#I just really wanted to write Dream loathing him | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

atlabeth · 1 month ago

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unadulterated loathing (pt 2)

pt 1 / pt 3

pairing: fiyero tigelaar x fem reader

summary: you are forced to partner with fiyero on a history project. things don't go as you imagine.

a/n: sprinkling anthony bridgerton references in this because wreck my plans that's my man!! anyways this is actually going to be 3 parts because i have zero self control and ended up writing 15k words in total and im trying to see whether i like posting parts or doing one whole one shot more so there's going to be a third part. but for once in my writer life i have the whole thing written so it will be out in a couple days! have no idea how this fic became this long out of nowhere but i hope you all enjoy lol. stressed reader x calm bf will always be famous on this blog

wc: 4.9k

warning(s): almost cheating? fiyero is still w/ galinda for most of this so the line is very blurred but they dont cross it lmao. the slightest bit of angst but basically all fluff

“Isn’t this nice?” Fiyero spread his arms out as you took a seat in the grass. Idly, you wondered about getting grass stains out before he started talking again. “Fresh air, actual sunlight, and things to look at other than words on a page.”

“I do go outside,” you said wryly. “You act like I’m some hermit.”

He shrugged. “I only ever see you in class or at the library.”

“I’m just there most of the time,” you said with a slight laugh. “I’m not this smart by slacking off.”

Fiyero said your name with surprise. “Was that a joke?”

You laughed again. “Hardly.”

“I think it was,” he nodded. “You really are learning how to have fun.”

“I know how to have fun!” you exclaimed. “We just have different ideas of fun!”

“And what is your idea of fun?” Fiyero asked pointedly. “Studying? Attending class? Going through the intricacies of various languages?”

“That last one is very fun,” you defended.

“How did you decide on linguistics anyways?” he asked. “You’re incredibly passionate about something I didn’t even know was a major here.”

“It’s not, technically.” You shrugged. “I’m a history major. I just convinced Doctor Dillamond to let me be his teacher’s assistant so I could include more linguistics lessons in the syllabus.”

“How do you do it?” he asked. “Oz— why do you do it? You’re stressed all the time. Surely taking one less class or not being a TA wouldn’t kill you. All of this seems like it is.”

“I’m not like you, Fiyero,” you said. “I can’t get kicked out of a hundred schools and still be fine. I’ve got one chance, and if I squander it, then I’ve also squandered my dream. And that’s unacceptable to me.”

“There’s always second chances,” he said. “And third ones, too. Sometimes even fourth.”

“Maybe for a prince,” you laughed. “But not for somebody like me.”

“And just who are you?” Fiyero asked as he sat down next to you. “I know you’re Gillikinese and I know you’re probably going to succeed in whatever you attempt. But I still feel like I don’t know anything about who you are without the school uniform.”

“Why does that matter?” you asked defensively. “We’re project partners, not friends.”

“Because I’d very much like us to be friends,” he answered simply.

That might have been the most shocking thing he’d said all day. Fiyero Tigelaar, Winkie prince and self-declared slacker and desired paramour of nearly every Shiz student, said he wanted to be your friend.

Again, that warmth bloomed inside you. You tried to ignore it—tried to fully banish it.

“Don’t do this,” you said, looking away from him.

“Do what?”

“Act like you like me,” you said, stronger this time. “You— you do it with everyone, and that’s fine, but don’t do it with me.”

“I’m not following,” Fiyero said.

You glared at him. “I know you aren’t this daft.”

“Apologies,” he said. “I’m just trying to figure out how you figured I don’t genuinely like you.”

You blinked. “Because you’re you. You flirt with everybody so you can dance through life.”

“Of course,” Fiyero agreed. “It just so happens that I genuinely like you in addition.”

Your eyes narrowed. “Why?”

His laugh was nothing but shocked. “Are you asking me why I like you?”

“Well,” you glanced away with a huff, “when you put it like that it sounds ridiculous.”

“I’ll bite anyways,” Fiyero said. “I like you because you know what you want. You never really stop talking about it, honestly.”

“Are you trying to compliment me?”

“You’re intelligent and driven and you don’t shy away from anything you want,” he continued. “And you thoroughly vex me in near every encounter we have, most joyously.”

“…So you like me because I’m stubborn and confusing,” you said.

Fiyero sighed. “You‘ve got some serious self esteem issues.”

“I do not!” you exclaimed.

“You’ve tied your worth to your academic achievement,” he said. “You can’t see all the good you’ve already done, how smart you truly are, because you only stress about the next thing you need to do. You’d rather lose your mind over what’s to come than realize all you’ve got in the moment.”

Your mouth opened and closed for a good five seconds, like a fish out of water, before it snapped shut.

“I thought you were supposed to be brainless,” you settled on.

“I am,” Fiyero agreed with a chuckle. “But I also know people better than most, and our study sessions have given me ample time to study you.”

Great Oz, why was your face so hot? You felt like you were burning up from the inside out. Fiyero Tigelaar was killing you, and slowly at that.

“Why are you studying me?” you asked pointedly.

“Because you’re interesting,” he said. “And very beautiful.”

“Well, I’m— I’m glad we’ve finally reached a truce.” You tried to sound as casual as possible—you couldn’t let Fiyero know the full effect he was beginning to have on you. You didn’t think he would ever shut up about that, and Galinda certainly wouldn’t either. You didn’t want to make an enemy of her. “It’ll make this project much easier.”

“Yes,” Fiyero mused. “I believe it will.”

Amusement, and maybe something warmer, danced in his irises. A very small part of you wanted to let yourself fall, freely and uncaring, just as every other student did.

You had to lock that part of you away, never to be seen again. You didn’t like Fiyero. He was still a nuisance in every single sense of the word.

You swallowed, trying to cure your cottonmouth. Thankfully, he didn’t seem to notice.

You needed to finish this essay immediately.

You sighed when you heard a knock on your door. Coralie, for how smart she was, had a habit of forgetting her room key—so much so that you’d stopped bothering to lock the door on the days she went to class before you.

“It’s unlocked, Cora!” you called out. You didn’t want to get up from your desk, not when you were in the middle of writing. You were worried that you would lose the thread of inspiration you’d finally caught the moment you got out of your chair.

“You shouldn’t leave your door unlocked,” a familiar voice said. “All sorts of miscreants could get in.”

Your hand slipped in your shock, but you couldn’t even be annoyed about smearing the fresh ink on the page or getting it on your shirt cuffs because you had more important things to worry about. Namely, your surprise visitor.

“Fiyero?”

“Present,” he affirmed as he leaned against your doorframe. “You’ve got a nice place here.”

“Thank you,” you said. “What are you doing here?”

“Much less pink than Galinda’s,” he continued. “I think it’s the only color she owns, honestly. A bit absurd but—”

“What are you doing here?” you repeated.

“I should be asking you that question,” Fiyero said, eyes narrowing in on you. “I went to the library and you weren’t there.”

You cleared your throat. “I was giving you the day off.”

He frowned and stood up from the doorframe. “Who said I wanted the day off?”

“You,” you said. “When you didn’t show up to Doctor Dillamond’s class today.”

Fiyero brushed his hand through the air. “That’s different.”

You looked at him expectantly. “So you skipped the class this project is for, but you don’t want to skip the actual project.”

“That sounds about right, yes.”

“You don’t even do anything whenever we’re together,” you said. “You just stare at me and complain about doing work and ask me about my life and take an hour to write one page of notes.”

“That also sounds about right,” Fiyero said. “I enjoy your presence. Do you not enjoy mine?”

If only he knew the way he’d been making you feel for the past week. He could never know that he appeared in your dream last night.

“...Your presence is fine,” you said. “I just figured I would give you the day off, seeing as we only have one week left until it’s due.”

“How much have you written already without me?” he asked.

“Five pages, but that—”

“You’ve nearly done half of the project without me?” Fiyero interrupted.

“...Yes?” Why did you actually feel bad about this?

Fiyero got closer so he could look over your shoulder at your work, and you found yourself holding your breath at his proximity.

“Do you think you’re doing me a favor?”

“Clearly,” you said. “The sooner it’s done, the sooner it’s over, and the sooner you don’t have to deal with me anymore.” You shrugged. “You said you wanted to ride my coattails anyways, so I figured I would make it easier for you.”

“Just a few days ago you were chastising me for not doing my part,” Fiyero said. “Now you’re not even letting me try?”

“I—” the words stuck in your throat, and again you felt your face heat.

I don’t want to have to think about any of this more than I have to because I’m worried what I’ll realize.

I don’t want to give you any more chances to take me off course because I know I’ll say yes.

I don’t want to be around you longer than I have to because I think I’m starting to like you.

“Yes?”

“I am doing you a favor,” you finally decided. “You don’t have to worry about it. Go ride that horse of yours, or bother other students, or spend time with Galinda. You’ve earned it.”

“Hardly,” Fiyero said. “I’m doing my part, whether you like it or not. We’ll meet at the library tomorrow morning before class like we’ve been doing.”

“I have class at 8 in the morning tomorrow.”

“...Then we’ll do it after class,” he reneged. “I do need my beauty sleep.”

That got a smile out of you, which spurned one from Fiyero in turn. “I think that is one of the only genuine smiles you’ve given me since we started working together.”

“I smile plenty,” you insisted.

“At your books,” Fiyero said. “Not at me.”

“That’s because my books are oh-so-beautiful,” you said. “And they don’t even need beauty sleep.”

He placed his hand on his heart. “You wound me.”

Your smile grew and you set your pen down. “The library after class?”

Fiyero nodded and tapped on your desk as he stood up. “Library after class.”

He was about to go to the door when Coralie poked her head in. “Why is the door— oh! Fiyero!” She straightened up, plastering on a pretty smile as she stepped inside. “What brings you to our corner of Shiz?”

“Doctor Dillamond’s midterm,” he said. “Your roommate here is trying to save all of the fun for herself.”

“That sounds like her,” Cora nodded sagely. “You’re very good to try and keep her from that fate.”

Fiyero pressed his hand to his chest. “I consider it my duty. But I apologize for the intrusion—I’ll leave the two of you be.”

“Oh, stay as long as you want,” she spoke up. “I’m sure your partner wouldn’t mind.”

“He’s got things to do,” you interceded. “You’ve got things to do, Fiyero.”

He smiled knowingly. “I certainly do. You lovely ladies have a fine rest of your day.” He looked at you and said your name. “Don’t forget tomorrow.”

“How could I?” you said weakly.

Fiyero chuckled and bowed his head in lieu of more parting words. The second he left, Cora turned to you with wide eyes.

“Don’t,” you warned.

“He came here to talk to you!” she exclaimed. “He found out your room number because he wanted to talk to you!”

“Be quiet!” you exclaimed. “The door is still open—he can probably hear your screeching!”

Coralie shut the door and squealed. “He likes you!”

“We are project partners,” you enunciated. “Nothing more.”

“Oh, I’m sure that’s what you think,” she said. “Just like I’m sure that he wants to be more.”

“You’re acting like he isn’t with Galinda,” you said. “She controls this whole school—do you remember what happened to Elphaba when she didn’t like her?”

Cora shrugged. “Sure. But I’ve been hearing there’s trouble in paradise.”

That got you paying attention. “What?”

“I knew it!” Coralie exclaimed—nearly yelled, honestly. “I knew you liked him!”

“Be quiet!” you whisper-yelled. “Oz, what is wrong with you?”

“I knew you liked him!” she repeated. “And he likes you— oh, it is too perfect!”

“He does not like me,” you insisted, “and you are crazy.”

“You didn’t say that you didn’t like him,” Coralie sung, and you screwed your eyes shut.

“Fine!” you finally said. “Fine— I like him. Will you stop now?”

“Of course not,” she said, and you sighed. “How bad do you have it?”

“I don’t have it bad,” you scoffed. “I just— I enjoy spending time with him. And I think he’s kind of cute.”

“Oh, you are full on head over heels,” she mused. “You just don’t know it. It’s okay.”

You groaned as you buried your head in your hands. “I hate you.”

She laughed. “And you like Fiyero.”

“Shut up.” Your words were muffled, but you meant them all the same.

You were comically doomed.

The next day went… shockingly smooth.

Fiyero was in the library when he said he’d be—he was even there before you, much to your surprise and he still had the notebook and pen you’d given him, much to his surprise. He made sure to bring an extra canteen of water for you, because he noticed you never had any with you. You were probably concerningly dehydrated.

He tried to be a more attentive student to you than he’d ever been at any of his classes—not that that was difficult. You explained your outline and all the work you’d already done, what he could do on the last five pages and how to make his writing voice match yours to make a consistent paper.

He wrote notes both on what you knew about Ilara Mayfair (a ridiculous amount, in his opinion) and anything else you thought he needed to know (also a ridiculous amount).

He was impressed most of all, though. No wonder you’d isolated yourself from near the entire student body and stressed over every letter in every sentence in every assignment. You were incredibly intelligent, but you were also able to explain everything in a way that even he understood. Fiyero had never really cared about… well, anything relating to school before he ended up partners with you.

But now, Fiyero found himself surprisingly entranced by it all. He’d always liked your voice, and he had a permanent smile on his lips watching you talk so easily about your passions. It put a spark in your eye and a brightness about you that was usually bogged down by everything else that you stressed about.

You were beautiful, especially when you were happy. And Fiyero had discovered over the past week that you were happiest when you got to talk about what you cared about to an interested audience. He only regretted acting like he wasn’t interested for so long.

Finally, when Fiyero called a break on account of his hands aching (he’d never written this much in his life, and it still was only half of what you did basically every day), and you were eating an apple (that he also brought, because you really didn’t take care of yourself when you were doing work, which was always), he smiled at you.

“You know, we really do make a good team,” Fiyero said.

You swallowed the bite of apple you had in your mouth and cocked your head as you looked at him. “You think?”

“I know,” he nodded. “You’ve done the impossible, darling. You’ve actually made me care about school.”

“Well, I think you’ve done the impossible too.” You lifted the apple up. “You made me care about my health during midterms season.”

“It certainly wasn’t easy,” he said wryly. “You kind of took it all kicking and screaming.”

You shrugged. “I’m not top of our class for nothing.”

“Do you have to stress yourself into misery to be top of the class?” he asked.

“I’m not miserable,” you retorted.

It was when you said things like that that Fiyero really began to worry about you. It was part of the reason he was so intent on staying by your side through this whole project—no matter how dull he found the material—after the first session. He sometimes saw you around campus, usually carrying a stack of books or talking with your roommate.

After Fiyero was paired with you, he wondered why he didn’t see you more before it all, considering how active you were with literally everything school-wise. Then he realized you were likely always in the library, and the only time he’d visited the library was on Galinda’s tour. You were there, well enough, but you took your leave as soon as things started getting rowdy.

A shame, he realized. He wondered what your relationship could have been had Galinda not staked her claim on him so soon.

You weren’t going to take care of yourself, clearly enough, so Fiyero decided—at least for the duration of this project—that he would. It didn’t really matter if you were top of the class if you passed out from stress, exhaustion, annoyance, or a mix of all three. Likely a mix of all three.

He didn’t really anticipate those feelings morphing into genuine affection.

“I seem to recall you saying you dream of your future assignments,” Fiyero said, coming out of his thoughts. “That doesn’t sound like the habit of a happy person.”

“Oh, please,” you scoffed. “Everybody has stress dreams.”

“You know, I really don’t think they do,” Fiyero said.

You rolled your eyes as you picked your pen up with your free hand and jotted down a few more sentences. “Sure.”

“On that note,” he said, “why don’t we call it a day?”

“We can’t call it a day,” you said. You took another bite from your apple and swallowed, continuing to write all the while without looking at him. “We’re not finished yet.”

“That is the most casually you’ve said that so far,” Fiyero mused. “I really am making progress.”

You laughed, finally paying him mind. “Progress with what?”

“I’ve been tracking your smiles and laughs this whole time,” he said. “See, this essay was your project, but that was mine—trying to make you enjoy your life.”

“This essay is both of our projects, Fiyero,” you said. “Besides, I don’t think Doctor Dillamond will accept your bar graph of all the times I laughed at you making a fool of yourself.” You frowned. “Or would it be a line graph because it’s over time? Or maybe it could be—”

“Alright,” he interrupted. “You’re going into hypotheticals on my joke. That’s clearly the sign that we need to call it a day.”

“…Fine,” you reneged. “But it’s just a break, not calling it a day. And I get to finish proofreading the rest of the essay when we get back.”

“A compromise,” Fiyero said. “Love it.”

You rolled your eyes as you started gathering your things. “You love everything.”

“Eh,” he tilted his head, and you felt his eyes on you. “Most things.”

You couldn’t help your smile, much as you tried to bite it back. “Whatever.”

Soon enough, you and Fiyero were sitting together by the dock. You let your legs dangle over as you watched the scenery around campus—the ripple of the water, the gentle brush of the wind, the chirping birds that flew around without a care.

“Isn’t this nice?” Fiyero asked. He also had his legs over the edge, but he’d laid down against the stone.

“You don’t have to push your relaxation propaganda so hard anymore,” you said wryly. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

“And I’m grateful for it,” he said. “Someone that works as hard as you do deserves to relax the same amount.”

“We’ve gone over this a thousand times—”

“I know,” he interrupted. He turned his head to smile at you. “I just have to hope that some of it sticks.”

You rolled your eyes, once again unable to hide your smile. “And I have to hope for the same with this paper. Do you think you’ll remember any of this once we turn it in?”

“Oh, but of course. You were the one to teach it to me, after all. I could hardly forget it all.”

“Good,” you said. “Everyone should know about Ilara Mayfair.”

Fiyero chuckled, and you once again fell into comfortable silence.

That was the thing that shocked you the most, you think. Not that you were beginning to like Fiyero, or that you actually liked Fiyero, or that you actually looked forward to spending time with him. It was that you were so comfortable just sitting with him in silence.

It was very difficult to get to the silence, though. Fiyero couldn’t really stay quiet, and you didn’t know if he liked talking or the sound of his own voice. But you found it didn’t really annoy you like it used to.

Great Oz. You really were into him. How embarrassing.

Eventually, when the strain in your wrists and fingers from writing had finally faded, you turned your head to look at Fiyero. “I think it’s time we go back.”

He sighed. “Already?”

“It’s been fifteen minutes,” you said. “Far longer than the breaks I usually take.”

He opened his mouth, likely to say something of the same ‘you need to relax’ ilk, but you held up your hand. “Don’t. Just be thankful you got me away for this long.”

Fiyero smiled, and he pulled himself up off the ground. “I always am.”

He held his hand out, and you stared at him for a moment. “Why do you always do that?”

“Help you up?”

You nodded. “I can do it myself.”

He shrugged. “I told you it was my project to make your life easier.”

“You said it was your project to track my happiness,” you said.

“And they go hand in hand,” he said. “I’m surprised you remember.”

“It happened thirty minutes ago, Fiyero,” you said wryly. “Besides, I remember everything. It’s a gift.”

Fiyero laughed, and you finally took his hand. He pulled you up and once again, you tumbled a bit too close—and again, his hand fell to your waist. He had to be doing this on purpose by now.

“We keep finding ourselves in this position,” Fiyero mused.

Heat flooded your cheeks like usual. “And whose fault is that?”

“Well,” he said, tilting his head, “you’re not exactly pulling away.”

Your mouth opened, trying to think of what words to say when your head was reeling from his mere presence. But then you saw a flash of pink in the background, and your eyes darted away from Fiyero.

Galinda. She was distracted, talking with Pfannee and Shenshen as she went down the stairs. Oz, how did she slip your mind so easily whenever Fiyero was in your proximity? Why did you let him get this close when he was spoken for?

You panicked—nothing less. You tore out of Fiyero’s grasp with a bit too much gumption, and then you stumbled, then you slipped, and then you fell. Fiyero called your name in shock, reaching his hand out, but it was too late. You’d plunged into the water before you could save yourself.

The cold water instantly shocked all your senses, your eyes widening as you gasped out on instinct. Your mouth filled with water and your muscles seized up from the change in temperature—it was so much deeper than you’d imagined, and all your layers of clothing weighing you down were of no use.

You tried your damnedest to ignore the alarm bells going off in your head as you fought against yourself, finally gathering the sense to swim. You kicked your way up to the top, gasping for air once when you breached the surface.

You heard Fiyero yell your name again and you blinked rapidly, trying to clear the water from your eyes. When everything finally came into focus, you saw him on his knees, his coat shed and his sleeves rolled up.

His eyes were wide as he reached his hand out, once again saying your name—this time with a certain desperation. “Are you alright?”

You tried to respond but all you could do was cough, trying to expel the water from your lungs. You took his hand and he helped pull you up onto the dock, where an exhale shuddered out of you.

“I— I am so sorry,” he stammered. It was the first time you’d ever seen him flustered, and you were too busy hacking up a lung to point it out. “Obviously I didn’t think—”

You held up your hand in lieu of saying something, as you didn’t think you could say something.

This was so stupid, and it was something that never would have happened before you and Fiyero started working together. Your paper was due in two days, you’d only just finished the draft, you still had so much proofreading and rewriting to do, and instead, you were here on the docks soaked to the bone.

And you found yourself laughing.

“Oh, Oz,” Fiyero said. “You’ve lost it.”

You couldn’t refute it, because you kept laughing. You could feel the eyes of your classmates on you, could hear them whispering to each other—likely making fun of you—and it only made you laugh harder.

“Are—” Fiyero chuckled nervously as he said your name, “are you okay?”

“I’m soaked,” you got out through your laughs. “And everyone saw me fall into the water. I’m a fool, Fiyero!”

He was still staring at you in that careful way, as if you were made of glass. “I can’t tell if you’re mad or not.”

“Oh, Fiyero.” You wiped the trailing water off of your face and wrapped your arms around him. You felt him freeze beneath you for the slightest moment—it had to have been the last thing he expected you to do. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” Fiyero returned the hug, his movements still unsure. He didn’t seem to care that you were getting him wet, just about your wellbeing. “What— what for, exactly?”

For a moment, you couldn’t look away. His blue eyes were meant to enrapture, his soft lips typically an invitation sealed with a smirk. But for once, Fiyero looked genuine—he wasn’t putting on a performance, or trying to seduce anyone who looked at him. He was genuinely sorry, genuinely confused. It only made you laugh again.

“What for, indeed.” A higher voice pierced through the air, and you separated from Fiyero immediately. Galinda, to no surprise, had found her way over to the chaos you’d created, her compatriots flanking her on either side. She smiled at you brightly, but her whole demeanor was like a violin string pulled taut.

“Galinda,” Fiyero said. “Lovely to see you.” He didn’t seem half as shocked as you at her appearance, but his words fell flat.

“And you as well, dearest.” Her smile turned sickly sweet as she shifted her attention to Fiyero momentarily, taking the opportunity to lace her fingers with his and pull him into a kiss. He pulled away first, but if it affected Galinda, she didn’t let it show when she looked back at you. She batted her eyelashes as she said your name incorrectly. “What was it you were saying?”

The sudden combination of cottonmouth and sour guilt creeping up your throat didn’t really help your already flustered state. She knew what she was doing—but you did too, didn’t you?

She was with Fiyero. You knew that. And though Fiyero danced across the line, you took his hand every time he offered.

“I—” you cleared your throat, attempting a casual smile of your own. “Just that I know why Doctor Dillamond put us together.”

“Excellent,” Fiyero said. “Off-topic, but excellent— are you sure you didn’t hit your head down there?”

“Perhaps you should go to the nurse,” Galinda said. “I’m sure Shenshen could—”

“I’ll be fine,” you interrupted, your smile tightening ever so slightly. You looked at Fiyero. “Meet me at the library tonight, and bring coffee. We’re finishing this project tonight.

“Of course,” he nodded.

You nodded as well, and you started to go. Galinda’s gaze was sugary sweet poison, and you couldn’t take the weight of it anymore.

“Wait,” Fiyero spoke up.

You stopped against your better judgment, and he let go of Galinda’s hand to take his jacket off. He moved closer to you and wrapped it around you. His touch, light but certain, lingered on your shoulders once he’d finished adjusting it, and his gaze stayed on yours

“Until you can change,” he said.

“...Thank you,” you said.

Galinda cleared her throat extremely loudly, her taut smile back. You remembered yourself and stepped away from Fiyero.

“I’ll see you tonight,” you said, already starting on your way. You wouldn’t let him stop you again.

“Tonight,” he agreed, bowing his head in parting.

You only glanced back once you were by the stairs. When you did, you saw Galinda speaking rapidly to Fiyero—you were too far away to hear anything, but she didn’t look happy. When your gaze drifted to him, you found he was already looking at you. Almost subconsciously, you tugged his jacket tighter around you. When you realized what you were doing, you stopped. You averted your eyes immediately and hurried up the stairs.

You weren’t out of breath from exertion.

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huntingingoodwill · 13 days ago

Text

civil. (j.m.)

masterlist

desc: you can’t stand joel miller, and he can’t stand you.

pairing: enemies to lovers! joel miller x gn! reader

a/n: this is my gift for the pedrostories secret santa 2024 event!!! i had so much fun writing this for my giftee, @adora-but-ginger. thanks so much for introducing me to the absolute bop which is never let me down by depeche mode which inspired this lil fic. i really hope you enjoy it babes <3 happy holidays!

“You’re an idiot. A big, hulking idiot.”

“You think I’m big and hulking?”

You could hear the smirk in Joel’s voice, which made equal parts of anger and embarrassment flare up inside of you. You could admit he was… well-built. Sickeningly, disgustingly so. And right now, you wanted to snap his well-built body in two.

“I’m going to kill you.”

“I’d like to see you try, but we’re a little tied up at the moment,” his tone was sardonic, his meaning literal - the two of you were in the bed of some raiders’ truck, tied up and blindfolded, being driven to who-knows-where. It was probably for the best, as the restraints around your wrists were the only things stopping you two from choking each other out.

“And whose fault is that?” you hissed.

“I’m glad you asked. Yours.”

“Mine?!” you exclaimed, the anger pulsing through you growing stronger by the minute. “I told you we should avoid the cabin and you still dragged us right into this mess.”

Joel had insisted the abandoned cabin would be a safe place to rest. The raiders had the same idea, and were quick to pounce on the both of you after coming across your horses outside. They had ambushed the two of you, deciding to bring you back to their camp to figure out what to do with you later - probably nothing too pleasant. They had left your horses behind, and you had overheard them saying they’d come back for them later.

“Maybe if you didn’t fall asleep when you were supposed to be on lookout, we wouldn’t be here right now,” Joel muttered.

You sighed, a dull knot of ache forming behind your eyes. It was true. You had fucked up. But he had fucked up too. If it were anybody else with you, the two of you may have been able to admit that, kiss and make up. But you and Joel never got along. You bickered and fought on every patrol you were forced on together, and this was your last straw. You were livid, and he was too.

“We wouldn’t have been there in the first place if you didn’t-“

“Enough with the goddamn lover’s quarrel!” one of the raiders yelled out from the cab.

That shut you and Joel up sufficiently, but that word tinged the silence with a shy awkwardness.

“Lover’s quarrel,” Joel scoffed.

“Yeah. ‘Lovers’,” you mimic his veneer of nonchalance, poorly veiling the flustered tone in both your voices, “in your dreams.”

“In yours,” he shot back, immediately rolling his eyes at himself.

He was too old for this shit. Everytime he was around you, he acted like a petty teenager. You just ignited a flame within him, one that he mistook for the bitter burn of loathing, not knowing it was something else entirely.

“So, how are we getting out of this one?” you whispered.

“Why are you asking me? I thought I was an idiot?”

“I wish you could see the look I’m giving you right now, Miller.”

He lowered his voice to a whisper, unheard by the raiders up front over the rumble of the engine.

“Admit I’m not an idiot, and I’ll get us out of here.”

“Oh, come on-“ you started, gritting your teeth with exasperation.

“Or, you can always spend the rest of the day with our new friends here.”

“...You’re not an idiot.”

“And, who’s in charge?”

“Oh, fuck y-”

“I can always let you hitch a ride with these guys and see how you fare on your own,” his voice took on an annoyingly laissez-faire quality. You hated him.

“You’re in charge,” you assented.

“Correct. I hid my knife in my pocket. They missed it when they took away our weapons.”

Maybe you didn’t hate him.

“Maybe you’re not as big of an idiot as I thought,” you smiled.

“Flattery will get you nowhere. Get it out of my pocket, then cut my ropes. Then I’ll cut yours.”

You shimmied close to him, trying to ignore how the proximity made the heat rise in your collar. You tried to convince yourself it’s a physical reaction to your hatred for him. Like an allergy.

You managed to slide the knife out, only almost stabbing him in the ass once on a bumpy stretch of road.

“Hands!” He had grit through his teeth.

“Please, there’s nothing back there to cut. You’re as flat as a board,” you had whispered, immediately blushing and following your words up with a quick: “Not that I’ve been looking or anything.” (You had looked. A couple times. But you’d die before telling him that.)

Unable to see, you fumbled around a little, careful not to cut him as you sliced through the ropes binding his wrists together. Once free, he lifted his blindfold with careful, quick movements, sure to not let the men in the cab see him, before cutting off the remaining ropes keeping his legs tied together then doing the same for you.

With the ropes loosened in heaps around your wrists and ankles, you whispered: “What now?”

His voice was determined, but grim. “We pray.”

“I gotta take a leak.” One of the raiders mumbled a mere 5 minutes later, after you both had replaced your blindfolds and were acting like two good kidnapees in the back of the truck, in hopes that the men wouldn’t look too closely at the both of you and discover you had freed yourselves.

“Let’s hope our prayers have been answered. Do you trust me?” Joel asked.

“No.”

“You’re gonna have to. 3…2…1.”

The two of you ripped off your blindfolds.

The scuffle was over in a few minutes. Joel’s chest heaved from the exertion of the fight as he cleaned the bloody knife off on his shirt. He had subdued one of the men pretty quickly, which gave you enough time to grab your gun from the cab and deal with the other.

He had done a pretty good job, you had to admit, with hiding his knife and handling the raiders. Without him, you would have been royally fucked. You felt a twinge of gratefulness, and a pang of something else as you watched him, the slope of his nose and hardness of his jaw as he wicked the sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand. He had saved you.

Then, you looked down at the two dead raiders, and what glimmer of heroism that you saw in Joel’s figure distorted into frustration.

You aimed your gun at Joel.

“Jesus Christ! What is wrong with you?!” he yelled, the bullet whizzing past his head.

“Cool it, Texas,” you huffed, “Now, hold still this time.” You aimed again.

“I just saved your ass, and you try to shoot me because of it?!”

“I told you we shouldn’t have gone to the cabin-”

“Look who’s talking, sleepyhead!”

You started to walk.

“Where d’you think you’re going?” he called after you, his voice already receding into the distance.

“Jackson. Back to the village of which you are the idiot of!” you screamed over your shoulder.

“A bit of a convoluted way to put it, darlin’.”

You refused to dignify that with an answer.

You had only made it a few metres down the road when you heard the roar of the raiders’ truck, and the heat of the thrumming engine as it pulled up beside you.

You stared straight ahead, feeling Joel’s gaze rove over you from the driver’s window as he cruised alongside you.

“Get in,” Joel called out to you.

“No.”

“D’you know where you’re going? ‘Cause I sure as hell don’t.”

“I do. I think. I tried to memorise the turns they took while we were tied up.”

“Well, you aren’t getting back to Jackson anytime soon on foot.”

You ignored him, marching forward. The next few moments were clouded in silence as you stormed down the road, Joel driving slowly beside you all this while.

“C’mon, get in. Please?” Joel’s voice was startlingly soft, a flash of vulnerability that you hadn’t expected that stopped you in your tracks. He said his words slowly, like it was difficult for him to articulate. It definitely wasn’t easy for someone as stubborn as him to seek help from you. “I can’t leave you out here alone, and I need your help to navigate.”

You turned to look at him, not expecting to find the sincerity scrawled over his face. It softened you. But you liked to make him suffer.

“Who’s in charge?” you said.

“Oh, c’mon…”

“Miller. Answer me. Who is in charge?”

“You are. Now get in.”

You smiled in satisfaction, clambering into the passenger seat.

“You’re in charge of navigation, I’m in charge of driving,” he mumbled beneath his breath.

You chuckled at his comment. Suddenly his snarkiness, though annoying, seemed like a harmless dig after the events of the day. That laugh was utter release, a reprieve from the loathing for him that had been boiling your blood all day.

Peeking over at you, you watched his confused face turn into one that mirrored yours. One of cathartic happiness. He let out a laugh, unable to help it. You had never noticed his laugh, his smile. Like a silver lining. You liked it.

The rest of the drive passed in relative silence, save for your directions, though the air between you was different. Still electric in its energy, but not because of anger, or frustration. It was strangely warm.

The sun had begun to dip beneath the horizon, and with a satisfying click, he flicked on the headlights, making a turn. The lights illuminated the cabin and your horses. Your heart soared.

“Well, shit. You did it,” he whispered.

You couldn’t help but let out a laugh, and more laughter bubbled from his lips. Laughing with Joel seemed so foreign after spending every patrol together arguing or in heated silence. It was pleasant.

From here, the two of you would be able to find your way back to Jackson, no question. The two of you mounted your horses and started your way back. He turned to watch you, the delicate turn of your head as you gazed up at the vast sky, drinking it all in. He felt that same pang he always felt around you, what he always thought was annoyance. It hit him with that same ferocity, but it was charged with a different energy. It felt kind of nice.

You turned to lock eyes with him.

“I’m sorry,” the both of you said in unison.

You both dissolved into laughter.

“Well, I’ll go first,” Joel chuckled, “I’m sorry. I really am. I should have listened to you-”

“No, I’m sorry!” you said. “If it wasn’t for me falling asleep… and I guess trying to shoot you wasn’t very nice.”

“Wasn’t polite, was it?” he snorted, his smile reflecting your sheepish one. “Still, I fucked up. And the way you helped us find our way back… you saved our asses.”

“I fucked up too. And if anyone saved us it was you. There was no way we would have gotten out of there without you thinking ahead and hiding the knife.”

“I guess we make a pretty alright team, huh?” he said, the smile he shot you so hopeful and sweet you felt that hot, molten feeling in your gut again, though it definitely was not hate.

“Yeah, we do,” you sighed. “I guess if your brother’s gonna keep insisting on putting us on patrol together, we could at least be civil to each other. I think we work together better that way. Deal?”

“Deal,” he said. “You still drive me a little crazy though.”

“Ditto,” you smiled at him, and the smile he flashed back made you feel strange and floaty, a similar sort of light-headedness from when you used to get so mad at him on patrols you wanted to scream. You were starting to realise that feeling may have been motivated by a different emotion entirely. He was definitely driving you a little crazy.

“Where the hell were you guys? You missed the bonfire,” Tommy called out to Joel as the both of you arrived at the centre of Jackson, a dying bonfire crackling behind him.

“That’s the least of our problems,” Joel huffed, dismounting from his horse as you followed suit, thrusting the reins into his brother’s hands. “You deal with that.”

Tommy shrugged, leading the horses back to the stable.

The two of you stood side by side, staring into what little was left of the bonfire, now a flame that licked up to around Joel’s knee-height. The crowd that was surrounding it earlier that night had fully dispersed, leaving just you and Joel alone before the fire. He turned to look at you, the fire glazing your eyes with orange and red hues, setting your gaze alight.

“I have an idea,” you said. Your smile meant trouble. “Let’s jump over it.”

“What?” Joel asked, eyebrows shooting up incredulously.

“I read it somewhere. It’s an old tradition, supposed to bring about good luck and new beginnings,” you smile at him, a smile that instantly wins him over. “We need all the luck we can get. C’mon Miller, indulge me. Be civil.”

His laugh was hesitant, but when you reached for his hand he knew he could do it.

“Do you trust me?” you grinned.

“Yes.”

“Well, you’re gonna have to. 3…2…1!”

There was a moment there, with his hand in yours, at the very top of where the flames swirled, where it felt like the two of you were flying, suspended against the dark sky.

Then, you hit the ground.

You were lying beside each other in the dirt, panting in between gasps of laughter, the cuffs of your pants and the soles of your shoes singed. That electric warmth fired through the air, boiling your blood - definitely not anger. Something else. Passion and anger possess that same fiery quality.

It burned so brightly within the both of you that he couldn’t help it. He leaned over to kiss you. The fire was warm by your side, the sky dark and electric above you as a storm gathered. The two of you were definitely going to be more than civil.

#pedrostoriesgift24 #pedrostories #joel miller imagine #joel miller x reader #joel tlou #joel x reader #joel miller #pedro pascal x you #pedro x reader #pedro pascal fanfic #pedro pascal imagine #pedro pascal x reader #the last of us fluff #the last of us

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kneelingshadowsalome · 2 years ago

Note

Hi !!!! I’m sorry if this is bothering you and if so you can totally ignore this but…

I’ve been thinking about how Ghost would react to reader gradually pulling away from him because she gained some weight and is self conscious and ashamed and doesn’t want to be seen by him, so sculpted and beautiful… but of course he’s feeling low because he wants to be close to reader and so he asks and she finally explains it to him (ready to be broken up with…)…. And I’d love to read your take on it !

You can make it female or gender neauteal I don’t really care !!!! Thank you anyway ❤️❤️❤️❤️

Wildflowers Grow in Ruins

(Ghost x F!Reader, word count: 5 k)

Summary: Reader tries to break up with Ghost because she thinks she's not good enough for him.

Tags/warnings: FLUFF, soft sensual smut 🔞, hurt/comfort, light angst, Jealous!Ghost, Soft!Ghost, self-loathing & self-body shaming. Good girl talk/praise kink. Reader is female and wears a skirt for smut plot purposes.

A/N: I hope you like this take & I hope you don't mind that I tweaked this request just a little bit!) Also: JFC I'm wordy. The "I need to explain why they're fucking!" meme comes to mind every time I write anything.

Wars are exhausting.

You know fighting for something can empower people. Fighting against something usually just depletes your strength.

But waging a war against yourself…

Now that is pure hell.

It started somewhere in your youth. You thought adulthood would take it away; that reason and tolerance would take it away. You were supposed to feel more confident in yourself, more positive about life. And for a moment, you thought you might just succeed.

But standing beside a god of war is no easy feat.

He came into your life like a walking myth, swept you away, and you only laughed as you went. It was fun at first. He was supposed to be your savior, the solution to all your problems. If a man like him found you attractive, perhaps it was the world that was crooked and not you.

But then you got soft: you started to gain pounds. Meanwhile, he became even more magnificent. It reminded you that it had all been just a dream.

Perhaps it was his eyes that seemed to worship you, that seemed to look past your every flaw. Perhaps it was the hands which never seemed to get enough of your skin. Whatever it was, it was too much. And at the same time, never enough.

The day has finally come to let him go.

You think yourself heroic. It's like it should be: it's only right that you finally release him to someone better than you.

But inside, the noble feelings twist and turn and curl around your throat and stuff your stomach full of ice - the kind they fill glasses of mojito with. The drink you'll always remember him by because he teased you about it: that you wanted an ice-cold summer drink even in the middle of winter.

Now you feel cold all over, and wish he could warm you like he used to.

You would forsake all the mojitos of the world to keep him. You would renounce the whole drink if it came to that; if you could make him yours.

But he's not yours. He never was: he was just on loan to give you a taste of what it would be like to have a man like him. That taste should be more than enough for a lifetime. You should feel grateful.

So why is it so hard to let go?

The key on the front door turns, and your heart shoots up your throat: you're supposed to settle this thing once and for all. You're supposed to let go of him today.

And still, when he arrives, you can't find the courage to say what you need to say. The words are stuck in your throat, but tears are not. He should already be a memory, but you find yourself suffocating on memories as you cry. You've learned to do even that in silence, like the rest of your suffering.

You take a few deep breaths, wipe the tears away, shove the rest of them down your throat – you save them for later, later, when he's far away and you can finally curl up and cry your heart out without no one there to look. Fucking later.

Good.

Great.

You put your heaviest armor on. It protects weak and soft flesh because you can't meet him all bare. Then you step forward with the knowledge that you’re a thoroughly wounded guerrilla while he is a seasoned, well-rested veteran. The fight is nowhere near even, but it's ok. You are not meant to be in the presence of immortals anyway.

The man looks at you warily as you finally enter the room. That haunted look has followed you for some time now as the distance between you has grown.

It should be easy, what is about to come, because he hasn't touched you in weeks. You haven't wanted him to.

Or you have… But it's not easy to have his hands on you when your body is only a vessel you hate. How can you even think about pleasure when all you think about is how it must feel for him to caress something as awful as this?

The man is a vision, and he settles for a peasant. It should be against the law, but it's not… so you figured a some time ago that you should simply find the strength and grace to do ii: do what's right.

"I need to talk to you."

Your voice comes out neutral, and it makes you more confident, if only for a second or two.

He lifts his chin: already knows what's coming, because he's not stupid. You've been shutting down for weeks, and he hasn't done much about it. But when the thunder rolls in, he doesn't flee. Probably because he fears nothing.

"Go ahead then," he says, equally as neutral, equally as icy. Got his armor on, too.

This should be easy…

It's really not, so you decide to rip the band-aid off in one yank.

"I think we should go separate ways."

The following inhale from across the room pierces the air like a bullet. You can hear his breaths gain depth and speed all the way to where you're standing.

"Ok."

It doesn't look or sound like he's ok. If anything, he looks like he's trying to process the sudden storm.

"Ok…" His eyes are on the floor as he rubs the back of his neck. Then he starts to pace around the little kitchenette you've shared for almost six months, just before you started gaining weight.

He stops to look out the window, then turns to you, and the hurt in his stare comes through like a thousand needles pushing through skin.

"Is it because of my work?"

"No."

"What is it then?"

Your breaths are getting out of hand, too. He looks like a lost, tired creature in an abandoned animal shelter for a moment, and it breaks your heart. It squeezes the organ inside a flaming fist until it shatters like it has never been nothing more than ice.

Your lip starts to tremble, and he notices, as per usual. Nothing escapes this man, except perhaps the true reason for your anguish.

"Hey. Hey."

He comes to you and hugs you like it's the only thing that matters: to comfort you when he sees you're about to cry, no matter how crushed he's feeling himself. The sudden warmth, the intimacy after weeks and weeks of pain is knee-buckling.

"Is there anything I can do to change your mind?"

His voice is soft, so soft… The tears rush forth now; there's no way of stopping them. What the hell can you even say to a question like that? That you wish he could grab a magic wand and turn you into someone gorgeous, the woman he deserves?

His embrace feels good, kind of. It also feels smothering because your self-hate makes you want to disappear from existence entirely. His eyes are equal to physical touch, a probing scan that sees every little flaw, not to talk about massive faults, the ones which make you feel like you're simply disgusting. His touch only reminds you how you must feel like to him: soft, too soft, weak.

And he must hate weakness.

"What do you need me to do? I'll do anything," he tries with a parched throat, then swallows.

It's fucking horrible. This isn't going at all like you had imagined.

"It's not about you," you struggle out of his hold, and he lets you go with reluctance. You have to basically fight your way out of a bone and steel prison. Why would he even want to hold a pathetic woman who's on the brink of ugly crying on top of everything?

"What do you mean?"

He's slightly breathless – and restless as fuck. He's usually so calm; nothing can get to him, nothing can rattle the tower of raw strength. Now you've not only pierced some invisible armor; you can hear pieces of it falling on the floor.

"Have you found someone else?"

What the…

"No." You put as much weight on that word as you possibly can. To imagine that he thinks you are cheating… Fucking cheating on someone like him. "Jesus Christ…"

He takes a deep breath and sighs deeply, sighs out relief, perhaps. Then his razor-sharp stare fixes on you again, and you can see the fear turning into something akin to concern. You suspect you have to tell him the truth, otherwise he will dig it out of you.

"I'm just…"

Jesus, this is just humiliating.

"I'm just not your type."

"What the hell are you talking about," he mutters, the impending fury giving way to momentary surprise.

He gets intense sometimes. This time, the ferocity is born of barely concealed distress. He's broad and magnificent, even in despair. He’s just so fucking fine… The perfect man, someone you had never even imagined yourself with. Pulled down to the world of puny mortals, evidently stressing about losing one.

Losing you.

"If you have someone new, you can just bloody well tell me."

"It's not that. You don't understand–"

"Try me."

"I just…" A tear escapes down your face as you finally break for him. "I'm fat. Okay? And ugly. And–"

"Stop right there."

The look on his face is just… It's priceless, you suppose.

"Bloody fucking hell…"

He looks at the floor, then runs his fingers through the short cut hair on top of his head. You've yanked those blonde strands more times than you can count, nearly every time he's been between your legs, and you miss it – you long for it, like fallen angels long for heaven.

And if there was a time this man was rendered speechless, you would say you were witnessing that moment right now. His brows knit together, then he looks up at you again with blaring disbelief.

"You're serious?"

"Yes."

"This is the reason you wanna break up?"

Ugh.

"Yes?"

His voice grows rougher with every question until it resembles thunder, and you suspect this is the commanding tone his soldiers are used to hearing.

But you're not: it's gravelly, harsh, and betrays the feeling of having been insulted. You feel even more devastated with yourself – it appears you can do nothing right.

"Where has this… idea even come to your head?"

"I don't know."

"And you never thought to ask my opinion?"

"Would you please stop yelling," you whisper and blink back some putrid tears. His mouth is snapped shut, his head pulls back just a little as he realizes what he's done.

"Sorry," he says with a half-whisper, and you catch the strain in his throat. You've never seen him cry, but now his voice is suddenly thin and frail. "I'm sorry."

He takes a step, then another, places fingertips on the counter as if to take the faintest support.

"Can I touch you?"

You don't really want him to do that, but you feel pity for the man. He's trying to find a way through this mess, and you want to help him.

"Yes," you whisper, and he immediately comes and takes you in his arms again. Hot tears disappear into his shirt, and you sniff a few times. He feels so good, so safe, even when you're about to lose him. His hold tightens around you, and the kitchen is silent; the whole world is silent. You don't know if you're being put to a grave or if you're in a deaf womb, waiting to be reborn.

"Now I don't know who's said this shite to you but ugly is the last fucking thing I'd call you," he declares above you. As if it was some bully whose fault it is that you were this way, a bully he could deal with with his fists or a gun. If only things were that easy…

"Have I said or done something? To make you feel this way?"

Then the blade is turned against himself. The man desperately searches for a culprit so he can deal with them.

"No," is the only thing you can say because it's true: he has never done a thing to make you feel like you weren't good enough; quite the contrary. But then again, he doesn't have to. It's enough that he exists and resembles a god.

"Then why do you think you're not my type?"

"Because you're so perfect," you hear yourself wail, no, cry into that shirt that smells of sweet safety and familiar musk – his scent, another thing you have missed like it's the only way to heaven.

"That for sure ain't true."

"But it is."

He seems to have the utmost difficulty in grasping what the issue here is. You can almost hear the wheels turning in his head with a rusty, laborious creak.

"Can't believe you wanna break up because of this," he finally says. You've chipped his pride, the ego that lives off of pleasing the ones he loves: the few chosen ones who he wants to give his whole life to.

"To me, you're perfect," he then says, and you simply… You stop breathing. "You're like… my dream woman. Ever thought about that?"

It can't be true, even if you vehemently, desperately want it to be. You reach out to his words like they're precious food after years of famine. Like they're sun and spring rain after being buried in the cold, dark soil whole winter.

"No…?"

"Never occurred to you that I might find you fucking beautiful?"

"Stop," you whisper, because it's too much to take in. He sounds so serious, so sincere.

"No, I don't think I will."

He pulls back a little and cups your face. Brushes away a tear, looks at you with so much love that it physically hurts; you feel like it's a lance that slowly drives through your heart.

"How about I kiss every part I love about you?"

You let out a soft little whimper. Fuck, that you want him to…

It would also be uncomfortable as hell. To try and let him love you and your body, which you have grown to loathe.

"It's gonna take all night, though. Wanna be as thorough as possible."

"Simon–"

"Love. I want you. Thought I'd made it pretty clear, but apparently I haven't. If you only knew how much–"

He sighs deeply. The man is frustrated with his shortcomings, thinks that this is all his fault. You cry a tear or two just for the sake of how absurd it all is.

"I don't want you to go. I fucking love you. Everything about you."

For the second time this afternoon, your lower lip starts to tremble as if this was some stupid, romantic movie. He can be so soft when he wants to, more romantic than the soft-spoken gentlemen in Jane Austen's novels. It doesn't even require any effort: underneath the cynical surface, there's fiery emotion, so powerful and raw that it almost bleeds out of him. Fuck… Does he even know what he's doing to you?

"I love you too," you whisper back, and the warmth that starts to bloom in his eyes is an entire sun on its own. It's hope, and you believe him, almost believe him.

"Then I'd say it's a bloody bad idea to break up."

You chuckle while few more tears push through to the surface.

"Simon…" You sigh and look back up at him, your armor falling to the floor too. "I feel like a wreck."

You allow him to see the pain, all of it. His breath is sharp as it hits him, but he still doesn't waver.

"Then let me help you."

The arms around you gain more strength, and you're crushed against a chest made of power. He tries to turn shit to gold, and threatens to succeed. You allow yourself to soften in his hold. How good it feels to be supported – no, loved.

"You don't even let me touch you anymore."

It's a filed complaint, but also heart-rending, soul-wrenching longing. You have evaded him for weeks now – hell, this shit began months ago and has escalated gradually, stealthily, until the moments together were a rarity, the space between you was full of frost; and not the crispy, happy summer drink kind.

"I thought you'd found someone else. Could've found out if that was the case in minutes, but honestly, I didn't wanna know."

Oh my God…

Has he lived with a growing suspicion and dread all these months?

That would explain why he has avoided you too…

He has allowed you to go to your supposed lover, has given you space to be alone and without too much attention. The man has shielded himself from pain.

Jesus fucking Christ.

"I'm so sorry," you say with a strained little breath. "I swear it's nothing like that. I just… I feel like a mess."

"Never seen such a gorgeous mess."

He speaks on your skin, the kiss on your forehead feels like an absolution.

Then you notice it's not only his words which try to assure you. He's growing harder by the minute against your stomach, just from a simple hug. Just from being pressed against you like this, after weeks of dry, bitter longing.

"Miss your taste," he murmurs to your skin, his voice like sand wrapped in burning velvet. "The sounds you make when you want it hard."

Oh God–

"Miss your smile when we go to shower after."

"Hmh…"

"Don't wanna live without that smile."

You don't have to.

God, you don't have to…

"How about we make a deal," he draws fingers down your chin, coaxing you to look up at him. His eyes are stripped from the cold distance that greeted you just moments ago: now they are filled with warmth that spreads to your chest and belly and bones. You drink him in like summertide.

"You come to me every time you feel bad and I'll make you feel good. Alright?"

"...Ok."

He tilts his head a little to the side, not entirely satisfied with your shy little answer.

"Come on. Make me believe it."

"It's a deal," you say with more grit to it, even if you're nearly crying again, this time from relief.

"That's my girl."

Oh fuck…

He knows exactly what strings to pull, the good girl talk being one of the things that instantly makes your legs feel like jelly.

And why does he always have to use that voice when he calls you a good girl or his girl, that sultry smoke that makes you want to swoon until he catches you and carries you to bed?

The man seems to be a mind reader as well, because he sweeps you off your feet and does exactly that: carries you to your bed which has mainly seen silent tears and painful sleep last months.

"Poor thing doesn't even know how lovely she is."

He sounds amused in the face of your darkness: sees it in full and still doesn't fear at all. He's ready to battle your demons for you, and you feel like shaking: from his touch and that voice, from the stress and loneliness that starts to release as he lays you down on the bed.

He looks so different from the man that has haunted this place for the past months, the complete opposite of the reserved soldier retreating into the shadows.

He moves to kiss you, and it's been – what? Weeks since your last kiss? And even that was only a quick peck, nothing like this… Wet, and desperate; a devouring. It makes you clench around nothingness, and you finally surrender.

No one can fake such fervor.

You try to accept it: accept the fact that even if you hate yourself, he does not. For some reason, he adores you. His breaths hit your face hot and urgent, and he can't keep his hands to himself anymore. They wander over your waist and hips, they even risk to steal a feel of your breasts, and then he groans in your mouth.

"I've missed you. Fuck, I've missed you..."

You taste notes of burning leaves; tobacco, his only weakness. You fantasize on the thought that you might be another weakness, too.

"Remember when I fucked you in my office?"

"I've missed you too," you utter softly in between the kisses that threaten to turn into a sloppy mess. "So much..."

He smiles at that, and it makes you weak, even when lying down like this.

"Yeah…?"

"You were so loud I had to put a hand over your mouth."

His voice is thick as he laughs a short chuckle. Your inner walls clench again at the sound, you throb among the warm syrup surrounding you.

"Never seen you so wet. Almost dripped all over my gear."

"It's that stupid mask you wear," you hear yourself breathe like you've just been underwater. Feel yourself throb some more, feel a burning sensation in the nether areas from the scorched desert turning wet again. You want him so much that it actually hurts down there.

"Knew you'd like it. That's why I kept it on."

If this man keeps talking, your underwear is going to be utterly ruined. And of course he does; of course he continues to pour more love in your ear.

"Everyone looked at you like you were a queen," he grunts in your ear, sounding almost… pissed.

"Don't be ridiculous," you try to form sensible words. It's only a faint breath, really, but he huffs at your modesty.

"You don't have eyes in the back of your head, love."

Wow… He is a bit pissed.

Had they checked your ass out when you visited him?

It was the first and, what you thought, the last time you got to visit him at his workplace… but you never would have guessed the reason for him not asking you to visit again would be jealousy.

"Don't worry. I put those fuckers in their place after you left."

Whoa.

Ok…

First, he had fucked you senseless in his office – a highly inappropriate move for a man in his position – then got jealous because some soldiers had checked you out as you left with his cum practically dripping from your cunt.

You put yourself in his shoes for a moment: he's had to live with thoughts of you running to some other man's arms when he's not home, and then watch you waltz around his workplace after making what was supposed to be the last effort to make him love you… When he has loved and adored you this whole time, has watched the sway of your ass with the rest of those home-deprived, horny soldiers, thinking you had fallen out of love and were on your way to go see some other guy.

Had he invited you there to try and win you back, too? By showing himself to you in all his puffed up, masculine glory? A desperate man in a skull mask, hoping to get love from you…

There's so many misunderstandings; they rip your throat. A sob escapes, and he stops his caress.

"Love… Tell me to stop if you–"

"No. No, I don't want you to stop."

Your request comes out with such demand that he hesitates only a second or two. Then he moves on top of you and tugs your skirt up. You don't even have time to realize what is happening before he has worked himself out of his pants.

He's hard and heavy between your legs, and your eyes go wide as you realize he's not going to bother to take your briefs off. He just slides a hand under the skirt and draws the fabric aside, and the fat tip of him is pushed in the middle almost clumsily. It's hot, and slips down to your opening with ease.

Oh f–

"Been jerking off to you nearly every night at the base," he says just before he pushes himself in.

"Uh–...."

Your thighs spread wide as he fills you slowly, inch after inch. The sound that leaves him is starved: a dry, painful sigh. He's been waiting for this for god knows how long, and you're just as hungry to take him in. He seems endless, the way he finally works himself fully inside, spreading you even wider as the thickening base of his cock reaches its end.

"Thought you were getting railed by someone else while I only get to fuck my hand."

"Oh god…"

There's really nothing else to say as his balls press against you, heavy and taut. He's not going to last long.

"Yeah. Imagine that," he admits, breathless like you.

You look at him with what must be the most helpless stare of longing in your eyes. Then he moves, and you want to grip him to keep him inside. The first thrusts are divine, they're pure heaven, and your head sinks deep into the pillow as you try to get enough air, try to not scream from pleasure already. Somehow, all you are able to utter is a desperate little whisper.

"Simon–"

His cock is good enough to bring tears to your eyes. You're starving too, you're pulling him in with fierce hunger, and he groans, then nearly falls forward, his weight pressing against you, swallowing you, until you feel like you're an idiot for thinking that you're too big. The thickness of his chest rubs against you as he makes love to you with passion that echoes the first times you did this.

"Just wanna adore you, love." He's panting desperate somewhere above you. A god and a man, both furious and gentle. "I wanna adore you. Just like this."

You answer him with what must be those sounds he told you about, the sounds you make when you want it hard.

You want him to fuck you, to wreck you after weeks of loneliness and hate. To love you until you break into a million pieces.

"Simon," you whisper. "...Love me."

He halts, huffs in your neck. It's almost a sob. There's so much emotion and desperation in the air that it could be scooped up and sold in the streets.

"Always," he rasps in your ear, then moves to kiss you again. "Always."

The promise echoes around you, it coats your lips as he loves you with all he has. It's been so long, and he feels so good that you nails dig into his shirt, his shoulder, you try to hold onto him even though he's the wave that rocks you.

"You feel that?" He goes deep; he's out of breath and desperate, even more desperate than you. "That's love. You feel it, yeah?"

"Yes," you sob in his shoulder, tears trying to escape your waterline as you're going dumb from the pure sensation, the sensuality of it all.

"That's it, love. That's a good girl," he turns to your neck and gruffs in your ear as you whimper and moan. "Always such a good girl."

Shit…

"I, I'm gonna…"

Your legs wrap around his middle, your muscles twitch and your hands reach and grab – they claw and yank and tug everything they can: his back, shoulders, shirt, something sturdy to keep you from drowning in a glorious orgasm.

He laughs in your neck and continues to grind you through your climax even when you're shattering, sighing, moaning, writhing under him. He just laughs, the man who never laughs: from witnessing you respond to him calling you a good girl.

Fucking bastard…

Lovable, infuriating bastard who knows you to your core.

You're an overstimulated heap by the time he comes as well, not long after you, but long enough to make you feel like you're only a tender bunch of nerves. Your legs have fallen to the side, he has open access to take what he needs: you, your love, all of it.

His whole middle goes tense as he cums, he groans and swears somewhere deep into your neck, rolls his hips over and over again like it's a must that his balls press against you with every thrust that shoot his load.

Then he falls slack, nearly collapses on top of you, reminding you of what it feels like to be small under a giant like him. You're throbbing together, you're full and fulfilled, and he is still lodged deep inside you, panting and broken in a sweat.

"Jesus Christ…"

He sounds dazed.

Relieved.

"Should've done this weeks ago."

You laugh at seeing him so done – a man in love, torn by jealous yearning, finally taking what's his. You stroke his neck, his back – it's so good to have him finally there… So close, with no barriers in between.

"I should've talked to you weeks ago..."

"Yeah. You should have."

"Are you going to punish me?" You giggle a little – the flirt is light and frees your heart further from its recent jail. He moves to look at you with all the tenderness there is. It's too much... His love is too much. But you won't run from it anymore.

"Nah. Think I'm gonna spoil you some more."

He spoils you right away with a kiss. You surrender to his treatment with happiness: happy tears, even.

The medicine to your anguish has been the exact opposite to what you had first tried, what you had originally thought. The true remedy for your sickness is mercy. Perhaps some spoiling…

And love.

#simon ghost riley #simon riley smut #simon riley fluff #ghost x reader #simon ghost riley x reader #ghost fluff #soft simon riley #simon riley imagine #ghost x you #simon riley x you #fluff and smut #call of duty

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fushiguruuzzzz · 28 days ago

Text

𑁤 Cherry Waves

Megumi Fushiguro x Fem!Reader

Words — 2.3k

Cw — rockstar au, yes the title is a Deftones reference, mentions of alcohol (no use this time! Yay!), written in one sitting, not proofread, sort of situationship to lovers????? I’m not even entirely sure that’s a secret between them ig, chappel roan reference, lmk if there’s anything I missed !! All you long for is Megumi Fushiguro to love you when he’s sober. All he longs for is to have the courage to show you he does. These two dreams tend to clash when paired with insecurities and desperate secrecy, and the question is: will you be able to work it out?

a/n — this was fun to write tbh, I love rockstar Megumi baddddd and just wanted to get something out for him I fear. This won the poll so Gojo fic out some other time, in the meantime I’ll probably post Kilby girl prologue :3

Being famous had its perks, but with them came many downsides. One that you would consider the most pesky was the lack of privacy. Every secret you kept so precisely hidden was uncovered somehow, sometimes ones you weren’t even aware of yourself. Sometimes it was an old video of you found in the darkest depths of the internet, sometimes it was a song you hadn’t released yet. In your case, it was… whatever you had going on with your bandmate. Honestly you weren’t sure what exactly it was, neither was Megumi. But there was something, far too many glances that lasted just a beat too long, the graze of your fingers as you passed him his guitar that seemed to set you alight. The drunken kisses you’d share in the back of a crowded club that you were both eager to leave, the ones you wouldn’t talk about when the morning came. You’d share glances over the breakfast table that grew less awkward and more knowing as your rituals continued, the weeks going by and your dynamic never changing.

Sometimes months would go by without those moments of solidarity when your desperation bubbled over and came out in bursts. He never dared to voice it, but it killed Megumi. He loathed the way your touch would be all consuming, and then just a few hours later he’d been imprisoned by the lack of label between you, your distance heart wrenching. You were everything, and then nothing. You came in waves, not steady like the rise and set of the sun, but like the tide, unpredictable and heavy and undeniably passionate. You despised it equally as much, but you had the self control to contain it. Until you were on stage and consumed by nothing but the music, the songs you wrote about him, that is.

Your fingers were nimble and quick as they strummed the guitar, your lips ghosting over the rough wire of the microphone with every lyric. The rhythm reverberated through you, your heart beating in sync with the unsteady beat of the drums. This was it. This was life. Life was impending hearing loss and callouses on your fingers, it was red lights and the screaming of a crowd and the lingering knowledge that who might be the love (or loss) of your life is just a few pages behind you. The energy emitting from your body picked up his own every instance without fail, the hairs on the back of your neck standing up as soon as he walked into the room. Paranoia? Maybe. Soul ties? Also maybe. That secret wasn’t yours to know, as it seemed.

Everything felt blurry, your consciousness only ever going up to half capacity on nights like this. You figured that if you were fully present, you couldn’t handle it all. It was a defence mechanism you’d made for yourself to handle the constant attention, the haunting awareness that you were being constantly perceived. Every shift of your eyes as they wandered to your black haired bass player was recorded, forever on the wide world of the internet. So you had to be careful, tread lightly at all times. They were everywhere, it seemed. You never really got used to it. This was your job, though, you signed up for this. You knew that, so you put up with it. You just wished you could love in peace.

You panted, chest heaving as you took in gasps of warm air. Not all that refreshing, but oxygen nonetheless. The last instrumentals of the final song faded out, the only noise being the dull chattering of the crowd. You felt their eyes on you, but one stuck out far more than any others. Him. His emerald eyes in the dim light were piercing, having such a deep effect over you even when they were out of sight. You were suddenly all too aware of the sweat sticking to your forehead, and the faint aftertaste of coffee on your tongue. You’d chugged three cups beforehand, figuring you’d need it to get through the night. Maybe it should’ve been four.

“Thank you so much for coming out, folks! That’s all for tonight!” you said, putting on an overly cheery tone that you were sure reeked of bullshit. With that the crowd began filtering out, the rows becoming gradually more empty with every passing minute. You, Megumi, and the others fell into the same old routine of packing up your instruments and getting ready to head out.

When the equipment was away and you were officially free to go for the night, Nobara spoke up. “Anyone in the mood to get drunk off of shitty overpriced vodka and hope we don’t get cancelled?”

As you walked to your respective vehicle, you couldn’t help but laugh. Your eyes flickered to Megumi for but a brief moment, but long enough for him to catch it. Something lied in the air between you then, the acceptance of what would happen the moment the alcohol took its toll and you were left alone. But as you met the sight of his raw eyes shining with what almost looked like expectation, something shifted. You didn’t want to be something that he only loved when he was drunk, you didn’t want to be the girl that was always just there when he needed you. The smile slowly faded from your face, being replaced by something softer; something more fake.

“I’m spent, I’m not gonna join tonight. Call me, yeah?” you asked, giving a small nod to the group as you lowered yourself into your drivers seat. Megumi’s eyes followed you inch by inch, taking in every subtle shift of your face, the soft crease between your brows as you put the keys into the ignition and made an eager escape. You were doing this on purpose, you were avoiding him. Why? Was he not enough, was he too much? Was this the end of whatever sick dance of passion and indifference that you were playing? But Megumi wasn’t stupid, in fact, he was an academically gifted boy. He knew that if he loved you when he was sober, you’d be willing to get drunk. It made something in his chest clench unfamiliarly, and he hated it. Hated the way you made him feel, hated the way he made you feel. He just… hated.

He hated the way the sound of your engine faded as you drive further and further from him, because it felt like you were leaving him in more ways than one.

Your fingers strummed impatiently against the steering wheel, though you weren’t sure what you were waiting for. You had nothing to wait for, no one. Maybe you were waiting for the moment your screen would light up with Megumi’s name, that he’d magically overcome whatever emotional blockage that was keeping him from you and learn to love you properly. You shook your head. Be realistic, now. It’s Megumi.

Pulling into the darkened parking lot of your apartment building felt like the nail in the coffin, the break in the inconsistent pattern you’d been following for so long. And as you stepped into your apartment, the falls felt oddly empty. It was missing something that had never been there in the first place, something that seemed to fit so perfectly, yet you didn’t. Maybe that was the case. Megumi fit into your life, he fit whatever love you held for him, but did you fit him? Maybe not.

You felt exhausted, yet you couldn’t bring yourself to sleep. You tossed and turned uncomfortably in your sheets for what felt like hours before sighing in defeat and trotting out to your kitchen.

As you sat on your counter, tentatively sipping an icy cup of water, your mind wandered. You wondered what type of lover Megumi was. When the lights were soft, would his touch be, too? Would the scrambled urgency of his lips against yours turn into something calmer when he knew you had the time? His rough hands calloused by his passion, would they hold you as delicately as they cupped your face in his moments of weakness, as you escaped from the crushing reality of your status? Your heart ached at the realization that you didn’t know, and you weren’t sure you’d ever get the chance to. Maybe someone else would, someone that fit.

A firm knock on your door pierced through the walls more than it should have. There was an empty sort of quiet that followed, as if the person waiting to enter didn’t have the courage to fill it. You slid from the cold marble, socked feet hitting the ground as you placed your glass next to you. There was barely the sound of shuffling as you padded to the door, not bothering to look through the peephole in your sleepy haze.

When you swung the door open, he looked nearly as shocked as you did. Of course Megumi had been the one to come here in the first place, but he half expected you to be asleep or just ignore him entirely.

“Megumi?”

He blinked at you for a moment, eyes unfocused. “…hey,” he said, voice hoarse as if he was the one who’d spent the night singing.

“What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be out?” you asked, standing dumbfounded in the doorway.

He paused. “You didn’t go.”

That statement meant a lot more than its words. You didn’t go, so he didn’t. He wanted to see you, to be with you.

“Can I come in?”

You looked between you, suddenly remembering that he was standing outside in the hallway whilst you were keeping him there. You shuffled to the side, motioning for him to enter. He did, no words shared in the silent moment. You fell into step, taking the few strides across the apartment and plopping down on the plush cushions of your couch.

You stared down at your fidgeting hands, debating whether you’d break the silence or not. He was the one who showed up here, so shouldn’t it have been him? But deep down you knew Megumi, he wasn’t one to speak unless spoken to. Not usually.

“What are you doing here?” you asked again, voice softer. He lifted his head, the black spikes of hair shifting with every movement. He looked particularly disheveled, like he’d spent his night tossing and turning as you had. “You and I both know why I’m here.”

With a soft exhale through your nose, you nodded. The thing was, you didn’t know the exact reason for his appearance. Was it to put an end to whatever you had, or the opposite? Because whether you liked it or not, it wasn’t casual. You didn’t know if they ever had been.

“What am I doing wrong?” you blurted. Your eyes widened, surprised by your own words. Damn your mouth and its tendency to act before your brain could, because it put you in situations like this.

His expression mirrored yours, confusion and something else, something more unrecognizable. “What?” he said, throat suddenly dry. “I never said you did anything wrong. You… you didn’t.”

That only puzzled you further. If you’d done nothing wrong, what was it that kept him from you? Perhaps your actions weren’t wrong, just you were. “I don’t understand,” you whispered, unable to find the correct words.

“Why would you think you’re doing something wrong?” he pushed.

“Because you don’t like me.”

A silence fell over you, and Megumi felt more flustered than he had in his life. “I’ve given you some pretty clear implications denying that,” he murmured.

“But you don’t like me when you’re sober, Megumi.”

A heavy silence fell over you, swirling with unspoken words and the quiet desperation for closure. You just needed him to confirm it, you couldn’t spend any longer clinging to the last bits of drunken hope residing in you.

“I’m sober now.”

“Yeah, well-“ you were about to shoot back, but then he was tilting your chin up and pressing his lips to yours. Your lips were captured in his as he inhaled every bit of you, the taste of your lips overtaking his senses. Cherry. He swallowed every claim and rebuttal rolling off of your tongue, rough hands cupping your face as he kissed you with a mission to prove himself. Megumi had never been one for words, opting to show his intentions through action. He sure got his point across.

He panted into your mouth, brow bone ghosting over yours as his eyes drank you in, deep and curious. Not an ounce of alcohol swirled in his bloodstream, but he felt completely drunk off of you. Maybe he couldn’t ever love you when he was sober, for your every breath intoxicated him, drew him in.

Your mind was spinning, wondering if you were in the midst of a fever dream. Megumi tasted of nothing but espresso and mint, no traces of vodka bleeding into your mouth as it interlocked his. He was completely present, and he was kissing you. He held you with a delicacy you weren’t aware he was capable of, hands that were once in tense fists now cradling you like fine china.

“Are you saying…” you breathed.

“Yeah. Now shut up, will you?”

You huffed, but it did little to hide the eagerness in your actions as you took him by the collar and pulled him in once again.

As you felt his lips on yours, you realized that they were perfect; like puzzle pieces reunited. The thing about puzzle pieces is that it was never one fitting in the other, it was that they fit together, reciprocated. They were two parts of a whole, equal, mutually connected. Megumi filled the empty walls of your home, and you filled his heart, and that felt pretty damn equal to you.

Tags: @sh0ot1ngst4r @azinniya @anotherwriternamedclara @ruruisru @lizbix

#jjk #jjk megumi #jujutsu kaisen #jjk x reader #megumi fushiguro x reader #jjk smau #megumi fushiguro #megumi x reader #fushiguro megumi #꩜ on replay :: mergurmur

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fictionismyreality3 · 3 months ago

Text

Take a Break

Warnings: hints at smut no actual smut, romance and everything that comes with it

Notes: every so often the need for this man will just suddenly pop up like gOD LET ME LIVE

The fingers you were clenching around your pen were beginning to hurt. Trying to write this essay was making you feel more like a wide eyed freshman than someone aiming to finish senior year at the top of their class. You stared aimlessly at your laptop, your eyes burning from how long you’d been looking over the work you had so far.

Which was only the title.

Just 2 more months. 2 months and then you could graduate, and you’d have your degree, and you could have your dream job and not be cramming book after book in your head, hoping you’d pick up the knowledge when really all it did was make you feel like punching your-

“Darlin’? You doing okay with your homework?” The honeyed voice of your boyfriend echoed around your dorm you, a light breeze the only warning you were given as he appeared randomly behind you.

“Yeah, Jasper. M’fine.” But just looking at his unfairly gorgeous face made you want to punch him instead of your TA.

It wasn’t fair. He got to be stupidly handsome and smart and he could easily ace your classes, probably finishing your degree in a few days with his stupid fucking vampire memory, and everything was so easy for him that you- “Honey, you’re frownin’ at me.” Jasper’s words drew you out of your little thought spiral.

“Yeah, I know, I know.. I’m sorry, I just..” You took a deep breath. “This is making want to rip my hair out.”

Jasper’s face now wore a frown mirroring your own, his gaze ever attentive, searching your face like he was looking for some hidden solution you couldn’t see. He ran his hand through your hair soothingly, his thumb brushing away the crease between your brows. The frustration and self-loathing that was radiating off you had hit him like a thick summer heat, pulling him up to your dorm in an instant.

He didn’t like to see his pretty little mate upset.

You were supposed to be happy. It was the last few months of school and he should have been feeling waves of glee and satisfaction dripping from your pores. Not this. And so, Jasper made up his mind. It wasn’t often that he used his abilities on you, it was something you’d discussed early into your relationship, something you insisted could only be a last resort kind of thing.

But the tears welling in your big eyes made his heart clench, and he found himself layering calm and relaxation over you like a blanket. “Why don’t you take a break, darlin’?”

Your head went all fuzzy, the cotton candy filling your skull making the words on your computer screen seem irrelevant. Blinking slowly, it took you a second to realize what was happening.

“No, no Jas, I have to finish this.” The words of protest sounded funny in your ears, the idea of doing anything but slumping back in your chair seemed exhausting. “No, you need to rest. You work so hard, honey.” Coaxing hands pushed you back in your seat, a sense of lethargy filling your bones as you hazily made out Jasper kneeling in front of you.

“Can’t.. I hav’to.. have..”

A Cheshire grin curled over Jaspers lips as he watched your body grow lax and pliant. Sure, adding little bouts of arousal between the relaxation would be breaking the rules you’d set, but he couldn’t have his mate overworking herself. Ghosting his hands up your legs, he pushed a little bit more bliss into you, enjoying the little whimper that slipped out.

“Don’t worry, darlin, I’m gonna take real good care of you.”

#jasper hale x y/n #jasper hale x you #jasper x you #jasper whitlock x reader #jasper cullen x reader #jasper hale x reader #jasper x reader #jasper whitlock #jasper cullen #jasper hale

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bookfanatic06 · 27 days ago

Text

I haven’t written anything in over a decade, but this head canon just won’t go away. I’ve often wondered if the idea of “like calls to like” will be prevalent in Elriel’s book like in all the others. I really feel like Elain is hiding some deep shit that just can’t be ignored. This piece is really what I think could happen if Elain deep down shares Azriel’s penchant for self loathing and low self esteem. She gets so much crap from the fandom for being boring, I really see her surprising us with some darker personality traits.

Also, my favorite thing about this other than the Elriel fluff is Nesta. I wanted to see her and Elain making up after the events of ACOSF on page. I didn’t hate Nesta, just thought she treated my baby El poorly.

I’m not sure if I’ll write more to this, or if it’s going to stay a one shot. I’m also not sure if I’m ready to post to AO3. I’m a mom with 3 kids and a full time teaching gig. I’m not sure I have it in me.

So here is my first shot at writing Elriel.

Unworthy

Words: 5112

Angst/Romance

Pairings: Major: Elain Archeron/Azriel,

Minor: Feyre/Rhysand, Cassian/Nesta, Varian/Amren

———————

Remember who you are, Kingslayer.

She breathes to herself as she stares at her reflection in the mirror, plastering on the smile she knows her family would never second guess. Perfected so much over the years in her mother’s keep, as she was taught to never reveal her true emotions, to never let anyone see the heartbreak, the pain of unworthiness embedded in her very soul.

The dreams plaguing her at the moment, the ones that increase with the unyielding torrent of emotions swirling in her mind, are of her family having lost their use of her. That she has become a burden that they can cast aside so needlessly. So she sits at the mirror and contemplates how to be helpful. She’ll practice those new recipes that she received from that fae female at the market. She’ll make the gardens of Velaris so beautiful, people will ask for her. She’ll care for Nyx when his parents need a break.

But still, she feels the hole in her chest and wonders if it’ll be enough. Will she forever be cast aside or passed over in favor of her sisters because of their far more important accomplishments?

What exactly has she accomplished?

I killed the King of Hybern. She whispers so that only the shadows can hear. Not Nesta, as all of Prythian seemed to believe. She knows she pushed that knife into his throat, she still dreams about it; still feels the hilt of the blade in her hands. Even the shadows, the ones that she felt the comforting presence of for so long, have gone quiet since solstice.

She knows that her sisters are magnificent. That they both have earned their right to voice their opinions and be cherished in this world. Feyre, the High Lady that the Night Court deserves, and Nesta, the warrior she was always meant to be. But Elain, she carries the weight of unworthiness everywhere she goes. She wasn’t born to lead, she wasn’t born to be a warrior. She was born with a gentle heart, with a delicate resolve. But a will of iron.

You shoved that knife into his neck. You aren’t as gentle as you believe yourself to be.

She’s intimately familiar with self loathing by now. It curls around her like the vines that wrap around the fortress of her mind. But that voice, the voice that is hers, but much more confidently so, tries to remind her of what she has to offer. Her heart breaks as the self loathing pushes through whispers, “He doesn’t want someone who is brittle and weak. He wants someone courageous, someone with fire in their heart, someone like…”

Mor.

Despite the months that have passed since she found herself alone in the foyer in the early morning hours of Winter Solstice, she is still tortured by the thought that even her dearest friend, or whom she believed him to be, had been repulsed by her meritless existence. The pain of that night has yet to ebb, and she wonders if, at some point in her immortal life, it ever will.

She huffs a breath and stands from her vanity, moving to open the door and walk into the hallway, that gentle but false smile she’s perfected on her face.

As she reaches the kitchen, she is surprised to find Feyre, eyes clouded with sleep, hair poking out of the halfhearted braid she probably threw together before bed the previous night, holding a bottle to Nyx’s whimpering mouth.

“I think he’s starting to teethe. He’s been like this all night.” Feyre’s eyes flicker to Elain quickly before resting on her son’s mouth as it attaches to the bottle and then detaches with a small wail. Elain opens her arms, a silent request to take over – and make herself useful.

“I’ll take him, you go get some sleep.” She says gently, taking the babe into her arms. Feyre gives her a tired smile.

“Rhys and I are so lucky to have you here with us, El.”

Elain’s false smile returns to her features, and before she can give herself away, she shoos her sister out of the kitchen to take over as Nyx’s caregiver. She cradles her nephew to her, his chest to her own, rubbing circles on his back, between his little wings as she’s watched her sister and Rhys do time and time again. For a moment, the hole in her heart fills with the love she has for the babe in her arms. It doesn’t escape her, that if her life hadn’t so explicitly changed thanks to the betrayal that left her at the mercy of The Cauldron, she would probably have a babe of her very own by now. THAT thought doesn’t hurt as much as she thinks it should.

Because a child with Grayson would have been a monumental mistake.

The thought is gone as fast as it had come. That’s one part of her life that she is resolute in. Being Grayson’s wife, the mother to his brood, would NOT have been a step up from her current existence. She’s not sure how she knows that, perhaps from watching how Feyre and Nesta are treated by their mates. The unmatched adoration, the passion between the mates that she can sense from the couples as she plays the fifth wheel.

Why don’t I feel that way towards my own?

It’s not lost on her that she covets the bond her sisters have with their mates; what it must feel like knowing that your mate would give their very lives for your happiness. Her and her mate can barely be in the same room as each other, the bond an uncomfortable tether pulling at her rib.

She had once asked how it felt for her sisters, to see if the bond was true…

“It’s a blossoming warmth in my chest. The pull to Rhys is oftentimes so strong that I can't imagine my life before him.” Feyre had told her.

Her and her mate definitely could not relate.

But that warmth, she could have sworn she felt it before. When three fae males had walked into her home in the humanlands, and she had chanced a glance into the hazel eyes of the fae male with sapphire gems on his leathers. His gaze had caused her breath to catch, and every once in a while, when the war was over and she would be in his presence again, she would find herself looking into those eyes and she could almost feel the ghost of that warmth in her chest. Her breath would catch every time.

That hole was deep and chilled now.

The circles she’s been rubbing on her nephew’s back have quieted his little whimpers and he’s quiet on her chest as she moves to the window overlooking the gardens she’s cared for all these months. The gardens bloom in the vibrant colors of late spring. In her angst, she just wishes that the loveliness of the flowers she’s cultivated filled that hole in her chest that she so achingly wants to forget. An ache that, for the moment, her nephew in her arms has dulled significantly.

“Little one, you hold my heart in your hands.” She whispers as she kisses the thick black hair on his tiny head. At two months old, Nyx is the splitting image of his father, with Feyre’s temper to boot.

She sways back and forth, Nyx a solid presence, a weight holding her down to this earth. She almost misses the sound of the front door opening, but turns just in time to see the eyes of the male who still so captivated her thoughts.

No words are exchanged but he sends her a quick nod of acknowledgement as her own eyes quickly return to her nephew’s sleeping form. Her heart thundering in her empty chest. Before she can return her gaze to where the male stood, he is gone. Leaving her alone with that chasm in-between her ribs. The feeling of unworthiness crawling back into her thoughts.

He’s too good for me anyway.

She walks silently to the nursery, opting to place Nyx in his crib to attempt to get some breakfast prepared. She leaves the door slightly ajar, in case he awakens while she is cooking in the kitchen. Her fae hearing attuned to his little cries.

In the kitchen, she washes her hands and pulls out what is necessary for a quick meal. Bacon, eggs, some leftover scones from the pantry that she can reheat for her family to enjoy. She’s startled when Rhys and his companion walk briskly down the hall and through the foyer to the front door. Their voices quiet but unmistakable.

“All I need is 24 hours of rest and then I can head back down into the tunnels.” his deep tenor voice feels like a balm to her aching chest.

“Take the week, you look like you haven’t slept in months.” A pause and a sigh.

“I can always count on you for a confidence boost, Rhys.” She can feel the small smile gracing his lips as he speaks with his brother.

“I’m serious, Az. You’re no good to us if you’re dead on your feet. Take the week. Clean yourself up, eat a few hot meals, and sleep.” She wonders if this pause after Rhys speaks is meant to last as long as it does in her mind.

“Okay.” It’s breathless, and she can feel the exhaustion behind every syllable.

“Come to the kitchen. I’m sure Elain is whipping up something for breakfast. It’ll do you well to get something into your stomach.” She bites her lip at the invitation. He hasn’t had a meal in her presence in months, since before Nyx’s arrival, possibly not since Winter Solstice, but she’s unable to remember.

Elain straightens her spine, contemplating whether she should look in the pantry for some potatoes to add to her small spread. Her thoughts are interrupted by his forlorn response.

“I should really get back to the House of Wind, Nesta and Cassian are waiting for me.” An obvious lie and she feels like the remnants of her heart have turned liquid and puddled on the floor.

“Ask the House to make you something nice.” Rhys’ voice takes on a worried tone.

“I will.”

She holds back the tears threatening to spill as she hears his boots take him to the door and then outside. The heartbreak is still as tangible as it was months ago.

If Rhys notices the silver in her eyes when he strides into the kitchen, he doesn’t mention it. Just kisses her sweetly on the cheek and smiles,

“Good morning, Dear Sister.”

—————-

It’s a few nights later, while her family, sans Mor and Amren, sits at the dinner table eating the roast and potatoes she and the twins had been slow cooking over the course of the day, that Nesta looks at the empty chair across the table and says with worry gracing her normally icy gaze, “when are you going to start ordering Azriel to attend family dinners?”

Cassian places a hand on her knee as if to say NOT NOW.

She shrugs him off. Giving him that icy stare that’s become her calling card, “He’s a shell of himself. Even more closed off and broody than ever. He crawls around those tunnels and pokes his head out for a day or two and then heads right back in. The bags under his eyes are darker than yours” she points at Rhys. “And he doesn’t have a newborn to account for it.”

Elain sits up at that, heart sputtering as if she can feel him. As if she can feel the darkness pulling him under.

Maybe she can.

“I’m worried. Cassian is too; he’s just too stubborn to admit it. Az is working himself to death.” Elain puts a hand to her chest, as if that hand could hold her heart into place.

“Az is working very hard to get the answers we need about the Daglan and protect all of us, Nesta.” Feyre states gently, holding Nesta’s gaze as they narrow.

“But he shouldn’t HAVE to. We could rotate duties. We can go down there for a few days and let him rest.”

“This is what he wants, Nesta. He’s volunteered.” Rhys’ response is like an ash arrow to her gut.

“And why would he volunteer to do this assignment and be away from his family for so long if he was genuinely happy, Rhysand?” The room falls silent and the remnants of the meal she’s so thoughtfully made is ash on her tongue.

He’s not happy. That word, once vocalized, is hard for her to break from her thoughts. Azriel is unhappy.

It's her fault.

She grips the fork in her hand so tight the metal bends. It’s her fault because she read his intentions wrong on solstice. He is avoiding their family because she made things so awkward between them that he can’t bear to be in the same room as her. Nesta glances at her direction as if she can sense that feeling of worthlessness creeping into Elain’s body. Before Nesta can say anything, Cassian places his hand in hers.

“You’re right, Nes. We need to find out what’s going on with Az. I’ll ask Mor to visit him and get him to work through it. If anyone can get through to him, it’s Mor.”

And there was that feeling again. The feeling of a heart shattering, her lungs struggling to expand as her friends begin to plan for the intervention of the male who she so loved, even if he wanted nothing to do with her.

———————

Azriel was many things, within the last year or so, he’d resolved to adding foolish to his attributes. Foolish for thinking that he could be loved for the male he was, foolish for thinking he had any right to the happiness he saw in the faces of his brothers, and foolish to think that he could be hers.

It plagued him daily, the pull to a female that belonged to another. That he was not deemed worthy by the Cauldron of the female that held his heart, but that one of the sons of Autumn was.

She belongs to no one but herself. His shadows, his only companions, whisper.

It was a small mercy that she seemed as uninterested in her mate as her mate is with her. That she was once so willing to spend time with him despite being mated to someone else. That she was once happy to be his friend.

And now, they were nothing.

That thought buried deep inside of him, burrowed into his bones and tore through his limbs.

So he cut himself out of her world. He threw himself into his work. He trudged through the tunnels under the Night Court and pretended that he was keeping his family safe from the Daglan, when in reality, he was avoiding them.

It was another grueling pass through the tunnels. His eyes slowly adjusting from the change in light when he stepped out of the dark and into the quiet grasses surrounding the opening to the tunnels that have become his tomb. He had promised to wait a week to return to his work, but the ache in his chest had him packed and ready to continue his mission only 3 days after his last excursion. After a week of fighting through the tunnels, sliding Truthteller through the folds of the various beasts that inhabited the chasms below, his exhaustion was threatening to take his knees out from under him.

So he gathered what little strength he had left, and flew himself to the House of Wind.

And it was a mistake.

Nesta stood in the middle of the training pit, arms crossed. The rest of the priestesses were long gone by the early-afternoon. Precisely why he had chosen this time to fly back to the house, a feeble attempt to hide from everyone. He landed with a little less grace than intended, and as he took a glance at Nesta, he could have sworn that the silver flames that had been given back to The Cauldron to save her sister were still present in her eyes as she stared back at him disapprovingly.

“So you’re volunteering for these tunnel missions, huh?”

Azriel sighed. He learned long ago that arguing with Nesta was futile, that she would never let him go without a word.

“My schedule is open.” He shrugged absently.

“The hels it is, Az!” She bellowed, looking him up and down for a sign of…what exactly?

“Are you hurt?” She asked, this time with a gentleness not many would associate with the accomplished warrior, Lady Death.

“I’m fine.”

She continued to observe him, not completely believing he was all well and good. She noted his tired eyes, his rigid shoulders.

“What’s going on, Az? You’re like a ghost, never staying long enough to rest. Barely managing to function. This is so unlike you—-“ it pained him to interrupt, but the unworthiness creeped into his chest at her care for him.

“—this is me, Nes. It’s been me for 540 years. You’ve only glimpsed a small part of my life. I’ve always been like this.”

“That’s not true and you know it.” She says through her teeth, the frustration evident in her voice, in her posture. Azriel bows his head in a movement meant to placate the female before him. She sighs, and with a voice far calmer than she’s treated him with thus far speaks.

“She’s a ghost, too.”

He knows who she’s talking about immediately. And he dares not let her know that he’s affected by those words. He swallows the lump in his throat and moves to go around her. She stops him with her palm to his chest, right where his heart should be.

“I don’t know what’s happened between you two, but I know that the last time I’ve seen her smile, her real smile, was when you were the one to put it on her face.” The hole in his chest is infinitely bigger as Nesta moves her hand and places it gently on his arm.

“Be present, Az. We love you. She—loves you.”

Az is sure that Nesta means he is loved in a friendly way, but the idea of being loved by Elain Archeron makes his heart beat a little faster in his chest. He nods his head, words failing him.

“Everyone is coming here for dinner tonight.” Nesta states firmly. “Get cleaned up and meet us in the dining room at 5.” She shuffles past him to reach the door to the house and smiles mischievously at him behind her.

There’s no hiding from them now. Nesta will hunt him down until he appears. So he plans to arrive for dinner even as his brain tells him to run.

——————

Elain stares at her sister as she repeats the itinerary for the day, eyes wide as she questions Feyre over the plan to “meet Nesta and Cassian at the House for dinner.”

Elain is confused. Never has Nesta invited them to the House for dinner. Tea, on occasion. Training, frequently. Never dinner.

“What’s the occasion?” She asks, trying not to let her nerves show.

“She just misses us.” Feyre smiles, and although Elain is suspicious, she gives her little sister a genuine smile.

“Sounds delightful.”

And if her nerves intensify as her sister’s mate puts her down gently on the balcony of the House of Wind a few hours later, she doesn’t let it show, because she can absolutely scent the one person she is anxious to see the most.

Azriel is here.

And it takes all of her mother’s etiquette training to hold her head up high and enter the dining room to see his gorgeous, but somber face. A face she’s conflicted to commit to memory. He looks so tired, she muses. And despite the ache in her chest, the unworthiness that her mind flashes into her skull, seeing him is like breathing air after drowning, and she can’t look away.

Dinner commences and for the first time in months, the smile on her face is real. Everyone she loves is at the table, Mor and Feyre chatting animatedly with each other. Amren, Rhys, and Varian are lost in their own conversation about the Summer Court. Elain chances a look at the glorious Shadowsinger across from her. He’s impressive as usual, but she notes that his shadows are moving lithe around him, as if they are also exhausted from his travels. His eyes meet hers, and that warmth in her chest that only he can provide blossoms under his gaze. And she smiles, for real, and she thinks she sees the corner of his own mouth move up slightly.

It’s only when the meal is done and the House takes the dishes away that Rhys and Feyre take Nyx home to bed. Amren and Varian go back to Amren’s apartment, and Azriel excuses himself to finally get some rest. The rest of the family moves to the sitting room to continue to chat and Elain sits with them, appearing to listen to their conversation, but barely hearing what is being said. Her thoughts are helplessly on the male asleep somewhere in this house.

“Elain, would you like to stay here tonight?” Nesta asks with a beautiful smile on her face that captures Elain’s attention. She points a finger at her mate and says, “It’s easier for this old man to fly in the daytime. His eyesight is going poorly, and Mor is too drunk to take herself home, let alone you.” Nesta nods her head towards the beautiful blonde already falling asleep on the sofa across from her. Cassian scoffs.

“539 is NOT old.” He crows indignantly. The sisters erupt into laughter but Elain can’t help but think that her sister is only asking for her to stay because it’ll make things easier, and not because she wants her there. As the others begin to move towards their bedrooms, Nesta stops Elain with a gentle hand on her arm.

“I know I haven’t been the kind of sister you deserve, Elain. I want to make that up to you. I want to have breakfast with you tomorrow. I want to sit and talk to you about your life. I want to show you that I’m trying, that I’m here for you.” Elain’s chest expands with hope and a love she can only have for Nesta.

“I would like that very much.” She smiles. And Nesta offers to show her her bedroom for the night. The two walk arm in arm as they move through the house until they come upon the door of a room at the far end of the hallway. The room she’s given is warm and inviting, with a giant bed covered in lilac sheets. There’s a fireplace in the corner that is not in use due to the late spring warmth, but the double doors opening to the balcony overlooking Velaris is the crowning feature. She bids Nesta goodnight, with a promise to meet in the dining room for breakfast, and immediately heads for the balcony after Nesta shuts the bedroom door behind her.

What Elain doesn’t expect, is to end up sharing a balcony with the Shadowsinger himself.

And it appears he’s just as surprised as she is.

“H—hi” she breathes. Taking in his tall form in the shadows of the night. He’s seated on the edge of the balcony’s railing, one leg hanging over the edge while the knee of his other leg is bent for balance on the railing. His glorious wings are tight against his back, the bottoms on either side of the balcony. His hazel eyes, the ones that torment her in her dreams, are wide.

“I—I’m sorry. I didn’t know you— or anyone, would be here—on the balcony, I mean.” She stammers as she looks down at her feet in embarrassment. He’s still quiet in front of her, and she curses the fact that the Cauldron didn’t boil her alive when it had the chance.

“I—I’ll just go…” she says and begins to move. She’s vaguely aware of him sitting up straighter than before.

“No, please— don’t.” His deep voice is a whisper that her fae ears only hear because she’s desperate to hear his voice again. She wouldn’t miss his first words to her in months for anything in this world. She swallows, unsure of how to proceed. Any courage she might have deep within her, sputtering.

“I don’t want you to leave.” He says louder, with conviction, and that hole in her chest feels the fullest it’s been in months.

“I don’t want to leave, either.” She says confidently. Her courage soars with the vibrancy of his words.

“I miss you.” He adds gently, finally meeting her gaze, and she’s at a loss. This male who has captivated her body and spirit for years now. Whom she thought was angry with her. Who walked away from her on solstice and didn’t look back.

“Then why?” She whispers back, a silver tear escaping and trailing down her pale cheek. The question is open ended, but he knows what she means.

“Because I am unworthy of you.” He admits. The self loathing in his voice matches her own every time she thinks about him.

“Of course you are. If anything, I am unworthy of you.”

“Never.” He replies instantly, but she waves him off. Moving to his side, eyes peering at his form under the stars, tears falling down both cheeks now.

“You are kind, Azriel. You are gentle, and you are courageous. You’ve fought on the battlefield, and you protect the people of this court, of this family. I bake bread, watch Nyx, and plant seeds in the garden. You deserve so much more than I can offer you.”

The air between them crackles with the intensity of his gaze. He moves, and before she can loose a breath, his scarred hands are wiping the tears from her skin.

“How can you not see how incredible you are, Elain?” He speaks softly, rubbing his fingers back and forth over her cheeks. “You put the needs of others in front of your own. You bake bread, watch Nyx, and build gardens to bring comfort and beauty to those around you. In a world of war and bloodshed, you are reminder that there are things out there so beautiful it’s worth fighting for.” She gasps at the depth of his stare. “You are everything I could ever hope for, but I can’t have you.” The words he’s spoken break something within her. Her hands land on his own on her cheeks, and she uses them to push his away, to push him away. Confusion gracing her features.

“And why can’t you have me? Why have you shut me out all of these months?”

He thinks carefully at how to respond. It’s in his best interest to lie, the rage in her beautiful brown eyes cuts him further than any blade and he pauses for a moment.

Rhys will mist him for revealing the truth. He’s disobeying his order right now, just being alone with the female that possesses his heart and soul. But he finds that lying to her is impossible. That he would rather be misted than lie to the female before him.

“Because I have been ordered to stay away from you.” He says with deep remorse.

The earth ceases to rotate for Elain. Her mouth opens, but nothing comes out. She stares in horror and Azriel wonders if he’s made a grave mistake.

“Rhys?” She whispers. He nods.

“But—why?” The devastation in her voice is palpable, and he wants nothing more than to fly to the river house, despite his exhaustion, and hit his brother in his pretty face.

“You have a mate, Elain.” She scoffs. Ready to deny such a thing. He weighs his words carefully before he continues. “Our—involvement could have severe consequences for the Night Court.”

“What consequences?” She asks, in an eerily calm voice that he doesn’t recognize. He takes a deep breath and prepares himself for her ire.

“The Autumn Court has an archaic tradition that allows for a mate to call for a blood duel against any male that threatens his mating bond. Lucien or Beron have the right to challenge me to that blood duel if you and I—“

Elain looks up into his eyes, horrified at the realization that this is what is keeping them apart.

“—but I would fight for you. Rhys knows it. And I would win, because there would be no chance in this lifetime that I would give up a life with you if I had the choice. But if I were to kill Lucien in a blood duel—“ he pauses. “Beron can enact revenge by calling for war against the Night Court.”

She’s quiet for a long time. Her chest, that was finally full only recently, is hollowed out and bleeding down to her toes. Rhys has deemed them unworthy of each other. Have deemed them unworthy of his protection. Unworthy of the Night Court’s protection. She steps forward, so that her breath mixes with his. He’s stunned for a moment, peering down into her face, determination and understanding amongst the many emotions crossing her features.

“I would rather have you in secret, than not at all.” She says so quietly that only the two of them can hear and places her hand on his chest where his heart beats against it. He’s dumbfounded for a moment.

She’s choosing him?

“Are you sure?” He whispers just as quietly, so that only her and the Mother can hear him.

“Yes.”

The word is barely out of her mouth when his lips meet hers in a kiss that stops the world around them. It’s soft and gentle, just like they are, but Elain swears that this feeling in her chest, at finally tasting the male of her dreams, is the same one her sisters have so lovingly described about their mates.

How can this not be it? They both muse to themselves.

His lips move slowly against her own, savoring her taste, committing it to memory. She has chosen him. She is willing to risk war and their family’s loyalty for him. He will never understand why, but he’s too far gone to talk her out of it.

They stay on the balcony until the early morning hours, touching, tasting, and chasing away the demon of unworthiness inside of each other. Because even if their family or the Night Court didn’t need them, they found out that night that they needed each other.

Fin (or is it?)

#elriel #elain kingslayer #elain archeron #elain x azriel #pro elriel #pro elain #like calls to like #acotar #azriel

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cherubmm · 3 months ago

Text

⇢ ˗ˏˋ YAN!SWAPDREAM.NIGHTMARE HCS ࿐ྂ

⊱.𖥔 ݁ ˖ ━━━━FEATURING: SWAPDREAM.Nightmare

⊱.𖥔 ݁ ˖ ━━━━CONTENT WARNING: Yandere in general. Soft yandere. Unhealthy attachment. Hint of violence. Implied Moral dilemma. One-sided love. Slightly implied suggestive theme(?). Attempt of nonconsensual touches (dw nothing really happens). Breaking in. Mention of stealing belongings. Stalking. Obsessive & Possessive thoughts. OCC. Proof-read(yay!)

𝐀𝐮𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐫’𝐬 𝐧𝐨𝐭𝐞: Can't y'all notice that I want turn this into filthy filthy filthy? Pleaseeee :( Also this is probably one of the longest writing I ever made.

Nightmare doesn't like you. But not in a sense where he loathes you entirely— quite the contrary, actually— rather, in a way where he wants nothing to do with you and for the reason of it is simple; he wants you safe. Unlike his brother who feels exceedingly entitled to control his darling's emotions and calling dibs right up, nightmare would be very AGAINST IT.

The guardian of negativity are highly empathic when it comes to your situation— Poor little you, it must be unfortunate to be admired, let alone be loved, by a repulsive being such as himself, ain't it? He pity you, he truly does! This skeleton is painfully aware of the danger and dire possibilities of being associated with him even as he tries —and fails — to delude himself otherwise.

And yet, despite his words.... He couldn't bring to turn his heels away from you no matter what his conscience screamed at him. How unfortunate

The darker guardian never let you meet him. That's right, you heard it clearly; never let you meet him. Just as i'd stated earlier, there are so many dreadful scenarios that could happen to you just by associating or being seen together with him, public or not, there's still an eye in every corner.

While I tend to keep it ambiguous and leave the relationship of darling and the yandere to the readers, the most likely and fitted scenario that would happen here is he's a stranger to you— completely, utterly and entirely so. You wouldn't know who he is nor will get any thoughts about it. Nightmare made sure that you remain oblivious to his presence all while he's not in yours. He craftily calculated everything, pulling string deliberately over the course of continuing his duty to protect the weak —mostly you— and hunt his brother.

Speaking of which, nightmare's BIGGEST fear is for you, to encounter dream (yeah, you come first. The rest can come next or be damned, he doesn't really care). Hypothetically, if there is still indeed an apple left on the tree, nightmare wouldn't hesitate to devour it just to annihilate dream all at once the moment he senses any alludes of interest directly to you. This is not even him— talking from possessiveness. In general,the younger skeleton knows his (delusional) brother's motives and it's always up-to-no-good. The last thing he wanted is for his cherished beloved, to be caught on the web.

Nightmare is greatly frustrated at the situation he put himself in. While the judiciousness alongside his morality (fortunately) overpowering his very own desire, the minor part of mind— something that ran far deeper than simple hunger for closure or possession yet veiled by the constant self-restriction— constantly murmured temptation to his (metamorphic) ears. The promising of forbidden pleasure he could taste if he only let his guard down and indulge for once— just this once.

This is always how it goes. The voice will strike at the times where he's at his weakest and desperate point. Yet, by the end of the day, he will never acted out on it. After all, he swore to his very being to not disturb you with his wretched presence, only allowed to bask at the sight of your beauty behind the shadow, where he can properly monitor and execute any danger that could possibly lurking near you. Right, he doesn't have a weak mind, he can't be affected by it. No never!.

...

...Then why is he here...?

Damn it. Damn it, damn it, damn it. What the fuck is he thinking?!

Nightmare paced restlessly, his tall frame moving back and forth in complete silence at the corner of your room. His gloved hands gripped at the sides of his skull, clawing in desperation, trying to quiet the raging conflict inside his mind. His face twisted with emotions he fought so hard to keep buried—anguish, frustration, guilt. Each second that passed only darkened the torment.

This is bad. This is bad. This is so, so bad. Fuckin' hell, Nightmare, you’ve messed up real bad this time, he thought—or was it him thinking? The voice in his head sounded like his own, but the words were biting, foreign. His thoughts were so loud, so scattered, they felt almost tangible.

He needed to smoke. Anything to dull the noise in his head, to drag himself back to some semblance of control. But the heavy sigh that left him was shaky, not quite calming. He had to get a grip. If he let his emotions slip any further, he might wake you, and disturbing your peace was the last thing he wanted to do.

Nightmare paused, standing still as his gaze shifted toward your sleeping form. You looked so peaceful, completely unaware of the storm raging just a few feet away. Seeing you like this—so vulnerable, so unguarded—was enough to make his thoughts blur into a painful white noise.

What the hell am I doing here? He’d sworn to himself, over and over again, that he wouldn’t disturb you. That he’d stay in the shadows where he belonged, only watching from a distance, ensuring your safety without ever letting you know of his cursed presence. He was supposed to be your guardian, protector. Never the intruder.

But here he was, standing at the edge of your bed like a hypocrite, breaking all the promises he’d made to himself. Guilt gnawed at him, making him feel filthy, like he was tainting the very air around you. He was doing exactly what he swore he never would—he was crossing the line. He should leave. Now. Forget this ever happened and go back to keeping his distance.

But when his gaze fell on you again, all his self-reprimands dissolved. The thoughts turned to dust in the back of his mind. You were ethereal. So pure, so unblemished, so untouched by almost anything.

Without realizing it, his feet moved forward. He knelt at the edge of your bed, his hand trembling as it hovered near your exposed leg. His mind flooded with filthy, shameful thoughts—what if he just let go for once? What if he gave in to the temptation that had been eating away at him for so long? He could touch you right now, could claim just a moment of forbidden pleasure.

...

But the moment passed. His restraint won out, as it always did.

Instead of touching your skin, Nightmare gently grasped the edge of your blanket, pulling it over you to cover the exposed areas. His hands were still shaking as he made sure the fabric was tucked securely around you, ensuring that no cold air would reach your delicate skin. It was a small act, something that soothed the turmoil within him, if only for a fleeting second.

He stood again, distancing himself from the temptation that had nearly undone him. His gaze wandered across your room, taking in the personal belongings that filled the space. His eyes caught on the pictures scattered on your shelves—photos of you, smiling alongside others. Who are these people? Jealousy flared within him, but he quickly quashed it, moving instead toward your belongings.

His eyes landed on something small and delicate: your handkerchief. It sat neatly on one of your shelves, its design is unmistakably yours. Nightmare reached for it with trembling hands, bringing the fabric to his face. He inhaled softly, trying to capture the faint trace of your scent that lingered on the cloth.

The scent calmed him, grounding him for a moment as he stood there in the quiet of your room, the fabric pressed gently to his face. After a while, the feeling faded. His fingers grew still, and he knew it was time to leave.

But instead of placing the handkerchief back where he found it, he tucked it neatly into his coat pocket. A small, selfish memento of the night. A part of you to keep with him when he couldn’t be near.

He made his way back to your bedside, his gaze falling on you one last time. His eyes softened as he watched you sleep, his chest heavy with longing and guilt. He didn’t deserve to be here, didn’t deserve to be near you.

With one final glance, he disappeared, fading in the gust of purple smoke as if he’d never been there at all.

#₊·꒰ა 👁️‍🗨️ ໒꒱ ‧₊˚ cheru's writing #sans x reader #sans x y/n #swapdream nightmare #₊·꒰ა 👁️‍🗨️ ໒꒱ ‧₊˚ yandere #yandere sans

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thesightstoshowyou · 8 months ago

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Sooo my Ghoul idea! So fem reader, the ghoul takes an odd job unlike his regular job with just killing people for money. A employer hires the ghoul and pays him BIG BIG “money” Caps to bring his daughter home safely across the dangerous wasteland. The reader is a vault dweller and so is the father who has outside connections so he knows who to contact and bring his daughter back. She snuck out to see what up top was really like, and to escape an assigned marriage. Reader is not so bright, basically a bimbo 😅, first time for reader, reader actually finds him attractive, cream pie, Dom Ghoul. Hopefully this is something you’d like to write! ❤️

Thank you for this request!! I hope I did it justice 😁🥰

Over Your Head

Cooper Howard (The Ghoul) x F Reader (NSFW)

Warnings: Loss of virginity, degradation, thigh riding, a little of the Ghoul’s self-loathing, painful sex (that becomes not painful), nipple play, dacryphilia, spitting, creampie, copious dirty talk

The Ghoul heaves a world-weary sigh. “Listen, darlin’,” he starts as he grips your ankle to shove your foot away from where it teases his inner thigh. “Your daddy’s payin’ a hefty sum o’ caps to bring ya’ back in one piece. I don’t think he’ll appreciate me deflowerin’ his lil’ princess.” The last word is said with so much contempt even you can’t miss it.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” you whine, bottom lip protruding in a pout.

“Means you’re gettin’ on my last goddamn nerve.” The inhaler hisses when he sucks down a hit. Outside, the wind howls and rattles the foundation of the crumbling office building in which you’d taken shelter. He assumes the dust storm that kicked up and trapped the two of you here, alone, is some kind of divine punishment for his misdeeds. “I know there’s some fuckin’ smooth-skinned brat down in your vault who’s dyin’ to fumble around with ya’. You’re better suited for him.”

The Ghoul watches as your disappointed frown morphs into one of determination. He can almost see the gears working in your head as you try to think up a way to get what you want. You aren’t used to being told “no,” that much is clear.

Never has he regretted taking a job more than he does at this moment.

“I don’t want someone from my vault,” you say as you move onto your hands and knees. Languidly, you crawl through the sand and he can’t help the way his gaze falls on the sway of your hips. He grits his teeth when you slide into his lap, the warmth between your thighs settling right against his clothed cock. “I want you.”

“Did ya’ hit your head on the vault door on your way out, sweetheart?” he questions as your palms come to rest on his shoulders. His own hands, rough from life on the surface and scarred from rads, smooth over your hips and slide down to cup your ass. Irritation shifts into bemused resignation. Admittedly, it’s been a long, long while since he’s been intimate with anyone, and the way you’re writhing in his lap chips away at the last vestiges of his resolve.

“No?” you reply, obviously confused. Pretty…and dumb. Though, he’s still not convinced this isn’t some kind of elaborate prank. Why you’d want him of all people—when you could have anyone you want—is beyond his comprehension.

But, here you are, apparently ready and quite willing. Who is he to snuff out your hopes and dreams, as misguided as they are?

Slowly, the Ghoul inhales through his teeth as one of his hands slides up to grip the back of your neck. His thumb brushes over your nape and he feels a shiver zip down your spine. “I don’t think ya’ know what you’re gettin’ yourself into, sugar.”

Already, your eyes are half lidded and hazy, your plush lips parted to allow for quick breaths. Desperate. Innocent. “Pretty please,” comes your tremulous whisper.

He’s going to make you regret every decision you’ve ever made.

The hand on your neck twists so he can gather up a handful of your hair. He brings your face inches from his own so his lips hover just out of your reach. A grin pulls at his mouth when he feels you test his grip, desperate to close the distance.

He leans in until he’s a hair’s breadth away, until you can feel his exhale ghosting across your panting mouth. “Ain’t no backin’ out a’ this once I tear into ya’.” Hastily, you nod and a breathy whine sneaks past your teeth. Your unbridled enthusiasm is going to be the death of him.

Or you.

The Ghoul’s lips crash into yours in a searing kiss. He swallows your sweet mewl and the sharp gasp that follows when he sinks his teeth into your bottom lip. The feeling of your hips bucking in his lap and the taste of your blood on his tongue rips a rasping groan from his throat.

“Get up and strip,” he orders. He releases your hair and lands a stinging swat on your ass for emphasis. You yelp but scurry away, apparently determined to prove your obedience. The slide of your zipper fills the small space and the Ghoul’s eyes rake over your body as the vault uniform is peeled away, little by little.

The clink of his belt buckle follows and it’s nearly impossible to contain his snort of laughter when your eyes grow comically wide at the sight of him. He palms his cock and slowly hisses through his teeth when you squirm impatiently on the spot, now as naked as the day you were born. Even from here, he can see the arousal glistening between your thighs.

“Come take a seat, kiddo,” The Ghoul says as he spreads his legs and slaps a thigh. Eagerly, you straddle his quad. He wraps a hand around your throat as the other settles on your waist. Slight pressure urges the roll of your hips and soon you’re grinding your slick into his pants.

“What would your daddy say if he saw ya’ actin’ like such a desperate little slut, huh? For a ghoul, no less.” As he speaks, the hand on your waist slides up to roughly tweak a nipple. You squeal and attempt to twist away, but his grip on your throat prevents too much movement. The Ghoul clicks his tongue, “I thought I said no runnin’.”

“It hurts!” You whimper when he turns the same mean treatment on the other nipple.

“Then why are you soakin’ my pant leg, baby?” The moan you loose when his fingers slip down your belly to prod your clit heats the lust burning in his gut. He snatches one of your hands, wraps it around his length, and uses it to stroke himself. The slide of your soft palm along twisted flesh earns you a strained grunt and the briefest fluttering of eyelids.

He watches you from under the brim of his hat. Your eyes are locked on the way your hand works up and down his shaft, your bottom lip glistening where you’ve wet it with your tongue. You’re damn near drooling at just the sight of his cock. The Ghoul has had about all he can take.

“C’mere,” he growls as he grabs hold of your waist and hauls you flush against him. An anxious squeak leaves you when the head of his cock nudges your slick hole. “Deep breath, sweetheart.”

You only manage half an inhale before the Ghoul digs his nails into your hips to spear you on his girth. Your pained shriek echoes off the walls and you scramble to pull yourself up and off, but his grip keeps you seated and forces inch by punishing inch through spasming, untouched muscles. Too soon, you’re impaled up to the hilt, your eyes wide and brimming with tears, your jaw working open and closed like you can’t find the air to scream.

“Fuckin’ tight,” he mutters, nearly overwhelmed by the death grip your hot, slippery insides have on his length. A steadying inhale allows him to turn his attention to you. “What’s the matter, darlin’? Gettin’ split open by my cock not what you’d hoped it’d be?”

The Ghoul tugs you closer to drag his tongue through the fat drops now rolling down your cheeks. Pinching your face between thumb and forefinger, he forces your mouth open and spits your anguish onto your tongue. This seems to shock you enough to draw a choked, furious sound out of you.

“F-fuck-stop-it-it’s too-so full,” you stammer, your thighs shaking like the shingles on the roof above. The Ghoul chuckles, dark and low, as his teeth find the soft flesh of your throat.

“I told ya’ t’breathe, baby,” he reminds you between teasing nips and licks. Your skin is rich like the food they feed you down in that vault, your scent lacking the taint of fear that comes from living life in the Wasteland. Good enough to eat….

Laboriously, you gasp, each breath minutely relaxing your cunt, just enough for the Ghoul to give a few experimental thrusts. The sound you make is distressed, yes, but now there’s something else there to, something akin to that desperation you showed him earlier.

“That’s it, sweetheart. Learnin’ how t’relax and take it. We’ll make a good lil’ whore outta ya’ yet.” Slowly, he moves your hips back and forth as he speaks. Eventually, you get the message and clutch his shoulders to attempt a few tentative undulations of your own. The Ghoul growls, his nails digging crescents into your skin where he holds you.

Soon, no pain remains in your vocalizations. You whine and moan and keen so sweetly, your cries filling the shelter and mingling with the wet squelching of your cunt. You find your rhythm and bounce, unrestrained, in his lap as your juices soak into his pants.

Pressure builds in his groin. The Ghoul can tell by the way your hips stutter and your sweet hole clenches that you’re about to finish too. Hastily, he pulls you against him, plants his boots in the dirt, and hammers up into you until you’re screaming all over again.

You cum a half a second before he does. You freeze in climax, your back arching, so the Ghoul must dig his fingers into the flesh of your ass to work you up and down his girth. With a growl on his lips and teeth bared, his cock pulses to paint your guts in thick ropes of ecstasy.

Long seconds pass as you both hover together in that liminal space of bliss. “Ohh…oh god…” you sigh finally, slumping, boneless. He mirrors your sentiment with a pleased groan that rumbles in his chest.

A hand in your hair tips your head back so the Ghoul can assess your dazed expression. “Fucked what lil’ sense ya’ had right outta ya’, huh?”

“You don’t have to be mean about—

A yawn overtakes your affronted huff. You move to scoot off his lap. “God, I’m so tired now.”

The Ghoul hums disapprovingly and maintains his hold on your hips. “We ain’t done here, sugar. That dust storm is still howlin’ and you got two holes left for me t’abuse.”

Nervously, you laugh and shake your head. “But, I thought…I just wanted—

“A big, bad man t’pop your cherry so ya’ had somethin’ t’brag about back in your vault. Well, I intend on doin’ just that and there ain’t no sense in doin’ somethin’ halfway. Not my problem ya’ bit off more than ya’ could chew, sweetheart.” A chuckle bubbles up from his throat at your horrified expression.

“On your knees, sugar.”

#thank you for the ask #cooper howard x you #cooper howard x reader #cooper howard #the ghoul x you #the ghoul x reader #the ghoul fallout #the ghoul #fallout 2024 #fallout #fallout show #thesightstoshowyou

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incarnadin3 · 4 months ago

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How Obey Me Brothers realized they were in love with MC: Part Seven, Belphegor

A/N: I'm gonna post this one before Satan and break the order because I have no clue what to write for him, and I originally started this series after thinking about Belphie being in love while being in the (you guessed it) shower. I feel like his is one of the easier ones because of what happened between him and MC and then Lilith. Another reason why Beel's is also really easy to write (hint hint). Also, unlike stated, Lilith doesn't actually hate Belphie, that's a figment of his imagination, and his hate for sloth isn't factual (I think?) that's just for plot. Anyways sorry if there's mistakes, for some reason autocorrect does not want to work. Enjoy~

Belphegor: The Catnapping Seventhborn

Being youngest meant that one could get away with a lot of things, but how could one get away with guilt?

There were only two things that Belphie felt guilt for. Killing you, and being the one that was saved during the Celestial War. Each day, when he looks at himself in the mirror, he sees a demon, full of sloth, and weakness. He looks at Beel's muscles, and wishes he had them too. Whenever he looks at himself in the mirror, he only sees the self-loath. Why couldn't he have had been stronger? If only he was strong enough to save himself during the war, then Beel wouldn't have had to choose between him and Lilith. Hell, he could have saved her. Now, her shadow stands behind him in the mirror, a look of pure hatred on her face.

One might look at Belphie and think, "Man, that's a demon who loves sleep". But no, Belphie hated his sin. It reminded him of his failure to be strong enough to save Lilith and himself.

He hated sleeping. Sure, his powers allowed him to control dreams, but what if his own powers want him to remind him of all his lacking qualities.

One doesn't think much of sleeping positions, and certainly no one batted an eye to Belphie sleeping. Not even his own twin knew when Belphie went into a nightmare. All he wished was that someone could shake him awake, hug him, and take care of him. But no-one noticed the signs that he needed comfort.

Belphie's sleeping positions went as such:

Splayed out - he was in a cozy dream, usually including you as a side character along with his brothers

Big spooning his pillow - in a dream with you (often times a date or a wet dream)

Little spooning his pillow - comfort dream where you reassures him that you didn't have him for killing you

And lastly, curled up - dream of the moment where Lilith died or you dying in Mammon's arms

No one, not even his twin knew that he still had these dreams, or what each position meant. He didn't think you even cared as long as you slept next to him. But today he got proven wrong.

Today was just like any other Saturday morning, full of chaos. On one had, Mammon was microwaving his frozen credit card, Goldie, and on the other, Lucifer was running around yelling, after a certain someone mixed bleach into his shampoo, making him look like a splitting image of his son/brother, Satan. Tired of the chaos, Belphie decided to steal a couple bites before slinking away back to his room, making sure to close his door tightly and hide the empty bleach bottle in case Lucifer and Satan joined forced in finding the culprit and burn down the HoL. Sinking into his bed, sleep took him within

The dream started like no other, Belphie big spooning his pillow as he dreamt of dragging you with him into the attic for a romantic date. But that's when things took a turn.

Belphie curled tighter as in his dream the two of you walked into the attic to see blood staining the wall. As Belphie reached for you in the dream, his hand touched a cold one. As he turned, he saw you, floating like a ghost, pale white, still in the clothes you died in, dried blood on your skin as you stared at him, and said in a gravelly voice, "You!"

"You killed me! I hate you!"

Belphie curled into a ball as he reached for you once again in the dream, as your hair fell into your face, (sorry to my bald MCs) obscuring your face from view.

As he reached out to push the hair away, to his horror, instead of your face, Lilith's angelic face greeted him, smiling, as your, or rather her body began to glow. Her smile turned sharper, as she reached into a hidden pocket in her angelic dress, and pulled out a sharp knife made of diamonds.

Belphie's face paled as he curled into the tightest ball ever, trembling as Lilith raised the knife and screamed.

"First you cause my death and then you kill my descendant?! I'll kill you!"

As the knife shot towards his chest, he snapped out of the dream, sweating as he gasped for air, his entire frame being shook by someone. He turned to see you, a concerned smile on your face as you wipe away his sweat, hugging him tightly and rocking him back and forth.

He doesn't know what takes him over at that moment, but he crumples into the embrace, his usual aloof personality being thrown out of the window.

"Shh its ok. I forgive you. And so does Lilith."

"H-huh? How'd you know I was dreaming of that?"

"I could tell by the way you were sleeping."

Never in his centuries of existence had anyone bothered to take notice of how he slept and correlate it with his dreams. Hell, it was a fucking milestone if someone even bothered to ask how he slept. But for you to tell what his dreams were about without him telling you, and comforting him? He felt like an angel all over again.

As the two of you laid down, him being big spooned by you, he relaxed, never once dreaming of Lilith and you dying ever again.

Guilt is often a crippling thing, and in the human world, it can even end lives. Belphie didn't go as far as that, but with you around, his brothers were shocked to see a smile on his face.

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depravitycentral · 2 years ago

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Yandere! Feitan Portor General Profile

Yandere! Feitan Portor x fem! reader

Tw: kidnapping, violence, murder, mentions of torture, mentions of Feitan carving his initial into you, mentions of masturbation, stalking, jealousy, threats, Feitan tortures a man in front of you, I stand by the (semi) soft creepy yandere Feitan agenda and I will not be swayed otherwise, this got super long I'm so sorry, I'm also delirious as I'm writing it so hopefully it makes coherent sense/is consistent, fem reader, MDNI

I do not condone any of the actions described in this post - this is fiction and should be treated as such. If you or a loved one is in a similar situation to anything contained in this post or my blog in general, please seek help. You're in charge of your internet consumption; please make responsible choices. With that, enjoy!

DARLING PROFILE:

Empathetic

In general, Feitan finds his attention drawn by a darling who is almost the complete opposite of himself.

He wants someone sweet and caring, all soft and squishy and warm. He’s never found this particularly attractive before meeting his darling, but there’s something oddly endearing about the way they’re always trying to help those around them, fruitlessly asking them to vent about their feelings, to use them as a supportive shoulder.

It makes him scoff, rolling his eyes and wondering at how impossibly naive his darling can be, but even he can’t deny how nice it is to have someone by his side, a human presence that’s steady and calm and understanding. It makes him feel good, a warm sensation bottling up in his chest and threatening to explode out, and although he’ll never really come clean with how he feels for you (at least, he never will verbally), a darling who can kind of read his rather emotionless face would be a very, very big attraction for him.

He just wants a darling who can understand him, even if his rational brain loathes the idea. An empathetic darling is sure to draw his attention, if only because he’ll be mildly revolted and intrigued by how they can be so selfless and so foolish.

Submissive

Feitan doesn’t want a feisty darling.

He doesn’t enjoy having to tame his lovers, and although he’s never really had a lover, he gravitates towards someone who is more naturally submissive and willing to follow direction.

He already feels powerless enough in the situation, frustrated that he doesn’t really have any say in how he feels. It scares him, quite honestly, if only because he doesn’t like how easily and quickly he’s jumping to conclusions where his darling is concerned, more than willing to jump through any hoop necessary in order to get what he wants, in order to make sure his darling is safe and isolated from every other man on Earth.

He likes knowing that his darling will do what he tells them to; it builds a layer of trust that makes Feitan go feral, and for every ounce of trust his darling gives him, he’ll try to return it as full heartedly as he can. He likes that he’s fully in control of his darling, and particularly if they were to be submissive in more… intimate aspects of the relationship, he’d be absolutely smitten.

He just wants his darling to revere him and believe his word as the word of God, and the moment that happens?

He’s only falling deeper into obsession, his desperation for them growing with every beat of his heart, getting harder and harder to swallow until he gives up, jumping head first into every swirling, dark, lecherous desire he harbors.

Soft

Of course, Feitan’s darling doesn’t have to have a softer body, but he can’t deny that there’s something enticing about a darling who is physically quite soft. Whether that’s rounder features, a plumper figure, or even a soft, demure voice, it all entrances Feitan.

His darling is something of a dream to him, because he’s never really believed that someone that stereotypically weak could ever really survive in this world. He likes how his darling feels, the touches he sneaks late at night when they’re sleeping sending sparks up his spine and serving as fuel for when he’s unbearably horny, his hand around his cock not nearly enough.

He’s prone to fantasizing about his darling, slipping into daydreams of his they’d feel in his lap, how they’d look with their ass up and face pressed into the mattress, how they’d feel so good wrapped around him. He just thinks it’s oddly endearing, and a darling who fits these characteristics would help initially draw his eye - he just thinks they’re pretty, a polar opposite to him, even going so far as to playing into some of his more protective traits.

Of course, he’d rather die than admit any of it, but he’s interally a bit soft for his darling - they’re just alluring in an almost primal way he can’t describe, but he can’t fight it. He can’t fight anything when it comes to his darling, as it turns out, and soon Feitan will decide that he doesn’t care.

After all, once his darling steps into his life and stays there, nothing at all matters - how can it, when he’s decided that they’re his, his woman to keep and admire and touch and fuck?

(It will take him a very, very long time to get comfortable with either of the last two options, but the desire and sentiment is still there, if the frequent raging erections he gets as a result of his darling is any indicator.)

Talkative

This trait is one of the things Feitan loves and hates most about his darling.

He enjoys listening to them talk; he himself isn’t particularly fond of conversation, nor is he particularly talkative towards his darling in general. And so, a partner who is capable of filling the silence between them sometimes is something that makes Feitan grateful, if only because hearing the sound of their voice makes his breath hitch.

And when they talk to him, all their attention aimed solely at him?

Well, how can Feitan not be flattered, not feel a bit prideful that they’re spending their time directing all their focus and thoughts around whatever small question he prompted them with? He just likes listening to his darling go on and on, even if the topic doesn’t interest him much. However, the downside of this trait is that it creates a rather ugly combination with his tendency to grow jealous.

If his darling is talkative with everyone, it’s sure to extend towards the men they meet, who just stare at them like they’re a slab of meat waiting to be devoured, all of them eager to get their hands on them and destroy what Feitan has claimed as his own. It’s infuriating, if only because it means that they’re interacting with others, putting themselves into a position where they could develop feelings for another man or be put into harm’s way or overhead something they shouldn’t have or any number of things.

It becomes a massive liability, and one that Feitan is so, so very aware of. It irritates him, and as much as he loves when his darling is chatting with him, he’s not so approving when they're with others.

And so, it’s really in his darling’s best interest to reign in the conversations with anyone else - unless they want to see their blood splattered all over the walls, hear their cries, feel Feitan’s red soaked fingers grasp onto their arms and force them to see the results of their chattiness. It’s in their best interest, and they’ll learn that soon enough. Hopefully.

GENERAL YANDERE TRAITS:

Distant

There’s a part of Feitan that genuinely hates you for making him feel the way he does. The constant pounding of his heart when you’re merely mentioned, the throb in his chest when he’s gone too long without seeing you, the nervous twitch of his fingers when he thinks about what you’re doing, what other man you’re thinking about…

He hates how paranoid you’ve made him, how so much of his time and energy goes into you. It’s your fault that he’s always distracted, that he’s not able to fully focus on his work anymore because he’s only able to think of you you you. It’s frustrating, and honestly it initially wards Feitan off from getting any closer to you - he doesn’t like the way he feels around you (that’s not true, but he needs it to be), so he’ll stay away and ignore you. Maybe that’ll get you to stop smiling at him so kindly, to quit asking him how his day was, to stop looking so pretty while you hum and make yourself dinner.

As time passes, slowly this hatred diminishes (or at least dulls), instead replaced with a desperate, pathetic need to be around you; he just can’t keep himself away from you, no matter how hard he tries. It’s demoralizing, embarrassing beyond belief that someone like you could get his emotions so twisted, but it’s reality.

He tries to fight it at first, believing himself to be above such stupid human emotion – he doesn’t need you, he’s a criminal and has never needed love or anything of the sort. And yet, each and every time he tells himself to not trail behind you as you walk to the grocery store, his resolve holds out for roughly five minutes. By then, there’s unwelcome thoughts drifting through his mind about what you’re doing, whether you’re talking to anyone, if you’ve managed to trip like you always do and scrape your knee.

(There’s even a small, very small part of him that wonders whether you’re buying foods that are nutritious for you, or whether you’re doing your usual junk food spree. A thought pops up in the back of his head: him beside you in the store, scoffing as you place chips into the cart. He’d replace them with fruit, mumbling something about you being so stupid, only to see you smile at him and thank him, telling him how grateful you are to have him watching over you. His cheeks feel hot at that, and he buries his face deeper into his jacket, grumbling under his breath.)

He’ll try to stop himself from circling back to you, but each and every time he finds some excuse of why he should be watching you, of how you aren’t really capable of taking care of yourself without his watchful gaze. It’s patronizing, more than anything, but eventually he’ll stop trying to fight it, submitting entirely and allowing himself the concealed pleasure of watching your horribly mundane life.

He’ll need to be around you, constantly, but he’s still not willing to let his emotional guard down. No, you’ve done enough damage just simply existing - you absolutely cannot know how deeply he feels for you, how wrapped around your pinky finger you have him. Not only would it eliminate any semblance of leverage he holds against you (in order to stay above you, that is), it also showcases just how far the extent of his feelings for you run.

And frankly, the thought terrifies Feitan – he’s never felt so strongly for anyone before, not even in the context of hatred or pleasure at their suffering. He’s in over his head, wading through waters he's always scoffed at and dismissed, and suddenly he’s finding himself nearly drowning, head always buried just under the surface.

So he steels himself, grabbing onto any shred of control and power he can against you – he grabs on and clutches on, strong fingers frantically staying attached so that he doesn’t get blown away and truly drown. And even in the beginning of your captivity, Feitan won’t change the way he’s so detached. He’s purposefully putting distance between the two of you so that he can remain in control of the situation, in control of you, and – most importantly, and most concerningly – in control of himself.

Because frankly, Feitan doesn’t trust himself around you. He doesn’t trust the way his body just does things, how any rational thought leaves his brain the moment your eyes meet, how fingers are already lifting up a bit to reach out touch you, to brush away stray pieces of your hair when you’re within a few feet of him.

The biggest way he maintains this control is by not giving you a whole lot of attention, aside from one stark, grave exception: his dark eyes are constantly watching you. He’s always just sort of staring, his expression blank as he observes you, motionless and still. It’s unnerving, terrifying you initially and only slightly calming down as time passes, but Feitan doesn’t care much.

He doesn’t necessarily want to interact with you, but just watching you allows him to be in your space, to be beside you, to smell you and listen to your breathing. You’re kept in one large room most of the time, and he’ll often sit in the chair in the corner and just stare. He’s not talking much, not trying to touch you or hurt you, but you almost wish he would sometimes.

He just doesn’t understand what about you it is that attracts him so deeply, that’s morphed him into this lovesick fool, and while he initially tries to understand, eventually Feitan gives up, because does it really matter?

Does it really matter how he became obsessed with you when you’re locked up in his spare bedroom, duct tape covering your mouth and an expressionless, frozen Feitan watching you with his heart practically bursting out of his chest? Does it really matter if he pinpoints exactly when he developed his love for you when you’re looking at him with those pretty tears in your eyes, whispering out a thanks as he sets the tray of food down in front of you?

It really doesn’t, now that his feelings for you are formed and solidified, now that they can’t be changed or reversed. So while he’ll never be the most accessible and sympathetic to your feelings, rest assured that Feitan really does love you in some fucked up way - he’s just unorthodox, incapable of properly expressing himself to you.

But actions speak louder than words, right? He’s always thought so.

Obsessive

Because Feitan is relatively quiet and secretive when it comes to his feelings towards you, it’s difficult for you to really pick up on this aspect of him. You’re unlikely to ever truly understand just how much he feels for you, the sheer depth of emotions you cause him.

He won’t ever tell you what’s going on behind that expressionless facade of his. He doesn’t tell you how oddly adorable you are when you’re sleeping in the early mornings, curled up in the corner of your room with your eyes shut and lips slightly parted, looking so soft and sweet and weak.

He’ll never make you aware of how his breath hitches ever so slightly when you make eye contact with him, even if it’s shaky and you look away too quickly, his spine tingling because fuck, your attention feels good.

You’ll never know why his foot is tapping lightly when you’re eating in front of him, the way those annoying nerves eat away at his stomach while he subconsciously wonders if you think he looks attractive today. (He’d trimmed his hair a bit, feeling it was too long and interfering with his work - do you like it? Did you notice? He’d hesitated a bit with the scissors earlier, brows slightly furrowing, dark eyes glancing at your sleeping form.)

He’s very cryptic, and this tendency to keep you out of the loop of his personal thoughts and feelings can cast a shadow on his more obsessive tendencies. That is, before he’s stolen you away from the world, Feitan did an extensive amount of research into you. He does nothing on a whim - he’s a calculating man, and once he’d finally come to terms with the fact that his feelings for you weren’t going to disappear, he was scouring every resource possible to garner your information.

He’s got access to all kinds of personal knowledge about you - your search history, for example. It’s a bit unexpected, if Feitan’s being honest - you’re much darker than he’d expected, the things you read about making him quirk a brow, his interest in you only deepening because hmm, seems the little sheep may be a bit of a wolf inside.

He’s getting Shalnark to hack into the camera of your phone and computer, the stream of footage easy to access as he cleans his tools, blood washing away as you smile and laugh at some comedy you’re watching.

It’s stupid and at first he pretends to find your laugh annoying. But then he sees the way your cheeks get all full and round as you smile, your eyes crinkling up, even the way you wheeze slightly when it’s really funny.

(Briefly, he wonders whether you’d find his dry sense of humor entertaining.)

He’s got photographs of you from his time spent trailing you, and though they’re a bit blurry and not as focused as he’d like, they’re still something nice to pin to his wall, keeping his favorites beside his bed. He’s never had trouble sleeping, but something about looking at you as he drifts into slumber makes him rest more soundly, wake up more refreshed.

Once you’ve been trapped with him for long enough, however, Feitan’s front of careful indifference to you will slowly begin cracking. You’ll never see fully through him, but you’ll catch the way the corners of his lips twitch up ever so slightly when you snuggle into the blanket he gives you one day, noticing how you’ve been shivering incessantly at night.

(He won’t tell you the blanket was freshly stolen, that he’d made sure to take one with the softest, thickest material he could find, and even in your favorite color. It’s just a coincidence, so don’t read into it.)

You’ll realize he’s slowly inched closer to you the longer you watch the television program Feitan turned on earlier, your spot on the couch feeling smaller and smaller as Feitan’s hip eventually brushes yours, neither of you acknowledging what’s happening.

(You’ll never know how badly he wants to reach out and touch you, to freely run his hand up and down your thigh, so trace your collarbones, to feel just how soft your body is.)

It all makes him feel weak, pathetic, disgusting, but Feitan can’t help it. There’s something magnetic about you, and he can’t pull himself away. His pride won’t allow him to fully succumb to the thoughts and desires about you that are constantly swirling through his mind, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t there, that they aren’t bothering him constantly. He’s secretive, and maybe it’s for the best that you don’t know how many nights he’s spent with his fingers wrapped around his cock, his pale cheeks rosy as he imagines the way you’d like tied up with hickeys he made spanning the insides of your thighs.

Perhaps it’s best that you don’t know how often he’s (begrudgingly) held the extra pillow on his bed close to his chest, dark eyes staring up at the ceiling as he tightens his arms around it.

(No, he wasn’t imagining it was you – he’s a touch starved man, and everyone has urges, right? It’s just coincidence that the pillow casing is one he stole from you, that he never washes it because it smells like you, that he nearly loses his mind when he almost gets a drop of blood from a victim on it.)

It makes it much easier to scare you into what he wants when you don’t know - you’re much more complainant this way, malleable, willing, and Feitan likes it that way. Sure, having you fall in love would be ideal, getting your obedience through a genuine desire to please him, but at least this way he can keep a piece of his pride intact.

This way, you’ll never realize the power you have over him - how he’d be willing to wipe out entire towns for you if you so much as mention it. You’ll never understand just how he needs to have you - to have you for what, you don’t know, but you can sense the odd sort of desperation coming off of him.

You can feel it in the way his fingers grip you just a bit too tight, the way his eyes linger on you just a tad too long, the way the smallest, most embarrassing little whimper falls from his lips when your hand touches his.

He’s good at hiding it, but everyone makes mistakes - just don’t pry too hard, because Feitan still needs to be the one in control, and you’ll quickly find yourself learning much, much more about the short man than you’ve ever wanted to know. Namely, that the only thing worse than him staring at you is him ignoring you.

Protective

Although, it will take you a very long time to see this side of him. Initially, Feitan’s feelings towards you are that of mild interest, mild disgust, and mild indifference.

Mild interest because he had, of course, noticed that you were pretty, what with your soft lips and doe eyes, your figure and the lilt of your voice. Indifference, because Fietan was sure there were a thousand other people just like you on Earth. And disgust, because you were so visibly weak and unable to fend for yourself, like an animal waiting to be slaughtered.

And yet, the more time he spends around you (maybe a long job has him centered in the same city for a few weeks, and you work at the little store he gets his meals from, or some other service job that brings you in contact regularly), the more complex these feelings become. His interest becomes peaked because you’re not just pretty, but also entertaining to talk to, handling his dry jabs well and even daring to throw back some jokes of your own. (He never laughed, of course, but a wry smile sat underneath his jacket.)

He’s still a bit indifferent, but not when you’re helping other customers or smiling down at your phone. (Were you texting someone? Your fingers were moving, implying typing – what were they saying that was making you giggle like that? What could he say that would make you giggle? Why does he care?)

But the starkest, quickest change of heart that Fietan experiences in how he feels about your strength and abilities. Of course, you are weak. Even if you can use nen, even if you know the basics of self defense – Feitan is sure that he could kill you in the blink of an eye, cleanly, easily. (He’s sure because he’s thought of doing it before – never seriously, just a fleeting thought, something that only briefly passed through his mind when he was still resistant to his attraction towards you – it was promptly expelled after that familiar sinking, uncomfortable feeling started up in his gut, but still.)

You’re embarrassingly weak, really, and as much as he tries to make himself ignore it or to simply stop caring about it, he can’t get it out of his head. He can’t seem to stop imagining you getting hurt, doing something stupid or careless and tarnishing that pretty skin of yours.

He can’t seem to stop imagining the way you’d take a corner too fast and slip on your own feet, tumbling to the ground and ending up with a sprained ankle or a scrape across your knee.

He’ll be sharpening a blade, blood stains caked onto the metal, and suddenly a flash of what your blood would look like staining the material makes him freeze for a moment, black eyes just a tad bit wider, the muscles in his arms and legs taut because there’s something sickening about the thought, something malicious and just carnally wrong.

He can’t help but imagine how you’d fare against someone like his coworkers, whose strength is difficult to handle even for an experienced nen user. How would someone like you fare against someone like Uvogin? Someone like Shizuku? Hell, even someone like Kortopi?

(Upon first meeting Hisoka, a very sudden and very intrusive image of the clown slicing a card clean through your throat flashed through his mind, and he’d nearly reached forward and ripped out the taller man’s heart at the thought, a purely instinctual response that left him more shell-shocked than he’d care to admit.)

He knows you wouldn’t stand a chance, and while he doesn’t want it to bother him, it does. It does, as much as he tries to forget the mental images or assure himself that you deserve getting injured for being so weak and helpless. But he can’t just sit still and let it pass by, if it were to ever happen - and so, Feitan’s protective tendencies begin manifesting.

They’re small, for the most part; making sure to keep his torture tools as far away from you as possible, just so that there’s no chance of you accidentally tripping or running into one or being stupid and getting any ideas.

He’s making sure that you’re under his watch as often as possible, becoming your second shadow and stalking you every free moment he can spare, just in case someone unsavory crosses your path.

He’s making sure that all your locks are working every night, compulsively checking them even though he knows they’re still good.

He keeps his protective tendencies under wraps, making sure that they’re subtle and just ambiguous enough that you won’t pick up on his intentions. Because while there’s something appealing about you knowing that he wants you to be safe, he would rather you not find out just how extensively he watches you, just how much he cares about your wellbeing, deciding that it’s yet another potential opportunity for you to manipulate him.

And of course, he’s embarrassed - he briefly considers requesting help watching you from a Troupe member or two, only for when he’s aware for long periods of times on individual jobs, but eventually he chickens out, too scared to have to explain why he wants Pakunoda to keep an eye on you.

He’s not embarrassed of you, per se, but rather the extent to which you affect him. And even once he’s stolen you away (an action which has roots in his paranoia for your safety), those protective tendencies are still firmly in place. He’s not a good cook, but he still tries to provide you with somewhat healthy foods, even if they’re undercooked and limp, bland and just overall unappealing.

He’s by no means an interior designer, but he’s getting you a somewhat soft, thick blanket, making sure the one pillow you have isn’t covered in stains or lumpy. It’s all subtle, nearly unnoticeable things that you’d have to be very perceptive to catch onto - but to Feitan it’s all important, because while he may still resent you for turning him into a lovesick fool, he’ll be damned if he lets you starve or be uncomfortable.

It’s stupid and he knows it, grumbling to himself the entire time he’s doing something to prevent hurting you, but it’ll always get done - and if you were to ever notice it, to thank him? Feitan would deny your allegations, telling you to shut up and eat your food, all the while the tips of his ears turn pink and his heart flutters because you noticed.

You noticed the way he takes extra precautions for you, the way he thinks of you and your wellbeing, even having the gall to thank him for it…

Don’t bring it up again or he’ll grow angry, but the pride sitting in his chest at your words is enough for him. It’s enough for him to know you see him, that you’re paying attention to him, that you appreciate all he does for you - it’s enough for now, at least.

DEALING WITH RIVALS:

Feitan is, unfortunately, a bit prone to jealousy – as someone who is aware that he isn’t the best option out there for you, the acknowledgement that there is a multitude of other men that deserve you more and could likely land you never fails to get past him.

He’s so, so aware of the fact that you likely don’t like him, that stalking you and planning to kidnap you likely doesn’t earn him any favors. He knows he’s fairly quiet, and while it’s mostly a fear of mildly embarrassing himself that bars him from actually interacting with you, it only pushes Feitan to worry that you only see him as a strange, unfamiliar man.

It’s likely that you think of him as nothing more than an acquaintance, a man who doesn’t seem to want anything to do with you. And so, the minute that another person tries to flirt with you, to look at you and think of you and speak with you, the insecurities over how you perceive him are blooming in his chest, growing and blossoming into full blown panic, because what if you fall for another man?

Of course, Feitan has absolutely no problem eliminating the threat, even enjoying taking the life of such a worthless man, but he can’t help the way fear grips his heart, cold and stabbing and brutal, because while he may be icy and difficult to approach, a stone face that leaves little emotion o be seen, Feitan wants you so fucking badly, to the point that it genuinely hurts.

And while he isn’t all that soft towards the beginning of his obsession (and really, even once you’ve been ‘living’ with him for a while as well), he does honestly want for you to return the feelings, to love him and care for him, to want to be with him and enjoy your new life by his side. Ideally, he wants you to fall for him, to see him and smile, to have your soft skin pressed against his rougher, more callused skin, your hands cupped in a firm embrace, a soft hug, a kiss against the lips and short, whispered words of trust and acceptance.

Of course, it’s makes him feel so damn pathetic each time he gets caught in a daydream where you’re smiling and laughing with him, tucking a strand of hair behind your ear and telling him he’s handsome, but try as he may, he just can’t allow another man to steal the opportunity to make you theirs.

He wants to be the only one in your life, the only man you see and think of and talk to, and quite honestly Feitan will succeed – his profession is death after all, and he’s a master at stalking his prey, locating their weaknesses, seamlessly killing and annihilating his target before they even have a chance to fight back.

And so, once his jealousy is triggered, the poor man’s fate has already been decided. Feitan’s never been particularly merciful, and where you’re concerned, this trait only grows - it feels good to kill whoever dared to speak with you, like some sort of cathartic release of all the emotions he’s been bottling up, all the anger and desperation and self-loathing and yearning trapped in his chest.

It feels good, euphoric in a way he can’t describe, and so he’s quick to jump on any man posing a potential threat to your status as single and ripe for Feitan to claim. He’s a trained killer, after all, and who is he to waste away a perfectly good target?

When the man in the black dress shirt approaches you in the grocery store, Feitan’s eyes narrow. The shorter man had been trailing you all day, watching you go about your weekly errands, and the tri-annual trip to the grocery store had been your last stop. You’d managed to evade any male attention today, a fact that had Feitan simultaneously sighing in relief and growling in anger.

And yet, here you are, dressed in a rather provocative set of leggings that have Feitan’s eyes absolutely glued to your supple ass, matched with a slouchy, oversized sweatshirt. You’re cute, he begrudgingly admits, and it seems the stranger agrees.

Feitan’s standing in the next aisle over, staring through the holes in the shelving to see the way you tap your chin and scan the aisles of bread, searching for the perfect loaf. You don’t seem to have noticed the man slowly walking up to you, his eyes visibly scanning up and down your body. Feitan scowls, black brows drawing tightly together as he debates what to do.

On the one hand, there’s not much he can do - you’re in a public grocery store, and he doesn’t particularly want you to notice his presence. And yet, he can’t just let this man approach you, speak to you, look at you, now can he? He grits his teeth, steeling himself to just watch for now, and jump in if the time is right, if he feels the man goes too far. The man clears his throat, making you jump and look over at him, the suave smile he sends you making your own smile falter a bit.

Which bread’s best? He’s asking you, and you answer quickly, naming your favorite brand and which style you like best - Feitan’s scowl only deepens when he realizes you’re telling him the truth.

The man nods along, before his smirk turns smarmy, one eyebrow cocked up as he asks which rolls are best then? I’m thinking they’re yours.

You blanch at that, disgust written across your face as you awkwardly laugh and inch away, but Feitan sees none of that - how can he, when he’s already moving, already grabbing the man by the neck and sprinting down the aisle and around the corner, all too fast for you to see with the naked eye?

You’re confused, unsure of how the man just suddenly disappeared, but his comment left you shellshocked and lost at what to do, so you quickly grab a random loaf and anxiously push your cart away, trying to put distance between you and wherever the man had ended up.

Meanwhile, Feitan’s got the man held against the back wall of the grocery store, fingers wrapped around his neck and a cold, menacing look in his eye.

Bastard, he grits out, tightening his grip and feeling the way the man panics and scratches at his fingers, trying to rip them away.

Disgusting, she is mine, didn’t your mother teach don’t touch what’s not yours? Feitan’s shocked he hasn’t just slaughtered the man yet, but there’s something in his heart telling him to prolong this out, to let the man suffer, to make this as slow and torturous as possible. He wants the man to bleed, to scream and sob and beg for his mercy, for being stupid enough to even try to seduce you.

Feitan’s angry enough that his breathing is uneven, his muscles occasionally flexing without his permission, the rage simmering in his veins nearly potent. He can’t stop replaying the sight of your disgusted and uncomfortable look, the fact that this scum caused you to feel such an emotion making his skin feel hot, his fingers eager to steal the man’s life.

He smiles as the man wheezes, the lack of oxygen making his face slowly take on a purple hue. What’s wrong? Can’t breath?

He squeezes once, harshly, roughly, and the man splutters, spit dribbling down his chin and getting onto Feitan’s wrist. He scoffs. Filthy, disgusting. Die.

And then the man is being stabbed with his sword, not once, not twice, but again and again and again, until holes and wounds decorate the planes of his chest, blood flowing down in rivers onto the dirty concrete floor.

The man is dead within a matter of seconds, but it’s not enough for Feitan. He’s quick to throw the body to the ground, kicking and stomping and mutilating the body until its unrecognizable. He’s still breathing hard, his fingers shaking, and he finishes it off with a spit at what was once the man’s face, a scowl thrown his way.

Pathetic, he says, dark eyes closing for a few moments as he looks to sense your familiar presence, already on your walk back towards your apartment. Feitan gives one last, firm kick, before taking off, the urge to have his eyes on you once more making him rush even quicker than normal. He’ll spend the rest of the evening watching you, like always, but this time he’ll pay more attention to your face.

You’ve never looked at him the way you looked at that man, all scared and revolted.

You’ve never tried to get away from Feitan, never ran or panicked or anything of the sort. Pride swells in his chest at the knowledge that you like the dark haired man more than that mangled corpse; you’d choose Fietan over him, he’s sure.

And as you slip under your covers, a soft look on your face as you drift to sleep, Feitan can’t help but slide open the window, slipping into the bedroom and coming up to stand beside your unconscious form.

Would you choose him over other men?

If given the choice, would you want him?

He’d always choose you, his heart always coming back to you no matter what he does or how he hates it - and one day, he’s hopeful you’ll feel the same. One day, you’ll be just as stupidly, pathetically, frantically in love as he is.

He sighs, the corner of his mouth twitching up. Someday, you’ll be all his.

TAKING HIS DARLING AWAY:

It takes Feitan a long time to resort to kidnapping you. It’s not that he doesn’t want to, but rather that it’s never been a priority for him. He’s reclusive, and because it takes him so long to sort out his feelings for you, stealing you away was certainly not at the forefront of his mind.

It takes him so long to even admit to himself that he cares for you, and that process alone takes anywhere from a month to three months, and only then does the stalking begin. Only then is he allowing the feelings for really grow, to fester and brew in his chest until he’s insatiable, desperate to see you and be in your presence. It takes him so long to warm up to you that he just simply doesn’t have the time or forethought to consider taking you for himself - that is, until his protective tendencies begin coming into play. Once he starts actively caring about your safety and wellbeing, little thoughts begin springing up in the back of his mind. He’s chastising you mentally for staying up late, the hands on the clock moving past hours he’s comfortable with.

He doesn’t like when you lay in your bed scrolling through that damn phone of yours, the bright light bad for your eyes and making you delay sleeping for as long as possible. It makes him angry (if not hypocritical, seeing as he himself only gets roughly four hours of sleep per night), and before he can even stop himself he’s thinking of how he’d make you fall asleep if he was with you, prying that phone out of your hands and telling you to sleep now.

He doesn’t like when you walk home alone at night, as if you’re practically asking to be mugged or assaulted or killed, which is why he has to follow you, begrudgingly hiding in the shadows and trailing you as you meander back to your apartment.

You’re stupid, is what you are, and as time passes, Feitan becomes more and more shocked at how lightly you take your own life - how can one single person be so careless? How can you be willing to eat food so close to the expiration date, or look both ways at the sidewalk just once? You’re helpless, truly, and it pisses Feitan off.

It makes him mad, if only because he’s trying so much harder than you are to keep you safe, and isn’t it unfair to him? Isn’t it awfully inconsiderate of you to make him spend so much time looking after you, doing everything for you because you’re so damn incapable? It’s a negative view and Feitan doesn’t really blame you, only convincing himself he does in order to make him feel better. It’s an excuse to help him feel like he isn’t as attached as he really is, a way to help alleviate some of the embarrassment he has regarding his feelings for you.

It’s pathetic, he thinks, but then something happens - something bad, something Fietan had hoped never would. Somehow, an enemy of the Troupe had discovered you. Maybe he was too preoccupied by keeping his eyes on you that he missed the stranger’s presence, unknowingly leading them directly to you.

Sweet, weak, defenseless you.

Time is frozen for Feitan as he returns from Troupe work, slinking to your apartment and letting himself in the front door, knowing that although it’s horribly late, you’re surely freshly asleep - except, the door is already ajar, and Feitan feels his blood run cold. There’s someone here. It doesn’t matter if they’re a friend or enemy to you - why the fuck is there another person in your home at such an ungodly hour?

The hairs on the back of his neck stand on end, and for a moment Feitan feels pure, absolute panic - you’re incapable of warding someone off, especially if you’re asleep, and although he feel sense your presence, there’s a distinct aura coming from your bedroom that isn’t yours. He’s quick to rush in, dark eyes narrowing when he sees the figure over your bed, a man hunched over and about to touch you -

His sword is slicing through the man’s neck before he can even blink, head dropping to the ground with a dull thud and blood pooling where it lands. His chest is rising and falling rapidly, brows pinched together and his grip on the sword hilt tight.

His gaze flicks to where you’re still sleeping peacefully, utterly unaware of the man standing beside your bed and the lifeless corpse bleeding out onto your floor. He’s got no choice, really - there’s something ugly stirring in his chest, something big and bad and painful, and he’s reaching out and scooping you into his arms all too quickly.

The man surely was after Feitan - he’d looked at him with recognition, and Feitan can only swallow and tighten his grip on you ever so tightly, hopping out your window and taking off into the night, the makeshift home he’d been residing in lately eventually coming upon the horizon.

The whole event spurs Feitan to believe that relocation is really the best option - his enemies are aware of you now, and who’s to say more won’t come knocking? How does he know you won’t be targeted again, those with vendettas against the Troupe knowing that someone weak and such an Achilles Heel like you would be the perfect revenge?

He doesn’t, and so although he’s grimacing and slightly worried to have you under the same roof, he sets you down on the hard mattress, giving you a few glances before closing the door, sighing to himself and hoping you wake up soon.

Feitan, once you’ve been stolen away, is mostly just an enigma to you.

He’s so painfully unexpressive, so difficult to interact with that you’ll be left to wonder just why he stole you away, why he even bothered to take you when he seems so utterly disinterested in you. He doesn’t talk to you - outside of a few clipped, short commands, he’ll hardly ever let you hear his voice.

Particularly in the beginning of your captivity, he would listen to your crying and begging to be released silently, his eyes slightly narrowed before a small, curt stop filled the room.

He’s never given you any sort of an explanation for why you woke up in his home one day, even when you ask him over and over again. He’ll only look at you, dark eyes fixed on your face, before telling you to go to sleep, you need sleep and promptly shutting and locking the bedroom door. He’s entirely unwilling to really interact with you in any meaningful way - except, it’s not because he hates you, or because he’s simply biding his time to kill you.

You may think that, fear swimming through your veins every time you see him, but it couldn’t be further from the truth - he’s not interacting with you much because there’s a part of Feitan that’s honestly afraid to. It makes him feel stupid and pitiful, but every time he tries to ask you a question or tell you something, the words just sort of die in his throat, his tongue frozen in his mouth even as he tries to move, tries to interact and get you to just look at him, dammit.

Honestly, he’s embarrassed to speak to you - he’s been watching you for so long, acting as your shadow and seeing you so natural and perfect and raw, and he’s grown used to having a front row seat without having to do anything. He’s not used to you being able to see him or hear him or even know he’s there at all. It’s scary to have you be aware of him, placing him in an uncomfortable position where he can no longer simply watch you or long for you from afar - no, now, as much as he hates to admit it, he cares about your opinion.

He cares about how you view him, how you perceive him, what you think about him. He wants you to think he’s funny when he tells cutting jokes, and generous when he gives you bowls of semi-cold soup. He wants you to find him attractive, catching your eyes settling on his body or your fingers running through his ebony locks.

He wants your opinion to be favorable, but despite how strong this desire is, the fear that you’ll find him weird outweighs it. He knows it’s stupid, but he’s terrified that you’ll think he’s strange, a freak, some sort of monster if he talks with you. He’s scared he’ll say something wrong, something to scare you or offend you, and while he may be a mass murderer and an atrocious man, there’s something about the way your eyes would get all glassy and teary, face contorting into disgust as you physically recoil from him that makes his gut wrench, a small frown tugging at the corner of his lips.

He’s too awkward and nervous to speak with you - and so, he resorts instead to the staring, to the watching, to the observing. It’s what he knows best, after all, considering that was how most of his time was spent before kidnapping you. This is better; he has control in this situation, and he won’t accidentally slip and say something that bears too much truth, that lets you in on too much of what’s going on in his head.

There’s less room for error if he relegates himself to minimal verbal and physical interaction, and while he aches to reach out and touch you, to feel the softness of your cheeks or the texture of your hair, he’s restraining himself. Just the mere thought of your skin against his gets him shivering, but it’s quite easy to overwhelm him; he’s not used to being the recipient of your attention, and while it feels good to have you looking at him and attempting to start conversations, it can get to be too much for him very quickly.

It’s easy enough to answer trivial questions; things like what the food is that he placed in front of you (doesn’t matter, it’s good is all he’ll answer with) or inquiries into why he wears that same massive coat all the time (warm and my favorite color).

Those are easy enough, not breaching too close to anything personal or anything that you could use against him. But the more complex questions, or - once the Stockholm Syndrome eventually kicks in and you’re so lonely you’ll happily converse with your kidnapper - compliments?

As soon as the words slip from your lips, a simple your eyes are pretty or a I hope you sleep well makes him stiffen up a bit, lips parting ever so slightly under that cowl of his, before he’s quickly darting out the door and slamming it shut behind him. He has to take a few moments to collect himself, his ears and cheeks feeling hot because god, you were looking right at him, and you’d even said his name.

(He spends the rest of the night in the basement, compulsively cleaning and recleaning his torture tools over and over, trying to distract himself from replaying your compliments over and over in his head, ingraining the sound of your voice and the tingling warmth he felt into his brain. Everything is sparkling clean by the time he’s done, a few hours having passed, and yet he’s spent the whole time thinking of you, letting you plague his thoughts like you always do.)

He just can’t handle having all of your attention on him like that, and although he gets better at it and more used to it as time goes on, he’ll still be very skittish. He’s like a feral cat; he’ll stalk and watch, staring at you with beady eyes from the corner of the room while you try and act natural, only to scamper away when you try to reach out and pet.

You’ll be starved for human contact as his captee, but aside from the lack of any sort of touch, you’ll find that being stuck with him is actually not too bad - he feeds you a decent diet, and lets you live in the spare bedroom of his home. He’d even cleaned everything up before you arrived, a preemptive measure he underwent one night when he couldn’t sleep, both his dreams and thoughts revolving around you.

(There’s still bits of dust and a spider or two in the corner of the ceiling, but everything smells not terribly musty, and you don’t notice any mysterious stains on the sheets, so it could be worse, right?)

He leaves you to your own devices more often than not, just on the condition that he can be present, whether you’re reading a book or sleeping or doodling with some art supplies he stole for you a while back. He’s not too demanding, but eventually the Stockholm Syndrome will get to you - you will eventually start wishing he’d do more than just look, even when he comes home with blood speckling his jacket.

You’ll grow to wish he would sit just a bit closer to you, so that you could feel his body warmth or a brush of his skin against your own. You’ll hate yourself for endearing your captor, but you don’t have much of a choice - Feitan, while terrifying and absolutely capable of killing you in more ways than you can count, is strangely sweet in his own way, even if it takes you a while to notice it.

He’s not buying you flowers or declaring his undying love to you, but he is leaving small, insignificant gifts on your nightstand, maybe a small pastry that you love, or even a small, pretty little jewel he managed to snatch away from the goods Chrollo said were communal among the Troupe from the latest heist. He won’t ever say anything about them, and if you bring it up to him he’ll either ignore you or deny their existence, but he likes leaving them there as a token, as some way of quelling the intense desire to please you that wells in his chest.

It’s the only route he can allow himself to take, because that way he doesn’t have to confront you, only looking at your sleeping face. You always look so peaceful and pretty this way, all the lines of stress and worry smoothing away - you look how you used to, before he stole you away, back when his infatuation first started.

And as he gently, carefully, hesitantly sits down beside your sleeping form on the mattress, he can’t help but gulp harshly and slowly, ever so slowly, reach out and rest his palm on your leg, the sheets separating your skin. He’ll keep his hand there for a while, dark eyes appraising your form under the covers, before exhaling shakily and standing back up, making sure the jade he’d brought back for you was securely on the bedside table, right in your view when you wake up. He’s not a bad captor by any means; he just has trouble expressing himself, walls built up too highly and too thickly to ever really knock them down.

And you’ll get close - as close as you can, at least, as time passes. Feitan will eventually warm up to you, but he’ll never be particularly loving, particularly obvious with his feelings for you - he’ll always be a lovesick fool, but he’ll be damned if he lets another soul know that.

PUNISHMENTS:

As a general rule, Feitan doesn’t particularly like hurting you. Of course, his career rides on his ability to harm, torture, mutilate and extract information out of even the worst criminals and agents, and for the most part he enjoys it.

There’s something about the way he can elicit screams and tears out of others that gets him giddy, the smile stretching across the part of his face covered by his jacket as wide as can be. And yet, for all the enjoyment he derives out of hurting others, seeing you harmed, bruised, crying and begging isn’t nearly as fun as Feitan had expected.

He’s not really sure why, but for some reason seeing you looking at him with so much fear dancing in your pretty eyes makes his gut wrench, an uncomfortable feeling sitting at the base of his throat while he mutters something demanding you to stop looking at him like that. It makes him feel weak, frankly, that you have this effect on him, but he can’t help it – early on into your captivity with him, he tried to settle your disobedience by physically harming you, but he got as far as leaving a rather large carved ‘F’ right over your heart before your crying got to him.

He couldn’t lift his hand as you sobbed below him that day, your wrists bound by leather cording stained with his previous victims’ blood. Your eyes were puffy and glassy, snot dripping from your nose and pathetic little cries and begs for him to stop tumbling past your quivering lips.

Frankly, Feitan was embarrassed for you. But more than anything, he was pissed – his hands were trembling, the switch knife grasped between his fingers frozen, his dark eyes wide as they stared down at you, guilt flashing through them the longer you sniffled and shook, the sight of you in pain with your pretty red blood dribbling down your collarbone simply too much.

That day, he cleaned your wound, packed up his torture gear and locked you into your designated bedroom, all without a single word, mostly because his tongue didn’t seem to be working. But the shaky gasps stumbling from his lips as he stared at his own two hands later that night were enough to make him realize he hates to see you in pain, particularly when he’s the cause.

It’s confusing, irritating, scary, even, that you have this effect on him, but try as he might, any thought of physically harming you from that point on makes his stomach twist, bile rising up his throat and nausea hitting him square in the chest.

But trouble, of course, arises; he refuses to physically harm you in most cases, but he still will only tolerate absolute obedience from you. You can’t simply walk all over him, he won’t let you – you need to listen to his instructions, follow his rules, eat the food he gives you, smile at him all pretty and warm, and let him sneak into your room and hold you when you’re fast asleep in the middle of the night, just as he starts craving.

Feitan needs you to be obedient and submissive to him, and so how can he mold you into the perfect, obedient partner without laying harm to you?

The solution, as it turns out, lies in making you absolutely believe that he will hurt you, despite it not being true.

You don’t need to know that the thought of making you wince or scrunch up your face in pain makes him physically hurl; no, you’re much better off thinking that he’s simply playing nice, waiting for the right moment to strike and leave you broken and bleeding. He’ll allow you to believe that he’s constantly ready to punish you, because then you’ll have some incentive to follow his words and rules, and to do what he believes you should do.

And why wouldn’t you believe it?

You know what Feitan does – he makes no effort to hide the torture tools scattered across his basement, and while you’ve only been down there once (the initial carving of the F), your imagination can conjure up plenty of scenarios of what goes on in that damp, dark basement.

The fact that he has hurt you leads to you staying mostly in line – you’re more than aware of what he’s capable of, and although it slightly pains Feitan that you think of him as a monster, it’s for the best. It’s better for everyone when you’re well behaved – when you simply follow his orders and do what he wants you to, no matter how strange it makes you feel.

You probably aren’t particularly fond of eating in front of him, but he’ll be sitting at the other end of the table as you carefully, hesitantly, twist the strands of pasta around your fork, your gaze flickering from the slightly undercooked noodles to your captor and back again.

You probably don’t really like sleeping while he sits in the corner of the room, that stupid jacket pulled up over his mouth, making the only part of him visible to your drowsy self those damn eyes – and his hands, of course, with just the slightest touch of dried blood under his nails. You’re probably not particularly a fan of any aspect of being his captive – and Feitan carefully controls this.

However, on the off chance that you do act up, that liquid courage flows through your veins and you cross him, you’ll quickly grow to regret it. Feitan still won’t hurt you – not physically, at least.

But others?

Well, it’s not hard to get Chrollo to give him someone who needs to give up some information, to set up the basement and make sure you get a front row seat as he makes the knots tight around the man’s wrist. It hurts him, really, to see the way your face contorts into horror as you watch him break bone after bone in the man’s body, but Feitan can’t stop looking at you. He needs you to be watching – you have to see what he’s capable of, even if he doesn’t really want you to know.

You have to know that he’s serious when he tells you that you can’t leave, that there’s nowhere in the world you can run to where he won’t find you. He rips the man’s nails off, a finger at a time, just to make sure you understand that his touch can hurt – but maybe, some part of him hopes, you’ll realize that when he touches you, his touch is only ever gentle. Or at least as gentle as he can be.

It’s all to make sure you understand that he’s utterly, absolutely in charge – his word is law, and while he craves for you to love him, he’s willing to compromise with just your respect and undivided attention.

It’s not ideal, but as he watches the way tears stream down your cheeks and your body heaves and shudders with your sobs, he can’t help but slice the knife into the man’s thigh deeper, send the punch to his jaw harder.

He has to keep you in line – this complicated, doomed relationship he’s forced you into is the only thing that makes him feel that strange, fluttering feeling in his chest, and he’ll be damned if he lets it go. He’ll be damned if he lets you go – even if you think of him as a monstrous, sadistic freak.

Maybe he is, maybe he isn’t; it doesn’t matter, because you’re never getting away.

OVERALL DANGER:

8/10

The danger that lies with being Feitan’s darling is much more mental than physical. By all means, he’s not the ideal captor – he’s a criminal and mass murderer, torturing people for a living and liking it. And yet, there’s something about you that tones down the more deranged, violent aspects of his personality - he’s by no means soft, but he’s rounder at the edges, less rough and bitter and cold.

He hates himself for falling in love with you, for having allowed you to worm your way into his heart and settle there, plaguing his every thought and dream with your face, your voice and laugh and smile and god, your body -

He blames you, initially, but as time goes on and his feelings only grow stronger, harder to suppress, he finds that it doesn’t matter. You’ve already staked your claim on his heart, and there’s simply nothing he can do to stop what’s inevitable.

Kidnapping is imminent with him, but it really does take him a long while to actually go through with it; you’ll have a long period of freedom from his clutches where you’re living your own life, with him only controlling it from the shadows rather than blatantly, like when he’s stolen you away. He’s not particularly needy, only demanding that you stay in his line of sight, but there’s something more terrifying about the way he’s always watching you like a hawk watches its prey than simple touching would be.

You’re thankful he hasn’t forced himself on you or even forced any kind of affection, but it doesn’t make up for the fact that you miss human touch, that you almost wish he would reach out and hold your hand, press a kiss to your lips, slip the ratty old t-shirt he’d given you over your chest.

You’ll find yourself growing stir crazy under Feitan’s rule, growing desperate but still too scared to confront him, because his intentions with you will remain ambiguous at best - he hasn’t killed you yet, so you must be important to him somehow. You’re not sure, but the longer you spend with him, the less you’ll care until eventually you’re actively dreaming of the day when he finally, finally touches you with those cold fingers and lets you out of that bedroom you’re locked up in.

Feitan loves you, in his own sick, twisted way, and the sooner you realize that the better - maybe you never will, but Feitan will always, always be there waiting, his gaze never faltering once from your figure.

You’re just too mesmerizing, after all - and Feitan’s never been particularly good at denying himself what’s his.

#yandere hxh #yandere hunter x hunter #yandere feitan #yandere feitan portor #hxh x reader #_hxh #_lee's profiles #_feitan portor

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nuttersincorporated · 5 months ago

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Gravity Falls fanfic I’m too lazy to write

Bill Cipher has been in the Theraprism a LONG time. It’s a good thing the Theraprism is in the neutral zone, outside of time because – if clocks worked there – he would have been there for 42 lifetimes of the universe.

It’s been slow work but Bill has made some progress. He’s at a point where he’s confronted the horrible things he’s done. He’s no longer living in denial and hiding behind a cheery façade. Unfortunately, he’s now deep in self-loathing and he’s been there for a long time, unable to move forward and grow.

Then the unthinkable happens. Something happens to the Theraprism and Bill takes his chance. He ends up back in our universe.

Half dead, glitchy and weak, Bill starts traveling backwards through his own timeline. Everywhere and when he finds himself, he desperately trying to change how things turned out and thwart his past self’s plans.

Bill arrives the day before ‘Dipper and Mabel vs. the Future’ and enters Mabel’s dream.

“Mable! Tomorrow you’re going to have a really bad day. I know you don’t want summer to end but when the Time Traveller turns up and offers you more time, don’t give him anything!

It’s a trap. I’ll be… he’ll be…

Look I’m from the future and past me possessed him. Just ask him to take off his goggles so you can see his eyes.”

He jumps further back. Dipper has been trying to guess the password to the laptop for two days and he’s getting nowhere. Bill’s past self is going offer to give Dipper a ‘clue’ in a few days time but current Bill gets there first.

“Dipper! Don’t scream! Everything’s fine! … or it will be. Just shut up and listen! This is important!

The password is ‘Stanford’ and the laptop was made by McGucket. The Journals were written by your Grunkle Ford. He fell through a portal 30 years ago and your Grunkle Stan’s been secretly trying trying to get him back ever since. He’s going to succeed.

Don’t ever make a deal with me. I can’t be trusted and the price is always too high.”

Bill jumps back again and again and again. The thing is, he’s been chased. Time Baby wants the Time Anomaly Removal Crew to catch him because his actions are causing new timelines to splinter off from what Time Baby sees as the ‘canon’ one. Bill’s old guards/therapists want to catch him and drag him back to the Theraprism for more treatment.

However, the worst danger Bill is in, is from his past self. He’s traveling back down his own timeline after all and his past self is always nearby.

Past Bill hates what he sees as a pathetic, broken version of himself. If he ever catches himself, first he’ll find out what happened to make a future version of himself turn out this way so he can avoid making the same mistakes. Then, he’ll kill this miserable excuse of a Bill Cipher. There’s only room for one of them and past Bill is going to make sure he comes out on top.

Current Bill never actually planned any of this out. He’s doing the best he can. If he has any sort of aim, it’s to make it back to before he killed his home universe. Hurt and weaken as he is, Bill still thinks if he makes it back that far, he can probably kill his younger self. Either way, he doesn’t plan to ask the Axolotl for another chance this time around.

#gravity falls #the book of bill #the book of bill spoilers #bill cipher #the axolotl #mabel pines #dipper pines #time travel #time baby #theraprism #he keeps getting stuck in the new timelines #and has to stay for a bit

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pendragora · 1 year ago

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I can write a whole essay on why Alicent would love to have a daughter-in-law from outside the House Targaryen

First of all, Alicent is bewildered by the customs Targaryens have (something we see in her when she is younger). I believe that if it wasn't to enforce Aegon's claim to the throne, she would not have him and Helaena wed and rather prefer to have them marry someone outside of the house

Second, ever since her falling out with Rhaenyra, she is stripped off any female companionship. She is surrounded by men – Viserys, Larys, Otto, Criston, etc. – and nobody is her friend there. For everyone else she is the queen. The only friendship she's had is long gone and is unlikely to be restored. We can see her yearning to have female company when she spends time with Helaena, but here she is also refused that – her daughter is much unlike any other maiden she has ever encountered or was herself. Helaena is a true Targaryen, tormented by her dragon dreams, one of the biggest manifestations the blood of the dragon has

So, imagine if Aemond and Daeron were to marry and their pick fell on ladies from other noble houses

She would be thrilled to have another daughter (even if in-law) because that would provide the female companionship she is stripped off. Her daughters-n-law would be someone who know the struggle of being a young woman in the world of men, the labour it is to be a maiden in noble society of Westeros. She would not only offer guidance to her sons' wives, but also cautiously seek and provide them with some actual warmth of a companionship such opportunity presents

Oh, and if she was to see that they were willing and eager to spend time with her? I think that, as a mother, all Alicent really want is to have some love from her children. I also believe that her love language is physical touch and she is so starved for it:

Her own father is not affectionate

Her husband is the last place she would seek warmth from, he's made it clear over the years where she stands

Her own blood, her children are struggling themselves in the misery that their situation gives them

Aegon is either drunk or in a whorehouse and he is stubborn in his self-loathing, he is convinced his own parents do not want or love him - he would never go for the comfort and warmth to Alicent

Helaena is neurodivergent and distant because of it, she can provide company, but it is not the company Alicent is used to. She can't touch her daughter (the older she gets, the less Helaena allows her to) and when they speak she can hardly understand her

Aemond is distant too, but they have their moments. I bet he is her favourite because he sometimes allows her close and gives her this affection she yearns for

Daeron is not even there in the King’s Landing with her

But they all are tormented by their fate. And she can't ask of them to be nicer. She knows they struggle. So does she

So, imagine women that have not known that struggle and legally are her daughters (in-law). Women that are eager to learn from the wise queen and look up to Alicent with adoring eyes. The last time she saw someone look at her this way was when her children were young and yet not off age, when they were not stripped off their childish innocence. She would do anything to bond with her daughters-in-law, but approach them cautiously, as if expecting them to also turn on her, like her children did at some point

But they don't and they openly express how much they want to be around her. She would be thrilled. It would be something for her

Something for her only

Suddenly, the Green Queen hosts tea parties with her daughters in law. She goes on promenades with them. They are often seen holding a conversation in public. In private Aemond and Daeron would notice how she holds them, either having a hand on the girls' wrist or half-embrace them

She would love to once again be a mother, not a queen mother, but just a mother, a female companion, dare I say, a friend to her daughters-in-law

She would become so much more relaxed and affectionate if her daughters in law were on board with physical affection, but she would never dare to raise a question herself

This is why I think she would cherish and support her daughters in law

She would be the support a newly-wedded into Targaryen family woman needs. Something she didn't have once she was married into the family

The Queen in Chains would not allow any other young girl or woman from outside the house to suffer the way she did

Please, I just want to hug her

Also? Bonus points if the daughters-in-law are from the Reach, she would have loved them twice as much

#alicent hightower #hotd alicent #hotd #lena goes off

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novelistrry · 2 years ago

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“I will not give this to you,” Y/N shook her head and furrowed her eyebrows. She almost cringed at the tone of her voice, so abrasive and calloused. Harry brought out the worst in her, he really did. Though, she didn’t understand how Harry could make this frustration brew inside of her when the rest of the Styles were so lovely to be around.

In two long strides, Harry was rounding the writing desk and in front of her. He towered over her, reaching for the crumpled letter in her hands and before she could grasp the paper tighter, it slipped beneath her fingertips and he was reading it aloud.

“I thought you said this wasn’t for me, Princess?” Harry wasn’t asking, it was more rhetorical than anything. The mock in his tone sent a heat through her, plummeting up from where her heart dropped in her stomach to the apples of her cheeks.

Harry is a prince, Y/N is a princess, and Harry is insufferable.

Tropes: Enemies to lovers, forced proximity, tension, etc.

Word Count: 3k

Disclaimer: This is an ongoing blurb. I do write full fics, but this blurb will have multiple parts and be posted in between fics (I am shooting for about 8-10 depending on the word count of each blurb).

Y/N hated Harry.

Actually, she wasn’t quite sure the loathing could run quite as deep as it did. It was almost as if when her eyes locked with his, or she got a whiff of his cologne in the corridor, the hatred would flow through her veins and act as a power source. As if the only fuel she needed was how much she absolutely and utterly loathed that man.

So when her handmaid had told her summertime was officially in action, and she knew what summertime brought, Y/N wanted to stomp her foot like a child and throw herself onto the floor.

Summer was supposed to be excellent, filled with fruits and sunny skies. It was supposed to be warm and lovely, but when Y/N’s parents invite Harry and his family to the palace every summer, it’s hard to find enjoyment in the season.

He was beautiful, there was no doubt about that, and Y/N wasn’t one to deny it. Green mosaic eyes, captivating and alluring like a siren sat atop a rock luring sailors in with that beautiful voice. Only instead of using his rhythmic voice to lure her in, he used the gaze of his eyes. Soft features and delicate sculpting to his face that were so perfect it was absolutely infuriating. He was perfect, truly, in every way possible and the people loved his beautiful face and charming personality.

Except when the large wooden doors shut, leaving Y/N and Harry alone (which wasn’t supposed to happen per Y/N’s request, by the way), his mouth was foul and his charming qualities were consigned to oblivion. Around Y/N, Harry was his worst version of himself and Y/N could not stand him.

“I don’t want him to come this year, Dorothea!” Y/N exclaimed to her chambermaid as her heels clicked against the large tile pieces. She was pacing back and forth, a nervous tick she’s had since she was little.

Sweat accumulated in the pits of her palms, a telling sign that she was nervous, though she would never say that to Dorothea or let it be known to Harry because he would never let her live it down.

See, Y/N and Harry were similar in two ways. One, they were both heir to a royal bloodline. And two, they were both so, so stubborn.

“I know, dear.” Dorothea, the sweetest old lady the palace could find, spent most of her day assisting Y/N in her needs even though there weren’t very many of those. Y/N was relatively low maintenance and hated to be waited on, “It’s only three months.”

With that sentiment, Y/N sat on the edge of her bed that was just made and fluffed, deciding she would spend her day sulking in her room rather than participating in any of the start of summer festivities. As if Dorothea could tell Y/N just wanted to be left alone, she quietly made her way out of the room, and left Y/N to her own devices.

____

Maybe dreams do come true, because the summer season had officially been in swing for three days and there were no sights of Harry, or his family, lingering around the palace. Eventually, she thought she would turn the corner and catch him chatting up a chambermaid with a devilish smile and eyes that would turn a girl into a puddle of melted candy, but it had been three days and even the girls she passed (who were anticipating him heavily) were whispering about the prince being late.

By the fifth day, Y/N was beginning to feel the weight lift off her chest and the ease flood through her veins. Though she didn’t dare to ask her parents about Prince Harry’s whereabouts because that would come with an agonizingly painful interrogation (they truly believed their daughter would wed the man), and a small reprimand because of her prior years sour behavior toward him, though they didn’t know just how insufferable he was in return.

Small talk whisked throughout the palace by the seventh day, explaining that Prince Harry would not be attending this summer season because he was to be married by the end of the year to a princess Y/N had never heard of. A small twitch shot through her chest, but she brushed it off feigning it as relief she never had to deal with him again. While Y/N acted oblivious, everyone knew the reason Harry and his family visited the palace every summer is because the families were hoping for an alliance of sorts— for Harry and Y/N to form a union, to form a bond that would end in marriage. As much as she chalked the twitch in her chest and the hollow in her belly as a feeling of relief, she was confused as to why she wished he would have written. Not necessarily her, but at least to her parents, informing that he would not be there this summer (or any summer for that matter because he was getting married) that way she didn’t have to walk around for days on end, thinking there would be a jump scare in the corridor or the dining hall.

A flicker of annoyance lit inside of her, an emotion she was familiar with and actually grateful for at the moment because it took away from the abnormal sensation in the chest and abdomen. Why wouldn’t he write? Or his parents at the very least? What kind of person does that? Y/N knew just how hard the chambermaids, the scullery kitchen, and the people who made the palace function as well as it did were working to ensure their guests were accommodated and comfortable for the three months they were staying with them.

It was very unlike Y/N, usually very polite and soft-spoken to feel that kind of irritation. The kind that was so pent up it was making her breathing slightly erratic and she was puffing breaths in and out through her nose. In a very un-Y/N like fashion, she decided that if Prince Harry wasn’t going to write to her, then she was going to write to him and tell him how distasteful his lack of presence or notification on the betrothal was.

Before she could even process what she was doing, she was in the main library of the palace, sitting at the writing table and crafting a heartfelt message to her dear friend Prince Harry, slightly berating him in each line for his so-called prince ethics (or lack-there-of).

Dear Prince Harry,

I am sitting here, writing to tell you how distasteful I find your lack of arrival. It is great news within our palace that you are to be married, which in turn, delays your arrival to our annual summer festivities, and possibly inhibits you from attending these festivities ever again.

A true prince, knowing royal ethics, would have written far in advance, revoking his acceptance to my family’s invitation. It seems that, as always, you are too engrossed in your own endeavors to care about the people around you who have taken the time to prepare for your arrival.

I know our royal household has been working gravely to make certain you and your family have a wonderful stay over the summer, as they have done every summer for the past two years—

“I knew I would find you in here,” his voice, clear and steady, echoed through the library bouncing off the walls and the leather bindings of the books which sat on the shelves of the wall, “You’re always in here doing something or another.”

She knew who it was by the sound of his voice, deep and sultry. He always spoke with such precision and so bluntly that even with her eyes closed, she could tell who it was just by the energy that filled the space. Arrogance and tempting were his two most significant qualities and they always filled the room, leaving her to suffocate in his presence.

Quickly, she jumped up and grabbed the letter, crumpling it in her hands. The ink was so fresh it smeared all over her hands with her rush, and when she looked to see him standing under the doorway, she noted that not a thing about him had changed. He stood with that same arrogance in his posture, his eyes were still that deep sea green, and his lips, chin, and jaw were as beautiful (if not more) as the last time she saw him.

Quirking his eyebrows, he couldn’t help himself. “Now I need to know what was in that letter you were writing. Are you in love, my dear Y/N.”

He took a step forward, and she realized he thought she would just hand the letter over to him, like it was his property to be read. And even though it technically was, the letter was now void because he did, in fact, show up for the summer season. While it may have been intended for him, the content of the letter did not matter, and because he expected her to walk over and drop the letter in the palm of his hand, that absolutely infuriated her.

He held the letter above the both of them, the words still readable even though the ink was smeared on the page. As he read aloud, Y/N wanted to drop to the floor and cover her ears from listening to speak her foolish words out loud. If anything, the letter was an act of catharsis. She probably would have never actually sent it to Harry, even if she said she was going to, but writing the words on the paper and pretending like she was going to send it to him was semi-therapeutic. By the second line, she was jumping in the air like a fish out of water, trying to grasp the letter from his hands so he couldn’t continue. To make matters worse, he was chuckling between words and flashing wide grins in her direction when he paused.

Eventually, the way she was jumping and frantically trying to snatch the letter from him was just as humiliating as the strong words she had put on that piece of paper he held in his hands, so she stopped and turned away from him so that he could not see the look of horror on her face as he finished reading the letter.

Finally, he got to the part where he walked in and startled her from her writing desk, her thoughts coming to an abrupt halt on the paper when his voice echoed throughout the room, and even though he was done reading the letter, she couldn’t bear to look at him. If there was one thing about Harry, he always had the upper hand with her. Always.

“I wish I hadn’t interrupted your thoughts when I came in here a few moments ago. I’m positive the rest of this letter would have been a great read, and you print your thoughts so eloquently, Y/N.” He was trying to get under her skin, even though he knew he had already burrowed himself under the flesh like a mite the second he walked in the room. That was another one of Harry’s traits— he wanted to see just how much he could push her until she snapped, because he loved watching her snap.

“Enough,” she spoke, barely turning to look at him. She caught a glimpse of him from the corner of her eye, enough for her to squint just barely and for him to know she was giving him a dirty look.

“Well, Y/N, clearly this letter was for me. Was it not?” He was doing it; pushing and pressing until the temper within her flicked on a light and her thoughts rifling through her brain started spewing like fire, the world around them turning to ash with each word that fell from her lips and targeted him like a huntsman and its prey.

“It wasn’t for you—” She began, getting cut off by the prince.

“It clearly says ‘Dear Prince Harry, I am sitting here, writing to y—”

Within under a second, she was turning on her heels to face him once more and trying to pry the letter from his fingers to no avail. She didn’t think she could handle him reading the letter out loud once more, so she covered her ears and began begging him to stop. The worst part was the feeling she had in her gut, the feeling one gets in their gut and their throat before the tears start forming in their eyes. While Harry had many horrid qualities about him, one of her terrible qualities were tears that formed, not out of sadness, but out of anger. Deeply, she inhaled to smooth out her thoughts and quiet her mind. “Stop, stop, stop.”

Grinning like the devil, he spoke slowly and quietly so any chambermaids passing by could not hear the words he was about to speak to her, “Are you embarrassed, Princess? The girl everyone thinks is so ladylike and polite writing words that would tarnish that sweet reputation.”

“I was never going to send it, and I think you know that,” she countered, and even though she knew he knew that letter was never going to leave her possession, she felt like she needed to reiterate that point.

Carefully and slowly—almost painfully slowly— he brought his finger to her cheeks and swiped across to feel the heat radiating off of her skin and she knew he was gaining even more satisfaction at the heat in her cheeks confirming his question, that she was embarrassed by him finding her letter. To rub salt in the wound, he folded the letter up and stuffed it in the pit of his pocket where she would not dare to fish out, as it was not very polite to stick your hand in someone else’s pocket, “For safekeeping,” he stated.

Those two words made her want to do it— stick her hand in his pocket and fish the letter out, tear it to little tiny pieces, and then stomp on the shreds of paper right in front of him, but she wouldn’t do it because she, unlike him, did not lack manners.

“You are absolutely unbearable, Prince. Do not think my opinion on you has changed. I can assure you it has not,” she wanted to get under his skin the way he got under hers, so she added, “Where is your betrothed?”

He paused for a moment, searching for the words, “I am not to be married, Y/N.”

The tone was cut and brief, not the same tone he had when she was pushing his buttons, but a clear line was drawn showing her this is where the boundary was placed, and as much as she wanted to upset him the way he upset her, Y/N did not want to pick and pry about his presumably failed engagement. Though, she did not blame the girl for not wanting to marry someone with such an insufferable attitude. And maybe, just maybe, she also didn’t want to hear about the girl. She didn’t want Harry to talk about how beautiful she was, or what her hobbies were. She didn’t want to know a thing about her or how she wormed her way into the heart of someone so aloof and out of touch with the idea of love. To put it plainly, she didn’t want to hear about their courtship and what he did to make her swoon.

Y/N would never admit it, but the first time she ever met Harry, she was taken with him. And then he opened his mouth, all-knowing and witty bordering intolerable.

“Well, then,” Y/N didn’t quite know what to say in response, seeming to be more uncomfortable with the idea of him getting married than he was.

With a mere couple inches between them, he leaned down to whisper something in her ear. Soft lips grazed the tops of her ears, a warm heat shooting through her, and though she was disgusted with herself for having such an instinctual reaction to his body and his lips so close to her skin, she was graceful enough to remind herself that it was only natural for her core to stir and her stomach to flip.

And when he finally spoke, his lips moved against her ear, “I am going to enjoy playing with you this summer, Y/N.”

She wanted to scream. She almost did.

Instead she took a step back, gasping and brushing out the wrinkles in her dress, “I absolutely loathe you.”

“I love that you loathe me,” he replied before turning on his heels and walking out of the library.

Y/N knew it was going to be a long summer filled with taunts from Harry.

And much to her dismay, that night she dreamed about his lips pressing against her.

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