can afford it.

Steve’s lived in a castle since the day his parents brought him home, swaddled in blue fleece from Hawkins General, and Billy’s never had a room that felt like his own, and a two-bedroom apartment is a one-way mirror. It’s a shroud, it’s protection. A spiny defense to hide behind when their landlord raises an eyebrow and asks if they’ve got a girlfriend. 

Not two girlfriends. A. 

One.

Split between them, or something. As if the landlord knows they’re conjoined, down to their roots.

Steve tracks the way Billy’s shoulders pull tight, how his smile is a bit too sharp, his laugh so thunderous that their landlord doesn’t wonder why they have six months' rent upfront. Steve knows it’s a pacifier stuck between Mr. Morrison’s front teeth so he won’t ask any more questions.

They move their furniture that night, huffing up three flights of stairs in the July heat. 

Steve yaps about ordering a pizza. He floats the idea of renting a video and they christen their apartment, their shiny new life, with letters addressed to the burning past. The worst is over. Billy’s lips and tongue and sweat-slick skin roll over Steve like fresh dirt, baptizing him.

Steve comes apart imagining home.

He sees blue eyes. Blonde curls tied back as the kitchen fills with the robust, lingering smells of Tuscany and his Nonna’s house in Indiana. Billy thrusts harder, faster, and in this dream world, their home smells like them. Sun-warmed blankets that never get washed, bathroom mirrors spackled with hair spray. In every luminous version of the future, Billy’s laugh runs through the very core of the Earth, rattling the tracks of the last train Steve will ever wave goodbye to, and it’s Graceland.

It’s bliss, until Billy offers to sleep on the couch.

He says it’s because he doesn’t have a mattress.

Steve hangs off the door jam in his fruit of the looms, “You can sleep with me,” He says, thinking he shouldn’t have to say that. His stomach shouldn’t clench with worry that for the first time in two years, Billy might so no.

It’s warmer in the living room right now than Hawkins ever was.  

Billy’s hair sticks to his neck. He wipes at it, and Steve opens his mouth to insist he’s not above begging. Billy came inside him. Billy’s teeth sunk into his neck as if Steve were made of ripe fruit, and this is their house. This is their home. The second bedroom is just collateral. 

I want to be with you, Steve imagines telling him, I want you next to me, inside of me.

“I’ll be alright,” Billy says, as if hearing every unspoken word. He turns away, he. Stares out the window with the same cold, empty expression he sometimes got when the night was closing in Hawkins. Steve thought they had washed their hands of that, and yet when Billy realizes Steve’s frozen to the floor, he grins. “I promise,” he says. 

It’s empty, too. Horrible.

Steve goes. 

Sleeping alone is like trying to make love on a burlap sack full of bowling balls. Steve tosses and turns and swears the door was shut when he went to sleep without a blanket.

Still, he wakes before dawn wrapped in the ugly knit Max threw at Billy’s head when he told her they were leaving.

–

“He’s probably an evil clone.”

“He’s not an evil clone.”

“Are you sure? He hit his head pretty hard on the tile. Banged his everything else against the fist of a space monster–”

“You’re not actually helping.”

“I’m just presenting the facts. He’s probably a government spy,” On the other end of the line, Robin’s slurping on something. Really taking her time with filing every single one of Steve’s nerves down to the cartilage. 

Steve shivers. It’s the middle of the day in September, and he’s shrouded in darkness. “Bills couldn’t be a government spy.”

“Why not?”

“Because,” Steve says, twirling the phone cord around one hand, “Because he still wants to shower together. He still likes Hershey's chocolate and little marshmallows in his peppermint tea. He’s afraid of the dark.”

“All of that’s just shit the clone learned from Billy’s personal file.”

Steve rolls his eyes. “Billy doesn’t have a personal file.”

“Don’t be thick, we all fought monsters so we all have a personal file in the event that we decide to air Big Brother’s dirty laundry,” Robin tells him. “I don’t give a shit what you say, if he’s not fucking you anymore it tracks.”

“You’re an idiot, Buckley. ”

“Why, because I don’t believe that thing is really Bills?” 

“You’re an idiot if you think even a robot version of Billy would stop fucking me.”

“God, that’s so gross. You’re so gross–”

“So you admit that I’m right?”

“No,” Robin Snaps, “Evil clones are not the strangest thing that’s happened to us. Not by a long shot.”

“--Robin–”

“And if you’re suggesting that the government isn’t homophobic, you should read more.”

“Robin.”

“I’m serious. The feds planted crack-cocaine in disco balls because that’s where all the gay–”

Steve scrubs a hand across his forehead. “I’m hanging up now.”

“Okay, fine,” Robin groans, finally stopping to take a breath, “Billy’s not an evil clone and all that hush money wasn’t just a ploy to get you out there. Alone. So they could finish the job.”

Steve wants to laugh. 

He aches to roll his eyes and call Buckley a bonehead before hanging up the phone and getting back to the three loads of laundry sitting on his-and-not-Billy’s bed, but. “What do you think the deal is?” Steve frowns, “Evil robots–”

“--Clones–”

“--Notwithstanding?” Steve asks, ignoring her. He perches the phone against his shoulder so that his hands are free to sort through the lights and darks. 

There are a lot of lights here. Apparently, this Billy wears beige. And sea-foam. And that lovely shade of periwinkle from Billy’s senior picture that makes his freckles look like a million spattered treasure troves. Steve hates it. He loves the color and hates the change. Hates the meaning. 

He’s so stupid for thinking this move would spell silver linings. 

He’d never imagined in a million years that it would change Billy to the core, even though it used to be all he hoped for. That Bilyl would fall asleep and stay that way for a hundred years, and when he finally woke up again all the hurt inside him would gone. 

But now. Steve’s wishy-washy. He’s a big fat washing machine man.

Robin hums, sucking at the dregs of ice in her piggly-wiggly cup. “Honestly, I think he’s happy.”

Steve drops Billy’s underwear as if it’s caught fire. “You don’t think he was happy before?”

“In Hawkins? I think he was trapped and miserable,” Robin says, “I think he was happier when he got you. You’ve always been his window into the outside world but now he’s got a doorway, you know? Being home again.”

Steve gets that. 

No one’s meant to be anyone’s everything, and.

Steve could accept it, were it not for the other stuff. The huge shift in dynamic even though Billy’s the same as always, at the root of him. Laughing at Steve and wagging his tongue and fucking Steve nasty all over the apartment. 

Avoiding the bed, though.

Shying away from any real intimacy, and all the domesticity that comes with waking up next to someone every day.

“It doesn’t make sense,” Steve grumbles, feeling like the last three years never happened. They’ve gone back in time, landing on the doormat of their relationship when Billy was still consumed with fear.

“Have you tried talking to him about it?”

“A few times,” Steve admits, “Mostly he just kisses my cheek and tells me he’ll be fine in the living room.”

“That is weird,” Robin says thoughtfully. “Listen. Don’t freak out, but. Right before my parents thought they were gonna get divorced–”

“Don’t.”

“You don’t even know what I was going to say.”

“Doesn’t matter, I don’t want to hear anything about divorce or separation–”

“You guys aren’t even married.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Steve insists, bile cracking like an egg behind his breastbone, “If you’re going to sit there and talk about endings, I don’t wanna fucking hear it.”

“Alright.”

“We’re not your parents. This isn’t the first big sign of a falling out–”

“--Okay, Harrington, I believe you–”

“--Billy loves me,” Steve snaps, “Billy loves me so much.”

But the more he says it, the more it sounds like a swan song. Steve admitting, over and over and over again, that he would rather die than see the credits roll. That he’ll break his fingers before he lets go of Billy again.

“Don’t cry, Steve.”

“I’m not.”

“My parents never got divorced,��� Robin tells him gently, like that’ll slap a bandaid on it, “Billy’s always slow on the take-up. He’s probably still adjusting to the move. His whole life has been one big change after another, you know? And all that shit with the Mind Flayer–”

“It’s just,” Steve tries, chin wobbling dangerously, “The first night we moved here and he said he didn’t want to come to bed I couldn’t remember the last time I slept somewhere without him. I know I have before, I just. Couldn’t remember. I still can’t,” Steve wipes his nose on Billy’s favorite pair of boxers, feeling dramatic and comical and lame. “Maybe I should call it quits. Give him an out–”

“No,” Robin snaps, so harshly that Steve’s tears crawl back inside his skull to hide. “Steve, if you break up with him–”

“God, I’m gonna split my skin. I’m crazy.”

“You’re not,” Robin assures him firmly, “It’s completely valid to wonder what brought on such a big change but it’s not what you think it is, and if you try to give him an out he’ll think it’s because you don’t love him. You know that.”

Steve nods, groaning when more tears slip out from behind his eyelashes. 

“Billy’s as batshit crazy about you as you are about him, the feeling’s mutual,” Robin says. “Besides, he probably wants to come to bed but They haven’t programmed it into his memory board yet and he can’t recall the purpose of a mattress–”

“I’m gonna kill you with a brick.”

“Hey, there he is,” Robin chirps. Steve imagines her flying high above the trees and then swooping low, angry pigeon style, to bomb his head with the truth. “It’s going to be alright, Dingus.”

“I know it is.”

“You don’t sound very convincing.”

“I’ll be okay,” Steve snaps, clutching Billy’s dirty underwear to his chest like some disgusting, demented teddy bear.

He hopes, down to the pads of his bare feet, that Robin’s right about this. That things will turn out okay. Because if they don’t and this spells the end of the best thing that ever happened, Steve will sink into darkness and he won’t be able to find his way out again.

Call him dramatic. It’s just the truth.

–

Darkness leaks out of him, through snags and tears he wasn’t even aware of. The only plus is that once the crescendo happens and Billy’s strapped down, swallowing mouthfuls of the rot he’d been dribbling for years, he lives. He can imagine a world where all the shadows are cast out. 

Maybe the ichor doesn’t seep out through harsh words, anymore, because there’s nothing left.

He’s empty. Wrung dry.

There’s all sorts of shit that comes along with that: hurt, pain, and guilt rotting inside him, growing teeth until they feed on each other. Billy’s nothing. He’s a non-issue.

Owens says it’s not productive to think of himself that way.

“What would your sister say if she heard you talking like that,” The Doctor says. In Billy’s memory of him, Owens always smokes black and mild cigars in a white jacket. “What would Steve say?” The Doctor asks, and it becomes like a chant, the evil cheerleaders in Billy’s mind playing both sides of the field.

Gloom, following him like a shadow.

What would Max think if she saw the way your eyes light up at the possibility of crashing your car into the gulch. What would Max growl at you under her breath if she heard the half-drunk promises you make to your teddy bear that the age-old dream of skipping town to find your mom would be an adventure? What would Steve think, crying big fat crocodile tears, if he heard you scream into the sky that you’re a devouring worm who’s going to eat and eat and eat through everyone’s love until they, too, are shining emptiness?

Owens always circles back to that. “You’re not a black hole, Billy,” He says, with so much feeling it almost seems like he believes it, “Your sister loves you. She’s happy you made it back to her. Steve loves–”

“I know,” Billy says. Doesn’t understand it. Never understands it–

“Do you?” The Doctor asks, cloaked in a milky haze so Billy can never tell if he’s leeching joy from Billy’s scarce reserves.

When Billy tells the doctor that he’s moving to California and Steve’s coming, too, Owens says it’s good. It’s something to celebrate. “You’re not a black hole. You’re a room waiting to be filled with dayglow,” The Doctor tells him, lighting his customary cigar, “California Dreamin’, right?”

Their sessions never make it past the thirty-minute hand.

–

On Wednesday, the phone rings. “Robin said that Steve said that you said–”

“This isn’t high school,” Billy relaxes into child’s pose and watches a bead of sweat fall, lazy as dew-drop rain, into the yawning hands of the carpet. “Might be a bit of a shocker, since that’s where you’re at in life but if you’re gonna do this telephone, he said she said bullshit–”

“Telephone?” Max interrupts. 

“Yeah, you know. The game where you whisper into the ear of the person beside you, and they whisper into the next person’s ear, and then that fucker whispers–”

“God, you’re so old.”

Billy’s sweat is absorbed and digested into the putting green of the spare bedroom’s floor. He hikes himself into downward dog, willing his arms to stop shaking in their sinuous hold. “Just tell me what Robin said.” 

“Not Robin,” Max clarifies, chewing on something crunchy, “Well, Robin told me, but really she heard from Steve that you said you aren’t in love with him anymore.”

Billy’s arms give out. 

And really, gun to his head, it’s probably because there’s no future, no alternative timeline, no possibility in all the infinite choices and lifetimes Billy sometimes imagines when he gets too high, that he would ever stop loving Steve Harrington. 

But, he’s also in recovery.

His hands don’t work quite as well as they used to and his stamina, in all things but especially in the demented world of his teenage sister, is for shit.

His forehead stings, “Ow, godammit–”

“What happened,” Max barks.

“It’s fine, just,” Billy rubs between his eyebrows, “Just give me a minute.”

“It’s not true, right?” Max demands because she can’t follow instructions. Because since the very beginning, even before Billy knew what to call this thing with Steve, she was rooting for them. Stapling pompoms to her hands to muster happiness when Billy said I’m going home and Steve’s coming with me.

For Max, anything involving Billy is better if Steve’s beside him.

It’s sweet.

It’s a thorn in Billy’s ribs, too, a dagger-tip poisoned with worry that when Steve realizes he’s too good for the life they’ve built together, it’ll break her heart just as much as it’ll shatter Billy’s.

Max isn’t crunching on the other end of the line, anymore. “You still love him,” She says, “Obviously, you still–”

“Why would Steve say something like that?”

“I don’t know,” Max says, in exactly the sort of stretched, wavering voice she has when she does know. When it’s her doomsday tale, come to fruition.

“Tell me what you know,” Billy demands.

“I already told you, dipshit, I don’t know anything. I only know what Robin heard from Steve who heard from–”

“Yeah, I got that part,” Billy tucks his feet under him, muscles sore and loose. His tendons trip over each other, clenching painfully to hold the rising tide of worry threatening to seep from his bones. “I don’t understand. Is he pissed that I threw out the boxed pudding last week?”

“You threw out all the boxed pudding,” Max repeats, and Billy imagines coppery horror dawning bright across her freckles.

“Owens said I need to cleanse my body, just like I need to cleanse my mind.”

“Yeah, that was a bad move,” Max reports glumly.

There’s not much Steve gets up in arms about. He’s as deep and as calm as a river, he’s moss-covered boulders and wisteria growing through cracks in the rubble of ancient buildings. He doesn’t simmer and boil over like Billy does, but Steve’s serious about dessert.

He’s got a sweet tooth the size of Mississippi that’s only gotten worse since Billy escaped death. They’ve got their ways of coping.

“He’s probably gonna kill you in your sleep,” Max tells him.

“Yeah, probably.”

“You’d deserve it,”

“I’d deserve it,” Billy tells her. For the pudding and for so many other nameless, faceless things that lurk in the past. Billy picks at the fiber of the carpet, “Still doesn’t seem right, though.”

“You think he’s worried about something else?” Max chuckles, “Wait, don’t answer that. It’s you he fell in love with, there’s always something to be pissed about.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“I’m just saying, you do things all the time without thinking about it.”

Billy resists the urge to cross his arms and pout. “Like what?”

“You want me to name them?”

“Yeah,” Billy spits, losing the war, “I want you to name them so I can be better. For everyone, but. For Steve. And you.”

Max groans. Long and low and Billy’s grateful, somewhere past his resolutions, that some things and especially some little sisters, never change. Billy tries not to smile, “Look, tease me all you want, okay? Owens says–”

“Owens is a quack.”

“He’s not a quack,” Billy insists, and now his hands are shaking.

It’s a drop of a dime, these days.

It’s out of his control.

“I know, he’s a partial quack. He’s got quack-like tendencies.” Max works to make her voice kinder. Softer. It means the world that she would try.

It means even more that she doesn’t baby him. 

Billy sits back against the wall in the guest room, tucking his knees up to his chin. He rifles through the last few months, unpacking every moment he’s shared in this apartment with Steve. They’ve cooked dinner together every night. They grocery shop and split the chores on Sundays, and Steve reads out loud to him from any book Billy picks up from the library, and.

“I thought everything was good,” Billy mutters, “I thought it was perfect. Steve is, and. I thought I could be.”

“You’re an idiot if you think anyone’s perfect.”

“I could try, Max. For him.”

“Look, is this about your survivors guilt, PTSD whatever?” Max demands. Billy hates the way he can’t hide from her. “We’ve already done the twelve-step apology bullshit, Billy. Everyone forgave you.”

He didn’t deserve it. 

Billy bites down so hard on his cheek that he tastes blood. He shakes his head and can’t admit that he never deserved a second chance. Not happiness, not love, and not steve.

Billy clears his throat, “Not everyone.”

“Well, everyone who counts,” Max says quietly. “Bills. You need to forgive yourself.”

It stings, like the reopening of a wound. 

Salt and rubbing alcohol burning in his nose when he breathes just like the Doctor taught him. Inhale joy, exhale pain. Inhale mercy, exhale–

“You have to forgive yourself,” Max tries again. Her voice wavers a little around the edges, fuzzy like it gets right before she starts to cry.

Billy hates himself, but. He hates that even more. 

For so long he wanted to believe that he was on the road to keeping his head above water. That soon enough he’d be able to think of the dark ages and not give into its way of life. 

Billy had thought that things were different.

In California, under sunny-bright skies, he’s a man made new.

Billy’s done everything right. He changed the way he eats. He does yoga. He sleeps on the mat on the floor to attone for the sin that still stain his hands like blood, he holds Steve far enough away that he’ll be safe but so Billy, selfish as he is, can still warm himself by the glowing light–

Billy sits up so fast that his head starts to swim. “I will,” He tells her.

“You mean it?”

“I’ll try,” Billy says. 

It’s all he can do.

–

Friday night, Steve comes home from work and falls into bed with his shoes still on. 

He’s asleep before his head hits the pillow. Billy hovers in the doorway for ten minutes to watch him sleep. Steve will wake up with a sore neck. His skin will ring itself red, indented with the seams of his pants.

Billy wants to enter the room. Feels like a sinner pacing the carpet outside confessional. 

He’s seasick and guilty about that. It’s a line of thought that leads nowhere, it careens madly off the edge of a cliff. 

Billy chews his nails and tells himself everything’s fine. 

He can cross the threshold without invitation. He can make sure his lover is comfortable. 

He can do this.

Just like this morning. Just like yesterday.

Billy gnaws at his thumb. Steve’s always more comfortable with his shoes off, soft and pliant with one sock clinging stubbornly to his foot. He can’t decide if it’s worth it to wake Steve or if getting the shoes off while he’s knocked out cold is even possible.

And once the shoes are gone, there’s the matter of Steve’s pants. Tight and scratchy denim and covered in drying finger paints and Billy knows even if he can manage to get Steve undressed, Steve will whine about the paint tugging on his leg hair, and then he’ll want to shower, and.

Well, Billy never could deny him.

–

The change in Steve’s breathing is like the first wave of a thunderstorm arching into the slow, lethal way the shadows in their room change shape and grow teeth. 

“Billy?” Steve calls, thick and groggy, edging toward panic, “Bills, where–”

“I’m on the couch,” Billy says. 

The whole house adjusts around the weight of Steve’s body. He runs down the hallway, appearing startled and out of breath, hair wild and cheeks lined.

“Jesus. I rolled over, and.” Steve runs a hand through his hair and Billy almost melts into the couch when those eyes slip like cool water over him, ringed with relief at the sight of him, tired and whole in their living room. “Nice to see you’re migrating closer to our bedroom.”

Our. 

Billy shifts, freezing cold without a blanket.

Steve watches him for a long, quiet moment. “You scared the shit out of me,” Steve grumbles, padding toward the coffee table with his sneakers still on. Billy makes room between his legs without a second thought and Steve curls like a cat between them, burrowing his face into Billy’s stomach. 

He sucks a mouthful of Billy’s stomach between his teeth, letting it fall doughy again before he presses a soft, firm kiss right above the worst of Billy’s scars.

Billy tangles his fingers into Steve’s hair, scratching and tugging at his scalp until Steve’s shoulders drop, until he’s breathing like he’s worried each inhale might be his last.

Billy wants to promise he’d give his own last breath to keep Steve alive. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s alright. You smell good,” Steve says, his tongue dragging lewdly over Billy’s happy trail.

Billy doesn’t deserve this. “I haven’t showered yet today.”

“Doesn’t matter, taste like vanilla bean,” Steve chews on him a little more, and Billy an feel every inch of his smile. “There is no more ‘yet,’ fyi. Today’s almost over.”

“Do you want me to clean myself up?”

“No,” Steve flails around, rolling and tucking his knees until Billy’s got a clear landing to his mouth, to the folded, unhappy lines of Steve’s forehead.

“You sure?”

“I like the way you smell,” Steve grumbles, carding his fingers through Billy’s leg hair. “It’s like aromatherapy for my trauma.”

“You’re a dork.”

“I was having a nightmare.”

Billy falters. He doesn’t know what to say, so he kisses Steve’s forehead, over and over again until the skin smooths itself out. Knows that even after all these years, Steve‘s gotta be smothered back to Earth when he wakes up screaming. 

“Wanna talk about it?” Billy asks, tracing a thumb over the perfect swell of Steve’s mouth. 

Steve kisses his finger. “You were gone,” He says softly, eyes unfocused and far away. “I pulled you out of a frozen lake and took all my clothes off so you could be dressed in something warm again, and I blinked. When I opened my eyes you weren’t there. You were gone.”

Billy should’ve been there. Next to Steve, in their bed. If he had swallowed his fear and just been there–

“You know I’m still in love with you,” Billy blurts suddenly. He holds tighter to Steve’s chest, fingers digging into the muscle around each one of his ribs. “No matter what you told Robin I did or what Max said you said Robin told–”

He may as well douse the fire. He may as well throw a blanket over passion, and a bucket of cool water on the night. 

Steve frowns at him. He searches Billy’s face and he says, “I was worried,” like the knife is finally being pulled form his stomach. 

Billy hates himself. “You never have to worry about me.” He swears, like a white-knight. A King.

Steve’s forehead wrinkles again. “You don’t touch me anymore.”

He wants to.

Billy aches, constantly, to the very atoms that make up the marrow of his bones, to touch him.

“I can’t. Because,” Billy tries. “Because I don’t deserve–”

“You’re wrong,”  Steve says harshly. 

Billy flinches. His throat closes up and Steve can tell, lurching into action so Billy doesn’t suffocate to death.

“Hey,” Steve says, sitting and twisting until his forehead tacks itself to Billy’s, “Breathe, c’mon.”

Steve demonstrates how to do it.

He patient. He’s beautiful.

“There you go, big guy.”

Bill holds onto the wrists that frame his face. Comes back to Earth, again, back home. Where he belongs. 

He feels Steve’s pulse through every inch of his body, thumping Billy’s blood when he can’t do it himself. He looks into those eyes, honey-pools that followed him into the dark. “I’m trying to do better.”

“You are better.”

“I’m trying to be perfect,” Billy says, “For you. Before I start this new life in our house, I want to be–”

Steve kisses the rest of it out of him. 

Everything, gentle licks and nips until all that’s left is fresh ground. 

“You’re done apologizing,” Steve says bluntly. He tucks a piece of hair behind Billy’s ear, eyes gentle on Billy’s face. “I’m sorry if I ever made you feel like you had to.”

“I needed it.”

“I know. But it’s not necessary anymore.”

“I’m sorry I made you think I didn’t want you anymore. I was worried that if I didn’t take this pilgrimage, something bad would happen and I’d hurt you.”

Steve kisses him. “You won’t.”

“I couldn’t take the chance before.”

“Let’s take it now,” Steve says. He sits back on his haunches, voice strong and true and bursting like dawn through the night. “The whole point of a fresh start is that we don’t have to crawl on our knees anymore, Billy. We get to be happy, now. We get to be together.”

Billy searches for the words he always thought were better left unsaid. 

He quiets the shadows that whisper there’s no going back. If he opens himself up to this, for real and forever, he sacrifices control. 

But if Steve’s the one he’s kneeling to–

“Can we go to bed?” Billy asks, small and uncertain. 

He braces himself for the sneer, for the unkind word, for reality to come crashing like a furious wave. 

Instead, Steve smiles. 

When he takes Billy’s hand, a door is opened. And light pours through.

--

for the lovely @chrisbitchtree for Harringrove for Turkey!

I hope you like it and I’m sorry it took forever and ever.

all my love,

Jaz

[blushcoloreddreams]

Dream hair at home - a leave-in is mandatory

Why is leave-in important and what is its role in fire protection? Now that you have learned how to wash your hair correctly from the previous posts, that is, to apply the shampoo only to the scalp, not to rub the shampoo along the hairline, completely remove the product when rinsing… to apply the conditioner to the extension of the foxes, and not directly on the scalp, I will teach you how you can protect your hair until the next wash. As you already know, the conditioner's sole function is make the hair strand more malleable. I'm reinforcing this because I know there are some people who believe that if you remove all the conditioner from your hair, it will stay dry or frizzy… And I need you to understand that the dryness or frizz does not happen for this reason. Frizz occurs due to two situations: either you are washing your hair incorrectly, applying shampoo on the rod and even rubbing it, or you are not protecting the strands after washing. Read more to discover how to protect your hair during the period until the next wash.

Leave-in and its function

The cosmetic product that plays this important paper is the leave-in. And what is leave-in? Leave-in is the product that stays in the hair. You apply it and you don’t wash it off, just like its name indicates. Comb cream, heat protector curl activators… that’s all leave-in.

You might already have one at home. However not every leave-in is adequate for you and your hair type.

The leave-in will create a protective film around the strands and is that film that will protect your hair against the heat of the blow dryer, against the sun heat, protect it against friction with the pillow while you sleep and friction when you brush it.

With such an important function this is a product you need to have and know how to apply correctly. Furthermore, it’s Laos necessary that its texture is adequate, all this care is necessary to keep it well cared for until the next wash.

Everyone should use

The use of leave-in is important for all types of hair: it's not just for those with curly hair or for those who are going to use heat tools like a curling iron. Everyone needs to use it , as this product will take care of your hair until the next wash. With that, the question you should be doing is:

“Whats the correct leave-in I need to use?”, “liquid or cream?”, “how do I apply it?”

As for the texture

Well, regarding the texture, it is important that you opt for cream products, more viscous. And why not in spray, in a liquid? Because the most liquid product have lower concentration of assets that will protect strands, and the leave-in cream has a higher concentration of these active ingredients. This is one of the most important steps for you have the hair of your dreams, precisely because of this protection it offers to the hair. Therefore, in relation to texture, choose a leave-in cream.

Regarding the application

After rinsing out the conditioner, you will remove the excess water with the towel, gently squeezing it, just like you did when you removed excess moisture before applying conditioner. Remember? It's not for Wring your hair in a towel, as this damages the hair a lot. of hair. Also, if your hair curls and you texture your curls hair up, it will tend to define its shape in the same direction, up. With this, we will have volume of hair and unwanted frizz. This may even be one of the reasons why you has frizz or even a certain volume that is more difficult to tame in this region, that is, because you tie your hair in head after shower and go out to change, to resolve any issue on the phone and, when you see it, the hair has already started to dry in this sense. therefore, no Curl your hair and don't leave it until later to finalize it.

The correct way to apply

The correct way is to remove excess water by giving lightly pressed with the towel and, after having removed all excess moisture, you will separate your hair into two main strands.

Then, spread the leave-in in your hand and apply the product covering the wires. Yes, you will apply the leave-in in the same way you applied the conditioner. Gloving the wires from the ear down, depositing the product and, finally, will apply what's left of the leave-in to your hands on top, in the same way. And it will be the same for every product you apply to the length of your hair. (Conditioner, leave-in, hair masks…) Always Before untangling, glove and place the product in the extension of the strands below the ear and, in the end, just apply what is left of product on the top in the hands.

Regarding the amount applied

In relation to the amount applied, those with straighter hair or who are going to blow dry it need to use a just a little bit of the product so you don’t to weigh down the strands. Those who have curly hair can use a bigger amount as they need to style their curls. The product won’t damage your hair, The problem is only when the person has finer hair and by applying it in excess it will look dirty when, in fact, it's just excess product. So the tip here is: apply it little by little. Apply a little first and, if it hasn't let your hair feeling heavy / oily / dirty and you think it still You can apply more, apply more. Finally, I want to bring up an important reasoning. When hair is bleached or has highlights, it may not appear to be more delicate. But when you separate a single strand, you realize how fragile it is.

leave-in is extremely important exactly because of this it will create a protective layer around every hair, diminishing severely the aggressions it suffers on day-to-day life. This leave in must be worn in a cream form.

The 3 steps explained here - the correct application of shampoo, conditioner and leave in will guarantee a healthy hair. .

[warriorofdragons]

Woe Is Menstruation

Word Count: 2.9k

Warnings: Language,NSFW(18+ Only) Vaginal Fingering, Nudity, Menstruation, Menstrual Blood

You smooth back your wet hair and groan. The cramps have been relentless today and your period just started yesterday. You adjust the water some more and let out a heavy sigh. Your eyes snap open when there’s a knock on your bathroom door accompanied by your boyfriend’s voice. “Hey, Pumpkin, you mind unlocking the door for me?” Cole asks. “Yeah,” you reply in a small, tired voice. With great reluctance you leave the spray of hot water and squeeze out your hair a little before making your way to the bathroom door. Upon hearing the click of the lock, your boyfriend cracks the door open and greets you with one of his usual cheerful smiles. You give him a small, tired smile back before turning back around to return to the shower. Cole watches you leave with a small pinch between his brows. Once back under the spray of water you rest your hands on top of your shoulders as you let out a quiet sigh. The sound of the bathroom sink running precedes the water coming from the shower getting hotter as you hear Cole splashing his face with cool water. Normally, you would leave the bathroom door unlocked while Cole is at home, especially since he often joins you in the shower. But today you don’t feel very well and had locked the door so you wouldn’t be disturbed, but had immediately caved upon hearing Cole’s voice. Even though you want to wallow in your misery alone, you’re not going to prevent him from brushing his teeth or something. You rake your fingernails across your skin as another painful cramp rips through you. “Am I bothering you, Pumpkin?” Cole asks gently, the sink faucet squeaking off. You must have grumbled out when the cramp hit you and you continue to grit your teeth as it continues. “Oh shit! I probably scalded you just now didn’t I?” Cole realizes. “It’s fine…I didn’t really notice,” you mumble. You did, but you didn’t care, you’d burn yourself if you thought you could get rid of the pain. “Is everything alright, Baby?” Cole asks concerned. “Huh? Oh yeah,” you say defeatedly. You glance in his direction and can roughly make out his head and shoulders from behind the shower door, but one thing you can tell is that he’s turned towards you. And then he steps towards the shower door and pulls it open to look at you. You look back at him and Cole’s eyes are filled with concern, “You just tired, Baby?” he asks. “Yeah I-ah!” you’re cut off mid-sentence by another cramp and then a couple moments later you feel something hit the bottom floor of your pelvis. “Sweetheart?!” Cole exclaims in alarm as you clutch your abdomen, “Is it your period?” “No,” you argue. Then you spread your feet apart instinctively as you feel the something slip further down and glance down to watch a huge clot of blood splash to the tiled floor beneath you. “Yes…”  you admit. Putting your hands under the spray of water you quickly wash your legs of any of the remaining blood and then try to wash the clot down the drain. Embarrassment heating your cheeks more so than the water has already done. “Oh, Sweetheart…” Cole says softly. You glance back at him to find him hastily pulling his shirt over his head and throwing it behind him. Then he pushes down his pants and underwear and kicks them both off and as he approaches, you keep your back to him and clutch your arms to your chest. Cole slowly wraps his arms around your body and pulls you into him, pressing his strong chest to your back. Slowly, you relax into him and rest your head back against his shoulder. Cole sways you in his arms and his right arm touches the spray of water and he hisses in pain and recoils making you jump. “This water’s boiling! How can you stand it?!” he questions as he reaches forward with his left hand to turn the water temperature down. Cole pulls you back a little more and out of the spray in order to protect you from the hot water while he waits for it to cool back down. There’s a shift in the air and some of the steam clears from the shower, so Cole gingerly sticks his right hand back under the water to test it. He adjusts the water temperature a little more, but you can tell from his reaction that it’s no longer scalding. You reach your hand under the water next and recoil from how cold it’s gotten and retreat back into Cole’s embrace for warmth. “It’s not freezing, it’s just not burnin’ ya no more,” Cole says. You clutch your abdomen and whine softly when the cramps wrack your body again. Cole lets out a sigh as he wraps his arm around you again and you grip onto his right forearm as he tries to comfort you. “It’s a bad one this time, huh?” he asks. You nod tiredly. Cole sighs again and places a kiss to your neck. “Can you rub my lower back, please?” you ask, “You know the spot where-“ No sooner had you finished your sentence, Cole’s hands start brushing down your body to the small of your back and he wraps his fingers around your hips and begins circling his thumbs in the middle of your back. You sigh in relief as he puts just the right amount of pressure on your back, “Thank you.” “Anytime, Darlin’,” Cole says as he continues to rub small circles. And after a couple of minutes of that, your back pain has subsided somewhat although your bloated abdomen still hurts despite the fact that you’re not currently suffering cramps, for the moment at least. Cole slides his right hand around your body to try and gently stroke you there, but when you suck in a breath from the added pressure of his hand, he stops. Instead, he just lays his hand against you and the warmth from his hand is at least a little soothing. “Did you already take your pain medicine?” Cole asks. “Yeah, right when I woke up. I kept waking up last night and thought that a shower might help with the pain. But it’s not…” you explain while glancing down at the drain. Cole places a kiss to your temple, “I’m sorry you feel bad, Honeysuckle, you want to finish rinsing off and try laying back down?” “I am…very tired,” you say weakly. “I know, Pumpkin,” Cole says kissing your shoulder this time and rubbing your stomach some more, “I know.” With Cole’s help you’re able to finish your shower and after he turns the water off, he hands you a towel first before donning his own. You step out of the shower and Cole steps towards you, “Put your arms around my neck,” he says. “What? Cole you don’t have to carry me,” you say. He holds out his arms for you and smiles. “Ok,” you say smiling back at him as you wrap your arms around his neck. Cole places one of his arms under your legs and the other on your back and he hoists you up into his arms. He turns sideways to get you both through the door and carries you bridal style towards the bed, pulling the covers back he then gently lays you down on his side of the bed.

Cole places a quick kiss on your lips, “I’ll be right back,” he promises. You smile up at him and turn your head to watch him head back into the bathroom. And when he comes back out he heads for the dresser, “Which pair of panties do you want?” he asks. “One of the cotton ones with stripes is fine,” you say. Cole returns to you with a fresh pad and the underwear you requested and hands them both to you. “Thanks,” you say as you set them aside and begin drying yourself off. You sit up making sure to dry your legs first before you move back up to your torso and arms. While Cole takes a seat next to you on the bed, you hear the crinkle of your pad as he opens it and you glance over at him as he fits it into your underwear. He’s a little clumsy at it, but it’s a sweet gesture none the less. “Aw,” you say. “Here,” Cole says gesturing to you with your underwear. You slip your legs over the side of the bed and Cole slides the underwear up your legs, and you lift your hips up a little so that it sits more comfortably on your hips. Then you cup your boyfriend’s face in your hands and kiss him, and Cole smiles against your lips. “You are the sweetest boyfriend ever, do you know that?” you ask. “You might have told me a time or two,” Cole preens. You finish drying your back and then hand Cole your towel, he steps away from the bed and deposits it in the hamper before starting to dry himself off finally. You feel your still damp hair and crawl off the bed to retrieve another towel from the bathroom and as you pass by Cole heading back into your bedroom you see him pull on a pair of boxers. They’re a red and white plaid pattern and you giggle when he catches you looking and shoots you a smug grin. But you also happen to notice that his eyes dip down to your breasts. You sit back down on the bed and pat your hair dry and then feel the mattress and comforter for any damp spots. You gasp when you suddenly feel Cole’s soft lips graze your shoulder and then look up into your boyfriend’s eyes. “Did I scare ya?” he asks softly. “Just startled me is all,” you say softly back. You relax into his touch as he leans back to continue his kisses from your neck to down between your shoulder blades, that is until you feel another painful cramp wrack your body. Cole sighs heavily and moves to rubbing your lower back again in an attempt to make you feel better, “Anything I can do for you, Sweetheart?” “No, I don’t think so,” you whine softly. He kisses your cheek. “I just wish everything didn’t hurt! My back hurts, my uterus hurts, my clit hurts, everything hurts!” you complain. “Want me to rub it for you?” Cole asks continuing to rub your back. You pinch your brows together, “Rub what?” you ask looking over at him. Cole simply smiles at you and then his eyes dart back to the spot on your lower back where he’s rubbing slow, deliberate circles. “My…my clit? You want to rub my clit?” you ask a little flustered. Cole smiles at you again, “If you want,” he offers. You smile wide at stare down at the floor, “I hadn’t thought about that…it would be nice…” Cole stops rubbing your back and gently takes your towel from you. “Yeah…please?” you ask softly. Cole smiles wide again and folds the towel in half and then leans towards you and gives you a long, slow kiss. And then he places the towel down on the bed. You scoot backwards so that your hips are over the towel and then you lay down on top of it. Cole lays down beside you and places his hand on your stomach and then trails his hand down your body. But before his hand dips beneath the waistband of your underwear he leans over you and kisses you again. Then his hand slips underneath your panties and down to your folds and you gasp into his mouth. Cole more than happily swallows your small gasps of pleasure. And then he parts just enough so you can finally take a breath, “Fuck! Everything’s so sensitive down there, it’s been throbbing all morning.” “Well, let’s see if I can make it throb in a good way,” Cole says lowly. “Yes, please,” you beg. Cole chuckles and continues to dance his fingers across your folds. You feel pressure build up in your abdomen, but in a good way this time, “I don’t think I’ll last long, Cole…” “That’s okay, as long as you feel good, Sweetheart,” Cole rumbles. You giggle, “Call me Sweetheart again?” Cole smiles, “My lovely…beautiful…Sweetheart,” he says leaning down towards you. He captures your lips with his and as his fingers quicken their pace the sound of your fluids causes Cole to groan against your mouth and you moan into his in response. And then your walls tighten and flutter suddenly as your orgasm ripples through you, and when your body starts to relax, Cole eases his movements and parts from your lips as you gasp for air. Your boyfriend kisses your cheek a couple of times looking very pleased with himself. You take a couple of heavy breaths and then bite your lip, “Cole…” you whine. “You want another one?” he asks smugly. “Yes, but give me a moment,” you pant. Cole smiles proudly down at you and you gather a few more breaths before wrapping your arms around his neck and pulling him down for a kiss. You passionately kiss him, your lips eagerly moving against his and he’s caught off guard, but quickly melds against you and when you break apart Cole’s now the one gasping for air. “I thought you said you needed a moment, “ he breathes. “Yes, but I decided I needed to kiss you more,” you say. Cole smiles and leans down to give you one small, sweet kiss. You can feel his fingers slowly resume their work as they circle your clit, and you happily relax into the bed and bury your fingers in your boyfriend’s hair. Your eyelids flutter when you feel him press a finger into you slowly. “Thank you,” you whisper. Cole chuckles, “I ain’t even done yet, Sweetheart.” “I know, that’s the best part,” you say softly. Cole laughs and kisses you tenderly. He slowly and gently rubs you until he can insert another finger and then he keeps the pace slow and consistent. Extending your pleasure and creating a slower build up than the first. And also Cole is clearly enjoying watching the expressions on your face as you rub his scalp and the top of his shoulder. Slowly but surely you build up to your release again as Cole peppers small kisses across your face. “Oh…I think I’m close, Baby…” you moan. “Yeah?” he asks, “You want me to make you cum?” “Please…” you beg. Now normally Cole might tease you about begging so much, but not today. He dutifully obliges and strokes you faster, swiftly pushing you towards the edge. You wiggle and moan under his touch and beg him for more. Cole then dips his head down and begins to suck on an exposed breast. Your muscles tighten and you clench tightly around Cole’s fingers and orgasm hard and long, and you feel like your entire body is swallowed in the resulting wave of pleasure as it washes over you. It goes on for long enough that Cole picks his head up to stare down at where his fingers are still working their magic. Your body finally goes limp as your orgasm trickles down. “Damn, Darlin,’ that was a good one, you were so nice and tight on my fingers,” Cole says. “Mhm…” you mumble as you close your eyes, feeling very satisfied. You hear your boyfriend laugh lightly above you and then his lips press to yours, and you kiss him back slowly. “I love you,” you say softly. There’s a kiss to your forehead, “I love you too.” Then you feel him slowly remove his fingers and his hand slip out from under your panties. You open your eyes to stare up at him. “Better?” he asks. “Much,” you answer. Cole turns from you and then slips off the bed and when you look over at him a little sadly he reassures you, “I’ll be right back, I just need to wash my hands.” You nod and roll over onto your side and curl up and close your eyes. You’re vaguely aware of the sink turning on and then off again after several moments, but mostly you’re keeping an ear out for when Cole’s footsteps draw near again. And when they do, you smile and the bed presses down beneath you and Cole’s body presses next to yours. You open your eyes and look up at him, “Hold me?” Cole gives you a sweet smile, “You don’t have to ask me for that, Sweetheart,” he says gently pushing one of his legs between yours and wrapping his arm around your middle. You settle against his body happily and he pulls the covers over both of you. Your brows furrow as you feel one more cramp begin in your abdomen again and groan, “My body couldn’t even give me five minutes of afterglow before it was back on it’s Bullshit again.” Cole laughs and then tries to stifle it, “I’m not laughing cause you’re in pain, I promise,” he says, “Just the way you said that.” You smile a little and then you start to giggle, “It was really nice though, and at least now I’m worn out enough to get some sleep cramps or no cramps, although I know which one I would prefer.” “Really wore you out, huh?” Cole asks playfully. You smile and kiss him again and when you pull back you savor the warmth of your orgasms that’s still present. “You always do, Cowboy,” you say blissfully wrapped in his embrace, “You always do.”

[kinetic-elaboration]

March 22: Octavia & Clarke, Cunning/Rough

Octavia & Clarke, Modern AU, from the same 'verse as Make a Lot of Money and Feel Dead Inside

~1350 words, written in about 50 minutes

For the prompt "cunning and its antonyms: simple, ignorant, blunt, rough" from my July Break Bingo 2023 card.

cw for references to sexual assault

*

They start high school with reputations, all because of a prank they'd pulled the summer before. Clarke called it a revenge plot; Octavia, getting even.

Now everybody knows Clarke to be smart, but dangerous—cunning, the kind of girl who will convince you to let down your guard around her, even when you know better, excavate your secrets and use them against you, sharp and cold beneath a mystifying surface. Octavia, her best friend, her shadow, is the rough-and-tumble sort, a hazard to one's health in a different sort of way. She gets into a scuffle out back of the school at the end of the first week of classes, which cements the whole thing. She's tough, rough, and simple, a girl unafraid of bruises, jutting out her chin to show the raw bleed where the skin's scraped off.

The origin of the legends spools back to the Fourth of July party at Dax's place in the long, hot, humid, languid interim between eighth and ninth grade. Clarke was invited because of her beauty, Octavia on the strength of her older brother's connections and because Clarke was going, and they came packaged together as a set. Octavia still had the tomboy look of her early adolescence, long and rangy and lean, proportions she hadn't yet grown into; half her wardrobe was old hand-me-down's from Bellamy. She thought she looked like something in the right light, thought maybe that might matter, to the right boy. Not many looked at her when Clarke was right next to her, round-faced and blue-eyed; she'd started wearing low-cut shirts that showed her cleavage, sundresses that made Bellamy go protective-chaperone on her if he saw, made his face get all red and embarrassed, and cut off shorts, tan lines from tank tops striping her shoulders.

At the party, all the boys looked at her.

Except for one, who caught Octavia's eye over the top of his Solo cup and didn't let go, didn't blink. Someone was waving around sparklers in the background. The air smelled of cut grass and some distant neighbor's grill smoke, pulsed with bass beats from Dax's stereo.

The boy introduced himself as Atom. They sat around for a while on the back-porch steps, the concrete cold and rough against Octavia's legs and the backs of her thighs, talked bullshit until after a while he was resting his hand on her knee. He didn't mention either Clarke or Bell. She didn't have much to say, too distracted by an awareness of his body heat, an overpowering scent of body spray, his goddamn hand.

They made out for a while in the backseat of Dax's father's car, which was parked in the driveway, so she could see the late-sunset fading through the windows and the twilight building. Through the crack in them she could smell the smoke still, lingering on the humid air, hear the same sort of chirps and buzzing that she'd hear from out in the swamp in her own backyard, back home. Such thoughts distracted her often: how distant she felt from his hands pawing at her. When he touched where she didn't want, she kicked him, weakly, right above the shin because it was where she could reach.

But he was on top of her and didn't seem overly concerned.

That was a spiral moment. She thought of it that way later, that topsy-turvy vertigo that comes from control slipping, the sick-slipping sense that anything could happen, and none of it would be hers.

She got a knee in, scrambled out backwards through the unlocked door, fell right on her ass in the gravel. Scraped up heels of her palms, the cut of a small, sharp rock. He hadn't gotten far, but the damage was the fear itself and it was done.

Telling Clarke about it in the fort, waving her fingers through sifting beams of pale sun that came through the holes in the walls, she kept so calm that her own voice unsettled her. No big deal. But it sucked. Let's send Bellamy after him—maybe he'll kill him.

"He might," Clarke answered seriously. And: "We've got to fix this one ourselves."

Dax was going to be a sophomore. He didn't have a car or a license but he knew how to drive because his cousin had taught him when he was twelve. So yeah, he’d take Clarke out on a ride down some deep-rutted back road until they found a good spot to watch the stars. It was his pleasure. He didn't know any constellations but that was all right. She pointed out a few to him, instead.

The cool thing about Clarke was that she was just shy enough to be cute, in a play-acting way that all guys basically believed, confident enough to let them know what she wanted and how she expected to get it. She wanted to know what he wanted. His daydreams, his fantasies. Her soft voice in his ear, teasing, cajoling—baby, babe—what do you really WANT? The sick-secret stuff. You're safe with me.

Octavia had hiked her way out ahead of them, was crouched in the long grass listening to the sounds of face-sucking and drawing pictures in the dirt with her stub nails, thinking about how great an actress Clarke was—fuck (a deep-forbidden word, still new on her tongue)—fuck, she really knew what she was doing.

And the tape recorder in her purse, next to them on the flatbed, picked up all of it. Confessions you could make a mix CD out of. Stuff he should have known better than to tell anyone—stuff Octavia would never tell if she was him—stuff she’d definitely never tell Clarke, if she was him, Clarke who had already distributed all of her love, or at the very least all of her loyalty, and would never gather up the crumbs of it for him.

After a while, the sounds tapered off. The familiar insect-riot grew louder in its wake. She flicked her gaze across the tall, thin stalks of burned-yellow grass, to the dark interstices, the hint of the rusty blue flatbed on the road. She could see it by its own headlights. The back, where Clarke was, dark as it was quiet.

Then she heard the click of the tape player, scratchy in the July night, like the trigger of a haunting. A sound where it should not be. Her ears were so attuned to it, waiting for it; but afterwards, she could only hear the cadences of Atom's recorded voice, not the content of the whispered, breathy words. She tuned it out to static. All static.

Sharp staccato yelling followed, empty threats and a couple of other new words, sharp-edged profanity she hasn't added to her vocabulary yet, and at last she saw a shadow-figure jump down from truck. She turned on her flashlight, finally, stood and pointed it at him, so he was caught in the beam like a deer. When he tried to rush her, she beat him to it. In her spare hand, she gripped Bellamy's knife with the blade snapped out.

He didn’t know she had it and he'd never approve.

Atom stopped up short, kicking up dust as he slid, halted: a cloud of it in the high beams. Over his shoulder, Octavia could see Clarke's silhouette, standing eerily still and watching them and waiting.

"You're fucking crazy," Atom spat out at her. But she had a knife almost to his throat so there was a tremor to the words, and she found the whole thing, that terrible blood-pounding moment, so wonderfully thrilling, so sharp and real, that she almost laughed like the deranged villain he must have thought that she was. She almost threw the knife away. She almost stabbed him. She almost ran, sprinting, yelling, cackling, like some sort of malevolent spirit in the night.

In the end, she just scared him. And Clarke never replayed the audio. Eventually she even unspools the tape and crushes it beneath her heel. But still their reputations precede them, for the rest of their days stuck in the deep-sucking mud of Arcadia Falls, and in some ways even after, because this is how they know each other and themselves.

[hannahssimblr]

Chapter Ten

January is long, and February, somehow even longer. It brings with it the kind of biting cold winds that make my face hurt and indignance rise inside me at the injustice of having to be outside in it. I try to manoeuvre my useless fingerless gloves over my knuckles as though they might provide even the tiniest bit of extra heat to my hands, but it’s already too late. I’ve let the cold invade, and by now there’s nothing I can do to prevent the cold spasms that rip through to my bones. 

It is five in the evening. I’ve been here since the morning, once Simon reluctantly allowed me to take a day of work away from the studio, but it’s been relentlessly cold since I arrived. The sun will set in an hour from now and I will lose the light, so I forge on anyway, tracing a careful line with the nozzle of the spray paint along the brick at the gable end of the bookshop that commissioned me. It is my first mural on a building, not a window, but nobody seemed to doubt my ability to do it when they approached me. Nobody except for me, and while I didn’t express it, I doubted it, and I still doubt it, even now. 

 I reach around at my feet for the cherry red paint can and rattle it before spraying a wide, confident arc across the brick. Does it look good? Does any of this look good? I’ve been nose to nose with it for so many hours now that I can hardly even tell what it is. The paint stains my finger tip red. Just about every inch of me must be dusted with paint at this point, as the wind has been blowing it back on me in clouds and leaving speckles all over my skin and clothes. I eye the streak of teal paint that has run down the side of my middle finger and dried there, and I silently curse at it, knowing how badly it will stain as I pull my vibrating phone from my pocket. 

Don’t suppose you’re free for a call tonight? 

I wish. I’m never free anymore. 

Sorry, I have a date at the medieval torture chamber. 

Gym with Shane?

Yep. 

And in those rare times that I am, Jude isn’t. We’ve been missing each other for weeks, like trains passing on the tracks, what with my work, the increase in commissions, more cards to design, I’ve been finding myself cooped up in the studio until late into the evening sometimes. And Jude, he’s working hard on his final projects. He spends as much time in his studio as I do. Sometimes the only meaningful correspondence I’ll get from him in a given week is a photograph of whatever modernist chunk of plaster or clay he’s working on lately, and this week is shaping up to be another just like that, only I’ll be the one sending some hasty close up of a few swipes of paint and trying to convince him that I’m getting paid to do this. 

We haven’t caught up in so long.

I like to imagine that he’s desperately sad about this fact, miserable and missing me terribly, when in fact he’s probably just bored at home again, Jonas likely out somewhere without him and whatever silly movie he’s put on the television has stopped being entertaining. 

At this rate I won’t see you until I come over.

Yeah, what the hell. How have we not spoken in over a month?

Probably because I hate you and I’m avoiding you. 😉 We’ll have a proper catch up in Berlin. 

He sends me a crocodile emoji, which has become our private code for “goodbye” as in, “See you later, alligator”. I type one back and get on with what I was doing, and paint another broad, sweeping line in that delicious cherry red paint. I last ten more minutes without an interruption, and there is a voice from behind me. 

“Well.”

I whirl around. “Ugh, hi Shane.”

“Delighted to see me, are you?”

“Honestly it’s a bit like a bad omen when you appear.”

I yank my protective mask from my mouth while he huffs out a laugh. “Ready for the gym?” I groan in protest, but I gather my things anyway, stacking all of the spray paint bottles into a giant canvas bag and rolling up the tarp. We stop by Mezzotint to store all of it in the studio and let me change out of my painty clothes in the employee bathroom and then we take the Luas into town to the gym. 

Shane decides to show me mercy, and lets me spend our session in the pool, so while he heads to the gym and does his usual routine, I swim lengths of the fast lane and keep strict count of the number so that I can brag about it when he comes to use the health suite. I reached a point suddenly, a month or two ago, where my lungs and limbs didn’t burn so badly during my swimming lessons, and in fact, despite the inevitable dread that the gym instils in me, once I’m actually in the pool I find myself enjoying it. I swim to the end, turn and come back, over and over as the smooth hands on the big clock rotate, and finally I anchor myself to the lip of the pool as Shane crouches in front of me, hair wet from the shower. 

“How many?” He wants to know. 

“Sixty lengths.”

“Many breaks?”

“None.”

He nods with approval and says “good stuff.” Which is the highest compliment available. I struggle out onto the tiles with trembling arms and follow him to the health suite sauna where we sit, ragged breaths, and the water that rolls off our bodies dissolves into mist as it drips onto the benches. 

“How’s college?” I say. 

“Grand.”

“Full on now, I’d say, is it? With the final exams kind of looming on the horizon a bit.”

He shrugs. “I dunno, I suppose so.” 

Shane did not fail his Christmas exams. He didn’t pass them with flying colours by any means but Shane being Shane, has never once done poorly at anything he has attempted. As far as I know he has never failed a test, and it’s evident by now that it’s not for lack of trying. The final exams are Claire’s newest worry, as she’s convinced he’s yet to open a single textbook. 

“And the football?” I venture, and watch as his shoulders slump. “It’s good, it’s busy and all. I dunno. I’ve a few things to kind of think about in terms of it. You know, like, some things to consider.”

I nod. “Must be tricky to balance it all, like what with the training and college and all. I can’t imagine how hard it is.”

He glances at me with a furrowed brow as though what I’ve just said has nothing to do with what he was talking about, but he throws me a consolatory “Yeah.” anyway, clearly not bothered to explain what he meant. 

“Pity you can’t come to Berlin.” I pivot. “It’d be nice if you were there, like, I know you’ve visited before and all, but I think it’ve been a fun friends thing to do altogether. Not often we all get to hang out now that we’re so busy.”

“Nice for Claire to have time away on her own though.” He says. “I think a bit of distance would do her good, a bit of space.” and I wonder if he means from Dublin or from him. 

“I’m a bit nervous to go.” I admit, which prompts him to look right at me for the first time since we came inside. “Why?”

“I’m not sure, I suppose it’s been years since I’ve been out of Ireland, like, been in a different country with a different language and… like, I dunno I suppose I’m nervous to be around Jude and all his friends.”

“They’re just more of the typical artist types, nothing to get that excited about.” He eyes me for a moment before adding “They’re not going to think you’re uncool, or whatever it is that you’re worrying about. Nobody cares about that type of thing except for you.”

“I don’t care if they think I’m uncool.” I lie defensively. 

“Right. So is it about Astrid then? Do you think she’s going to tear you a new one?”

I stare at him, startled. “What are you on about?”

“Astrid, like.”

“I have no idea what you mean.”

He rolls his eyes and gets up, slinging his towel over his shoulder. “I’m sure you don’t, Evie, you fecking dope.” He says, and then pushes his way out into the cool air of the poolside. 

Beginning // Prev // Next

[mamamittens]

Carry On (+18)

As requested by @sab0ace, hope you enjoy how it came out and sorry for the wait!

SaboXOC(Luna) and past AceXOC(Luna)

OC is blind and AFAB.

Warnings: Angst, hurt/comfort (Ace dies timeline), past relationship, rough sex, overstimulation, spanking, and yandere behavior (from Sabo). He's kinda mean in the bedroom in this one but it starts lowkey soft.

Word Count: 3,112

Luna faced the open window with a small, fond smile. The smell of ocean spray heavy in the air with a faint, growing storm wafting in. She’d grown quite familiar with her new home over the past year as well as the surrounding area. She never imagined she’d stray so far from the quaint village of her youth, let alone in such a… violent fashion. But she was safe now.

Safe to mourn what she’d lost and consider what she’d gained instead.

Her heart still ached at the memory of her time with Ace. Gentle, calloused hands and that heady, smoked wood scent that followed him everywhere he went. Mixed with sea salt and sweat from the hours he spent sailing under the sun over open water. She dreamed of him, sometimes. His voice low and husky in her hair.

Ever so eager to please and love her until they both collapsed in her bed. He could never stay long, but even fleeting moments of time stretched out for hours.

She knew he was a pirate. Hard not to. But that rough edge was nowhere to be found when he grasped her hands and kissed her slowly. Like she’d fall apart against him if he went too fast.

He whispered into her hair late one night his darkest secret. More frightened of her reaction than any time she ever heard him before.

The truth of his heritage.

He cried when she cradled his cheeks in her palms and kissed his face. Plied his wet eyes with soft brushes of her lips. Settling over his bare hips as he reverently stroked her body like she was a dream he never wanted to wake from.

“Does that make you my prince, Ace?” She remembers smiling, grinding against his hard cock, “Is this your throne?” She teased him.

“Yes! Yes! Y-Yours, it’s yours now, please baby~ FUCK!” He moaned so sweetly underneath her, trembling hands grasping her waist. The cool night turned hot with slow, sensual thrusts until long after the birds starting singing to the rising sun.

She remembers that they spent the whole day in bed. Ace never leaving her side, always caressing her skin and kissing her without thought or reason.

Then he had to go.

And returned only a few more times with Whitebeard’s mark proudly on his back. He was going to introduce her to his father soon, he promised. He just wanted to keep her to himself for a little longer. But soon her island would be under Whitebeard’s protection as he knew she was reluctant to leave her home. She remembers kissing the slightly raised skin on his back, tracing the tattoo there in thanks for giving Ace a home he could thrive in finally.

Then it all came crashing down. Her neighbors, people who’d seen Ace and her together many times before, were whispering. She could feel their pitying glances for several days. Until finally, one of the approached her and told her of the tragedy.

Ace’s arrest.

Marineford.

They were so sure Whitebeard would save his son, they didn’t want to stress her over the matter—then came the announcement of Ace’s heritage.

Luna didn’t care, of course, but she knew this wasn’t a sentiment shared by all. Many people had their lives changed by Gol. D. Roger, and not for the better. But still, she never thought…

Her hand drifted to her lower stomach.

The marines were paranoid about Ace’s bloodline continuing. And with his late mother having achieved such an impossible feat, they were taking no chances.

No mercy for a heartbroken, blind, island girl. Even though she was certainly not carrying his legacy in anything but her heart.

How she escaped was a blur. Someone, a kind neighbor perhaps, shoving her into a barrel as fire erupted in the village. The heat unbearable even as she drifted out into the sea. She was fished out of the water by a merchant ship and played into the delicate, blind girl she was to cover her tracks. She doesn’t know what happened to her island, but she wasn’t going to let it be in vain.

The merchants took pity and dropped her off into the care of an elderly couple who simply wished to enjoy her company. And that’s where she stayed and mourned in private for her lost love. She wasn’t sure she could ever love again after that, not knowing how quickly the world was willing to rip it away from her again.

Luna smiled softly, wiping her tears before reaching out to where the den den mushi rested on the sitting room table.

Then, she remembers fondly, a posh, polite man came asking about her. Voice shaking and thick with emotion as he spoke of his later brother. Of only remembering after hearing of his death and choosing to dig into what Ace got up to over those years. Miraculously finding a journal on the abandoned Striker that spoke of her and his information network declaring that she was killed as well. He had hoped to pay his respects at her grave in leu of Ace but was quietly informed of her escape.

Sabo, second in command of the Revolutionary Army, had come all this way to meet her. To meet the woman that made his troubled brother so happy while he was gone.

They spent hours trading stories about Ace. The love Sabo had for his brother clear in every fond, exasperated story and disbelief of how Ace matured after so many years.

Apparently, her love was a bit of a wild child, who knew?

She expected that Sabo would leave, just like Ace had to, only to visit occasionally.

Instead, he asked that she come with him.

“You can’t hide here forever. Eventually a marine will find your sudden appearance suspicious. You… you can’t hope to be that lucky twice. Please. Come with me.” Sabo asked desperately, leather gloves protesting as he squeezed her hands in his.

How could she say no to that sweet desperation that she knew so well? Didn’t she once wish Ace would ask the same thing, not so long ago?

And so, she was settled into Sabo’s ‘personal apartment’ at the Revolutionary Headquarters. The space so unused she could literally smell the dust in it. Koala, a lovely lady who worked with Sabo, declaring him a workaholic. Expressing a hope that Sabo would actually use his own rooms more now that he had a guest to look after as well.

Though, privately, Koala confessed that she’d never seen Sabo so anxious over another person before. The intensity of his feelings unsettling her.

After losing so much though, Luna just felt comforted in the knowledge that someone cared so much about her again.

Certain and settled in her thoughts, Luna dialed Sabo’s personal number, intending to keep it short.

Hopeful that he’d return her feelings. Or, if not, then allow them both to use the space they already have for her to quietly put her fragile heart to rest. If this is what she had to look forward to… well, she can learn to live with a little more heartache.

“—my apologies for the interruption, Admiral Fujitora—Ah, yes?” Sabo answered a little breathlessly. Luna grimaced slightly, not having expected Sabo to answer if he was in the middle of something.

“Oh! Sorry, Sabo. You can call me back after you’re done.” Luna apologized quickly, realizing that he must be in the middle of a fight.

“L-Luna! Oh! A-Ah that’s alright, I’ve got all the time in the world for you. Is something wrong?” Sabo asked, grunting as he seemed to move quickly for something.

“No… nothing’s wrong. I just realized something today and I wanted to tell you while I still could.” Luna admitted, her voice falling a little more quiet. “I miss him so much, you know. Every day I wish he was here.”

“… I miss him too, Luna.” Sabo admitted, the background of his voice now more quiet.

“It… It feels so fast but I know he’d want me to be happy. And you make me so happy, Sabo.” Luna finally said after a long moment, tears in her eyes. “I love you. But it’s okay if you don’t love me back. I just… didn’t think I’d ever feel this way again, you know? Sorry for bothering you with this. Just… you don’t have to feel the same way. I only ask that you come back, okay? I can live with anything else as long as you come back.” Luna asked.

There was a long, strained pause.

“L-Luffy! I have to protect Luffy! But! As soon as I can, I’m coming back to you! Wait for me, Luna, I promise that will be the hardest part of loving me.” Sabo swore.

“I’m an old hat at waiting, Sabo. I know Ace would want Luffy safe too… maybe I can meet him too one day. I know he’s busy going after the crown but…”

“Luffy would love to meet you! Shit! Sorry, I-I gotta wrap things up here. But I’m—I love you too, Luna.”

The line went dead.

Luna fell into her chair, head spinning and dizzy as she laughed.

She did it. She finally did it.

She turned towards the open window, the sun shining down on her.

“I’m finally starting to feel like me again, Ace. He’s not you. Never will be but… he makes me happy too.” Luna confessed to the ocean breeze. The faint scent of firewood tickling her nose.

She liked to think that it was Ace, showing his approval for just a brief moment.

Koala came in a few hours later with dinner.

“I don’t know what you said to that man, but he is tearing through Dressrosa to come back.” Koala huffed, setting down the plates to eat with her. “I’ve never heard him so fired up. Ne, think you can convince him to take vacation time off too? He’s got so many hours it’s unreal. I think Dragon’s going to ground him soon if he doesn’t slow down.” Koala complained. Luna laughed, gently finding the edge of her plate and the bread roll she knows is always placed on the right side.

“I can certainly try!” Luna giggled.

“…Hey.” Luna looked up. “If Sabo gets… too much, let me know, alright? He’s… He’s really passionate but has a hard time knowing when to stop. I can knock some sense into him if you need it.” Koala offered.

Luna couldn’t help but smile, her new friend so terribly sweet to her. Eating meals with her despite Luna being fully capable of making her own meals. Making sure she has everything she needs while Sabo is away. Assigning someone to take her place when he’s off on missions—sometimes it’s even Dragon seeking a quiet moment from his duties.

“Thank you, Koala. I’ll remember that.” Luna promised, despite doubting any need for intervention.

It was well over a week of waiting—the nostalgia almost bittersweet now—before Sabo returned in the dead of night.

At first, Luna thought she was still dreaming. Gentle hands stroking back her hair and the scent of fire unmistakable. She cried a little, fearing it was another dream she’d wake up sobbing from with an aching heart and the memory of Ace’s touch. But the sea salt was overpowered by something more heady. A masculine cologne that Ace would never have the patience for maintaining. Leather and clean soap. The unmistakable sting of expensive booze sharp in her nose.

“Shhhh, no tears, darling.” Sabo whispered into her hair, brushing her tears away. The sound of clothes hitting the floor followed by the blankets being pulled off of her. “I went as fast as I could to come back, just like I promised. All I could think about was you.”

Bare hands brushed up her nightdress, soft lips dragging over her neck.

Hiccupping quietly, Luna reached up and found only toned muscles under her hands. No clothes in reach as she stroked up his heaving ribs, gently feeling the edges of the burns he’d gained as a child. His head turning to hiss her hand and run his hot tongue over her wrist.

“Y-You smell… different? Like… fire.” Luna gasped, jerking as Sabo grabbed her inner thigh and lifted it up.

“That’s right, darling. I’ve inherited Ace’s will. His devil fruit.” Sabo hissed, grinding his cock against her panties, leaning back to tear them off and slip between her folds. Rubbing his length up her slit and dripping pre over her clit. “I’m going to rip those bastards apart that took him from us. Protect Luffy. And love you with everything I have.” Sabo groaned, heat flaring above her as her nightdress gave way, exposing her to the hot air between them.

Sabo threw her leg over his shoulder and, without warning, slammed into her unprepared body. The burn around his thick cock taking her breath away as she gasped for air. His tongue filling her open mouth as he groaned, grinding his thumb on her clit harshly as he rolled his hips. Not pulling out for a moment as he encouraged her cunt to flutter around his cock with no small difficulty. The tang of sake strong on his lips.

She whined, bucking beneath him as the burn lessened under the weight of his passion. His insistent thrusts that made her legs shake. He pulled back, allowing her to breathe finally despite how deeply he fucked into her. She gasped and moaned loudly, hips bruising under the force as his hand slipped around her wrists, pinning them above her head.

“A-Ah~! S-Sabo! Sabo-ooooh-nhg~!” Luna keened as he sank his teeth into the fat of her breast, unbearable hot tongue soothing the wound before he did it again. His thrusts coming faster now that she was soaking his cock, rocking the bed frame against the wall hard.

Drops of salty liquid fell onto her face, sweat or tears she wasn’t sure. Her body on fire as Sabo seemed intent on fucking clear to her throat.

“D-Dreamed of this! You. Under me. I’ve wanted this for so long—rubbed my cock to the thought of your soft thighs, those pretty fucking lips, until my balls ached.” Sabo grunted, pinching her clit as she squeezed his cock hard, squirting onto his thighs with a scream. “I’m never leaving you. This sweet cunt is mine now. Mine.” Sabo slammed into her with a soft moan, hot cum seeping out from her walls.

He chanted it breathlessly, fucking the wet mess in her cunt like he was trying to break her. Lips wet and messy as he spoke over her moans. The sound of wet sex and the slamming headboard filling the room underneath his crazed mantra.

Luna felt fucked and frazzled—a far cry from the soft, sweet sex she’d experienced before. Overstimulated and used, if it wasn’t for the whining drone she’d wonder if Sabo even realized she was there.

“Mine—mineminemineminemineminemine—ffffuck I love you so fucking much!” Sabo chanted, growing frustrated despite cumming hard into her fluttering cunt again. “It’s not enough. I need more.”

He pulled out suddenly, grabbing her waist as he turned her over, lifting up her ass and shoving her head into the damp pillows. His fingers caressed her abused thighs, plunging into the slick mess in her cunt as he reached in as far as he could. Rubbing in the lewd mix against her inner walls as she mewled in complaint. His hand on her head clenched a fistful of her hair and yanked back, forcing her body to arch against his chest.

“S-Sabo! A-Ahhnn!” Luna choked, Sabo pressing his wet fingers onto her tongue as he slammed his cock in to the hilt again. Fucking up into her aching body as she sobbed around his filthy fingers. The taste of their mixed arousal thick making her head fuzzy. Her head was pulled back by her hair over Sabo’s shoulder.

He panted directly into her ear, praising her in slurred speech as he fucked her with enough force that her poor cunt started to feel battered by his cock.

“So pretty and mine, take it. Take it! You have to take everything—I need you to take everything I give you f-fuck~!” Sabo fell forward, pinning her to the mattress with her ass arched into his furious thrusts. The wet smacks almost overpowering her own desperate whines as she shook. Tried to get some distance from his relentless cock that filled her with more cum only for it to squirt out to her thighs as he refused to stop.

Sabo growled, low and harsh in his chest, the air snapping hotter than before as he pressed a burning hand against her neck. Lifting his upper body away from her with his thighs shoving her legs further apart.

SMACK!

Luna screamed into the mattress as he slapped her thigh.

“I said you have to fucking take it.” Sabo hissed, drilling into her ass harder as he started littering her thighs with bruises.

The pain and pleasure and lack of air coalesced into a heady mix in her body. Despite trembling and shaking under Sabo’s harsh pace, she found herself moaning. Sore body burning as the tension build up more and more.

“SABO~!”

She came with a sharp yelp and another hot palm strike against her thigh. Squirting and seizing around his cock so hard that Sabo was forced out for a moment. The head of his cock quickly grinding over her quivering cunt as he panted, laughing softly. Suddenly stroking her skin softly like he hadn’t been violently fucking her for the past hour and a half.

She moaned hoarsely as Sabo slipped back in, her walls raw and overstimulated.

Sabo kissed and licked across her shoulders. His hips languidly fucking into her as though he suddenly had all the time in the world as she still shuddered from her overpowering orgasm.

“My perfect girl… you can do that again, won’t you? Show me you can take it all over again~” Sabo purred, slamming his hips against hers with a lewd, wet smack.

Luna sobbed, overwhelmed as Sabo started a harsh pace again, this time kissing her burning skin with a wide, toothy grin.

“I love you. Do you still love me?” Sabo asked softly despite his rough pace.

Even after this shocking turn of events, Luna couldn’t help herself. Feeling so much all at once after so long.

“Yes!”

“Good.” Sabo growled, seizing her hips to raise them up further for his relentless thrusts. “Prove it.”

[sarifinasnightmare]

Family Trip

Rating: Everyone can join in the fun.

Pairing: Sarah X Bucky

Author's Notes: Inspired by the fact that I went to a waterpark to beat the heat!

Summary: Summer is atrociously hot so the Wilsons go to a waterpark. Bucky is feeling self-conscious.

July 29- August 4: Beat the Heat

The heat was intense, driving everyone inside their homes. After a while even TikTok could not entertain the boys further and they asked if there was something fun they could do.

It was then that it occurred to the older Wilson siblings that it was time to take a trip to the nearest waterpark.

The boys were enthused.

They were enthused.

Bucky was not enthused.

Waterparks meant being in the water. Being in the water implied he’d have to wear a swimsuit. Being in a swimsuit meant he’d be half-naked. Being half-naked meant the full length of his metal arm and the scars around it, would be exposed for everyone to gawk at. He wanted none of it.

The boys really wanted him to come, and he loved them dearly, but he felt self-conscious. Once Sarah coaxed the reason why out of him, she kissed her sweet super soldier boyfriend and assured him there was an easy solution to his problem.

  A quick shop online and soon they were all at the waterpark with Bucky sporting a long sleeve swim shirt with trunks.

“Do I look alright?” He asked Sam as they came out of the men’s changing room.

“Yeah you look like any other white guy who’s trying not to turn into a lobster.” He teased.

“Whereas you plan to hog all the skin cancer for yourself.” He retorted.

Sam grinned and spread his arms out. “Hey I was blessed with melanin and Banana Boat. Spray some on me while you’re at it.”

Bucky caught the sun block Sam tossed at him and diligently sprayed him down before they headed back to the canopy they rented out where they found Sarah alone, the boys having run eagerly into the wave pool.

“Oh thank God, you have another can. I finished mine on the boys. Bucky would you be a dear and spray me down please?” Sarah set her towel aside and stood up.

Sam groaned. “Sarah I thought we agreed you wear the one piece.”

“No, I said I’d think about wearing the one piece.” She turned around showing off her new leopard print two piece. “I thought this was much cuter.”

“Yeah but look at Bucky! You broke him!”

Bucky had in fact, not said a word, his eyes raking up and down his girlfriend’s form. “Huh?”

“You see??” Sam gestured.

Sarah chuckled. “Sam go to the wave pool and make sure Cass and AJ aren’t trying to drown each other.”

With Bucky flummoxed and his sister enjoying it, Sam shook his head at them both and went to join his nephews.

“Bucky, are you going to help me with the sunblock or should I ask one of the cute lifeguards instead?” She teased.

That seemed to snap him out it. “I’m not letting anyone rub you down!”

“Well come on then! It’s too hot and the water is calling my name.” She insisted.

Bucky got to work spraying her then made sure it got absorbed by rubbing it onto her soft brown skin. It had to be done thoroughly and he was determined not to miss a spot.

Sarah sighed, trying not to get into it too much. “How’s the shirt working? Any gawkers?”

“Actually no,” he realized, “there’s other guys wearing stuff like this too.”

“Good, I want you to have a good time.” She ran his fingers through his short hair while he was rubbing up her legs. “I didn’t like the idea of leaving you behind. You deserve to enjoy yourself.”

“I would’ve been fine sitting here protecting the towels.” He replied before kissing her hand when it drifted close enough.

“Sweating it out while we enjoy the water? Hell no, not for my man!”

He stood up. “Thanks, you’re the best girlfriend a man could ask for.” He kissed her. “You’re also the most beautiful girlfriend a man could ask for.”

She captured his face and kissed him more deeply. “Are you trying to distract me with kisses so you can continue feeling me up?”

“Is it working?” He murmured against her lips.

“I’m sweating.”

He grinned. “I can make you sweat some more.”

“Oh hell no! You’re not dragging me into one of those changing rooms for a little bump n’ grind.” She grabbed the sunblock, spraying a good deal of it on her palm before rubbing them together and spreading it over Bucky’s face with a mother’s vigor.

“Blah! Ack!” He gagged as some of it got into his mouth while she massaged what was left onto his ears and down his neck.

“There! Got to protect that pretty face of yours.” She said with a satisfied smile.

“Yeah, thanks…I feel greasy.”

“It’ll dry. Now come on. I need water.” She dragged him to the pool.

The wave pool was full of families, wading around enjoying the cool waters on the scorching day. People floated along in clear, green tubes while others just swam or meandered.

Bucky hurriedly followed after his girlfriend, hoping no one paid any mind to his left hand and also prayed that Shuri wasn’t joking about it being waterproof as he carefully dipped his arm into the waters. He felt a vague tightening occur that made his shoulder tingle and realized it had sealed up. Pleased he waded in with more confidence.

Being taller had its perks as they got into the five feet without a problem and Sarah backstroked a little with a sigh of delight. “Hallelujah this is what I needed. Feeling good Bucky?”

“Actually yeah, not too bad.” He realized, casually swimming after her.

“Hey Uncle Bucky you made it!” Cass smiled, hugging a green floatie against him.

“You’re getting on the slides with us, right? Uncle Sam says you’re too chicken!” AJ called out from his own floatie as he kicked around.

“Oh did he?” He glared over at Sam who was resting comfortably on his own green floatation device, sunglasses parked over his nose as he took in some rays.

“I just think seeing that you’re at a geriatric point in your life that the some of the thrills might me too thrilling.” He said with dazzling smile.

“I’ll show you geriatric.” Bucky retorted and flipped Sam’s floatie over, throwing him into the waves. The boys laughed and Sarah shook her head at them.

“I am the only responsible adult on this trip?”

“He started it.” Bucky replied before offering Sarah the green tube.

She rolled her eyes and grinned. “I guess I am.”

After refreshing themselves for a while, the boys coaxed their uncles to the slides. Sarah joined in a few but much preferred dousing herself under the giant bucket by the kiddie section before resting at their canopy. She had ordered food and it was ready by the time all of them returned, soaking wet and starving.

They ate; Sarah and Sam reminisced about times they went to the pool or the lake with their parents. Cass and AJ laughed along while Bucky leaned back on a chair and closed his eyes, soaking up the peace.

After they cleaned up the boys ran back into the pool. Sam was going to wake Bucky up but she insisted he’d be left alone to enjoy an uninterrupted nap. Agreeing, he left to join the boys, urging her to join them shortly. She got up to do some mild organization when a metal hand shot out and pulled her down onto his lap.

“Oof! I thought you were asleep.” She said, settling against him.

“I was a little, but you were wiggling that gorgeous behind and I couldn’t help myself.” Bucky murmured with a sleepy smile.

“I didn’t wiggle anything.” She protested lightly even as she casually wrapped her arms over his shoulders. “Feeling good, baby?”

“Yeah actually. I’m glad I came. Thank you for talking me into it.”

“You’re welcome. I’m glad you came too.” She leaned down to kiss him gently, but he let it linger into something more sensual. “Mm, don’t tease.”

“Not a tease, a promise.” He nuzzled her neck. “When we get back home let’s take a shower together.”

“Gonna wash the sunblock off my back?” She shivered.

“Yeah, give you a thorough, deep, long cleaning.” He promised as sneaky fingers went to feel up her breasts.

Sarah instantly stood up. “You are shameless, Bucky Barnes!”

He winked.

[papasbaseball]

Terzo x Reader (Candid)

+18 CONTENT NOT FOR MINORS. MINORS KEEP SCROLLING Pairing: Terzo x F!Reader (Prime Mover) Rating: Explicit Warnings: Dagger used to cut for ceremonial purposes. Situational change of mind. Summary: You're taken away on your way home one day. Now you're in a strange castle and people are calling you Prime Mover. What's a girl gotta do to get out of a place like this. Word Count: 6,135 AO3 Link

Your tears were ruining the dress, if you could call it that. The gossamer shift did almost nothing to hide your form, and what little it did was thanks to its midnight hue. Even though it was sheer, when you clasped your breasts through it, you could tell the fabric was more expensive than anything you'd owned back home. You winced at the thought of home, picturing your little sister's face and how her small arms wrapped around your waist only a day or two ago when you'd left for work. She was gone now and so was home, taken away on your walk, back to this drafty and frightening place.

The stonework of the dressing chamber and corridors suggested that you’d been taken to a castle, or at least that’s what you thought since you’d never seen a castle before. Another draft ruffled the silk tapestry of the demonic goat creature that covered the one wall of the chamber. Its hands pointed one to the sky and one to the ground. Your skin prickled and you slid your hands away from their protective covering to the heat under your arms. The tears continued to fall, rolling down the gossamer onto your now-hardening nipples.

“Don’t cry,” said the lady dressing you. Her black and white religious garments were a sharp contrast to your own lack of clothing. She placed a veil attached to a comb in your hair. Flipping it forward, you could no longer see the tears running down your face in the ornate mirror, but they continued to flow regardless.

“I want to go home,” you’re voice broke.

“You should feel very honored to have been chosen by the Dark Lord to be the Prime Mover. A lot of our sisters are envious of you.”

“I don’t know what that means. Please let me go home. Do you want money? I can give you money.” You tried grabbing her arm to beg, but the veil impeded your actions. The action held about as much weight as your bargaining offer. Your clothes and empty purse had been whisked away as soon as you’d entered this prison. The warmth was quickly being sapped from your useless exposed fingers, so you resumed your heat-conserving position.

“When you get to the altar try to remember to answer any questions with ‘I will’ and ‘I do’. His Dark Excellency will offer you some wine. Drink some and then offer the wine back to him. The ceremony shouldn’t take long.” She brought forth some beaded backless slippers from the dressing table, offering the right one up for you to slip your foot into.

“What if I refuse?” you said, slipping your foot easily into the doeskin lining. The left slipper glided on as easily as the right, and you shifted your feet to point a little straighter, comforted by the little bit of skin that was covered up.

“Omega,” the woman said, turning to the hellish creature that guarded the door, “when I leave, please make sure she doesn’t run off. Imperator will have your head if she does.”

The creature offered a hideous low growl in return, thwacking its gray spaded tail against the flagstones. Truthfully, it looked human, all limbs in the correct amount and places, but the tail and the clawed hands gave away its distorted nature. You pulled your arms closer to your body at the thought of it removing its mask. Angling yourself away from the door, you favored your gaze towards the stained glass window.

The unholy sister — for she must have been to consort with such beasts — continued preening at you, fluffing the veil and shift, pinning dried flowers through the veil to your hair, spraying you with perfume that initially made you wrinkle your nose and then seemed to set you at ease. This went on for what must have been several minutes, for every time she did something you were certain it would be the last thing only for her to go back and pluck at you again. At last, she took a step back, eyes darting back and forth as she scanned you from head to toe.

“You’re ready. There’s one last thing.” Bustling off to the oak armoire behind you, the unholy sister produced a black velvet cloak on a thick hanger. Unprepared, she flung it over you, and you dipped a bit under its weight. Slowly the gooseflesh of your arms receded and you stood a little straighter. “Papa Emeritus Terzo will remove it from you when the time comes for you to give yourself to him.”

Any warmth provided by the cloak fled your body. “Please. No,” you whispered hoarsely.

“Omega, watch her,” the sister reinstructed, “I’ll come to get the Prime Mover when they’re ready.” Quickly, she slipped out the door, the sound of the lock clicking when it had been shut.

Pulling the velvet tighter around your naked body, you looked to your last companion, one of the demons that took you from your old life and home. The longer you looked the more your blood pounded in your veins, bubbling the words up and out of your mouth. “You won’t get away with this.”

“Quiet,” the ghoul said, or at least that’s what his struggled demonic sounds seemed to say. If he wasn’t capable of speaking, perhaps he could take instructions.

“I want to go home. I want my clothes back. Go bring me my clothes.” The creature looked stupid enough that you could perhaps boss it around like a dog with whatever authority being Prime Mover held.

Instead, it just growled back at you, tail thumping the wall like a whip. “No.”

“I’m the Prime Mover, you have to do what I say.” You puffed your chest out, crossing your arms under the cloak.

The demon shifted towards you, tail swinging with each step. You looked to the window, wondering how high up off the ground it was. Omega descended on you, your footsteps catching in the pooled folds of the cloak. It caught you by those terrible hands that felt like talons, the boney vice wrapping around your neck. Your beaded slippers barely touched the carpet as he looked up at you with those cold eyes. His mouth moved, but the sounds it made were inhuman hisses like a dead record player. The blood pounded back to your head as your feet hit the ground. “Vessel,” his voice grated.

You opened your mouth to ask him what he’d just said when the door lock clicked. It was the unholy sister, returned.

“It’s time,” she said. “Omega, go get the other ghouls, and don’t forget the dagger.”

“We were very fortunate to have found the Prime Mover,” Sister Imperator said, the black and gold china teacup clinking as she set it back in its saucer. She glanced around the room, Terzo pretending to be interested in one of the many liturgical titles on her bookshelves. Secondo had draped himself and chasuble over the sofa near the bookshelves, puffing contentedly on a cigar, gaze fixed on their eldest brother, Primo.

“It is a shame we didn’t find her sooner. Now she will have to suffer inexperience and incompetence,” Primo muttered to his steepled fingers, sinking lower into the velvet armchair.

Snapping his book shut, Terzo strolled over to where Primo brooded opposite Sister Imperator. “Being older doesn’t make you better in bed,” he said, bending down to his level. “I found your Viagra in the medicine cabinet.” Terzo’s smirk was uncontrollable as Primo whipped around in the chair, eyes wide in contempt.

“You need to keep out of things that aren’t yours, peste,” he said, pointing a gnarled finger at Terzo.

“Yes, but I needed to use the bathroom. It’s not my fault all your bottle labels are so interesting. So much Rogaine too.”

“Enough, Stronzino,” Secondo said sitting up.

“Scusa,” Terzo bowed, “I didn’t know the Rogaine was yours.”

“You need to get serious: you have a duty to carry out tonight. You are the one to help bring forth the Antichrist. You need to be prepared.” Secondo jabbed the smoldering cigar in his direction, ash falling on the black and gold Turkish rug.

“I fuck the girl. Maybe sex is difficult for you, but it seems simple to me.” Terzo mimicked fucking the air, setting his voice to a falsetto saying, “Oh your Dark Excellency! Just like that! I’m so happy I get to fuck you and not your ugly brothers! Oh! Oh! Oh!!!”

“And you’ll finish inside her, sì?” Secondo said, taking another drag.

“I’ll finish wherever I damn well please,” Terzo laughed, “Her tits, her ass, her face. Everyone looks better when they’re wearing my cum.”

Imperator clanged the china down hard on the table next to her. “You will finish inside her, Stronzino; this is not a joking matter. If you don’t get the Prime Mover pregnant I’ll have you demoted to a cardinal. It’s taken the ghouls years to track her down. If you can’t finish the job I’ll find someone else who can.”

“At least if I’m a cardinal I can go see Copia again. You sent him away to study, but we all know the truth: that you banished him so he wouldn’t be tainted by us, by me. Your golden calf.” The air had been sucked out of the room, the only sound was the sizzling of Secondo’s cigar, paused halfway to his lips.

“If I demoted you, you would not see him,” Sister Imperator said, ice seeping from her voice.

“I’ll find him when I get there. You can’t stop me once I’m in Florence.”

“If you were demoted, Copia would be next in line to be Papa.”

“He’s not a true Emeritus,” Primo cut in. “The rules state that-”

“I make the rules,” Sister Imperator stood from her chair, towering over the eldest of the brothers. She marched over to Terzo and skewered a manicured nail into his chasuble. “You will bring forth the Antichrist tonight. I don’t want any funny business. So far you’ve treated this job like a joke, Stronzino. I’ve noticed and the other Clergy have noticed. Nations will not fall before a clown. This is your last chance. You get her pregnant or I’m sending you to Florence.”

She turned to address the two older brothers. “The same goes for you. Maybe all your years put together can knock some sense into him. Any kind of funny business and you’ll be shipped off as well… and not together.”

The oaken door to her office slammed with thunder when she left. The two older brothers turned to Terzo.

“You need to learn to keep your mouth shut,” Secondo said.

“That old bag needed to hear it. I’m sick of walking on eggshells around her. She should have just stayed in Florence with Copia if she was going to walk out of our lives like that.”

Primo got up and placed a gentle hand on Terzo’s shoulder. “I miss Copetto just as much as you, but you’re risking our lives here at the ministry.”

Terzo shrugged the fraternal hand off of him, stalking off toward the wall of windows that overlooked the Ministry courtyard. The grounds, though darkened by the blanket of night, were still noticeably well-kept thanks to Primo and his gardening ghouls. Hadn’t it only been yesterday that he and Copia played amongst the cold stone statues?

“I’ll count to thirty and you hide, okay Copetto?” he told the boy in the surplice.

“Okay, but Stronzino where am I supposed to hide?” Copia asked scrunching up his face.

“I can’t tell you, otherwise I’ll know where to find you.”

“Copia!” Sister Imperator called from the archway. “Copia get over here right now!” She’d come to get him. She was always coming to get him.

“Just five more minutes!” Copia called back.

“Copia, I will not tolerate any backtalk. Come do your daily studies or I’ll add 30 minutes to them.” She stood there, hands on her hips, waiting for the small boy to come running.

Copia looked up at Terzo, swiping tears from his unpainted eyes. “Can we play tomorrow? I got to go. I always have to go.”

“Go on, Copetto,” Terzo said, giving the sniffling boy a quick hug, one that was returned with a greater ferocity. “We can play tomorrow. The statues will still be here.”

The statues were still there the next day, but Copia was not.

“Terzo,” Primo said, “you should be getting ready. The hour approaches.”

“Sì, let's get this over and done with. Tell Imperator that I will be in the chapel soon.”

Terzo adjusted his miter and brushed imaginary lint from the black silk chasuble. They had been specially commissioned decades ago for this day, two woven lovers entangled on the front, consummating their sin within the black flames of hell. The pleats from where it had laid in its preservation box still faintly creased the front, despite all the siblings' best efforts to remove it. Sister Imperator would surely blame him later for them.

“Veniat Lucifer, accipiat vas suum,” Nihil’s voice muffled through the doors. As they broke open, Terzo closed his eyes as the familiar scent of the incense flooded him and the chapel from the censer swung by Secondo. The only source of light was the half-melted black candles that chuffed smoke along the pews and flighting up to the veiled altar. Spotting Sister Imperator in the front row, he walked toward the altar, slowly rolling his footsteps as to appear gliding and as intimidating as someone of his office should be.

“Luciferum veni. Accipe sponsam tuam,” Nihil chanted.

“Accipe sponsam tuam,” the Siblings filling the pews echoed. Passing them, Terzo spotted at least three sisters softly crying, and several more holding each other’s hands in emotional support. A smirk twitched the corner of his lip as he brought his focus back to the altar and his responsibilities.

Nihil stood in front of the navy and gold damask veil, a smile close to pride creasing his painted face as his youngest child stepped up to the other side of the lectern that held the crumbling Book of Satanic Rites. It was a rare treasure, that smile, hardly ever bestowed upon his children, but such a sweet gift when it was bestowed.

“Place your hands upon the text,” Nihil instructed Terzo.

Doing as told, Terzo placed his black suede-covered hands lightly on the decaying tome. The embroidered pentagrams on the back glimmered in the candlelight like the thread had been spun from actual gold. Nihil turned back, grabbing the stone ceremonial dagger from Omega.

Nihil held the dagger just above his eyes. “Semen tuum pariet Antichristo. Novas tenebras afferetis super hac terra. Patriarcha huius ecclesiae, hoc tuum est officium. Do you accept your responsibilities?”

Terzo looked to the first row where Sister Imperator sat, glaring him down. No funny business. The words echoed in his mind.

"I do," Terzo said, not taking his gaze off the old woman.

"Take, then, this blade. It is a symbol of your virility, of the phallus of mankind: penetrative and sharp, capable of slaughter and destruction. With it, you will spill the blood of the Prime Mover and yourself symbolizing your dedication to the cause of bringing forth the Antichrist to walk the earth.” Nihil handed the rough unpolished dagger over to Terzo.

Terzo bobbed the dagger up and down a bit, surprised at the weight of it. It probably weighed about as much as a full communion chalice, much more than the typical athame used at weekly Black Mass. Quickly picking the fingertips of his left glove off his hand, he discarded the suede covering and advanced forward to the curtain, knife in barehand.

“Unholy goddess,” his voice echoed just loud enough for the first row to hear, “give me your hand so that we may be joined together as one.”

The flames crackled loud as he stood there, waiting for the Prime Mover to reach out through the veil. A few siblings coughed, the silence becoming more and more apparent. Surely she had heard him?

He cleared his throat. At last, shoved through the veil with great force, was the nude arm, trembling and gripped tight near the elbow by a ghoul. The fingers twitched, palm quivering as he noticed even the gossamer dripping from the wrist wavering like the flames of the candles smoking up the chapel. That haunting hand, restrained so as not to flutter away, possessed him. His own unknowingly trembling hand tore back the curtain.

A frightened girl. Despite all his quick wits and quips, it was just now striking him how ludicrous the thought was that the Prime Mover would be one of his own devoted and loyal congregation. Laying awake at night, he’d always dreamt that it would be the lust-filled gaze of some Sister of Sin looking up at him while she sucked him off. Clad in cloak, A secretive nun. The words played in his head as he reached forth to remove the hood and veil of the one it had taken so long to find.

Her eyes were that of frightened prey that had been ensnared, his for the taking. They were puffy and the whites had gone bloodshot red. Rosy cheeks glistened wetly in the candlelight. Dragging the bare pad of his thumb across the tear-stained cheek, he felt his blood start to boil.

How many people will you hurt?

Keeping his gaze as compassionate as possible, he lowered his voice to an imperceptible level, enough that she would have to read his lips to make sense of what he was about to say. “Stay calm. This will be quick. I’m going to get you out of here.”

Quick thinking had him grabbing the flighty arm first, the blade biting into her palm producing blood and a wail. Then slicing his own palm, he smothered the cuts together, mingling the flowing red.

“Una pro Antichristo!” he exclaimed, raising the shaking arm with his for the congregation to see. The crowd erupted in praise and applause, reveling in the moment they’d all joined the Ministry hoping to see. His eyes shifted back and forth, waiting for the peak of excitement as siblings kissed each other and hugged, some of the Prime Mover hopefuls fainting, and then he seized upon it.

“Come with me now,” he whispered into her ear.

“No,” she said, trying to wrench free of the bloody grip.

“Trust me, you don’t want to stay. I can help you escape.”

His eyes shifted once more, landing on Sister Imperator who squinted, apparently distrustful of his secretive words. He didn’t wait any longer than that, putting on a smile and dragging the girl out from behind the altar and down the aisle. Sister Imperator stood and grabbed his arm tighter than the ghoul had to the poor girl he was now pulling out of the chapel.

“The ceremony is not finished,” she said.

The rage that danced under his skin tempted him to punch her, but he satisfied himself with a lick over his teeth and a chuckle. “You’ll forgive me. The Olde One has struck me with the sin of selfishness. Such beauty I am not feeling inclined to share right now. Excuse me.”

“Let go of me!” you said, wrenching your arm free from your captor. They hadn’t even told you his name, and already he had maimed you and, from what you’d been able to gather, was planning to impregnate you.

“Keep your voice down,” he said, heaving the door behind him.

You could feel your color running down your face, melting into the ubiquitous flagstones, as you saw the black wooden bed, bedecked with a plush red velvet duvet that pillowed like it was stuffed with clouds. Unable to bear the sight you snapped your head around to see the curtains whipping by the window. A drop from this height would be less painful than whatever these freaks had in store for you if your burning and dripping palm was any indicator of things to come. Your feet were moving before you could think the rest of those terrible thoughts through.

“No!” he hoisted you from behind and threw you onto the bed, your body bouncing and tumbling as if you were a rag doll. Flying to the window he fastened the bolt of the stained glass, the flapping of the curtains hushing to a quiet.

“You can’t keep me here!” The velvet duvet tangled with the gossamer of your gown, the sounds of netting softly ripping as the collar of the dress tugged at your neck, pulling you down into the softness of the bed.

“You’re right: I can’t,” he said, removing his miter first, then chasuble, folding the fabric in rough quarters and tossing it over an armchair. You were struck by his now plain appearance, just how soft he was built. Edges of jaws and shoulders were not quite as sharp and intimidating like a divine being built by the gods. If he had been just a regular guy back at a party in your hometown, you might have even approached him with some sort of confidence.

Rolling up his sleeves, he sauntered over to the bed, the springs lightly creaking as he sat down. “But I don’t think you’d like the feeling of being torn apart by the ghouls either. Can I see your hand?”

Immediately, you pulled the wounded hand closer to your chest, guarding it with the other. “You’re going to hurt me again.”

“No, dolcezza, that part of the ceremony is over. I’m sorry for startling you like that. I would be sorry about the cut, but someone was going to do it; be glad that it was me. May I please see your hand? I just want to see how it needs to be dressed.”

You searched his face for sincerity. The cut throbbed again and you realized that wherever you were they probably didn’t have tetanus shots lying around. You hesitated as you stretched the hand out to him. His hands gently took hold of your fingers, the other cupping the bottom to aid in rotating it in the dim lighting of the bedroom.

“It doesn’t look too bad. Let me get un antisettico and some wraps. Your skin is ice, cara. I have some pajamas over in that armoire,” he said, nodding to the wooden cabinet. “Why don’t you get changed and I’ll be back? There’s a privacy screen over there if you wish.”

The pajamas were just where he said they would be, a soft black flannel that had your shivering legs running to the privacy screen to put on. The cloak had been easy enough to remove, but the buttons that lined the back of the dress were a different story. You bent your arms to the best of your ability past the first five buttons, but couldn’t quite get the sixth.

“Is everything going okay back there?” he asked on the other side of the screen.

“I’m stuck.”

“Do you want me to come help you?”

Stomach flipping, you chewed the inside of your lip. Having him undress you was the last thing you wanted, especially with the implications of what was supposed to happen in that smokey infernal chapel. The gooseflesh on your skin rose again without the cloak. “Yes.”

You turned to face the corner where the privacy screen met the wall. The thought of seeing him seeing you almost naked, save for the gossamer, curdled your stomach and made you want to curl inwards like a small bug. You stilled yourself as you felt his hand briefly touch your shoulder before going about his work undoing the numerous buttons.

“You’re not from around here, are you?” he said, undoubtedly trying to fill the silence of undoing the tedious amount of buttons that ran down the dress.

“I was kidnapped. Those monsters shoved me in a van on my way home from work,” tears pricked your eyes anew as you thought of your little sister, waiting for you at home watching the clock on the stove as the minutes ticked by from when you should have walked in the door. “I didn’t even get to say goodbye.”

He stopped undoing the buttons. It surprised you when you heard a small break in his voice as he said, “I’m no stranger to that feeling,” before resuming his work.

“What could you possibly know about being kidnapped? Aren’t you the head of this group? That’s what your hat means, right?”

“No, I don’t know anything about being kidnapped, but I hold as much power as you, dolcezza. I have lived here my whole life, but I am not free to leave either. We are only permitted to leave on Ghost project business.”

“Have you ever tried to leave?”

“Have you ever tried to fight a bear? No.”

You were silent after that. It had been a foolish thing to assume. This was probably a cult, so of course he wouldn’t be allowed to leave. Still for being a cult member at least he was being nice to you.

“Nobody even told me your name.”

“Stronzino Emeritus Terzo. It’s more of a title really.”

“Well, what do your friends call you?”

“Most aren’t familiar with me enough like my brothers are to call me Stronzino, so I am just Papa or Terzo to ghouls and clergy.” He finished the last button and stepped back to the other side of the privacy screen.

You shrugged off the shift letting it crumple to the ground before pulling on the pajamas. The ghouls, or at least you think that’s what those hideous creatures are called, took your underwear when they’d dressed you for tonight. Hopefully, he didn’t mind you going commando in his pajama pants.

Stepping out of the privacy screen you watched as he handed a note to a ghoul outside the door. You stood there, definitely not wanting to head for the bed, but worried also about drawing closer to him. You would be stupid to not notice the way you were admiring him, or at least his body and the way he moved. Everyone else had been so cold, but the way he thanked the ghoul for taking his message, the way his hair fell in his face, and the way his arms were accentuated by the rolled-up cuffs had your heart pattering.

“What was that about?” you asked.

“I sent Alpha away to get you some food. I’m guessing they didn’t feed you?”

“No. They gave me some bread and water when I got here, but that’s been it.”

His nostrils flared at that information. “Dolcezza, please lie down. You must be lightheaded,” he said, cursing in what was probably Italian under his breath.

“Is this your way of getting me into bed so you can fuck me?”

“I am concerned about your lack of nutrients, per favore.” He gestured to the bed, making his way to a dressing bench that sat near the armoire. “I don’t need to see you injured twice in one night when you hit the floor.”

“You injured me the first time!” you said, walking over to the bed. He had a point about the floor.

“I’m sorry. It was required for the Prime Mover ritual.”

“What is a Prime Mover anyway? People keep calling me that and I don’t really understand what’s going on.”

With surprising alacrity, there was a knock at the door. Terzo jumped up to get it, taking the plate of cheese, fruit, and nuts, and bringing them to where you sat. “Please, eat. I know it isn’t much, but the kitchen ghouls are fixing you an actual meal. This is just while we wait.”

“You didn’t answer my question,” you said taking a bite of cheese.

He sighed sitting down next to you. “The Prime Mover is the one who will give birth to the Antichrist.”

“And you’re supposed to get me pregnant?”

“More or less.”

A thudding started in your heart. You popped an apple slice into your mouth, trying to distract from the room seeming to spin. “I want to leave.”

“You can’t right now, but if we follow through with my plan you might eventually get to go back home.”

“And what’s that?”

“Well, we would… you know,” he gestured to the bed you both sat on. “And then since you carried the Antichrist we could come and go as we please. You could go back to your family and I could go see my brother.”

“You have a brother?”

“I have 3. They took Copetto from us when he was little though. I never got to say goodbye to him. I can only hope that he still remembers me,” Terzo said, hanging his head.

A stinging in your chest caused you to set the plate of food aside. A light hand on his knee caused him to look up, mismatched eyes threatening to spill tears.

“You’ve been the only person kind to me this entire time, even if you did cut my hand, and I want to help you get your brother back. Plus you’re not bad looking.”

His lips twitched into a smile and you looked as his eyes flit between yours and your mouth. He brought his mouth to yours in a quickness and you found yourself angling more towards him. His hesitancy was notable, seeming to not want to push anything onto you. You carded a hand through his hair, placing another on his chest as you moaned into the kiss.

Terzo laid you further into the bed, hands roaming to feel your body through his soft pajamas. The duvet swallowed you into its velvet and you were lost at sea in the fabric and his touch. Grabbing ahold of his shirt you did your best to undo the buttons, desperate to cling to your fast-becoming rock in this storm of misfortune. He aided you in the last bit, tossing his shirt onto the cold floor, before diving back in peppering your neck with kisses.

“Terzo,” you breathed, air stolen through his attention to your pulse point. He moaned lowly against the column of your throat, slowing his roving hands to squeeze at your hips.

“Yes, dolcezza?”

“That feels so good.” You tugged on his hair as he nipped at your neck.

“I can make you feel even better. Would you like that?”

“Please.” The way it came out of your mouth was sinfully whiny, feeling your core tighten at his words. It almost made you want to never go back home, the way he was able to bend you with just the lick of that tongue.

The pajama shirt you had put on mere minutes ago was undone with speed, and the hunger that possessed him had him seizing immediately upon a nipple. He was right: he could make you feel better. The way his tongue danced, flickered and rolled the nipple in his mouth was enough to make you levitate off the bed, arching your back so your bodies met more fully.

“Oh, fuck! Terzo,” you said, looking down at where his hair fell in his face as he suckled. He looked back up at you, nipple still in mouth, and hummed in satisfaction.

“I am a hungry man, dolcezza,” he said before bringing that wonderful mouth of his to the other breast. His desperation had you clenching, now so willing to give yourself over to him. The thought of him being the one to spill into you, fathering your child, Antichrist or not?

“Terzo, please!” you cried out.

“Please, what?” he muttered into the kisses he pressed along your ribcage.

“Please I need you to fuck me.” It was embarrassing to admit it out loud, but you couldn’t care less how much your cheeks burned when the feel of his tongue and touch burned your skin even more.

“We have all night. No need to rush things,” he said, snaking a hand up your breastbone to support your neck for another languid assault.

You grabbed him by the shoulders and flipped him to his back.

“Sathanas below,” he managed before you captured his lips for a kiss. You reached down, palming his already hard cock through his pants. Each press and stroke had him whimpering into your mouth in a new way, eventually having you break the kiss to focus on undoing his pants.

His cock was already leaking precum and you looked up at him as you licked the bead off. His head fell back into the duvet, overwhelmed as you swirled your tongue around the head, stopping to rub just underneath.

“Dolcezza, please.”

“Please what, Terzo?”

He moaned as you slid him into your mouth. “Satana, diavolessa. Mi farai venire.”

You hummed, picking up the pace. His hand pushing you further onto him had you clenching, thinking about how badly he wanted to fill you. For someone you had just met, you could already pick out that he loved to tease his playmates.

“Fuck,” he said, hand tangled in your hair to pull you off of him. His cock made a satisfying pop as it slid out. “If you keep that up I’m going to cum in the wrong place.”

“Well cum in the right place then,” you said, voice a little hoarse from your ministrations.

He guided you back up to lay your head on the squishy pillows by the headboard.

“I have to incant some words while I take you, is that alright, cara mia?”

“Yes, as long as you fuck me,” you laughed.

He lined himself up with you, the white face paint of his forehead creasing in concentration. Slowly, carefully, he sank into you. He was big, but not painful, and the pressure of him had you already clenching around his cock. “Sit uterus iste Satanae consecratus,” he hissed. He bottomed out, allowing time for you to settle. His finger traced an invisible pentagram just above your pubic bone.

You rolled your hips, urging him to move on.

“Be patient, dolcezza” He shut his eyes as you clenched around him. “Producemus Antichristum hac nocte,” he spoke, thrusting into you. “Will you produce the Antichrist with me, Prime Mover?”

Your mind flashed back to what the dark sister had told you earlier. “I will.” He bucked his hips forward, seemingly satisfied with your answer. Perhaps a little improv wouldn’t hurt? “I-I want you to fuck a baby into me, Terzo.”

Something shifted in his eyes, hair falling into his face. It all lent a darkness to his features, the same darkness you’d been so scared of earlier. He hooked both of your legs over his shoulders and set a reckless pace. “You want me to make you swell with my cum? Is that right, dolcezza? You would be my maternal slave?”

With the way he pressed into you, your knees pinned your own shoulders down as he pressed time and time again into a pleasurable spot so deep you didn’t even know you’d had it until he’d blessed you with his cock. “Yes!” you whined, half in response to him and half unable to believe how good you felt right then, your core tightening deliciously. “I want you to fill me up with your seed. Make me your prime mover.”

“My little breeding slut,” he rasped, biting more at your neck than before. “Papa will make you his, don’t worry. You’ll be free.”

Freedom. That’s what awaited you at the end of this: the ability to go back home. But right here? Right now? Freedom felt so close, and the only thing you craved was-

A hand slipped between your bodies and the lewd noises of hips clapping together seemed to fade away as the pressure inside you began spiraling faster and faster toward the ceiling. “Terzo, I’m going to cum,” you panted.

“Just hold on a little more. Cum simul ut unum. Concipiatur hac nocte Antichristus. In nomine Patris nostri in inferno. Nema.”

“Terzo, please!” You were standing so close to the precipice, trying your best to focus on anything other than how good he was making you feel right now.

“Cum for me. Cum for Lucifer’s Son,” he said, holding pressure down on your throbbing clit. The waves came crashing over you. You felt so at peace staring him in the eyes as you could feel his own hips falter, filling you with his seed to create the Antichrist. This is where I belong, you thought as you pushed yourself up to kiss him, clenching once more to make sure it really took.

“Can we do that again?” you whispered against his lips as your heart steadied from its frantic beat.

“We have all night, dolcezza.”

[shilladodo]

Omegaverse pt1

Karasuno

Daici is an alpha and nobody can deny it. The strong scent of oak, orange and Good coffee just out of the mocha is difficult to get rid of if a hug or being close enough to him happens.

For this reason in the first year, he had "the safety distance" that he put into practice when an omega approached.

Sugawara Koshi. He is the most beloved alpha of the school at home of his appearance. Several omegas try with him, who, not being interested, goes away calmly. He prefers Betas. Its smell is Linden, Passion fruit and coriander. During matches, his inner Alpha gets so excited that he sometimes has a hard time keeping it at bay.

Ennoshita is a quiet boy, many mistake him for a Beta. Instead he too is an Alpha. The smell of him is not very strong. Lemon tea with mango and cinnamon, it's a typical smell for an omega. All this is due to relatives. The grandmother is an Alpha (alpha women are rare) the parents beta. He likes omegas with short hair.

Tanaka. Even for him it doesn't have to be said. A strong Alpha who loves the beautiful manager Kiyoko. The strong personality greatly affects the smell of her. Spices, roasted meat and a light night of tiger lily, younger alphas fear it.

Hinata's entire family is made up of betas. but he is an Omega. Until his sister was born, his uncles thought he was adopted. Also Natsu Is AN omega. They also smell very similar. They both taste like clementines. For Hinata it is also calendula and honey.

Tobio is also an alpha. He doesn't really like the attention he gets from omegas. He is blatantly gay, he will never admit it though, due to a super straight blonde alpha who would make fun of him. (Cof, cof, tsukki, stop please...) It tastes like milk, salmon and parquet wax. When he gets pissed he only tastes like rotten milk.

Asahi Is a big alfa With BDE. Unfortunately this causes many to see him as a nasty alpha, territorial and very aggressive if he touches his partner. It's nothing true. He's so sweet of a man, his alpha sends angst filled vibes whenever someone doesn't understand his good intentions. Vanilla, cherry tree and earth are its smell. Most of the time it just feels earthy. When she walks into the gym, she can smell her full scent.

Tsukishima kei. This guy is an Alpha. He doesn't know that his best friend loves him. He just can't see it damn, he needs more glasses ... Deep down he likes the company of Bokuto and Kuroo (He won't even admit it under torture though). And yes. He would make fun of Tobio if he found out that he is gay. If Yamaguchi confesses, he'll turn so red that he'll risk exploding. Its smell is of spicy udon, mint and spray paint. When Yamaguchi argued at the retreat, he was so frustrated that the smell As a chemist he did not take off his clothes.

Nishinoya, This little sliver of pure energy is a beta. His Kohai are terrified of him, again for the same reason. He hangs around like a sentinel alongside Kiyoko and Yachi. This ball of energy, it's so fast, third years don't know how to handle it. except Sugawara. the small and overly energetic beta calms down when he senses that i The alpha of the captain and the number 2 make them nervous. Although it happens that Yuu doesn't give a damn, so he ends up running away from his senpai. . It tastes like star anise, chilli pepper and green tea.

Kiyoko: Obviously it's an Omega. It's not true, she's an Alfa ass kicker too. She knows how to defend herself well from the alphas in heat who hit on her. And she hurts him, all right if she hurts him. Since alpha females are rare, they are also the most respected. So she could conveniently tell Tanaka and Nishinoya to stop "protecting" her. But he likes their liveliness. Its smell is of roses, whiskey and tobacco, inherited from his grandfather.

Yachi is considered the cutest female omega of the first year. She doesn't know, otherwise she would have passed out from embarrassment. When she met the team she was so nervous that her smell was undefined. He loves and admires Kiyoko, his omega would start crying like a baby if he ever made such a big mistake in front of his senpai. She and Asahi get along well, as they are both insecure. Its smell is composed of wildflowers, blueberry mochi and sea breeze.

[myelectricaura]

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Toronto Flat Roofing Services | The Roof Technician

[pestcontrolbloguk]

pest control blog

How To Get Rid of Rats in Drains: Expert Tips & Solutions

Identifying Mouse Droppings: Potential Hazards and How to Clean Up Safely

Rat Droppings: The Hazards of Inhaling or Touching Rat Faeces

Expert Advice on How To Get Rid of Rats From Home and Garden

Pigeon Lifespan: How long do pigeons live?

How Do Flea Bombs Work? The Pros and Cons of Flea Bombing

How Long Do Flies Live?

Do Mice Hibernate?

Field Mice: How to Identify and Control

Bed Bugs: How to Identify, Control, and Treat

Understanding the Bed Bug Cycle and How to Kill Bed Bugs

Where Do Bed Bugs Come From And How Do You Get Bed Bugs?

The History of Bed Bugs

Locate and Destroy the Bugs: Bed Bugs

Heat Treating for Bed Bugs: Pros and Cons

How to Identify Bed Bug Bites and Recognise the Signs

Bites in the Bed: Identifying Bed Bug Bites

Treatment of Bed Bugs – Effective Solutions

How to Get Rid of Bed Bug Bites Overnight

How to Effectively Treat Bed Bugs: DIY and Professional Solutions

Uncovering the Mysteries of Bed Bugs: From Diagnosis to Prevention

Pest Advice For Controlling Rats

Common Mouse Species Found in The UK

Mouse Control: What are the Best Mouse Exterminators and Repellents?

Mouse Identification Chart to Quickly Identify UK Mouse Species

How to Get Rid of Mice: The Benefits of Different Mouse Traps, Repellents, and Baits

Identifying Fox Den Locations in the Garden to Keep the Foxes Away

Types of Earwigs and Their Habitats

Identifying Different Types of Crab Spiders

Identifying Fly Eggs: How to Spot an Infestation

How to Identify House Crickets Infestation and Take Action to Stop Them

A Guide to Identifying Big Spiders in The UK

How to Tell If You Have a Roach Infestation and When to Hire an Exterminator

Choosing the Right Pest Control Services: Tips and Advice for Homeowners

Debunking Common Myths About Spider Bites in the UK

Flea Spray For Home: Professional Tips for Controlling Fleas 

The Best Tips for Setting Up a Humane Mouse Trap in Your Home

Baby Pigeon: How To Humanely Remove Baby Pigeons From Your Home

Effective Ways to Deal with an Ant Infestation in Home and Business

Rat In Garden In Daylight: Tips for Making Your Garden Rat-Proof

How to Get Rid of a Wasp Nest: A Guide to Safe and Effective Wasp Control

The Most Effective Treatment of Bed Bugs: What You Need to Know

Types Of Fly – What Are the Different Types of Flies In The UK?

Small Tiny Brown Bugs In House UK

How To Get Rid Of Ants In Kitchen

What Do Bed Bugs Look Like?

The Dangers of Pests: How to Protect Yourself from the Health Hazards They Bring

Don’t Take Pests Lightly – A Comprehensive Look at the Health Dangers They Pose

The Hidden Health Risks of Pest Infestations: The Link Between Disease and Rodents, Insects, and Other Pests

How To Get Rid Of a Mouse?

What is the best way to get rid of rats at home?

How to deal with rat in garden in daylight

Who Is Responsible For Rats In a Rented Property

Wood Worm Control

Pigeon Pest Control Near Me

Pest Control Harrow

Tower Hamlets Pest Control

Seagull Nest Removal Near Me

Cluster Fly Killer

Best Way To Get Rid Of Mice

Flea Exterminator

Wolf Spider UK: Bon Accord Pest Control, Wolf Spider Control Experts

Garden Spider UK

House Spider UK – Control and Removal

Wasp Nest Removal Near Me

Wasp Exterminator

Biscuit Beetle Control

Carpet Beetle Spray

Bon Accord Best Ant Killer UK – How to Deal with Ant Infestation

Spray For Bugs

Pest Control Supermarket

Spray for Bed Bugs

Wasp Removal

Say Goodbye to Pests with Bon Accord – London’s Best Pest Control

Bed Bug Killer

London Pest Control Near Me

Mouse Deterrent

Do Mice Usually Go Upstairs

Rat Repellent

Rat Killer

Cockroach Killer London: Bon Accord Professional Extermination Services

Bird Netting Services

Bed Bug Spray

Moth Killer

Spray For Bugs in Bed

Fly Killer

Bon Accord Ant Killer -We Deal with Ant Infestations

How Common are Bed Bugs in London Hotels

Rats In Garden – Find Out How To Get Rid Of Them

What Do Ants Eat?

Best Rat Poison In The UK

Bed Bug On Mattress – How To Get Rid Of Them

Fox Deterrent And Repellents That Actually Work

How To Eradicate Bed Bugs In The Home – Bed Bug Removal

6 Signs You Have a Bed Bug Infestation – Bed Bug Exterminator Advice

Why Hiring a Professional Exterminator is the Best Way to Treat Bed Bugs

8 Bed Bugs Treatment Options

How to Avoid Bringing Bed Bugs Home from a Hotel – Bed Bugs Killers

How to Get Rid of Ants and Keep Ants Out of Your Home

[dairelawlor]

Journeys, Grief, and New Beginnings

The new year came, went, and now we are half way through the third month of it. Outside, it is raining; a cold, wet rain that makes my flat feel damp and grey. We’re lucky we don’t have mould here, what with how chilly the walls can feel after the onslaught of sea spray and drizzle. The sky is shrouded in murk.

If there is one thing that has always been true of Ireland, it is that we know the rain, and there are a million and one different descriptions for the precise type of rain we can experience at any moment. It is currently a wet rain.

I know how it sounds to the uninitiated. All rain is wet, you say. Duh.

But here, a wet rain is rain that gets through your layers, down to your bones. It seeps in through the protective shell of warm skin and chills your core to ice. For homes, it oozes through walls and insulation, making you shiver under your blanket throws and jumpers. The heating struggles to keep those cool fingers at bay.

I still love to hear it on my windows though, and in all actuality, I have always loved the rain, no matter its form.

Read the rest free on my substack <3 

[youcantkillamutant]

Deeper Into The Drink: Chapter II

Author: youcantkillamutant

Fandom: ACOTAR (SJM)

Pairing: Tarquin x Black Fem!Reader

Summary: You’ve always known that Cresseida would do whatever it takes to protect the Summer Court. You just didn’t realize that you were a part of that equation. So you vow to do all you can to help Cresseida and protect your court, which is proving to be difficult, what with the scheming lords of Summer, human refugees from the war, sly overtures of kindness from the Night Court and the growing desolation of the neighboring Spring Court. And yet, you think you might have been able to handle all of that, if the High Lord Tarquin wasn’t so…himself. It would have been easier still if your heart didn’t take notice of that fact.

Warnings: Depictions of violence, angst, mentions of death, slow burn (as is my custom), no smut (probably), lots of IC slander

Rating: 18+

Words: 7K+

A/N: Um… Yeah idk how to explain this one honestly? I’m in my “let’s get some critical thinking going about the IC and their shitty actions” era and just can’t deal with how dirty they did Tarquin. So…yeah. I just want Tarquin to have more people on his side honestly. This story is set post-ACOSF in terms of timeline. This is my first time writing in this fandom, so be nice. Don’t like it don’t read it and all that jazz. Not Beta’d we die like men. I own nothing, all characters belong to SJM.  

Prologue |  Chapter I  |  Read on Ao3  |  Mood Board  |

To succeed in court is to make friends out of enemies.

🐚☀️🐚

You loved Cresseida. She was your best friend. Your sister. You absolutely adored her and absolutely would not murder her for waking you up before sunrise, but you really, really wanted to. Your wakeup call this morning was the door to your room banging against the wall as glided in, ripping your duvet off of you and pulling you out of bed before you could wipe the sleep from your eyes.

Before you could blink, she’d pushed you into your bathing room, heated the bath and dropped a mix of scented oils in that made you feel like you were walking through a summer field. According to Cress, you didn’t have time to “luxuriate” but you still moved a little slower than normal. Aside from the fact that you were still waking up, you were also working to quell the anxiety that twisted your stomach in knots. Today would be your first day as advisor to the Princess of Adriata.

You hadn’t spent much time actually thinking about the work you’d be doing with Cress on the journey to Adriata. Sure, you’d thought about Court and the city itself, but Cresseida merely asked you to advise her when she found you back home, and you were so out of it that you’d agreed without actually asking for more information. Rising out of the bath and drying off, you figured now was as good a time as any to start asking questions, starting with that incredibly rude wake up call.

“Cress, why exactly did you wake me up so early today? I thought we didn’t have a meeting until after lunch.” You finished rubbing lotion into your skin, spraying a bit of leave-in in your hair and slipping on a robe.

“If you’re to be my advisor,” You opened the door to see Cresseida pulling clothing from your closet. You hadn’t brought much, and she was clearly annoyed by that. “you aren’t allowed to dress like a villager any longer.” She flounced out of the closet and yanked a dress from a rack by the door. “Take this.” Thus began your Summer Court Makeover. To be fair, it wasn’t so much a makeover as it was a closet overhaul. Most of your clothes were appropriate for farm chores only, and everyone you’d seen in Adriata so far seemed to be dressed for a weekend on a pleasure barge, so Cress was definitely doing you a favor.

Two hours later, your closet was full of clothing you’d never be able to find in your village, silken slippers and golden sandals, and lots, and lots of bathing suits. You’d never really bothered with them before, living so far inland, but Cress swore by all 15 she’d stocked your closet with. While you two had plucked items off of racks for your closet, you asked your questions about your position in the the court as her advisor. It was mainly basic stuff, reading over missives, planning appearances, managing her schedule. You’d attend council meetings with her as well, your first one being later today after lunch. With your closet stocked and questions answered, Cresseida left you to get dressed for the day promising to meet her in her office once you were finished.

You pulled on the dress you’d been eyeing all morning, and slipped on some sandals to match, stopping at the mirror beside your door. The dress was gorgeous and like a wave lapping at the shore, the silk fabric floated around you lazily. The sleeveless gown dipped low in the front and even lower in the back, leaving the hem to kiss the floor as you walked. Cresseida had gifted you a few “Summer Court Staples” as she’d called them: a pair of pearl earrings dripping gold, a few golden armbands crafted to look like rolling waves, even a ring of marine diamond that signified your position as a member of the royal court. Each piece glittered on your brown skin, practically glowing.

You allowed yourself three deep breaths at the mirror, taking in the Adriatan version of you. This version showed a lot more skin, glittered like faelight off of the sea and wore a face that was just a second away from grinning coyly. You looked just as you imagined Cresseida did when out on official Summer Court work. It was…odd, so you pulled the necklace with your father’s ring over your head, letting the metal rest against your heart. One more breath and you were out of your room, starting your first official day as Advisor to Princess Cresseida of the Summer Court.

Cresseida’s office was on the west wing of the castle, and it took you nearly ten minutes to make it to the right wing. It took you another ten to find the right door after peeking into four others that remained empty in the early morning glow of the sun. When you finally pulled the correct door open, you gaped at the size of the room. Two desks sat beside each other, one cluttered with stacks of papers and letters and books, the other completely bare. Sunlight streamed through the windows above the desks and on the opposite wall, shelves of books climbed up the wall, to the glittering ceiling of the room. Normally, the bookshelves would be enough to excite you, but your eyes caught on the wall next to them.

There was a map of the Summer Court painted on wall, and at first glance, it was merely a colorful mural. But when you stared at the piece, you could see that the streets in glittering city of Adriata bustled with small dots, people. The mountains were sun-bleached barren rock and, snow even drifted down on the mountains closest to the Winter Court borders. The fields where your village lay were lush and green, and you could practically hear the wind blowing through the grass as it swayed.  

“It’s spelled to reflect everything in the Summer Court lands.” Cresseida stepped to your side as you continued to gaze at the map. “My aunt crafted it for me when I officially took on my title and role in Adriata.”

“It’s amazing Cress.” Your awe only grew when you brushed your hand along the fields and you could actually feel the grass and the breeze and the sun. “Amazing.” You took one more beat to gaze at the map, then turned to Cresseida. “All right, where do I start?”

You spent your first hour in the office acquainting yourself with…everything. Cresseida had more messages to answer this morning than you’d ever received in your life, and it took and hour to get through half of the first stack. You didn’t realize just how much of being a princess was communicating with other courtiers and maintaining relationships through droll little letters. Another hour slipped by as you sealed the response letters with golden wax and the Summer Court crest. A few more minuted dripped by when a series of chimes sounded through the room.

Cresseida pulled her head up from whatever tome she’d been reading, blinking dazedly. She murmured something like ‘already?’ before dropping the book on her desk, folding and creasing the unsuspecting reports below, and pushing to stand. She stalked to a table in the center of the room, this one filled with a few copies of the parchment, static version of the map on the wall.

“Okay, I may have lied about this being easy.” Cress plucked a map off of the table and walked back to your desk. “After the war, the humans below the wall needed somewhere to go. Tarquin volunteered the Summer Court, which is all well and good, but I’ve been getting complaints from the fae nearby.” She placed the map in front of you, and you noticed that it was a flat map of Adriata. “The trouble is, we’re still rebuilding a third of the city and honestly I don’t know what to do with them. Integrating them has proved…difficult.”

“In what way?” You studied the map, noting the few areas circled in red listed as the human encampments. There were about three large ones, but if the numbers beside them denoted population, then there were less than 200 humans in the Summer Court. You wondered what exactly the fae nearby were complaining about.

“The High Fae…they aren’t taking kindly to them, well, existing in Adriata. We’ve never had them here before.” You waited, because you could see there was more she wanted to say. “When Tarquin offered refuge for the humans, I knew it was the right thing to do. I also knew that it would cause problems.” She let out a loud sigh, and sunk into the seat at her desk. “Tarquin…he’s a good male, but that doesn’t always make for a good High Lord. His goals are noble, but if he—Cauldron, if we aren’t careful, he won’t survive this new Court. And we need him to survive.”

“What do the humans think of their…situation?” Cresseida snorted at the question.

“No idea.” Your face must have shown your shock, because she rolled her eyes. “Don’t look at me like that! What am I supposed to do? Walk down there and ask how they’re doing? Humans are terrified of us on a good day, you know.”

“Cresseida, there is an entire group of beings in the Summer Court that you haven’t spoken to at all? They’re on our lands. We can’t just leave them to their own devices!” Your mind began thinking up all of the ways that unattended humans could destroy the Summer Court and you did your best to push the thoughts aside. “Look, forget about the High Fae for a second. The humans, weak as they are, deserve to have a say in their life here.” Cresseida nodded, listening intently. “So we engage with them like we would any other Fae, invite them to the city council meetings, get them a representative, help them make a life here.” You blew out a breath, mind spinning.

If Cress was worried about Tarquin’s foothold in the Court, then he’d need more than Cress and occasionally Varian supporting him. Humans weren’t anything to fear for the fae, not without faebane at least, but if Tarquin could get them to support him quickly, the other court lords might think twice about attempting any sort of coup. You hoped.

“Make sure the humans know that Tarquin is the one behind it all. The lesser fae like him well enough right? If we get the humans on his side as well—”

“We’ll have willing soldiers.” Varian strolled into the room, armed to the teeth, and shot you an appraising look. You hadn’t even noticed the door opening, trying to puzzle out the best way to speak to the humans now that they’d been in Adriata for at least a month with no contact from the Court. You shook your head at Varian, happy to see Cress similarly disturbed by his bloodlust. You were about to launch into a well constructed tear on the lack of basic respect for humans that his comment clearly displayed, but you remembered something your father had told you about his time at court.

“To succeed in court is to make friends out of enemies.” He’d worked with fae he hated in court, convincing them that he was their ally, to gain a stronger foothold in the court. He’d used their hatred and arrogance and entitlement to his advantage. You decided to do the same, starting with Prince Varian.

“No. No. If we’re to truly coexist with the mortal realm, we need to show them that we aren’t the monsters they believe us to be.” You’d never be able to say Fae weren’t monsters entirely, but humans couldn’t either. No matter how much they believe they can. “We need them to exist in colonies here. We need them to be happy. Safe.” Varian didn’t look convinced, clearly uninterested in anything other than using the humans to his wartime advantage. You merely let your lips curve into a smirk, sliding on that cunning mask. “And what better way to show them that than to allow the sheep to sleep amongst the wolves?” At your tone, Varian grinned, and it was a sharp, nasty thing.

“So how do you suggest we fool the sheep?” Varian awaited your answer, eyes trained on yours.

“A party, of course.”

☀️

Your first Council meeting at the palace didn’t start until after lunch, so instead of eating in the royal hall with Cresseida and whoever else happened to be there today, you decided to do a bit of your own research. Which is exactly how you found yourself in a walled off portion of Adriata, far from the sea and baking in the heat, with the humans. You didn’t bother to introduce yourself and it wouldn’t have mattered anyways. Most of the humans shrunk back from you in fear, and the older ones merely looked on warily as you glided by, silk skirts whispering and gold gleaming on your skin.

Dodging a few clumps of rubble, you peeked into one of their…shelters. Canvas draped over a crumbling shop entryway. Bedrolls glinted with broken glass. There were sounds of tinkering and the low murmur of conversation, but this was beyond abysmal. How the hell were you going to get the humans to love Tarquin if he allowed Cresseida to put them here? Why the hell did Cresseida put them here? Cauldron boil you. You had a lot of work to do.

You turned slightly, studying the man in the doorway next to you. He was round bellied and cautiously looking at you from the side of his eye. He perked up when he noticed that you’d returned his stare, and stumbled back as you took a step towards him.

“Please wait,” You held your hands in front of you, as if attempting to soothe a frightened animal. He began to shake but remained still. “I only wanted to ask if you had enough food and water?” You gestured to the humans still milling around. “For everyone?”

The man only nodded looking ready to piss his pants and bolt, when a woman spoke from behind you. You were surprised to hear her steps, confident and steady. Not common for a human interacting with a fae.

“Aye, we’ve water an food but we sleep on beds of glass.” She paused, allowing you to take her in. She was small, shorter than you remembered full grown humans could truly be, with brown wispy hair and eyes to match. She was also covered in grime. “An we’ve no place to bathe.” She tilted her head and her brows scrunched together. “Milady?” You nearly smiled at the uptick in her voice. You were no lady, not officially at lease, but she didn’t need to know that.  

“I see.” You studied the woman again. You could see she was tired, probably still shell shocked all these weeks after, but she stood steady on her feet. Her hands did not shake and her eyes did not waver from yours. You noticed a loose crowd forming behind her. A group of sentries ready to protect their queen. Perfect. “What is your name?”

“Aida. Milday.”

“Thank you Aida. You’ll be hearing from our High Lord soon.”

🐚

The Council Chamber of the Summer Court was as beautiful as everything else in this palace. Arching windows with stained glass borders depicting ocean creatures glowed across the far wall, the white tiled floor was as grandiose and pristine as any other room here but the table in the center of the room gave you pause. It was a sand-colored, hulking slab of marble, only the legs, carved with seahorses and squids resembled the elegance of the Summer Court. The males surrounding it also gave you pause, but Cresseida breezed in with you by her side, so you had to study the males that made up Lord Tarquin’s Court up close. Cauldron save you.

Each of the men wore at least one item with their family crest, a conch shell matched a narrow faced male with umber eyes and skin. A cresting wave belonged to a male with wrinkled male with greying hair. You continued to let your eyes slide over the signs: sailing ship, starfish, even a glowing sun. The only one you’d recognized from your time in the village belonged to Lord Hasu, the ripe berry and fields of wheat making your heart yearn for a home you’d never have again. You nodded to Hasu, and he even greeted you with a wave and a smile. Your heart cracked a bit more for that memory of home. You turned to Tarquin before your eyes could mist over. There was no time for tears. Not in front of these Lords.

Tarquin’s crest was a mix of the all of them, the main elements being a cresting wave under a beaming sun. When he called the meeting to order the lords meandered to their seats, hardly in a hurry. Something about their casual attitude irritated you, but Tarquin didn’t seem bothered, and only nodded to Varian, who had slipped into the room so silently you hadn’t noticed, to close the doors. Once the meeting commenced you regretted stepping foot in this room at all. You should have known that war wouldn’t be the last hell you’d see.

“Lord Tarquin, I want to discuss the human encampments here in the city.” There was rustling of fine robes, tightening of lips and narrowing of eyes when Cresseida spoke. You couldn’t tell if it was because it was Cresseida speaking, or because of the subject itself. You’d been sitting at the meeting for too long. Twenty minutes in, you wanted to jump straight into the sea. Forty minutes in, you were contemplating murder, but you did everything you could to refrain from showing it on your face in your seat beside Cress. You hadn’t taken off your courtier mask around anyone but Cresseida, and you weren’t going to start with this gathering of old men and fools.

“They are quite the eyesore Tarquin, when will you do away with those?” The ‘and do away with the humans’ was implied. Heavily. It irked you that none of the courtesans from Nostrus’s reign bothered to address Tarquin with his title. He had survived under the mountain while these elders sailed around in their ships and languished in their own palaces. He was stronger than the lot of them. He was High Lord. Cresseida hardly paid the male any mind.

“They’re sleeping on rubble with no where to bathe. They may be humans, but we need to get them to a better location at least.” Tarquin nodded, listening intently. “We have plenty of suitable shelters for them, I just need a few volunteers to help me winnow them over.” The males at the table tittered, and finally, one spoke up. It was your least favorite lord so far. One your father had mentioned with annoyance in passing.

“Princess, with all due respect, you are not a High Lady,” The droning Lord turned to you and continued. “and your father would never agree with—” You stopped the man there with a hand. Lord Karrian was the sort of man who so arrogantly assumed that everyone worshipped the ground that he walked on that he didn’t notice most people spitting at his feet. You’d be happy to spit in his face if you got the chance.

“You do not know what my father would have wanted, as you and him were never close. Please refrain from using him in your arguments in the future…” You cut him a look, and his jaw clenched. “Lord Karrian.” You could see Varian smiling sharp, bright and feral, so you knew you’d struck with just the right amount of force, at just the right time. Cresseida knocked her leg with yours in celebration.

“Humans are worthless.”

“There’s no such thing as a useless bargaining chip Lord Karrian.” At your cool tone and callous words, he reevaluated you. You held his eye, grey brow rising in challenge. Before either of you could speak, Tarquin interrupted.

“Cresseida, see to it that the humans are moved to my Adriata estate. There are a few hundred correct?” Cress nodded. “Then there will be plenty of room.” Tarquin turned those blue eyes to you, and you let out a slow, silent exhale to calm your beating heart. “Would you be willing to assist my cousin in this?” The question stopped you short. Of course you would, it was your idea, but the fact that Tarquin, the High Lord had asked if you were willing? And in front of his courtiers too? Tarquin had his work cut out for him, and his kindness wasn’t doing him many favors with the old guard, but you couldn’t quell the rapid beating of your heart. Not as he held your gaze, waiting for your answer.

“Of course, my Lord.” Tarquin stared at you beat longer and you could have sworn his eyes went…soft, but the look was gone in a blink and he returned his attention to the other lords of his Court to listen to them bicker about something ridiculously bourgeoisie and elitist. Before you could curse them to boil in the Cauldron for all eternity, you breathed deeply, shared a look with Cresseida, and began your plans for the human move. You and Cress could handle the bulk of it, but Tarquin needed to be there too and you could only hope he’d be willing.

☀️

“Lord Tarquin, do you have a moment? Princess Cresseida and I would like to discuss a few things.” The lords of the court weren’t watching, but you’d bet they were listening, so you stuck with formal titles. The meeting ended without bloodshed or elaborate curses, but it had long and tedious. Tarquin turned to you and gave you a small smile and nod.

“Of course. Do you mind if we walk and talk?” You shook your head and Cresseida grabbed your arm, looping it with hers. The three of you strolled out of the Council Chambers and into the hallways. Cress directed you all to the gardens and when you reached the verdant archway leading out, she slid your arm into Tarquin’s with a wink.

“We’ve already discussed what you need to know T, so I’ll let my lovely advisor fill you in.” Your eyes were wide and you did everything you could not to shake your head. Cress could not leave you alone with Tarquin. You’d never been alone with a High Lord, and certainly not a High Lord like Tarquin. For a split second, you wished your were a daemati so you could scream at Cress in her head. She caught your eye and grinned wider. Bitch.

Tarquin only nodded and guided you further into the garden. It wasn’t like any garden you’d ever seen in the village, this one was full of small ponds. In each one you passed, aquatic flora, coral and rocks glittered like jewels. There were even fish and frogs in some of them. Mosaic sea glass paved the walkways in the garden, and the way the sun glinted off of them made you love the beauty of your court just a bit more.

“So, what is it you’d like to discuss?” Your head whipped to meet Tarquin’s eye. You hadn’t realized how long the pair of you had walked in silence. He held your gaze, and nodded encouragingly.

“Right um, the humans.” You breathed out a short laugh, embarrassed by how flustered you were. Honestly, the man was just looking at you and you couldn’t keep it together? Cauldron boil you. “Cress and I were talking, well strategizing really, and we need the humans to fall in love with you.” You stopped your stroll, turning to stand in front of the High Lord. “What I said about the humans being a bargaining chip? It’s true. Not pretty, but if we’re honestly looking to coexist with the humans, they need to see that they can live with us. Without being hunted or enslaved.” Tarquin nodded along, listening so earnestly it surprised you.

“My estate will certainly ensure they live in comfort.”

“Which is a start, a good one, my Lord. But they need to see you. You need to be the one winnowing them to your estate, you need to speak with them, ask them what they want and need. Cresseida and I can help, but they have to fall in love with you.” Tarquin nodded, and clasped his hands behind his back. You itched to wrap your arm back into his, but clasped your hands in front of you instead, falling into step beside him.

“When Cresseida told me she wanted to bring you to Adriata as her advisor, I’ll admit I had to wonder why.” Tarquin turned to you. “Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been dying to meet the woman my cousin calls her sister, but I wondered what a village girl could advise a princess on.” You laughed and nodded, his question was fair. “When I heard who your father was, it made more sense, but still, I wondered why a village girl would leave her family farm to come to the city. If given the opportunity, I’d stay in the fields forever.”

“Have you spent much time in the country, My Lord?” Tarquin scrunched his nose in distaste.

“You know you can call me Tarquin? You don’t have to bother with that High Lord nonsense.”

“My father taught me that names and titles are important. Especially for anyone looking to maintain power.” You said it carefully, because you weren’t trying to offend him, but you knew the stakes at play here.

“Perhaps I should have brought you on as my advisor.” You released a light laugh, and Tarquin graced you with a smile so bright that your breath caught. He continued on like he hadn’t just put you into cardiac arrest. “I’ve been to the country a few times. I was only a Prince then, but I had been planning a village tour when we all…” Went under the mountain. You nodded in understanding. You wanted to kill Amarantha yourself for the icy look that fell over Tarquin’s eyes.

“Well I assure you my Lord, this village girl had plenty of time to read and research after the summer harvesting and chores were done. My father wouldn’t have had it any other way and Cress brought back all the best gossip of the courts I’d learned about. Did you hear about Lord Horanu's cousin’s niece? When I heard she fell straight off the pleasure barge on her own birthday?” You did your best to stifle a smile. “Something so ridiculous shouldn’t be so funny, but when Cress acted it out for me, complete with the squeal and bratty diatribe? I laughed all night.” Tarquin laughed loudly then, the sound ringing through the garden. His head was thrown back, and you allowed yourself just one second to admire the line of his neck, the dark skin wrapped around it warming in the sun.

“My Lord, can I ask you something?”

“Only if you don’t call me ‘my Lord’” Tarquin teased. You rolled your eyes.

“Fine…What do you want for our Court Tarquin? In a decade, a century, half a millennia?” Tarquin went silent at that, like he was surprised at your question. Almost like he was hoping for something else.

“I want…too much it seems. An alliance with the seasonal courts. Wealth redistribution. Societal reconstruction. And perhaps a farm, in a small village.” He winked at you for the last one and you could feel your face heat. “The only problem is that though I’m High Lord, I don’t feel very adept at…I don’t know what precisely, but somedays, it feels like I’m merely playing High Lord, and everyone in the palace is humoring me. We were Under the Mountain for so long…” His voice went distant at the last words, but he had already been sounding small. You didn’t like the self-doubt that colored his words.

“Add to that the fact that I seem to be shit at making any sort of worthwhile alliance and the fact that the Lords of Summer would be more likely to murder me than pay higher taxes to the Court or higher wages to their workers? Not to mention keeping the humans in our borders alive and the gap between lesser and higher fae from growing? I want too much.”

“You don’t have to get it all at once, my Lord.” You used the title, hoping to snap him out of whatever reflective sadness he’d fallen into. It didn’t work.

“Helion has told me that progress takes patience over and over, but I look at the High Fae and I look at everyone else and I just…I can’t stand it. Some days I can’t stand myself. I was born into this position, this wealth, and it’s my duty to make things right. The people in our Court deserve it, they deserve better.” The sadness had been burned away, passion blazing in his eyes now. This was the High Lord the humans needed to love. This is a male that will take care of his people.

You were overcome with an incredible sense of relief. Tarquin so easily could have been…anything but who he was. He could have been selfish. He could have taken the easy route, Lording over our court until it was time for him to pass on the mantle. You wouldn’t blame him for it. Not after Amarantha. Not after the war. But still, he fought and dreamed and hoped for your court. For your people.

“Well, we’ll take it one step at a time then, but don’t ever think that your dreams for us — for our court, are too much.” Tarquin gave you a rueful smile.

“Your words are kind but…Sometimes I am afraid that I’ll fly too close to the sun.” And with those words, you knew you’d have a hard time keeping your heart in check when it came to the High Lord of The Summer Court. Fuck.

“We won’t let you.” You couldn’t resist grabbing his arm then, stopping him in and turning him in front of you. “Tarquin, you are going to change our Court for the better and you won’t have to do it alone. Ever.” This was a vow you would do everything in your power to keep, because you could see the world that Tarquin wanted, and you wanted it too.

Tarquin’s brows rose in surprise, his blue eyes searching your own for…something. You could feel the the warmth of his arm in your grasp and looked down to note the faint scars on his brown arms. A result of the War or Under the Mountain? You weren’t going to ask, but a spark lit fire simmered inside of you, dying to know who exactly had hurt your High Lord.

“What did you have in mind?” You looked at Tarquin, confused by his line of questioning. “You said that my winnowing the humans would be a start, what else did you have in mind?” You were grateful for the subject change, unwilling to look into your irrational rage at the idea of Tarquin being harmed. You released his arm with a smile.

“How do you feel about festivals?”

🐚

You didn’t see Cresseida, Varian or Tarquin until later the next day, Tarquin and Cresseida having spent all day winnowing the humans to his Adriata estate. You’d spent nearly all of your day answering the rest of Cress’s messages, your hand cramping from so much writing and wax pouring and crest sealing. Without direction from Cresseida on what to do after that was done, you decided to take your chances and find the library. Your father had mentioned it once briefly, and really, you’re surprised you were able to wait this long before seeking it out. The village was too small to warrant one, and you’d always wondered what it might be like to be surrounded by books in a room solely dedicated to parchment and bindings and ink and stories.

The library was closer to the center of the palace, down a set of marble winding steps and a short hallway glinting with amethyst and faelight. The doors to the library were carved of black stone, a silver handle nestled in a scene of creation. An eight pointed star rose over a waved line, making an arc across the double doors. As it made it to the other side, it exploded in a splash of glittering jewels which trickled down to a rolling hill meeting the sea. It had been a long time since you’d read the old myths, but you thought that maybe this was a creation myth of the lands. The birth of Corealis, goddess of the sun. You ran your hands over the jewels, all rocks plucked from the sea you were sure, and pondered the myth. It was an old one, and you may have only heard it once. You could only remember that Corealis crashed into the sea, and instead of stealing her life, the sea goddess…Ocea? Ogea! Ogea imbued Corealis with the will of the ocean and guided her back into the sky. Corealis returns to the Ogea every night in thanks, warming her waters as the sun falls below the sea. At least…that���s what you can remember.

The clicking of heels on stone above pulled you from your memory, flawed as it might have been. Taking in the doors once more, you admired the craftsmanship and pushed them open. The door led to a dark hallway. Your bare arms shivered in the cool air and if you listened closely, you could hear the sound of waves. No, not waves exactly, but water. It sounded like you were underwater. You continued on, noting the slick obsidian walls in the faelight lining the hallway. After a few minutes of walking the dark hallway opening into a cavernous space. And as you surveyed the space, you wondered if this wasn’t actually an underwater cave. Or at least, had been in the past.

The walls were rough and dotted with moss, giving way to openings the size of small rooms. Each one, as far as you could see, was filled with books. Light floated into the space between dripping stalactites, bathing the room in an ocean blue hue. Stepping further into the cavern, you noticed a series of staircases carved into the curved walls. The stairs led to upper levels filled with more books and larger rooms, with tables and fluffy chairs. There were a few people in the space, reading quietly or scribbling furiously on parchment. As you began a circuit of the Library of Adriata, you couldn’t believe your father had only mentioned the place once. Something settled in your soul as you listened to the waves and breathed in the parchment, gathering books in the crook of your arm until you couldn’t see over the pile.

Tarquin found you hours later, studying a book on the families of the Summer Court. It was a newer version you hadn’t had the chance to read, used to your father’s older volumes. It must have been well into the evening as you blinked up at the male, noticing faelights lighting a grand chandelier of bleached coral in the center of the room.

“I’ve been looking for you.” Tarquin looked at you and the piles of books you’d gathered around you like a firedrake. “Looks like the library found you first.” You grinned.

“This place is amazing. I’ve never seen anything like it.” You clutched the book to your chest as you leaned forward. Tarquin had seated himself in the chair opposite yours and watched you with a soft smile.

“I’m glad you like it.” You nodded furiously , and Tarquin huffed a laugh. It wasn’t barbed and boorish like Varian’s, no, The High Lord of Summer’s muted laughter was honeyed whisky and your stomach flipped at the sound. “I was hoping to speak with you about the festival idea you had for the humans.” Tarquin paused for a moment, as though debating what to say. “I was also hoping to get your opinion on a few ideas.” You nodded and slid away the surprise at his request, along with the book you were reading, onto the table before you.

“Of course. How did the winnowing go?”

“It was…interesting.” Your face must have shown your confusion, because he continued on. “The humans are so…fearful of us. I had an idea of it. I knew that we had been the monsters in the wood to them for centuries, but I don’t know… I suppose I assumed most humans were like Jurian, or Feyre.” You nodded. From what you’d heard, the both of them were quite fearless. For better or worse.

“I went to see them yesterday. They couldn’t even look me in the eye.” Tarquin’s mouth twisted in distaste at your admission.

“About that—There was a woman, Aida. She asked about you.” Your brows flew up in surprise. “We came to an agreement, and I’m hoping you’re willing to agree as well.” You gestured for him to continue. “I’ve promised to meet with the humans and whoever they choose to represent them every two weeks, but Aida would only agree if you were there as well.” Tarquin leaned back in his chair just a bit, drawing your eyes to the gold that glittered in the threads of his tunic. “I know you’re Cresseida’s Advisor and this doesn’t really fall under your duties, but would you be willing to join me?”

“Of course I’ll come. Though I am surprised.” And you were. You’d hardly spoken to the woman, but apparently you’d made an impression.

“She trusts you. On some level at least.” Tarquin’s shoulder rose and fell, an elegant shrug. “It’s a good sign. If you’re the fae that gets them to trust us, or our court at least, I’ll gladly take it.”

With that answered and out of the way, you both spoke about what kind of festival you could create for the humans and fae. You had no idea how long you spent volleying ideas back and forth, writing ideas on parchment Tarquin had magicked in front of you when you cursed at not having anything to take notes with. Somehow, you’d veered off the subject, and Tarquin was yet again asking you about your life in the village. You told him about your daily chores and how Cresseida would whine about helping with them while doing them perfectly.

“I just can’t see Cresseida shoveling anything, let alone manure!” You laughed, and defended your friend.

“Just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. Cress is strong, and honestly, she was faster than me. Probably because she wanted to get it over with.” You felt like you’d been spending too long speaking about yourself, so you redirected the conversation.

“What kind of chores did you have as a prince? I can’t imagine it involved any sort of shoveling.” Tarquin smiled at the teasing tone of your voice.

“No shoveling, but tons of sailing. I’m pretty sure I spent most of my time on a boat or in the sea the first two decades of my life.” He sighed, blue eyes lost in a memory. “It feels like a dream now, after everything that’s happened. I miss it.”

“Don’t you have a pleasure barge? And an entire fleet of naval ships?”

“It’s not the same. Firstly, they’re all large, and secondly, those vessels have a specific purpose. They’re meant for war or parties, but a small sailer is built for nothing but the sea and the wind. There’s nothing like it. It’s freedom.” He glanced your way. “I’d be happy to take you one day. Everyone should experience the sea like that.”

“Well, I’ve never been on a boat before, so…” You met Tarquin’s gaze willing your face to stop heating. “I’d like that.” The High Lord released a smile that made your breath catch.

“Great. Good.” Another huff of laughter, and Tarquin shook his head. “If you’re lucky, I’ll even teach you to sail.”

“Oh how generous of you, High Lord.” Tarquin let out a laugh that was entirely too loud for a library, and received a few annoyed glances, even as High Lord. You held back your own laugh at the look of shock on his face. You were so busy trying not to laugh that you didn’t notice Cresseida stalking towards you.

“I should have known you’d be in here.” The words were harsh, but her tone was fond. “I’ve been looking for you for hours.” At the look of surprise on your face, she backtracked. “Okay, maybe it’s only been an hour, but it felt like forever.”

“Always so dramatic cousin.” Tarquin rolled his eyes at Cress, but she only studied the two of you.

“And what exactly have the two of you been doing down here all this time, cousin?” His narrowed eyes met her smirk and you had a feeling you were missing some silent conversation between the two of them. After a beat, Cresseida rolled her eyes. “You know what? Maybe I don’t want to know.” She grinned at the embarrassment on your face and continued on. “Anyways, I came to find you because you’re the only fae I know with knowledge of the old world.”

“I wouldn’t say I have any special knowledge, just what I’ve read.” You took another look at Cresseida, noticing the tightness around her brown eyes and the way she held a bit of her hair tightly, rubbing it between her fingers. “Why? What are you looking into Cress?” She bit her lip.

“During the war, I heard the Night Court whispering a name.” She dropped her hair, wringing her hands instead. “I didn’t think much of it then, but now…I don’t know. I have this feeling.” You nodded, encouraging her to continue. “I need you to tell me everything you know about Koschei.”

“The Death God?”

________________________________________________

A/N: I’m not 100% happy with this chappie but I needed to leave it alone because good and done is better than perfect and non-existent so…I have plans for Koschei in this one, I am so excited for it to unfurl, like!!!!! *excited squealing* Anyways, look, I love my Summer Court babies but I have no doubt that Cress was not thinking that hard about the humans after the war, especially as they try to gauge where all the court lords are in their fealty to Tarquin. Issa mess right now, but imma try to fix it for them. This will have an HEA so we gon get this figured out.

On Varian: I don’t think Varian is evil in canon. Not by a long shot, buuuuuuut I think a man dating Amren has to be a little callous towards humans. So yeah…he’s a little snake in this bit. I don’t know if he’ll get worse or better at the moment, but for now….he can stick with Amren.

Also wanna share my outline notes for this chappie cause they make me laugh every time I read them:

-GRWM Summer Court Edition

-You attend your first Advisor’s meeting and get mild civil war energy

-Talk to Tarquin about his dreeeeeammmssss (for the Summer Court) big swoon alert.

-Love letter to the Adriata library cause I know that shit is some underwater cavern business that I would eat right up 🥰

-IC comes freaking knocking (I didn’t get to this bit, but it’s coming.)

This has already eaten my life and I’m only on chapter 2. Cauldron boil meeeeeeeee. 

Thank you to everyone who’s been reading! 

@yuhhhhhhhhhhhhhh here’s another chapter 😊