#I did this over a year ago so I will admit

[lovebugism]

✶ ┄ HOLY GRAIL !

summary: in ancient rome, where survival is determined by the whims of a mad ruler, the empire's beloved general gives you – his first and only love – to the crazed emperor to ensure your safety. (6k)

pairing: marcus acacius / fem!reader, emperor geta / fem!reader

contents: established relationship, strangers to lovers, angst, hurt/comfort cw for mentions of war and violence, mentions of sex work, swearing, smut 18+ (dubcon, m receiving oral, unprotected sex, cuckholding, exhibitionism) (this is a pretty dark fic so pls heed the warnings!!!)

Marcus Acacius was the name on the lips of a thousand fallen empires. His ledger ran a deep scarlet color, which dripped like proof from his sword. The war had destroyed the General over the years — had turned the man into an empty thing filled only by untamable ghosts. The relentless battle had wrung his boyhood from his body like a slow, merciless death. Any remaining innocence has since been replaced with violence.

Rome made a legacy of his grotesque evils, turned him into a saint. Marcus Acacius did not want to be a saint. He did not want to be angry; he did not want to be cruel. He only wanted to love and to be left alone with his tenderness. His mouth filled with blood instead.

You loved him like all doomed, grotesque things are meant to be loved. In the dark. In the shadows of war. In the depths of the soul.

“This is me,” he confesses, the great General Acacius, returning to you like a ghost to its haunt. “This is who I am.”

His golden armor is sullied from a victorious battle, tainted now with blotches of soil and dried blood that’s not his own. His dirtied, unholy fists tremble at his sides as he fights the urge to cross the threshold of your quarters to meet you. Marcus knows he doesn’t deserve to be held by you now. Not when he still wreaks of death.

He can still feel the breath of a fist on his bruised cheek, but the way his sword felt plunging through the beating heart of an enemy soldier plagues him most of all. 

“Love turned on me long ago— It is not a burden I compel you to carry.”

So, please, do not love me, he doesn’t say. I only know how to destroy you.

You smile at him, eyes soft with sympathy, and cross the threshold of longing with an admirable effortlessness. You cradle his weathered, war-torn face in your palms, willingly staining your delicate hands with the blood stained there.

“I love you despite. So I imagine I’ll carry it anyway,” you coo to him, gentle eyes locked firmly with his heavy ones. “And I’m certain you love me in return, regardless of what you think the siege has made of you.”

“There is naught I can do about it,” Marcus admits, words heavy with choked-back emotion. He melts into your touch but continues to deny himself the want to hold you back. “Not while I still oversee this campaign. Not while there is a war to be won—”

“We love each other, don’t we?” you interject, pleading eyes searching for emotion behind his dark, stoic gaze. Marcus swallows hard. His scruffy chin scrapes your palm as he nods once in response. You grin and say the unforgiving truth out loud. “So fuck the war.”

You pull him down by his face to press a kiss to his unclean lips. Marcus rests his shaking hands over your waist and lets you build cathedrals in his mouth with your tongue. The blood in his teeth turns to holy water. 

Marcus long understood that bringing you to the city would be his last act of love.

Keeping you in the heart of Rome was the only way he could ensure your safety, with the surrounding towns still under merciless siege. The people there were docile, and loyal most of all to the General who had won them a thousand wars. They would not hurt you because it was not in their kind too, and because they feared General Acacius’ wrath as much as they respected his mercy.

This was known to everyone in Rome except its Emperors.

Geta and Caracalla ruled together following their father’s untimely demise but shared not a brain between them. They were boys, after all, the oldest being hardly two-and-twenty –– it was in their nature to talk more than they listened, and to pretend as if they knew the world despite never leaving the city walls. 

They were as cruel and as stupid as anyone who wished to rule an empire would be.

But the two of them relied heavily on their General to keep the restless public at ease. It made it easier for Marcus to bring you with him, knowing he had the trust of the most powerful men in Rome. He knew Geta kept meticulous care of his most precious gifts — all Marcus had to do was get you there, really, and the Emperors would do the rest for him. 

It was simple, but it was not easy; though he imagines no war ever has been or would be. Both of you had survived, yes, but neither of you had been spared. Bringing you here was a testament to that, which you seemingly could not comprehend. You were as soft and green as the countryside he plucked you from, too naive for politics.

Marcus tells himself that this was the merciful decision, anyway, as he gives you a tour of Caracalla’s labyrinthine gardens — the place farthest from the feasting hall where the noblemen dined. Hidden behind climbing leaves, free from prying eyes.

“I can’t imagine why you would be so apprehensive in bringing me here. It’s beautiful,” you marvel aloud as you walk ahead of the man guiding you. 

Your sandals pad faintly along the cobbled trail as you skim your palm over the bed of blooming roses. The petals feel like silk against your skin. You pluck one from the soil, careful to avoid its thorns, and hold it up to your nose. You turn to face Marcus with the crimson flower resting on your cupid’s bow.

“And it smells better, too,” you quip softly, tilting your head to your shoulder as you smirk behind the budding rose.

Marcus just barely manages to bite back his own grin until you reach out for him, tapping the delicate flower against the bridge of his strong nose. He exhales hard through his nostrils in place of a laugh.

Your giggling comes carried on the breath of a warm summer breeze — a symphony of salty ocean, dainty florals, and the pretty oils you’d bathed in. The wind billows through your thin, white gown and creates music with rustling leaves. You squint one eye when the setting sun peeks through the swishing tree limbs, bathing you in a golden-hour aura. 

You’re as beautiful as sin. Sweeter than death. Smiling at him like this is the beginning of something that died the moment you entered the city walls.

Marcus clears throat and gently guides your hand away. His cautious eyes flit around the vacant garden. He’s constantly looking over his shoulder, you find, despite being the strongest man in all of Rome. You feel safest at his side, so you don’t know why he always looks so frightened.

“I know you are drunk on youth and immortality, petal, but we cannot get ahead of ourselves,” he advises, all stiff and stern, though the term of endearment spills effortlessly from his mouth. “We’re in the city now. So we must play the part. Like we discussed.”

He speaks to you with an unintentional sort of vagueness that makes you bow your head like a scolded child. Your arm falls limp at your side. A scarlet petal slips from its stem and hits the unforgiving stone.

“I know,” you murmur with a poorly hidden frown that conveys otherwise. Your sheepish gaze flits from the ground to Marcus’ unwavering stare and to the ground again. “I just thought— whenever we were alone, that we might—”

“We aren’t alone. We must behave as though the city is full of eyes. Understand?”

“I can’t,” you confess, peering up at the General from beneath your lashes. 

Marcus’ chest stings, like the fiery sun blazing his newly-fashioned armor. “What do you mean you can’t?” he bites emotionlessly.

He looks like a corrupt sort of angel in this light, unnaturally handsome and hopelessly wartorn. He was as hard as the earth below your feet — a statue made of clay, iron, and marble — cold to the touch and melting only for you. 

His heavy eyes were so brown they looked almost black, and they shone with a perpetual sort of gloom. His gaze swam with the prophetic darkness of a man who’s seen too much, though you often felt like you could drown in its void. For a man so adept at killing, he looked at you with a remarkable softness.

It wasn’t as shallow as physical desire. It was something far more cruel. You wanted Marcus Acacius the same way flesh wanted to knit itself together over a healing wound. It was simply in your nature to love him. 

“I mean, it’s impossible,” you ramble with a concerned furrow to your brow. Your grip on the flower’s papery stem tightens until the bulb rattles with the force. “How am I to be here with you but not touch you? That’s like asking the seasons not to change— It’s unnatural, and it’s cruel—”

Marcus swallows hard, adam’s apple bobbing in his throat. His hands begin to ache with the urge to touch you. He balls them into fists instead.

“It’s the only way I know to keep you safe!” he confesses, words sounding heavy in his mouth. His eyes flit across the garden in a paranoid search of something that isn’t there. “Emperor Geta will take care of you. I know he will. And his brother is a half-wit, but he is kind when he wishes. He’ll take a liking to you, I’m sure of it—”

You interject his anxious rambling with a stubborn shake of your head.

“I can’t be someone else’s,” you murmur, voice as wet as the tears glittering in your wide-eyed gaze. “I don’t know how.”

“You will learn,” Marcus tells you with an emotionless stare. Not because he’s sure you will, but because he knows you have to. “For me.”

Your pretty features swirl with anguish. “Marcus…” you whisper his name in a feeble whimper caught in your throat.

He does not soften at your emotion like you’re used to. He’s practiced apathy for so long that it comes naturally to him now. He bites his tongue to keep from kissing you and lets the blood stain his teeth all over again.

“If not for your own sake, then for mine. The Emperors would have my head if they understood the pretenses I brought you under.”

You flinch at his words, perhaps finally understanding the weight of the unforgiving world in which you live. The surest example of such cruelty stands before you now, in the only man you ever loved now using your purest devotion as a means to keep you pliant. But your anger for the merciless arrangement is long eclipsed by your yearning.

“Then I will,” you tell him, rigid with a glacial disposition Marcus hasn’t seen before now.

The choices here were few. Either you were slaughtered outside the city walls by soldiers and pillagers, or you were slaughtered within them — in the metaphorical sense that burns physically in your chest now. 

Being without Marcus feels like a fate worse than death, but you want him so desperately to live. So much so that you’ll fall on the sword of your longing and bleed out at his feet. Knowing that you’re under the same sky would have to be enough for you. 

You can’t tell which it is — sacrifice or self-slaughter — but Marcus knows it isn’t as poetic as all that. 

Death is death.

Emperor Geta staggers drunkenly down the spiral stone steps of the west wing of his castle. The path to his chambers is illuminated by several dwindling torches hung along the brick walls. The subtle squeaking of his leather sandals sounds much louder in the quiet — filled only by crackling flames, a distant dripping noise, and the song he slurs under his breath. 

The latter ceases suddenly when he stumbles to a stop at the sight of General Acacius. The man stands like a statue outside his bedroom door — arms crossed behind his back, old spine perfectly straight — like the obedient guard dog he is. 

The thought makes the Emperor’s lips curl into a crooked smile. “What are you doing here, dog?” he calls to the General as he approaches him, voice echoing down the soulless corridor.

“Your nameday present, your majesty—” Marcus answers and tries not to make a face when the Emperor stands before him. The bittersweet scent of wine stains his breath, overwhelmingly so. Geta was never one to practice temperance. “—I was told to see that you got it.”

The younger man hesitates. “From my uncle?” he wonders aloud.

Marcus nods wordlessly in response.

Geta pauses for a moment. His wide, glassy eyes flit over the General’s shoulder to the arched doorway behind him. His stomach swirls at the thought of what may lie inside. The last nameday present his uncle sent from overseas was a monkey his younger brother has grown much too attached to.

“Well… What is it?”

Marcus swallows hard and steps aside. “Look inside, your majesty.”

Geta takes a deep breath in and swings the creaking door open. His bedroom is lush with crimson silk and golden candlelight, familiarly fragranced with cinnamon and sweet myrrh. It’s accompanied by something foreignly floral, a feminine rosy-lavender that catches his attention before his eyes ever find you.

He steps through the threshold and finds a strange girl standing by the window, before a platter of fruit and wine — bathed half in the silver beams of a full moon, and half in flickering orange flames. 

White silk adorns your frame, so delicate it’s nearly see-through. One of your shoulders is mouthwateringly bare, and there’s a slit in the fabric that rises to your hip. You look as pure as a dove, though you’re so obviously built for sin.

The ground sways beneath Geta’s unsteady feet.

You crunch audibly into an apple before you realize anyone’s there. The juice runs down your chin before you swipe it away with the back of your hand. Only then do your eyes lock with the Emperor’s, who seems equally stunned to see you there. You tense and say nothing as you hide the bitten fruit behind your back.

“It’s a woman,” Geta observes to no one in particular, though his dark eyes have not yet wavered from yours.

Marcus stands behind him and nods — hands still clasped behind his back, heart still pounding against his ribcage. “Yes, your majesty. In plain terms.”

“Well,” the Emperor glances over his shoulder. “What does she do?”

“Whatever you want,” the General answers, though the words taste like vinegar on his tongue. He swallows the bitterness down like bile and leers at you, looking upon his lover as though she were a stranger. “You need only ask.”

Geta, satisfied by his answer, turns back to you. His initial surprise has ebbed into something more pleased, diabolically so. His pink lips curl into a sneer as he walks slowly towards you, eyeing you up and down with curious eyes — a predator stalking its prey.

“Is that true?” he asks you, voice ringing through the quiet room. “Or is he confusing you for a dutiful hound?”

“A dutiful whore, your majesty,” you correct with an acquiescent smile, following the story as Marcus intended. 

The half-truth comes easily to you. Not a lie exactly, but not the whole tale either. You’d spent many of your years working in a brothel on the outskirts of Rome. You were a young woman, unmarried, without family or viable prospects — whoring seemed the most obvious decision then, though it feels so long ago now. 

You’d waited your whole life for something, for Marcus, though you hadn’t expected it to kill you when you found it. You won’t die a saint if the crazed Emperor decides to take your head, but perhaps you could be a martyr. Perhaps that’ll be enough.

Fear beats through your body like a second heart, but your eyes never waver from the Emperor’s. It’s easiest to meet his gaze. He feels more like a human that way. 

There are flecks of gold in his dark eyes, and dark strands in his gold hair. He’s got stubble on his long neck, spots on his broad nose, and wrinkles on his forehead. Not quite as perfect as the pristine white-gold armor would let on.

His eyes flit down your form once more. Something sparks in the deep brown of them, a flicker of silent realization. He spins suddenly on the heel of his sandal to flash Marcus an accusatory glare.

“Is she your whore, General?” he lilts into the heavy silence. His brows raise when he receives no answer from the man across the room. “The question was not rhetorical, Acacius.”

“No, your majesty. She is not mine,” Marcus answers, then clears his throat when the words get stuck there. It’s like he’s plunging a knife through his own heart. He can feel the cold sting of the sharpened blade and the burn of the blood on his skin. “Though, I don’t believe whores belong to anyone.”

A boyish chuckle spills from the Emperor’s mouth. “No. They don’t,” he says with an airy giddiness. “Not before now, anyway—”

Geta spins back again, pleated skirt fanning around his pale thighs. His smile fades with an eerie swiftness. “What are you waiting for? Undress,” he commands with a wave of his ringed hand.

Your wide eyes flit instinctively past him to Marcus, who still idles in the doorway. Only then does he realize how long he’s been staring at you. He forces himself to glance off in another direction, but his gaze keeps finding yours — like a magnet, or a planet with its own gravitational pull.

Your eyes lock, and the only thing you hear is each other, though neither of you has spoken a word. This is the only way, you hear his voice in your head as clearly as your own. This is the only way to stay together. The only way to survive.

Geta mistakes your fear.

“Don’t worry about him, little dove,” he coos, and taps the bottom of your chin with his fingers — as soft and petaled as your own. He smiles when your attention turns to him again, speaking loud enough for the General to hear. “He’s only the guard dog. And good boys get scraps, don’t they, Acacius?”

Marcus’ face screws like he’s tasted something sour. He’s grateful the Emperor isn’t looking at him to see it. “They do, your majesty,” he monotones.

“So you will watch. And report to my uncle how his lovely present fared,” he calls to the older man, though his eyes remain locked with yours. You tense when his pale hand reaches suddenly for your face. He holds your cheeks in his fingers until your lips jut in a soft pout. “Let’s hope I don’t have to send him back your head, little dove.”

He says it with an absentminded effortlessness, as though it’s something he’s done before. 

Still, you manage a small smile and blink up at him with innocent eyes. “What good is a dead whore, your majesty?” you quip.

Geta’s grin widens.  “Precisely. Now undress.”

You reach for the singular sleeve of your slip with trembling fingers. Your right hand sweeps across your left shoulder, skin blazing with fear and anticipation. The fabric trails down down down your arm before falling to your feet in a puddle of milky white silk. Your bare body glows silver and gold between moonlight and flame. 

Goosebumps pebble over your skin despite the humid summer night as Geta circles you like prey. His eyes trail slowly down your form in time with his rhythmic steps. The sound of his sandals scrapping the stone floor, crackling candlelight, and subdued breathing are the only sounds in the quiet room for several long moments.

The Emperor disappears behind you, and you forget how to breathe. Your wide, wet eyes find Marcus once more — pleading, though for what, you cannot say. His face reveals nothing but wrath burns in his gaze.

Geta reappears at your right side. You smell grape wine on his breath when he nears you, breathing heavily through his mouth as he reaches out to touch you. His ringed hands smooth over your collarbone. Your breath catches in your throat. He smiles as though your fright pleases him.

“You’re skittish for a whore,” he muses, playful in a way that makes your stomach wrench. “Are you sure the General didn’t bring me a virgin?”

You swallow hard as his hand trails down your body. Over the swell of your breast, skimming his thumb over your taut nipple, before tracing the expanse of your ribs. His fingers run down your stomach and past the thatch of hair between your legs. They dip finally between your thighs. 

Geta hums a faint moan at the velvet feeling of your pussy. The way your lips part for his fingers, silky skin warm and wet to the touch. 

“I’m whatever you want me to be, your majesty,” you answer, breathing hard through your nose when he pulls his hand away — a warmth you find yourself begrudgingly grieving.

“I need only ask…” the Emperor coos, running his middle and pointer finger over your bottom lip. They shine with the honey you leak despite yourself. Your mouth parts, and he rests the pads of them on your tongue. “…Do I not?”

You nod wordlessly through the salty fingers in your mouth, trying to imagine their Marcus’.

Geta smiles when he parts from you. “Undress me,” he demands. 

You work at his tricky armor with nervous hands and bated breath. 

You unclasp his cape first. The white fabric, now free from its chain, falls heavily to the floor behind him. Your fingers have gone noticeably clammy as they struggle with the sleeves of his tunic. It takes you a beat too long to loosen the laces at his shoulders. The cloth falls finally and puddles around his feet, leaving his lean body on display before you.

His torso is lean and mostly hairless, save for splotches of chestnut on his sternum and stomach. His skin is smooth and flushed from the alcohol. His stomach is slim but noticeably full. The Emperor is well-taken care of, though his subjects outside the keep suffer from the consequences of war.

Your trembling fingers curl around the hem of his loincloth. His pale skin is warm to the touch, boiling with desire while you freeze over with fear. You crouch before him as you drag the garment down his scruffy thighs. You hear Geta sigh above you when his half-hard cock meets the cool summer night air. 

He’s paler there compared to the rest of his golden body, though the mushroom tip glows a faint strawberry-red color. A vein trails in jagged lines to the base of his heavy cock, fading as it reaches the thatch of dark blonde hair at his pubic bone. He’s not nearly as thick as Marcus, though not many people could hope to be — but he is long and thin and soft like velvet.

“How do I look?” Geta wonders as he steps out of his loincloth. He tilts his chin to his chest to peer down at you, on your knees to untie the intricate laces of his sandals. You blink up at him with wide, uncertain eyes. “Without my armor,” he adds, then repeats. “How do I look?”

You realize, then, that he wants your praise. Though you’re unsure why, you’re not in any position to deny him of it. “You’re a— a very handsome man, your majesty,” you respond cautiously, with a wavering smile.

You hear his breath catch at the compliment. The corner of his mouth flickers upward, and his nostril flares as he takes a deep breath in. 

“Well, go on, then,” he insists suddenly, nodding his head to egg you onward. “Good whores don’t keep their masters waiting, do they? You don’t want to see me impatient, little dove.”

You wrap his stiff cock in a tentative fist, averting your gaze as you give an experimental kitten lick to the bulbous, strawberry tip. Your tongue swipes away the pearlescent pre-cum beading there. The salty tang is foreign on your tongue, sweeter and thicker than you’re used to.

You imagine your lover when you take the Emperor’s cock in your mouth. A practiced form of dissociation that comes naturally to you now. 

You focus on the way the stone floor digs into your knees as you cup his balls in your hand — a desperate attempt to finish him quickly. Geta shudders when you swallow him whole, burying your nose in the coarse thatch of hair at the base of his cock. His head tips back as he groans at the ceiling.

“You are a proper whore…” the Emperor moans with a delirious smile. He tilts his flushed cheek to his freckled shoulder to sneer at Marcus, then frowns when his eyes meet the back of him. “Are you distracted, General?”

The man keeps his back turned and his eyes trained on the wall, counting the bricks there to distract his racing mind. His mouth snarls at the Emperor’s words. His hands ball into fists as he fights to keep his composure.

“Just giving you your privacy, your majesty.”

“Nonsense!” Geta laughs, loud. “You should watch! You should observe— so you know what to tell my uncle.”

Marcus can hear the mischievous lilt in the younger boy’s voice. Like it’s all just a game to him. Like you’re just a whore to be played with, and like Marcus’ only hope of companionship is warfare. Both might’ve been true once, but not since you find each other.

The general smacks his lips against his teeth. “As you wish,” he deadpans and spins on the heel of his sandal.

He’s strangely grateful to find the Emperor’s body obscuring your own. Geta’s lean, pale form towers over your kneeling one — back muscles flexing, hips thrusting, fingers knitting in your hair.

But Marcus can still hear the sounds of your mouth on the other man’s cock. The room fills with heavy breathing, wet noises, and the Emperor’s unabashed whines. Embers of envy burn in the General’s empty chest. A wildfire of want and wrath rages behind his ribcage.

You swallow with Geta’s cock in your throat and squeeze softly at his balls. You hear his breath hitch just before a lengthy moan spills from his parted mouth. Several loads of salty cum spit down your throat a second later. The man shows you little mercy as he holds you by your hair, keeping your nose pressed to his pubic bone. You take shallow breaths through your nose and try not to choke.

You pull off of him when he lets you go. A string of saliva threatens to keep you connected. You take a deep breath in and swipe at your swollen mouth with the back of your hand, staying on your knees while the Emperor tilts his head back. He exhales a breathy laugh of relief at the ceiling. You peer up at him with wide, wet eyes, still so uncertain of your fate.

“Proper whore, indeed,” Geta muses, almost to himself, as he drops his heavy head once more. 

His flushed chest sparkles with a foreign feeling at the sight of you beneath him — eyes teary and fearful, lips swollen and rosy, features flushed with sweat and sex. His cock jerks, still sensitive but threatening to harden again. He grips himself with a loose fist.

“On the bed,” he instructs suddenly, then grins madly at your shock. “You didn’t think I was done with you, surely. Not until I mount you like a mare, anyway— Treat you like the bitch in heat you are…”

Geta cups your warm cheek in his free hand. His touch is strangely gentle as he cradles you there, right before he smacks gently at your jaw to urge you upward. 

Your bare feet pad towards the bed, then. Geta swats your ass as you go and laughs when you squeak in response. You fight the urge to look at Marcus, lest you see the rage burning in his eyes — lest he see the heartbreak swimming in yours. 

Marcus watches you crawl over the silken sheets, both of you sporting similar far-off gazes. He feels a bit like a ghost now. An empty, invisible thing, doomed to watch the rest of the world go on without ever being able to live in it. It’s dreadfully symbolic of how he’s lived most of his life, and how he’s spent the years loving you. Because even if a ghost is full of love, the only thing it knows to do is haunt.

The silk pillow feels cool under your burning cheek. The mattress dips under the Emperor’s weight when he kneels behind you. His ringed fingers smooth over your ass and down the arch of your back. He treats you with an uncharacteristic sort of tenderness, as though he were molding you out of clay.

“You are a pretty thing, aren’t you?” he whispers under his breath. “And timid, too… I like that…” 

Your pussy clenches at his words despite yourself. Geta’s chest swells with pride accordingly. ���You don’t have to be scared, little dove. I’m going to take such good care of you.”

Despite his words, he does not bother to ready you for his cock when he positions himself at your pulsing entrance. You hadn’t expected him to, of course — not many men were as kind as Marcus in that way, who often treated your pleasure as if it were his own. But the slick sticking to your thighs has made your pussy more than pliant. Your velvet walls swallow Geta’s cock with a pulsing vigor.

The Emperor groans as he fucks into you, savoring every inch as he buries himself to the hilt. His ringed fingers dig into the plush of your waist, as though you were a toy he didn’t want getting snatched away.

“Look at the hound!” Geta giggles boyishly to himself. “He’s itching for a feel of you— I just know it.”

Marcus remains as still and stoic as the battalion trained him to be. He reveals nothing on his face, though his skin prickles with flames of envy beneath his armor. 

Marcus Acacius was not a jealous man. His love for you was a testament to that. He visited the brothel you boarded in and spared the same coins as every man in the establishment did. But it was different now. Because the Emperor does not deserve you, and he forces Marcus to watch as if he knows it, too.

Something within him seethes, like a feral animal trapped behind his ribcage, desperately clawing its way out.

“Look at him,” Geta snaps when he sees you staring at the wall, eyes glassy and glazed over. He’s grinning all over again when your gaze snaps to Marcus’. 

The soldier’s weathered eyes burn with tears then. General Acacius has faced death a thousand times over, but it wasn’t quite as heartwrenching as this. His wrath simmers to a boil. He swallows it down like fire.

This is her salvation, he tells himself. This is how she survives.

Your features twist with the anguish of being seen as the Emperor lays himself over your back. His slick chest sits flush with your spine, pinning you to the mattress. “I bet he can taste you now. Smell you,” he murmurs in your ear, chapped mouth brushing the shell of it. “His mouth is salivating at the thought of putting his tongue on you— Isn’t it, dog?”

Marcus swallows through the emotion threatening to strangle him. He blinks away stinging tears and feigns an air of nonchalance. “It would be… impolite to talk so brashly about something that doesn’t belong to me, your majesty,” the General responds. Obedient. Loyal like a hound.

Geta grins wide. “Good answer, Acacius.”

When the Emperor finally fucks into you, it’s with a sloppy sort of precision. There is no rhythm or care to his thrusts. He is led only by his blinding pleasure, like a man who has only ever fucked playthings and his own fist. He props himself on one forearm and curls the other beneath you, holding your breast in his ringed hand.

Geta’s flushed cheek presses against your own while he slides in and out and into you again. You hear his groaning as you feel it rumbling in his chest, still laid against your back. You stare at a framed portrait on the wall across the room and wait for it to be over, even as your body refuses to dismiss its simmering orgasm.

Your swollen clit ruts against the silk sheets with each of the Emperor’s sloppy thrusts. You can feel a wet spot forming beneath you, and your stomach twists at the thought of seeing proof of your own pleasure. 

His balls smack your leaking cunt, creating a symphony of lewd noises — moaning, whimpering, clapping, smacking. Marcus thinks the sounds of war were more merciful than this.

“Do you understand what that means, little dove?” Geta croons into your ear, words choppy through his labored breaths and irregular thrusts. “You belong— to me now… So whatever you used to be— whoever’s you used to be— no longer matters.”

He thrusts once, hard, and shudders above you with a choked-back groan. You grit your teeth to swallow down your own noises of pleasure. The assault on your clit, though unintentional, is still yet relentless. You feel the distant white-hot burning feeling begin to swell in the pit of your stomach. A coil about to snap.

“Fucking me— Making me feel good—” the Emperor pants, punctuated by his hips against your ass. “—Is your only duty now. Understand?”

You nod, cheek running over the silk cushion as you grip it in your fists. “Yes, your majesty,” you gasp.

Geta presses his smile to the apple of your cheek. He can feel you leaking around him. You’re enjoying this just as much as he is, to be sure. A proper whore, indeed.

“Now… Take my spend like a good bitch, and thank me for it—”

He fucks you harder, and your face twists with a pleasure you’re too weak to fight away. 

Your gaze falls instinctively to Marcus as your orgasm threatens to swallow you whole. Your eyes squeeze shut in a feeble attempt to hide. Your mouth parts with a silent moan as you cum around the Emperor’s cock.

“Thank you, your majesty,” you whimper obediently into the pillow as you tremble beneath him. “Thank you.”

Geta buries a whine in your neck when he cums again. He gives you only two pitiful, warm loads but still possesses more stamina than your Marcus. He stills, then shudders, then rests his unforgiving bodyweight on top of you when pleasure makes a puddle of him. And of you, you assume, as a mixture of your spend leaks out of your cunt and onto the sheets.

“Write to my uncle, Acacius—” Geta slurs into your skin, heavy through labored pants. “—A thank you for my nameday present.”

Marcus forgets, until then, that he can still be seen. He felt more akin to a corpse hidden in the walls, forced to spend his afterlife in a merciless purgatory. His heart has stopped beating, frozen over, and now sits dead in his chest. He will never be as gentle as he was with you. He will be bloodied knuckles and pulsing wounds. Rough and cruel and angry.

“Yes, your majesty,” the General nods, thankful that it’s over now.

Geta rolls off of your body and onto the empty spot beside you — not shy about his nude form or yours. The sudden lack of warmth makes you shiver. 

“And tell him to send another— To keep the General’s bed warm, too,” he says, patting your ass with his palm before smoothing tenderly over the skin. “One whore’s as good as any other, I’m sure.”

Marcus flinches at the thought of being with anyone other than you. He couldn’t hide the look of disgust if he tried. It makes the Emperor laugh loudly in response.

“Oh, did you— Did you want to try this one?” Geta muses knowingly, pointing to your limp body, still trembling beside him with the aftershocks of your orgasm.

“No. No, no, no— See, this one’s mine,” he corrects the General as if he were a child. “And it would be impolite to touch something that belongs to me, would it not? It would be treasonous, even.”

“Yes, your majesty,” Marcus nods, lip flickering in a mere hint of a smirk as his plan finally comes to fruition. “It would be.”

The Emperor sees you now as his property, and no one hurts what belongs to him without meeting a certain death. Marcus is comforted only by the thought that nothing can touch you now. Not even him. But perhaps that’s the price he pays for love. Perhaps, in the end, love is grief.

“So best tread lightly, Acacius,” Geta warns with a crooked smile, petting you like a dog. “I’d hate for someone to get hurt.”

[talesofallure]

Dorothy Delgado's Divine Devices. The letters were printed in bold black writing over the shop door. From the street you'd think this pop-up shop was nothing much out of the ordinary, and in truth you'd be right.

Some fifteen years ago, when Dorothy was still a girl who believed in such things as the Tooth Fairy and the Baba-Da-Gan, she'd come across a small shed down by the brook behind her mother's house.

Her mother had told tales of imp-like creatures that lived in small sheds similar to this, tin can contraptions with leaky roofs and blacked-out windows, covered in rust and mould.

There were markings on the door of the shed, ritualistic symbols (Dorothy had etched these same symbols into the frame of her pop-up shop door, it was all about appearances you see). Despite her mother's warnings -- about sheds and imps and strangers by the brook -- Dorothy had been curious, too curious not to take a peak inside. It was ironic really, that same curiosity is what now sent customers flocking to her store.

"You're shorter than I expected," a boy half her height, wearing a bright yellow hat and sporting a beard the same colour that ran to his knees -- odd for a boy to sport a beard that long -- was sat on stool playing with his tail.

"You were expecting me?" Dorothy asked despite herself, forgetting yet more of her mother's wisdom.

There's trouble in asking questions.

The boy had smiled an awful sort of smile, all teeth and no lips. There was a flash of hunger in his eyes. They're like stones. Dorothy had thought to herself. Grey and hard, and I'll bet they don't bleed.

That was all it took, one question followed by another and the boy had managed to trap Dorothy in a sort of spiraling conversation that felt so much like a fever dream she'd have sworn it never happened. That was, had it not been for the curse.

"Little girls lie, don't they?" the boy had asked.

"Nuh-uh. Not this one." Dorothy had protested, just a little too much.

Of course little girls lie, but they get in trouble for lying, so Dorothy certainly wasn't going to admit to such a sin. Not to this stranger in a tin-can. What if her mother found out?

Back in the present day Dorothy sighed. That boy, that day, they held home in the very fore-front of her mind, a memory played forever on repeat, just like that Christmas special her mother had loved, the one about the boy who never did as he was told.

She gave a short laugh, unlocking the door to her store, the bell above her head ringing as she stepped inside. Her mother would have loved this, the veritable mountain of antiques displayed on table-tops, and on shelves, and hanging from the ceiling, some larger oddities standing of their own right on the wood panel flooring.

But her mother was no longer of this world. A tragic accident that could have been prevented if not for this Gods forsaken curse.

To tell the truth was to be spat at in the street, no matter how hard she tried, no matter how hard she pleaded, no one would either again believe the words of Dorothy Delgado. But to lie, to lie was to speak gospel that no ears could ever deny -- little girls don't lie, nuh-uh, not this one.

The only problem was the inevitable visit some days later when Dorothy's divine device failed to live up to expectations.

She could handle the authorities, all she had to do was lie and they'd bid her a good day, apologising for having wasted her time. But the customers, oh dear lord the customers. You could lie and send them packing, but word would spread, yet more words would be written, scathing reviews left online making Dorothy Delgado's Divine Device's the one place in town you gave a very wide birth.

Oh how she missed the days before the world and her wife carried computer's in their pockets.

So she'd move along, find another town, come up with some other clever name under which to sell her fabled goods. And ever on the cycle would repeat.

If she'd had the choice, she might just have gone back home, to her mother's that is, the little cottage by the brook. But the boy had taken that took, hadn't he.

Ring.

The door came open and with it entered Dorothy's first customer of the day.

"Interesting place you've got here," the man offered.

There it is. Dorothy gave a short but pleasant smile, just enough to invite the man in further, but not so friendly as to lose all sense of mystery. It was an art. One she'd mastered over the years, she'd have you know.

The man picked up a feather pen and pot of ink, squinting at the tag. There was no price, just words and a promise, "this is a joke, right? You don't really expect me to believe..."

"That this pen can make you a world famous novelist?" Dorothy put a hand on the man's shoulder, and whispered in his ear, "this pen was once owned by Dickens, by Orwell, by Virginia Woolf. It can make you world famous alright, but at a cost."

The man drank up every word, he swallowed and asked, "what cost?"

"Thirty-four ninety-nine," Dorothy grinned, "plus taxes."

You have been cursed so that nobody believes you when you tell the truth. But you find people will believe you when you lie. So until you can find a way to undo the curse you make do as a very successful merchant.

[nightxcreature]

A Little Less Talk

Part three of Hot-Blooded! I’m sorry it took so long to get it out! I hope it lives up to your expectations.

Minors DNI/18+ ONLY

Don’t copy my work.

Summary: reader and Dean finally have their moment.

Pairing: Dean Winchester x Reader

Warnings: angst, smut, PinV babyyyyyy, choking, public sex, oral (female receiving), cursing, I think that’s all but let me know if I forgot any. No use of Y/N.

—————————————————————————————————————

It had been three days since the phone call that rocked my world, and Dean and I had barely spoken a word to one another. When I’d finally come down from the god-tiered high that I’d been on, I had every intention of finally admitting to the feelings that had been bubbling inside of me from the moment I’d locked eyes with the green-eyed hunter years ago; I’d left my room intent on throwing him into bed and confessing my love a million times over….and then I chickened out. He’d side-stepped me in the kitchen when I’d come in for breakfast, I’d avoided his gaze while he was explaining the next case we’d be on, we’d gotten completely different motel rooms instead of the three of us sharing like normal. Embarrassment flooded my nervous system whenever I even stepped into a room with him. Which puts me here, sat next to Sam in a run down dive bar somewhere in Missouri watching Dean flirt shamelessly with the busy blonde bartender.

The paint on my nails chips as I peel the tape on my beer bottle, scowling down at the label. A chuckle comes from beside me and I turn slowly toward Sam, a glare of mass proportions on my face, “What?” I bite through clenched teeth.

My rage does nothing to deter him as he laughs again and shrugs, “Nothing, just…” he glances over toward Dean and then back to me, “you seem…grumpy.” He mumbles, a slight smirk playing on his lips.

“The seats sticky.” I grumble out the excuse quickly and turn back to the label, “And the music’s too loud.”

He nods and I can tell from the look on his face that he’s holding back a laugh, “The seats are sticky. But, I would think you’d both would be in a better mood.”

I peek over at him, my eyebrows raising in question, “What does that mean?”

He grins and nods toward Dean, “You sort of admitted to that little crush you’d been harboring for years.”

I shake my head, pulling my bottom lip between my teeth, “Didn’t admit shit, Samuel. I got drugged. And look at him,” I point over at him, leaning casually against the bar, that Winchester Swagger just rolling off of him, “He isn’t interested. Whatever did or did not happen between us was a one time thing.”

Sam glances over to Dean, a knowing look in his eyes when he finally turns back to me and whispers, “Huh, I thought you had more balls than this.” He shrugs again, chuckling at my wide eyes, “Oh well…” he trails off, leaving the dare hanging between us.

“More balls than-.” A loud giggle cuts me off and I turn to see Dean leaning across the bar, that sly smirk on his face as the poor blonde just eats him up. Rage fills my body and I slam a hand down on the table, “You know what, Sam!” I stand up quickly and grab my empty bottle, “I’ll show you balls.”

The grin on his face widens and he nods, throwing me a thumbs up, “Go get em, Tiger.” His teasing tone spurs me on and I turn toward the bar, making my way as quickly as I can to Dean’s side.

“So, where are you staying tonight?” I hear the bartender mumble as she reaches across the bar to place her hand on his.

“With me.” I snap and set the empty bottle down harshly on the counter. Her hand slinks back, shock crossing her features, but I don’t have time to argue. I grab Dean by the jacket and spin toward the door, stomping out before this sudden adrenaline plummets.

“Hey!” He shouts as we burst through the door and into the cool night air, “What are you doing?!” He shoves my hand off of his jacket and takes a step backward, shooting me a confused look.

I take a deep breath as the adrenaline coursing through me begins to fade. Facing him, I can feel the rush of embarrassment creeping up my body. His green eyes are bright and confusion covers his features. I can almost see the millions of questions running through his mind.

“I just don’t want to ignore each other anymore.” I mumble out, a blush covering my cheeks.

His brows furrow and he leans down, “Huh?” He’s close enough now that I can smell the whiskey on his breath and it’s taking everything in me not to grab his collar and taste his lips.

“I said,” I huff, speaking loudly as i peek up at him, “I don’t want to keep ignoring each other.”

He places a hand gently on my shoulder, a sigh leaving him, “I’m not ignor—“

“Yes. You are.” I cut him off and cross my arms, “And I’ve been ignoring you because I’m too scared to actually say anything, but between Sam practically goading me to do something and you about to bring that woman back home…” I lean against the wall, placing my head in my hands, mumbling, “You’re killing me, Dean.”

He says nothing for a minute, giving me space to breathe before he places a hand on my arm and pulls me up to look at him, “I didn’t think you’d want to talk after the other night.”

I scoff, glancing down at his hand in mine, “I wanted to do a lot more than talk…”

His eye brows raise again, a devilish smirk crossing his face at the same time, “Oh yeah?”

I pull my lip between my teeth and nod, “I thought I made that pretty clear.”

He shakes his head, the smirk still on his lips as he answers, “Thought that could’ve just been the potion talking.” He mumbles out, stepping closer to block me against the wall, “Wasn’t sure you actually meant any of it.”

“I meant every word.” I whisper, placing a hand on his chest. Tension was rising between us at a rapid pace and I could feel my heart beating quickly in my chest as I waited for his response.

He licks his lips quickly, glancing down at my own, before whispering, “Prove it.”

And that was all it took to snap whatever willpower I had left. I grabbed the collar of his jacket, yanking him into me and crashing my lips onto his. He gasps at the sudden movement and I take the opportunity to slip my tongue in his mouth. We fight for dominance before I graze my teeth across his bottom lip. He groans into my mouth, slipping a hand up my frame to grip my throat as he breaks the kiss and places his forehead against mine.

“Dirty girl.” He mumbles, staring down at me , “Still want me to make you forget your name?”

I nod breathlessly as I stare up into his eyes, “Please.”

He glances around quickly before pulling me to the side of the bar. Shoving me chest first against the wall, he presses against my back and I feel the outline of him straining against his jeans, “You’ll have to be quiet, think you can do that?”

I nod again, glancing back toward the parking lot, “What about Baby? We could-.”

“Can’t wait that long.” He gruffly bites out. He drops his hands to my waist, pushing my shorts down as he slowly kisses his way up my throat to my ear, “Is this okay?”

“Yes.” I groan, tipping my head back to capture his lips. He nips my bottom lip and drops to his knees as he slides my shorts down to my ankles. He pushes my shoulders further into the wall as he pulls my hips back toward him, arching my back for me.

“Beautiful.” He mumbles out as he slips a single finger through my folds, “So wet already.”

I jerk at the friction, pushing my hips farther back as I feel his lips against my core. He licks a long stripe up my middle, moaning at the taste, “Tastes so good, Baby. All for me?”

I nod vigorously and glance down at him. He’s latched his lips to my core, his movements slow and precise causing me to bite my lip hard to keep from groaning too loudly. He glances up at me, a glint in his eyes as he slips a finger inside me, curling it just right. He slips his tongue over my clit as his fingers work me up, the band in my belly tightening and tightening as he builds up what feels like the orgasm of a lifetime.

“Come on, Darlin’, cum for me.” He mutters lowly. His green eyes feel like they’re staring into my soul when the band finally snaps and stutter out his name. My eyes roll back at I watch him and I groan loudly, sagging against the wall. He pops up beside me, a grin on his face as he slips his fingers out of me. His lips are glistening in the moonlight and I can’t help it as I lean up to kiss him deeply; the taste of me coating my own tongue.

“That was….wow…” I whisper against his smile, “You really do know what you’re doing.”

He lets out a low chuckle, “You don’t know the half of it.” He kisses me again and the metal click of his belt buckle falling to his side reaches my ears as he slips himself out of his pants. He slides his hands up my shoulders and spins me around to hoist me into his arms, my shorts dropping to the ground as he does. I feel the cool brick from the wall through my shirt as I wrap my arms around his neck, “You ready?” He asks with a quick glance to the parking lot.

“Yeah.”

I feel the head of him slide between my folds, notching at my entrance when he smiles mischievously, “Beg me.” He arrogantly says, his brows raising when I don’t immediately comply. His tone changes and his voice drops what feels like an octave when he repeats himself, “I liked that shit the other night. Beg me.”

“Please?” I whisper, glancing down at the sight below me. His hard member between us, so close to exactly where I want him to be…I peer back up at him as he shakes his head, “Dean, please. Please fuck me. I’ll do anything, please.” My hands wrap around the back of his neck as I plead and I can feel my nails sinking superficially into the skin there.

His smile widens, “I thought you’d never ask.” He sinks me down onto him, sheathing himself tightly inside me. He slaps a hand over my mouth as I moan loudly and shakes his head, “Quieter or I’ll stop.” He places his hands back on my hips, bracing us against the wall as he begins to piston in and out of me quickly, “God, you’re so tight, Darlin’.”

“Just for you.” I manage to whisper, raking my hands through his hair, “All for you.”

He places sweet kisses across my collar bones as he continues his pace, one hand sliding between us to work my clit while the other keeps me pinned against the wall, “Yeah, it is.” He begins to rock into me slower, releasing my clit to wrap his hand around my wrist. He tugs my arm down my belly and kisses my cheek, “Touch yourself for me. I didn’t get to watch before.”

I bite my lip and look between us, watching as he rocks into me slowly. I slip my hand between us, fingers grazing over the bundle of nerves he’d been busy with before, moaning lowly as the pressure begins to build. I flick my wrist faster and watch him as he watches me; his eyes blown with lust and his own lip between his teeth. His hand wraps around my throat again when he pulls me in for a heated kiss, his tongue quickly slipping into my mouth as he moans out, “So fuckin’ hot.”

His hips stutter a bit and my eyes clench closed as we both reach our peaks at the same time. His hand tightens around my throat as he groans out a quick, “Son of a bitch…” when he spills inside me. And I chuckle a little as I slump against him, breathing heavy.

We both stay that way for a moment, his arms wrapped around me as we pant against the wall. Our skin, sticky with sweet, is adamant against parting as he leans up to stare into my eyes. His cheeky smile makes one form on my own face as he places sweet kisses across my cheeks.

“Should’ve done that a long time ago.” He whispers, placing his lips against my temple.

I nod and lean into his kiss, “I agree.”

He bends down and grabs my shorts, helping me keep balance as I slip them on before sending me another mischievous smile, “Wanna go back to the motel and do it again?”

_______________________________________________

A/N: I hope that lived up to your expectations! I think that’s the last part for this one, but I’m open for requests if you’d like for me to write something for you. 🫶🏼 if you’d like to be added or removed from my Taglist please let me know!

Taglist: @lmhf1 @whimsyfinny @enigmalynne @envysarchive @k-slla

@daisydark @foxyjwls007 @roseblue373 @manicjk @aylacavebear

@suckitands33 @oceean @mxtansy @justwhisperingfantasies @mgchaser @xinsonyax

[theconstantsidekick]

Everybody Loves A Clown

Pairings: Dean Winchester x Reader, Sam Winchester x BestFriend!Reader

Genre: fluff covered angst

Summary: John died a week ago, and Dean's been weird. Sam's been up his ass about it but it finally comes to a head when Y/n decides to talk to him about the whole thing.

a/n: it has an open ending but i can write more if y'all eat this up

Warnings: Smoking, mentions of smoking, romanticisation of smoking, a lot of that yes, sorry. Don't smoke kids

“You were right,” Sam admits.

“About what?” Dean asks from where he stands over the Impala, wrench in hand.

“About me and Dad,” Sam answers with red eyes and a crack in his voice. “I’m sorry that the last time I was with him I tried to pick a fight. I’m sorry that I spent most of my life angry with him. I mean, for all I know he died thinking that I hate him.” He pauses. “So, you’re right. What I’m doing right now, it’s too little… It’s too late.” His lips tremble. There’s a self-deprecating smile on his lips as he continues, “I miss him, man. And I feel guilty as hell. And I’m not all-right. Not at all.” There’s tears in his eyes now as he stares directly at Dean. “But neither are you. That much I know.” He waits for a second, seeing if Dean might answer, and still knowing that he won’t. “I’ll let you get back to work.” With that he walks off.

Dean doesn’t know what to… do.

He fidgets.

He paces and fidgets.

He clenches his jaw hard enough for it to hurt and then he paces and fidgets some more. 

Until his eyes fall on her.

“The fuck do you want?” He asks her.

In turn for his crude tone and cruder words, he is given half a smile. “Nothing,” she tells him.

“Then what the hell are you doin’ here?” He bites back. 

To her credit, she doesn’t flinch away at his harshness. No, she just smiles wider. 

She gets to her feet from where she was sitting on the steps of the shed behind them and walks over to Dean. She pulls something out of her pocket as she asks, “Asking, if you want a cigarette?”

The lack of pretence throws Dean off completely. “What?” is all that he can bring himself to say.

She shrugs, shaking the pack of menthols in her hands. “You want one?”

Dean, again, is met with the curiously unsolvable puzzle that is Y/N and left struck. “I didn’t know you smoked?” It’s a stupid thing to say, all things considered. But the fact that the answer is stupider consoles him some.

“I don’t!” she exclaims, a little too defensive to be God's honest truth. She pulls one cigarette out of the box. “Do you want one or not?” She throws the box at him. 

Dean catches it on reflex. 

“Fuckin’ menthols,” Dean curses looking at the box, but pulls one out for himself all the same. 

“Might make your swimmers less effective,” she says a little too easily as she lights his cigarette, “but they’re a certified cure to sadness.” She smiles, lighting her own. And standing this close, with the flame from the lighter painting her all shades of yellow, Dean has to physically pull himself away. He has to will himself to take a step back and catch his breath. He gulps and takes a drag. He is clenching his jaw again.

“You should mind what you’re sayin’ while lighting a guy’s cigarette. Talking about my ‘swimmers’ when you’re an inch away from my face?” He shakes his head. “Another guy might take it the wrong way.”

“Or the right way,” she mutters, so jumbled and wrong, Dean’s not even sure he heard it correctly.

“What?” 

“Nothing,” she dismisses him off handedly, a little too easily. 

He decides to let it pass, because again, he’s not sure he heard it right. And if he did, he’s not sure he has the mental wherewithal to be able to deal with that implication. So, he lets it pass. 

Besides, she doesn’t really give him any other option. “You remember how Sam was when Jess died last year?”

“It was last fucking year, yes! ‘Course I remember it,” Dean throws back, exhaling smoke out as he speaks.

She nods, “And?”

He knows what she’s getting at. “Sam was a mess,” he answers the unasked question. “I’m not like that.”

“That’s precisely the point I’m trying to make,” she states, taking a drag. “Not the second half, the first. Sam deals with emotions very openly. He… He lets himself fall apart and crumble. That’s what he’s gonna do now. He’s gonna get sad and he’s going to try and do things that John would have wanted him to do when he was alive. He is going to feel guilty and he is going to be a mess… because he deals with death, like he deals with everything else. He’s not emotionally constipated like you are. He’s normal…” She shakes her head slowly from side to side, reconsidering her words. “Or well, as normal as anyone in this line of work can be.”

Dean takes another puff. “Well, does he have to drag me into it?”

“Yes!” She answers, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.

And it fucking isn’t. “Why?!”

“Because he isn’t used to this.”

“What? Death? We just established that—”

She shakes her head at him like he’s being difficult for the sake of it… Maybe he is, but it’s not fair for her to be able to read him that easily. She cuts him off then, with, “No. He’s not used to you being like this.” And the words hit him hard. She must see it too because then she pauses and brings the cigarette to her lips and takes a long drag. “He’s used to the flirty, cocky Dean, who’s an overall dickhead.” When she exhales the smoke, it’s thick and white. Don’t smoke, my ass, Dean thinks to himself. “He’s going to ask you if you need something. He’s going to try to make you feel better and he’s going to keep checking up on you, because he has never seen you—his big brother—bereft before.”

And fuck, if she isn’t talking complete and utter sense. 

He runs a tired hand over his face, cigarette clipped between the index and the middle finger. “And what, you have?”

He’s not very good at people assessing him and his brother emotionally so accurately, okay? He needs to retaliate.

“No,” she replies easily with a smile. “When your mom passed away you were too young, and with everything that followed, I’m not even sure you had the opportunity to deal with it. This might as well be your first time dealing with loss.”

He clicks his tongue and raises his brows briefly in semi-agreement. And having been assess accurately once again, “Well, isn’t that just fucked?”

She nods. “It is.” She brings the cigarette to her lips. “But at least you’ve got me.”

He laughs. 

It’s kind of cruel that he does and he knows it.

But he laughs, because what the fucking hell?

And again, he’s fully aware of his cruelty in this moment and ready for the repercussions. 

What he isn’t ready for is to look at her and see her wearing a smile instead of a hurt look on her face.

“You think you’re gonna save me, sweetheart?” He retorts, adding to his asshole-ry.

She shrugs. “I don’t think I’m meant to save you, Dean,” she says, all too politely while taking a puff from the cigarette. “I just meant…” she looks at him. “I know what you’re going through.”

“No, you fucking don’t.” His words are harsh and cold and painful and mean.

You’ll break her, he thinks. You’ll break her and it’ll hurt worse than anything ever could.

But she doesn’t seem to be breaking. “Your dad died ‘cause of a demon and you feel responsible for it—”

“I don’t feel responsible for it, I am responsible for it. He died to save my life. It was supposed to be me who you salt and burned, not him! It was me who was supposed to be dead, not him!” And he’ll carry that weight with him for the rest of his fucking life. “You have no fucking idea what I’m going through.”

Her eyes are locked to his as she counters without hesitation. “My brother died because of a demon and I feel responsible for it.”

Dean can do nothing but close his eyes and yell out in frustration, “It’s not the same!”

“Isn’t it?” she bites back, standing straight and unmoving in the face of Dean’s rage. She doesn’t let him answer. “It was supposed to be my job. I was supposed to be the one who got possessed by a demon and driven around like a meat-suit. I was supposed to be the one who died in a freakin’ basement like a rat. It was my job, Dean. I was the first call, the second and the third… But I just decided to ignore it. But he didn’t… ‘Cause he’s nicer than I am…” She winces, looking away. She looks hurt for the first time since they began this conversation. And it seems she’d done it to herself. Because then she corrects, “Was nicer…” She takes another drag from her cigarette. “So, fuck you. But I know what you’re going through.”

He bites his lips.

Then he lets his head fall.

Because as much as he’d like to fight her on this, he can’t. 

She’s right… as usual.

He doesn’t know what to say to any of that so he stays quiet. Moreover, he thinks he’s kinda supposed to. Because she doesn’t swear often, even less so at him. So yeah, zipping it might be the right call here.

She takes charge then, as he begins pacing and smoking once more. “This might be your first go around at grief. Sam’s second. But, for once, I’m the season player.” 

When he turns to look at her, she’s smiling.

“Does that mean you’re gonna keep fucking smiling at me like that?” He retaliates, again. He’s already told you the logic behind that one.

“Sorry,” she holds up her hands in surrender. “I don’t mean to. I’m not smiling at you—not really.” She smiles again. “It’s just… It’s just that look on your face. I’ve seen it before.”

“I thought we just established you’ve never seen me like this before?”

“No, not on you,” she clarifies.

“Then?”

“In the mirror,” she tells him honestly. “Every morning for the last three years.”

Fuck him. Fuck this. And fuck everything.

A part of him, a selfless and kind part of him wishes she didn’t get him, wishes she’d rather be hurt at his words than look at him with so much understanding.

But another part of him, the selfish and unkind part of him, is comforted by the fact that at least someone does, in fact, get him. Even more so, he’s comforted by the fact that it’s her.

“So, take it from someone with experience,” she begins then, breaking him out of his mind numbing miserable thoughts. “You’re gonna wanna explode. You’re gonna wanna break something.”

“You got a cure for that, oh experienced one?”

She smiles again. “Yeah, break it.”

“What??”

She shrugs all too easily, taking another drag. “If you can find something you can break, that won’t hurt anyone, that you could ideally fix, then yeah! Break it.”

He stops pacing to look at her and cocks her head. “Will it make me feel better?” He is genuinely curious.

She outright laughs at him then, “No!” She brings her foot up and butt the cigarette on the back of her boot, sending embers falling to the ground like fireworks. “Nothing ever will…” She looks back at him, still smiling, “But it'll help.”

Dean sighs. 

He nods.

And then he throws the cigarette to the ground, steps on it and then walks over to the side. He picks up a crowbar, and then he walks back to the Impala. He grips the crowbar tighter and then he smashes the window. 

Then he starts slamming it into the trunk, over and over and over and over again. It clatters to the ground. 

He keeps at it till there’s a hole in the metal near as big as the one in his heart. 

And when he’s done, he lets the crowbar fall to the ground and pulls the packet of smokes out of his pocket. He grabs a cigarette and places it right between his lips. When he looks up, she’s close to him again, lighter in hand.

She looks at him and he looks at her.

Then she lights his cigarette. “How’d it feel?”

“It didn’t make me feel any better,” he replies, handing her the packet back to her when she smiles at him. “But it helped.”

She nods, and takes the entire packet to her lips, with her teeth she pulls one cigarette out and then lights it, pocketing the packet and lighter in one go. “Look, I know you… You don’t know how to deal with this, and as much as I want to, I can’t really help you with it either but unlike me, Sam’s not gonna get it.”

“I know,” he tells her. Because he knows that his brother means well, but he has a tendency of being too in your face about it. 

She hums in agreement, as if hearing her thoughts. And fuck, if he’s to go by her track record, maybe she can. “You’re gonna wanna get mad, go crazy and lash out. So… I’m suggesting that you do that with me, instead of him.” Her eyes are too fucking kind as she adds, “If you want to get mad, go crazy and lash out—lash out at me, get mad at me.”

Dean can’t fucking breathe.

“Why?” he asks.

“‘Cause he’s grieving too.”

“That the only reason?” he asks, hoping for… well, you know what he’s hoping for. You’re his inner monologue.

She tilts her head with a sweet smile. “You gotta mind what you’re saying, Winchester. Being emotionally vulnerable when you’re an inch away from my face? Another woman might take it the wrong way.”

He can’t help himself.

He snorts.

“Or the right way,” he says then with a smile of his own. 

And fuck it all, her face turns red at the realisation that he’d heard her. 

He loves it so fucking much that he’s not even bummed about her taking a step away from him.

“Asshole,” she curses him, but her heart’s not in it.

“I’ve got one condition though,” he says and watches confusion break onto her face. “For lashing out at you instead of Sam.”

She shakes her head fondly, at his wording. “What is it?”

“You promise to do the same.” It’s the kindest thing he can offer her. His misery, in exchange for hers.

She chuckles at that. Morbid as it may be, their sense of humor was always on par with each other. “Sure,” she says. “You’ve got yourself a deal.”

He raises his hand, cigarette still wedged between his fingers, “Shake on it?”

Apparently, that’s the wrong thing to say ‘cause then she makes a disgusted face like the hand he’s offered is covered in snot. 

Slapping it away, she throws the smoke in her hands away and she steps closer. And then hugs him. 

The action catches Dean off-guard. 

It takes a second for his brain and his heart to have a meeting and catch up with each other. And then finally his brain sends the signal out for his to hands drop the cigarette and wrap around her. 

Probably encouraged by him hugging her back, her grip on him tightens. And fuck if that doesn’t thaw Dean’s cold, broken, blackened heart. He happily does the same, snuggling his face into her neck and breathing her in.

They stay like that for a bit, until Dean realises she’s waiting on him, letting him have his fill.

Reluctantly, eventually, Dean lets her go. 

When he does, if she can spot his misty eyes, she doesn’t mention it. 

Instead she says, “Now, hand me the crowbar.”

“Huh?”

“What, you think I don’t wanna break shit?”

[4ranghaes]

heyy can i request bsf since diaper! myung jaehyun and fem! reader which they're finally meet each other after a long time and decided to hit the club then some guy try to talk or flirt with her and suddenly jaehyun become so protactive as if she's a child but obvi jaehyun got a crush on her (spoiler: he always stalk her social media and thats how he got his crush on her although its been awhile since they met) idk the thought of unserious jaehyun become protactive is cute tho hehehe. anw thank you in advance!! love ur writing sm!!

myung jaehyun x reader [fluff, fem!reader, jealous!bsf!myungjae]

a/n - hiya anonnie, of course!!!! i hope you enjoy💓💓

00:24 - “for old times’ sake?”

jaehyun rolled his eyes, getting up off the sofa, your relentless begging having worn him down, “fine, fine. there’s a club a couple streets down from here. i’ve been with the boys a couple times, it’s good.”

“yes! jaehyun thank you! thank you thank you thank you!” you cheered, jumping up and down, kissing your friend on the cheek before running to his bedroom to check your appearance.

riwoo gave him a knowing look, jaehyun just rolling his eyes as he shrugged him off. “stop looking at me like that.”

riwoo held in a laugh, shrugging, “just thinking about how you almost bit sungho’s head off when he complemented her earlier. hope you enjoy the club!”

the boy shook his head, watching you emerge from his bedroom in a totally new outfit; short skirt, small top, and one of jaehyun’s mesh overshirts hanging over top. he swallowed, his mouth hanging open.

“is this okay?” you asked, posing in the doorway.

jaehyun just nodded quickly as you cheered, “come on, let’s go then! it’ll be too expensive past 1am.”

“o-okay,” he stuttered, gathering his keys and shoving his essentials in his pockets, waving goodbye to riwoo.

“i mean don’t you think it’s fun? the last time we saw each other we were still bathing together, and now we’re clubbing!”

myungjae chuckled, “yeah our mums would be so proud.”

you laughed, walking close to him the whole way to the club, your arms touching as the alcohol you’d steadily had throughout the night seemed to hit you. the two of you had been planning this meet up for months, and finally you’d arrived in yongsan last night, the dorm door being flung open to jaehyun’s wide smile - the same one you recognised from all those years ago.

jaehyun watched now as you, a grown woman, stood ahead of him in line for the club. he’d always had a crush on you, even when he was 5 and you were 4, running round the back garden naked together, bathing together, walking to school together - he’d liked you. he’d kept up with you online of course, even over the years of various moves separating the two of you, he watched from a distance as you grew and matured. his heart fluttered opening the door for you yesterday - he didn’t want to admit it, but he still liked you now.

“okay, drinks, or dance floor?” you shouted, mouth next to his ear as the two of you entered the club, surveying the scene.

“why don’t you get a table and i’ll get some drinks?” jaehyun offered, holding your hair back with a gentle hand as he did the same to you, “i’m not drunk enough yet!”

you giggled, nodding as you found an empty table, guarding your territory. jaehyun tried to be quick with the drinks, glancing back over to you several times to check you were safe.

“two jack cokes please,” he ordered, leaning against the bar as he quickly looked back to where you were. now with a man? he strained his neck, squinted his eyes, trying to get a better look. he could feel his anger rising.

“here you are,” the bartender said, snapping him out of his daze as he handed over two cups. jaehyun took them quickly, rushing over to where you were.

slamming them down on the table, he looked up at you expectantly.

“oh myungjae!” you exclaimed, “this is jinyoung.”

“you two know each other?” he asked with furrowed eyebrows.

“no,” jinyoung shrugged, looking at jaehyun with competition in his eyes. jaehyun narrowed his eyes at him. jinyoung pointed to the drinks as you took your cup. “didn’t get me one, mate?”

“well, we actually just came out the two of us so…”

“oh i can get you one!” you smiled, jumping up from the seat before jaehyun shoved your body back down.

“he can get it himself, y/n,” jaehyun said, not taking his eyes off jinyoung.

“yeah, don’t worry darling,” he spoke, smiling at you, “i’ll buy your one too, hey?”

jaehyun was mouthing curses after the man as he sauntered over to the bar.

“what are you doing?!” jaehyun exclaimed, grabbing your arm.

“what? he’s nice!”

“you don’t know him!” jaehyun yelled, looking at you exasperated, “you’re not taking that drink either.”

you rolled your eyes, brushing him off and walking to the dance floor. you looked back to jaehyun, still stood against the table, tilting your head in invitation as you started to dance. jaehyun stood watching for a while, fighting a smile on his face as he watched your body move. eventually, he downed his drink, making his way over to you. a smile spread across your face when he reached you, jaehyun’s hand moving to your hip as they moved with the music. jealousy was never a good emotion, except maybe when he needed to make a move.

“you’re gorgeous,” he spoke, not taking his eyes off you. you read his lips, barely able to hear him over the blaring music. you stopped for a moment, before looping your arms round his neck.

“you’re not too bad yourself, myung,” you laughed.

jaehyun broke into a smile, “really?”

you nodded, “really.”

he eyed you cautiously before beginning to move in. he was slow and steady, before realising you were also moving towards him; he smashed his lips to yours, letting out a disbelieving laugh into the kiss. you smiled into his lips, body still moving to the song.

jaehyun pulled away, grinning like an idiot as he started to dance with you. you laughed, grabbing his face to pull him again, starting to make out with him.

“you’re not just drunk right?!” he exclaimed, pulling away suddenly.

“barely drank at all,” you yelled back, dragging a hand through his hair.

you saw jinyoung making his way through the crowd towards you with a smile as you rolled your eyes; you only interacted with him to make jaehyun jealous in the first place.

“kiss me again!”

“huh?!”

“again, jaehyun!”

[eliotquillon]

i have to imagine that at some point during chase and cameron’s fwb era, chase went back to aus for a trip. what about a time zones/jealous cam drabble?

sorry this took me FOREVER and is also not really jealous cam but more…pining cam?? argh. but i tried :) set between fetal position and airborne

In the end, it isn’t House who goes on vacation after they discharge Emma Sloan. It’s Chase; he walks into work one morning, a rare day when they’re not both riding in together, shoulders hunched and face pale, and says, “House. I need to talk to you.”

“You know I hate it when you do that,” House complains, but he must see what Cameron sees: the sunken gaze, the tense fingers. Who died, Cameron thinks, but his parents are both dead already. He leads Chase to his office and shuts the blinds. Cameron looks, and looks, and looks. Chase does not look back.

*

“I’m going out of town for a few days,” Chase tells her at lunch. They are attracting stares: the whole hospital knows they’re sleeping together now, no thanks to House. No thanks to me, Cameron thinks, a little guilty, and pushes another forkful of salad into her mouth. “Can you check on my stuff while I’m gone?”

“Out of town?” Cameron presses, selfishly wanting; she regrets it as soon as she says it. Chase presses his lips together, pushes his fries sullenly around his plate. Cameron is all too aware of the choreography. In two hours, the nurses will all be whispering about the big break-up—false for all the obvious reasons, but also because there’s nothing to break up. “What happened?”

“I have to go to Melbourne,” Chase says flatly. “There’s an issue with my dad’s will.”

“But I thought he cut you out of it,” Cameron frowns. She doesn’t mean to be insensitive with her bluntness. She only means to clarify; she had been shell-shocked, when he spat it out bluntly all those months ago, not at the specifics but at the mere concept of it. It’s the sort of thing you hear about, vague family gossip about a friend of a friend, but surely, Cameron had thought, it didn’t really happen. Surely people—mothers, fathers, great-aunts—were never really so cruel as to deliberately strike someone out with their last act in this world, not for no good reason. Chase spears a fry, and does not eat it.

“He did,” he says heavily. “Including the stuff he had no right to cut me out of. Can you do it?”

No, Cameron thinks. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t handle it. I’d be a sobbing mess, not coming into work every day to flirt with a colleague and snipe at Foreman and save people’s lives. Not casually discussing it over lunch. But that isn’t what Chase is asking.

“Of course,” she says, “just leave me the key.”

*

She gets into the routine of it easily enough. It helps that she knows her way around Chase’s apartment already—though, of course, she knows the bedroom best. Cameron stops by every evening on her way home from work to air the place out, sort the mail, check there’s nothing spoiling in the refrigerator. Chase left at the last minute; there are still clothes in his laundry hamper, a towel on the bathroom floor, electronics still plugged in. When she turns on the TV out of idle interest, it is automatically tuned to a sports channel. Cameron laughs, and the way the sound rings out across the empty room makes her feel absurdly guilty.

It would be so easy to pry. She has the experience, after all—years of snooping around patients’ homes, always careful to put things back where she found them, and she’s far more familiar with Chase’s habits and floorplan than she is theirs—and, secretly, she has the desire. Without him here to distract her with his hands or mouth or terrible post-sex cooking, it is easier to admit her own curiosity to herself. It is easier to admit that she wants to know him beyond the scope of what he has already told her. But easier isn’t the same as easy. Cameron closes windows and throws out expired milk. She ignores the bedroom. She always leaves the key behind.

*

It isn’t that she misses him, at work. It’s simply lacking for a case—House is due to fly to Singapore the day after Chase is scheduled to return—and there’s scarcely anything to do. She has brief, cordial lunches with Foreman, spends the mornings doing clinic duty and the afternoons catching up on House’s permanently-backlogged charting. It is all very companionable; she has always liked Foreman well enough, save for the times he has given her reason to be annoyed, and without Chase to wind him up Foreman seems to return the sentiment. He only tries to broach the subject once.

“About you and Chase,” he starts, and Cameron’s pen leaves a dent on her chart.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” she says. It’s the wrong answer: she should’ve said, there’s nothing to talk about. It’s what she means to say, but for some reason her mouth won’t form the words. Foreman sighs, and his eyebrows make a grand leap of frustration, but he just nods.

“Don’t bring me into it,” he warns, and this time Cameron doesn’t bother trying to correct him.

*

Melbourne is sixteen hours ahead of New Jersey. It is natural, Cameron thinks, to wonder what he might be doing. It is natural, given the circumstances, to wonder if he’s alright. It is not natural to wonder if he misses her, but she finds herself doing that anyway. His voicemail beeps with messages; the sound of the dialtone makes her so irritated that she has to fight the urge to delete them all at once.

*

“Thanks,” Chase says when he comes back to work, jetlagged and small-looking and yet, Cameron hopes, a little pleased to see her. “You didn’t have to clean up after me.”

She didn’t mean to. She didn’t even want to, but her hands were idle and his phone kept beeping and once, while she was intercepting a delivery he must’ve forgotten about, she heard a strange woman’s voice ask about him on the speakerphone, words garbled through the closed hallway door. In Cameron’s experience, it is easier to resist temptation if there is something to be tempted away from. “I don’t mind,” she says. “Did everything turn out alright?”

“More or less,” Chase shrugs. He leans close; he still smells a bit like stale plane air and, Cameron imagines, a certain kind of foreign-ness. “Come over tonight?” he asks in a hopeful undertone.

Cameron is sick of his apartment. She would rather not examine why. “Come to mine,” she says, decisive, and rises to greet Foreman.

[estrellami-1]

Lavender Letters

Part 7

Eddie grins.

He drops it in his locker.

Friday at 7 sharp, he’s locking his van and knocking on the Harringtons’ front door.

It swings open to reveal Steve, blush high on his cheeks. “You made it,” he says, almost breathily.

Eddie grins. “I said I would, didn’t I?” He steps closer. “Hi, sweetheart.”

“Hi,” Robin Buckley agrees. “Let’s come inside before the whole neighborhood has to watch you play tonsil hockey.”

Eddie chuckles. “R,” he says, and holds out his fist.

Robin blinks at it for a second before she remembers. “The biggest, gayest fist bump!” She exclaims, bumping his fist with hers. “Okay, now come on, into the living room, I finally got the set list down and I’m not waiting on you bozos to start the party.” She drags them to the living room, where Eddie sees Nancy, Jonathan, Vickie, and…

“Miss Cunningham,” Eddie grins, bowing to kiss her hand. “Looking lovely as always.”

“Eddie!” Chrissy grins, pulling him up and into a hug. “I didn’t know you’d be here!”

Eddie chuckles. “Where else would I be? Prom?” He grins wide, and Chrissy laughs.

“Who invited you?”

“Ah, only the man of the hour.”

“Oh, this is years in the making,” she laughs, pushing him back over to Steve. “Don’t let me steal you away from him!”

Eddie lets himself stumble over, almost falling before Steve catches him. “Hi, sweetheart,” he grins. “I think I just fell for you.”

Steve grins wide. His eyes are barely slits. “According to your letter, you fell for me a while ago.”

“Maybe so,” he acquiesces. “But now I know you. Really know you.” He finds his feet, offers Steve a hand. “May I have this dance?”

“You dance?” Steve grins, accepting Eddie’s offer.

“I… shuffle,” Eddie admits, grinning when Steve laughs. “But I can follow if you lead.”

Steve grins. “That’s not what your hanky says.”

Eddie is delighted. “You looked it up!”

“A while ago, actually, yeah. You’re not exactly subtle, flagging in Hawkins.”

Eddie shrugs. “If I have to, I can play it off as being a metal thing. James Hetfield wears one, too.”

“James Hetfield?”

“Metallica frontman. The point is that I have an alibi if I need it.”

“Have you ever needed it?”

Eddie laughs. “In Hawkins? Hell no.”

“How about in Indy? How do you know what you like?”

Eddie hums. “Some reading, and some… hands-on. Not as much as you’d think.” He grins wryly at Steve. “Most guys take one look at me and assume I’ve got the wrong side.”

Steve frowns. “That’s stupid. They think you’d go to all the trouble of getting a hanky just to forget which pocket you should put it in?”

Eddie shrugs a shoulder. “It happens. I do have some experience, though.”

“Good.”

“Good?”

Steve grins at him. “I’m glad one of us does, yeah.”

“And you? How do you know what you like?”

Steve blushes. “A lot of nights with a zine and my right hand.”

Eddie laughs. “We’ve all gotta start somewhere. What did you discover?”

Steve’s blush is permanent now. “Kitchen?”

Eddie leads him there. “How about a drink first?” He suggests. “I’d get you a water but I don’t know where anything is.”

Steve giggles, grabs two bottles. “There’s beer in the fridge that you’re welcome to, or Nancy brought punch, but I’d be careful.”

Eddie dips a glass in for a little taste and nearly gags. “Christ, what is that, paint thinner?”

Steve snorts. “Just about. You don’t want to get on her bad side.”

“No kidding.” He wipes his mouth, rinses out the glass, and accepts the bottle Steve offers. “Yikes,” he murmurs, causing Steve to snort.

He leans on the island. “So?”

“So,” Steve agrees. “Um. I’d like it if you would take more control. Not- not be mean. I don’t like being called names or put down in any way. But, um. I do like some pain. You-you can, um, slap me around a little? And-”

“Sweetheart,” Eddie murmurs, “you seem nervous.”

“I’ve never actually, uh, said any of it out loud before.”

Eddie crowds into his space, absolutely delights in the way his eyes go half-lidded and his blush takes over his face. “Then how about we try something else?”

[whoiwanttoday]

(This was yesterday's post. It sat in drafts accidentally.) Here is some Aubrey Plaza who I shouldn't need a reason to post, once upon a time I really didn't, she showed up all the time but she along with her once upon a time joined at the hip bestie Anna Kendrick somehow doesn't just show up out of the blue anymore. Any time this happens I just blame pop culture in general because pop culture loves 20 somethings and they just seem to be always talked about, so while Aubrey Plaza is still a star and a sought after actress, she isn't like a buzzed about actress. I of course, am an easily distracted idiot who is easily influenced by the world around me and really the only way that makes me unique is that I am pretty willing to admit this while so many people dig in their heels and try to contend they are in no way influenced by any of that and it's probably just a coincidence they care about the same thing everyone is talking about these days. Anyway, I saw her in a movie a bit over a week ago and said I would post her because of that but I didn't. Luckily, she was in V Magazine and it reminded me I really need to post her. Cause she's great. She is very good at a certain type of comedic role, she's drop dead sexy, and I really liked My Old Ass. It is in many ways not at all similar but in spirit reminds me Safety Not Guaranteed in that it is a type of movie that I don't think ends up on any best of lists but is still very good and sticks with me. More so, it fills a little niche we don't get very often which is a sweet and big hearted comedy that is subtle and a little bittersweet. I guess it always fits reality as I see it better. Anyway, since I did recommend my Old Ass here and i know a few people watched it I am going to recommend Safety Not Guaranteed as well cause you'd probably like that. If you haven't seen it. I mean it's like 12 years old now. Today I want to fuck Aubrey Plaza.

[cherryblossompink303]

Patience: ~Jungle Pool SOS!~

➼ pairing: Kyoya Ootori x Reader ➼ summary: when kyoya offers up his families yet to open resort no one could have guessed what would actually happen. ➼ what to expect: “I have a duty of care for you" ➼ warnings: none ➼ Part six | Part eight

Now considering this was technically considered a club activity you have to admit this was the most relaxed you had been in a while. The sun beaming down on you while you sun bathe, even the usual drama of host club antics get lost in the serenity of an empty resort.

"I must admit Kyoya, when I joked a few years ago that the ootori group should create a holiday resort and label it as a form of therapy I didn't think you took it seriously" you muse, eyes closed as you bring in the sun rays.

Kyoya shrugs but quickly remembers that you can't actually see him "Believe it or not I don't completely disregard your ideas, expecially when they truly have merit, my father seemed to agree"

You hum knowingly at what he actually meant by that statement "I'm assuming that he doesn't know that it was my idea then" You tease, not really being that mad about the stolen idea, it wasn't like Kyoya was getting any direct monetary profit from the resort. "I did try crediting you but he had a hard time believing a fifteen year old girl came up with it by herself"

You weren't exactly surprised, you had met Kyoya's father after all, you knew what it was like by now. Luckily you were too relaxed to care at that moment.

There was a moment of silence, peace between the two of you. It was actually something you enjoyed when spending time with Kyoya, the two of you never forced conversation for the sake of it, which on it's own sounds sad but it makes any words that the two of you do exchange all the more important.

"If...you have any more ideas like that...tell me about them...I can at least appreciate a good idea when it comes from you" you laughed under your breath, "Well of course" lifting your sunglasses to rest against your head, sitting up to face him properly "You have taste"

"Why thank you my dear" he joked, taking a sip of his drink, watching chaoes unfold as Tamaki and the Twins argue over what Haruhi should wear. Typical.

“Haru-chan! Let’s play! You wanna go swimming in the current pool with me?” Honey tugs on Haruhi’s arm with a pink float decorated with bunnies clinging to his waist.

“Nah. I’m not gonna swim today. Hold on. You know how to swim; you still need that float?”

Honey shakes his head, “Mm-mm. Just looks cuter this way, you know?” Honey spins on his heel to go prancing in the other direction toward the current pool.

“Mm, he’s right. Those bunnies are pretty cute.”

“He’s so innocent.” The twins materialize on either side of your chair despite the umbrella above them.

You sigh, leaning back in your sun lounger basking in the controlled chaos you are used to.

“No way! You’ve got it all wrong!”

You start, awakened by a powerful rumbling in the ground and echoing voice.

“Is that Renge?” Haruhi turns her head to the offending sound.

A cabana splits in half, and the trees part to make way for her infamous contraption, the rumbling sound now accompanied by her shrill laugh.

“How does she do that? It’s like the rig follows us.” Haruhi sweats.

you groan, pinching the bridge of your nose "One day, all i want is one day"

“That outfit’s pretty impressive,” Hikaru observes Renge’s two-piece bikini and a tattoo winding up her ribcage.

“What’s with the tattoo on your stomach?” Kaoru inquires.

“Oh, that? You don’t recognize it? I’m cosplaying.”

“Yeah, as who?”

“La-La~”

“LaLa? Like the manga magazine?” Kaoru grumbles.

“Her petite and slender frame, her blue eyes that light up young men’s faces, her singing voice! I am Quon Kisaragi!” Renge extolls.

“I wouldn’t have guessed.” Haruhi sneers.

“I had no idea who you were supposed to be.” Tamaki shrugs.

Once again, the twins and Tamaki are huddled in a circle as Renge poses for Haruhi, who watches, miffed.

“Hey, Boss, are you sure it’s okay for Renge to be dressed-”

“-like that?” They point to the girl in question.

“Well, yeah. That’s okay.” Tamaki shrugs indifferently.

“And why is that?”

“Because it’s cosplay? I guess.”

“Listen up, boys! You obviously need help understanding Haninozuka’s hidden motives. Look!” Renge notes, pointing over to Honey and Mori.

“Takashi!” Honey calls, landing in the current pool and letting the current sweep him gently away as Mori watches fondly.

“What are you talking about?” Tamaki implores.

“Think about what he said to you earlier.”

“Just looks cuter this way, you know?”

“He’s not being as sweet and innocent as you think.”

From the chair next to you, Kyoya shoves his glasses up his nose, “I agree. Try putting the word 'I’ at the beginning of that sentence.”

“I just look cuter this way, you know?”

“I look cute!”

“He planned that?!”

“That’s Haninozuka for you. In the last part, he felt threatened by another loli-boy type, so he’s taken steps to keep his rank. I should give him more credit. He’s a lot smarter than I thought.” Renge descends into the ground and disappears.

“Hey! Look at this, everybody!” Honey draws everyone’s attention to him and Mori.

Mori swims diligently against the current with Honey on his back.

“Check it out! Look! Even though we’re swimming really fast, we never go any farther than we are now!” He waves excitedly.

“So, what’s up with him?” Tamaki groans.

“Could he really be that smart?” Haruhi interjects.

Hikaru cocks his super-soaker water gun; the squeaking draws Tamaki’s attention to them before he’s blasted in the face with a stream of water.

“I got ya!” Hikaru winks handsomely, resting his weapon of choice on his shoulder.

“C'mon, Boss, let’s go! Let’s have a water gun fight.”

“It’ll be me and Kaoru against you. If you get it in the face, you lose. What do you say?” Hikaru implores, hand on his hip.

“Forget it.” Tamaki dries his face, “Why would I want to subject myself to a childish game like that?”

An idea forms in each of the twins’ minds.

All of a sudden, you’re grabbed by your wrist and pulled from your nap with an exclamation of surprise.

“y/n, I think it’s time that we got married! Then we’ll honeymoon in Atami!”

You quickly break from their hold, sitting back down on the lounger really not wanting to get involved. "Considering if y/n was going to marry anyone it would be me you clearly haven't thought through your plan very well" Kyoya spoke up, glaring at the twins before nodding towards haruhi.

The twins quickly pick up what he's putting down "Good point Kyoya, we were thinking about this all wrong, Haruhi clearly is the better option SHE should marry us"

"gee thanks" you mutter but its clear that it did the job of pissing off Tamaki, breaking out a waterfight between the three of them.

“I’ll get you guys! Sideways-leaping shot!” Tamaki launches himself sideways, but the twins shield themselves with two comically large tiki masks.

“That’s cheating!” When Tamaki lands, his foot catches on the previously discarded banana peel, and he tumbles noisily into a totem pole, head first.

You wince and suck in a breath through clenched teeth, “Oh- that didn’t sound good.”

One by one, the animals on the totem pole’s eyes glow an intimidating red until the final animal at the top is shining.

You remove your sunglasses from your eyes and place them on your head, “That… doesn’t sound good either.”

As if he senses something is amiss, Mori drops his glass at your feet, attention diverting to Honey in the current pool, still carelessly kicking his feet.

Something underneath the water rumbles, and a wave develops until it’s practically a tsunami. With wide eyes, Honey watches as it heads straight towards him.

“Wah~!” It crashes over him, and his bunny float is sent soaring into the air- but without him inside as he’s flushed in the wave.

“Honey-Senpai!” You lurch from your chair, and your sunglasses fall discarded to the ground.

“Mitsukuni!”

Both you and Mori hurry to see if you have enough time to save him, but Mori slips on the same banana peel and falls harshly to the unforgiving concrete.

“Mori-Senpai,” You call in concern.

Tamaki jabs a heroic finger in the air, “Gentlemen, we’re going after Honey-Senpai! That pool looks like the quickest way!” he announces, referring to the pool Honey was treading water in before he was washed away.

“Charge!” Haruhi, Mori, and the twins follow Tamaki’s lead as they sprint haphazardly in a random direction.

As you see that Kyoya’s stayed put, you decide that it might be best to stay put as well. His family did build this resort, after all.

“Wait! I wouldn’t go-”

It’s already too late; the club has come across the alligators in that direction. “There are alligators in there!” They flee as quickly as they can.

Tamaki jabs another heroic finger in the air, “Okay. So we can’t use that pool, then let’s try this way next!”

But where Tamaki has pointed, several more alligators appear, snapping their jaws in a warning.

“They’re here too!”

“And here!”

With his more petite, brown leather portable notebook, Kyoya’s glasses glint off the sun as he explains your current situation.

“Those alligators belong to the park’s tropical animals exhibit. I guess it is kind of dangerous to let them run wild.”

“And yet i'm supposedly the one with bad ideas?” You huff in frustration, peering at Kyoya from your crouched position on your nap chair.

“Though, the cause of our present situation seems to be the location of the switch for the current pool. I’ll have to have a little chat with our designers.” He snaps the notebook shut.

“Thanks a lot, you guys. I got some great data today.”

“You what?!” The club exclaims.

“Ok I'll admit that is a little smart" You shrug.

“This is a map of the Tropical Aqua Garden. This is our current location. We need to get here- I have a feeling that’s where Honey-Senpai probably ended up. It might be tough, because to get there, we’ll have to make it this jungle area in the southern block.”

Kyoya drags his pen along the map to indicate your path, “Distance-wise, we’re talking about 800 meters.”

“It looks like there’s a lot of undeveloped areas. And idea what might be lurking in those parts of the jungle?” Haruhi cautiously inquires.

“Since they’re still being developed, I’m afraid I don’t know.”

“Yeah, someone’s going to have to carry me.” You lift your arms high and glance around for any takers.

None. Yet. You’re going to have to work on your skills.

“Whatever’s out there could be even more dangerous-”

“-than alligators.”

“Alright. Now, this is a mission of survival! I know we can make it through the treacherous jungle in one piece… It is our sworn duty to save Honey-Senpai!”

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In the dense plant life and humidity of the inner workings of the jungle, the sunlight is much more filtered than it was out in the open.

“Wow, this place is just like a real jungle, huh?”

If you couldn’t see the glass dome and someone had dropped you off in the middle of this theme park with no knowledge as to how you got there, you might have believed you were in the jungle.

“Yeah, and I keep hearing all of these really strange animal calls,” Haruhi grumbles.

“You don’t think that all of those animal sounds-”

“-could belong to the real thing, do you?”

Kyoya shrugs, “To be honest, I’m not sure, but I do know that my family always strives for authenticity whatever the cost.”

"There surely must be some kind of ethical issue if that is the case, wouldn't be a good healing facility if there is a serious alligator injury" you pointed out, suprised that Kyoya's family would put actually dangerous animals in an enclosed area.

Kyoya hummed "I suppose so but it also wouldn't surprise me if that was on purpose to drive more business to our hospitals" he muttered only loud enough for you to hear really. It didn't surprise you either really but you dreaded to think if that was actually the case.

As if on cue, Mori slips and falls behind the group. At the loud grunt and crash, you all turn to him. He lays unmoving with a banana peel on his face.

“Mori-Senpai is-”

“-acting as clumsy as you do, Boss.” Hikaru and Kaoru worry.

“Shut up!” Tamaki snarls as Mori sits up from his position on the ground.

Your accusations are correct- Mori is more worried than you can imagine.

The sunlight diminishes greatly, and you look overhead to see the beginnings of rainfall.

“Uh-oh, it’s about time for the squall,” Kyoya notes as he checks his wristwatch.

“Huh?”

The first few drops fall, then it turns into a downpour. You and the club take refuge in a nearby pavilion with a straw roof.

“Hey, Mori-Senpai. You seem to be really close with Honey-Senpai. Are the two of you like childhood friends?” Haruhi inquires from her seat in the pavilion beside the twins as Mori leans on the edge, watching the raindrops fall.

"You don't know?" hikaru asked "They're cousins" Kaoru added. You lean back against the wall of the shelter you are all in, sighing as you look out into the rain.

"Now this is the kind of rain that I remember" you mutter to yourself, the rain reminding you of europe. Kyoya also leans against the wall next to you "Hello? It's me. Well, we've had an incident that's caused some trouble"

you look up to see Kyoya on the phone, most likely to either his father or someone high up in his private police force. "No she's fine. yes she's unharmed" You raised an eyebrow, obvious that he was talking about you although you were confused on why whoever he was talking to was asking about you.

In the mean time Mori and Haruhi seem to wander off "Yes, at once, please" he finally put down the phone. "My family's private police force is going to send in a search and rescue team to help us, they're better equipped to find Honey-senpai than we are. so let's just go back to the gate and wait there"

The others weren't listening except for you, too busy arguing over Haruhi. "Hey, where are Mori and Haruhi?" he questioned as all of you left the shelter to head for the gate, but he shrugged it off, figuring they would show up at some point with a search and rescue team around.

The other boys rush ahead, still arguing "when you were on the phone before, you were talking about me? weren't you?" You ask kyoya, looking up at him as he looks ahead. "I was, why do you ask?"

You dead pan at him, head tilting at the side "You know why"

Kyoya sighs "you know I have a duty of care for you, as does my father, if I call up our police force when it is known that I am with you it is protocol to ask about your safety" he explains.

He pauses, stopping in his tracks "You know, I'm don't believe I mentioned to them that there are other visitors here. Huh. Oh well" He shrugs carrying on, hovering a hand over your back to urge you forward.

however instead of finding the gate you instead find a series of police officers on the floor with honey, Mori and Haruhi standing before them. We break out into a run at the sight of them "Haruhi!" Tamaki cries.

"Are you alright?" he adds, the five of you out of breath as you come to a halt "Hey its Tama-chan!" Honey says as if he hadn't just knocked out a dozen guards.

"You okay, senpai?" Hikaru asks. "Haruhi!!!" Tamaki leaps for her "I was so worried" the twins bend down to check on the guards "I'm not sure what happened here, but at least they're alive"

"It's pretty amazing that this is Honey sepai's work"

"He must have been really holding back" they continue to poke at the guards

"Huh?"

“What do you mean he was holding back?” Haruhi queries with innocent eyes, although Tamaki is in serious pain.

“So then-”

“-you don’t know about Senpai?” The twins seem bewildered by her lack of knowledge.

“The Haninozukas are famous for their martial arts. Not only have they helped train the police and SDF forces, but they’ve also worked with several overseas military forces.” Hikaru elaborates as they abandon their fascination with the grounded soldiers.

“Honey-Senpai, in particular, has been called the dreadnaught of the Haninozuka family. By the time he was in middle school, he’d become the national champion in both karate and judo.”

Honey turns when he feels he’s called, then giggles with closed eyes.

That’s the karate and judo champion for you.

“Mori-Senpai’s no slouch either. He won the national championship in kendo when he was just in middle school.”

Haruhi looks to her savior, and he turns when his name is mentioned.

“So how were you able to find us, Honey-Senpai?” the twins inquire as Honey has returned to his natural aura.

“It wasn’t hard. It didn’t take me long to reach the end of the current pool, so I decided to look for you guys.”

“We humbly apologize!” A different, more foreign voice pipes in, and the attention of the club directs to the soldiers, now reoriented from their initial shock and kneeling to the ground in a show of respect.

“I am a second-generation student of the Ishizuka Dojo!”

“I’m a student of the Todoroki Dojo!”

“And I’m from the Otakeh Dojo! We are in your debt!”

Honey’s eyes and posture display innocence and confusion, “Why? Is something wrong?” His voice can easily be mistaken for an eight-year-old boy’s.

“Yes, sir! We’re so sorry, sir! We were unaware that we were searching for Mitsukuni Haninozuka! We’ve committed a terrible offense here! I apologize for this confrontation. But my dojo will be so excited to hear that I’ve come face to face with the great Haninozuka! I cherish this moment!”

You snort, scooting closer to Kyoya, “I bet if he offered them an autograph, they’d pass out.” You snicker. You almost draw a smile from him, but rather he gives you a condescending look.

“What? I bet I’m not wrong.” You pout.

Honey takes Mori by the wrist and gently brings him down to his level, patting him gingerly on the forehead, “Takashi~ you did an amazing job of protecting Haru-chan.”

This patronizing show of affection elicits a smile from Kyoya as he adjusts his glasses.

“I bet you were pretty lonely without me around, huh?”

Mori’s eyes dart to the right where Haruhi is stood, “I don’t know if I’d say that.”

Honey smiles with a fond giggle.

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With the sun setting, the clear, blue water now fades to an orange, coral color as it washes upon the shore. It has taken the rest of the day to walk back to where you’d begun this journey.

Despite his earlier resentment, you now ride on Kyoya’s back, limp arms slung around his neck and your cheek pressed to his back, eyes contently shut.

Back to your much deserved nap.

“You know, maybe we should go to the beach next.” The twins stride ahead with arms casually thrown behind their heads.

“Yeah, the beach would be nice.” Kaoru agrees.

Kyoya glances over his shoulder at your relaxed features and smiles fondly. He’ll have to keep you away from the water.

“You idiots, Haruhi’s not interested in anything like that.” Tamaki scoffs confidently.

Haruhi smiles gently, “Actually, I might like to go to the beach.” It stuns the club, each one stopping in their tracks to look at her.

“I may not be into this silly water park but I like the ocean. It would be nice to go the beach, and it’s so pretty.”

Completely recovered and acting like he hasn’t just opposed it, Tamaki glitters, “Yeah! Alright. Then that’s where we’ll go next time.”

“We’re all gonna go to the beach, Tama-chan?” Honey quips, perched on Mori’s shoulders.

He hums gently, “That’ll be fun, don’t you think?” His inquiry is directed to Mori below him.

Mori simpers fondly, “Yeah,” It’s not hard to pick up the genuine agreement in his tone.

Next time on patience 'The Sun, the sea, and the host club!'

Tag list (reply to be added): @skottch @cgmajor @rebirthbunbun @bbybubbles @blueberry19000

[lichenes]

#1 dad(dy)

based on those tweets/tumblr posts: ⓪ ① ② ③ ④ ⑤ ⑥ ⑦ CW: mentions of smoking, actor au wc: 571 .  * 　　 ✦ . 　⁺ 　 .⁺ 　　 ˚ .  * 　　 ✦ . 　⁺ 　 .⁺ 　　 ˚.  * 　　 ✦ . 　⁺ 　 .⁺ 　　 ˚.  * 　　 ✦ . 　⁺ 　 .⁺ 　　 ˚.  * 　　 ✦ . 　⁺ 　 .⁺ 　　 ˚

The sound of clapperboard was heard as the day of filming began. “Today, due to immense demand, Gabriel Fouché, will be reading your thirst tweets!” Said the director with a bright smile. A part of the contract with the studio recording “Arcane” was to take part in a few interviews, this one was a bit- unusual for him. 

“RIP to Silco, you would’ve loved vaping ‘bandaged heart’, you would’ve been doing crazy smoke tricks on tiktok ‘R. N’.” He chuckled. “What does R, N mean?” Laughs could be heard behind the cameras. Someone answered. “Right now.” Gabriel nodded. 

“Well I did have to learn how to smoke cigars and do tricks with the smoke for the role. I do have to admit I am a habitual cigarette smoker so it was infinitely easier to master the art.” He paused for a moment. “As for the tiktok tricks - I’m a jughead when it comes to technology so unless there would be someone doing all the recording… you aren’t seeing those videos any time soon.” 

“The children yearn for the mines, and my photo underneath it.” He burst out laughing, putting his hand on his mouth. “Ahahah- okay, okay. Yeah they do.” 

“I think about this Silco moment every day, my god he’s so hot here.” Gabriel tilted his head. “Hmm… it seems most fans of Silco find him most attractive when he’s kicking the camera. I wonder why.” He put his hand on his chin in faux thought and then laughed.

“Sorry but older Silco ‘greater-than’ young Silco. I actually have to disagree on that.” He said. “Younger Silco was in one scene and he captured so many hearts, both on set and amongst the viewers, that Older Silco didn’t manage to do with all his screen time. Younger Silco is something special…” 

“Hashtag Zaundads, actually!” Gabriel got closer to the camera and put his hand to his mouth almost as to whisper a secret. “Me and Gerard actually kissed to prepare for the alternate universe episode, to really get into character, you know.” Gasps were heard in the studio. “I’m joking.” He said winking towards the camera.

“Silco’s left eye is missing eyelids so I guess he was sleeping like this every night. Exactly what happened I can attest to that.” He nodded solemnly. “Actually, SIlco just doesn’t sleep ever, that’s how he runs Zaun, he does not let his guard down even for a moment. Poor guy, he needs to relax more.” 

“P, L, S - please, I assume? - Stop posting Silco thirst he looks like my dad, and a comment left under that, is your dad single? I’d love to meet my doppelganger! Send me a message and we shall schedule it.” He said half-joking as an email popped up on the screen. 

“And the final one- okay who the hell was all over my dash two years ago thirsting over Silco, I understand you now. I want his whole wardrobe and he can read the dictionary to me until I fall asleep. I actually have a deal to voice a certain someone in a new project we’ve been working on with the cast so keep your eyes open!” He said. “And as for my wardrobe, I’ve seen some pretty talented people replicating my outfits! So it’s clearly easy to steal Silco’s wardrobe.” 

“Thank you all for watching!!” He exclaimed with his million dollar smile as the cameras stopped rolling.

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masterlist

[typhoonvash]

"You've already fought some of them?!" Vash squawks in disbelief, concerned primarily with the priest's health above his own... as usual. It's Wolfwood... what did he really expect? Of course he won't just sit and twiddle his thumbs while the Eye searches night and day for Vash. He'll do quadruple the work with half the resources the organization has, that's just how he functions.

He pouts, his one hand holding onto the abrasive, yet gentle, palms that he loved what feels like thousands of years ago. Still loves. Still loves... Will love until he can't love anymore. Even then, he'll love and love again and if he's recycled into a new Plant or whatever happens to him after death Vash will still find a way to love Wolfwood.

"You gotta take care of yourself..." the pot calls the kettle black, "How much have you been sleeping?! Eating?"

Vash raises his hand to cup Wolfwood's cheek, pinching it slightly with his brows furrowed mid-pout. He meets his gaze for a long moment and searches it, seeing the exhaustion and relief in equal measure. Though his own eyes have been stained violet with exertion, there are still small flecks of marine blue for those close enough to examine them.

Subtle cracks of that same purple hue break along his jaw where his markings usually show. It's hard to make them go away these days. The stress he put on himself was literally enough to make him crack, yet he carried on anyway. He knew back then that it was causing his seemingly random outbursts of power, but admitting that it was a problem felt like tearing a fresh scab off of a bloody wound. Right now his power is dulled to a low sizzling static, raising the hairs on Wolfwood's arm and his scruffy facial hair to attention.

"I'm not letting them take you away from me again, Wolfwood," Vash tenses his grip slightly, remaining perfectly stoic. He doesn't go into detail about what he'd do to keep Wolfwood, the lengths he'd go. The priest doesn't know about what he had to do to save Livio, to save the one person that Wolfwood sacrificed himself for, and Vash isn't sure that he ever wants him to know. He supposes it will probably come up in conversation at some point, unfortunately. "I want you to live a life without worries for once. If this is—if I'm really part of the life you want to live, then I'll do anything to make sure you get to see it. Me. Wait—"

Vash pauses, allowing his head to empty itself of all thoughts. Blinking a few times, losing himself in those same whiskey-gold eyes, and putting puzzle pieces together, a small spark of pure inquisitive energy zaps the undertaker like a static shock. It sends with it the confusion and warm love that he feels in the moment, not that Vash is aware of it.

"You still want to—still want me even after all of this is over? I could really hurt you, you know! A-and, I mean..."

Of course Wolfwood still loves him, why else would they be like this? Why else would he come find him, search for years for him... Why would he do that if his only goal was to root out the Eye of Michael? Still... it's not like either of them ever really considered living a peaceful life after everything had been over. At least—well—he'd never thought... that far ahead. So he's only done the whole 'relationship' thing once in his life—they never really lived together and it was casual back then. What the hell does he do if all the trouble is gone, his bounty is cleared, and Wolfwood is back?

"What do you want to do when this is over?"

‘Bearer of bad news’ is not the worst mantle he has donned. The Eye of Michael. His lips form the shape of those words with a loose growl held at the base of this throat. Two hundred years later, the bones of its founders ground to dust, and still, Nicholas will not let them have Vash the Stampede. 

Cradling Vash in his arms, feeling the tickle of his soft spiky hair, the damp scent of petrichor clinging to his clothes, the thrum of energy where their hands are joined and the small sparks that jump out between each rhythmic tap of Vash’s fingertips, and the warmth of living and breathing are the closest to coming home he’s felt since he was roused from cold sleep. Beneath each passing beat of silence, Vash draws his inevitable conclusions.

“Don’t recall ever needin’ yer permission to protect someone.” 

Fuck. He knew it was coming and he still can’t help but feel defensive. Wolfwood has to practically chew on his tongue to prevent himself from saying anything stupid. Vash has every reason to react this way. Despite his obvious agitation, Wolfwood listens.

Unlike Vash, Wolfwood has never grieved for the same person for over two hundred years.

Neither of them are fragile. They have each endured far more pain, death, and loss than any one person should ever have to experience in one lifetime– more, in Vash’s case. 

“Vash,” he says gently. Leaning forward places his chest flush to the curve of Vash’s spine and his chin just above Vash’s shoulder. “We’ve been through this same song ‘n dance, darlin’. Where you go, I go. Simple as that.”

He needs to look Vash in the eyes. Those same, kind, eyes that he fell in love with and all the sadness therein that shimmered behind the jeweled veil like a blinding light when Vash truly smiled. Wolfwood withdraws ever so briefly to scoot around the edge of the bedroll and draw up his legs beneath him to kneel beside Vash. Between both hands now, he holds Vash’s hand. “If I wanted to choose another life, if I wanted anyone or anythin’ else, I wouldn’t be here.” 

A vow, an oath, whatever it is, he’ll say the words as many times as Vash needs to hear it. If he needs to wrap his promise in gunpowder and bullets, so be it.

“We’re both goin’ to yer safehouse and we’ll do like ya said, alright? We’ll figure out what to do about the Eye.” 

Wolfwood leers at Vash then, having not forgotten the moment’s prior jabs against his dignity. “I may be gettin’ old, but I’ve been crawlin’ around in the dark for the past four days straight, so forgive me if I got a little excited. ‘sides, I’ve already fought a few of the Eye’s stupid new-age priests. Nothin’ like the monsters Conrad cooked up.”

So far, nothing he found about the Eye during his search for Vash suggested they possessed anywhere near the level of biotech knowledge that Conrad had amassed. Operative words being ‘so far.’

“I’ll kick the ass of the next one I see for ya, free of charge. You’ll see.”

[dewwshi]

we'll be there! 💖

[biblically-accurate-dca]

KILL!!!!!!!!!

[theyarebothgunshot]

.

[polyamorouspunk]

Getting messages on here that are like “wow I’m so disappointed in you.. I thought you were better than that” is SO funny like bestie who are you to me? This is tumblr.com! The place we celebrate blocking people for the bare minimum because none of it fucking matters and we’re all just little icons and usernames in each other’s phones. Like you don’t know me! I don’t care that I’ve disappointed you! It doesn’t matter! Unless you are kissing me with tongue I don’t give a shit <3

[zevrans-remade]

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