#I knew I had to incorporate it into my fic somehow! its not just in the title though

[cosmic-ships]

Once again making a fic that makes you want to slap us both 💜

[dreamingofep]

Sinned Awakening pt. 10🩸

An AU Elvis fic

(Vampire!Elvis/Vampire Austin!Elvis × reader)

Character/Fandom: Elvis - Elvis (2022)

Request: No

Prompt: Getting promoted to be Elvis full time housekeeper, you realize the man holds secrets beyond belief and your undeniable attraction makes you fear the unknown. [Fem!Reader]

TW: Cussing, tension, angst, spanking, oral, Smutt, blood/gore 🩸

Rating: Explicit

Word Count: 7.7K

A/N: Hello everyone!

Welcome to part 10! I can't believe we've gotten this far! There's still so much we're learning about these two and it's only getting more complex by the day. A reminder, this is Vampire!Elvis so there is going to be mentions of blood/gore from here on out. If that's not your thing, sorry but it's needed for the story.

There's a lot going on this chapter that I've been wanting to include in a chapter at some point but haven't felt like its the right time. First off, when I first had the idea for this fic, I was curious when the first vampire myth came to be. It turns out it started out in Ancient Greece and a "vampire like being" was created by the gods. It fascinated me and I knew I needed to incorporate it into my story somehow.

Second, I have a soft spot for Elvis singing gospel. I know I needed to add a meaningful song to the chapter to show his vulnerability and You'll Never Walk Alone came to my head. When Elvis recorded this, it is actually him playing the piano in the recording. While this isn't technically a gospel song, it was written by Rodgers and Hammerstein for the musical Carousel but you can see how Elvis might have interpreted it as so. Take a listen if you want 🤭

I wanna say thanks to those of you for reading from the very beginning or, if you somehow stumbled across this one late night on Tumblr or Ao3 and decided to give it a shot. Your enthusiasm about this little story makes my heart sing so thank you!

If you’d like to start reading from the beginning, start here. 🩸

Thank you again! Please let me know what you think in the comments or send me a message!

Sorry for any spelling mistakes and overall goofs.🖤

You shake your head at him, watching him give you that sly smirk that you love so much, knowing that he has you in the palm of his hand. He leaves the bedroom with the door open and you follow him to see where he’s run off to so quickly. You grab the pajama top and put it back on you, buttoning the first few and following him into the next room. 

He’s standing by the small bar and opens a bottle of water. You walk to him leaning over the ledge as he hands you the glass. 

“Here honey,” he says smoothly. 

You take a sip, not realizing how much you need this. He comes around the bar to sit on the stool, drinking you in. He had his pajama bottoms on but left his chest exposed, giving you the best view imaginable. You look him up and down as he does to you and press your lips together, fighting the smirk forming on your face.

You step in between his legs, rubbing your hands up his chest gently, gliding around his neck, then up to his hair. He murmurs contently, but you pull at his hair harshly, making him grunt. 

You get close to his ear, “Take this out of me. Now.” You growl. 

“No. Not yet,” he says smugly, laughing softly. 

“What do you mean not yet?” you hiss. “I’m not having you play with me like this.”

He puts his hand around your neck, softly squeezing it, and makes you look at his dangerous eyes.

“Yes, you will. Trust me, you will listen to me,” he boasts.

“No, I won’t. You forget that I can resist your… charm,” you smirk at him, knowing that’s going to piss him off. He hates that you can’t be compelled by him and shoving it in his face is the icing on the cake. 

He squeezes his eyes closed in a frustrated manner and opens them back up facing you intensely. 

“You’re going to be the death of me hmm? Just never going to listen and constantly test me?” He grumbles rubbing his thumb lightly over the bruise on your neck. 

“Hmm… yes that sounds like a marvelous plan. Can’t let you get too comfortable,” you tease. 

“Using my own words against me, I don’t know what I’m going to do with you,” he quips, running his fingers through your hair. 

“I’m sure you’ll find a way,” you tease. “But first do something else with this,” you grunt, taking your finger and pulling the ring out of you, pushing it against his chest, your slick covering it. 

His eyes light up in shock and stares at you. You know you’re pushing it, he likes to be obeyed but something in you loves to get a rise out of him. It’s all dangerous though, his mood is so drastic especially when he’s hungry so you have to watch yourself. It’s been two days since he fed and you’re unaccustomed to how he acts when he does need to eat again. Can’t be worse than the first day you two met so you think you can handle anything. 

He doesn’t grab the ring right away, just looks at you like he could pin you down in one swoop and make you beg for his mercy. His eyes grow dark and his lips form a pompous look, waiting for your next dangerous move. You decide to grab his hand and slip the ring back on his ring finger. 

“There you go sweetheart,” you say mockingly, walking away towards the bathroom to wipe the slick in between your thighs. In the blink of an eye, he is in front of you again, towering over you, his breathing heavy. 

“Where do you think you’re going?” He seethes. 

“I’m not leaving if that’s what you’re thinking. You don’t have to break the doorknob again,” you taunt. 

His face drops and his eyes turn fiery. “You are unbelievable. Someone ought to put you in your place,” he rasps.

“I know honey. Put me on top of the piano again and show me how to behave,” you quip, rubbing your hand against his cock making him hiss in frustration. 

He quickly picks you up and puts you over his shoulder. You gasp and try to get out of his grasp but he’s far too strong compared to you. He takes long strides to the guest room and puts you down on the bed face down. You put your arms out quickly to brace yourself but he roughly grabs your wrists, putting them behind your back. You protest and continue to try to wiggle out of his hand that is grasping onto both of your wrists, keeping you still. You rest your forehead on the bed and let out a frustrated grunt. 

He pulls at your hair to turn your head to the side and leans down into the crook of your neck. 

“What did you think that kind of behavior was going to get you? You just like gettin’ me all riled up, is that it?” He hisses. You know you’re gonna get it, your little game has now turned into his and he loves to win. You feel him nip at your neck causing both of you to grunt. 

“Maybe a little,” you whimper. 

He doesn’t like that answer. Not one bit. 

He grunts and takes another nip at your neck. 

“I know I can’t make you listen to me, but I’m gonna have to teach you to listen to me,” he growls. Your eyebrows furrow in confusion but that’s when you feel it. 

His hand moves up to scrunch your pajamas out of the way and giving you a spank on your ass. You’re in shock and the stinging left behind on you makes you gasp. 

“Elvis don’t you dare!” You squeal out. 

“You’re gonna listen to me from now on won’t you,” he asks, giving you another spank. 

Your eyes water, not used to the feeling of anyone hitting your backside like this. He gives you another spank, letting out a breathy grunt. 

“Elvis!” You squeal. 

He pulls at your hair again, making your head lift from the bed. 

“Are you gonna listen? You gonna be good for me?” 

“Mhmm… most of the time,” you grumble, gasping for air. 

His hand comes down again but this time, a little moan comes out of your mouth instead and a new wave of pleasure begins to pour over you. You shouldn’t be surprised at this point that Elvis has unlocked another spark of pleasure you didn’t know existed before him. 

Now you want him to spank you, turning his little game into your pleasure.  

He murmurs contently,“Mhmm thats what I thought. You liking your punishment now honey?” He growled. 

“Your hands feel too good on me to be a punishment,” you gasp.

He gives you one last spank and you can’t help but moan louder. 

“Oh fuck, baby,” you groan. He squeezes your ass and places a kiss in the crook of your neck. He moans too and his fingers graze your folds, wet with arousal. 

“Jesus, such a naughty girl. I should put something in your mouth for saying such vulgar things.” He grumbles.

“Mhmm, I think that would be the appropriate punishment,” you tease.

He lets go of your wrists and turns you around to face him towering over you, your back laying on the bed, and your legs wrapped around his torso. He has a string grip on your thighs and has a big grin on his face when you look up at him. 

“You just can’t behave,” he growls, his thumb lightly pressing on your clit making you jump, still very sensitive. 

You shake your head no at him, batting your eyes at him. 

“Don’t be mad at me. I’ll be good. I’m sorry,” you whimper. His thumb continues to tease and you feel yourself get wetter. You watch his almost drunk eyes look at your weeping pussy and watch how he wants you to himself all over again. He pulls down the waist band of his pajamas and takes his cock out, hard once again. He really wasn’t lying that he never gets tired…

“Show me then. Show me how sorry you are,” he commands. His voice makes you quiver and you know what he’s asking for. You adjust your body on the bed and lay on you stomach, your forearms popping you up. You lick the tip of him softly, making him sigh with satisfaction.

“Please, forgive me baby,” you whisper before you wrap your lips around his head and suck, taking more of him in your mouth gradually. His hips buck into your mouth, wanting to fill you quickly with his length. You moan out, loving the way he’s so eager.

You know what he likes and know what will get him to come unglued the fastest. Your hand reaches for his balls, massaging them lightly. He bucks his hips into you again, causing you to gag around him.

“You fucking naughty girl,” he moans, placing his knee on the bed to move easier. You lick and suck more, groaning when how he puts more of his cock down your throat, making your eyes water.

“Sucha good girl. Relax your throat and let me fuck it some more,” he growls, taking a fist full of your hair in his hand and moves in and out of you. Your hand continues to touch his balls, getting him to let out all these animalistic grunts. 

You let him move, feeling how he won’t last that long with how you’re touching him and the way he’s moving inside you. You place your hand on his shaft that’s not in your mouth and jerk him off, licking and sucking his sensitive head.

He keeps groaning and cursing your name, getting so close.

“Baby, I’m gonna cum, right in that pretty mouth of yours,” he moans, moving his hips a few more times before he releases in your mouth. He fills your mouth quickly and makes you fall apart too with the sounds he’s making. You can’t help but gag around his length and moan with how he’s using you. It’s so dirty but you couldn’t care less. He was yours. All yours. 

He pulls his cock out of your mouth and watches you swallow everything he gave you. You smirks at you, pulling your body up to kiss you.

His lips devour yours and has his hands back on your body, consuming your bare flesh. You moan into his mouth loving how he feels on you. He slips his tongue into your mouth and deepens the kiss further. He feels like heaven as he touches all the parts that only he knows you like to be caressed.

He briefly pauses, giving you some air. 

“You’re good at apologizing,” he groans, going back to give you another kiss. 

You nod your head in agreement, “oh I’m glad you accepted the apology,” you quip. 

He smiles down at you, “So bad. You’re so bad. I like a good girl,” he teases. 

“Well, you’re going to have to deal with a bad girl then,” you say, your voice sultry. 

His hands squeeze your ass, pushing your body more into him. God, you’re a mess because of this man. He knows how to make you weak at all times and half the time he isn’t even trying. You’re addicted to his attention and his body and the way he makes you feel. It’s all never enough. You don’t know where this is going to end up but all you know is you need him at all times. Probably not the same level as him but in terms of being human, you didn’t want him to go away and leave you.

He smoothly pulls you onto him, having you lay your head on his chest. His skin melts into your warmth and makes you want to fall asleep on him. You feel so content here and you two wallow in the silence together. The longer you lay there, a chill runs through your body and his body temperature starts to make you shiver. He tries to hold you tighter but it isn’t helping. He grabs the blanket at the edge of the bed and covers your body.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers.

“It’s fine,” you says, wrapping the blanket tighter around you.

You adjust your head on his chest and your ear presses into where his heart is and for the first time, you hear his strange heartbeat. It’s so faint, barely obtainable by your ears and his slow breathing makes you realize how inhuman he really is. 

All of him is a facade that is made to please his victims. It’s so strange feeling and touching him knowing what you know now.

Thump…….silence……. 

Your hand trails up his stomach to his chest, placing your hand over his heart and look up at him surprised.

“I know,” he says, looking at you like he knows what you’re about to say. 

“Your heart… It’s so, quiet,” you whisper.

“Mhmm, it doesn’t work so well anymore,” he mumbles, kissing the top of your head, “Don’t worry about me.” 

“Is that how it always is? So… dormant,” you say softly.

“Yes. Ever since I’ve been bit. It’s also affected by how much I umm… eat,” he says carefully.

“I didn’t know. There’s just so much I’m finding out for the first time with you. You have to understand this stuff freaks me out a bit,” you explain.

He wraps his arms around you tighter, trying his best to comfort you.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry about all of this. You should have never found out. I should have never laid a hand on you, maybe then this all would be so much easier,” He says sorrowful.

“Honey, that’s not what I mean at all. I’m so happy with you. More than I have been in a very long time but it’s just this new bomb has dropped that you’re not really who I thought you are is going to take some time to get used to. I only found out two days ago that you’re…,” you say sheepishly when he cuts you off.

“I know baby, I know. I wish I could be different for you. Be exactly who you deserve but I can’t help it.” He says defeated, slowly lifting you up off his chest and getting off the bed, feeling the mood of the room drastically shift. 

You know he is this very powerful being that has abilities beyond your wildest dreams but as he looks down at you, sorrow filling his eyes, you see how fragile he really is. His stature is slouched, and his eyes look tired and gaunt. You want to comfort him, reach out and tell him everything is going to be alright but in reality, you don't know if that’s the truth.

“Baby, please come lay with me. I don’t want you to go. I didn’t mean to upset you,” you plead.

He looks at the clock on the wall and it reads midnight. “Maybe you should get some rest. You haven’t been sleeping well so I’ll leave you alone,” he says weakly.

You try to protest but he’s already out the door, softly closing it behind him.

You let out a frustrated grunt. You couldn’t sleep even if you tried. You hated seeing him hurt and wished you could make him forget all of his self-hatred.

You can only understand a fragment of how he felt about himself and how he felt when he looked in the mirror. He made this life-altering decision and now thirteen years later, does he regret it?

Does he regret it because you are now in his life?

Are you the reason he thinks differently about everything?

You don’t know but you also need to figure out what to do about this situation. There was one thing you knew for certain; you wanted him. You want him like no other person on this planet. You don’t think you wanted Daniel like this the you two were first seeing each other. These were two very different situations but they still affected you deeply.

That was another thing you had to figure out was how you were going to move out of that apartment and where you were going to live next. You didn’t want any confrontation with Daniel. There was no point in it and you made up your mind. Leaving was going to be the best option for both of you and maybe you could start the next chapter of your life freely.

You knew Anna wouldn’t mind letting you stay a little longer to figure your shit out. You were thankful for her and her kindness. Oh shit. 

You took her car when you thought you were going to just talk to Elvis. Now it's been days later and you haven’t even called her.

Shit she’s gonna kill me, you think.

Your chaotic thoughts swirl in your head and you panic. You see a phone on top of the dresser and quickly scramble out of the bed and reach for the phone. You start to dial her number and glance up at the clock and it is already half past two. She was definitely fast asleep but you needed to talk to her.

The phone rings a couple of times and the sound her her groggy voice fills the receiver.

“H-hello?”

“Hey Anna, it's me,” you whisper.

“Y/n? Are you okay? I’ve been so worried about you. What’s going on?” She asks.

You pause and take a deep breath. You know Elvis is probably listening with ease to your conversation so you know you need to choose your words carefully.

“I’m fine. I’m sorry I haven’t called… things have been… hectic,” you admit.

“Y/n I know when something is wrong. What’s going on?” She asks more firmly.

“I can’t really tell you specifics… but I’m sorry I took your car. Let me come by and pick you up for work so you can have it back,” you suggest.

“Okay, we’ll talk about this later, see you at 5:30. Just let yourself in with the key. I’m glad you’re okay though, I was worried sick.”

“I know, I’m sorry again, I’ll see you soon I promise,” you say before hanging up. 

You fall back onto the bed again, staring up at the ceiling, feeling crushed by guilt.

You try to take a nap but it feels too hot and too cold at the same time. An hour passes by and you’re restless. Elvis hasn’t made a sound in a few hours and you were curious what he was doing.

You put your pajama top on again and peeking out into the living room. You see piles of books scattered about on the tables and sofa. You decide to pick one up, curious about what he’s reading. You sit down on the sofa, scanning the mess of literature in front of you.

The thick, red, leather-bound book felt ancient, the pages were so thin, that you had to be extra careful touching them. You scan the pages seeing what this one is about. In the text, it explains, what a vampire is:

“The main characteristic of vampires is they drink human blood. They typically drain their victim’s blood using their sharp fangs, killing them slowly and turning them into vampires. Making the victim bite them in return to complete the process.”

A chill runs up your spine as you read these details of what these pages tell.

“Vampires are typically said to be of pale skin and range in appearance from grotesque to preternaturally beautiful…”

Yeah, that one is pretty obvious he’s supernaturally gorgeous.

You pick up the next book and thumb through the pages, reading the ancient lore of the first vampire showing up in Ancient Greece that was cursed by the Gods. This surprised you because you thought stories of the Greek Gods were just a fable, something that was made up. You don’t think you’ll ever be able to comprehend that stories are no longer myths and probably have more truth residing in them than you think.

You start to read the story of Ambrogio, a young adventurer born in Italy and one who longed to travel to Greece. When he was old enough, he set sail to Greece and traveled to the Eastern area of Delphi.

This was the home of Apollo’s temple, God of the Sun. When he was visiting, Ambrogio met an Oracle who would sit in a chamber within the temple and speak prophecies inspired by Apollo to those who came to seek the Oracle’s wisdom.

She only repeated: “The curse. The moon. The blood will run.”

It kept him up all night, worried about what the Oracle meant. He went for a walk and he saw a beautiful woman dressed in white walking to the temple. He stopped her and she told him her name was Selene and was the maiden of the temple. Her sister was the Oracle and would take care of her when she would be working. For the next few days, Ambrogio met Selene before she entered the temple and they fell madly in love.

On his last day in Greece, he asked Selene to marry him and return with him to Italy. She said yes and they agreed they would meet the next day at dawn outside the temple.

But this entire time, Apollo had been watching. He too loved Selene and grew enraged that Ambrogio would come to his temple and steal one of his maidens away. At sunset, Apollo appeared to Ambrogio and gave him a curse that from this day forward, the mere touch of Apollo’s sunlight would burn his skin.

He was terrified and had nowhere to go as the sun would burn him as soon as the sun rose. He hid in a cave that led to Hades. Hades, the God of the Underworld, listened to his cry for help and made him a deal. If Ambrogio could steal the silver bow of Artemis and bring it back, he would grant him and Selene protection in the underworld. As collateral, Ambrogio had to leave his soul behind with Hades until he returned with the bow. If he didn’t return with the bow, he would have to live in the Underworld forever, never seeing Selene again.

He took his bow and arrows and set out on his mission. He had no parchment to write to Selene what was going on, so he shot a swan, using its blood for ink and taking a single feather to write a poem to her. He did this for forty-four days, never missing a single day.

On the forty-fifth night, he had one arrow left and shot at a swan and missed. He felt hopeless and cried for help. Artemis, sister of Apollo and the Goddess of Hunting and the Moon, heard his cry. He begged her for one arrow to write Selene a note and she took pity on him. She let him borrow one silver arrow and he quickly ran to Hade’s cave to deliver the object to him. Artemis realized what was happening and cast her own curse on him; for silver to burn his skin.

Ambrogio begged for her forgiveness and explained the curse Apollo gave him and his undying love for Selene that he didn’t have any choice but to do what he had done. She pitied him and decided to give him one last chance. She offered to make him a great hunter, almost as great as she was, with the speed and strength of a god and fangs with which to drain the blood of the beasts to write his poems. In exchange for this immortality, he would have to agree to a deal. He and Selene would have to escape Apollo's temple and worship only Artemis forever. The catch was that Artemis was a virgin goddess, and all of her followers had to remain chaste and unmarried, so Ambrogio was never allowed to touch Selene again. They could never kiss, never touch, never have children. He quickly agreed and left a note to Selene at the temple to meet him at the docks and ran away before Apollo would notice he was there.

She met him at the ship and she found him hiding in a coffin, sheltering from the sunlight. They sailed to Ephesus where they would live many long and happy years together. They stayed faithful to Artemis and never touched or kissed. While he stayed the same after all those years, Selene grew old and ill and was on her deathbed. He couldn’t bear to see her die and knew he would not be with her in the afterlife since his soul still resided with Hades. He ran to the woods and found a white swan and shot it, offering it to Artemis, begging to make Selene immortal like him.

Artemis thanked Ambrogio for all their dedication to her after all these years and would make him one last deal. He could touch Selene just once - to drink her blood. Doing so would kill her mortal body, but from then on, her blood mixed with his could create eternal life for any who drank of it. If he did this, Artemis would see to it that they stayed together forever. Ambrogio was terrified and didn’t want to do it, but when he explained this to Selene, she begged him to bite her. He had no choice but to bite her and took her blood into his body as he watched her body be lifted up to the sky where she met Artemis on the moon. She beamed with brilliant light where Artemis granted her to become the Goddess of the Moonlight, where her rays of light would shine upon everyone and her beloved Ambrogio.

This story left you in shock, the story of the first vampires on this earth were made by the gods? So much information flooded your head and you needed to borrow some of these books from Elvis. In a way, you thought it was beautiful, the way he made her immortal out of his undying love for her even though he thought he was cursed for all eternity. They got to spend forever together. You wonder how they turned other people into, what would later be known as, vampires.

You easily could sit here the rest of the night sifting through all these books but you should see where Elvis ran off to. You call out for him but hear nothing in the suite. You check his bedroom and it is untouched and quiet. You decide to see if his men outside know where he ran off to. You grab the blanket from the bedroom to wrap around you since you don’t have any pants on and don’t need any wandering eyes on you. 

Opening the door, a man is standing outside of it as usual.

“Hey, where’d Elvis go?” You ask.

“Downstairs, in the ballroom,” he says without turning around.

“Can you get out of the way so I can get through the doorway?” You say ticked off, pushing past him to get out of the suite.

His frame is stiff and rigid just like Elvis’ and you can feel his cold temperature brush off you.

You stare up at him in bewilderment.

“Oh my God, he turned you? Didn’t he?” You say in shock.

He takes a moment to pause and remove his sunglasses. His eyes were dark, almost black, just like how Elvis’ got.

“Yes. Do you always ask so many questions?” He grumbles.

“Fuck you. What floor is he on?” You snap.

He takes a deep breath before answering, “First floor. Make a right out of the elevator to the door that says Ballroom 1.” He says annoyed.

You push past the rest of the men that you now know are vampires and get into the elevator. How many other people has he turned? Did they have any say over the matter? Or was he so thirsty he couldn’t control himself…

You pinch yourself, stopping from creating these awful scenarios in your head.

You get off the elevator and get out, going down the hallway til you reach the ballroom doors. Quietly turning the knob, you look into the room. It was filled with chairs and musical instruments and you hear the soft playing of a piano. You step inside fully and close the door, finding Elvis with his back turned toward you, dressed in his robe, black pajama bottoms, and wearing his slippers.

When you walk through a storm

Hold your head up high

And don't be afraid of the dark…

His voice rings out flawlessly, it makes you have chills as you have never heard him sing live before. Something about his voice in person is better than any recording could ever capture. You watch his long fingers dance over the ivory keys, pressing delicately and letting the beautiful music fill the room. 

At the end of a storm

There's a golden sky

And the sweet silver song of a lark

You make your way further into the room. He never fails to keep you in awe of him. Even though he saw himself as a monster, you saw him like a Greek God. Perfect in every way. From his chiseled jawline to his perfect nose, there wasn’t a flaw you saw on him. Every inch of him was perfect and you wanted to make him see that. “Cursed,” or not, you were entirely enthralled by Elvis Presley.

You stand behind him, your hands trail down along his chest making him breathe deeply and he leans back into you.

He inhales your scent and grumbles, taking another breath before singing the next line. 

Walk on through the wind

Walk on through the rain

For your dreams be tossed and blown

… Walk on, walk on

With hope in your heart

And you'll never walk alone

He plays the last few notes and leaves them ringing out on the grand piano. He sits there still, not making a sound.

“That was beautiful honey. You sing it so soulfully,” you whisper, kissing his neck.

He lets out a low growl, “You should have stayed upstairs.”

“Hiding from me isn’t going to solve your problems. Talk to me,” you plead.

“I just wanted to play without disturbing you. You need your rest,” he says.

“I can’t rest when I know you’re upset. The song was beautiful. You sing with so much love in your voice,” you praise.

You see his face crack a smile when he hears this from you.

“Thanks… Gospel music makes me the happiest. It’s what I first fell in love with. Sometimes I sit here and play for hours, trying to get God to listen to me,” he says weakly.

He turns to look at you, tears filling his eyes, “Do you think God can forgive me? For what I’ve done? For who I am?” He looks so fragile, wanting love and acceptance from God. From you. He still had so many human qualities even if he didn’t see them. He was insecure just like the rest of us. Wanting love and acceptance no matter what we do in life. 

But he wanted to hear acceptance from you in particular.

You had heard he was very religious, but now that he was… well, no longer human, you didn’t know how he felt about religion.

“Oh, honey… I don’t know much about religion… I frankly don’t know much about anything in this world anymore, but from what I’ve gathered, He’s a forgiving God. I think He can forgive you too.” You assure. 

He adjusts his legs on the piano bench, turning his body and putting each leg on the side of the bench to look at you. He looks into your eyes expectantly, “I don’t think so baby… I’m not good. I’ll just always be this,” he says exasperated looking down to the floor.

You take his face in your hands and make him look at you.

“You’re a lot better than most men. Trust me on this. I know you’re trying your best to be better. I see it,” you press. “

He shakes his head at you, taking your hands off of him, and squeezing them lightly.

“Honey, please, I can’t have you touch me right now. I don’t trust myself,” he grunts.

Your heart aches for him, frustrated he sees himself so evil.

“Baby, please. I trust you, I know you won’t hurt me.” You assure him, putting your hands back on his face. He lets out a content sigh feeling your skin on his.

“Honey, listen to me. I- I- shouldn’t. You need to know something. Before anytime I’m around you, or make love to you, I need to drink blood. Just so I can have some sense of control around you. I don’t want to hurt you,” he says weakly.

This made a lot of sense actually, how he would sneak off into his bathroom, his eyes becoming brighter and less clouded before he’d have you. 

“You’re okay. I trust you. I need to be with you,” you beg.

You place a kiss on his forehead, taking in his scent. He continues to look down, looking more defeated than you’ve ever seen him. You hate seeing him like this. He’s not listening to you and you need to make him. A bold rush comes over you and your hands trail down his chest to his torso where his robe is tied. You pull at the bow and watch his robe come apart, exposing his chest with the long gold chains hanging down on it.

His blue eyes meet yours and he looks at you cautiously.

“Honey, please,” he sighs.

You won’t listen to any of his protests, you’re so focused on him, determined to get him to forget all of his self-doubts and have him let you love him. You bring his hands to your hips, making him squeeze you gently.

“Touch me,” you whimper. He sighs frustratedly, looking up at your pleading eyes.

You drop the blanket and slowly unbutton your pajamas, flinging it to the side, watching his eyes get distracted by your breasts in his face. You straddle his hips and sit down, kissing his cheek, and wrapping your arms around his neck. His hands travel down to your ass and push you into his frame firmly. He grunts getting to feel your body like this and the response you give back to him.

You can feel his cock growing harder the more you tease and kiss his face. You nip at his neck, just as he does to you and he growls. “Goddamn it. You’re killing me,” he grunts.

You keep teasing him, softly rocking your hips into him, loving it as much as he does.

You pull at his hair to get him to meet your eager lips and kiss him passionately. He moans into your mouth and puts his hands in your hair. You pull away to get some air and his attentive mouth is licking and sucking on your breasts. Your eyes shut and your jaw slacks open as he sucks on your nipple, sending shock waves of pleasure through you. Your hips continue to grind on him and feel his length rubbing your core. This friction felt so good on you and you let out the moans you don’t want to hold back. This extreme amount of need flows through you and you don’t want to wait any longer. You can feel the arousal seep out of you and need him to feel what he’s doing to you.

“Let me fuck you,” you whisper in his ear, reaching underneath his robe and scratching down his back. He cusses under his breath and grumbles.

“Baby, I can’t… I can’t hurt you,” he professes.

“You’re not. I know you won’t. I want you to make me feel good,” you say with a roll of your hips. You reach for his hand and guide him to your wet folds. He groans when his fingers make that discovery and instinctively rubs his fingers on your clit, then teasing your entrance lightly.

“I need you,” you plead. 

He grunts heavily and sucks on your neck moaning your name, making your core throb. The way he moans your name should be illegal with how unglued you become and makes you feel like you’re on fire. “Please,” you continue to beg, “you know how long it’s been since you’ve fucked me?” You say in a moaning breath.

He groans, pushing your upper body away from his at an angle with his hand on your lower back, pressing his face into your breasts and nipping and sucking on them. This makes you moan and squirm too, loving the response you can get out of him.

“Yes, I do,” he pants,“ Five days. Five days since I’ve been able to stuff that tight little pussy and make you scream my name,” he grunts, making your core grind into him. You groan and feel your heartbeat start to race in your chest, his words making your core throb immensely. 

You stand up, hooking your fingers into his pajama bottoms, and slide them off. His cock springs free and you straddle him once more, taking him in your hand, rubbing him firmly.

“Do you want to do that, honey?” You whimper, weak already from this notion.

“Please, fuck me, baby,” he grunts, lifting you up and lining himself up to your entrance.

You love how needy you’ve made him and want to make him a puddle just as he makes you.

You sink down on his length, taking all of him quickly and you groan when you feel him stretching you, filling you so completely. 

“Holy shit. Oh, fuck baby,” you pant, your fingernails embedding into his shoulders. You move faster than you normally would, wanting to fuck him like you have never before.

His hands hold onto your hips tight, bringing you down on him hard and fast.

Both of your grunts fill the room and he feels too good, making you come apart faster than usual. You squeeze and claw at his biceps and moan out his name. He holds your hips still as you adjust to him. Rocking your hips back and forth, you feel how insanely good he’s filling you never wanting this to end.

He pushes his hips deep inside you, making you cry out in shock.

“Oh fuck yes baby, just like that,” he groans.

He places his hand on your lower stomach and pushes there. He’s added this new pressure inside you and you look at him in shock, having never felt like this. Your hips grind into the base of his cock, making you want to come.

“Oh God honey, y-you’re so deep inside me you’re killing me,” you gasp.

“Mhmm, keep moving,” he growls.

Your eyes roll back and you squeeze your eyes shut, letting all your instincts take over and fuck this perfect man underneath you. You can feel your walls begin to flutter the more you bounce on him, cussing his name like he’s your savior. You feel his hand wrap around your neck, making you pop your eyes back open.

“Look at me. Look at me when you’re fucking me,” he groans through his teeth, possessiveness rolling off of him like a tidal wave. You lock onto his eyes as his hips buck into you, taking you harder and faster. You can’t take much more of this, you feel the coil in your belly about to snap and the pressure added by his hand on your stomach makes you feel like you’re going to combust. You scream out his name, having to shut your eyes, getting too overwhelmed with each thrust.

His hands slide to your breasts, squeezing them firmly, his intensity blazing off of him. 

The sounds you two are making shouldn’t be allowed and being quiet isn’t an option for you. 

His hand grabs your jaw, making your eyes open again. 

“I said, look at me. I want to watch you come apart,” he groans, putting his hands back on your hips, helping you thrust on his length. 

He keeps you locked onto him, biting his lip as he watches your face marvel into pleasure. You can’t hold on for much longer, you can feel your body begin to fall apart with every loud heartbeat ringing in your ears.

“I’m- oh fuck baby,” you beg him, your eyes doing all the talking.

He growls in your ear and pants heavily, “cum for me, now,” he demands, possessiveness overflowing from him.

You hold onto him for dear life as your whole body tenses and the heat of the orgasm washes over you over and over again. You see stars behind your eyelids and gasp for air. You moan out his name as your walls squeeze his cock deep inside you. Your nails leave red marks down his back and he only fucks you harder. He lets out a deep, primal growl as he fucks you through your orgasm.

“Mhmm yes, you’re all mine baby, all mine,” he moans, loving the feeling of you squeezing him.

His face burrows into the crook of your neck, groaning loudly and heaving for air. You continue to ride out your orgasm and your vision becomes clear again. The grip his hands have on you is so firm, you’re afraid he’s going to leave huge bruises behind. You heard him inhale deeply into your neck and moan your name. He keeps you moving on his length even though you feel spent.

He suddenly places a hand on the back of your head and makes an animalistic groan. You feel his teeth on your neck and nips at your neck like always. Your heart races out of your chest as this all feels so overwhelming. You gasp with his mouth on your neck and push into him more, more moans escaping you. Then, it feels different. He was nipping harder than usual and it started to sting.

You start to panic and the sounds emitted in his throat begin to become louder.

A sharp pain spreads across your neck and you push his head away from your neck and cover your neck as a reflex from the pain.

“Ouch!” you yelp.

Your eyes widen in shock as you see a small amount of blood dribbled down on his bottom lip. You remove your hand from your neck and look down at your to see the blood on your fingertips. You can’t move, you’re too scared from how he’s looking at you and by the way he has this far dazed look in his eyes. He licks his bottom lip and tastes your blood, making this eyes roll back.

He then quickly lifts you off of him and he stands up, towering over your scared body. You watch how he heaves for air and how his fangs grow and sharpen. 

“Oh God,” you gasp.

Terror washes over you as you try to back away from Elvis, needing to give him space. You reach for the blanket on the floor and wrap yourself in it again. You keep pressure on your neck to stop it from bleeding but your racing heartbeat only makes it worse. He lets out these frustrated grunts, squeezing his eyes shut like he’s in pain.

He opens them again to look at you and they’re blood red, black veins spreading from under his eyes. You can’t speak, you’re too in shock from all that has happened. Elvis groans in pain, panting heavily and backing away from you.

“Leave. NOW!” He bellows making the hair on the back of your neck stand up.

 Nerves fill your body and you feel like you could pass out any second. You’ve never needed to get out of a room quicker than now with a starving vampire staring you down. You think this might be even worse than the first day with him. His eyes look so dangerous, so cunning, he has lost complete control of himself and won’t calm down til he gets his fill.

You start to stumble backward but your feet aren’t catching up with your brain. You can’t get out of here any faster. He presses his hands to his ears, groaning in agony.

“Fuck, get away from me! I can’t control myself. RUN!,” he yowls. He quickly turns away from you and you watch in horror how his fists fly up in the air, then come back down on the piano, splitting it in two.

The tumultuous sound it creates makes your skin crawl and your ears hurt. You turn to run to the door and all you hear is his painful, agonizing groans as he continues to bash at the piano.

You slam the door closed and make a run to the stairwell. You don’t care if anyone sees you running through the hotel in just a blanket, you need to get out of there fast.

You grab the keys to the car you left in the locker room and make a sprint for it to Anna’a apartment. Your heart hasn’t slowed down one bit from leaving the hotel. You drive recklessly on the side streets and hope to God you don’t get pulled over. You check your rearview mirror every five seconds, praying no one is following you. Elvis in particular.

You finally make it to the apartment, quickly park the car, and run upstairs. You can’t catch your breath and feel the entire room spin as you close the door behind you and quickly lock it. Your neck throbs at the bite mark and you place your hand back on it, checking to see if you’re still bleeding. Your blood paints your fingers and you whine in pain. Your flesh was already so sensitive there from the bruise that resided on it, but now the open wound stung and you needed to stop the bleeding.

The hall light comes on and you see Anna turn the corner, sleepy-eyed and squinting to try to adjust her eyes to the light.

“Y/n? Are you okay?” She says panicked, watching you stand there bloody wrapped in a blanket.

You gasp for air and feel the room closing in, “I- I- please help-,” you whimper before your knees give out and your world turns black in an instant.

*

*

*

Tagging:

@powerofelvis @burninlovebutler @neptuneismysister @velvetelvis @ccab @presleyenterprise @elvispresleyxo @loving-elvis

@prompted-wordsmith @sillybookmarks @dkayfixates @rosepresley @ellie-24 @rktismylife-blog @myradiaz @tacozebra051 @thatbanditqueen

@18lkpeters @flwrs4aust @emma181873 @austinswhitewolf @eliseinmemphis @everythingelvispresley @chasingwildflowers @idontwanttoputanything @ohjustpeachy @elvisalltheway101 @austinsmutler @kingdomforapony @generoustreemystic @kendralavon7 @lettersfromvenus @claire-elvisgirl

@ashtag6887 @burnthheparaphilia @richardslady121 @jaqueline19997

@returntopresley @iloveelvis @rjmartin11 @that-hotdog @louisejoy86 @misspresley @cattcb @annapresley8 @arrolyn1114 @raginginkedslut

[stars-in-our-oceans]

Scroll past if you dont wanna read my incoherent rambling while brainstorming the FUCK outta this fic

Avatrice au prompt that I also wanna write lol TM TM TM TM TM TM MOTHERFUCKERS

//

Beatrice is a sculpture amongst five artist who were selected to go through a paid internship (paid internships amirite) at the louvre. This internship would allow artist to push their creative bounds outside of all the boxes that may have constricted them in their daily lives.

When they all finished their pieces their predecessors would pick and choose which pieces were “worthy” of being apart of the museum's modern artist showing. Each of the artist who were selected had only a year to finish all of their pieces, but Beatrice finished hers in under 8 months.

Mostly due to the fact that she would stay working until the sunrise because she was a perfectionist but also... she was passionate.

However so was Ava once upon a time, but now all he can do is sit and watch through the lifeless eyes of a statue... [BANGER]

Or

Ava can only sit and watch Beatrice work through one of the paintings in the museum

- So maybe… Sister Francis who’s like the wicked witch, cursed Ava to watch her life pass her by (kinda like an continuation for her time spent in the orphanage as a paraplegic) so like being trapped in a painting/statue, was sister Francis’ way of “sparing her from death.” THIS CAN STILL APPLY IF I PLAN ACCORDINGLY ND SWITCH UP SOME THINGS BEAR (haha pun , im so funny iykyk) WITH ME

- WAIT SO LIKE WHAT IF AVA STILL HAS THE HALO JAMMED IN HER BACK AFTER HAVING ALREADY BEEN KILLED BY SIS FRANCIS (WHICH SISTER KNEW THIS BUT USED HER TO HIDE THE ARTIFACT IN THE PAINTING/SCULPTURE ALONG WITH AVA WITHOUT REALIZING THAT IT WOULD RESURRECT HER LOL) this is kinda contradictory lol

- I was also thinking whichever pieces Ava is “trapped” in or “bound” to, belonged to one of the predecessors that was also selected at one point just like Beatrice. Which obviously makes this person very likely to have had something to do with what happened to Ava. I mean technically the predecessor could have smth to do with what happened to Ava, like this person worked with sister Francis and made the sculpture so she would have somewhere to hide the halo (not anticipating a entire human being apart of the equation but ya know life or whatever 👁️👄👁️)

- Beatrice however does end up finding out about Ava’s situation (SOMEHOW) Beatrice probably things its just sleep deprivation when she sees a singular teardrop fall from the eyes of the statue or like fucking uhhhh???

- Beatrice then is somehow convinced later on that she can break the curse (bc Ava’s smart ass would definitely find a way to fuck w bea) so bea maybe finds out about the existence of another witch (Lilith) to help her break the curse, if shes will lol

- the part im having trouble with is incorporating Lilith into the story because odds are bea doesn’t know about the supernatural 🤩 so like the FUCK would she seek out a random witch for???? Uhhhhh mayhaps Lilith senses the halos energy AFTER it activates and goes to investigate in the museum but also figured thatd draw too much attention, so she finds a way to get a job there.. which is how she comes across BEATRICE HUZZAH 🎉 YALL I JUST FIGURED OUT MY OWN PLOT HOLE IT MIGHT NOT MAKE SENSE TO YALL BUT HELL

- Also, Camila, Yasmin, Mary, Shannon, along with Beatrice are the candidates for the internship. (Camila and Beatrice are roommates) (Shannon and Mary are married and roommates WHAT ARE THE ODDS!!?!??) and YASMINE UHHH lives nearby (bc the internship also paid for housing, and Yasmin didn’t really require the housing still determining whether or not she is a nun)

- so Shannon and Mary were never nuns nor part of the convent, Beatrice is a reformed nun who decided art was more important than her vows (slay sister artist), Camila was getting her masters in cyber security but had always felt her true calling was art and saw this opportunity and took it, and yea I guess Yasmin is still a nun in this au but like of the more chill variety (so in terms of where she stays which is the convent, she was able to get lucky enough to commute back n forth to the museum due to the short distance)

- also Camila decided to either stay late with Beatrice one night/come pick bea up and witnesses the weird aforementioned thing Ava does in the sculpture or painting after being revived by the halo and unlike ya know screaming when she awoke 🥹😖 (god this is somehow sadder than the actual storyline wth imo) she has to silently cry instead out of the sculpture LIKE IN THAT ONE SCENE IN THE SHOW OMFG YOU KNOW THE ONE WHEN AVA AND MARY SLEEP IN THE CHURCH IN THAT ONE TOWN YEAH

- okay… so it is 5am but I am sticking with the sculpture idea bc the fucking teardrop sounds cool lollll like bea sees it, wipes her eyes blinking hard, and Camila is just like 🧍🏻”ayo they done sprung a leak in here???” BUT THIS TIME IT AINT A FUCKING LEAK YO WHAT??!??? CRAZY!???!?

- also yea Lilith DEF a security guard (so she has clearance to being in the museum late at night idc if thats not how it is irl this will be biblically accurate information in my au) and that is how she comes across bea and Camila (ooh woo *winks*) bc you already know im going to have Beatrice use Camila as leverage to steal Lilith’s heart so they can help get Ava outta the sculpture (also Camila and bea are allowed to stay late too yea yea bc they sectioned off apart of the museum for them to work where Ava’s sculpture happened to be hehehe, im scheming, gay scheming, if I may HEHEHEE)

- so like idk what else to add currently bc if el halo is still in Ava’s back when she gets out of the sculpture then she can magically walk again but like not immediately (bc like after she gets out bea, Camila, and Lilith too lol bc she will be the witchy bestie chasing after Camila like a lost puppy , ANYWAYS they realize that they cant just take a freaked out, unstable, Ava to the hospital w/o questions arising bc in this she was declared “missing” from the orphanage, ANYWAYS X2 Sorry I have adhd unmedicated, they take Ava back to bea and cam’s apartment nd call Shannon and Mary bc Mary is a nurse (we love a multi tasking queen) who helps alba and what not. Mary and Shannon come to find out what happened, but also bea and cam let ava stay “secretly” in their apartment so they can figure out wtf to do from there)

- nd like tbh i dont wanna make huge conflict bc ava already been hurt enough but after she gets out of the sculpture she gets to know bea and all that cute shit and gets to experience the life she missed out on, but that would create a plot hole bc if Lilith can sense the halo that means Francis can too (so who knows ava may find out the halo gives her powers and kills Francis by “accident” in this timeline too HAHAH) so maybe Francis sends the predecessor who created the sculpture only to find it shattered

I know this is getting away from the internship aspect of the story (im trying to be consistent bc like bea, cam, and Lilith needed to have a reason to be in the museum that late at night but like if they all worked there thatd be BORING so im improvising but THIS IS JUST BRAINSTORMING) and also kinda overshadowing yasmin (so as much as I love her she may just be a far removed side character reeeee)

- ANOTHA ONE, OKAY SO LIKE WHAT IF BEATRICE FOR SOME UNGODLY REASON HAS A NECKLACE THAT HAS DIVINIUM IN IT STARTS GLOWING AFTER AVA WAKES UP ANYTIME BEA IS NEAR THE SCULPTURE REEEEEEEE (yall the smile on my face bc I feel like I’ve cracked another code, or you could say YOU COULD SAY IVE CONNECTED THE DOTS)

- also like what if mommy- sorry mother 🥸 superion was like the person who overlooked their progress on their pieces, obviously bea is way ahead of everyone else, overachieving bichass [endearingly] 🙄 , but yea LOL

FUCK OKAY TIME TO PUT THIS IN A DOC BC MY HEAD HURTS STARING AT THIS WHITE SCREEN

[missingn000]

1. Is there a character that you didn't really expect to enjoy writing, but found out that you really liked them as you wrote their arc?

2. How much of the story did you plan out before you started writing? Like was it the whole story or just the major points?

3. What inspired Kenjaku's whole ideology? I really enjoyed his whole deranged villain monologue, which was surprising because while I had faith in you as a writer (it's clear that you put a lot of care into writing each character), Kenjaku was never a villain that I found interesting while reading jjk (like, I found him repulsive, but with not enough villain flair to at least make him feel like a compeling threat).

4. What is in your opinion the best part about writing a fic?

5. How did you decide to stick Hajime and Mahito together and why is it such a compelling dynamic?

✨️🎊✨️🎊✨️🎊✨️

1 -- SUKUNAAA. my god. he's in my top 3 least favorite characters in canon, so before i thought of his arc, i was lowkey dreading writing him. then i came up with his backstory, his key dynamics with members of the fam, and i just...ohhh when i tell you i fell in LOVE. i'll reveal the characters i picked as my top 3 faves when i release popularity poll results, but i will say this: sukuna is one of them

2 -- when i first started writing, i had a few major plot points -- the first chap of tpg was released 8 days after i came up with the idea itself (july 2 2021!) but the story developed quite quickly from there, so i'd say over the stretch of about ~2-3 months, i had a significant amount of major story developments planned out. that said, other major ideas came much later, and i still have moments of inspiration that add huge twists to the story!

3 -- a couple things went into kenjaku's ideology. i agree with you: i loathe and am repulsed by him in canon too, but i wanted to make the main villain have compelling and interesting goals that were genuinely a threat to our heroes. i wanted to incorporate the significance of him having riko's body, and combined with tengen's ability to combine all of humanity by collapsing the barriers between others, i thought there was something insane i could do with that. i was also inspired by nge!

4 -- i think the best part about writing tpg (and fanfiction in general) is having the chance to explore things the author/source material doesn't. i think the jjk verse and many of its characters have amazing potential that just wasn't followed through, so having the chance to expand on that myself has been so fun and rewarding!!

5 -- WAHH PFPK...oh that was a mentally ILL moment i had on a plane once. thought of the major plot points of their arc during one very deranged flight overseas and it snowballed from there. i knew i wanted to add an additional character to the opposing side, but i wasn't particularly drawn to any of the disaster curses. we then learned kashimo had a binding vow with kenjaku in the past in the manga, which i thought could be so interesting to somehow incorporate! given that i love creating unique duos, once i knew i wanted them as part of the story, pairing them with mahito felt natural. i think their dynamic is compelling for many reasons, but what i love so much about them is that mahito is the only one who sees kashimo as more than their strength, and kashimo is the only one who sees mahito as more than a monster. this starts out largely as a negative thing at first, but as they spend more time together and mahito learns the extent of his humanity & hajime learns there's more to life than violence, it develops into a powerful bond unlike any other due to mahito's unique nature as a curse and kashimo as a sorcerer out of time. the only one they could each belong beside is each other

[bigskydreaming]

Okay, I’m literally just editing and formatting the next chapter of Lightning Crashes right now, so I feel confident enough to say it’ll be up within the next few hours, tonight at the latest. So just giving my eyes a break from that chapter so I can actually finish editing it instead of just reading what I think I wrote (as opposed to what’s actually on the page, lol).

BUT. I know its been forever, so instead of expecting people to reread the whole thing again even if they’re interested in the update, here’s a recap of previous chapters. Spoilers for the fic, obviously, at least up until the current chapter, Chapter 7.

This post contains the breakdowns for Chapters 1-4, Chapters 5 & 6 will be in the next post.

LIGHTNING CRASHES

Scira/ensemble fic

Full AU diverging from the very first scenes of the pilot. Pulls from all seasons of canon, but incorporates characters in new ways (how they’re introduced and such. They still have roughly similar histories to canon, at least as of the timepoint of the pilot).

Summary: Scott ran away not long after being bitten by Peter, to protect his loved ones from the Alpha (and himself). Three years later, in New York, Noshiko Yukimura seeks out the rumored True Alpha and his pack to protect her daughter from an old enemy.

CHAPTER ONE

Noshiko Yukimura goes to a supernatural club called Otherworld, looking for the True Alpha said to work there, along with two of his blue-eyed packmates, Aiden and Malia. She tells them of her daughter, Kira, and an ancient enemy of Noshiko’s called the nogitsune who recently freed himself of the cage she trapped him in seventy years ago. Noshiko wants to hire Scott and his pack to protect Kira when/where she can’t, though she says Kira is still unaware of the supernatural world and Noshiko wishes to keep it that way until she knows if Kira inherited her kitsune nature. Its implied that Noshiko has had other children over the centuries, but none of them were immortal like her.

Fully aware that there’s plenty she isn’t telling them, such as why go to a pack of teenagers when anyone as old as she is has to be well-connected in the supernatural world, she ultimately sells them on the job offer by offering her own resources to help in evading or defeating Kali and Julia/Jennifer and their pack, whom she’s somehow aware Scott and his pack are on the run from.

Noshiko concedes that if Scott needs to tell Kira the truth for her own safety, he should do so but she wishes that to remain a last case option...though she does leave it up to his discretion, whether or not he ultimately feels its necessary.

Before leaving, Scott asks her about the cage she trapped the nogitsune in, where it was and how he got free, and why its not an option this time. She’s vague on the last part, only suggesting that her power is not what it was seventy years ago for reasons she has no intentions of disclosing, but as to the former, she says it was in a town called Beacon Hills, though she doesn’t know how he got loose. Upon Scott’s reaction, Noshiko asks if that means something to him (Scott goes by Delgado since running away and though knowledge of his pack exists within the supernatural world, his place of origin is not common knowledge). Scott says he’s never heard of the town, but Noshiko is fully aware Scott’s lying - she just doesn’t know why.

It leaves all of them on the same page as far as everyone’s trustworthiness is concerned.

After Scott, Malia and Aiden leave, Noshiko lingers to talk to the club’s owner, a large man called Henry, as he closes the door to Otherworld and pulls it from the wall, folding up the supernatural pocket dimension until he reopens it in another location the next night. Its established that Noshiko and Henry knew each other centuries ago, though they haven’t seen each other in a long time. And Henry is not pleased she’s ensnared his favorite bartender in one of her schemes, though he has no idea what she actually came to Scott for. He does seem protective of Scott and his pack though.

Oh, and back when he and a younger Noshiko were running around back in the day, he was better known as Herne the Huntsman, leader of the Wild Hunt.

“So like a True Alpha,” she mused under her breath, though of course he picked up on that as well.

“You sound like you’re speaking from experience.” He narrowed his eyes over a rising frown as he contemplated her. Crossed his arms over his chest, highlighting the twin black bands of a tattoo around one bicep.

“I may have known one or two in my time,” Noshiko admitted. “Its been a long while since the last one I met though. That was…hmm, the sixties, I think?”

“I was told it’d been almost a hundred years since the last one.”

“Such a sweet boy,” she beamed at him. “I meant the 1760s.”

That startled a bark of laughter out of him. Distrust still clung to him like a slowly dispersing fog, but his intrigue was obvious.

“Perhaps we can discuss that as well,” Noshiko said. She tapped the envelope with a red painted fingernail. “I promise, I simply wish to discuss a possible business arrangement. Nothing illegal, nothing immoral. The money is yours whether you accept my offer or not, all I ask is that you hear me out.”

“I’m well acquainted with the owner of this place,” she added when he continued to hesitate. “Herne will vouch for me, and you must know that’s not a claim anyone would make in here if it weren’t absolutely true.”

“You mean Henry,” Scott said.

“Of course I do,” she agreed, and refrained from rolling her eyes at the hulking behemoth eavesdropping in a booth across from the bar. Honestly, what was even the point of hiding his true nature if he insisted on remaining the most conspicuous person in sight at all times? Henry. Absolutely ridiculous.

CHAPTER TWO

Scott, Aiden and Malia take the rooftop highway back to the converted warehouse where their pack lives (they rent the space from a Sidhe landlord who’s impossible to get on the mirror whenever they have a maintenance issue).

The pack - which also includes Ethan, Liam, Brett & his sister Lori, the other girl from their original pack, Carrie...as well as former chimeras Tracy, Josh, Lucas, Corey, Hayden, Beth, Zach, and an OC named Diego, who was born into the Calaveras hunter family before getting bitten and turned on a hunt. 

The original pack was Scott, Malia and the twins...who along with Theo were all abducted and experimented on by the Dread Doctors not long after Scott ran from Beacon Hills. As yet unrevealed events resulted in Scott, Malia and the twins escaping from the Dread Doctors, after Scott (through still untold events/actions) became a True Alpha, which turned his bonds with the other omegas into an actual pack. From there they ended up with Kali and Julia’s pack, before escaping from them along with Carrie, Brett & Lori, survivors of Satomi’s pack which had been attacked by the former. Liam was a runaway they found and added to the pack while searching for the Dread Doctors’ new lair, in an attempt to find and rescue Theo. They never found him, but they did find the chimeras being experimented on: Tracy, Josh, Lucas, Corey, Hayden, Noah, Beth & Zach. Scott gave them each the Bite in order to save them when they started dying from the chimera transplants, and most joined the pack as they were runaways or orphaned by the Dread Doctors (like Tracy). Noah and Hayden were the only two with family to return to....Noah did so, but Hayden was afraid of her sister getting hurt by proximity to her, if she ended up targeted because of her new supernatural nature, and so she stayed with the pack. Diego’s addition to the pack is a still-untold sequence of events. 

There’s plenty of shenanigans to set up the pack’s internal dynamics as Scott checks in on his infant son, Connor, before presenting Noshiko’s offer to the pack as a whole. They debate the situation, its apparent pros and cons, and the ultimate approach: Scott, Malia, Liam and Brett will go undercover at Kira’s school, pretending to be students with the aid of magical charms provided by Noshiko, which should keep attention from being drawn to them as they’re meant to make anyone who meets them believe that they’ve been students there all along.

“So is this bodyguard deal going to be our thing now?” Brett asked, sandwiched between Carrie and Malia. “I could get into that. Suits, dark sunglasses, business cards. We could call ourselves Full Moon Security!”

“Right, because the full moon is when people would be most secure with us,” Ethan said witheringly. Brett flapped a hand at him.

“Whatever, it’s a metaphor.”

“That’s not even remotely what a metaphor is. You’re an idiot.”

Later, when indulging in a frequent ritual of his - checking his mom and Stiles’ social media accounts, Facebooks, etc, in case something’s happened to them - Scott’s shocked to see a notification that Stiles is now dating Cora HALE....and after taking a closer look at the pictures of his friend group these days....himself, Cora, Lydia, Jackson, Danny, Isaac, Erica, Boyd and Allison....he figures out from their in-jokes, his own knowledge of the Hales’ natures, and some of them always keeping their eyes closed in pictures....Stiles and his friends are a pack of sorts themselves.

Worried about what this could mean or imply, along with his concerns knowing the nogitsune escaped from Beacon Hills by unknown means and could have caused considerable devastation there, Scott calls an “Inner Circle” meeting with his original packmates: Malia, Aiden & Ethan. He sends the twins to go to Beacon Hills and see if there’s any sign of the nogitsune & check that his mom, Stiles and the others in his pack are safe. Malia (not exactly thrilled about having to go back to school, and having endured a few too many of Aiden’s jokes about it already) suggests that they go undercover at Beacon Hills High for a few weeks just to make sure.

The twins are less than amused by her contribution to the plan, but they set out the next morning, as Scott, Malia, Liam and Brett prepare to go back to school.

CHAPTER THREE

The morning of Scott, Malia, Liam & Brett’s first day of school, Scott gives Liam a pep talk as the younger boy is worried about going back to a school for the first time in years, and convinced he’s going to ruin everything.

The younger boy was the very picture of misery in his gray slacks, black dress shoes and a button down white shirt. His hair stuck out wildly in all directions thanks to a very haphazard application of hair gel, and the striped crimson and gold tie meant to complete the ensemble was looped around his collar and knotted in a death grip around one hand.

“Ties are stupid,” Liam declared with no shortage of venom. “Can you do it?”

“I tried already, but he didn’t want my help,” Hayden said. She leaned against the doorframe, examining her nails. Beth and Corey poked their heads around her, mouths open in objection, but Scott let his eyes flash red. Their heads popped back out of sight with an audible ‘whoosh.’ Huh. He really needed to just start leading with the alpha eyes thing first.

“You weren’t helping me, you were insulting me.” Liam glared. She shrugged.

“I have a process.”

From there, Scott calls Tracy, Josh & Lucas to the rooftop: with the twins gone & Malia with him at school, he’s leaning on the three next oldest members of the pack more than he usually does - which they have varying feelings about. He has a specific assignment for each of them to undertake at work. Tracy, who works as a hacker for a cybermancer named Tobias (who heads up the network dedicated to keeping the supernatural hidden in New York, and scrubbing all digital traces of anything paranormal) is tasked with seeing if she can retrace Noshiko’s steps in the weeks before she met with Scott. He doesn’t think they were her first choice for this job, and he wants to know who she approached first, and why they turned her down. 

Worried about the possibility of this all blowing up in their faces and needing to get out of town quickly, he asks Josh to try and arrange a contingency exit plan with the sirens he works as hired muscle for down on the docks. With their abilities to enchant and confuse, as well as to summon storms and obscuring fogs, sirens are the go-to smugglers of the supernatural world, at least in New York. 

Lucas works as a bike messenger during the day, delivering artifacts and other magical items and ingredients to members of the supernatural community - many of them older and reclusive...leading Scott to ask him to try and see whom among the older supernaturals of New York might have history with Noshiko and insight they can use. 

After that....its off to school.

“Where’s Malia?”

“She’s coming,” Carrie said. “I would just like to say that its probably in everyone’s best interests to focus very carefully on their self-preservation instincts in the next few minutes.”

Several faces scrunched up in confusion at that, including Scott’s, but then the heady smell of strongly charged defensive anger preceded the werecoyote’s footsteps on the stairs.

All became clear as she came into view.

The black and white laced up shoes appeared at the top of the stairs first, one foot landing angrily, holding for a pregnant pause, then the other striking with equal force. Rinse and repeat.

Then came the white knee-high socks. Then a mere inch of tanned skin before the hem of a red and black plaid skirt, carefully pleated.

The lower edges of the crimson red blazer started well below her waist, gold buttons leading up the length of her torso, flanking the crisp white blouse, fastened all the way up to her neck. Finally her face emerged from the shadows of the upper landing, hair a wild halo around her head.

Her eyes gleamed a cold, dangerous blue as she stomped the rest of the way down the stairs.

Everyone was carefully very quiet.

Then Corey squeaked and shoved a couch pillow into his face, shoulders heaving with silent laughter. Brett’s lips twitched. A muttered ‘better her than me’ came from under Hayden’s breath, and Malia’s scent spiked in a prelude to violence before Scott hastily intervened.

Then from Kira’s POV, we see her meet Scott as a new addition to her chemistry class...or at least that’s what she’s convinced no matter that he insists he’s been there all year...and everyone else seems to believe the same. The charms provided by Noshiko are clearly not working on Kira the way they’re supposed to, and her suspicions are raised from her first encounters with Scott and Malia. They hope Liam and Brett have more luck staying close without making her paranoid - except Kira’s hearing is similarly better than they expect, and she’s on the look-out for this Liam and Brett before she ever meets them.

CHAPTER FOUR

Kira’s POV continues the next day after school - she works as a peer tutor for younger students....and the latest student in need of her help happens to be a sophomore named Liam that she knows she’s never seen before, no matter how many people think he’s not a recent transfer. Half convinced she’s the target of some secret government conspiracy that employs fifteen year olds, her tutoring session doesn’t do much to help her decide one way or the other.

“Umm, all of it,” Liam said, frowning. He perched on the edge of his chair like he was prepared to launch himself to safety in the event of an explosion, and Kira took a discreet look around for men in black suits with tranq guns or sniper rifles.

There’d be no one to see if they were even halfway competent at their jobs, but so far Liam, Scott and Malia weren’t rousing endorsements there. Unless they’d been picked because they seemed so harmless. But as she launched into her tutorial and the hour progressed, she started to think Occam’s Razor might actually be in play here. Sometimes the simplest explanation was the right one. Which meant that sometimes a sophomore not having the most basic understanding of trigonometric principles meant he wasn’t a super young looking secret agent pretending to be clueless, he just really didn’t understand trigonometry.

Because while Kira could believe that shadowy secret agencies spying on high schoolers recruited five foot four agents with no facial hair to pose as sophomores, she couldn’t fathom those agents being sent into the field with absolutely no grasp of trigonometry. It had literally dozens of real world applications.

But then on her way home, she just so happens to be followed down to the subway by another tall stranger in her school uniform. Knowing without a doubt that his name is Brett, Kira causes a scene to leave Brett stuck behind in the crowd while she uses the distraction to hop a different train home.

In the next scene, we explore Tracy’s POV at work as she closes up after her boss Tobias leaves for the day, and works through some angst about her murdered father while tracing Noshiko’s movements through the last several weeks. She finds a potential oddity....a day when street cameras catch her visiting a rundown mansion in the midst of the kind of high-money district where neighbors care too much about the potential impact on their own property values to just let a house in their midst fall into such disrepair....unless something like magic was keeping them away. Watching Noshiko emerge from the house five minutes after she enters it, and clearly not happy, Tracy and Scott conclude this was definitely someone who turned down Noshiko’s earlier attempts to seek help, and Scott decides to have Lucas investigate the house while they’re at school.

Also, Tracy alerts Scott that Hayden’s cop sister Valerie, who they’ve been keeping tabs on as she searches into her sister’s disappearance, has without warning - or any specific reason Tracy can find online - taken time off from work and booked a flight to New York. Almost as if someone told her exactly where to look next for her sister. Scott says he’ll tell Hayden and let her decide what to do next there, and lastly Tracy lets him know someone in Beacon Hills hacked into the high school there’s records to vet the transcripts and paperwork they made up for the twins.

This segues into Danny’s POV, as he’s prodded to dig deeper by Stiles, as Lydia, Jackson, Isaac and Cora ignore their back-and-forth. They’re all talking about the new twins at school, and trying to decide if there’s something to be wary of there. Danny and Lydia are joking/not-joking about potential ways of finding out, when the twins enter the library.

Danny chose to ignore Isaac’s unfortunate delivery of that sentence in order to focus on the more important aspects of it. “Really?” He asked, mouth suddenly dry. Isaac just widened his smirk.

“Danny, no!” Stiles said, aghast. “You can’t date evil.”

“Don’t be such a prudish Quaker woman, Stiles,” Lydia sighed. “Danny’s not thinking about dating him.”

“Also really not sure they’re evil,” Danny said. He leaned back in his chair and cracked his knuckles, reviewing his screen again just to see if he’d overlooked anything. “I’ve gone through everything I can find, and it all checks out. Aiden and Ethan Bishop, age 18, just transferred from North Carolina where their dad was last stationed. He’s in the army, their mom’s deceased, he’s supposed to consult on some defense project in the San Francisco area and he sent them on ahead of him so they’d miss as little school as possible. I mean, it all looks legit.”

Stiles frowned, clearly dissatisfied with this explanation.

“All of you shut up,” Cora said, sitting up straight in her chair. They followed her gaze just in time to see the twins stroll through the library doors. “Speak of the devil…”

“See?” Stiles muttered. “Cora gets that they’re evil.”

Lydia invites them to sit down for a barely-disguised interrogation session, during which Aiden makes the mistake of asking about something they heard about when checking out the school....the disappearance of a student named Mc...something, years earlier?

He’s quickly corrected by a Stiles-with-hostility-amped-to-1000, who informs him that his best friend Scott McCall was murdered, actually. After he takes off to the bathroom, Lydia and Danny explain to a confused Aiden and Ethan the version of events as far as anyone in Beacon Hills knows them - the commonly believed story is that someone once arrested by Scott’s FBI agent father came back for revenge against Rafe. He even filmed a video confession before killing himself. No one in Beacon Hills is aware Scott was at all connected to Peter, who covered tracks to keep the FBI from also involving themselves in his Season One plans for revenge. 

After Scott ran away, Peter took advantage of Jackson’s presence at the video store the night he killed the clerk there, and bit and turned him, using the Alpha bond to manipulate/force Jackson into killing people as his proxy the way he attempted with Scott, and comparable to Jackson’s role as the kanima killing for Matt in canon. In this universe however, Jackson was a werewolf from the jump. He still has blue eyes though, thanks to Peter’s...’tutelage.’ He does not like anyone with the last name Hale and is only a reluctant member of the pack due to a lack of other options and knowing he’s not cut out to be an omega. He doesn’t handle being alone or left out well.

Once the twins leave, Stiles returns and is now fully on board with having Danny and Lydia date them to get close to them. Danny gently confronts him with the fact that Stiles doesn’t cope well, tries to repress and villainizes anyone who makes that impossible. As much as he distrusted the twins from the get-go, the second they mentioned Scott, they were confirmed as the enemy in his eyes. Stiles says that’s not fair, and Danny points out he notices he didn’t say it was untrue.

[novemberdevils]

I will be rereading while waiting for puck drop so be prepared for a long rambling session.

But honestly im the happiest person that the calendar is 24 races -purely because I will get more of the masterpiece that you are writing but please guys consider 18 races it’s perfect and enjoyable for everyone and not tiring-, IMOLA MY LOVE so excited for her so I will cherish and love her-imola is my favourite race if you cant tell btw-, the light is here to trick you and us into thinking everything is good but then boom suddenly there is no light and we are just walking blindly with Jack leading us deeper into the tunnel because we followed him thinking he figured it out.

Indy paddock THE most fun place ever, even with the general admission tickets if you are lucky you could meet some drivers who are walking-a fun story time I was wearing merch for stingray and I was walking around with my brother when I saw him and he was like oh let me sign this for you and take a picture I had a GENERAL ADMISSION TICKET f1 could never-, but f1 paddock are so weird like for my birthday my friends and family bought a Ferrari paddock ticket for monza weekend and the place was weird because there were influencers who didn’t even care about f1, when Charles won it I swear to you there were two person who were there who didn’t give a fuck and then there was the rest of us who was jumping up and down and half crying because he won it, and honestly im just waiting for our yearly Alex Palou contract drama; it would never be a silly season without it, but yeah stingray joining JUNCOS is definitely the start of silly season.

I KNEW IT!!! But I thought I was overthinking because like a normal fan who doesn’t watch NASCAR wouldnt know about dalton but I knew it! Please never apologise about taking about Logan he is like my Roman Empire I have followed his entire career and was so sad about his season in f1 and I always always WILL talk about logan and would mention him every opportunity I get-he is my favourite outside of Ferrari drivers-.

Anyways I feel like this would get too long if I rambled about the fic in the same comment so I will be sending another ask with the fic because good god it’s this long and I haven’t even talked about the fic yet in case you still havent somehow realised this but I yap a lot -can you believe that I don’t actually yap a lot in only English because it feels weird to me because its my second language? If I also incorporate my first language I fear that you would hate me, my friends have established a system where I can yap for two hours but then I take a 15 to 20 mins break where I dont talk so I dont ruin my vocal cords-

i am always prepared for a long rambling session. thrilled and riveted

no fr 24 races is so many. both in real life and also in the scope of this goddamn fanfiction... re: i am STILL writing round seven of twenty-four and the fic doc is over 200 pages. which is awesome

imola is great it is a great time it has been running away from me since i started writing it like. almost every scene i write for imola i start with some kind of direction and it all immediately goes out the window and then i'm like. well what the fuck. getting into a lot of uh. non-racing drama. Well. it's all racing related in a way but like. Drama. i've been writing a lot of dialogue for it

i love indycar so bad <3 the one (1) race i went to was so fun i need to go to another one sometime. and yeah i remember seeing people who did not give one fuck about f1 being in the paddock or whatever and i'm like. cool for you but do you even?? care?? i see it less now just on the proxy of i pay less attention to the entire everything of f1 but i did see that carlos and lando went golfing with COLTON HERTA and CONNOR DALY today. which was not on my bingo card. the joys of f1 races in america i think

i was logan sargeant's #1 fan when he was a rookie i got sooo endeared to his stupid american ass it was not even funny omg i could not help but shove in some good old fashioned References since now i'm writing a fic starring an american f1 driver who is also just jack hughes. my bad. i had a twitter mutual who knew me in my loganisms ask if the jack/trevor friendship is supposed to be logan/kyle coded and i was like yeah you got me. my bad. self-indulgent fic continues to be very self-indulgent

i love the yapping. if my answers don't give it away i too am a certified yapper so! thank you for the continued excuses to keep yapping. i love

[red-riding-wood]

@kiss-me-cill-me Why would I not be ready for a Jackson smut thesis paper?? GIMME.

Also, Lemmy, you pointing out the newscaster line actually made me forget that I was meant to edit a line in so I rushed to edit it after your comment! Your thesis paper saved my ass lmao.

"A few threads [his hair] that sprung awry were limned by the blue light of the TV, the carnage that continued its broadcast." This was the line I added in because it was important to me that the TV still get a mention since it's just casually playing in the background while he's going down on her lmao, and because I wanted to highlight the fact that violence is sort of underlying their antics.

Lmao I would probably also throw it out the window in her position. And I wouldn't even need to be drugged up or suffering a head injury. I have issues.

Thank you! I did try and make it as much like the first part as I could while still giving it a fresh vibe (and now we have the context that she's working for him rather than probably just being a uni student which are two entirely different things lol).

The heavens/hellfire line you quoted was a particular favourite of mine! There isn't really any religious theme in this fic and I felt it could've been used better somewhere else, but I left it in there because I loved it so much. Might use it again if I find there's a situation where it's more appropriate and hopefully no one notices lol.

Poor girl probably got some kind of disease from him not washing his hands after murdering someone lmao. I think he would absolutely not give a fuck, though.

I don't know if you remember from the film but Jackson was very particular about his name because he was bullied in school for his name's resemblance to Jack the Ripper, hence why he doesn't like being called "Jack". Personally I think it sounds cool as fuck, but y'know, I guess I understand it lol. But yeah I thought it was a fun little thing to include and also another indication of how unhinged and, frankly, moody he is!

So was I! I kind of made up most of it as I went alone, knew I had to write this final scene that just somehow incorporated her pulling a knife on him (I'd assembled the moodboard after writing the first scene of this and didn't wanna change it) but genuinely had no idea what I was doing and I'm glad to hear it came together so well! I despise writing action and combining that with suspense, well, I wasn't super confident in it coming across as believable and not dumb.

Sorry I wrote you an essay back. Thank you such a thorough comment, Lemmy!

Coldfire - Pt. II

Read Part I here!

Pairing: Jackson Rippner x F! Reader

Fandom: Red Eye (2005)

Summary: Intent on turning you into his plaything, Jackson "takes care" of you after you wake up in his hotel room.

Warnings: SMUT, non-con (prev) and dub-con, sexual violence, kidnapping, power imbalance, oral sex (f receiving), teasing, biting, blood, violence, humiliation, degredation, dirty talk, pet names, hair pulling, dom/sub dynamics. This is a dark!fic and a tad disgusting. Read at your own discretion.

WC: 6490

Pain. It was the first sensation you felt. The first and, for a moment, the only thing that existed.

Your skull pounded with a dull, resounding ache that seemed to trail down your spine, as if someone taking a sledgehammer to the back of your head. The pain radiated from your spine to your shoulders, your limbs, shot to the core of your stomach and settled between your sticky thighs.

Next, came the soft brush of a pillow against your face, your head lolling against the stuffed fabric, your body weighing so heavy that you thought you might sink into the bed.

The pillow smelled clean as you grasped feebly at the cotton sheets, deciding to ball the fabric in your fists because it grounded you, because it seemed to be one of the only things that were tangible in this half-awake reality of pure, almost numbing pain.

But the spice of the cinnamon that tickled your nose churned hot coals in your gut, stirred a fire deep within your core. Familiar, oh so familiar…

Voices came to you, distant and well-mannered and urgent, drilling themselves through the pockets of pain in your skull.

As a thin, white light began to filter past your haze, you wondered if these were the voices of angels, calling you to Heaven. Were they always this obnoxious?

They were taunting you, more like. That must have been it, you realised as your eyelids peeled back only for white-hot fire to singe your retinas.

Maybe this truly was the punishment for pledging your soul to violence

The light came from a crack between thick, black curtains, haphazardly drawn across a massive window frame. The light bled across your blurred vision, but colours and shapes were beginning to form around it now, and though the voices seemed to heighten in intensity, you could now discern your surroundings as some private room, the overhead blessedly off and the lighting dim.

A hotel, it seemed, as the gleam of white plastic winked at you in the shred of sunlight. A mint, on a pillow.

Your mouth watered, but your lips were dry and your reach clumsy as you tried to swipe up the mint. Your stomach roiled with an empty kind of nausea. 

Candy clutched in quivering hand, your fingers stilled as you undid the wrapper. The voices were clearer, but quieter now.

“... crime scene…” Pain. “… terrorist act ….” Pain. “… killer on the loose…” Crinkling plastic. “… university …” Why was this mint so damned hard to open? “… physicist, Doctor Cal…” Was that the ticking of a clock? “… shot with .380 ACP…” More pain.“… total lockdown…” The mint left a sharp kiss on your tongue.“… chaos...” Your blood ran cold as you recognised the taste, recalled the heat of the breath that had raked across your face…

The voices were interrupted by the click of a lock, and you startled, images of a spinning bathroom and bright, white fireworks racing through your aching skull as you buried the wrapper of the mint beneath one of the pillows, as if you were a child caught with their hand in the candy drawer.

As the door swung open, and a soft whistling filled the room, you rolled your head to the side, glimpsing the time on the alarm clock.

4:13.

For a moment, your muddled brain thought that perhaps he wouldn’t see you; your vision hedged where the skin of his neck came into view. Your breath hitched in your chest and your skull pounded, and you watched as he removed the black blazer as if he were coming home from work, whistle slowly fading from his lungs. A heavy sigh made his chest rise and fall beneath his white dress shirt, the collar stained in red.

The scent of iron, sweat and sandalwood came to you; you had breathed against that collar, you had buried your face in the warmth of his chest and tucked your head beneath the hard line of his jaw.

Your mouth watered around the mint as you recalled the chalky pill he’d placed under your tongue, shushing you and petting your hair and lulling you to sleep with a voice like silk.

The man folded his blazer and tucked it beneath the flashing screen of the TV – the source of the voices, you ascertained – and after rifling through his pockets, he placed upon it a hotel keycard, a bloodied tissue, a Ruger LCP. .380.

The familiar, metal clang of a buckle sounded, and he loosed his belt from its loops, coiling it beside the Ruger. Cold danced along your thighs, and you felt the ghost of a burn along your stinging flesh. You realised you weren’t wearing anything underneath your skirt.

He reached in the pocket of his slacks, leaning slightly as if to fetch something particularly irksome from their depths, and added a lace garment and a loop of dark fabric to the strange pile of items.

Everything dawned on you at once, weighing so heavy on your fatigued limbs that you thought for one moment you really would sink into the bed, slammed against your pounding skull as breath poured into aching lungs and the mint caught just in time between your back molars. You remembered hiding that Ruger and your holster-garter to the toilet-paper dispenser in a bathroom with navy blue stalls. You remembered lace panties behind ripped from your thighs as he shoved you against the bathroom counter.

Your eyes squinted, narrowing against the harsh light of the TV now to see cameras pulling back on footage of the university, cop cars with flashing red and blue lights and squealing sirens, listened to the droning voice of the newscaster announce the harrowing details of the death of the target you’d failed to kill.  

“Oh good, you’re awake.” A perky yet soft tone innerved your aching limbs, and your head stirred against the cinnamon of his shampoo and the cotton of the pillow.

“Fuck,” you groaned.

“And still thinking of the fun we had…” he chuckled as he approached the end of the bed. You wanted to land one good punch to his smug face, knock out his perfect white teeth. Maybe when whatever drugs he’d given you were gone from your system, provided he didn’t kill you before then.

“Does this mean I’m fired?” Your voice came raspy from your dry throat as you shifted, a lightning bolt of pain seeming to bring every neuron alive with white fire as you lifted your head slightly to look at him.

Jackson leaned down, resting the palms of his hands against the bedframe and smiling at you. “That depends,” he said, and you lowered your head back to the pillow as you rolled the dissolving mint on your tongue.

“On?”

“On how well you behave.”

“What do you want from me, Rippner?” You almost whimpered.

He tutted. “I may have to knock points for your lack of professionalism. That’s now how you speak to your boss.”

Your head hurt too much for this childish nonsense.

“And how may I be of service, sir?” You tried to force the sarcasm past your tired tone but you were drained.

“Good girl.” Those two words stirred the coals of that fire within you, making your sticky, cold thighs squirm. And that damned smile disappeared from view as he righted himself, and circled round to your side of the bed.

“I’m here to take care of you,” he told you, and the mattress sank beneath his weight as he took a seat, your nails digging into the fabric of the cover as if to keep yourself from slipping off. “And before you even think of screaming… remember what happened last time.” He brushed a lock of hair from your eyes with a surprising delicateness.

His words seemed oddly nice for a terrorist, but you weren’t fooled. There was a darkness that you could hear now beneath his silk tone. One you cursed yourself for not recognising before.

“What a relief,” you murmured into the pillow. This time, your sarcasm thankfully came through.

Warm fingers peeled at the tops of your stockings, and your knees rose instinctively, but he gave you a warning look that froze you in place – not in fear, but in a strange excitement.

“Don’t you want to feel clean?” he asked, as he peeled the thick fabric from your legs, cold racing along your flesh.

You didn’t think that you’d ever feel clean after being introduced to his sinful touch and piercing stare.

“I just want a hot bath and a very long extension cord.”

“One thing at a time, sweetheart…”

Jackson paused when the stocking rolled down to your heel, and the sharp sound of a zipper met your ears. He slipped the heel and stocking off with gentle fingers. Wisps of chestnut hair fell across his forehead as he admired your bare skin. What was he doing, playing boyfriend with you?

“Where are we?” you asked, wishing to fill the silence that seemed all too comfortable. The news on the TV made it sound like you’d just woken up in your condo, only extremely hungover.  

“A hotel.”

As his fingers rolled the other stocking down, you had the brief urge to kick him with your heel.

“Where is the hotel?”

“Don’t worry about it, sweetheart,” he said, in a half-exasperated, half soothing tone. “Just let me take care of you.” Your heel was cast aside, and the urge was gone.

The mint clicked against your teeth in the silence, and it burned your throat as you swallowed. A hand ran up the bare flesh of your calf, prying your knees slightly apart. Your heart raced in your chest, skull pounding, flashes of heat racing beneath your flesh and icy hooks sinking into the deepest fibres of your being as his gaze met yours between your thighs.

Coldfire.

You wet your lips with your tongue, thinking that for a moment, with his bright eyes and his parted lips and his hair just a little bit messed, he looked almost cute like this. For a terrorist and stalker and serial killer, that was.

Like you were one to talk.

“Careful looking at me like that.” A smirk curled the corner of his lip, and the strange innocence of his expression vanished. “I don’t know if you can handle a Round Two.”

Why did he have to ruin the moment by opening his smarmy fucking mouth, you thought, but the throbbing heat between your legs wished for other things.

And what moment could you have possibly imagined? Fuck, you were delusional.

And before you could fire back with a retort, the smirk fell from his face and icy gaze devoured you. You shivered beneath his touch as he pried your legs apart, coming up between them like a predator, eyes locked on his prey. Like a mouse pierced by snake’s venom, paralysis seeped into every pore.

A hot breath swept across your lashes in the second that he spared your soul from his gaze, twin blues running down your flushed face. Though his movements and touch were gentle, his mouth pressed to yours firmly, pulling a slight moan from your lungs. Your hand reached upwards to curl the fabric of his shirt into a fist, but he forced your wrist down. You shattered a gasp onto his tongue at the sudden, sharp movement, the bed hinges creaking from the force exerted. His fingers wove through yours, curling round your knuckles and squeezing ‘til your flesh turned white. His weight sunk onto the delicate blood vessels of your opposite wrist, your pulse hammering against his palm.

Jackson was quick to force his tongue inside your mouth, and you jolted as the remnants of the mint hit the back of your throat. Unable to do anything about it, you bit down on his lip, hard, and he growled into the kiss. Teeth grazed your tongue as you rolled it forward, and he pulled away, spitting the mint onto the sheets. His icy eyes flashed with hellfire but your body sank with relief into the mattress, tension leaving your body.

“Wouldn’t want you to choke,” he uttered darkly, fingers releasing yours to glide across your neck, shivers running down your throat as his palm once again found your pulse, fingertips brushing the beginnings of your scalp.

“Did I tell you that you could have that?” he demanded, the bright of his eyes chased by the dark.

“It was complimentary.” You sneered up at him.

Hands swept beneath your spine, pulling you upward, and the world teetered on its axis and pressure mounted your skull. Your legs wrapped around his waist, nails seeking purchase in his back to ground yourself, a moan hitching in your chest as your hips rolled forward and your bare pussy sank around the outline in his trousers. The jolt that travelled through you, from bottom to top, was perhaps the only thing that kept you from passing out as you felt the weight of the drugs tug at your limbs. Something peeled off from the back of your skull and you hissed, pawing at blood-crusted locks of hair.

“No, don’t touch that,” he told you, almost concerned. With you now firmly straddling his lap, and his legs folded beneath him, he gently pulled your hand away and replaced it with his own. Eyes narrowed in concentration, and he bit his lip. “The bleeding stopped.” A small, white bandage was pulled away, tape burning your scalp briefly as it tugged at a few threads of your hair, and your eyes tore from his to examine the almost black crimson on the white material.

Was that all? It hurt so much.

Noticing your wince of pain, he sighed, and your arm hooked with desperation round his neck as he leaned forward to reach to the end table, gravity tugging at your spine.  

You jumped, nails scraping his back, as a bottle of pills was tossed in your lap, hollowing your skirt around your thighs, and he righted himself with a glass of water in hand.

You released your hold on him to accept the water between shaking fingers, and he shook out two pills of Advil on his palm. Wedging one between his thumb and forefinger, he pressed it gently to your lips.

“Wash your hands,” you told him as you looked him up and down, at the blood that dappled his white collar and was still smeared slightly at the corner of one dark brow, and he rolled his eyes, forcing the pill past your teeth. He helped tip the glass of water to your lips, and repeated the process with the other pill.

“My pain didn’t seem to stop you before,” you said once he’d put aside the water glass and pills. “Why are you playing so nice, all of sudden?”

One hand landed on the bare flesh of your waist, slipping beneath your shirt, and the other brushed another lock of hair from your eyes.

“I told you I’d take care of you,” he said.

Before you’d the chance to respond, he was tugging your shirt over your arms, and you shut your eyes, the collar passing your lashes and crest of your skull. Lucky for him, you weren’t wearing a bra, and for the first time, his gaze landed on the swell of your breasts, your nipples hardening in the sudden cold. His lips parted and his pupils dilated.

“You have a strange way of doing that,” you remarked, breath coming shallow from your chest. Your fingers traced the collar of his shirt, still slightly damp with blood, and began undoing buttons as a sly smile crossed your face, making it all the way until his shirt came apart and your eyes widened at the sight of the dark line of hair disappearing past the hem of his trousers. Your curiosity would someday kill you if he didn’t.

“Shhh. Just rest, now…” his words confused you as he lowered your spine back to the soft bedding, but his voice melted like honey into every pore, and the mattress welcomed you. Breath pooling at the base of your neck, wet lips placed a kiss to the notch of skin in between your collarbone.

You understood now, and you found yourself with no complains, shutting your eyes and allowing his hot breath to trail down your sternum, arching your back when he reached your stomach. His nails dug into your waist, hands fitting perfectly in the grooves above your hips like you’d been made for him.

You shivered, remembering what he’d felt like inside you.

Lips brushed your navel, nose tickling your soft flesh, and his tongue began to lap at the juices that had dried on your abdomen, tasting you. His fingers hooked in the hem of your skirt. It was the only fabric between you, and even then, it had pulled taut round your spread legs. Another zipper came undone, and the checkered fabric was cast aside, sounding like it landed in a heap somewhere on the floor. Cold swept across the heat of your cunt, and lips slowly ghosted down the length of your pelvis, burying his nose in the crook of your thigh and inhaling deep.  

Your elbow had stirred, fingers coming to rest on the wet streaks his tongue had left across your stomach, though not quite reaching him, for your body still seemed to move slower than the world around you. Yet, he was almost too slow; he was taking his time, and you needed him like you’d never needed anything before. You whined out your disapproval, and he nipped at the pocket of your thigh as if to correct your behaviour.

And instead of finally giving you what you desired, he began to trail kisses down your inner thigh, hands following his movements. Your eyes blinked open in confusion, and you winced slightly in pain as you craned your neck to look down at him. Though the pillows were elevated, you sought a clearer view. What did this bastard think he was doing?

Feeling faint, you sank back into the pillow and succumbed to his teasing, a soft sigh hanging on your lips.

“Beg me for it.” His command came gruff against your skin, his tone akin to that which he’d used when he’d come deep inside you. You could still feel the last of his hot seed dribbling out of you, almost as if innerved by his words.

You chuffed out a laugh, and your head spun. “Yeah, right…” you murmured, but jolted as he placed another nip to your soft flesh. An electric current seemed to flow from his teeth through every fibre of your being, every synapse in your brain. You were too easy, you realised, as you relaxed and huffed out another sigh.

“Oh, please, Mr. Rippner… please take care of me…”

“Mm… what’s that, now? What do you need?”

“You. I need you, fucking Hell,” you breathed as you felt him smile against your thigh, the faint stubble of his jaw scratching the delicate flesh. “Please, I need to feel your tongue against me. I need you inside me… please…”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Take care of me… clean me… fuck me – I don’t care at this point.”

He tutted. “How unprofessional of you, wanting your boss to fuck you. That ought to knock off some points, for sure.”

“Stop being a goddamn tease,” you groaned, rolling your hips against empty air. Your fingers slid down your slicked pelvis to try and sate the itch between your thighs, deciding you’d do it yourself at this point. He swatted your hand away, and your knuckles burned.

“Who’s the boss here?” His breath hissed against your thigh, heat trailing down your flesh with a shiver and his nails digging in again.

“You are.” You pouted your lip, shame creeping in but you didn’t care. 

“Good girl.” The praise, uttered in such a guttural tone, made your core clench around nothingness, and his tongue began to light a trail of fire up your sensitive flesh, until his nose struck the groove of your thigh again and then his hot breath finally huffed against your folds. “So desperate for attention, so wet for your boss you’re wanting to touch yourself already. What a good fucking slut.”

Then why not let me? you thought with bitter longing, but didn’t dare utter the words. His teeth were currently hovering over a part of yourself that you didn’t particularly want bruised.

Though, on second thought…

“Come onnnnn,” you whined. “Get on with it.”

The sting of teeth landed on the lip of your pussy, and you chimed out a giggle as another wave of excitement crashed against you. “You’re so predictable…” you teased, words slurring as the heat of arousal pounded hot in your skull. The pain, you realised, was beginning to slip farther and farther from you, like a red ribbon caught in the vicious wind.

“Hey.” You jolted again as his palm struck your pussy, sensitive flesh stinging but your core clenching again with need. “Look at me.”

Your eyes fluttered open and you looked down at him, the burn of his coldfire eyes igniting something inside you that threatened to spill like lava from every pore, every fibre. You breathed heavy and smiled, admitting, “All right, maybe not so predictable.”

“Remind me, sweetheart, what do you need right now?”

“You.” A whimper was cast to the air like a prayer, and you giggled again, hair spilling around you as you laid back.

He placed a gentle kiss right on the lip of your pussy, as if to make it all better. His nose tickled the slick parting of your cunt, and you trembled.

“Good girl.” The heat of his breath raked your folds, and you nearly lost it, fingers grasping at the fabric of his shoulder.

Finally, the wet swipe of his tongue sent you into overdrive, dragging with a deliberate leisure along your slick parting. Your back arched, shaking, into the sheets, and your fingers sought his hair, threading through the strands as you squirmed under the increasing pressure of his tongue. Not teasing anymore, it was clear he wanted to devour you. And it was clear you wouldn’t last very long.

Like some kind of starved animal, he lapped up your juices, fingers forcing your legs further apart and stirring a squeal from your diaphragm, a noise which only spurred him on, teeth gently grazing your clit and his tongue circling your entrance to draw every last bit of sweet nectar from you. Thick fingers ran along your outer thighs, palms rubbing at your hips as if to encourage you on.

Stopping to catch his breath, he groaned, panting against your trembling folds, “You taste so good with my cum inside you, babygirl.”

“Fuck,” you breathed, hips bucking against his face, the stubble of his jaw lightly burning your skin. A knot tightened deep in your belly, walls clenching. He chuckled at your enthusiasm, which only sent you further over the edge, one hand cupping your ass as his tongue sought the taste of you back out, nose nuzzling into your clit. A myriad of sensations slammed into you all at once.

“Jack…” you moaned, tugging a fistful of his hair.

He stilled just as you felt yourself ready to tumble over that familiar precipice, thighs trembling around him, back fully arched as if to reach for the heavens while hellfire brewed beneath your flesh. Breaths came quick against you, nails sunk deep enough into your skin to well blood around his nails, and he growled, the sound seeming to reverberate through your core.  

“Jackson,” he corrected, tone thick with darkness. Lust. Wrath. All things sinful.

“J – Jackson.” You would say anything if it meant feeling his tongue against you again, if it meant some sort of release from the pain that still lingered beneath the surface of the pleasure he gave you.

“Mm.” Approving, he placed a kiss to your clit. Your nails raked along his scalp and the bucking of your hips became more erratic, so with his hands he pinned your waist down, a huff of fiery breath trailing up the cold of your stomach. You squirmed, desperate for release, as he prodded at your entrance, and you couldn’t take it anymore as his nails dug against your ribcage and his palms flattened against your stomach, and your walls finally clenched around his tongue as it slipped inside. 

You fell limp under him, your head tipping back to the white ceiling, your lips still parted from chanting his name like a sordid prayer, stars exploding across your vision and your skull inundated by a fire that cleansed the pain and brought with it only bliss.

You heard him swallow against a dry throat, and you lifted your starry gaze to watch as he swept his tongue along his upper lip. Bright eyes darkened by lust met yours, and you relaxed your hold on his hair, watching as chestnut locks fell around his face, clung to the sweat of his forehead. His shirt hung open, exposing the bare sheen of his chest. Your juices coated his nose and freckled cheeks, his sharp jaw framed by your thighs as they closed slowly around him. You’d never seen anything more beautiful.

“So, did I get an A?” You huffed out teasingly, and though you hadn’t thought it possible, his eyes darkened another fraction, shards of shattered ice sharpening like knives around the pools of ink black that bled into pale irises. Your sides burned where he dug his nails in, and you added, “A participation award, at least?”

Grabbing hold of your hips, he yanked you forward, your legs hooking over his shoulders and something wicked glittering in those darkened eyes. A brief moment of panic seized you as you were tugged down from your throne of pillows. His flushed lips were parted, a bead of your nectar dribbling down his chin. Looking more akin to a wild animal in that moment than he did a man, you felt the unravelled knot begin to weave into something dangerous in your gut.

“You think this is over?” he demanded, practically snarling, lips pulling in a wide grin round his white teeth. He began placing kisses and nips to your trembling thighs, ghosted a shuddering breath over the heat between them. He already had you moaning from how sensitive you were. “It’s not over ‘til I say it is, sweetheart.”

He’d told you not to scream, so you had to clamp a hand over your mouth, cries muffled by your sticky palm that smelled of mint and saliva and the faint trace of sex. He attacked you, tongue and teeth and all, while you were still coming down from your first orgasm. Yet, your hips still bucked against him, and he kept tugging you closer, grinding the slit of your cunt against his face, suckling and nipping at the delicate folds and finally forcing his tongue back inside you. Your other hand found its way back into his hair, clutching the messy strands as if your life depended on it.

You were quite certain at this point that he was trying to kill you.

Finally, as if in frustration, he hooked a finger inside you, reaching places his tongue couldn’t, and you bit down on your hand, rolling your hips madly against him despite the fatigue that weighed on every limb. Your bliss rolled over you in white-hot waves, in shivers of burning cold that seemed to electrify your skull.

Coldfire.

“Come for me one more time, baby,” he urged you, trailing sloppy, wet kisses up your stomach, gliding his weight over you to witness the look on your face as he worked his finger inside you. The knot in your belly tightened and unravelled in the space of those words alone, and you shuddered out a groan as your toes curled and your thighs closed around him. You became limp again, head spinning and darkness hedging your vision.

“Good girl.” A kiss was placed at the swell of one breast, his nails running up and down your sides. Your legs were still slung over his shoulders, now hooked around the curve of his spine, and the last thing you felt before oblivion took you was the heat of his palms on your flesh, the scrape of his bloodied nails, the graze of his teeth and the softness of his lips as he worshipped your body with little praises.

---

The dip of the bed beneath his weight was what woke you, your nose still buried in the cinnamon shampoo of his pillow and your nails clutching the fabric for dear life as the mattress creaked. Pain thudded beneath your skull, but not as intensely as before, and you were able to peek open your eyes, catching a glimpse of the alarm clock.

8:56.

A wicked finger of cold ran down your bare spine as the sensation of his body heat left you, but you remained still, waiting, like an animal playing dead. Maintaining an even breath this time. Shallow, faint.

The soft padding of Jackson’s feet against the carpet disappeared round the corner, along with the low melody of his whistle, and your breath hissed slowly from your teeth. You looked to the TV, now silent, and the blazer he’d folded across the stand. Your deadly affects were gone. Of course. Why would life ever make escaping your kidnapper that easy?

You glanced then to the door, your heart picking up speed in your chest.

But did you really want it to be easy?

Deep down, you couldn’t help but feel like you had something to prove. You’d let this man beat you and best you and had found yourself wrapped around his finger, and worse yet, he’d killed your target. You’d failed your mission.

He must’ve thought you were so pathetic.

The sound of a shower turned on, past the drywall divider of the hotel. The bathroom was located directly behind you, which must have meant the kitchenette was to your right, towards the window side.

8:59.

You had to take a minute to steady yourself against the edge of the bed as you pushed yourself up, the heels of your hands shaking against the mattress. Deep breath in, deep breath out. Head lowered between your legs, your dizziness gradually ebbed, and your toes brushed the carpet.

Legs trembling beneath you, cold washing across your nude form, you slowly crept your way into the kitchen, peering down the hall to the bathroom. Light pooled beneath the doorframe and, by the sound of it, the water still buffeted the porcelain of the tub, nearly masking his idle whistle.

Your scalp itched where you’d been struck, and you resisted the urge to paw at it. You wished desperately to fetch another glass of water to sate your parched tongue. But your eyes caught on the soft glint of knives along a magnetised strip on the wall, and you moved forward, heart pounding so hard in your skull that your breath caught in your chest, for you feared you would not be able to hear your surroundings.

The knife made the scarcest sound as you pulled it from the metal strip, and trembling fingers tightened round its handle, lowering the weapon to a defensive position at your belly. Some semblance of power coursed through your veins, hot and thick and whelming, intoxicating you for one moment as you drew a shaky breath into your lungs.

Until the noise of the shower and the whistling stopped, and your blood ran cold. The drip of water began to time to the mad beating of your heart and the rest was only silence.

Thud, thud, thud, thud…

Turning on your heel, you slipped round the corner of the wall divider and held your breath as the bathroom door swung open. A shiver passed through you in your cold sweat, and though you listened intently, the blood roared too loud in your ears to hear anything more.

“Put the knife down, sweetheart.” His voice came to you just from the other side of the wall, calm and warm, like a man coaxing his lover back from the cruel grip of calamity. You startled, your breath hissing between your teeth, though his words slid over your bare skin like silk.

Jackson emerged from behind the wall, fully clothed, hair not even damp from the shower. His hands rested at his sides, no weapons – he didn’t need them, for that tongue of his was as sharp as your knife and fire raged in those icy eyes.

“You tricked me,” you breathed, collecting yourself, stalling. He was right there in front of you… you could lash out, in one quick motion and allow your blade to meet blood and bone. “You knew I’d wake up and you turned the shower on to see what I’d do.”

“Very astute. Has anyone told you you should be a detective?” he rasped sarcastically, voice darkening. Despite his gentle plea to put aside your weapon, he had that predatory look about him that made your flesh crawl with bitter cold but your insides melt like honey.

In the second he took for his eyes to rake down your nude form, you darted to the left, reckoning you could outrun him better than you could fight him, but his hand caught your ankle and you fell, squirming in his grasp. The rough carpeting scraped your bruised flesh, and kicking at his hands, as you felt his weight clamber on top of you, clutching your knife tight as you attempted to draw it back in to your chest.

“I told you not to play games, sweetheart,” he said, hands gliding over your skin. The heat of his breath raked across the small of your back.

Twisting, you didn’t kick this time, but brought the knife in a wild slash towards him; his hand captured your wrist, squeezing again at the delicate blood vessels beneath your flesh, reminding you briefly of the brush of his lips against yours. The knife slipped between your fingers, landing somewhere beside your head in the sea of hair that spilled beneath you as you stared helplessly up at him.

There was no fear in his gaze. Only darkness.

“You know what happens to bad girls…” His other hand wove its way through your hair, bunching the locks in his fist and tugging at your scalp. Magma consumed your skull, and your lips parted in a breathless cry, the oxygen forced from burning lungs. Your fingers grabbed for his jaw, his throat, but as you tightened your hold, so did he; threads of hair snapped from their roots, and for one blinding second, all you knew was pain.

And without thinking, you screamed.

Jackson’s hand came to clamp around your mouth, frantically loosed from your hair, and instinct brought your hand in a striking blur across the hollow between his jaw and his throat, where you knew you could render him unconscious. His weight teetered over you, eyes widening, a gust of breath burning your eyes as it was forced from his lungs. Blinking wildly and gritting your teeth, you struck him again, until you managed to slip from beneath him. Fingers grasped for the knife, the cool, varnished wood of the handle a welcome comfort in your palm. 

As you made it to your feet, he sent his teetering weight forwards, crashing against you but you held on tight to your blade even as the breath once more escaped your lungs, and your spine hit the wall, jarred but consumed by adrenaline that set your veins alight with fire.

“Fucking bitch,” he snarled, any playfulness of his façade shattering like the icy shards of his wild eyes. From his shift in tone, you knew that there was no going back.

Nails dug into your skin, cruel and unrelenting, and his arm slammed your right wrist into the wall, attempting to disarm you.

Little did he know, you had switched the knife to your left.

The heat of his blood spilled around your knuckles where you clutched the knife, having driven it deep beneath his ribs, and his nails loosened from your flesh, a wheezing cough sputtering against your cheeks. For good measure, and smirking revenge, you wove your fingers through his hair, and brought his skull against the wall.

A trail of crimson smeared across the alabaster-white as you watched him sink to the floor, your chest heaving with ireful breath and his eyelids fluttering, working hard to focus on you as his fingers grasped feebly for the knife you’d left buried in his stomach.

“Feels great, doesn’t it?” You hissed, cocking a brow at him. Standing here, watching as he gasped for his breath and tightened his grip round the knife, unaware he was slicing the flesh of his own fingers on the blade, you felt powerful.

While your adrenaline lasted, you gathered up your clothes – or rather, what remained of them –, shimmying your skirt over your hips and tugging your shirt over your arms. Next, you began searching drawers, yanking them wildly from the TV stand. One clattered to the floor, but at this point, noise was no longer your concern.

You found your belongings and snapped your garter over your thigh, checked the chamber and mag of your Ruger to find he’d been kind enough to load fresh bullets, and hooked a finger over the torn lace panties to bring them up in the low light of the room.

“You can keep them,” you said, tossing them against his face, his eyes still wide and his jaw now clenching. Something like fury passed through the blue of his gaze, but still no fear. Strangely, both unease and a familiar dash of excitement brewed beneath your flesh.

Finally, you made a call to 911 from the room’s phone, telling the operator that there was a man who’d been stabbed and desperately needed medical attention. You hung up just as they asked for your name, bloodied fingers tossing the phone on the bed in your haste. There was no point covering your tracks; your DNA was everywhere, and you knew, from the fury in the man’s eyes, that it wasn’t the law you would need to watch out for.

"Y/N," he wheezed, breath hissed between his clenched teeth, and you paused. "I'm going to fucking ruin you."

"Oh..." you purred, a smile twisting your lips. "I'm counting on it."

And it wasn't from his words, but from the excitement beneath your flesh and the dull ache of your loins that you knew that it would not be the last time you saw Jackson Rippner.

And as you left, door slamming in your wake, you realised,

Maybe you enjoyed your little games.  

A.N. I'm on the fence about carrying this into a series since I have a lot to work on at the moment, but can definitely consider it if there's a demand!

MASTERLIST

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Coldfire taglist: @mizzbel @violetparis

[earthtooz]

Ramble abt todoroki incoming!

Todoroki who does so much for you and never expects anything in return. Todoroki who’s your best friend, always at your side and supporting you like it’s second nature. Todoroki who is in love with you but it’s not just fleeting romance, he loves you so deeply he’s content even if you don’t love him back. Todoroki who’s devoted to you because you’re his best friend and he’s yours. Todoroki who you’d do anything for. Todoroki who’s held you while you cried, gossiped with you about anything and everything, trusts you to hold him while he cries, to back him up. Todoroki who whispers brutal jokes and quips only loud enough for you to hear. Who tells you all his secrets, and keeps yours. Who’s kind but funny, vicious to protect those he loves but is so soft. Todoroki who everyone knows is a package deal with you because you’re best friends, and you have been for years. So much so that when they tell you to keep a secret they know, Todoroki also knows all their business. Todoroki who loves you so wholly, who’s your ride or die, but is somehow still surprised when you tell him you love him. When even you might be the one to purpose to him.

Todoroki who makes it feel so easy and natural to go from best friends, to someone you know you’ll spend the rest of your life with. Todoroki who has shown you how easy it is to love unconditionally. Todoroki who’d you’d do anything for, and never once doubt he’d do the same. Because being with him is as easy as breathing.

i kept this ask in the inbox bc i wanted to incorporate it into one of my fics for inspo :o but it'll be a while until i find time to write and post something, so rambling abt this now might be more fitting.

but i totally agree!!!!

todoroki shoto is familiar. he is constant. he is stable and most of all, he is an immovable force in your life- not that you want is any other way.

you have loved him during your years at u.a and you will keep loving him, even as you climb the hero ranks together and face new challenges.

you have loved him at the training camp before being ambushed by the- what was then, the league of villains. you have loved him whilst you cried together afterwards as he thanked fate that you were okay because he had heard from his classmates that you were right in the middle of all the action and it took multiple of shoji's arms to hold him back; to prevent todoroki from rushing into the fog-ridden woods to find you and protect you with the heat of his fire and the walls of ice.

you have loved him in the late nights and early mornings shared in the dorms. you have loved him in all the exchanged cups of tea. you have loved him in all the hugs, gossips, whispers, quips about the class and inside jokes that are sacred to no one but you two. he has loved you in return.

he loves that you two are synchronised to this extent. he has loved you in all the moments that when anything remotely shocking or funny happens, you two immediately look at each other with the same expression, communicating through brainwaves. it's almost creepy.

you have loved him whilst interning under endeavour together. todoroki watched as you grew stronger and you, he. the love you shared bloomed right under his father's nose and although the dual-wielder knew he didn't really need his dad's approval on who he liked, he knows he got it regardless.

he has loved you whilst watching you bicker with bakugo and midoriya during the breaks you'd take during the internship, with the glorious, setting sun brushing your face with its golden glory, illuminating your beauty in a way that made todoroki breathless.

you have loved him in the midst of all of his family drama AND trauma. you have loved him as you wiped his tears away, you have loved him wounded and hurt. you have loved him as he shyly crawls to you for the comfort only he can find in you.

he has loved you when you do the same with him, vowing to keep you safe, holding you closer than he does with anyone else.

even if you break his heart, he tells himself to hug you tighter.

he loves you during the rest of your high school lives, all the way until during third year where this love blossoms into something... more stable, final, and beautiful. now officially together, todoroki learns to love you more passionately. this time, he fully devotes himself to you, more than he could during the earlier years that he's spent pining over you.

he loves you when you become a sidekick for a hero you've been looking up to for years, celebrating your successes together. he loves you when you appear on the annual list of top ten heroes and you love him when his name appears on the top three.

you love him when he brings you flowers after his patrol hours. you love him when todoroki asks you to move in to his place. you love him when you see the way he has manoeuvred his space to become your space: he has filled up vases with your favourite bouquets, he has incorporated furniture he knows you like, he put some of your plushies on the couch and even folded your favourite blanket over the couch so it's always there during cuddle time.

you love him during domesticity too. cooking together, cuddling together, cleaning together - just... existing together, this is all pure bliss for todoroki because he loves you.

he loves you in your pajamas, he loves you when you're dressed to the nines for a hero event, he loves you when he watches you float through the ballroom; greeting every hero that approaches gracefully, he loves you when your eyes light up when they meet his and like magnets, you find your way to him.

you love him even when he throws himself in front of you instinctively to protect you during missions, he loves you when you do the same. you love him during the nights he spends at the hospital and he loves you when he does the same. you love him when you wake up with a sore back and neck, sleeping on the guest chair and todoroki loves you when it's the middle of the night and the first thing he sees is your sleeping figure draped over the side of the hospital bed.

the first time this happens, he knows fully that there is not a moment that he doesn't want to spend by your side and every time he gets to wake up to your sleeping face is a blessing that life has provided todoroki shoto.

and here's the thing- you'd do it all over again because being by todoroki's side, supporting todoroki, loving todoroki is as easy as breathing.

it's you and him against the world because you love todoroki shoto and todoroki shoto loves you.

WHEN I SAY THIS IS UNEDITED I SAY THIS IS UNEDITED but literally thank YOU SO MUCH FOR THIS RAMBLE!!!! it literally GAVE ME SO MUCH SEROTONIN AS I WROTE IT!!!! i have never enjoyed reading an inbox message as much as this one and as i kept referring back to what you said, i just- indescribable experience, 10/10!!!! THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU VELVET!

[dickwheelie]

by popular demand on the discord server, a jonsasha fic! this incorporates a few different requests from the discord buds, but it boils down to: jon and sasha are on a "stakeout" for a statement and jon thinks it's purely for work but sasha is treating it like a date without him realizing.

this was my first time writing jonsasha and I gotta say it was super fun! I'll have to do more with these two in the future. please enjoy!

___________

"Anything yet?" Sasha asked.

Jon's leg had begun to fall asleep, and so he shifted his weight, leaning closer to the windshield. He squinted through the darkness at the doorway across the street, but it was as empty as before. "No, nothing," he said with a sigh.

Sasha shrugged. "Time to dig into the sandwiches, then." She reached into the backseat and retrieved the cooler she'd brought along for their overnight stakeout. It was two in the morning and they'd already gone through a packet of crisps and a candy bar each, as well as a handful of oranges, because Sasha thought they should try to be at least somewhat healthy. Now she pulled out two wrapped sandwiches, which looked like they'd come from Tesco's. She handed Jon the tuna one.

"So you can keep kosher," she said as she unwrapped her ham and cheese.

Jon looked at her in surprise. "Oh, er," he said, "thank you." Usually people forgot.

"Course." Sasha flashed him a smile. She'd been smiling a lot that night; Jon had no idea Sasha enjoyed stakeouts so much. He'd have to invite her to investigate statements more often in the future. He liked seeing her smile; she would scrunch up her nose slightly and it was very cute.

Almost as though she were reading his mind, Sasha said, "Thanks for inviting me out tonight, Jon. This has been fun." She craned her neck towards the passenger's side window. "Even if we're not having much luck. It's nice just to spend time together."

"O-Of course," Jon said. "Thank you for joining me. And for bringing the food." He paused. "And the car."

Sasha laughed. "Least I could do, really."

The truth was, Jon had asked her to join him mostly because Sasha was the best researcher he knew at the Institute, definitely better than himself. It didn't hurt that she was also a good friend, and one of the few people at work who seemed to like Jon. The only other one he could think of was Tim. But Sasha was . . . she was just different, somehow. She understood him, in a way very few people did. Now that he thought about it, not since Georgie had he so thoroughly clicked with someone. He was unaccountably relieved when she'd agreed to join him on what would have been a very lonely and very dull stakeout. Then again, Sasha had never shied away from a chance to do more thorough research.

The passenger's side window nearest to Jon was cracked open, and a sudden draft of night air blew in, making him shiver.

"Oh, are you cold?" Sasha said, and before Jon could answer, she removed the wool jacket she was wearing and placed it around his shoulders. Sasha was about the same height as him, perhaps an inch or two taller, but she was much broader-shouldered, and her jacket was large on him, encompassing him in its sudden warmth. He couldn't help but notice it smelled like her perfume. "Better?" Sasha asked.

Jon felt heat rise to his face, and drew the jacket a bit tighter around him. "Er, yes, much better." He definitely wasn't cold anymore, at least. He looked down at the jacket, running his finger along one of its many tiny enamel pins. He'd never tried to get close enough to look at them all. Now he could see, among others, a trans flag, a pan flag, an anarchist symbol, a pin with a drawing of the globe that said "Give Earth a Chance," and one that just said "int elligent;". He didn't understand that one but he supposed it meant something to somebody.

"I wonder how legal this is," Sasha was saying. "Staking out someone's flat like this. I mean, technically we're not breaking any laws, just sitting here in the car . . ."

Jon nodded. "Considering the kind of stuff I usually do, this is on the lower end of the legally dubious spectrum."

Sasha laughed. "How many carparks have you jumped the fence of again?"

"I believe the last count was six," Jon said, allowing himself a satisfied grin.

"Next time I expect you to invite me along to one of those 'research outings.' "

"Deal," said Jon, and they shook on it.

"Either way," Sasha said, settling back in her seat, "this has definitely been one of the more interesting dates I've been on."

Jon froze in his seat. Date? He had invited her out to help with investigating a statement, not for a date. His mind flashed back over the last three hours. Had he been on a date with Sasha this whole time, without realizing it? Had she not realized that this was a work thing? Oh god, what had he said to her when he'd asked? Had he made it sound like he was asking her out?

"Sasha," he said slowly, mind racing to figure out how best to break the news to her, "I . . . I'm so sorry, but I didn't--"

"Didn't know this was a date?" Sasha didn't seem angry. In fact, she was grinning at him. "I know. When you asked me to join you tonight, I said to myself, Sasha, this is the closest Jon is gonna get to asking you out. You better make it easy for him." She shrugged. "So, I made it a date. Assuming you're okay with that. If not, then it doesn't have to be one. Simple as that."

Jon stared at her, with her bright eyes and expectant smile. She really was very beautiful. He didn't ordinarily notice things like that, about anyone, but now that he was looking for it . . . And what an efficient way to go about things. It would be so much simpler if all dates could be arranged so easily. "Yes," he said, surprising himself at his own words. "That's . . . that's okay. A date is okay."

"You're sure?"

There was a spark of anticipation in his chest. "Yes."

Sasha's face lit up. "Brilliant." She leaned a little closer to him, resting an elbow up on the dashboard. "Is this alright?"

"Is what alright?"

"This." Sasha leaned across the gearshift and kissed him on the cheek.

Jon sat there for a moment, his heart racing. "I--um." He didn't have to give it much thought. "Yes." He leaned towards her. "Do it again?"

Sasha grinned, and pressed her lips to his. They were very soft. He could taste her chapstick, which was coconut flavored. It was wonderful. Her mouth shook under his for a second, as she tried to stifle a laugh. He pulled away, indignant, but Sasha was shaking her head. "I'm not laughing at you. It's just--you're so gentle. You don't have to be all careful with me." She pointed at herself. "It's Sash, remember?"

"I'm sorry," Jon said. "It's . . . been a while."

"Ah, same here. But I don't accept your apology."

Jon cracked a smile. "Can't get anything past you, James."

"No," Sasha said, faux-primly. "You can't." And then she kissed him again, and despite her insistence that he needn't be gentle, Jon melted anyway. Even with the both of them sitting down, Sasha's couple of inches on him were evident, and Jon gladly let her tower over him. He had always been a little self-conscious about his height, and having a partner that was taller than him was extremely welcome.

When they finally pulled apart, Jon said, "You're a genius."

Sasha looked puzzled. "I didn't know I was that good of a kisser."

"Oh, no, that's not--You're a really good kisser, yes, but I meant about the date thing."

"Ohh. That makes more sense. Yes, I am a genius. And a great kisser. Thank you for noticing," said Sasha, and Jon laughed.

The rest of the stakeout was, unfortunately, a bit of a wash. Neither of them spent much time watching the doorway, and they fell asleep on one another's shoulders around three in the morning. As a date, though, Jon would have to say it was a complete success.

[alltooreid]

Dancing With Our Hands Tied

In order to keep Y/N safe from danger, Spencer vows to keep their relationship a complete secret from everyone they know. However, as their romance gets more serious, Y/N and Reid begin to realize that no matter how in love they are, they may have been doomed from the start.

A/N: Back at it with a hopefully very angsty fic! This is of course inspired by the Taylor Swift song, but you don’t need to be familiar with the song to read and enjoy! Also I made a playlist for this one shot, which you can find here (its best if you listen to it in order and of course you don’t have to listen as you read, but if you enjoy that kind of thing, I thought it would be fun). Additionally, in order for the timeline of this fic to make the most sense, I’m choosing to ignore the Lauren Reynolds subplot, because trying to incorporate it and explain it would be distracting and unnecessary in my opinion. Thanks for reading!

Pairing: Spencer Reid x Fem! Reader

Type: Angst

Word Count: 3.9K

Content Warnings: Some cursing, general fighting angst, discussion of pregnancy, brief mention of abortion (follow up is left intentionally ambiguous, based on your own desires and beliefs you are allowed to decide where that aspect goes (pro choice tings))

“I, I loved you in spite of Deep fears that the world would divide us So, baby, can we dance Oh, through an avalanche?”

Spencer Reid hated funerals. 

Somehow he felt he was always invited to one, and no matter how hard it was for him to be there, he always made every effort to go. So when Hotch had to plan Haley’s funeral, Spencer knew he had to go, no matter how much he would hate it.

He looked down to the grass as his supervisor cried over his now dead wife, the most emotion he had seen from him ever. He refused to look up and watch, although there were at least a hundred people there to mourn Haley, this moment felt innately private to Hotch. Spencer didn’t think it was his place for his eyes to intrude. 

So he stared at the lawn and got lost in his own mind.

Right then and there he realized he never wanted to go through what Hotch had to go through. No matter how many philosophers described love in the most beautiful, enchanting way, Spencer didn’t want it anymore. 

He didn’t want to go through a heartbreak, because how worth it could it be?

Of course, all information he had in his repertoire pointed to the claim that it was worth it. Yet he couldn’t pay attention to Oscar Wilde, trying to tell him that “hearts are made to be broken,” or E. A. Bucchianeri screaming that “grief is the price we pay for love.”

All he could see at that moment was the most stone-faced man he had ever known, breaking down in front of everyone he knew over the woman he loved. 

At that moment Spencer Reid vowed to completely give up on love. He would become the best profiler to ever live. People would compare him to Jason Gideon, but Spencer Reid would win every time. Spencer wouldn’t let himself be like Gideon and get so hung up over a person that he couldn’t ever work anymore.

So when Spencer left the funeral and went to bed that night, he was confident that he would sleep alone like that forever. It was comfortable like that and he was happy. Who needs to be in love?

Not Spencer Reid that’s for sure.

Well, until three months later, when Spencer Reid met Y/N Y/L/N. 

She was beautiful, and Spencer knew he wanted to get to know her the first time he laid eyes on her. 

But he was doing such a good job recently…. Even Hotch was impressed with his work ethic. The only one who had talked to him about his lack of emotion was Penelope, she seemed concerned when Spencer told her he didn’t want to meet let alone go on a date with the cute nerdy barista from her go to coffee shop. Spencer refused to reason with her, he was too focused on proving himself to Hotch and the rest of the team. 

Even though in the back of his mind, Spencer knew he had already proven himself to the rest of the team, now he just needed to be good enough for himself.

A truly impossible task.

But he was still trying to do it, so he didn’t talk to the barista at the new coffee shop he was trying.  

He wasn’t expecting her to try and talk to him. Maybe that’s why he was so willing to give up his own reasoning.  

“That’s a lot of sugar, sugar. Are you as sweet as your coffee?” she said, giggling as she did it. She knew the line was cheesy and stupid but she had been eyeing Spencer Reid since he came in and knew she needed to get his attention. Luckily, he couldn’t help but laugh.

Their first date was right then and there. They got distracted and talked till closing, Y/N’s coworkers noticing she was actually putting herself out there and deciding to pick up her slack so she could continue. 

“So are you going to call me Dr. Reid or were you just leading me on for 3 hours?”

“Of course I’ll call you, how else am I going to get you to watch Doctor Who?”

Y/N smiled, “Well I know this is kind of forward, but I have this art exhibit tomorrow, I would love to see you there. But don’t over think that! I’ve invited pretty much everyone I know. I have a bet to win amongst the other art students, whoever has the most people come to see them wins one of those giant Costco sheet cakes. I need that sheet cake Spencer.”

Spencer smiled, “Well, I am from Vegas . . . Maybe I could help push the odds in your favor.”

“Well I can’t wait to see you there. Tomorrow, 6 pm, I’ll text you the details.”

It was only when he laid down to sleep that Spencer remembered his philosophy on love, but strangely, he did not care. 

He may have been trying to freeze his heart, but Y/N was coming in with a blowtorch.

And he didn’t mind. In fact he unlocked the door to let her in.

So when he arrived at work the next morning, he fully intended on going to her art show. He thought about what flowers to bring her. . . was this a date? Was last night a date? Were roses too strong a message? He couldn’t do anything red, it was too forward. Pink? What if she saw it as stereotypical because she’s a woman, maybe she hates pink?! Yellow Tulips were safe, but if he got her yellow tulips then she would think they were just friends and Spencer didn’t want to be just friends.

His internal debate was interrupted by none other than Penelope Garcia, but not to interrupt their paperwork day with a case, but to make an announcement to the bullpen.

“Hello my loves! I have an interesting idea for some team bonding tonight, my favorite barista and dear friend has invited me to her school art show. Of course she needs the most support humanly possible, so you all need to come with me and look at cool art!”

“Who’s this friend of yours Penelope?” JJ asked.

“Oh Jayge you’ve met Y/N! She’s lovely and I’m sure an incredible artist. You guys will all love her!”

Suddenly Spencer remembered Hotch and his broken down faces at Haley’s funeral. He remembered his philosophy on love and his fear of heartbreak.

But he also remembered how alive he felt with Y/N. How the way she laughed like a little kid and how that made him feel giddy. He remembered how she was always so interested in what he had to say. He remembered that he really liked her.

And at that moment, Spencer realized that he did not have to choose between being in love and keeping his heart safe from the devastating heartbreak of seeing his true love die. He realized that the reaper could only find Haley because Hotch let people know they were together Because everyone knew of Hotch’s wife, she was in constant danger.

Maybe if he kept Y/N secret he could still be with her.

“Spencer! Did you hear me?”

“No, um sorry Garcia what did you say?”

“I asked if you were going to come to Y/N’s art show, you know you too would make such a cute couple! You should totally come.”

“I actually can’t, I’m not feeling well.”

She sighed, “That’s what you said last time I tried to get you two together 187 . . . Do you want to talk about anything Spencer? You haven’t been yourself lately.”

“I’m fine, I just have a headache. I don’t want to go out tonight.”

She rested her hand on his shoulder for a second, before following Morgan to the kitchen. Spencer knew she was going to say something to him, but he didn’t care. He had found the perfect solution to his conundrum.

And he knew exactly what flowers to send to Y/N.

Y/N texted him thirteen times, and waited an extra hour after the open house closed in case he showed. So although she went home empty handed, one person away from enough cake to feed fifty, she received a call from Spencer Reid.

“Hey, where were you tonight? I was looking forward to seeing you.”

“I’m sorry Y/N, something came up, but I have something for you! Are you still there?”

“Oh no, I just got to my apartment. I can send you the address.”

“I’ll be over as soon as I can.”

And five minutes later Spencer was at Y/N’s door, with Chinese take out and white peonies, a flower known for its apologetic symbolism.

Y/N blushed, “You didn’t have to bring me flowers Spencer . . .”

“Well I wanted to bring some to your show, but I figured this could be the next best thing . . . And maybe we could eat some of your Costco sheet cake afterwards. Sounds like a balanced meal to me.”

“Although I love that idea, I unfortunately came home tonight sheet cake-less.”

Reid frowned, “How close were you? Would I have made any difference?”

“Oh no!” Y/N lied, “I was way off, don’t even worry about it.” She smiled, “I’m just excited that you're here right now.”

Spencer blushed and looked down at his feet, “Well I’m excited to be here.”

Four months after that night, Y/N asked Spencer a seemingly stupid question while they were eating take out at her apartment. “Spencer, I love takeout and all but we haven’t gone out in public together since the first time we met. . . Call me stupid but I’m starting to wonder if you don’t want to be seen with me.”

Spencer sighed, “Y/N, it’s not that it’s just . . . complicated.”

“I just don’t get it. Am I the second woman or something?”

“No! Absolutely not! You are my one and only flower,” he said, smiling and then leaning in to kiss her nose. She giggled in response, but quickly remembered the serious nature of their conversation. “Y/N, you know what I do for a living.”

“I don’t understand what that has to do with anything.”

“Not too long ago, my boss was targeted by a serial killer who made it his mission to make his life miserable. In doing so he killed his wife. I just . . .  I don’t want that to happen to you Y/N. I think I’m falling in love with you, and I can’t put you through that.”

“Spencer . . . I love you too.”

So no matter how badly Y/N wanted to tell her family, or update her Facebook status, she respected Spencer, and although she didn’t completely understand his concerns, she wanted him to be happy.

So she spent ten more months like that, catering to Spencer Reid’s peace of mind. Pretending to smile as he told her stories of all the funny things his team members did, all about their partners, and their love lives.

A couple times now, Y/N asked Spencer if she could meet them, but Spencer always shot it down. When he first mentioned the idea of keeping their relationship a secret, Y/N had secretly hoped it would be one of those things that was forgotten about within a week or two. But no. It had been many, many weeks, and Spencer still didn’t want to be seen in public with her.

And by now that was all she wanted. To go on a real date, to introduce him to her friends, to actually be able to tell her coworkers that something did come from that guy she hit it off with.

Everyday, Y/N felt she did the same exact thing, she went to work, would come home and if Spencer was still in Quantico, she would convince him to come over. (They had been dating for over a year now, and Y/N had never been to his apartment. She didn’t even know where it was). If Spencer did come over, he would usually bring some kind of dessert with him, and they would talk and be merry in their own little secret oasis. A couple weeks ago, Y/N started to get this uncomfortable, uneasy feeling that encompassed her whole body, her whole being. Every part of her was trying to tell her that Spencer Reid was not the man for her. And even though she was still very much in love with him, she agreed.

Although she loved Spencer for the person he was, the man who brought her every different flavor of cheesecake from the bakery across town (one a day for fifty nine days straight), the man who begged her to make him a painting for valentines day instead of buying him a present, the man who cried when she did and laughed when she did and-

There were a lot of things to love about Spencer Reid, but there were a lot of things to hate about their relationship.

She hated the time she bought a gold locket in the shape of a heart, and put a picture of them in it so she could keep him with her all day long, and he made her return it because it could fly open and someone could recognize him. She hated the day she came home with a little beige kitten named Betsy and Spencer made her give Betsy to her sister so that he wouldn’t get cat hair on his clothes and have to answer a million questions. She hated the time Spencer missed her birthday weekend because he had a case and couldn’t give an excuse to why he couldn’t go. She hated that Spencer was her entire life, while she seemed like just an inconvenience to his.

And most of all, she hated that she loved him so much. Because deep down she knew that she could never leave Spencer Reid, but she also knew that there was no way they could last if nothing changed.

Just then Spencer knocked on her door, she had offered him his own key many times, but he declined because he didn’t want anyone to see it on his key ring and ask what it was for. She let him in, and right away his fun perky smile dropped. “You’ve been crying. I can tell.”

“Is that the kind of thing they teach you in FBI school?”

“Yes actually, but that’s not the point,” he said, dropping his bouquet of red chrysanthemums on Y/N’s coffee table and grabbing one of her hands with both of his. “Talk to me Y/N.”

She sighed, “I love you Spencer, but I just don’t know if we can do this anymore.”

“What do you mean flower?”

“Spencer we’ve been together for over a year-”

“One year, two months and five days,” he corrected.

“Yes, yes that. We’ve been together for one year, two months and five days but no one except us knows that.”

“Y/N I thought you were okay with that, I just want you to be safe.”

“I thought I was okay with it but,” she paused, afraid of what she wanted to say, “I’m not Spencer, I don’t want to live like this anymore. I love you, and I want to be with you. To really be with you. What happens if we ever get married, do we have to get eloped, would you even let us get married because you need someone else to watch? When do I get to tell my mom I’m in a relationship? What if you get hurt out in the field, and no one has heard of me, let alone knows to call me, and we never get to say goodbye? How far do you plan on taking this?”

Spencer grew flustered, “Um, I- I don’t know? I didn’t know you were even thinking about those things.”

“Do you think about those things? Things like getting married?”

“You’re the love of my life Y/N, of course I do.”

“Well then something needs to change. We can’t live like this anymore.”

“Things will get better Y/N, I promise you, we’ll start small but I’m going to make this better for you. Actually, um we can start right now,” he started digging through his messenger bag. After a minute, he pulled out a smaller gold heart locket than the one you had originally purchased for yourself. “I, um I was going to give it to you for your birthday, but I feel like now is the best time. I couldn’t find the same one, but it’s the same picture inside.”

She teared up, “I love it. It’s perfect. Here, put it on me.” She turned around and pushed her hair to one side so that Spencer could clasp the delicate chain around her neck.

They kissed, and afterward Spencer spoke, “I hate to ruin this moment, but I’ve had to use the bathroom ever since I got here.”

Y/N laughed, “Ok go, I’ll be waiting.”

While waiting for her love to come back, Y/N admired her flowers. Ever since Spencer began to get her different flowers to symbolize different things she had developed an abnormal botany fascination. She would always beat Spencer to explaining the symbolism of her latest bouquet, so she already knew the red chrysanthemum was a symbol of prosperous, passionate love in most countries. However she also knew that in Italy, chrysanthemums were a death flower, given only at funerals.

Part of her couldn’t help but wonder if some unconscious part of Spencer’s genius brain was beginning to feel the same way she did. Three weeks later nothing much had changed in the state of Y/N and Spencer’s romance. She was still unheard of in the eyes of the BAU and two nights prior Spencer had stopped her from calling her mother to tell her about him.

And then Y/N discovered her sick, uneasy, all over body feeling was not just her incredible intuition.

She was pregnant.

She had taken a couple of tests a while prior and could just now get into the doctor to get it confirmed. But it was official. She was pregnant.

As soon as the nurse confirmed it she broke down crying. And when she asked her a couple more questions, she broke down even further. “Are you currently in a relationship?”

“No,” she sniffed.

“Do you know who the father is?”

“I don’t know,” she sobbed.

“Sweetheart, I don’t know where you want to go from here, but there’s a lot more options that you may think. Everything will be okay.”

Y/N still cried the whole way home.

She spent the rest of the day thinking about how to tell Spencer, and then overthinking what he would say.

She knew Spencer loved children, but he couldn’t even manage to tell people she existed, how was he going to explain a long term relationship and a baby?

It would have taken decades for Y/N to prepare to deliver this news, but Spencer showed up at 8:19 pm.

“Hi flower! How are you today?”

“I’m pregnant.” She blurted out, she was not planning to do it exactly like that, but she panicked.

“What?”

“I’m pregnant Spencer.”

He sighed and ran one of his hands through his hair, “You could get an abortion?”

Y/N lost it. “Are you kidding me? Are you fucking kidding me Spencer?”

“I don’t think a baby is going to be very easy to keep a secret Y/N.”

“Is this how far you’re willing to go Spencer? You want to keep me hidden so bad that you want me to get an abortion? Are you insane?”

“You’re right, Y/N, I’m sorry, we’ll figure something out.”

“No, you’re wrong there Spencer. I’ll figure something out.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I can’t do this anymore. I’m done. I love you but, please just get out of my apartment.”

“Y/N please don’t do this, I love you, we can make this work. I know I haven’t been doing the best job for these three weeks, but just give me a little time and I promise we can do this.”

Y/N wiped tears from her eyes, then reached her thumb up to Spencer’s face, wiping his cheek. “Spencer, it’s not a matter of how much I love you or you love me. Sometimes, things just aren’t made to work out. We gave it a good run, but no matter how hard we love each other, I don’t think either of us is happy.”

“But I don’t know how to live in a world without you in it, flower.”

“I’ve never been in your world Spencer, after tonight, nothing in your life will drastically change. You don’t have to worry about living in a universe without me because you’ve already been doing that for 15 months.”

“Please don’t do this, can we just give it another try?”

Y/N wrapped her arms around him, “That’s all we’ve been doing.”

The couple stayed in silence like that for a couple of minutes before Spencer spoke. “Can we just stay here for one night. I can’t believe I never got to do it.” Spencer had never spent the full night at Y/N’s place because he always worried that he would forget to answer his phone and the team would try to come to his apartment to tell him they had a case.

“You know we can’t do that Spencer,” she sighed, knowing she had to stay strong and act on her own best interest, but she also loved Spencer. “But you can stay here, if you want.”

He thought for a moment. “Okay, um do I need that key you always offered me? To lock up when I leave?”

“No, the front door locks automatically when you close it, you just have to make sure you have everything before you go.”

And so Spencer slept in Y/N’s bed, for the first time, without her in it.

And Y/N called the one person she knew Spencer would never try to track her down to to avoid exposing himself.

Penelope Garcia.

She of course let Y/N stay with her for the night, and although she would eventually, Garcia did not pry when Y/N said she didn’t want to talk about what was going on. So Y/N walked to her apartment with peace of mind, she knew that although she had a lot to think about, for the time being everything was going to be just fine.

On the way to Penelope’s apartment, Y/N saw a flower vendor. She couldn’t help but stop by and pick up a bouquet for Penelope, but more so for the symbolic meaning.

Daffodils and daisies.

The flowers of new beginnings.

“I'd kiss you as the lights went out Swaying as the room burned down I'd hold you as the water rushes in If I could dance with you again”

- Thank you for reading! Please reblog and let me know what you think :))

holly’s tiny taglist: @reidingmelodies​ @hercleverboy​

[writing-red]

The Onyx Ring | 6

Draco Malfoy x Reader

Summary: Chapter six of the Silver Letter series. It’s their sixth year, Draco and the reader are placed in an arranged marriage by their pureblood families, expected to follow through they navigate their feelings for each other amongst the many other social pressures at Hogwarts.

Warnings: 

Word Count: 8.2k

A/N: So, I am middle-eastern and I rarely find the opp. in fics for that to fit, and since I talk about family history in this chapter I wanted to make the reader’s ethnicity open ended. Just keep that in mind when the reader’s family history comes up. Also note that I made some changes here and in chp. 5 to incorporate titles because I can ;)

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6

You spent Wednesday and Thursday holed up with Draco in his room healing. The wounds on your back pertinent and angry; the pain there to remind you of your sins against the family no matter what you did or what you took. Not only that but you knew the scars he left would last, layered atop the old. In order to gain some privacy, Draco had told Narcissa that you’d broken your leg and that you were just waiting on the potion to do its job, it usually took two to three days, so the lie served its purpose, and Narcissa left you both alone in order to allow you to heal. The entire time you virtually didn’t leave Draco’s bed, he’d go to your room if you wanted a book or a particular sweater, although admittedly, you were using the situation as an excuse to wear Draco’s. Zilsey would bring you both food and magically tend to your wounds so that Draco wouldn’t have to risk getting in trouble for using magic outside of school.

Throughout Thursday, you laid in Draco’s arms as he read your classic muggle books aloud to you, although you were keen on forcing him to read your favourite, Pride and Prejudice. Less because you wanted to read it, which you certainly did, but more because you wanted him to read it.

“‘Oh! She is the most beautiful creature I ever beheld! But there is one of her sisters sitting down just behind you, who is very pretty, and I dare say very agreeable. Do let me ask my partner to introduce you.’

‘Which do you mean?’ and turning round he looked for a moment at Elizabeth, till catching her eye, he withdrew his own and coldly said: ‘She is tolerable, but not handsome enough to tempt me; I am in no humour at present to give consequence to young ladies who are slighted by other men. You had better return to your partner and enjoy her smiles, for you are wasting your time with me.’” Draco paused after reading the section aloud

“Mmm,” you breathed as you looked up at him. “Why have you stopped?”

“Well, doesn’t he know that Elizabeth can hear him? I mean, that’s quite rude,” Draco huffed, and you giggled despite the pain it caused in your ribs.

“Draco, it is just a story,” you smiled, amused by his investment so early into the novel.

“Yes, but Elizabeth is clearly too good for him,” he said, still frustrated with the fictional Mr. Darcy’s actions.

“Merlin, I wonder how she feels,” you teased him, lightly referring to your own situation.

“I wasn’t ever this mean to you,” he huffed.

“Draco, don’t challenge me on this. As you will indeed lose. Now, unless you want such a lecture, I suggest that you continue reading,” you said playfully.

“Is that all I am to you, an audible library?” Draco asked, mocking pain.

“Yes, dear, that is the only reason why I lie here so that I can use you for that deeply, handsome voice of yours.”

“Fine then,” he said as he returned his gaze to the book. “Mr. Bingley followed his advice. Mr. Darcy walked off; and Elizabeth remained with no very cordial feelings toward him.”

“Draco,” you interrupted, your voice plainly displaying that you were not paying attention.

“Yes?” he asked, looking away from the book again.

“Come here,” you muttered as you propped yourself up on your elbows in an attempt to get closer to his lips.

“Are you trying to distract me from Jane Austen with physical affection?” he asked, sounding as you had truly hurt his feelings.

“Just one?” you asked, “Then I will let my library get back to his very important duties.”

“Fine,” he huffed as he leaned down and caught your lips with his. The kiss was warm and pleasant, and it made you forget about your pain for a moment as you were happy to lose yourself in his soft lips. “Is that what you wanted?” He asked after you both pulled away.

“Precisely,” you said, an entirely satisfied smile gracing your face.

“Good,” he said, smirking, but glad to see you in such good spirits considering you spent most of Wednesday in and out of panic attacks and nightmares. It pained him to see you in such a state, yet it comforted him that he was able to be there for you through it.

You lowered yourself back down and laid your head on Draco’s thigh as he cleared his throat and continued reading. “She told the story, however, with great spirit among her friends; for she had a lively, playful disposition, which delighted in anything ridiculous.”

The two of you spent the rest of the day reading, Draco pausing anytime he had questions or a vote of confidence for Elizabeth, becoming increasingly excited by Lizzie and Mr. Darcy’s interactions. While you continuously had to remind him that you did not intend on spoiling the book for him. You found it interesting how things had shifted between the two of you since just yesterday; you didn’t know that you’d had it within you to trust him the way that you suddenly did. You were sure that you would hate him till you were on your deathbed, and you had been determined to push away any feelings for him. Somehow you now found yourself laying in his lap, essentially trusting him with your life, your secrets, and your traumas, essentially handing your heart to him on a golden platter. And you were nervous to go back to school, that the petty drama, secrets, sneaking around, and lies would return to your relationship, but you refused to dwell on that for the time being.

Friday morning, while you were still asleep, Draco snuck out of bed to find his mother, he was determined to protect you from your parents, and after what they did to you, he didn’t want them back in his house. Aside from the wedding, he didn’t want them around you at all. He was sure that if he told his mum the truth about what happened, she would feel the same way. Draco dressed and made his way downstairs to the kitchen, where he knew his mother would be. Since his dad has been in Azkaban, she had stopped eating in the dining room instead, taking her breakfasts early in the kitchen.

“Mother,” Draco greeted as he entered the kitchen.

“Draco dear, how is Y/n’s leg?” Narcissa asked, setting down her copy of the Daily Prophet when she noted her son’s entrance.

“That’s what I was hoping to speak with you about,” he said as he leaned against the kitchen island. “Leave us, elf,” he assumed the traits he was raised to bear easily around his mum, and Zilsey quickly skittered out of the kitchen.

“Is something wrong?” She asked.

“Well, she didn’t break her leg mum, Wednesday when Sir Y/l/n pulled her away from lunch, she didn’t trip and break her leg, her father beat her nearly to death, he used the splitting curse on her, she had nearly bled out by the time I found her,” Draco explained. “Now, I don’t want either of them over again except for the wedding, and even then, I don’t want them having any contact or control over her.”

“Draco, it is not our place to interfere in the way William and Layah choose to discipline their children,” Narcissa said, hiding the pain she felt for her future daughter-in-law with complete neutrality.

“Excuse me? You’ve got to be joking! You should see her back; it’s been ripped to shreds by that bastard, she’s got a bloody scar reaching from her eye to the bottom of her face, and no potion or spell has been able to get rid of it,” exclaimed Draco in anger.

“Draco,” Narcissa warned, her voice remaining low and quiet.

“Don’t do that. Just because you can’t stand up for me when father reprimands me doesn’t mean you have to let the same thing happen to her.”

“Draco,” Narcissa repeated, her voice tighter this time, rising from her seat. “If her parents have decided that she has done something that demands scolding, then they will handle that as they see fit. It is not our place to interfere. And you shall not be referring to your future father-in-law with such language.”

Draco pushed the tears that were pooling in the back of his eyes away, he refused to show such weakness in front of his mother. “How could you simply turn a blind eye to this?” He questioned. When he was met with dead silence, he nodded, “I see, mother, I will be retiring to my room then,” he said, turning to leave.

“Before you go,” she said, stopping her son in his tracks although Draco did not turn to face his mother. “I expect you to propose to Y/n using the family ring tomorrow night as is expected in our families traditions, I believe you have the ring?”

Draco simply nodded in confirmation before striding out of the kitchen.

Narcissa remained standing with her head held high, only collapsing into her seat when she was sure that Draco was half-way back to his room. She pushed all thoughts of the torture you endured at the hands of your parents, her friends, out of her head.

When Draco made his way back to his room, he found you out of bed and nowhere to be found, which he thought to be a bit worrisome.

“Y/n?” He called.

“I’m in your closet,” you called, and he let out a sigh of relief and collapsed onto his bed.

“It sounds like you’re feeling better,” he commented, although you could hear the distress in his voice.

“I am, it still hurts, but it’s nothing I haven’t felt before,” you said as you stepped out of his closet in a perfectly oversized white knit sweater of his and one of your pairs of jeans. “Although it sounds like you have something going on, does it happen to have anything to do with where you disappeared to this morning?”

“I just had a conversation with my mother,” he said as he dropped his head into his hands.

You sat next to him and put a kind hand on his shoulder, “do you want to talk about it, or do you want to go walk around the gardens?”

“Let’s get outside, the sun is out, and it’d be nice to show you around out there,” he said as he met your eyes and matched your smile, trying his best to put his conversation with his mum out of his head.

“Sounds lovely,” you said as you stood up and reached a hand out to him.

Draco took your hand and stood up, but before he really could think about anything, he pulled you into a tight embrace, only knowing that he wanted to hold you as close as he could.

The hug surprised you at first, taking you off guard, but after a moment, you felt yourself melt into his arms, your two bodies fitting perfectly with one another’s as if you were meant to hold one another. He rested his head on your shoulder and continued to hold you, you could feel his desperation, and you swore to yourself that you wouldn’t be the one to let go. Although eventually, he slowly released you, taking a moment to observe you and take in your beauty.

“Ready?” he asked, his voice now somehow lower.

You simply nodded as he took your arm in his and the two of you made your way downstairs and out onto the platform that led out into Malfoy Manor’s extensive and stunning gardens. Despite the beautiful spectacle displayed before you, again, you were affronted by a cold and unnatural thing. The gardens and mazes were filled with the darkest colours nature could serve, and overlooking them were statues of cruel-looking men whom you often found stalking around in the portraits within the manor, and each of their statues was accompanied by snakes and peacocks.

The two of you silently descended into the gardens, and Draco led you into the towering maze.

“I used to run around through here when I was little. I know it like the back of my hand,” he said as he led you down one of the forks in the maze. “I don’t think anyone else in my family knows it so well.”

“It’s intimidating,” you admitted, to which he responded with a nod. “This whole place is.”

“I think they built it like that on purpose,” he admitted, leading you down another twist in the path. “Apparently, the first Lucius of our family acquired the land, and when Queen Elizabeth I rejected his hand in marriage, he retired from court and focused on the building of the manor.”

“My great-grandfather burned any proof that our family ever fraternized with muggles, although I’m sure they were title obsessed back when they could be. However, I do know that our family didn’t come to England until 1889.”

“Our families certainly are interesting,” he said with a certain level of distaste.

Since your first year, Draco had proudly boasted that his family was better than so many others, something you had always despised about him. Therefore, it amused you to see him refer to his family in any way that didn’t display reverence. You would continue with the topic, but you were sure that the trees could hear you.

Draco continued to lead you through the maze until you found yourself in a peaceful little clearing covered in an assortment of small wildflowers, the clearing resembling a small meadow, and with the clouds gone and the sun shining, you found it to be particularly lovely. In the middle lay a blanket, a basket, and a series of foods and teas laid out.

You looked over at Draco once you registered it, “How in the world did you manage this?” You asked in disbelief of what was before you.

“House-elves are pretty crafty, Y/n,” he said, a proud smirk rising to his face, and you shook your head as you laughed.

He led you over to the blanket, where a floor pillow was situated amongst all of the treats. “Draco, this is too much,” you said as he sat down on his own cushion.

“Impossible,” he said, his smirk returning to his face. “Entirely impossible to be ‘too much’ when it comes to you, darling.”

The two of you broke into the expertly prepared food and tea as you continued talking about whatever came to mind, Draco complimenting you at any opportunity he found, about how the sun made your eyes sparkle, how he loved your laugh, and so on; and with every word he spoke to you, you found yourself falling further in love with him. His voice was a perfect melody you wished would never stop playing, his eyes twinkled when you were around, and he just had you absolutely entranced. And what was even better than watching his perfectly crafted hands pour you tea was watching him finally open up to you. For a while now, you had firmly believed that there was something more to him, that he was hiding his real self from you, and now you finally had proof. You planned on talking about it more when you got back to school as you were both afraid that the walls, the trees, and the paintings were listening in on you, but you were excited to see Draco Malfoy turn into the truly good person you knew existed within him. The person that existed out of his parents control.

As you finished eating, Draco placed all of the dishes into the basket before you, exchanging them for your still unfinished copy of Pride and Prejudice. Excited, you laid down with your head in Draco’s lap, basking in the sunlight, which you hadn’t seen since you left school, as he cracked open the book and begun to read. You only had a few chapters left, and you were quite excited for him to reach the end of the novel.

You listened attentively as he read; as always, you were able to refuse yourself the indulgence of listening to him speak, “Her father had most cruelly mortified her, by what he said of Mr. Darcy’s indifference, and she could do nothing but wonder at such a want of penetration, or fear that perhaps, instead of his seeing too little, she might have fancied too much,” Draco read, turning the page and moving on to the next chapter. You cracked a smile, knowing that he would just adore what was to come.

“‘If you will thank me,’ he replied, ‘let it be for yourself alone. That the wish of giving happiness to you might add force to the other inducements which led me on, I shall not attempt to deny. But your family owe me nothing. Much as I respect them, I believe I thought only of you.’” you were excited by the joy and intention Draco was carrying in his voice, almost as if he had read ahead and practised, but when he skipped ahead a line, you knew something was up, “‘You are too generous to trifle with me. If your feelings are still what they were last April, tell me so at once. My affections and wishes are unchanged, but one word from you will silence me on this subject forever.’” Draco read as he delicately placed a silver ring decorated with curving leaves and set with a small amber gem in the centre on the top of your hand, which was resting lazily on Draco’s calf.

In contrast with the warm sun, the cold metal shocked you as you realised that he was using Jane Austen to propose to you. Draco closed the book while keeping his thumb in between the pages as to not lose your place. He looked down at you with a smile that rivalled even the sun.

“My mother is going to make me propose in front of your parents during Christmas dinner,” he admitted as you rose into a sitting position and twisted to face him, immediately making and maintaining eye contact. “I wish we could wait, that we could have more time but, I have fallen too hard for you to allow anyone to force me to propose to you, you don’t deserve it in the least, and this is a moment that our parents shouldn’t be allowed to control.”

You placed the ring between his thumb and forefinger of his right hand and then guided it onto your ring finger on your left hand. “‘Elizabeth, feeling all the more than common awkwardness and anxiety of his situation, now forced herself to speak; and immediately, though not very fluently, gave him to understand that her sentiments had undergone so material a change, since the period to which he alluded, as to make her receive with gratitude and pleasure his present assurances.’” You quoted the passage from memory in response to Draco, and as a way to say yes to his proposal. “Thank you, Draco, and I want you to know that if the situation had been different, I still would have said yes.”

Despite his bright smile, a tear slipped from the platinum-haired boy’s eye, startling you. You really hadn’t ever expected to see Draco Malfoy cry, even a solitary tear.

“Draco, dear, what’s wrong?” you asked as you wiped the tear away with your thumb, leaving your hand to rest on his cheek.

“Y/n, you’re being forced to marry someone who could get you killed,” he said, his voice lowering and becoming melancholy.

You sat up and turned to face him, taking his hands in yours, “It’s the opposite, you’re the one saving me from my parents. I don’t know what you mean,” you said, concerned at his sudden change in demeanour.

“He knows, he knows that I love you, and he’ll kill you if I don’t do what he’s asked me to do,” Draco said, his eyes cast down.

“Who, Draco?”

“Voldemort,” Draco whispered, barely audible. “He’s demanded that I kill Dumbledore by the end of the year in order to make up for my father’s mistakes at the ministry,” he admitted. “And if I don’t do it, he’ll kill you.”

Your eyes widened in shock as you processed what Draco told you, all of Harry’s theories finally making sense. Even more so, all of Draco’s nerves and mood swings over the year finally coming to light, why he had been so hesitant to admit his feelings for you, his possessive nature finally making sense.

“Y/n, you’re so good, such a good person,” he said as another tear slid down his cheek. “You are so much braver than I am. You were able to denounce all of this while I let them turn me into one of them.” You felt the pain in his voice resonate in your chest. “While I terrorised you and your friends, and even now as I plan to murder our headmaster, you continue to find a way to show me more kindness and love than I have ever experienced.”

“Draco, I love you, and you’re wrong. You aren’t them,” you whispered as you gestured to the manor. “If you were, you would have left me to bleed under my father’s boot. You wouldn’t have tried to protect me from him,” you said as you placed your hand on his shoulder. “I know that what you’re doing comes not from a place of evil but from necessity and that all will be right in the end because we will find a way to come out on the right side of the war. I promise that as long as we have one another, things will be okay.” You promised with all sincerity. “Now, the sun is setting, and it’s about to get frigid out here. I say we head back up to your room, and I finish reading Pride and Prejudice to you.”

“I thought that was my job,” he said, the smile slowly returning to his face.

“Well, I think that it is fair of me to want to cheer up my fiancé,” you said, matching his smile.

“Admittedly, I’ve wanted to hear your Mr. Darcy interpretation,” he teased.

“I don’t think it’ll be half as good as yours,” you admitted, glancing down at the ring on your finger, which wasn’t a symbol of the life you were losing but the love you were gaining. “Thank you for this, Draco.”

“Anything for you, my darling,” he said as he reached a hand out to you, which he used to pull you up to your feet and into a kiss in which you melted into Draco. His lips were still warm from the sun and so soft on yours. When he pulled away, you sighed from the loss of touch, yet also in satisfaction.

You collected the remnants of the picnic, along with the book, which suddenly held so much more value in your eyes, and you followed Draco out of the maze and back to the Manor. You were so engrossed in your thoughts and in Draco that you completely forgot about the other residents of the mansion. Although, you were swiftly reminded as when you entered through the large, French style, doors you were affronted by a stoic-faced Narcissa occupying the centre of the room, clearly anticipating your return.

“Good evening, Narcissa,” you greeted warmly.

“Good evening,” she returned coldly. “Glad to see that your leg is better,” she said despite the terrible red scar that now obviously occupied your cheek. “Since tomorrow is Christmas, and essentially our final day together, I have the day planned to the minute. Throughout the morning, we shall be finalizing wedding plans, which require both of your thoughts. Then Draco, you will have time to complete your errand before you return to get ready for Christmas dinner with the Y/l/n’s. Sunday, the two of you will pack and prepare for your return to Hogwarts. We start our day at precisely eight.”

“We will see you at the dining table at eight then,” Draco matched her tone, clearly unfazed by his mother’s sudden coldness, which had uniquely caught you by surprise. This was a side of the woman you hadn’t seen yet.

“Good night, Narcissa,” you said, trying to push aside your shock as Draco pulled you out of the entryway and upstairs to his room.

When you made it inside, Draco closed the door behind you and looked you dead in the eyes, “tomorrow, you don’t get a second of alone time with them. No matter what, I’m by your side.”

“You don’t have to convince me,” you smiled grimly, and he sighed in relief. “Now, lay down, dear. We have a book to finish.”

The two of you cuddled up into one another’s side as you finished reading the book aloud. To your satisfaction, just as you finished the book, Draco started prompting you to softly run your hands through his perfect platinum blonde hair, which in the days without styling or care had begun to curl into soft waves. At some point, you fell asleep with the light still on and your precious copy of Pride and Prejudice open on your lap. Yet, you slept that night without a nightmare or a negative thought, your mind and body entirely at peace wrapped up in Draco’s arms.

You awoke to bright morning light flooding into the room, which startled you as you still felt Draco by your side. You slowly drew yourself up and looked over to see Alexis, your wedding planner standing by your bed, assuming it had been her who had opened the curtains.

“Alexis?” You asked groggily, confused by her presence in your fiancé’s room. “Why aren’t you home? It’s Christmas.”

“Lady Malfoy asked me here,” she said. “She also asked me to retrieve you, miss, as well as Master Malfoy.”

You nodded, “we’ll get dressed and be down shortly.”

She responded with a bow of her head, then she swept out of the room, closing the door fast behind her.

“What in the world was that about?” Draco groaned, eyes still closed.

“Your mother sent the bloody wedding planner up here to wake us,” you said, in complete disbelief of Narcissa’s decision to do so.

“Mm-alright,” he said as he sat up, kissing you on the cheek before sliding out of bed.

“I’m going to slip into my room and grab a dress,” you said as you stretched out your arms before standing.

“Alright, darling,” Draco said as he disappeared into his closet to get dressed himself.

The two of you got ready relatively quickly, donning appropriately formal clothing and descended downstairs and into the dining room together, where Narcissa and Alexis were already talking, papers, linen samples, and photographs spread out amongst tea, fruits, and other miscellaneous breakfast items.

“Good morning,” you greeted as a polite way to announce your arrival.

“Oh, good, we’ve been waiting for you two,” Narcissa said, looking up as you entered the dining room. “Sit, we have a lot to get through.” While she wasn’t as cold as she was last night, she wasn’t the same kind motherly woman who had offered you her dress for your wedding.

You and Draco assumed seats next to each other as Narcissa occupied the head of the table and Alexis sat across from you. Immediately, you were bombarded with questions, confirmations that Draco liked the choices you had made last week, ornate changes Narcissa recommended, and series more decisions you had never considered went into wedding planning. Occasionally, you would lean over to Draco and whisper some joke or terrible comment into his ear, and he would have to stifle his laughter which inherently bothered both Alexis and Narcissa as they were suddenly convinced that neither of you was taking this seriously. As afternoon approached Narcissa dismissed Draco, much to your dismay you were left alone with the two women who buckled down on you the second he was gone.

Eventually, Narcissa dismissed you and Alexis, allowing you to go and change and for Alexis to finally make her way home. Although, you were convinced that she didn’t care about that, instead sticking to her oh-so-important schedule. You made your way up to your room, Draco nowhere to be seen, you slipped into your room where you found the black gown your mother had packed for this exact occasion; it even had a note on it that read, ‘wear for Christmas dinner.’ Not in any particular mood to disobey, you donned the dress. While it did not come with a corset, it was quite tight and held your core in as if it were one. After dressing, you sat in front of the vanity to don the face that would get you through the night. Despite the time you took on your hair and makeup, hoping you would waste enough time so Draco would be ready and you wouldn’t have to face whatever was downstairs alone. However, when you made your way down, you found both the entrance hall and the few sitting rooms to be empty, leaving you to admire the decorations that had gone up in the last hour you had been spending getting ready. Classical music was drifting through the first floor, and the decorations which were already there had been accompanied by more lavish ornaments circled throughout the space, which was almost entirely lit by warm candle-light. Had the manor not been another prison for you, you may have some capacity for admiration of its beauty.

“Oh, well, hello there,” you heard the sharp and twisted voice you hadn’t heard since the battle in the Department of Mysteries.

In response, you shot around to see Draco standing next to his Aunt Bellatrix Lestrange as they were standing in the entryway before you. “Lady Lestrange,” you said, bowing your head respectfully.

“Draco, this is the girl?” she asked her nephew as she crept towards you.

“Yes, Aunt Bellatrix, this is her, Y/n Y/l/n,” he spoke formally.

“It’s a pleasure to finally meet you, ma’am. I’ve been told that you’re a great witch,” you said, your head still bowed. To say that Lestrange intimidated you was a grand understatement.

“Enough flattery, girl, it will get you nowhere,” she said as she circled you, inspecting you.

“Bella,” Narcissa greeted warmly as she descended the stairs into the hall.

“Cissy,” Bellatrix responded, turning away from you to greet her sister.

You used the opportunity to make your way to Draco’s side, Bellatrix’s appearance at the dinner, both shocking and nerve-racking. Having to deal with your parents was one thing; Bellatrix Lestrange was a whole other beast.

“Watch your mind,” Draco muttered in your ear as he snaked an arm around your waist, pulling you into his side. “She’s a powerful Occlmens.”

You nodded in response, watching as the sisters greeted each other. “How were your errands?” You asked.

“Fine, we can talk about them later.”

“What are we waiting for?” Bellatrix asked her sister, clearly unaware of the plans for the evening.

“The Y/l/n’s, Y/n’s parents are set to arrive in a matter of moments,” Narcissa said. “Then it will just be the six of us, an intimate affair.”

Perfect timing as always, your parents popped into the room through the grand fireplace, green smoke billowing around their feet.

“Hello, Narcissa, Bellatrix,” your father greeted the two witches. “Happy Christmas.”

“Yes, Happy Christmas, William,” Narcissa greeted, her warmth and kindness suddenly flooding back.

“Bellatrix, oh, I haven’t seen you since the summer. How have you been?” Your mother greeted.

“I have been quite well, Layah,” Bellatrix said, a note of sadism to her voice. “Lovely to see you both.”

“Let us make our way to the sitting room. I know we have quite a bit to discuss,” Narcissa said as she eyed Draco, likely referring to the proposal he was meant to make.

Everyone followed Narcissa into the sitting room, sifting out to where they were meant to sit. You and Draco on a loveseat near the Christmas tree, Bellatrix and Narcissa sitting on armchairs adjacent to one another, and your mother and father on a couch together. As you all situated yourselves flutes of champagne appeared at everyone’s side.

“Now, Narcissa I know you said that we weren’t focusing on gifts,” your father spoke up. “But I was thinking, and since Draco is to be my son-in-law, I thought it would be appropriate for me to give him this.” William rose and crossed over to where the two of you were sitting to hand Draco a long, elegantly wrapped, box.

“Thank you, sir,” Draco said, accepting the box.

“Go ahead and open it,” your father said jovially as he returned to his seat.

Draco split the wrapping along the seam, leaving a black jewellery box, opening it he revealed a silver wizard’s watch, the one your father had given to William for his seventeenth birthday. You swallowed your shock, refusing to show the pain that echoed in your heart on your face. Yet, you weren’t surprised at your father using Draco as a replacement for what he killed.

“Thank you, sir. It’ll be an honour to wear this.”

William beamed, twisting his face into a nasty smile, “I’m glad you think so, boy.”

“How kind of you, William,” Narcissa piped.

“Actually,” you chimed in. “While Draco and I were out last week, I picked this up for you. It’s small, but I thought it’d be nice for you to have them for the wedding.” You made your way across the room to hand Narcissa the impeccably wrapped, tiffany blue box. “And Draco got something for you as well, mother,” you said, then walking to her to hand her the black velvet jewellery box.

“Darling, you didn’t have to do this,” Narcissa smiled kindly as she opened the box.

You returned to your spot next to Draco, taking his hand in yours.

Narcissa pulled out the drop pearl earrings, the smile remaining on her face. “Y/n, this is so sweet, thank you.”

“I’m so glad you like them,” you said, returning her smile.

Layah opened her gift, revealing a fine diamond and emerald decorated bracelet that fit into her jewellery collection well. “Draco, this was quite thoughtful of you,” she said, her lack of gratitude bothering you.

“You’re welcome, ma’am,” he said, nodding his head.

“Well, this is quite boring, isn’t it?” Bellatrix chimed in. “It’s a bit of a drag.”

“Is that because no one got you a gift, ma’am?” you asked sarcastically, quickly taking on the ‘ma’am’ as you noticed the gravity of you using such humour in that room.

Silence fell upon everyone in the room, and you could feel your parents sharp glare fall upon you instructing you that you had made a-

A shrill laugh erupted from Bellatrix’s throat, interrupting the concern that fell upon your shoulders, “Oh, maybe I underestimated you, seems you’re not so boring after all,” she said, then continued to giggle, causing Narcissa and your parents to join in with uncomfortable chuckles and false smiles.

“I’m glad you think so,” Draco said, standing up from his spot next to you. “If no one minds I would like to steal this moment to do something quite important.” Once he received looks or nods of recognition Draco turned to face you, bending down onto one knee, he looked up at you and knowing that only you could see his face he shared a bright, kind smile you had only seen when the two of you had been alone. “Y/n Y/m/n Y/l/n, throughout our years of knowing each other, growing up with one another, attending school together I only ever imagined a life with you. When my mother informed me of our arrangement I was overcome with delight at the prospect of joining hands with another great Wizarding family,” You were not surprised by the loveless and prideful nature of the proposal, this was not for you, it was for your father and for his mother. Draco pulled out a ring, something dark, ornate, and clearly ancient. “Now, it is with great admiration for you and your family that I ask you to be my wife,” he said, looking up at you expectedly.

“It would be my honour to uphold the noble name of Malfoy, and therefore the name of Y/l/n, through becoming your wife,” you said, the acceptance taught to you, forced down your throat, word for word by your mother. While you accepted, Draco slipped the engagement ring onto your bare ring finger, the one he had given you yesterday residing on the opposite hand for the time being. As he did so light, polite applause filled the room.

“The two of you do make a handsome couple,” Narcissa smiled, and you couldn’t tell whether or not the curving of her lips was genuine.

“Absolutely,” your mother hissed. “Draco, we are pleased to be inviting you into the family.”

Accolades for Draco, for you, and for the two of you as a couple continued on until dinner was announced. Dinner itself droned on for hours, and drinks afterwards droned on for hours, you felt as if you were a puddle by the time the evening was over. As usual, you spent most of the night silently observing those around you, although Bellatrix would occasionally drag you into conversation in an attempt to read you. The dinner was like the lunch before and the dinner before that, and every, single, individual, societal event you had attended in your life. You yearned to return to Draco’s room fall into his arms and shed the night, the terrible forced proposal, and the stank of society from your shoulders. Eventually and thankfully you did, both of you quick to wish ‘Happy Christmas’ and ‘Goodnight’ to your parents as well as his mother and aunt. Then, of course, swiftly retreating to Draco’s bedroom. Both of you exhausted trading the confining clothing you wore throughout the evening for sweaters and pyjama pants, then collapsing onto the mattress and into one another’s arms.

The next morning you awoke first to find Draco’s arm draped over your torso, and his face nuzzled into your neck. You smiled, happy to see him so peaceful, and terribly sad that you would have to disturb that peace. You slowly started running your hands through his wavy platinum blonde hair, taking in how handsome he looked as he slept.

“Merlin, it’s Sunday, isn’t it?” Draco asked.

“Yes, darling, it is.”

Draco emitted a pained groan and curled his arms around you to pull you tightly into him, “that means I won’t get to hold you like this ‘till June.”

You giggled at his pain, “I’m sure we will find a way, Draco.”

“You know, this is the worst thing about you being a Gryffindor,” he said with distaste. “If you were a Slytherin we wouldn’t have this issue.”

A pleasant smile rested on your face, “Draco, we wouldn’t have this issue if you were a Gryffindor,” you countered.

“As if, Y/n,” he scoffed, you laughed again, and Draco was sure that your laugh could rival the brightness of the sun. He drew away from only for a second so that he could kiss you and experience that brightness for himself. The kiss lasted for a blissful moment before he pulled away to take you in for just a moment.

“You’re beautiful, Y/n,” he said, brushing a piece of hair out of your face.

You smiled up at him, “you’re too nice, Draco.”

“I am the complete opposite,” he countered and your smile widened.

“Come now, we have to get you packed,” you said, gesturing to his closet.

“Y/n, that sounds miserable,” he lamented.

“Darling, as badly as I want to lay in bed with you all day, I also wish to return to school.”

“Fine,” he said, dramatic as ever. “But only because I love you.”

“Thank you,” you said as you planted a swift kiss on his cheek before rolling out of the bed.

It didn’t take you long to get your things together since you didn’t bring much and because most of your things were staying at the Manor considering you were essentially moving in. When you finished, you helped Draco pack his things up, and you were sure to include some of his sweaters which you had come to love so much. After you were both done, you made your way downstairs where Narcissa was waiting.

You stood in front of the fireplace, excited to finally be leaving the terribly dark home. “Narcissa thank you again for having me. I am truly excited to return for summer,” you lied through your teeth, doing your best to make the statement as believable as possible. At the end of the term, you would go to your home for a day in order to pack up whatever you wanted to bring along with you to your new life. From then on you would reside at Malfoy Manor, at the very least until the end of the war, then it would be expected for you and Draco to live alone until Lucius handed the Manor over to his son. Unless of course, the war turned against Voldemort’s favour.

“Y/n, it was lovely getting to know you. I am incredibly excited for the wedding,” she responded and you smiled. 

“So am I ma’am, and thank you for including me in so much of the planning.”

Narcissa nodded, a tight smile on her lips.

“Well, you two have a good semester, and Draco, please write,” she said as she brushed her son’s shoulder as many mother’s do.

“Of course, mother,” he said before turning to you. “Y/n, would you like to go first?”

You nodded, “thank you again, Narcissa.” And with that, you stepped into the fireplace with floo powder in hand, “Hogwarts!” You shouted clearly, disappearing in a green cloud with Draco not far behind.

To your surprise, you found yourself in Professor McGonagall’s office. You quickly became aware of your surroundings, and dusted the powder off of your jeans before stepping out of her fireplace and onto her carpet. “Hello Professor, I hope you had a happy holiday.”

“Thank you, Miss. Y/l/n, it was nice, quiet without Mr. Potter around to stir the pot,” she said as she looked up, a warm smile on her face.

“Well he is known for that, isn’t he,” you conceded, knowing you were often a part of the trouble.

“Dear, Y/n, your face, what happened?” McGonagall’s face twisting into concern as she noticed the still fresh raised red scar reaching across your face.

“Oh,” you raised a hand to touch the scar, having forgotten to come up with an excuse for the visibly wound. “Just a freak cooking accident, it seems I-I manage just as much trouble when I’m home as when I’m here,” you said, adding a fake laugh to try and convince her that all was fine, although you were sure she could read right through you.

“Y/n, if you need anything,” she said, her eyes falling on the engagement ring on your finger. “Please feel free to speak to me.”

“Thank you, Professor, I’m going to go unpack now,” you said, wanting desperately to get out of the awkward situation.

“Of course,” she said. “I’ll see you in class Tuesday.”

You nodded, and swiftly left her office, making your way to the Gryffindor common room in the hopes of finding Harry, Ron, and Hermione, knowing you had a lot to explain. When you got to the common room, you were disappointed to discover that you were the first to arrive. You sufficed yourself to grabbing some food in the Great Hall, figuring if anyone was looking for you that would be an easy place to find you. However, your journey downstairs was swiftly interrupted.

“Y/N!” You heard Harry’s voice, and you turned around, excited to see your friend.

“Bloody hell, Y/n, what happened to your face?” Ron asked as you turned to face them.

“Seriously, Ronald?” Ginny scolded her brother.

“No, it’s fine, it was just my father,” you explained. The three of them knew plenty about your parent’s abuse.

“Merlin, he’s never-” Harry started, but you cut him off.

“I know, I’d really rather not get into it, it’s not like it’s a happy memory.”

“Yeah, of course,” he said, scratching the back of his head, unsure of what to say.

“Holy shit! Y/n is that an engagement ring?!” Ginny exclaimed, rushing over to you and grabbing your left hand to examine your ring finger.

“Why don’t we go to the common room and we’ll talk about the holiday there,” you said firmly, uncomfortable having this conversation in the middle of a hallway.

“That's probably a good idea,” Harry said, and the four of you made your way back towards the common room, and for extra precaution, you went up to the boy’s dorm which was empty, and thankfully didn’t smell as it often did since the boys hadn’t had the opportunity to stink it up just yet.

“So, how was Malfoy Manor?” Ginny asked teasingly as you all found places to sit around the room, you and Ginny taking Harry’s bed; mutually refusing to trust Ron’s.

“Well to make a long story short, the scar was caused by my father finding our letters, and according to tradition, Draco had to propose to me with our families present, and with his family ring. So, they had him propose last night,” you explained. “Malfoy Manor is a terrifying place, but I have been before,” you thought, and you knew you couldn’t just say that Draco was assigned by Voldemort to murder Dumbledore which is why he had been acting so weird, but you weren’t sure otherwise how to explain to your friends why Draco acts the way he does, and that he really is a good guy.

“What did Malfoy tell your dad about the letters?” Ron scoffed.

“No, of course, he didn’t,” you bit. “My father just spies on me. Draco is actually the reason my father didn’t end up killing me, and he really isn’t such a bad guy.”

“I’m sorry, but there is no way we are talking about the same guy who terrorised us at dinner and announced to the entire school that you were snogging Harry just a few weeks ago,” Ginny countered, and Harry’s face turned beet red.

“We’re talking about Malfoy, I presume?” Hermione asked as she entered the room.

“Hermione!” you greeted her warmly, excited to see her.

“Hello everyone,” she said as she assumed a seat near you. “So, what did I miss?”

Ginny quickly summarised the conversation thus-far, "And I don’t trust Malfoy in the least,” she said, shooting you an irritated look.

“Well I do, and considering it is my life I have no control over, I think that I get to at least decide whether or not I trust him. Anyways he’s proved himself over the holiday, and that’s all that matters, eh?”

“I still think you’re marrying a Death-Eater,” Harry said, confident in his accusation, which you of course knew was correct.

“And what if I am?” you asked. “Harry I am also the child of Death-Eater’s. Not only that, but my parents made it very clear that if I don’t marry him, I’m dead. And wouldn't you rather, when this war happens you have someone on the inside with your interest at heart? Harry I would rather die fighting for a cause than fighting myself.”

Everyone paused for a moment, it was oftentimes easy to forget the gravity of the situation you were all in, but your words made your friends conscious of everything for a moment.

“You all know where I stand,” you said, your eyes were watering, but your voice was firm. “And I intend on fighting with you; I just won’t be able to do so by your side. I assume you already knew that.”

“We just always hoped it would somehow turn out differently, Y/n,” Hermione said honestly. “But of course we understand.”

“Then you’ll also understand that this is likely my last term at Hogwarts,” you said, your voice lower this time.

“Yes,” Harry said quietly.

“So you’ll understand why I want this conversation to end and why I just want to spend time with my friends?” You asked as a tear dripped down your cheek.

Ginny wrapped you in a hug, Hermione quickly joining in, and you wiped the tear from your face. “We love you,” Ginny muttered, and you squeezed her tightly in response.

“What are you two doing over there?” Hermione chided Ron and Harry, ignoring her own tears. “Get over here and join the bloody hug!”

The boys both shook their heads, trying their best to push back their own emotions and joining the three of you in the hug which was quickly turning into a dog pile.

“Anyways, Draco is on our side,” you breathed.

-

Part 7 - Coming Soon

Tags!

Everything - @sarcasticallywitty15 @fred-love-bot

Silver Letter - @hidejeon​​ @Ravenclawgurl137 @unexpectedly-slytherin @missmercurymoon @herequeerandstressed @lordfxxker@pillowjj@pointlesscoconut @lovelylangdonx @fire-in-her-veinz​ @morelovemorepeacemoretattoo-blog @oi-itsemily@lukehemmingslut831 @peachybeannn @lovebynorth@bubblesam06@voidnarnia @bethii1 @arthemis-o-negative@roseyrams@treestarrrrrrrr @streetfighterrichie @dreams-in-blxck​ @psychramt​​ @dracofeltonmalfoy @weasleydream​ @rottenhexrt@daringvixon @thatguppienamedbae @lord-byron

[delaber]

Can’t Have Your Cake and Another Cake Too

Rafael Casal x Reader

Note: Okay, I’ll stop breaking Rafa’s heart now... Last time, I swear! Thanks for the prompts to these lovely anons. Alhough this is not a prequel to Poetic Justice (Rafa x ER Nurse), poor Rafa’s facing some of the same issues. I very loosely based this story on J. Cole’s Kevin’s Heart (don’t know why I’m always incorporating J. Cole into my fics, but apparently he’s always lurking in the back of my mind) and Phlake’s So Faded. Let me know what you think!

Words: 4.7K

Warnings: Cocaine addiction! Does not have a happy ending (nobody ODs and nobody’s dying ...Only on the inside lol)

Tagging: No one! This might not be for everybody and I don’t want anybody to feel forced to read it 😌

It was supposed to be a great night out. The entire gang was there, and at the instigation of Diggs, Rafa was supposed to be on the prowl to get laid so he could take his mind off of his broken heart.

From his seat in the booth, Rafa had a fairly good view of the dance floor and he had already spotted a few honeys who likewise had acknowledged him by smiling and sending him a couple of long looks. One of them had even twirled her hair between her fingers while blowing him a kiss. He had the green light, all systems were go!

However, of all the things that could've thrown him off his game, Rafa would not have placed a single bet on a phone call. But the minute he pulled out his vibrating phone and checked the caller ID, both the group of honeys on the dance floor and his friends occupying the seats all around him were completely forgotten. Nothing else mattered anymore.

He stared at the screen for a while, reading the name over and over again. What the fuck was Morris calling him for? Rafa had told him to stop. Morris knew he was too weak to say no even though he had promised his girl that he'd stop for good.

...Or, you weren't his girl. Not anymore.

But Rafa was still determined to win you back no matter if you had stopped answering his phone calls or not, so he took a tough decision and pressed the decline button beneath Morris' name. He even contemplated putting his phone on flight-mode to remove all unwelcome temptations - he knew you'd never take him back if he fell back in - yet, for some reason taking himself off the grid was easier said than done, and before he had pulled himself together to actually press the little airplane button, a text from Morris had ticked in. It only consisted of two words but Rafa understood perfectly.

'New candy.'

Fuck... Rafa considered the pros and cons of accepting for a few milliseconds before he came to his senses. No, no, no. The only way he'd ever win you back would be by showing you that he could stay sober even after your break-up. Morris could fuck off! As if awaking from a trance, Rafa hurriedly put his phone back in his pocket and desperately tried to forget about Morris' enticing offer by telling himself that he was strong enough to shake it.

...although deep down, he was aware that it was already too late. That no matter what, he wouldn't be able to stop thinking about it now. And no matter how hard he tried to re-focus on the honeys on the dance floor and tell himself how stupid it was to hit Morris up, it was no use, the damage was done; he was desperate to get high!

Deeply, horribly ashamed of himself, Rafa texted Morris the address of the club and impatiently waited a couple of minutes before he walked outside with heavy footsteps. It felt as if he was walking to the gallows, the shame eating him up from the inside. You'd be so disappointed in him!

However, in order to make himself accept what he was about to do, he reminded himself that apparently, you didn't care if he was high or not. If you did, you would've returned his phone calls, and you would've reacted to the fact that he had been sober for three weeks now - but you hadn't. And with that in mind, Rafa managed to push away most of the shame as he laid eyes on Morris' sketchy Subaru parked by the curb on the other side of the road. He walked across the street with determined footsteps, carefully looking over his shoulder to check if anybody he knew were watching him approach what was clearly a dealer's car.

"What's up, bruh!" Morris called as he rolled down his window. He was wearing sunglasses, looking like an absolute turd in the dark night.

Rafa put his arms on the car's beltline and shot Morris a bro handshake through the open window, "what the fuck are you wearing sunglasses at night for? You look like a dick."

"Nah, man, it looks cool," Morris laughed, "do you like them? Hell, you should like them - you paid for them."

"What do you mean I paid for them?"

"With the amount of money you spend in my shop, I think it's safe to assume that you paid for these sunglasses and the rims on the ride too," Morris snorted.

"Yeah, about that," Rafa looked away, the embarrassment slowly creeping up his spine again, "you gotta stop calling me."

"You said that last time as well but look at you now," Morris laughed.

"Come on man, it's important that I stop."

"You don't wanna stop though."

Rafa let out a sigh, "look, I'm trying to prove something to my girlf- ...ex-girlfriend."

"A'ight, I respect that," Morris nodded slowly but then he quickly continued, "so did you just call me here to pin your lady troubles on me? Cause I have a customer waiting up on Seventh Ave."

Rafa blew out some air, embarrassed by the decision he was about to make.

"...Or do you wanna buy?" Morris continued as he read Rafa's body language.

"...you're not gonna tell Diggs are you?"

"Do I look like a fucking snitch?" Morris looked offended, "and you know me and Diggs don't talk no more."

"Yeah, alright. This stays between us, okay? If word gets out, I'm fucked."

"A'ight bruh," Morris laughed, "Now, how much do you need?"

"Just... just give me an eightball," Rafa mumbled.

Morris let out a small laugh, "an eightball? Man, you're not about to quit," he chuckled and handed Rafa a zip-lock bag with white powder in it.

"Shut up," Rafa mumbled and pocketed the baggie, "how much?"

"Rafa, you're my man, so I'mma give you a discount because I feel bad for you and your girl. Three hundo."

"Three hundred?! Last time it was two-eighty without the discount."

"Times are changing. I haven't seen you in three weeks, man. Plus, this is a good batch," Morris poked Rafa in the chest, "my contact got it shipped in directly from Medellín. Look, it got fish scale and everything!"

"You better not fuck me over," Rafa muttered and threw Morris three hundred-dollar bills before he turned away from him with an annoyed huff.

"Pleasure doing business as always, Casal! See you next weekend!" Morris yelled after Rafa with a small laugh, apparently not a care in the world for who knew about their illegal transaction.

"Fucking idiot," Rafa muttered to himself without turning around. He had more important things to do than to scold Morris about his indiscretion.

Rafa hurried to the restroom and carefully locked the door behind him before he frantically pulled out the zip-lock bag. He examined its contents and saw the pearl-like surface that Morris had talked about - Fuck it looked good! He opened the bag carefully but froze when he caught his own reflection in the bathroom mirror; the loving look he was sending the bag of coke was sickening. It made his stomach plummet. Had he really been reduced to snorting coke alone in a dirty bathroom of a sketchy club? He remembered when it had been a group activity. Before he couldn't control it.

Shake it off! He told himself. He had every intention of stopping after tonight. This would be the last time.

You said that last time as well, a small voice rang in the back of his head, but he ignored his guilty conscience and instead poured out a small pile of the pearl-like coke on top of the hand dryer. Quickly, he pulled out a random card from his wallet and used it to form two heavy lines. Before his guilty conscience could interfere again, he also grabbed a one-dollar bill that he neatly rolled into a small tube and put between his right nostril and one of the white lines, ready for the rush. His gaze, however, lingered on the random card he had used to break the coke into lines; it was his fucking rewards card for the small organic, artisan shit coffee house that you liked. What wouldn't you say if you knew what he was doing? In his mind's eye, he could see the disappointed look you always sent him whenever he'd come home all hyped up, rambling his mouth off. You never got angry with him and his love of coke, but somehow your disappointed demeanour was way worse. He would've taken screaming and yelling over the disappointed stare and the slow shake of your head any day.

Slowly, he removed the dollar-bill from his nostril, stood up straight and met his own eyes in the mirror again - and for a moment, he could truly see how pathetic he was. What the hell was he doing? He was throwing away his last shot at getting you back - and for what? A few hours of euphoria and confidence?

But she doesn't want you back, a small voice rang inside his head, you called, and you called, and you called. You declared yourself clean to her voicemail and she still didn't reach out. Fuck her!

"Yeah, fuck her," Rafa mumbled before he put the dollar-bill back to his nostril. Quickly, he snorted both lines of coke, shooting his head back afterwards, sniffling a bit as he cleaned his nose with the back of his hand. He knew he only had a couple of minutes before the euphoria kicked in, so he quickly brushed off the dollar-bill and the rewards card and tugged them both back in his wallet. The remainder of the coke was stowed away in his shirt's breast pocket for safe keeping.

Ready for the rush, Rafa was impatiently staring at himself in the mirror. He was thinking about how to avoid Diggs and his condescending looks for the duration of his high, when he was finally overwhelmed by the familiar fuzzy feeling. It came out of nowhere and started behind his eyeballs and continued all the way down to his toenails. It felt as if someone had pulled a large, fluffy blanket down over him, and it was slowly heating up his body, making him feel safe and secure. His pulse quickened in time with his breathing, and he had to close his eyes to get himself under control. He felt fucking powerful! Morris had not lied about this coming from a good batch. "Shit, Morris," he laughed.

There was a knock on the door, and Rafa remembered that he had occupied the men's room for a good five minutes now. He took a last look at his suddenly hazed eyes, aware that no matter how hard he tried to hide it, anyone could see that he was high as a kite. He contemplated riding out his high alone in the bathroom but also knew that with the amount of energy present in his body, he couldn't stay in the small restroom all night. He had to dance! To fuck! To fight!

With a suddenly confident bounce in his step, he opened the door, and sent the guy in line what he hoped was an apologetic nod before he confidently strode towards the honeys on the dance floor.

"Hey Rafa!" he heard someone yell behind him.

Hoping it was someone who wanted to fight, Rafa quickly turned around but was slightly disappointed to see Diggs coming towards him with a huge grin on his face. Shit! Rafa realised that he had to act nonchalant around his best friend. Diggs absolutely couldn't know about the coke in his breast pocket, or he'd be all up in Rafa's face about it.

"Diiiiiggs! My man!" Rafa yelled overly excited, clearly very, very high.

Diggs shot him a look at his weird behaviour before he continued, "where've you been, man? I've been looking for you everywhere."

"R-r-r-r-r-r-r-rrrrrrrestroom," Rafa laughed, he was too happy to pretend otherwise.

"Why are you saying it like th-" the huge grin was slowly slipping from Diggs' face, "...hey, Rafa - look at me," Diggs suddenly sounded all serious as he took Rafa's face in his hands, carefully examining his features, "Rafa, look at me."

Rafa let out a low chuckle, "Diggs, you know I think you're handsome and all that, but I don't like you that way," he joked.

"You're being weird," Diggs furrowed his eyebrows, "- and your pupils are huge. Have you been doing lines in the bathroom?"

"Maybe," Rafa laughed, unable to stop himself from revealing his dirty little secret, "why? You want some? I still have a few hits left," he padded his breast pocket.

"You know I don't do that shit anymore..." Diggs let go of Rafa with a sigh and looked away from him.

"Oh yeah, I forgot you're a fucking saint now," Rafa said a bit more harshly than he had intended to. Ever since Diggs had met Emmy, he had been boring as hell.

Diggs chose not to comment on Rafa's low blow, and managed to keep his calm, "I thought you'd stopped, bruh."

"Morris made me an offer I couldn't refuse," Rafa laughed in an accent halfway between Tony Montana and Vito Corleone.

"Yeah well, I'm not the only one who thought you were done fucking around," Diggs said seriously. He was having none of Rafa's jokes, "I just saw your girl downstairs. She wants to talk to you."

It took a few seconds before Rafa understood, but when he finally grasped Diggs' words, he felt the blood drain from his face and his mouth run dry, "what? No, you're kidding me..."

"Nope," Diggs sighed, "I've been running around trying to find you for fifteen minutes..."

"Shit! What the fuck do I do?" Rafa said in a panicked voice, licking his lips frantically, "I told her I was sober! If she sees me like this, she'll never take me back."

"Yeah, well you better pray that you don't run into her."

Rafa ran his hand through his hair, "fuck I'm screwed. She's downstairs?"

"Was fifteen minutes ago."

"Alright, I'm jumping out this window. You stall her, tell her that I got sick or something."

"You can't jump out this window?" Diggs said incredulously, "we're 50 feet up, if you do that, you die! Just walk out the doo- ...oh shit, dude, we're blown. She's here. She's coming over."

"Fuck! Can I still bolt?"

"Of course not!"

"Well how do I look? Alright?"

"You look-" Diggs cut himself off, "...maybe just try and avoid her looking into your eyes, okay?"

"How the fuck am I supposed to do that?"

"The light in here's paying you a favour but apart from that you're gonna have to pull yourself together. You brought this upon yourself," Diggs said harshly before his demeanour changed completely as his eyes interlocked with yours over Rafa's shoulder, "heeeeey," he smiled broadly, "look who I found."

Rafa slowly turned around and met you. Your stunning beauty - as always - immediately knocking him to the ground. He couldn't believe that it had been four weeks since the last time he'd seen you. He'd do anything to get you back!

"Rafa," you nodded formally with a stiff face. Rafa couldn't help but make a mental note on how weird it was to see you without a smile on your lips. You were normally always so happy. He had done this, he reminded himself.

"Hey baby," he whispered, the words weirdly familiar in his throat.

You briefly raised your eyebrows while looking away from him, clearly uncomfortable by the sound of your old pet name.

"Sorry," he continued, "force of habit. ...I'm just happy to see you."

Your gaze slowly found his face, and Rafa prayed that you couldn't see his coke-eyes from where you were standing.

"Well..." you said and clicked your tongue, "I'd like to talk to you."

"I'd like to talk to you too," Rafa said quietly.

"And you're sober? Like you said on my voicemail?"

"Yes," Rafa breathed, "completely sober," he lied thickly, hyper-aware of how awkward it was with Diggs shuffling nervously beside him. He was uncomfortably rolling back and forth on the balls of his feet.

"Good," you finally let out a small smile, "do you want to sit down?"

"Yeah," Rafa nodded.

"Yeah, I'll - uh - I'll leave you to it," Diggs cleared his throat and padded Rafa between the shoulder blades as a way of wishing him good luck.

"Thanks man," Rafa muttered before he followed you down to a vacant booth in the corner of the room. Instead of sitting down opposite you, he made sure to occupy the seat next to you, hoping that it would minimise the risk of you looking into his eyes. He just had to pretend that he was sober until the high quieted down. Fourty-five more minutes - Less if he was lucky.

"So, how've you been?" You said quietly as you were both overlooking the dance floor, avoiding looking directly at each other.

"Not good," Rafa said quietly, "like shit, actually... how about you?"

"Yeah, well I guess 'shit' sums it up neatly... How's sober life?"

"Oh, it's - yeah - it's - it's great!" He said, the lie thick in his throat, "I feel so much better now." He knew how much he had hurt you, and he knew how difficult it must be for you to face him after you'd said that you never wanted to see him again - which just really only made his lying so much worse. Fuck, how he hated himself for what he had done. What he was still doing.

Your eyes darted across his face before your gaze settled on a spot just below his chin. He was relieved that you weren't staring him square in the eyes. "I was so happy to hear your voicemail," you whispered, "you really flushed your stash?"

"Yes," he croaked.

"I'm glad that you're finally taking care of yourself," he couldn't make out your face in the dark but he could hear a hint of happiness to your voice that you were clearly trying to suppress. It made him feel horrible.

"Yeah, I want to stay sober for you," he said slowly. At least that wasn't a lie.

"You have no idea how happy that makes me," you said quietly, the happiness definitely shining through now.

Rafa's heart was fluttering in his chest, and he felt the coke-induced euphoria run amok in his brain, "...does that mean you'll forgive me?" All his senses were heightened.

"It's a step in the right direction" you said quietly, still not looking directly at him, "I've missed you."

"I've missed you too baby," Rafa said quietly and boldly took your hand in his.

Finally, you looked up at him, and to avoid you noticing his bloodshot eyes with the dilated pupils, he took a quick decision, leaned in and crashed his lips against yours.

Luckily, you mistook his desperation for passion and fiercely kissed him back, your hand releasing itself from his, and instead caressing his neck. In-between kisses you managed to mumble, "I'm still... mad... at you."

"I know," Rafa mumbled, enjoying the familiar feeling of your lips against his. Your hands switched to caressing his torso, and your small fingers travelled over his stomach and up his chest, coming to a halt over his heart. It was racing against his ribcage and he had no idea whether it was due to the coke or due to the heap of emotions he felt in his chest. He couldn't believe he was kissing you again. He had completely written it off no more than half an hour ago.

Your right hand moved away from his heart but came to a sudden halt when you felt a small bump in Rafa's breast pocket. Still kissing him, you ran your fingers over the bump a few times before you remembered that it was where he always kept his coke. Quickly, you pulled your lips away from his.

"Wait, no, don't take kissing away from me," he hummed, completely unaware of the discovery you'd just done.

You were looking at his euphoric face with the closed eyes and the swollen lips as you moved your hand over his breast pocket once more.

When Rafa realised what was going on his eyes flew open and he spluttered, "it isn't what you think!"

But he was too slow to react, and before he had had the chance to move away, your fingers went inside his breast pocket and grabbed the small bag from there. "You've got to be kidding me!" You said angrily as you held his coke between your fingertips.

"Baby, I can explain," Rafa said quickly while desperately grabbing your wrist.

"Rafa, you fucking idiot! Don't touch me!" You wrestled yourself out of his grip, got up from your seat, and fast-paced towards the door.

"Baby! Baby!" Rafa yelled out as he ran after you.

"Don't touch me!" You cried, attracting the attention of everyone in your path.

You stormed out the door, Rafa at your heel desperately clinging to every inch of you that he could reach. When you reached the curb outside, he finally managed to run up in front of you, stopping you in your tracks, "baby, I can explain!" He said desperately.

"You said you'd flushed it all!" You were screaming at him now, the tears running down your face.

"It was a mistake, baby, I swear I didn't mean to. I flushed it all, I promise. It's just a setback."

"When did you buy this, Rafa?" You said through gritted teeth, "how long did you manage to stay sober before you decided you wanted to throw it all away?"

Rafa looked away from you, he was so embarrassed by himself, "Morris called and I tried to say no, I really did! Baby, I tried so hard to resist it. But he was persistent."

"Well, did he force you to buy?" You hissed. You were having none of his excuses.

"...No." Rafa admitted.

"When did you buy it?" You emphasised every word, "before or after you called me last weekend?"

"After..."

"When? How long after? When did you have your setback?"

"Does it matter?"

"Yes! I need to know if you did it because you were physically craving it, because you just felt like getting high, or if you did it because you’d thrown the thought of us away when I didn’t answer you.”

"I tried to fight it, I swear I tried to fight it," he was getting choked up.

"Rafa, tell me when you bought it."

He considered shooting you a lie but he didn't want to fuck up any more. "I bought it tonight..." he finally muttered under his breath, avoiding your gaze.

"You're not serious!! You bought it tonight?" You bellowed, "are you trying to tell me that you planned on throwing away your soberness tonight? That if I hadn't shown up, you'd be high as balls right now?"

Rafa didn't say anything, he just looked at you with huge eyes, the embarrassment evident on his face - and first then did you notice his blood-shot eyeballs with the abnormally large pupils that had taken over most of the green that was normally present.

"No..." you whispered when you realised, "no, no, no..." you groaned quietly, clutching your chest, "you're high right now?" The heartbreak was evident in your voice.

Rafa sent you a pained look. He fucking hated himself.

"You're high..." You stated in a whisper, the tears were streaming down your face, "you lied."

He had broken your heart. Again.

"I - I didn't mean to," he croaked, "I was just so happy to see you. I knew you wouldn't want to talk to me if I told you the truth."

"So you planned on telling me when?"

"I don't know," he croaked, "I didn't think it through. I've been sober for three weeks. Tonight's just a small setback. Baby, I swear, I'll block Morris and I'll flush this baggie right now if I can just get you back," Rafa was begging, “I’ll stop if you tell me to!”

"Rafa, how many times do I have to tell you," you cried, "You have to stop because you want to. Not because I tell you to stop! I don't care about the snorting! I don't care that you party and get high! You've done lines of my tits several times for God's sake! But I can't live with the constant lying that has become part of it!"

Fuck, Rafa knew what you were building to. His life's biggest mistake. He had it coming, he knew it. He deserved it. He was a fucking cheating coke-head and he hated it. "Please don't bring it up," he sobbed.

You didn't listen to him. You had to confront him with it because he clearly hadn't understood. "Rafa, you fucked another girl! And you were so high that you didn't even realise it! And when you woke up the next day and saw what you'd done, you lied about your whereabouts and the fact that you'd been high as fuck! I had to learn about it through her!" You were sobbing, "...and instead of staying home and comforting me, you lied about having to go to the studio, and you met up with Morris and you got high! Again! If knowing that you're breaking my heart with your constant lies doesn't make you want to quit, I'm not sure what will."

"I want to stop!" he sobbed. He had never felt so horrible before, "I love you, I want to be with you," he sniffled and took your hand, "please give me another chance! I'll stop snorting. I'll stop lying. I'll do anything for you."

It looked as if you were contemplating his words but the look in your eyes darkened suddenly and you let out a whisper, "no Rafa!" as you pulled your hand away from his.

"Baby, please!" He pleaded desperately, "I love you."

"You love coke more," you whispered.

"I have a problem," Rafa tried desperately, "I know. I can't stop. But I'll get help. I'll do whatever you want me to do!"

"Rafa, if you stop snorting because I tell you to stop, it will never last! You love getting high!"

"That's not true... it's pathetic," he cried.

"Rafa, honey,” you said quietly, “- ask yourself this; would you be throwing away this baggie and deleting Morris' number if I wasn't leaving you because of it?"

"Yes," he croaked immediately.

You took a deep breath of air, hurt written all over your face, "Love," you sighed desperately as a fresh wave of tears started streaming down your face, "you're lying again..." you sobbed, and put the baggie in the palm of his hand and folded his fingers around it.

"I'm flushing it," he croaked.

"Do whatever you want," you whispered and looked him in the eye, "We're not together anymore. I'm done - it's over,” you said as you slowly turned around and started walking away from him.

“No, no, no! Please come back!”

“No Rafa… This time I'm serious,” you said before you started walking again.

This time, Rafa didn't run after you. He just watched you walk further and further away from him as your hands dried the tears off of your face every two seconds. He imagined you stopping, imagined the hurt look you'd send him. How he'd run over to you and take you in his arms. Imagined how he'd apologise and you'd both hug and cry and kiss it out. But you didn't stop. You didn't send him any look at all. And he didn’t run to you, he was glued to the pavement.

He stood as if frozen in time and looked after you even long after you'd disappeared around the corner. Suddenly, however, he noticed that he was still clutching the baggie in his closed fist. Slowly, he opened the palm to reveal the beautiful mother-of-pearl-coloured powder. He contemplated dropping it down the gutter next to him. It would all be so easy.

But instead, he closed his fingers around it and pocketed it right above his broken heart. It would help relieve the terrible thunder that he felt rolling over him. It brought along a storm of emotions. A hurricane of regrets. And he was desperate to get high.

[eldritchqueerture]

Point of View - Original Statement Fic

Point of View (5004 words) by LadyNikita Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: The Magnus Archives (Podcast) Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Characters: Original Statement Giver(s) (The Magnus Archives) Additional Tags: Statement Fic (The Magnus Archives), Original Statement (The Magnus Archives), this was intended as the eye but evolved into the vast as well, happens, cosmic horror, attempt at Eldritch Madness, unreality, Discussions of pointlessness and meaninglessness, Canon-Typical The Vast Content (The Magnus Archives), from the eps about space, Mentions of Death, Compulsion, discussions of free will (kind of), Dissociation, Panic, Mentions of addiction, Leitner Book (The Magnus Archives), except it was not possessed by Leitner, Pretty Colours <3, Neurodivergent Protagonist, Queer Protagonist, because I can project a bit as a treat, Can Be Read Without Prior Knowledge of the Podcast (I think)

Summary: "Humans crave understanding. They strive towards knowing more and more, that’s what all science is about, isn’t it? To study, to learn and understand; to seek answers to questions. But are we really equipped to handle the answers we seek? Even if we were able to reach them, are our minds advanced enough to grasp the truths about the world we live in? What if there are things just beyond our understanding, lurking in the shadows of reality, peeking into our world just enough to feed on us, on our uncertainty and our pathetic scrambling towards answers that would only bring madness?" --- Statement of Lyria Ellison regarding a different point of view and the dangers of knowledge.

Notes: Hiiiiii <3 I've been reading Lovecraft recently and as much as I hate the dude, The Colour Out of Space gave me so much inspiration that I immediately sat down and produced this in one sitting. I've been meaning to play with the concept of eldritch madness for a while; something about this trope is really appealing to me and I'm really enjoying my attempts at shaping it with words. Lyria is a preexisting OC of mine, I will give some background on her in the end notes because I love her very much. This is a form of practice for me; I'm playing with horror themes and I'd like to get acquainted with them to better incorporate them into my overall writing. Therefore I will accept constructive criticism if anyone wants to give it, but only in the form of DMs, either on Tumblr (your-queer-vampire-dm) or on Discord, if we know each other through a server. All of the warnings I think should be mentioned are in the tags, but if you think something should be added then please tell me!

Date: May 10th , 2018

Name: Lyria Ellison

Subject of experience: A different point of view and the dangers of knowledge.

—

How do you start telling a story that changed your heart, your mind, and your soul so profoundly that you can barely still function in a society? How do you say all that without sounding borderline insane? Nobody knows what I’ve seen, what I’ve been through. I know they would all say I’ve hallucinated it all and should seek treatment. But I know it won’t help. I know… I know so much now. Too much and not enough. Never enough. I know what happened was real . I don’t have proof so I’m guessing you won’t believe me either, but I need to tell someone about it. So I might as well tell you.

My name is Lyria Ellison and I’m a neuropsychology major. Ex-major, I should say. I dropped out after… Yeah. I dropped out; there’s not much point in continuing studying things about the feeble, insignificant human brain. Utterly pointless venture.

Humans crave understanding. They strive towards knowing more and more, that’s what all science is about, isn’t it? To study, to learn and understand; to seek answers to questions. But are we really equipped to handle the answers we seek? Even if we were able to reach them, are our minds advanced enough to grasp the truths about the world we live in? What if there are things just beyond our understanding, lurking in the shadows of reality, peeking into our world just enough to feed on us, on our uncertainty and our pathetic scrambling towards answers that would only bring madness?

Just a year ago, I was convinced I was going to finish my degree. I was so passionate about it too, eager to learn more and more, to research and seek knowledge. Curious and fascinated by the world around us. What a foolish thing it was to give into that drive. My mind was open to the supernatural, although I always approached it scientifically; I never said the supernatural existed, but I also never said it didn’t. It was plausible; all in all, every scientist must accept that there is still a vast amount of knowledge we don’t have about the world.

The ignorance was a blessing. But I shall not get ahead of myself.

It started around December last year; my dad had died, and my girlfriend, Shawala, and I were clearing out his house. There wasn’t really anyone else to do it; my mother had passed a couple years prior, I had no siblings, and extended family was out of the picture as well; and my dad had gathered a lot of things in his adventurous life; he was a traveller, and he loved the world, loved learning about it, just like me. I was feeling pretty overwhelmed with it all; my dad meant a lot to me back then, and Shawala proved an excellent support at that first shock. She promised to do some first view assessments of the ground floor, while I went to scope out how things looked in the attic.

It’s always either basements or attics, isn’t it? I used to read horror, Lovecraftian was my favourite – how ironic, isn’t it? How stupid . How utterly ignorant. The hubris of the human race at its finest.

Anyways, the attic was half-lit from the small windows in the roof, and dust was swirling in the faint light of the afternoon sun. It was cold here, but I didn’t pay much mind; the house was old, and it wasn’t surprising that there was draft. To say the space was cluttered would be an understatement; I could barely walk around the numerous boxes, old furniture, crates, and overflowing bookshelves; all of which made something in my chest curl tight, bringing tears to my eyes. I steered my steps towards the nearest bookshelf; I’ve always been a bookworm, fascinated by nearly any tome I came across; I’ve been reading popular science books since I was eight. So naturally, I was drawn to the books, taking huge steps above the cardboard boxes and careful not to hit anything else.

The books were old, of course, and dusty. Some of them had loose pages, and I treated them very gently, almost reverently. I have a little bit of a bookbinder streak, and I decided I would take them home and try to put them back together. As I rifled through them, I saw they pertained to a vast variety of subjects, from poetry, drama, and history, to science, metaphysics, and maths. The deeper I looked into this stunning collection, the more reverence rose in my heart; at my fingertips I had the oldest and the biggest accumulation of knowledge I had ever seen. I saw some books dated back even two hundred years ago.

At that point Shawala called me to check if I was alright. I put the book I had in my hands back and my knuckles brushed against the black leather cover of the next one on the shelf. I felt pleasant tingling in my palm at the touch and my heart leaped at the prospect; I didn’t know why –  the book seemed ordinary enough on the shelf and there was no title on its spine.

I sometimes wonder if I could have just left it there and gone downstairs; chosen to come back later and then maybe, it wouldn’t have enticed me as it did. If, by that point, I had had any choice left on the matter.

Alas, intrigued by the book, I placed my palm on the spine and took it out. The leather was soft and smooth, probably sheep, with familiar subtle grains all over the texture. I remember it striked me as odd that it was warmer than the rest of the books in the drafty attic, but I shrugged it off. The front cover had a title, small but visible in the centre, etched in gold – Punctum Visus .

I, by all means, cannot read or speak Latin, but I figured it was something to do with vision. I opened the book, an unknown anticipation buzzing in my stomach. The pages were worn and old, their texture was slightly rough but pleasant under my fingertips; as I opened the front page, I saw the title again, this time in thick but still elegant, black letters, and the smell came up to my nostrils.

I tried to describe it in my head countless times after. I always loved the smell of old books, and I knew it very well, so it came to me as a surprise to realize it wasn’t the only smell I could feel from the book. It was… cold, somehow, distant but prickling at my nose, a little bit the way peppermint tastes. It reminded me of the night sky and distant stars somehow. The smell awakened an unease within me, as I couldn’t quite place what it was and why it seemed so weird , but it wasn’t by any means unpleasant. It was… enticing. Like a promise of a mystery.

I breathed it in again through my nose, closing my eyes, and for a moment I lost all feeling in my body. I was untethered and immaterial, somewhere in deep darkness that seemed to envelop me whole. It felt cold on my mind, stretching it thoughtlessly in the empty vastness, and I saw distant flickering lights of stars. Before I could form a coherent thought, I was back in myself, panting and shaking, staring at the front page of the Punctum Visus . I looked around with shaky breaths; the attic looked the same, and Shawala’s steps on the stairs reached my ears, with her voice calling my name. A shiver passed down my spine, causing goosebumps to bloom on my skin; was it the draft, the dread, or the excitement I couldn’t tell.

I knew I had to read this book, no matter what it took for me to do so.

I took it home, almost forgetting about the rest of the books upstairs. It had spent the next month laying in my room, as I dealt with the formalities and moving the rest of things that weren’t sold from the house either to my place or to charity. After the day we left the house for the last time, I collapsed in my bed, exhausted, but instead of closing, my eyes fell on the book unassumingly waiting on my nightstand.

A surge of excitement passed through me, waking me right up. I sat up and reached for the book. It was still warm; I couldn’t tell if it was good or bad, but warm it was. I think it made me subconsciously assign it more… being? Like, even before I knew anything, I somehow subconsciously accepted that it was more than just an object; that it was, in a sense, alive on its own. I brushed my fingers on the cover, feeling the texture of the leather and the etching of the letters. In the meantime during this month I had checked the meaning of the title – Point of Sight; a position from which a thing is or is supposed to be viewed. It makes so much sense now.

But then I didn’t know what dangers it held; or I didn’t want to think about them. I do remember feeling anxious, my hands trembling every time I opened the cover, but it was so mingled with exhilaration of the certainty I was discovering something important that I must have disregarded it. As I turned the pages, I wasn’t surprised to find the text in Latin; though I still felt a pang of frustration that it meant I couldn’t read it for now. I rifled through the pages, looking curiously at the letters that formed words yet unattainable to me. There was a hunger inside of me; a hunger to Know. As I turned the pages past various symbols, illustrations of the constellations, and of Earth, I determined it must be some sort of a metaphysical work. The point of view on the world around us.

Normally I just skim through works like this and leave them. While they are an interesting read sometimes, they’re not my favourite genre and, looking objectively, putting in the effort of learning a whole language just for the sake of reading a treatise on the meaning of cosmos by an unknown author seems strange at best. But somehow it seemed obvious to me that I had to read it. It called to me, sang into a part of my being that begged to be filled, promising knowledge that would finally leave me satisfied. I know now that it’s impossible. Once you’ve tasted the hunger for knowing, you will never find satisfaction; it’s like an addiction. You just crave more and more, and the knowledge never ends. After a certain point you know too much and when it all connects, when it starts to make sense… you slip. I didn’t know that, even though maybe I should have. I didn’t know what those things I was feeling meant then and I didn’t stop to question them; I gave into it as soon as it touched me. I was stupid.

What followed were a busy couple of months. Every waking moment that wasn’t spent keeping up the pretence of being interested in my major (back then I only thought it a brief hyperfixation, of course, and wouldn’t have called it a pretence at all), I was learning Latin online or staring into the incomprehensible words on the pages. This period of my life is a blur; I remember my friends checking up on me if I was alright, since I wasn’t particularly social anymore. Shawala got progressively more worried, but it fully escaped my mind to care. I know that staring thoughtlessly at the book took up more and more of my time; once, I remember, I returned from my classes at three PM and took the book out; when I came back to myself it was well past midnight. That’s when I started to feel truly uneasy about it. It was the second half of April; I looked back on what I’ve been doing these past months and this cold dread started creeping up to my throat. I realized I didn’t know why I wanted to read the book so much and I remembered the “vision” or the hallucination I had that first time in my dad’s attic. I had set it aside completely as unimportant, and I couldn’t wrap my head around why. I started shaking and theorizing in my head about the book being able to influence my mind somehow, to control it. Had my actions not been my own? How much of it was my own will and how much was the book? Was it even possible for it to influence me like that; could it be that it was supernatural in some way?

The house became cold, unnaturally so. It was dark and all the windows were closed, but a chill draft managed to find its way into the corridor I was in anyway. I sank to the floor and hugged my knees, trembling in panic. I was all alone in the flat, everyone I knew was surely already asleep in their homes, and I was small and weak in the face of something that maybe could have controlled my mind. I suddenly became aware of the leatherbound book in my hand, and I threw it along the corridor at the front door with a whimper, as far away from me as possible. The book thumped against the door, then the floor, and opened on a random page.

I’ve read enough horrors. I knew that the page would be significant, and that knowledge made me sob and hug my knees tighter. I didn’t know what was happening; I felt like I’d just woken up from a months-long dream… and perhaps I was right. The recent past felt alien.

I felt tears sting my eyes and that’s when the smell reached me. Again that mixture of old paper and peppermint cold, distantly sweet but freezing the blood in my veins. My breath came in ragged and shallow, and tears streamed down my face as I stared at the open book that was calling me in an inaudible whisper. The logical side of my mind was trying desperately to make sense of it, to assign the dissociative feeling to my father’s death and yeah, it was plausible, but somehow it just didn’t feel right. The whispers sounded again, swirling around my head, the golden sound almost touching the back of my neck, making me wince. It was enticing and promising, but this time, I felt terror instead of excitement. Disregarding how my mind was trying to rationalize the situation, I knew the book was cursed somehow. I knew that I was its victim. And I knew that I would not be strong enough to resist it.

I don’t know how much time I sat there, trembling, and sobbing into my knees, before I calmed down from the panic and decided I had to do something. I had to find out what this book was and how it found itself into my dad’s library. I couldn’t remember seeing anything in his diaries that would mention it at all, but then again, I didn’t read them all cover to cover. On wobbly legs I carefully made my way back to my room and searched the Internet until the sun started peeking out of the window; I found nothing about any book titled Punctum Visus . I tried all the libraries that I’d known of, that had their assortment online, all the research databases; nothing.

So, at the crack of dawn, with a fast-beating heart, I stood in the door of my room, staring out into the corridor, where the book still lay by the front door, unmoving. The golden strings of a wordless melody made it to my ears; it promised an explanation; that this time if I looked close enough, I would find what I was looking for.

What was I looking for?

Where else could I find the answers if not in the book itself?

I could feel its cold fingers slowly wrap around my mind, steering me to come closer. It called me with a hypnotising voice that awakened all the red signals in my brain, telling me to run and hide, but I didn’t. The voice meant danger, but I knew it also meant knowledge.

Dangerous knowledge. The pull dragged me through the corridor step by step; I hadn’t been fighting it as strongly as I could have had and I was about to start, since I was getting closer to the book, but suddenly I felt the chill of the influence let go, hovering close but out of reach. It was still compelling me to come, to Look, but I could move my own limbs. I had a choice to make.

Knowledge of danger. Did I believe my own warning thoughts that I would regret looking into the book? Did I take my own logical, rational side seriously? Was I ever good at resisting my own impulses?

I’ve never been addicted to anything, but then again, I never really had the opportunity, as it were; my friends were more of a no-alcohol types and I really ever smoked cigarettes once. I’ve never seen drugs in real life. So who’s to say if I’m not an addictive personality? And this, this was addictive. The thrill of mystery, the exhilarating process of learning, the anticipation of the answers.

Was it ever really my choice?

No supernatural force guided my steps that night; no cold fingers made me kneel next to the book and carefully cradle it in my arms, looking at the page with a shaky breath and tears in my eyes, as if I was coming back home like the prodigal son. But I’m sure it was by some paranormal means that this time I could understand the text on the pages.

I honestly don’t remember what it said. As I read the unfamiliar words, the meaning presented itself in my mind, not entirely unlike that first “vision” I had in the attic; as soon as I started reading I knew that I had made the choice and there was no turning back. That cold draft enveloped me, sat on my skin, and started to bite; I felt that smell again, stronger than ever before, something intangible but unmistakably inhuman . It was then that I realized that’s what had felt wrong to me about the smell since the beginning. It was inferior and alien. My hands started shaking as my eyes, glued to the text, moved now on their own down the page, drinking the words in. I was terrified out of my mind, but the pleasant tingling along my nerves was back, the anticipation of the promised understanding.

My mind was drowned with the tide of knowledge. This was just a prologue; a true discovery would require preparation, but I was almost ready. The voice said I was chosen, that I was a perfect candidate to bring It what It needs and that I would be rewarded. I cried tears of amazement and horror at the sheer scope of the voice – it seemed to encompass the entire world. I couldn’t comprehend it, but I didn’t know then that it was a blessing. I wanted to know, I craved to know what It was and how I could be of use to something so powerful, so huge. Divine. That was a word that crossed my mind, as much as I don’t like that. I don’t like many things, but I can’t change any of them.

The voice said I’m on the right path. I would Know and Understand. First, I needed to do something. As It told me what that was, doubt started to creep up to my mind. What was I doing? What was happening? How could this be real?

I came to on the floor by my front door, the cursed book in hand, with a tear-stained face and a bloody nose.

I knew what I had to do to get ready and, as I calmed down and went over everything in my head, I was surprised by how trivial it was. Honestly, by this point I was kind of afraid It would tell me to hurt someone, so I was glad this was just about reading a bunch of words in a specific location at a specific time. I was aware of the fact that this was most probably a ritual, and I was quite apprehensive. I kept arguing with myself in my head, over and over whether I should follow through, but deep down I knew that I would, no matter what I told myself. This part, I think, scared me the most; how compelling the promise of knowledge was, how reverently I’d found myself thinking of the book and its owner (which I assumed was the voice), how fanatical some of my thoughts sounded. I’ve never been religious, never really felt idealistic either. I was always focused on facts, on the here and now. Can knowledge be an ideal? Can you be a fanatic of Seeing and Knowing?

How much had I changed since I’d found Punctum Visus in that old attic.

I found a good, quiet spot, on the north-west side of the New Forest National Park near Southampton. I told no one about this, deeming it unimportant. I would come back after my big discovery, I would explain everything. I laugh at myself now; at my naivety.

The night of April 28 th was clear, and the starry sky looked back at me as I parked my car on the road in the forest and locked it. I tied a piece of a long red string to the wheel, not to lose my way in the forest, and started to walk forward. I held the book close to my chest, as if it could protect me from the dark, eerie outlines of the trees, swaying gently on the wind and whatever the darkness around me held. I didn’t light the torch; the moon was nearly full, bathing everything in its gentle light, and besides, for some reason it seemed that the crude yellow light would somehow break the sanctity of what I was about to do. I could see the ground in front of me and managed to lose sight of my car and everything else besides trees pretty fast.

I stopped when I found a small clearing. The moon was high in the sky, shining down on me like a big eye; I didn’t know why this comparison seemed the most fitting, but it did. I took a deep breath, feeling a chill plant little dots all over my skin, making my hairs stand on end. The wind died down and the trees froze, as if in anticipation. I felt something watching me closely; I was not alone here anymore.

The realization made my breath catch in my throat and the last streaks of sanity broke through my thick skull. Run! Drop the book and run! I didn’t. My hands trembled, my muscles tensed, and I stood there, frozen with fear as something stared at me, seemingly for eternity. Something bigger than me, bigger than anything I have ever seen was watching me, waiting. My eyes dropped to the book in my arms. The black leather was warm, as always, but this time I felt a pulsating sensation from it. A heartbeat.

I screamed. The book landed discarded on the ground, and I stumbled backwards and tripped, landing in the grass as well. It was cold and wet, and it glistened with something in the faint moonlight. At first I took it for water, but upon closer inspection I saw it was the grass itself that glittered – a shy rainbow, glowing iridescently in an impossible way. I froze, stunned, for I have never seen such colours before. It seemed utterly alien, something unfitting for the human eye to see; simultaneously beautiful and horrifying.

As I looked around, I noticed that everything alive in the forest – the trees, the grass, the bushes, the plants – had taken on that iridescent mixture of faint light that prickled my eyes and sent a shiver of terror down my spine. It was beautiful, utterly gorgeous in a way that nothing a human eye can perceive could be. It was horrifying in how different, alien, and other it was. My senses could tell this is not of the Earth; not of this reality, not of this world; everything in me that still had common sense tried to recoil from the inferiority of this magnificence and the danger it brought, but I had abandoned common sense a while back. Maybe even when I touched the book for the first time. I stared then, breathless and trembling, at this scenery as if from a fairy tale and decided to lock away my rational thoughts. I wanted to See, to Know; I wanted to experience and if this was the death of me then hell, it was a pretty good way to go. To behold such a sight, I thought, was a reward in and of itself.

Of course, I had no idea what any of it meant. I slowly rose to my knees and patted the ground down until I felt the book. It still pulsated with this heartbeat and the letters etched in the leather glowed with golden light. My hands were sweaty, and I didn’t know whether I was shivering from fear or the cold. I opened the book on the first page.

What I saw was not what I had expected. I remembered that the first page, after the titular one, was the beginning of the introduction, that much I had understood, but now it was a big picture in black and white; a night sky, with an almost full moon and strewn with stars. It was a shot from the ground and treetops could be seen at the edges of the picture. As the book swayed in my hands, the stars glittered, and the perspective shifted ever so slightly, as if it was in 3D. Stricken by a surge of dread and cold certainty, I looked up. My suspicion was right – the picture in the book depicted the exact image that was now above me. I gasped quietly and looked down at the book—

And this is where things started to really go horribly, horribly wrong.

The book was gone. What’s more, the ground was gone too and suddenly everything was not where it should have been. I blinked but it did nothing to ease the dizziness; and when I composed myself enough to register what I was seeing I froze, the most intense horror I have ever experienced crushing my body from all sides and inside out.

I realized that I was Seeing. I was finally Seeing, and I Understood it all.

I don’t know how to convey in words what I saw. I don’t believe it’s possible; humans were never made to see and understand such things. I should have never touched the book, I should have never asked for knowledge. All my life I believed that knowledge was the point; it was a tool, and it was power. I don’t know what I think anymore. I think some knowledge should always be hidden because we were not made to know everything. We can’t , it’s physically impossible for us to comprehend.

For one moment in my life. For one moment I became something else, and I saw the world in the way It sees the world. For one moment I shared a mind with an eldritch being, a thing that is Fear itself, and I saw the Earth through Its Eye. I can’t… I can’t tell you just how horrible it is. How… How meaningless; we’re all intertwined things, guided by strings of web that lead us through life, and we’re all connected in this maze of fear . We’re not individuals; we’re not special. We don’t have souls and none of our experiences matter. We’re just fear. These… These entities are a part of all of us. They’re our fear and they live inside of us, inside of every living creature that can feel fear. Can you comprehend that? How can you be sure you are yourself when there’s a cosmic entity, a power as old as life itself, living you ? And no one has any idea. Nobody knows and if I tell someone they’ll think I’m crazy. Sometimes I think I’m crazy. But deep down I know what I saw. I know it was real. And I’m terrified. I’m terrified because I know that this Being of eyes that I became a part of watches everything I do. I feel Its presence here very strongly, and I guess it makes sense. It will never leave me. It’s a part of me, just like the rest of them; just like they’re all a part of every one of you, yet you have no idea. But I know. And I know I’m all alone with that knowledge, the knowledge that I can’t comprehend, but I know I could in that one moment. It’s a very lonely place to be and I’m scared.

I’m scared as I have never been before; this fear doesn’t leave me anymore. Every second of every day I’m aware I’m watched by something as great as cosmos. I’m aware I shared my mind with that being and it makes my skin crawl.

I don’t know what to do now, but I don’t expect any advice from you. I’m leaving the book with you, as proof. Its heart doesn’t beat anymore, and I’ve seen what I was supposed to.

Don’t read it.

Notes: If you enjoyed it, please consider leaving me a comment!! For people interested in a little bit of background: Lyria is a D&D character I have created that still awaits her chance to play in a campaign. She's an arcane scholar that has a dark little secret of actually being a warlock of a being she doesn't know a lot about. She's in love with knowledge and she seeks to learn about her powers as well as the world around her. I'm currently DMing a Ravenloft campaign and I just couldn't miss the fact how much potential for a corruption arc she has. Then I listened to TMA and I was like, she would definitely become the Avatar of the Beholding.

[dinosaurtsukki]

❀ weakness | “it wasn’t like that” “then what was it?” feat. akaashi keiji

⇢ day 9 of angstcember

⇢ synopsis: being with akaashi keiji, the vocalist of your favorite band, was a dream come true for you. however, he soon becomes far too out of reach.

⇢ a/n: i really love thinking of main vocalist!akaashi and i’m so glad i got to incorporate it into an angstcember fic :D

⇢ pairing: akaashi keiji x f!reader

⇢ word count: 2.5k words

ANGSTCEMBER MASTERLIST (feat. haikyuu!! and bungou stray dogs)

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the thing about falling for musicians and band members was that there was always going to be a distance between you two. there was the physical distance between stage and audience, and the fact that no matter how many times you showed up at their gigs and screamed about being their fans, you were never really ‘close’ to them.

needless to say, you didn’t really care about all that when you first watched akaashi keiji, the main vocalist of a student band, sing onstage in the local bar that everyone in university visited on friday nights. he didn’t look that much different from the other band vocalists you’ve seen with his curly, brown hair, white t-shirt and jeans, and dark eyes lined with black that always fluttered shut whenever he sang. no, it was the way he sang that caught your attention. his voice a beautiful tenor that drew out every syllable of the lyrics. it was as if akaashi was the siren and the crowds formed the dangerous waves that pulled you in close. 

the stage lights illuminated the shine of his skin, making him look almost ethereal. the boundary between you and the stage felt even greater even though you were in the very front of the crowd. but when akaashi’s eyes fluttered open to survey the crowd, they landed on yours. 

and somehow, it felt as if the distance between you two had been bridged.

...

ever since that night, you had signed yourself up to be their band’s full-time fan. you followed their social media and marked down your calendar to show up at every single gig. always, always, you made it a point to make your way to the front of the audience whenever they played. even though they were still a local band that was pretty much under the radar, you still knew that meeting them in person would take some time. 

or so you thought.

“hey.”

the all-too familiar voice made you stop in your tracks as you left the bar to hurry back to your dorm. blinking with surprise, you turned around to find akaashi keiji himself leaning against the wall outside the bar with his hands in the pockets of his leather jacket. you thought you were dreaming, but he was looking right at you.

“you’re the girl who always shows up at our gigs here, right?”

“i... um, yeah!” you nodded, trying to smooth your hair as much as you could as you inched closer to him. “i... really like your music,” you smiled shyly. up close, akaashi keiji looked even more beautiful under the dim lights. the liner around his eyes looked perfectly smudged and you noticed a few piercings in his left ear.

“i’m glad,” akaashi smiled, shuffling his feet. “it’s... comforting, you know? to see a regular fan. most of the time we’re not even sure if people are going to show up.”

“tons of people do,” you said.

“but none quite like you,” akaashi narrowed his eyes at you before his lips turned up in a slight smile. “um, i feel like it would be too presumptuous of me to ask this but, would you like an autograph?”

“y-yes! definitely!” you nodded a bit too excitedly. akaashi chuckled and searched his pockets.

“i think i have a pen here somewhere...”

“oh, hold on...” you searched your purse for anything he could write on, only to come up with a few paper napkins that you always kept with you. “all i have is this, though.”

“well, same here,” akaashi said, lifting the only writing instrument he had on him: an eyeliner pencil. you couldn’t help but stare in wonder as akaashi carefully signed the paper napkin before handing it back to you. 

“figured i should do something nice on behalf of the band for our number one fan before we officially disband,” akaashi smiled.

“d-disband? what? why?” you stammered.

“it’s not official yet, i haven’t told the guys about it,” akaashi rubbed the back of his head sheepishly. “but, i’ve been thinking that it’s for the best. sure, being in the band is fun but very few actually make it. konoha-san, bokuto-san, and washio-san, they trust me so they’ll believe whatever i say but i don’t want to lead them on, you know?”

“but you guys are amazing!” you protested. “i mean, sure it’s different from mainstream music and all but the lyrics that you have are straight-up poetry and don’t even get me started on the music...”

“you... think my lyrics are poetry?” akaashi looked at you with wide eyes.

“i mean... of course they are,” you said softly. “but, what i’m saying is i believe in you guys. take it from your number fan, why don’t you?” you pleaded one last time. akaashi looked down at the ground, appearing to mull it over, before smiling and nodding.

“alright then. i’ll give it a few more months.”

“you will?”

“but, if nothing happens by then. i’m afraid we’ll have to say our goodbye’s.”

“that won’t happen,” you shook your head. “i just know it.” you carefully folded the napkin with your precious autograph and placed it inside your wallet. “i’ll be seeing you in more gigs, akaashi keiji.” with a wave, you turned around and walked away.

“wait!” 

you stopped again and turned around. akaashi looked, nervous, for some reason as he stuffed his hands in his pockets again. finally, he asked.

“would you like to grab a coffee sometime?”

...

you never thought you would actually be able to get to know akaashi keiji beyond the version of him he presented onstage. in the mornings, he attended class, writing song lyrics in the margins of his notebook, and worked part-time at the library. he liked drinking his coffee black and adding a few drops of lavender oil in his laundry so he slightly smelled like it. and knowing this bits of information made it even more wonderful to watch akaashi sing onstage.

true to what you said, something did happen within the few months that you convinced him not for them to disband. 

“an invitation to play in the university fair? this is huge!” bokuto, the band’s drummer hooted. you watched with a warm smile on your face as you watched the band members you grew to know and love hug each other. from across the room, akaashi caught your eye before gesturing with his head to head outside.

“what did i tell you?” you grinned smugly when the two of you were alone.

“i know, i know. thank you very much for convincing me to keep the band together,” akaashi smiled at you. 

“you can count always count on me to get your hopes up.”

“you have supported our band since the beginning,” akaashi bit his lip as his eyes flickered to the side. “and, i truly appreciate that but... i was wondering if you could support me a bit more... personally.”

“what? of course i will,” you nodded.

“no, i mean,” akaashi paused, inhaled deeply, before continuing. “y/n... i was wondering if you would like to be my girlfriend.”

be his girlfriend? 

how could you say no? 

“akaashi, of course!” you laughed, flinging your arms around his neck. akaashi’s breath tickled your ear as he pulled you close.

“i’m glad, y/n. i’m so glad,” he smiled, looking down at you. you may have started out watching akaashi from afar, but you had made it closer to him.

...

“there can’t be anything better...” akaashi sang as he played a few chords on the piano, trying out a few different ways to sing the line before settling on a progression that he liked and writing it down. his hair was a mess and he was dressed only in his pajama pants because he headed straight for the stand piano in your bedroom after rolling out of bed. 

“i like the second one more,” you said out loud, watching him from where you lay on the bed.

“really?” akaashi cocked his head, playing the chords and singing it again. “hmm... maybe i could have it for the bridge?” 

“definitely! and you can make konoha insert a cool guitar riff right there,” you added.

“are you sure you don’t want to be credited in the album?” akaashi looked at you with a sideways smile.

“i’m not that ready for fame,” you teased.

“ït’s literally just our second release. it’s not one to hit the charts just yet,” akaashi shook his head.

“you wanna bet?” you smirked. 

“maybe not yet.” akaashi scooted over the piano bench and patted the space next to him. “come, sit here.”

giggling, you left the bed to sit beside him. you loved watching his songwriting process up close, how his thoughts just stringed the perfect words together and coming up with the most amazing melody to compliment it. you loved the sound of his voice, whether it was slightly husky in the morning or as smooth as silk after he drank the tea you’d brew for him, and how his fingers danced over the ivory keys.

“there can’t be anything better than, waking up together when the sunlight hits your face just right...” akaashi sang before pausing. “well, that’s all i got for now.”

“it sounds beautiful,” you sighed.

“that’s because it comes from personal experience,” akaashi smiled, turning to place a kiss on your forehead.

“oh, so am i your muse now?” you teased.

“no,” akaashi scoffed, absentmindedly playing a tune on the piano. “muses are people artists abandon when they’re no longer inspired by them. you,” akaashi grabbed your chin and kissed you on the mouth. “are more than that.”

...

just as you predicted, akaashi’s band grew to success in its own time. the title track of the third album was a hit success, much to akaashi and everyone else in the band’s surprise. they had offers to play on radio shows, to live studio sessions, and then soon, they were able to cut a deal with a record label for their next album. it was the life you knew akaashi had always wanted and you couldn’t be happier for your boyfriend.

you had always known that there was something captivating about akaashi, whether he was on or offstage. he grew to be popular among women and men alike and you just had to be comfortable with it. despite all that, akaashi liked to remind his fans that he already had a girlfriend. he never forgot to dedicate the songs he wrote about you on live or recorded performances and in interviews, he liked to blow a kiss at the camera just for you.

as the band’s number one fan, you still made it a point to attend all of their performances but this time, you weren’t at the very front of the crowd. you were farther now, watching akaashi sing onstage from the VIP section. the view was good but you were much farther now and for some reason, you felt uncomfortable about this.

turns out, it was a prelude to something much worse.

the distance between you and akaashi grew. the band was offered a chance to go on-tour so your boyfriend was constantly caught up in band practices, interviews, and composing new music in the recording studio. your calls with him were always cut short by his manager needing his attention. he even stopped his usual practice of dedicating songs to you.

most nights, you lay in your empty, shared bedroom or absentmindedly played the abandoned piano, wishing you could go back to those days when akaashi was always there when you woke up. 

...

 “y/n... you’re here!” konoha greeted you just outside the recording studio’s door. 

“yeah, i wanted to surprise him,” you chuckled, holding up the box of the birthday cake you had brought. for some reason, konoha’s smile faltered at the sight of the birthday cake. “is... keiji here? did he just leave?” you asked, trying to look over konoha’s shoulder.

“y/n...” konoha paused, evidently struggling with what he was going to say. watching him formed an anxious pit in your stomach. “shit... i-i can’t keep lying to you.”

“konoha... what’s going on?” your hands trembled as they held onto the cake box as the voices from inside the studio grew louder.

“akaashi, you said it would be the last time! we can’t keep covering for you.”

“think about how y/n would feel?”

“let me through! let me through!” you exclaimed, pushing past konoha and into the recording studio room.

nothing could prepare you for what you what you were looking at. now, you understood why those ‘recording studio sessions’ would end up late into the night and why akaashi’s manager, a beautiful young woman who always made you feel less put-together, always looked smug around you. 

“keiji...” your voice shook as you watched your boyfriend shift his gaze guiltily to the floor. “how could you...?”

“it-it wasn’t like that--”

“then what was it?” you practically screamed. 

“look, you don’t know what it’s like dealing with all of this,” akaashi rubbed the back of his head. “all the stress and expectations and having to come up with new material--”

“you could have come to me! i’m right here, i’ve always been right here,” you bit your lip and asked what you were afraid to know. “how long has this been going on?”

akaashi shifted uncomfortably. “...a few months.”

you turned to look at bokuto who had been standing awkwardly in the side of the room since you came in. “how long?”

“longer than that,” bokuto murmured. “sorry we didn’t tell you sooner.”

“i can’t believe you,” you shook your head, slamming the cake down on a nearby table. “happy birthday, by the way.”

“y/n, wait!”

you didn’t give akaashi a chance to explain himself because you’d already seen enough. it was only when you were on a bus on the way home that the sadness started to hit you as sobs escaped from your chest. despite all of this, you missed akaashi terribly. you missed the feeling of his fingers brushing hair from your face in the morning. you missed how he’d wave at you through the glass in the recording studio. you missed hugging him and smelling lavender on his clothes. you missed the soft look in his eyes when he composed a new song dedicated to you.

with the tears running down your face, you searched through your purse for something to wipe your eyes only to come across the edge of the napkin inside your wallet. you pulled it out to find the autograph from akaashi, the very first one he ever gave to anyone, and immediately remembered that night when you two first talked. 

‘to my number one fan: i hope i’ll always get to see your face in the front-row’

the thing about falling for musicians and band members was that there was always going to be a distance between you two. at first, you thought you and akaashi had managed to close that distance, only for you to end up even farther than you ever were. 

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event taglist: @himikadafangirl @swoona-rintarou @l-dokisaki-l @laure-chan @aonenthusiast @ah-kaashi @just-a-gay-bean @linyu-sees-you @alto-march-of-death @newfriendjen @shrimpypenis​ @tenyafacesquish​ @mkkhaikyuu​

taglist applications still open! just answer this form

[phoenixtakaramono]

Does Bing gē Have Descendants in ‘The Untold Tale?’

This topic has come up a few times since The Untold Tale takes place in the PIDW universe (post-Bingge vs Bingmei extra), I figured I might as well compile and archive my official answer here for me to refer my AO3 readers to in the future for convenience’s sake. I hope everyone doesn’t mind. :) I’m always happy to answer questions!

TL;DR

Q: Will we see Bing gē having fathered children with his harem of 600 or so wives in TUT?

A: For TUT, the answer is a definite “no.” There were a lot of factors which’d contributed to my decision. I’ll try to explain my reasoning down below.

Context

In PIDW, it is canon that Luo Binghe has a bountiful number of descendants with his harem of 600-or-so wives. It is a detail that has been mentioned even in ch1 of SVSSS and in ep1 of the donghua.

(SVSSS Excerpt - ch1)

(SVSSS donghua - ep1)

I like to plan things ahead of time. So from very early on, I knew this would be something I would have to decide on whether or not to address when I’d finally decided to expand TUT from just a prologue into a full-blown story. And after contemplating it, I decided against adding children into the story. It is because 1) it would make the situation more complicated, and 2) it would take TUT in a different direction that wouldn’t be fun for me to write.

I’m a very decisive writer, meaning when I make my mind up about something, chances are I won’t change my mind. This is because I would have already planned it into my plot outline, which means changing a decision would require me to change other details in the other chapters I have planned for that story. (I’m typically not a spontaneous writer; I try not to write spontaneously because when you’re a writer who rotates through multiple WIPs with different characters across different genres or writing styles, you inevitably have writer’s block because you probably won’t remember all the ideas or the direction you had whenever you return back to a different WIP. To reduce this shortcoming, it helps me personally to have a plot outline. This way I can return to any WIP, read my notes and then transcribe them into legible paragraphs, find a way to transition between the story beats I have to hit for that chapter, and then eventually post the final draft to AO3 when I feel it’s ready.)

Having made a decision, I knew I had to set it up in TUT and give a “reasonable explanation in-story.” Hence, in ch2, we see:

(Excerpt I - ch2)

Basically the set-up is TUT takes place post-Bingge vs Bingmei, but between “the third or fourth book” of the hypothetical PIDW webnovel series aka before Airplane wrote the fanservicey chapters where the luckier of LBH’s wives give birth to children during the harem drama plots and the children are probably rarely, if ever, mentioned again in the story as a lot of stallion novels tend to do.

(Excerpt II - ch2)

(Excerpt III - ch2)

Contrarian Tendencies

You know the saying: Monkey see, monkey do? In my case, it’s monkey see, monkey do not do.

A little fun fact about me as a writer: if I have already seen a fanfic where someone has already written a concept or idea into their story, chances are I will just avoid it entirely in my own stories. I don’t know why this aversion exists, but I’m assuming it’s because of my counterculture hipster inclinations and an intrinsic fear of plagiarism which has been beaten into all of our skulls since adolescence. There’s nothing wrong with being inspired by other people’s works. Technically everything’s been done before in writing so, as a writer, a good rule of thumb is to always try to give it your own unique spin on things. So for me, my brain somehow interpreted this a step further. This is a reason why I try to avoid reading stories from whichever fandom my WIP is from during the writing process of updating a fic, because this is how I get influenced. Once I see an idea or interpretation from another fanfiction, it influences me to not want to write it into my own. This is a very strong unconscious impulse for me. I guess this is just the neurons in my brain’s thinking that this way, it won’t be something my readers will have read before and the story idea will come across as different or fresh, and mine. In a way this is also how I show respect for fanfiction writers in the same fandom—by being inspired to not be inspired, ha. I like to think every story in the world serves a niche audience, so seeing a diverse range of originality and interpretations in a fandom is a good thing. This is also how I feel when I am able to identify certain popular tropes or depictions or patterns in a fandom; 99% of the time, it makes me feel a compulsion to “go against the grain” or write the opposite. For example, you have no idea how long it took me to come around the idea of incorporating the fanon “A-Yuan” into TUT. However cute it is, the moment it dominated the fandom (well, “dominated” is an exaggeration; it’s more like I’ve seen enough, especially in the Original LBH/ SY | SQQ tag), my gut reaction was to nope out of using it. But after seeing a lot of comments in my inbox with readers affectionately calling SY “A-Yuan,” I’d contemplated it for a long time and it wasn’t until ch4 that I decisively decided that yes, I can have Bing gē calling SY “A-Yuan” in TUT—but it has to be at the right moment for maximum dramatic and emotional impact. (See this thread that started it all. And this is the small sneak peek I wrote where LBH will call SY that for the first time.) <- This is the rare 1% where I actually conformed to what’s popular.

In this case, when I finally decided to expand the prologue into a full-blown story, coincidentally I had just recently read a good Binggeyuan (Bingyuan) fanfic which featured a kidnapped Shen Yuan interacting with Bing gē’s harem and LBH’s children/descendants. I’d liked their portrayal and even thought the children were cute. <- However, with me having reading this, the problem came up: I felt the familiar stubbornness in me rearing its head. So knowing myself, if I had included children, it is very likely the direction that I would have gone down for TUT would have been the opposite. To further complicate matters, you have to keep in mind the kind of writer I am. I tend to like grounding stories with a semblance of realism, no matter if the genre is pseudohistorical fantasy, romance, sci-fi, etc. And this writer has seen and read quite a few harem and palace intrigue Chinese dramas/ premises.

For further context, in those types of “historical” C-dramas^, in that sort of environment which fosters scheming, competition, jealousy, etc, it is almost expected to see heirs aka children aka descendants harmed along with the women. Innocent parties are often victims in these sorts of cutthroat premises, to underscore the underlying message the show or novel wishes to present. (See Ruyi’s Royal Love in the Palace. See Yanxi Palace. See The Legend of Haolan. See Nirvana in Fire. See The Rebirth of the Malicious Empress of Military Lineage. Etc.) And me being me, this would be the direction I would take. Remember, while TUT is meant to emulate a legitimate danmei C-novel reading experience in a fantasy world, I do drop pseudohistorical and cultural Easter eggs into the story. So trust me when I say you would not like the direction TUT would have gone down in, had I made LBH have children with his harem. I mean, theoretically yes, we could’ve seen endearing children characters from me, but you would have also seen me addressing a lot of the baggage that comes with (see Comment III Excerpt down below).

The situation with dissolving Bing gē’s harem is already complicated enough. As his romance with Shen Yuan develops, I didn’t want to have an additional headache thinking about how to address the issue of LBH having children already. Divorces in a pseudohistorical context is already a heavy topic—even more so when it’s divorces with children in the mix. Naturally I will still have SY and LBH eventually discuss the matter of legitimate heirs since LBH will essentially become the Sacred Ruler of all Three Realms and it’s a traditional precedent for an emperor to bed his empress, noble consort, and imperial concubines until he has his heirs (plural, because the rate of mortality was high in ancient China). In TUT’s case, at that point in the story SY will remind LBH that he’s essentially an immortal sovereign so there isn’t any need for an heir unless he wishes to retire. Furthermore, he will inform LBH that he could set a new precedent since he’s already different from the other emperors from history (with him being of half-Heavenly Demon and half-human cultivator lineage); as long as LBH is fully aware of all perspectives of the situation, he doesn’t necessarily need to conform to all traditions if this is something he really feels strongly about. But this future conversation(s) is likely the extent of it.

But wait, you say, what about a certain someone who’s going to be transmigrated as an imperial crown prince? Isn’t he going to be in that sort of vicious upbringing? <- Yes. But that’s an entirely seperate matter. In a way, since I’ve decided Bing gē will not have had any children or descendants in TUT, with Airplane, this now presents an opportunity for me to show the consequences of being one of the many children of an emperor with a harem of women vying for one man’s attention—and the power struggle that’d ensue in this kind of environment. It’s an interesting What-If parallel, if you think about it.

AO3 Comments

Although these are just small excerpts from replies I’ve written before, it’s nice and orderly to just compile them here for everyone since these will be buried underneath all the comments as TUT updates:

(Comment I- ch3)

(Comment II- ch4)

(Comment III- ch4)

Because of seeing comments that have asked me for my thoughts on whether or not I will include LBH’s children, I’ve had so much fun seeing theories thrown around: from LBH’s blood parasites being able to control conception, to someone’s headcanon about LBH being a hybrid and all that entails scientifically (think: mules). I will say in TUT, it’s more the former since in PIDW he’s supposed to have descendants; we’re pretending Bing gē doesn’t have any yet (and now definitely won’t, especially after having heard SY’s “prophecy”) because he subconsciously does not want children due to certain fears, trauma, etc. And his Heavenly Demon’s “blood parasites” (blood manipulation) is a convenient story device to explain why no wife has gotten pregnant yet.

I hope this explanation makes sense! Mainly I just wanted to have this archived on tumblr so that I have this post to refer to moving forward.

On a side note: especially since ch4 had been posted, quite a few people have actually mentioned they’ve read my replies to other comments and/or I have seen different people having hopped onto other readers’ comment threads (for example, imagine my pleasant surprise when I saw a reader you lovely person, you helpfully jumping in to respond to another reader’s questions about TUT, and their answers were actually aligned with what I would’ve answered!), so it’s always such a thrill whenever I see this level of engagement happening. I can’t explain why, but seeing this happening is just so cute to me. It really makes this writer feel so warm and fuzzy inside!

[a-dorin]

feral | darth maul

word count: 1.760k

warnings: nsfw, sex pollen(and its effects), oral (receiving), smut, filthy language, cursing, nudity, pet names, mentions of ovulation, horn kink

a/n: i incorporated a request, along with sex pollen for this one! i hope you guys like it, as i am really proud of it! if you wanted to be added to my taglist, let me know. enjoy our favorite zabrak, consumed with lust from copious amounts of sex pollen! 

prompt:  “Please, I need a fic of Savage, or Maul, just dying slowly in his rut, just smelling the reader ovulating and internally going nuts from all the hormones”

(not my gif)

it was almost as if he was suffocating. 

as if someone had their hands around his throat, choking him. maker, was this feeling unmatched. it was overwhelming, flooding his body with one, primal, desire. the zabrak shook his head, a low growl erupting him from his lips. his insides burned, his body temperature elevated. he was panting, his breaths coming out ragged, shortened. 

he had to quench this fire consuming him whole. 

and he had to do it now. 

“m-master?” your sweet, innocent voice filled his ears, “are you all right?”

the zabrak eyes blazed, an intense, smoldering amber as they fell on you, “i’m fine.”

wrinkling your nose, you arched a brow, “are you sure? you smell so.. sweet. did you roll around in wildflowers on your way back?”

his hearts thudded as a whiff of your scent flooded his nostrils. your scent was heavenly, an alluring mix of sandalwood, starflower, white agarwood, and amber. a trace of starflower lingered as well. he could sense your pheromones, ears pricking up on the dull beating of your heart as you gazed at him, depths glimmering with concern. 

maker, was he ready to pounce. 

but, not yet. 

time was not of the essence in this case. the effects of the pollen would last the entirety of the night. and maul was patient. he was calculating your every response in his mind. although he could sense your unease through the force, he didn’t want to extract the thoughts swimming in that little brain of yours.

hearing the words tumble from those pretty little lips of yours would be far more satisfying. 

in the moonlight, your exposed skin glowed, a bright, softened, greyish-blue glow. a loose tunic hung from your frame, your nipples hardened, peaking out through the thin fabric. your thighs were full, the skin so tantalizing. if only he could feel it against his tongue. maul blinked, unsure if his eyes were deceiving him. 

if this was a mere mirage, an illusion. 

or, if this was reality, and you were standing before him, aching and desperate for him. 

“you’re ovulating,” his eyes narrowed, “i can practically smell your arousal, little one.”

satisfaction rushed through him as pink dusted your cheeks, “w-what are you talking about?”

the zabrak cleared his throat, “i can sense the desire consuming you. it’s gnawing away at you, and the way your cheeks flushed tell me everything i need to know. there is no need to lie, (y/n).”

“okay, okay,” you muttered, cheeks burning crimson now, “perhaps you’re right. but what are you going to do about it? besides, i think i recognize that sickening scent.”

“please, tell your master what you believe it is.”

“somehow, you encountered sex pollen. did you walk in a field of wildflowers?” your tone was smooth, the words confident. 

the purr intensified, “i may have stumbled across some. yet, there is nothing more i would like to do right now than take care of your problem, little one. would you let your master help you? it would be a fair trade.”

“i don’t think you have the-” you began, but maul practically lunged forward, his lips merely centimeters away from yours. 

“just because i don’t have the same anatomy as my other males of my species does not mean that i cannot feel or give pleasure,” his words pierced right through you, directly to your core, “do not underestimate me, little one.”

“i never said i-”

the words formed, yet didn’t come out as his lips collided with yours, the kiss hungry and open-mouthed, desperate to establish dominance. you couldn’t help but submit, nearly collapsing as he sucked on your bottom lip, his tongue exploring your mouth. deepening the kiss, a guttural growl rumbled in his throat as your hand, so soft and delicate, rested on his chest, tracing the tattoos woven on his skin. your lips were plump, a trace of strawberries lingering. 

the lust that threatened the zabrak intruded his mind completely, any coherent thought slipping from his mind. 

he was bordering the line, his inhibitions crumbling away by the second. 

maul was about to go feral. 

a yelp bounced off the walls as maul scooped you into his arms, grasping you by your thighs. your arms looped around his neck as he clambered towards the lower deck, in the direction of his personal quarters. he took no time, reaching the destination within minutes. 

as soon as he stepped foot in the space, he threw you onto the bed, your back hitting the mattress. the zabrak looming over you was on longer maul, your master. the aura hanging over him was nothing but pure lust, his instincts shrouding his logic. yet, you couldn’t help but feel the wetness between your thighs. how you were just as desperate as he was. how you yearned for a touch. his touch. 

his body was on top of yours now, the heat radiating off of him in thick, intense waves. lips connected with yours once more, the kisses needy, craving more. his hands tugged at your tunic, the fabric crinkling between his fingers. 

“you can take it off,” your lips brushed against his.

“so eager,” maul panted, “do you really want me to take it off, little one?”

you nodded, earning a hum of approval, “as you wish.”

a horrid, tearing noise rang through the room as your tunic fell of your frame, crumpling to the mattress. your breath hitched in your throat as maul’s eyes raked over your exposed body, the amber hue darkening to a deep, murky honey. 

“you didn’t wear anything underneath.”

“i didn’t say rip it off,” you muttered, a flash of irritation ringing through your mind. 

a hand covered your mouth, “hush. i will replace it.”

warm, callused hands roamed all over your flesh. maul licked his lips, savoring how your skin felt under his touch. how it was so smooth. so soft. so human. 

his hands cupped your breasts, the zabrak rolling your nipples between his fingers. a breathy, broken moan dripped from your lips. his mouth met with your neck, gently nipping as he placed a trail of wet, sloppy kisses down, ensuring that he plastered you with love bites. you were his, and he wanted to ensure that you knew.

every single move was electrifying, the air crackling with tension as maul had his way with you, peppering kisses all over your collarbone and chest. a shiver ran down your spine the moment his tongue flicked over your nipple, a whimper flooding the zabrak’s ears. 

“you’re so beautiful,” maul murmured against the underside of your breast as he painted another mark, “i could ravish you all night.”

your hands wrapped around his horns, desperately clinging on as his mouth drifted lower, not leaving a single inch of skin untouched. the sensation was blissful, pleasure rippling through your body, pressure building in your abdomen.

“now what do we have here?” a purr rumbled from the zabrak as he parted your thighs, “my gods are you soaking. is this all for me?” 

blush spread through your cheeks, “it is, master.”

maul slipped a finger between your folds, his eyes hardening as you squirmed, bucking your hips, “i see that my apprentice needs a lesson on patience.” 

“i am patient,” the words were a groan as his thumb circled your clit. 

“i don’t believe that,” maul chuckled darkly, “you’re practically riding my finger as i touch you. little one, you’re eager for me. i promise i will take care of you.” 

the zabrak drank in the sight of you. although he was beyond the point of thinking coherently, drunk with lust, he knew the image would be permanently ingrained in his mind. he would remember the way you core glistened in the light, the way love bites, from his mouth no less, were plastered all over your skin. 

the way your eyes shone. 

ablaze with longing. yearning for to fulfill the fantasies hazing your mind. 

craving for him. 

your taste coated his taste buds as he buried his head between your thighs, his nose brushing against your folds as he delved deeper, aching to feel it all drip onto his tongue. 

maker, was the taste divine. 

it was pure ambrosia, ecstasy washing over maul as he consumed you. 

your moans were melodic, his arms wrapped around your thighs, clutching onto your hips, pinning you down. pleasure racked your body, your head thudding against the pillow, jaw slack as he lapped away at your core, the juices dribbling down his chin, onto the sheets. 

the heat of his tongue was blissful as it flicked over your clit, the zabrak purring as he inserted a finger into you. the action was effortless, his finger pumping in and out, curling as it entered you. pressure was building in your abdomen, coaxing you closer and closer to orgasm. 

you were a mess underneath him, bucking your hips, riding his tongue as he fucked you with not only one finger, but two. he was pushing so deeply inside you, almost to the knuckle. the way you gripped his horns sent euphoria crashing over the zabrak, his hearts thudding. 

and maker was the sight of you oh so gratifying. 

“i can feel your walls tightening around my fingers,” his breath was hot, amber eyes glossed over with satisfaction, “are you getting close?” 

nodding meekly, the words were strained through gritted teeth, “i’m so close.”

maul’s pace of his fingers intensified, “that’s a good girl. you’re my good girl, (y/n). you’ve been so behaved for me, taking my tongue so well. you can cum.”

the moment he was finished, his lips wrapped around your clit, sucking on the bud. 

you unfolded, collapsing onto the mattress. 

stars burst in your vision, dancing as your thighs trembled. maul lapped away, ensuring that he savored the taste of you on his tongue as you came, orgasm racking your body. your breathing was shortened, ragged as he pulled away, his lips glazed with your juices. 

“here,” maul murmured, his voice delicate, “taste yourself.”

parting your lips, you licked his fingertips, earning a praise, “good girl.”

maintaining eye contact, you sucked on the digits, watching as his eyes squeezed shut, a noise you had never heard before tumbling from his lips. 

the sound was sweet, flowing so beautifully from his lips, like honey. 

maul nearly melted.

“h-how can i please you master?” you inquired, keeping his hand close to your mouth. 

narrowing his eyes, a smirk crept onto his features, eyes glowing amber in the night. 

“come here.”

*****

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