#I like reading more of the latter into it

[traveler-at-heart]

Doctor's In - Part 9

Wanda Maximoff x Doctor!R

Summary: New Year, new... relationship challenges? Sharing a home isn't all fun and games.

A/N: Everyone, please don’t tell me how much you hate where this story is going just because it seems like R will cheat on Wanda. There’s more to the plot and it’s not something I’m doing just randomly, I’m spending time and effort into creating a fic that is a bit more nuanced or at least I hope it is.

Natasha is not a people person.

Which is funny, considering her profession. She’s created a system that allows her to interact with patients as little as possible, and to focus on what she understands best: the human heart.

Not as a metaphor for sentimental stuff, but as a perfect machine.

She’s out of her element now, and considering the stupid drunk that is shouting in the middle of the ER, Natasha thinks it’s better to check if you’re around later.

“Is anybody going to take a look at this?” the man raises his messed up hand, slurring his words. He approaches Natasha, and she busies herself reading a chart. “Are you going to help or not, hot stuff?”

“I don’t work here” she grumbles, deciding that she’ll have to wait for you somewhere else.

“I was hoping you could take care of me. Where are you going? I'm talking to you” he says when she turns to leave, his good hand flying to grab her by the elbow.

Natasha is ready to throw a punch, but she never feels his touch in any part of her body.

“Lay a hand on her and I will strap you to a hospital bed and give you a colonoscopy without anesthesia” you say, surprising him with your strenght. “Now, sir, sit the fuck down and someone will be with you shortly”

“I’ll handle it” Barnes, the new nurse, approaches with his signature frown. He is equally attractive and terrifying, though most of the nurses ignore the latter.

“Thank you” you smile, watching the man become quiet as Barnes grabs him by the shoulder, knowing he won’t be able to say anything stupid to him. “Hi, Nat”

“Hey, stranger” she smiles at you. “I was hoping I’d run into you here”

“Is that why you were wandering the ER? You could just text me” you smile, walking with her to the cafeteria. “My shift ended an hour ago, which is why I wasn’t the one dealing with that asshole”

“Thank you for that, you are such a gentlewoman. I am dissapointed, though. I was hoping you’d stay for our first lesson today”

“Of course I am. I wouldn’t miss it for the world”

Most of the hospital was buzzing with excitement at learning the new surgical technique that had earned Melina Romanoff a Nobel Prize. The exception was Tony, but that was only because he was convinced the Romanoffs had a secret, evil plot to take over. Even Pepper had told me to chill in front of everyone.

You sit at the front, saving a spot for Darcy and follow every word Natasha says. She’s just going over some of the theory and the process of how the research came to be, which is still very interesting to you. Medical research required patience and focus that you did not have, so you had turned your professional development to trauma, as well as search and rescue training.

“We’ll meet on Wednesday to start the first exercises” she finishes the presentation, and winks at you discreetly.

You smile, leaving the conference room, Darcy right behind you.

“What was that?”

“What? Were you expecting exercises from the get go?”

“I meant the wink. Why was she winking at you?” Darcy insists and you shrug your shoulders.

“I don’t know. Friends wink at each other. I wink at you!”

“If you winked at me, I’d think you’re having a stroke” Darcy insists, and you have to roll your eyes. “It was flirty”

“Natasha knows about my relationship, we are just friends” you say, eager to finish the conversation.

“I just think there’s something fishy about this”

“You too? Stark got to you, Lewis” you mock, nudging her shoulder. “Come on, it’s all fine. I gotta get home, though, I forgot to tell Wanda I was staying longer”

“I hope she kicks your ass for that!” Darcy says as you run out of the hospital.

“Yeah, yeah”

As you drive home, you stop by the shopping street to get Wanda some flowers. You don’t think she’ll be too upset about you being late, but it never hurts to be safe.

Still, as you park in the driveway, you take a couple of minutes inside your car, looking at your old home in the rearview mirror.

Truth be told… you’re stalling. Though you love everyone inside the Maximoff house very much, you’ve had so much work these past two weeks, and it’s always a bit exhausting to get home and find the kids running around or Pietro complaining about something.

As someone who went from living alone to sharing a house with four other people full time, it was definitely overwhelming to say the least.

You take a last, deep breath and step inside the house, Pietro watching a show while the twins play in the backyard.

“You’re late” he comments.

“Work stuff” is all you say, not feeling in the mood to justify your tardiness to someone who isn’t Wanda.

But, as you enter the kitchen and your eyes meet hers, you can tell she’s also a little upset.

“Sorry, work ran long” you apologize, offering the flowers. She tries to smile and you put them down on the counter. “I really am sorry, Wands”

“No, it’s ok. I’m just behind with the book and the kids were a little difficult today… I could have used your help, that’s all”

I could have used some rest, you want to say, but that won’t help. It’s not forever, you keep thinking. Pietro will get better and move out, and things will be less crowded.

“I’ll be here all day tomorrow, I can take care of anything you need” you promise, saying goodbye to the prospect of a good nap. To keep yourself busy, you take out stuff to make a sandwich, sighing when you notice you’re out of cheese. “Like going to the grocery store, I guess”

Pietro keeps eating everything and by the time you’re home, there’s barely any food left.

“And you’re coming to the twins game on Wednesday, right?”

“Oh” you pause, scratching your neck. “I have to go to the hospital”

“Again? It seems like you’re there all week” Wanda protests.

“Well, yeah, we’re understaffed, between people being sick and others taking time off. I have to go and head the department, it’s my job, Wanda” you say, suddenly not hungry.

Nothing’s enough, you’re not good enough.

“I just… miss you. That’s all” Wanda says, and you sigh, feeling like an asshole.

“I know. I’m sorry. It’s always crazy during January, plus we’re doing a new training with a doctor from Boston. Things will settle in a couple of weeks, I promise”

“Ok” she nods, smiling as you approach her, kissing her temple. “But you’ll have to make it up to me”

“I have a few ideas for that, Miss Maximoff” you smile, pulling her against you and kissing her temple. “And none of them include clothes”

“Good” she laughs, standing on her toes to kiss you.

—

You wanted to have a good day, you really did. Wanda needed some work done on her new study so you dropped off the kids and drove to the hardware store, trusting Pietro could be fine on his own for a while.

What really ruined the mood happened on the way back home.

While turning on a busy street, your mother calls and instead of pressing the ignore button, you answer.

“Fuck” you mutter and it’s too late to hang up. “Hey, mom”

Wanda perks up at that, curious about your mother. She has never even heard her voice, let alone watch you have a conversation on the phone with her. She can tell your posture stiffens.

“Hello, Y/N. I missed your call for the holidays”

“Had lots of work” you lie.

“Oh, well. Hope you liked your birthday present” the woman says in a kinder tone and you almost want to laugh.

“Yeah, thanks. Really appreciate it”

“So, I don’t have a lot of time, wanted to let you know we’re flying there next week but we’re just gonna stay for three days. I don’t think we’ll have the time to meet you. Plus, it’s just us family, you know”

“Right” you try to sound disappointed, but are actually tempted to stop the car and dance around the street. “Some other time”

“Just make sure you’re available in case we need anything. It’s the least you can do”

“Of course” you agree, looking out of the corner of your eye at the confused expression on Wanda’s face. “Have fun, say hi to everyone for me”

“Ok, you take care now”

The minute she hangs up, you let out a huge sigh of relief.

“What was that?” Wanda says, frowning.

“Which part, love?”

“Everything! Ok, first of all, the birthday present. What did she get you? I didn’t see anything delivered”

“Wanda, she doesn’t even know where I live. What happened was, someone walked by and she pretended to be nice. She’s always done it” you explain, feeling irritated. All you want is to be happy that you won’t see her, but Wanda is pushing the subject.

“And what about them coming? And not making the time to see you? Just us family? You’re her daughter!”

“Wanda, please, drop it” you plead, parking outside your home and stepping out of the car.

“Why is she like this? Why don’t you call her out on it? And I’m sorry, I just can’t understand someone being so horrible to their own child”

“Wanda!” you snap, slapping the trunk of the car. “I know, she’s horrible. I don’t care if she lies about getting me a birthday present and I don’t care enough about her to call her out for being mommy dearest. I am just so damn happy that I don’t have to be around her anymore, can we please focus on that?”

“I am just trying to understand. You never tell me anything about her” Wanda protests and you can’t believe she’s still talking about this.

“Everything there is to know, you already know, Wanda. What else would you like to learn? That sometimes I went to bed without having dinner because she thought I was getting fat? Or that when I got a summer job and was out too late she only let me sleep on the porch? What other fucking twisted things would you like to learn about that awful woman?”

“I…”

“If I say it’s complicated or I don’t want to talk about it, maybe just listen once. Here” you toss the car keys her way, not caring if she catches them or not. “I’m going for a walk”

You’d do more than walk if you were wearing different shoes and it wasn’t so damn cold. Still, you don’t make it very far, running into a black and white bunny in the middle of the street. None of your neighbors have pet rabbits, not that you can recall.

“Where did you come from?” you say, hugging the little thing and feeling relaxed as it moves its nose and settles in your arms.

“Señor Scratchy!” Agatha yells from her porch, and you turn around.

“I take it he’s yours?”

“Yes, Rio gave him to me. Señor Scratchy, what are you doing outside?” the woman says with a soft voice, taking him back. “I don’t know how he got out”

“Maybe your fence? Let’s take a look” you walk around to her backyard, pointing at an old part of her wooden fence. “Aha!”

“Oh, great. It will take forever to find someone to fix it” she grumbles. “He’ll have to stay inside for the time being”

“I can fix it. It will only take an hour or so” you say, eager to stay out of the house for a bit longer.

“Well, aren’t you a sweetheart?” Agatha squeezes your cheek and then slaps it gently. “Just remember, I’m already taken, hot stuff”

“I’m just fixing your fence, Miss Harkness” you wink. “I’ll be back with the stuff we need”

Wanda seems to be in her study when you go back home. The fact that you feel relieved instead of sad for making her hide does make you a little guilty.

Truth is, you’ve never lived with anyone you had a relationship with, and neither did she. Maybe you’re both expecting things to be perfect, and it’s just not realistic. Disagreements are bound to happen when you share a home.

Right?

As you work on Agatha’s fence, you keep thinking about a way to make things work for everyone, because you’ve had a couple of fights with Wanda in the span of two days and you really don’t want to make it a habit.

“Did that fence do something to you?” Agatha interrupts you, handing over a glass of water.

“Huh?” you look up at her, taking it and nodding your thanks.

“You're nailing that wood a little too hard, hot stuff” she says, dragging a garden chair and sitting next to you. “Spill”

Saying it’s nothing won’t stop her from asking, so you keep working and tell her everything that has been going on. How the house feels too crowded sometimes, and work is kicking your ass. It takes a minute, but you admit that Wanda really upset you, questioning why you didn’t stand up to your mother.

“I don’t know, I guess it’s something I’ve always wondered myself. Why didn’t I say something instead of being weak. It struck a nerve when Wanda said it out loud”

“Did she call you weak?” Agatha says, frowning.

“No, that’s me being dramatic” you chuckle.

“Look, it’s what I told you the other day. Not everyone understands it, because most people have a semi functional relationship with their parents. And from the sound of it, Wanda’s were straight out of a sitcom”

“I guess”

“She doesn’t have to understand it. She just has to respect your boundaries” Agatha says and you nod, still thinking about everything. “Have you ever thought about going no contact with your mother?”

“Is that what you did?”

“Oh, honey, my mother’s dead. So unless I pull out a Ouija board, we’re no contact already” she cackles, which makes you laugh.

“I don’t know. If she needs something, I guess I would try to help her. If she was a bad mother, that’s on her. But I won’t be a bad daughter”

“You’re too good” Agatha pats your back, and you smile at her.

“Alright, well, your fence is fixed. Can we call it even with the therapy session you just gave me?” you stand up, making sure everything’s in its place.

“Nu-uh, you owe me” Agatha jokes, taking the bunny out to the backyard. “You’ll be fine. Tú puedes”

“Duolingo?”

“Rio’s been teaching me Spanish. The other stuff I can’t say it to you because it’s dirty and for her ears only” the brunette winks, which makes you blush. “Bye, Y/N”

“Bye, Agatha” you roll your eyes at her antics, feeling better as you walk back home.

You figure it’s better to start working on what Wanda needs, so you carry the stuff upstairs and knock before entering the guest room turned into a study.

“Hey” you say, as Wanda looks out the window instead of working.

“Hi”

“I’ll fix the lights and then adjust your desk, or do you need to work now?” you ask, unsure if she’s also upset at you.

“No, that’s fine. It’s not even important, you should rest, work has been crazy for you” she finally turns, and you can tell she’s trying hard not to cry.

“Hey… come here” you step closer, pulling her into a hug. “What’s wrong?”

“I’m really sorry for pushing the subject. I can’t imagine someone being so awful to you, and I made you… I should have kept it to myself”

“It’s… yeah. It wasn’t nice and I really don’t like to look back at everything that happened. But I know you didn’t mean any harm, ok? I love you, baby” you kiss her temple, feeling her relax in your arms. “Why don’t you go check on your brother? He’s been too quiet, which can only mean he’s getting into some sort of trouble”

“Or buying more stuff from Amazon. We barely fit here” Wanda grumbles and you laugh, kissing her. “I’m sorry”

“I know. You’ll make it up to me in bed” you joke, which makes her laugh.

“Maybe now that he’s busy…”

In that precise moment, her brother decides to call for Wanda.

“Go” you kiss Wanda again, wishing you had more time just with her.

—

Natasha’s not excited about the day ahead, the only silver lining being that she gets to see you. There’s nothing wrong with that, of course. She’s flirting and constantly eyeing you, but nothing’s gonna happen.

Not on a lack of desire on her part. It’s pretty obvious you’re not the type of person who cheats. Pretty ironic, she finally meets a decent woman and you’re already taken.

What does that girlfriend of yours have that she doesn’t? Aside from two kids that adore you. Is the whole housewife thing really that appealing to someone like you?

As she enters the room for the next lesson, Natasha notices you’re sitting a few rows behind. That’s a little disappointing. Still, your eyes follow her every move and she feels a little surge of pride at that.

If only you were single, Natasha might get you to roleplay that teacher-student fantasy she’s had.

Still, as she finishes her explanation, you walk up to her, smiling.

“That was brilliant, Natasha” a brunette doctor walks behind you, and you reach out to stop her. “Hey, come meet Doctor Romanoff, Darcy”

“Pleased to meet you. We’re loving the lessons” she says, not wanting to make small talk. “Y/N, come on. I’m starving”

“Oh, I was thinking we could go out for a bite if you’d like?” you turn to Natasha, smiling.

“I’ve got surgery in half an hour” Darcy says, glaring at you.

“Nat?” you turn to the woman, smiling. “Bishop can take care of the ER for me”

“Yeah, I’d love to” Natasha says, kicking herself over how fast she agrees to doing anything you ask.

“Awesome, I know this great place” you begin saying, but she gets a phone call. Natasha looks at you apologetically, but you smile, while Darcy is pulling at your sleeve and giving her a strange look.

“I’ll only take a moment” Natasha promises.

“Yeah, that’s fine”

“A word, Y/N?” Darcy finally gets your attention back and you frown.

Natasha doesn’t care much about the new doctor, unless she’s also fighting for your attention. She finds an empty room to take the call, shutting the door behind her.

“What is it, mother?”

“How’s the second lesson?”

“Fine. Do you keep a timer on your desk?”

“I just like to know if the study plan I designed is working, Natalia. That way, when we move to the next one, it can be more efficient until we manage a global, scalable solution”

“We? I’m only doing this here and then I’m going back to my research, you agreed” Natasha reminds her, blood boiling.

“This is your legacy too”

“Then how come I wasn’t up there getting the Nobel with you?”

“Natalia, those are insignificant things compared to what we can acheive” Melina scoffs.

“I’m not going to spend another month in a different hospital just because you’re too paranoid about someone stealing your research”

“Fine, then get me a new Head of Trauma for Boston and we’ll consider it even” Melina says. “You know Yelena wants to focus on that, she needs someone who can teach her”

“There are tons of applicants. Choose one from the pile in your desk, Mother” Natasha sighs, knowing where this is going.

“What about that doctor you told me about? You sounded so enamoured last time”

“She wouldn’t move to another city, her girlfriend’s here” Natasha says.

“Girlfriends aren’t wives. Well, even spouses can get divorced. Maybe she just needs to hear the right offer” Melina insists.

“Mother…”

“You’re not resuming your research until you find a new Head of Trauma. That’s final, Natalia” the woman loses her cool, hanging up on her daughter.

Natasha feels so stupid, of course this would happen. Melina never cared about anything other than herself and her accomplishments.

“Fuck” the woman says, kicking one of the chairs. You walk inside that precise moment, jumping at the outburst.

“You ok?” you say, locking the door.

“Yeah. It’s nothing”

You let out a sigh, sitting next to her in the bed of the on call room.

“We can skip lunch if you’re not hungry”

“It’s not that. I mean, I’m not hungry anymore, my mother just pissed me off” Natasha shakes her head, trying to calm her racing heart.

“You got one of those too, huh?” you chuckle. “I’m sorry, Nat, honestly. It’s the worse feeling in the world. Someone who should support you trying to bring you down, and then no one believing you because there’s this collective denial that mothers can be bad people”

“Yeah, that’s exactly it. To everyone else she’s a genius. To me, she’s the woman who’s always reminding me how ordinary I am compared to her” Natasha fiddles with her hands, not used to being vulnerable. Not with someone who understands her so well.

“You’re not ordinary, Natasha” you say with so much conviction that the redhead looks up, eyes meeting yours. “And if your mother thinks that, I’m sorry to say that she’s not as smart as I thought”

Natasha laughs, blushing a little at the compliment. You nudge her with your elbow, standing up.

“Want some coffee instead? If you’re not hungry anymore” you place your hand in the doorknob, checking if she’s ready to step out.

“Yeah, sure”

As you nod and open the door, Natasha stands up, reaching for your wrist.

“I… thank you. You’re too kind to me” she says in a low voice.

“I guess I know how isolating it can be. If you ever want to talk, I’m here” you squeeze her arm in return, smiling at her.

Natasha is about to say something else, something probably really stupid, when a voice calls behind you.

“Detka, there you are”

“Wanda? Hi, what are you doing here?” you step out of the room now, looking at your girlfriend. Wanda, however, is focused on the very attractive redhead that follows behind you, noticing you were alone seconds ago

“Am I interrupting something?” she says, eyes not leaving Natasha’s figure.

“What? No, this is Nat… eh, doctor Romanoff. She’s the doctor from Boston who is giving us the course” you explain, looking between both women. Natasha is the first one to give up the staring contest, extending her hand to Wanda.

“Nice to meet you. Y/N has told me so much about you and your boys”

“I’m happy to hear that”

Happy that you know she’s taken.

“So, uh… what are you doing here?” you ask, still thrown off by Wanda’s presence. Ever since Pietro was discharged, she has never been back to the hospital. If you recall correctly, she said she had enough of hospitals for a lifetime.

“I need to talk to you for a second. Alone”

“I’ll meet you in a second” you smile as Natasha walks back to the conference room and she nods. When you turn to Wanda she has a strange look in her eyes. “What’s wrong?”

“You never told me she was this pretty”

“Who?”

“Natasha”

“I didn’t notice” you mumble, scratching your neck. “And anyways, that’s not why you’re here, is it?”

“Right. I just… I wanted to apologize again for yesterday. And make sure we’re ok. I know these past few weeks have been hard. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had to come over and see you”

“Hey, we’re ok” you promise, pulling her by the waist. “I love you, you love me and we have a pretty nice family, don’t we? Even with stinky Pietro”

“I’m trying to convince him to shower daily” she laughs against your lips. It’s pretty clear that he was clean during his hospital days because he got sponge baths.

“It’s either that or hosing him down in the backyard”

“I’d like to see that” your girlfriend laughs and you take her hand, bringing it to your lips. “I’ll let you get back to work”

“Ok, if I can I’ll leave early” you kiss her cheek, squeezing her waist until you’re hand goes dangerously lower. “And maybe we can have some makeup sex”

“Mmhm you’d like that wouldn’t you” Wanda slaps your shoulder. “Go”

But as you wave goodbye and walk up to meet Natasha, Wanda doesn’t miss the look on the redhead's eyes.

She knows it, because it’s the same way Wanda looks at you. And that’s all it takes for her to decide, she doesn’t like the other woman.

—

It’s not as late as you thought, because when you get home everyone’s finishing dinner.

“She lives” Pietro says when you walk in.

“He bathes” you say, noticing his wet hair. “Did Wanda tell you I was going to hose you down?”

He doesn’t get to reply, because the kids jump in your arms.

“My stinky minions! Did you win the game today?”

“No, you have to come to the next one. You’re our lucky charm” Billy says.

“Pinky promise, I will come to the next one” you nod, moving to kiss Wanda. “Hey, gorgeous”

“Moya lyubov” she says and you smile, always loving that accent. “Come have dinner while the kids shower”

“Can you read us a story when you finish?” Tommy asks.

“Of course. Now go with Mom, I’ll be there as soon as I’m done”

The kids cheer as you get a plate and serve some delicious lasagna. Now you really don’t regret coming home early.

“Alright, I’m calling it a night. I’m exhausted” Pietro says.

“From showering?” you joke, but he fake laughs as he pushes his wheelchair away. “Leave your plate, I’ll clean it up”

“Thanks, sestra”

As you eat, you remember to send a text to Natasha, asking if she wants to have lunch with you tomorrow before she heads back to Boston for the rest of the week.

The kids are ready for bed and you walk upstairs, sitting between their beds and reading Dragon Feathers, which was your father’s favorite bedtime story to tell. Billy and Tommy laugh as you make different voices, the way your dad did when he told you the tale.

As soon as you’re done, they settle in bed, and Wanda’s the one who tucks them in, joining you at the door.

“I missed this” you say against her temple.

“I missed you” she agrees, leaning against your side. “Come to my study, I want to show you the drawings I made for the book”

The new working space was starting to grow on Wanda. Even if it was smaller, she had enough room to fit everything she needed, and her view was much better from the second floor.

You admire the sketches she hands you, looking at every detail and stroke of her pencil.

“Could I see you work one day? I don’t think I’ve ever done that, baby” you say, in awe of her talent.

“I don’t know, I might get too nervous”

“Please?” you pout, hoping that will change her mind. Wanda rolls her eyes and leans forward, standing on the tip of her toes to kiss you. Her movements turn more frantic and she catches you off guard when she pushes you against the small sofa, straddling your lap.

“Tell me more about her”

“About who?” you say, completely lost in the way her shirt strains against her breasts.

“That new doctor”

“Natasha?” you blink, trying to form a coherent thought. “Why?”

“Because. You’re working a lot, and apparently it’s next to a very beautiful woman whose name I hadn’t heard up until I saw you walking out of a room together”

“We were just talking” you mumble, more focused on undoing the buttons on Wanda’s shirt. She takes your wrists and pulls them away, forcing you to look up.

“I hope she knows your girlfriend is incredibly possesive and jealous” she whispers against your lips. “Or I might have to remind you who you belong to”

“I haven’t forgotten” you promise, looking at her lips intently.

“Then show me” Wanda says, her nails digging in your scalp. Whatever you were about to say dies in your lips as she kisses you, biting your lip and making you forget your name. You open your mouth, allowing her to explore it with her tongue and you carry her to the desk, pushing away everything so she can sit on it.

Wasting no time, Wanda holds her hips up so you can pull down her pants and underwear, and you kneel, moaning against her center when you begin to eat her out, desperate for her taste.

It feels like forever since you’ve had the chance to worship her body.

“That’s it” she moans as you bite the inside of her thigh, pleased with the way her legs close around your head. “I’m gonna…”

“Hold it”

“No, please”

“Did I fucking stutter? God, you are so impatient” you say, squeezing her throat as you move up, sliding two fingers inside her wet cunt. “Why can’t you just let me fuck you?”

“Oh, God” she says, getting wetter at your words.

“I think you’re the one who’s forgetting her place, baby” you say, hitting her G spot over and over until she can’t speak.

“Fuck” Wanda sighs, biting your neck as she finally gets her release. You kiss her, muffling her moans until her breathing evens out. “I missed that”

“Mhm” you smile, letting Wanda taste herself in your lips. “Come on. Let’s go to bed”

As you get changed and clean up, your phone pings several times.

“Work?” Wanda asks, but you’re smiling as you type.

“Huh? No, not work” is all you say, getting in bed and kissing Wanda. “Night, baby”

“Goodnight” she says, watching the screen of your phone light up again. You don’t notice because you’re already asleep, exhausted.

Wanda has to resist the urge to look at the text you just got.

You’ve never given her a reason to doubt you.

And yet, as she goes to bed, looking at your sleeping shape, Wanda can’t help but feel, there’s a part of you that’s not being honest.

[secretl1fe0fm3]

can’t take it back once it’s been set in motion ~ matty healy

this is slightly inspired by my favorite ovulation song; oxytocin by billie eilish

warnings: smut, inexperienced!reader, service top!matty, slight power imbalance, excessive use of the word ‘love’, matty going down soft sound, aftercare, soft(ish) dom!matty, sub!reader.

18+ minors dni!!!

3k+ words

You sigh lightly as your phone lights up your pitch black room, mocking your current state of insomnia. You had set it down over an hour ago to try and force yourself to sleep, but even with a lack of the blue light, you were still wide awake. Sitting up, you reach for your phone and notice an unknown number calling you. Already being unable to sleep, you decide to entertain whoever could possibly be calling you at this hour. Ultimately, deciding to answer.

“Hello?” You speak slowly and softly, still somewhat tired despite being unable to sleep.

“Thank god you answered.” Said the voice, relieved, on the other end of the line.

“Matty?” You could recognize that voice anywhere, even though you were seventy percent sure you were hallucinating right now.

“Im sorry to bother you at this hour, love. I need your help.” Matty breathes out, his voice sounding rushed. You groan to yourself, barely audible. You and Matty had been friends for years, meeting through a mutual friend, but you haven’t heard from him in almost two years until now. He practically ghosted your friendship when he found himself in a new, yet toxic relationship. But, based on the headlines you had read the other day scrolling twitter, they had finally called it quits.

Sitting up, you put your phone on speaker, and sit it in your lap. “Matty, what the fuck do you need?” You’re pissed, but your voice not showing any more than a slight annoyance.

“I need you to come pick me up, take me back to mine. My buddies dragged me out with them to get over, well, you know. Long story short, they are all shit-faced, none of them fucking coherent, and my god damn car service app isn’t working.” He sounds genuinely stressed. “My phones about to die as well, which is bloody fucking fantastic.” Matty grumbles into the phone.

You sit there, momentarily debating your options. You could leave him there, make him figure his shit out on his own. But you also have a soft spot for him after everything, knowing, if anything, he’s not the same person who deserted your friendship a few years ago. A deliberate exhale leaves your mouth, choosing the latter.

“Yeah, okay. Just text me your location before your phone dies. I’ll be there soon.” You hear him start to thank you, but you hang up quickly, not letting him get another word out. Deciding to keep your satin pajama shorts and bra on, you throw a hoodie over and slide on your sneakers. Groaning while grabbing your car keys off the kitchen island, you set off to your car, driving to Matty’s current location.

As you pull up to the bar, you recognize Matty leaning up against the wall, taking a long drag of his cigarette. Nothing has changed. You also notice none of his friends are anywhere to be seen. Odd. Driving up next to where Matty is standing, you roll down your window and his eyes catch yours.

“Long time no see, love.” Matty’s lips twist up into a smirk. Nothing. Has. Fucking. Changed. You watch him stub out his cigarette on the brick wall and toss it into the trash can by him. He climbs into your car shortly after. “Missed your face, thanks for coming to get me.”

Letting out an immediate scoff at his nonchalant behavior, you decide to ignore his comment. “So, Im taking you back to yours, right?”

You feel Matty’s eyes rake over your body, burning into your skin. You can smell some alcohol on him, though you know he’s not a big drinker, only having a glass or two of wine usually, and choosing to stick to his cigarettes or weed. He’s not drunk, so why is he looking at you like that.

“Of course, love.” He speaks lowly, eyes still stuck on you. You decide to disregard his use of the pet name and put your car into drive, pulling off onto the main road.

The drive to Matty’s house was maybe fifteen minutes at most, and yet it felt like an eternity with his eyes fixed on you. It’s almost like he couldn’t believe you actually came to pick him up, not being able to come to terms that you were finally seeing each other after two years.

Pulling up to Matty’s house brought back so many memories, and important moments you two had shared over the years of your friendship. His driveway led you to his front door, as you put your car in park, you finally glance over at Matty, who’s staring attentively. Under the glow of the exterior lights on his house, you notice he’s wearing tight black jeans, a dark belt, blank tank top, and a satin dress shirt. His long curly hair is slicked back slightly, with his sunglasses sitting on top of his head.

“Like what you see?” Matty implies cockily, eyes never leaving yours.

“It’s a fucking Monday.” You glare at him. “Why were you out on a fucking Monday, don’t you think you’re too old for this bullshit?” Continuing to ignore his playful comments, you squint your eyes at him, crossing your arms over your chest. You slightly feel bad for picking arguments with him, but his remarks are starting to make you feel some type of way.

Matty laughs out loud at your comment, the sudden deep laugh makes you jump a bit. “Lighten up a bit, love.” He nudges his elbow into your arm. You continue to frown at him, clearly not finding anything amusing. Matty falls silent, realizing how upset you actually are. “Look, why don’t you come inside? I can make you some tea, and we could watch a movie like old times?” He wiggles his eyebrows at you, waiting on an answer.

Your eyes bore into his. “Fine.” Turning off your car, you and Matty step out, walking up to his front door. He unlocks his door and steps to the side, motioning for you to come in. You take off your sneakers and set them on the mat, walking over to his living room and sitting down on his massive couch. He joins you promptly, sitting right next to you, a little too close for the amount of spots he could’ve picked from.

“Still a little bratty? Huh?” He asks casually, not once looking up at you as he turns on his TV.

“Excuse me?” Your eyes widen at his sudden judgement.

“Bratty. You’ve always been a little brat, love. It’s cute, though. Never minded it. Some things just never change.” He chuckles to himself, shaking his head.

Can’t take it back once it’s been set in motion

Your mouth is agape, taken aback by his words, struggling to make a counter remark.

“I see no one’s ever tried putting you in your place yet.” Matty hums absentmindedly, setting the remote down and glancing over at your shocked face.

You know I love to rub it in like lotion.

Pink flushes on your cheeks and neck as you stare at him with wide eyes, unsure of what to say next. "I- what?" You stumble over your words, mouth suddenly dry.

Matty moves closer, invading any personal space you were clinging onto. His hand falls on your thigh, squeezing as he keeps his eyes locked on yours. "Oh, you heard me loud and clear, love. Don't play stupid now." He whispers, eyes flickering to your lips momentarily.

You lose the ability to speak, eyes unable to leave his. "Matty-" He cuts you off.

"C'mon darling, I saw how you were looking at me in the car, and how eager you were to come pick me up tonight, even after all this time"

I can see it clear as day.

The blush on your cheeks deepens as you feel his hot breath fan across your skin, creating goosebumps up your arms. You grab onto his forearm, putting your other hand on his chest, trying to keep a small distance between you two. Matty was very attractive, you couldn't deny it. But your inexperience was making you hesitate, unsure of how to handle his advances.

Before you could react, Matty reached his hand out and placed it on your cheek, the other still resting on your thigh, squeezing tighter than before. His face was only centimeters away from yours as he breathes out, "Tell me to stop and I will. But you don't want me too, do you, love?"

You don't really need a break.

You close your eyes tightly, feeling flustered at his words. A warmth growing in your stomach, an unfamiliar feeling. You think about pushing him off, but your body ached for him, not wanting to stop this. Without any more hesitation, you look back up at him, shaking your head slowly, an invitation for him to continue.

Wanna see what you can take.

At your permission, Matty crashes his lips against yours, moving the hand that was on your cheek down to your neck. You let out a small gasp at the contact. He takes this as a chance to deepen the kiss, taking up every part of your mouth with his. The grip on your thigh moves up, closer to your heat. His fingers play with the hem of your pajama shorts, pushing them up slightly, almost exposing your underwear. You let out a pathetic whine as he breaks the heated kiss.

"God, Ive wanted to do this for years, you have no idea." Matty grumbles out as he pulls off your hoodie swiftly, pushing you down to lay back against the arm rest. He hovers over you, pulling down your satin shorts slowly, eyes never breaking contact from yours. "You're so fucking pretty baby, my perfect girl." You blush at his words, letting out a soft groan. Feeling like a prey under the gaze of a predator, you fix your eyes on the ceiling, unable to look at him.

You should really run away.

Matty notices this, and reaches his hand out to grab at your chin, directing your attention back to him. "Don't you dare look away, keep your eyes on me, yeah?"

Your eyes meet his again, his pupils blown with lust. He looks at you with a stern look, asserting his dominance as you nod silently. Matty smirks at your obedience, and starts rubbing small circles on your heat. You moan louder this time at the friction, pushing your hips up against his hand.

Other people wouldn't stay. Other people don't obey.

"That's right, love. Does that feel good? Do you want more?" Matty's eyes stay trained on yours. You feel small under his gaze, yet enjoying how he towers over you, his chain dangling in front of your face. You clench your legs together as his fingers rub at your clit, growing wetter by the second.

Your stomach starts to tighten, already close to an orgasm. "Im close, please, I can't." You cry out, throwing your head back on the arm rest.

His fingers suddenly disappear from your clit, and you cry out from the sudden loss.

"Do I need to repeat myself? I told you to keep your eyes on me, yeah? Be a good girl for me, darling." Matty reiterates, moving his other hand up to your neck again, applying pressure but not fully cutting off your airway.

You nod feverishly, not wanting him to stop again. Your eyes pleading for forgiveness. Matty chuckles and reaches his hand back down, his fingers barely grazing your clit again as he pulls your underwear down your thighs, exposing your wet cunt to him. The cold air against your core makes you shudder, the contrast in temperature sending a wave of pleasure up your spine.

Matty watches your reaction intently, reveling in how it doesn't take much to get you worked up. He releases your neck from his grip and places his lips against your neck, searching for your pulse point. You expose your neck more, giving him silent permission to continue.

I wanna do bad things to you.

"God, you really are a desperate thing, aren't you love? Tell me where you want me." He murmurs into your neck, planting kisses and bites around the sensitive area as he rubs tight circles on your clit. You flush at his words, letting out a whimper.

"Anywhere, please." You beg him, jerking your hips up to create more friction again. He lets out a soft chuckle into your neck at this.

"Your wish is my command, darling." Matty smirks and pulls away from your neck. He begins to move down your body, trailing kisses until he reaches your cunt. He breathes out onto your heat, then swiftly attaches his lips to your clit, sucking hard. You cry out from the new feeling, body squirming with pleasure.

Matty hums against your pussy at the cry you let out, creating a vibrating sensation. Your hands grip at his head, your fingers curling into his hair and pulling. You keep your eyes on him as he flicks his tongue against your clit repeatedly, mouth hanging open in a silent moan.

"So fucking perfect for me." He mumbles, wrapping his hands around your legs, keeping them wide open for him. His tongue teases your tight hole, licking thick stripes wherever he could reach before his attention is drawn back to your clit, sucking persistently.

Your back arches off the couch, fingers gripping at his hair and pulling hard. "Matty, fuck, Im gonna come, fuck-" You stumble over your words, feeling your stomach tighten at his continued abuse against your cunt.

Matty pulls away momentarily, "Go ahead, darling. Be a good girl for me and come on my tongue, yeah?" He picks up speed, mercilessly sucking and circling his tongue on your pussy.

I wanna make you yell.

Your legs clench together, affectively trapping him against your core as your body tenses up. You throw your head back, letting out an obscenely loud moan as you feel your orgasm wash over your body. Your hips buck up into his mouth, feeling even more wetness pool where his mouth is. Matty moans against your cunt, sending aftershocks from your orgasm straight to your heat again.

"You taste fucking unbelievable, love." He grunts out. Your body twitches from overstimulation as he finishes cleaning you up with his tongue.

Matty pulls away, his lips red and wet. You look at him with heavy eyes, feeling almost drunk from your orgasm. He looks almost as wrecked as you. You are about to sit up and reach for him when you glance down and realize he's still hard, but he stops you.

"I know you're tired. You don't have to finish me off. Another time, okay?" Matty speaks lowly, keeping eye contact with you as he stands up and grabs a blanket from the basket near the coffee table. He sits on the edge of the couch next to you, wrapping you up in the fluffy blanket. You blink up at him, exhaustion washing over your body.

Matty stares down at you, giving you a look filled with an emotion you couldn't quite pinpoint. You sigh out, feeling his body press up next to yours. He pulls you into his arms tightly, brushing his fingers through your hair.

"Thank you for that." You admit your appreciation shyly, a content smile on your lips.

Matty grins down at you, "Of course, love. Anything for you." He runs his fingers through your hair, brushing the strands out of your face. Your eyes flutter shut, unable to fight the sleep coming over you this time.

[tossawary]

It's not right to say that I'm pickier about "Enemies to Lovers" and "Rivals to Lovers" stories, exactly, because I'm also picky about the relationship dynamics within other tropes that I will less reservedly say I like. I am leery regarding the balance between hostility and affection, let's say, opinionated about the details of the conflict and the satisfaction of following resolution, too much vitriol is usually not to my personal tastes. "Enemies to Lovers" done badly is often more likely to be "aggravating" to me, whereas "Friends to Lovers" done badly is more likely to be just "boring", and the former bad reading experience is often more memorable than the latter, a more active dislike compared to a more passive indifference.

But one part of the "Enemies to Lovers" and "Rivals to Lovers" stories that is so, so often deliciously juicy? When the other characters find out that the main couple have a "thing", probably an extremely inappropriate "thing", going on. I can less reservedly say that I personally love that part, especially if it's also a "Secret Relationship" situation.

The "you think our enemy is HOT?!" and/or "you've been fucking your rival for HOW LONG?!" blow-ups. The cries of betrayal. Treason and trials, potentially, bloodshed, or other horrible consequences. Shock. Horror. Laughter. The "I didn't even know you'd had a single positive conversation with that asshole" and/or "how did you think this was a good life choice?" confusion. The "I fucking knew it!!!" smugness. The way that the main couple either initially explodes or pulls together immediately. Totally possible that the story will fail to stick the landing and break both figurative ankles here in some way or another, that happens, but it's so good to me when it's good.

A "Romeo and Juliet" love affair? Sure, that's compelling, I guess. The part of a "Romeo and Juliet" love affair where all of their friends and family find out? Gimme.

[onlymexsarah]

Burning Flames V || Eris Vanserra

Pairing: Eris Vanserra x Archeron!reader Summary: Since you became High Fae there were only two things that scared you: your deadly power and your attraction toward the male you should hate most after Tamlin, Eris Vanserra. Warnings: Eris thinking important stuff, Eris being Eris, probably grammar mistakes and my english. A/n: I’M SO SORRY FOR THE WAITING. I had a writer’s block and i didn’t want to write anything that would disappoint you. I hope you’re gonna like this, let me know if you want to be added at the taglist🫶🏻 Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3 - Chapter 4

As soon as you all arrived at the River House the mood lightened up. It was time to truly celebrate the Winter Solstice, and Feyre's birthday.

You were all in the sitting room, and when you said all you meant all. Even Nesta and Lucien were there, throught you thought that the presence of the latter was not entirely because his fondness to the Inner Circle.

You took a moment to look around you and letting the sight sink. They were all happy, everyone was talking about something and everyone had a smile on their faces. It was refreshing being in such a familiar occasion, but somehow you couldn't help but feel a bit of melancholy.

Feyre had found a beautiful family. Not perfect, because no one was perfect, but she had found people who loved her and would do anything for her. They would do anything for each other, and even if being Feyre's sister made you part of the group you knew you would never be more than that: Feyre's sister.

You had no special bond with anyone. Only Rhysand and Mor had taken interest in developing a relationship with you, but as you watched them talk with Cassian and Azriel you knew that you could never compare with that. The Winter Solstice was the night for wishes, and you deeply wished to find a family like that one day.

When the time of gifts arrived you were excited. When your family had fallen into poverty there was no money for gifts, so you had spent your birthdays and the holydays as normal days.

You had found out that you loved making gifts. It had something magical the whole searching the right things for everyone and find it. The one yuo were proudest was an enchated satchel for Nesta, where she could put every book she wanted and bring it with her weightless.

You had received gifts from almost everyone. but it was when Mor handed you a box wrapped with expensive, sparkling red silk that your heart skipped a beat. "I think someone is quiet fascinated by you after only few dances." said Mor smugly and she read from who it was from.

You tried to steady your hands and you took the gift and read the little note that was attached to it.

"A reminder that flames are the apotheosis of beauty if shaped by the right person. Happy Solstice, Eris."

You slowly unwrapped the delicate silk and opened the box. Your eyes widened as you caught what was inside. Everyone's attention was on you as you took the glass case that was inside the box and hold it in your hand in front of your face.

You felt everyone's breath stopping as you stared at the beautiful rose made of fire that burned inside the glass.

The glass was warm, and the fire was perfectly shaped as a rose, forever burning on its own. Something inside you flickered, something gold, soft that a moment before was not there. You didn't know what to say as every word disappeared from your mind. It was breathtaking. The beauty of it could not be compared to anything else you had ever seen.

"At least he has good taste for gifts." Mor commented crossing her arms.

You put the glass case on the table in front of you and quickly looked away from it, giving a Mor a tight smile. "What? Having second thoughts?" you said ironically to her, needing to change subject.

She snorted. "Hardly."

"Let's just appreaciate the kind gesture." Rhysand said with an amused smile. "Thanks to you we have his alliance back, let's celebrate that."

It didn't go unnotice to you your sister's tight expression. From the way she looked at Rhysand and the smile he gave her you were sure they were having a mental conversation, about what you didn't know.

The night passed smoothly, there had been no other awkward gifts thankfully. At some point your eyes threatened to close on their own so you excused yourself and went into your room.

You put the rose on the vanity in your room, and for a moment stared at it like it could explode. If Eris wanted to mess with your head then he was doing a great job.

You scoffed, fuck you Eris.

You swear you heard his low laugh deep inside you.

***

When a letter in red paper came for you with only a place and a time written on it you stormed into Rhysand's office, guilt eating you alive. You opened the door without so much as knocking, and told him everything.

You told him how Eris saved you during the war, how you had cured him because yes your power didn't go away but "my sisters lied too so you can't be angry at me". You showed him your hands and arms. You told him that Eris knew about your power but never said anything or threated you, and in the end you told him about the bargain you made.

"You were letting yourself burning from the inside out because you were scared to hurt someone?" Rhysand's voice was not in any way angry, actually he seemed more concerned.

You shrugged, your eyes fell on the ground feeling his heavy gaze on you. "You were all so happy after the war. My sisters still needed me and I didn't want to ruin anyone's happiness with this problem. I would have figured out something, eventually."

Rhysand stared at you silently, a mischievious spark in his violet eyes. "And you thought that making a bargain with Eris was the solution?"

His question wasn't accusatory. It sounded like Rhysand was curious about your maddness, and honestly you were too. There was no right answer to make it sound reasonable, so you gave him part of the truth.

"When he chose me to dance the responsability to keep him as an ally had fallen on me, and unfortunately I couldn't seduce him like Nesta would have done." You shrugged. "Cassian was right, Eris seems to enjoy to annoy me. When he proposed to train me I took it as my chance to keep him close to the Night Court and keep him close as an ally."

"And are you comfortable with this...arrangement?" Rhysand asked you carefully.

You noticed how his reaction had been completely different from what you had expected. You thought that he would look at you like the stupid girl you felt, almost pitying you for talking about Eris like he was not a monster. Instead, Rhysand had just listened, nodded and gave you an encouraging smile.

"Yeah, I'll need one of you to winnow me where we'll meet, but I would prefer if you tell no one but Feyre and Azriel." You said and saw in Rhysand's eyes that he understood the double meaning of your words:

"I don't want Mor to find out, for now."

"It can be easily arranged, but since you'll start to spend time on your own around Prythian I must ask you to start training with Cassian and Azriel whenever you can." he said kindly sitting on the chair behind his desk.

You tilted your head with a grin. "Are you asking as my High Lord or as a worried friend?"

"What about as a brother?" he matched your grin. "An overbearing one, as Feyre calls me."

You chuckled. "I'll start training with them tomorrow."

***

"Your brooding silence is louder than Nesta and Cassian during Winter Solstice." You snorted watching with almost disgust all the flowers around you. The border between the Spring's court and the Summer's court was a explosion of yellow, pink, orange and purple. All colours that made your eyes almost hurt.

You felt Azriel's death glare on your back as you pointly avoided his eyes. "I still have to understand why Rhys think letting you be alone with him is a good idea."

"Because Rhysand would be a hypocrite to deny me of this lovely bargain." An amused, deep voice said behind you making your toes curling in your shoes.

You turned around and saw Azriel watching Eris like he was imaginaing stabbing him, and somehow you knew you were right. "I'll stay with you." said the shadowsinger as if Eris' presence just reminded him how a bad idea that was.

"Tempting, but I'm not usually one who like to share." Said Eris with a cocky grin before looking at you. "Unless the lady wants to."

You narrowed your eyes at him, crossing your arms. It was annoying how most of the times you didn't know if Eris was flirting with you or trying to rile you up.

"Go Az." You looked at the shadowsinger with a kind smile. "I'll be fine."

"I'll be back in few hours." Azriel said to you before winnowing away, giving Eris one last warning look.

You watched for a few seconds the place where Azriel had been standing and took a deep breath. "Over the centuries I forgot how dramatic he could be."

You snapped your eyes on Eris, making a good effort to not notice how his green outfit made his eyes look of an impossible shade of emerald.

"He just doesn't trust you." you said ironically. "I wonder why."

Eris gave you a feline grin before offering you his arm. "There is a lake near by, shall we?"

You studied his arm with wary eyes. Inside you there were two sides that were fighting each other. The first one wanted to give him the chance that no one ever did, to trust him and gain his trust back, to get to know the Eris that if you tried hard you could see under his mask; the other part was yelling at you to not be stupid, that if the Inner Circle didn't trust him after five centuries there were very good reasons, and the worst part was that you knew most of them, and still it wasn't enough to make you feel even a hint of disgust.

So you had to pretend.

"Let's just get started." you hoped that your cold mask was at least half good as his as you walked past him toward the lake, ignoring his low chuckle.

***

From your sister's story of her training you had expected everything but this.

Eris had made you sat right in front of the lake with your leg crossed, your back straight and your eyes closed while he did the same beside you and gave you instruction with his voice.

He had told you to focus on your breathing while you had to map the environment around you just with your hearing. Was it even possible?

Spoiler: no.

Everytime you heard a sound your mind would wander around with random thoughts that become a deep dive inside your head. The birds over you reminded you of the days that your father used to bring you around the forest close to your old estate. Who knew who lived there now? Maybe the humans had chosen to let it fall to ruin after what happened to them. Maybe they would think it was cursed.

That's it. You had forgotten to calm your breathing. Again.

"Awknowledge the thoughts that came into your mind and let them go." Eris' voice vibrated right inside you making you shift slightly on your place.

"I thought you were going to teach me how to control my power, not how to control my breathing." You scoffed.

"Who said anything about training your power in the bargain?" He said almost bored.

Your eyes snapped open and you looked at him incredulous. He was smirking. That bastard was smirking and you wanted nothing more than to slap that grin away from his face.

"If you do not train me I could easily lose control and burn everything around us to ashes." You said slowly, angry that he thought he could trick you. "And you with it."

Eris opened his eyes, his grin only grew wider as he looked at you. "Oh, but that would be quite the sight." You clenched your jaw as your skin started to pinch with heat. He gave you an amused look before closing his eyes again and taking a deep breath. "Relax, Little Flame. We need to make you burst out that mass of power that you had been foolishly sealed inside you, but I won't make you do it until I know it's not completely safe for you."

"And completely safe for this place." You added while you fought the blush that was growing on your cheeks at the thought that Eris had just said that he wanted you safe.

You saw him shrugging, his eyes remained shut. "Helion wouldn't mind a little renovation." You scoffed rolling your eyes. How could he be so calm? You had expected to learn how to control your fire, and instead you were struggling to control even your breathing. "Believe it or not, but I'm trying to help you. Close your eyes."

His firm tone made you ashamedly tightening your thighs. You bit the inside of your cheek to prevent you from doing something stupid, like talk back and made him use that tone again.

You closed your eyes and took a deep breath, trying to calm the heat that was starting to grow at the pit of your stomach, which you were sure wasn't due your flames.

"You were born human, but no one taught you how to be a High Fae when the cauldron Made you. Your body is stronger, faster. Your sight, hearing, and nose are sharper." Eris' explanation hit something very precise inside you. It was true, no one had ever stopped to explain to you how to use those new abilities. And it was fine, you had never really asked, knowing that as the older sister you should have to figure it out on your own. "We are at the border between Summer and Spring, with only your nose you should be able to tell where the border exactly is, but lets start easy. Use all your senses but the sight."

His calm and warm voice made it sound simple, and you believed him. It wasn't a even-a-child-can-do-it type of simple, it was more like a your-body-can-naturally-do-that type of simple.

You spent another hour like that, and by the end of it you were smiling broadly. You had successfully used all your new senses, and you were mesmerized by Eris' patience. Not once he had rushed you or had seemed to be tired.

"You're smiling." your head snapped toward him and you couldn't help the look of surprise that grew on your face. "You've never smiled like that when I was around."

You watched him with a hint of michievous in your eyes. As soon as you had successfully told him where the border was he had instructed you to stand in front of the lake and try to smell the animals around you. "You've never been silent around me before."

Eris laughed. The redhead in front of you, the Heir of Autumn, the General of the Autumn Court's army actually laughed and didn't incinerated you for your words.

It was an awful lie what you had said. His voice was probably the most beautiful sound you had ever heard, and you wondered if he laughed because he knew that deep down.

Cauldron, I hope not.

"Tell me if you sense some creatures in the lake." Eris smirked crossing his arms over his chest. "I'll gift you with more silence in the meantime."

You playfully rolled your eyes and took a step closer to the lake.

Deep breath.

Empty mind.

Eyes closed.

You felt the bird above you, the deers at your left, deep in the Summer's forest and even the rabbits beyond the Spring's border. But nothing came from the lake in front of you. Confused you opened your eyes and tried to catch some glimps of fishes or other creatures.

"Nothing." You said tilting your head a bit confused. "I don't think there is something in this lake."

"Good." Eris grinned michievously. "Then put your hands in the water and let your fire out."

You felt your eyebrows hitting your hairline as you widened your eyes and looked at him incredulous. "I am absolutely not."

"You absolutely are." he quickly remarked.

"What if there are fishes in there? I cannot kill them." You gestured to the pool of water in front of you, trying to understand what he intented.

"You said there is nothing in there." He shrugged becoming serious. "You need to start trusting your senses. There might still be days where you need to let your power out and you'll need to scan the area quickly to make sure no one is around."

His words carried something too personal for you to let them go. Was he speaking for personal experience? You wanted to talk back, you wanted to ask him if there were creatures in the lake, but something inside you stirred.

Eris might be the only one who could understand you, who knew what you were going through. He was the oldest son of Beron, you wondered what kind of pressures he had to live with. You wondered if he too had to learn how to use his fire beside a lake to not hurt anyone.

You slowly crounched on your feet and even slower took your gloves away. The burned flesh on your hands were red with remains of the green sticky cream that Madja had given you. The cold water send shivers of pure relief through all your body.

"You want me to light a fire under water..." You said skeptical looking at Eris over your shoulder.

"Darling, I'm positive your power could light a fire at the bottom of the ocean, if wield properly." You looked away from his lazy grin as your stomach twisted at his new nickname.

Water or not water you had to understand now how to call the fire at you. For weeks the flames had been burning all your body no-stop, you just needed to focus them in your hands.

"I do not suppose to know you, but I might guess that your power usually answer to your anger." he was standing behind you like you hadn't a burning fire inside you ready to explode, like you weren't a danger for him. "Focus that sweet mind of yours toward what anger you most."

You.

The answer was quick in your mind.

Eris Vanserra had the ability to make you angry with just a look, and there were so many reasons that you couldn't focus on just one. It made you angry when he used his mocking tone with you. It made you angry when he used a gentle tone with you. It made you angry when he looked at you like you were the only person in the room, and it made you angry when he avoided your gaze in a room full of people.

It made you angry knowing what he did to Mor. It made you angry that there were times when you didn't care. It made you angry that you thought that the male in front of you could never do shuch thing. It had made you angry that he had saved you. But you were even angrier when he hadn't seek you out after the battle.

Eris Vanserra made you angry because he didn't make you angry at all. He made you feel frustrated, amused, annoyed, flustered and seen, and you were angry because you shouldn't feel those things. Not with him.

You felt it then. You felt hot flames rising from your skin and you imagined that the water in front of you were your feelings, and they needed to burn. So, they burnt.

Bright, red fire appeared underwater around your hands and the water in front of you started to boil. You let it all out. Every flame you had pushed down in those months was now left free.

It felt so good to finally let it go. The flames were circling all your arms, from your shoulders down your elbows and to your hands. You had missed the warmt that came from inside your body, the ethernal sensation that no cold could ever touch your skin, never again.

***

Eris had never known an enchanting sight as the one he had in front of him now. Your flames were all around you while from the lake it was rising a cloud of steam that soon enough would catch someone's attention.

He felt your rage through the bond and everything you had kept inside. The steam of power that you were letting out was huge, destructive, beautiful.

He watched silently as your fire stopped and you let yourself fall back, sitting on the burned grass and staring the water with emotionless eyes. He dared to tuck softly the bond, trying to understand what you were feeling, then you laughed, and something gold flickered inside him at that sound.

It was a laugh that could make him burn courts to the ground for the chance to hear it again. It was the laugh that at some point he had dreamed while Under the Montain. It was the laugh of hope that no matter if people like Amarantha, Beron or the King of Hybern ruled merciless, there were still people with enough strenght to laugh.

"I've never felt so free in a long time." you almost whispered to yourself. You stared at your hands and Eris let out a sigh of relief as he saw that the skin was completely healed.

He saw as you took a deep breath and closed your eyes tilting your head back toward the sky, and Eris felt the need to make you stop looking so fucking perfect while he had no right to enjoy this view.

He cleared his throat bringing his hands behind his back. "Can I dare to ask what or who you were thinking? I wouldn't want to find myself in the middle of the two of you."

You gave him a indecipherable look. "Cassian's habit to steal my breakfast."

Eris didn't hold the scoff that escaped his lips. It was clearly a lie, but he understood that. He was no one for you, there was no reason for you to trust him with your thoughts, so he didn't push, even if his stomach twisted in a payinful knot.

He smelled a light scent far behind him, and he knew that was time for you to return back at home. "We should go back before the shadowsinger cut my throat."

He turned around, needing to stop that moment before he started to believe things that couldn't be true. Not yet.

"Wait." your voice stopped him and he curiously turned around to look at you as you stood up and brushed of the grass from your dress. You walked closer to him with a steady look that made him equally unsteady. "It's time for my part of the bargain. My question."

He rose slightly his eyebrows, surprised by your sudden determination. "Go ahead."

He saw as you tried to organize your thoughts, crossing your arms as to make you more secure of yourself. "Is this side of yours part of the mask?"

Eris tilted his head, a bit confused by your question. "This side?" What were you seeing in him? What did he let slip?

"Yes, this side." You gestured with your hands at his whole person. "You, helping me and not being a total arrogant. You always make sure to make the others doubt your intentions, to doubt you. While...while the one I have in front of me is not the same male I heard the others talk about."

Eris stood there for a moment, looking into your eyes. He heard steps behind him approach, steps of someone who usually doesn't want to be heard. He slowly reached out a hand, and tuck some hair behind your ear and he smirked as he heard your breath caucht in your throat.

"Maybe I'm just manipulating you." He whispered, knowing he had few more seconds to play with you. If he couldn't have you for himself, he at least could have those reactions from you. "Maybe I want you to think I'm the good guy to use you against your precious Inner Circle. It would be quite the revenge."

"You are not moved out of revenge." Your response left him speechless for a moment. "If you wanted revenge then half of Prythian would be death."

"I could convince you to kill them for me." he stated back. He had let his hand lingering behind your ear, and now he let it slowly trace down the curve of your neck.

You breath had become clearly shorter, he could feel your heart beating through your chest, but your face betrayed nothing. He could see something flicker in your eyes, the only thing you couldn't control, but the look you were giving him was caution.

It was a game now, seeing how far he needed to go to convince you he was indeed the bad guy. Not to you. Never to you. But to everyone else. He wasn't above killing to gain what he wanted. He had lied, killed, manipulated and swore false oath to ensure the security of his people, but for you? He would kill with his bare hands an entire court to give you a throne, and it terried him.

"I told you, I won't kill for you." your voice snapped him back from his mind. You grabbed his wrist with your hand, fingers still hot with fire, and shoved it away from your neck. "You didn’t-“

“It’s time to go.” A voice cold as death stopped you in mid sentence.

Eris didn’t acknowledge the shadowsinger behind him, keeping his eyes on you. “But we were having so much fun.”

“Step away from her.” Your eyes snapped on Azriel and something twisted inside Eris as he watched you smiling at the shadowsinger and walking toward him.

Will he ever be the one receiving that smile? Will you ever walk toward him that happily?

He watched as you took Azriel’s arm and the shadows started to grow around you, ready to winnow away.

“Little flame.” Eris called after you. Your eyes found his over the wall of shadows that was forming around you. It was time for the answer, he guessed. “No, it’s not.”

Your eyes widened, and it was a pity, seriously, that he couldn’t see the rest of your face before you disappeared, because he knew it would be hilarious.

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[wearysparrows]

Flesh of my Flesh

ao3/masterlist

Part 1 / Part 2/ Part 3 (here)

Summary: You play a game of tag in the forest with your closest friend, Sylus. You eat at a local diner in the dead of night. You dream of consuming him.

CW: implied afab reader but no pronouns used, no use of 'Y/N', reader is MC, primal chase, you play tag with Sylus, depictions of eating, a diner date, eyeball licking but its in a dream, cigarettes, not beta read, minor depiction of Sylus torturing someone 5.8K

A/N: Please mind the tags. The latter portion of this work is inspired by this lovely piece by @relentlessconqueror.

In the serene dark of the forest, you walked next to Sylus. The bodies of the birches and firs grew so tall into the night that they nearly blotted out the light of the moon overhead. A wetness hung on the air, the kind that fed the moss under your feet and the fungi that erupted from it. The soft earth was pliant underneath your steps, with a springy return to it that aided your stride. Sylus had given you hold of his arm, lest you stray from him in the darkness – as if such a thing were possible. You glanced at the man whose arm you held, the leather of his jacket somehow warm under your fingers, despite the chill in the air. A black cigarette hung from his lips, its own orange moon in his mouth. He returned your gaze, taking the cigarette from his lips into two of his fingers. He exhaled smoke from his nostrils.

“Sylus,” you called, though he was already looking at you. He stopped, pausing the both of you. When his name fell from your lips, tilted his head, offering you a questioning upturn of the corners of his mouth in return. You were comfortable enough to make your childish need known to him, and that he would likely indulge you. After all, you were more similar than you had ever realized before. He leaned down towards you, as if to better catch your words. His hair fell over his forehead.

“I want to play.” 

On the distant highway, a car passed, and the light of its headlamps cut into the trees. For a moment, Sylus’s eyes were illuminated. They reflected the light in a way that was inhuman, a flash of the yellow-green reflective organ behind his iris – so brief you wondered if it had been real. At the Hunter’s Academy, you had dissected the eye of a Wanderer for an anatomy course. Lying behind its retina was the organ that reflected light back onto the eye – the tapetum lucidum –  allowing increased visibility in the night. Common in nocturnal creatures. You knew humans lacked this organ. You swallowed. His eyes never left yours.

“What would you like to play?”

You took a step back from him, and he took one towards you, closing the distance between you before it had even had the chance to occur. The smile hadn’t gone from his face, and he raised an eyebrow, as if sensing your intention without the need for the passing of words between you. You pointed at him, your fingertip brushing his chest.

“Let’s play tag. You’re it.”

Sylus nodded without a second thought, snuffing out his cigarette into the portable ashtray on his keys. He returned it to his pocket.

“I’ll give you a ten second head start, then.”

Sylus was being courteous, you knew. You were strong – light on your feet from years of hunting Wanderers. You were quick, too. No stranger to sprinting, with a lung capacity that rivaled most individuals of your size. But Sylus was a big man, with long, powerful legs. If he wanted to, he could outstride you in seconds. It wouldn’t be fun for either of you if he caught you immediately, though. He would give you a chance.

“One,”  he said, voice teasing, the number long and drawn out. As he spoke, you saw the liquid change in his demeanor, the preparedness of his body to launch itself into the hunt, no longer a man at rest, but a beast prepared to strike.

  You turned on your heel, pushing yourself into a run on the spring of the damp earth beneath you. No particular direction called to you – you simply went opposite of Sylus. Your blood coursed through your newly working limbs, heating you outward from your core and into the swing of your arms, the movement of your legs. Your breaths came in practiced counts, and the exhilaration of your own prowess made you feel even lighter on your feet. You couldn’t quite run at full speed, though – your vision alternated between the ground before you and the space in front of you, avoiding rocks and roots, the tree limbs that snatched at your clothes, slicing at your skin. The weather was just cool enough that you could see the condensation leave your nose with each outward breath. Under your jacket, you felt the first wetness of the sweat of exertion.

You strained your ears to hear beyond your own breathing and heartbeat. Trees passed you by in a blur of greys and greens, an endless sea of the same repeated images. You had already strayed far from having any idea of your location. There was no point in taking note. As you ran, you counted. Ten seconds had long passed, but you couldn’t catch wind of Sylus. On you went, knowing that looking behind you would only stall your progress.  You began to feel the familiar burn in your muscles, the result of pushing yourself from zero to one-hundred in the span of a moment. The red gem you wore around your neck – a gift from Sylus – bounced up and down against your chest, trying to escape its chain. You clasped it in your fist to still its movements. It was dark, and you could see less than a foot in front of you. You wondered if Sylus was toying with you, staying behind to let you run yourself ragged before he would spring himself on you at the last moment. You relaxed your pace at the thought.

 Just as you began to slow to ease the tension, your ears pricked at a sound – footfalls growing closer behind you, the brush of clothing against itself. Your heart picked its pace back up, your skin alight with the feeling of being stalked in the dark. You pushed yourself harder, willed yourself to go faster, but the sounds behind you kept their quiet pace, inching ever closer. For a time, the distance remained the same between the two of you. Even if you increased your pace, forcing your feet to pound the ground even harder, he maintained the distance. Not closing it, not letting up. 

Knowing he could gain on you easily at his leisure, you decided to make a turn, trying to throw off his line of action. You made an immediate right, digging your heels in to change your directory, leaping over a fallen bough before you. You landed softly on the plush dirt. You felt yourself beginning to tire from the constant pace, from the effort of avoiding rocks and roots, the changes in the elevations of the earth. Still, you ran from him. You thought you heard the click of the metal of his belt, the sounds of his steps somehow even closer than when you had changed your direction. Running miles over the grounds of Linkon was nothing for you, but the thinness of the air and the unevenness of the ground had you breathing through your mouth, panting, feeling a pack of black dogs nipping at your heels. The saliva on your tongue was thick, the cold air drying out your teeth. So long had you known Sylus that you could sense his presence behind you, keeping pace at a distance he chose. But it was different, singular in its oppressive need to catch you. You knew you shouldn’t – that it would mean the end of the game – but you chanced a look backwards over your shoulder as you ran. The need to see your pursuer overrode the need to escape. He was close, so close you could almost make out all of his features. But most striking of all were his eyes, stark pinpoints of crimson in the darkness. They seemed to glow, red and hot with the chase. A primitive fear lanced through you, and rational thought drained out from your feet, soaking into the dirt. He was reaching for you, going to get you, to consume you – teeth around your neck, over and over, your jugular crushed under his hot breath, no more than flesh between his teeth. The new adrenaline of your fear gave you one final push forward, but you hadn’t been looking in front of you. A root reached up from the earth, catching the toe of your boot, sending you careening towards the ground. 

You tried to propel your body forward away from his grasp while in the air, but to no avail. His hand caught you around your middle, easily eclipsing your stomach. Primal panic pumped through you, the feeling of an animal just shy of the claws of a predator, dangling from the teeth of the moment. You heard yourself yelp involuntarily, and turned towards him, scrabbling at his hands and arms with your nails, your legs kicking. The knowledge of your relationship was momentarily forgotten, replaced only with the need to flee. The force of your resistance sent the two of you sprawling, and you felt Sylus close his arms around your entirety as you fell. He landed with a soft thud against the earth, the wind just knocked from his lungs. You were straddling him, head pressed into his chest from firm his grip on you. Something reached your ears, and you realized it was the sound of his laughter, not triumphant, but an exhale of exhilaration.

“You’re pretty good at running away. But I’ve got you, now.”

His voice was a rasp against your skin. He made no move to let you up. You pressed your nose into his chest, unabashed in inhaling his scent. The smoke of the cloves clung heavily to him still, the citrus of his cologne – but most prominent was the masculine smell of his sweat, fresh from the well of his skin. It was somehow different this time (for you knew all of his scents), laced with some layer of excitement, the rush of his blood, the pleasure of the chase. It was, in some sense, the smell of his desire for you. Your own desire, what you thought must be of another kind entirely, clawed its way through your belly, a wanton creature, slick and wet inside your innards. He surrounded you in every way, and you were so empty of him. You made move to sit up, and he let you, hands drifting to your waist, instead. Underneath you, in the moonlight, it was as if it was you who had caught him. 

His jacket was unzipped, and his black shirt underneath rode up, exposing the taut flesh of his abdomen to your eyes, decorated with a trail of white hair that disappeared into his pants. There was a tension in his neck, you saw. His tendons slid over each other under his skin, his jaw working at nothing. His Adam's apple cast a strong shadow on his neck. What little light the moon shone on him reflected the sheen of his sweat on his forehead, his hair brilliantly white in its light. He was totally still under your observations, save for his eyes, which darted around each contour of your face, pupils just nearly eclipsing that infernal, otherworldly red. You saw his breaths come through his nose, the rise and fall of his broad chest underneath you. Unthinkingly, you spread your hands out on the skin that was open to you, splaying them open on his abdomen. There was a stutter of a breath that he took through his mouth, this time. His skin was still slightly damp, warm underneath the cooling skin of your fingertips. You pushed his shirt up, up, until his chest was fully exposed. He made no move to stop you. As your heart came back into your chest, so too did the reality of the situation. You, astride the lap of your closest friend, his shirt exposing his flesh, a pale silhouette against the dark of the earth beneath him. His chest still heaved, no longer with physical exertion, but with something else. His thumbs dug into the crests of your hips. Unable to produce anything else, you managed a single word.

“Sylus.”

You felt his arousal clearly underneath you.

Your mind worked feverishly to still itself. It wasn’t because it was you – just the nature of two bodies against one another, the pump of adrenaline, the intimacy of closeness with another thing with the pulse of life in it. A biological response. This was not the first time this kind of thing had occurred between you, nor was it likely to be the last. Sylus never addressed it, so neither did you. On top of him here, there was no corpse of you – only the delicate satin of the darkness. A great indulgence and a sense of restraint all at once. You could never let those threads snap.

And so you took his shirt by the hem, and pulled it back into its place, shielding the ghost of him from your prying eyes. Sylus, ever following the whims of your strong and strange moods, sat up, wrapping his arms around you. He lifted the two of you to a standing position with only the power of his legs, and set you gingerly to your feet. The ease with which he lifted you never failed to reignite a sense of exhilaration in your blood. That blood rushed eagerly to your head, and you saw spots before you could formulate further thought. When you finally blinked them away, Sylus was kneeling in front of you. You spoke downwards, in the direction of the broadness of his back.

“Why are you kneeling?”

You heard the breathlessness that still tinged your voice from your game. You felt a tug at your ankles. His fingers were deftly reworking the laces of one of your boots. He stood back to his full height before responding, having righted the lace.

“Your shoe came untied when you fell. I can’t have you falling again on my watch, now can I?” 

His former statement was matter of fact, as if there were nothing strange in the nature of him on his knees, adjusting your shoes. He looked at you with those same eyes, full of a mirth you couldn’t source. There was a ceaseless yearning in your chest, the need to reach for him, to be consumed by him, to consume him. The game of tag only made the wound weep harder. It was clear there was affection in his actions, but of what kind, you were afraid to know. You wanted to ask him; do you love me? If so, how? In what way?

But instead, you conjured only this:

“Sylus, would you kill for me?”

You saw the rare flicker of surprise over his features, then the return of his smile that came more and more easily, around you. He answered the invisibility of your ache, rich and warm.

“My light, I already have.”

You sat across from Sylus in a booth seat, a wobbly table separating you. He had brought you to this diner on his bike – the only place that was open so late at night in a small town like this. The interior was charmingly out of date, with wood paneling lining the lower halves of the walls, the upper portion of which had probably at some point been white. Now, it was an aged ivory, colored by smoke. In the center of the diner, a traditional wrap around bar curled, complete with stools, though no other patrons graced it. The two of you were the only customers. The red leather of the booth seat creaked underneath your movements as you adjusted yourself to be more comfortable. You fiddled with a leaf of the fake plant that lived at the end of the table against the wall. It stalwartly protected the salt and pepper shakers in its shade.

Your eyes drifted to Sylus, who was focused on you. Having your attention on him, he tapped the top of your hand with his index finger.

“Hungry? You should eat something, sweetie.”

You took a moment to appraise the state of your body. You were hungry. Sylus had worked diligently to bring back the appetite that had left you along with your family before you met him. There was always food, even when you rejected it. Slowly, he had you eating on a regular schedule again. It showed in the new definition in your muscles, in the energy that prickled under your skin. That residual fog hardly plagued you, now. You nodded, flipping up the hand he had tapped, opening your palm to him. He stroked it idly with two fingers. You grasped them between your thumb, index, and middle, trapping them in a cage. 

“What about you? Are you hungry?” 

You tugged on his fingers. He watched the movement as he answered.

“I’ll eat if you will eat.”

A  non-committal answer, but one you would accept. Sylus rarely expressed base needs – I’m hungry, I’m tired – but he certainly did inquire after yours on the regular. You flipped his hand over with your fingers, pinning it down. He met your eyes again, raising his free hand to signal the waitress over. She drifted out of the center bar and towards you. A waifish sort of thing, with an air of confidence about her that came with age. Soft blonde hair, a delicately sloping nose. The uniform she wore was baby blue, with white lapels and buttons. Antiquated by anyone's measure, sure, but cute. She regarded you with an amiable smile, hardly seeming to acknowledge Sylus’s presence.

“Can I start you off with some coffee?”

She had a strange lilt to her voice, like it was an effort to speak with any sort of inflection. You glanced at Sylus, who merely shrugged. It was the dead of the night – but this was normal for you, now. You returned your eyes to the waitress. 

“Sure, thanks. Um,”

You were about to ask for a menu, seeing as there wasn’t one lining the walls, nor one in front of you, but Sylus commandeered the attention of the waitress, and was listing off a rather egregious number of breakfast dishes. You surmised he must have been here before – or he was simply making demands. They were both equally as likely. The waitress scribbled furiously on her notepad, nodding as he spoke. She offered you a smile full of brilliantly white, straight teeth before disappearing into the kitchen. It was deadly silent in the diner. You scrutinized Sylus. You hadn’t even had a chance to consider what you might like to eat before he had taken the initiative. You tapped his hand, reflecting his earlier actions.

“Did you order the whole menu, or what?”

Sylus sat back against the cushion of the booth. It was too small for him – his shoes were touching yours under the table, and very nearly his knees, as well. He tapped your foot with his own. Once, twice. Your stomach flipped with each touch.

“Would you like me to?”

You sighed, relenting. There wasn’t any winning with him – but you weren’t exactly losing, either. He was no stranger to your food preferences, this you knew. Sometimes, he had to remind you of something you didn’t like while you were mid-order. All the time you had spent together had allowed him to know you better than you knew yourself, in some regards. Sylus was shedding himself of his jacket when the waitress returned with the carafe of coffee, and you thanked her quietly, unsure if she had even heard you, for she disappeared as soon as she came. You filled both of your cups, then stopped just short when filling Sylus’s. You nudged the cup at him.

“Black or room?”

You always asked him, even when you knew what his answer would be. 

“It doesn’t make a difference to me.”

Sylus’s fingers were about to close around the rim of the cup, but you swatted him away, sliding the cup towards yourself instead. Sylus parted his lips into a smile.

“Kitten has claws.”

You rolled your eyes in his direction, reaching for the sugar and creamers. One packet of sugar and two creamers went into his cup. He watched all of this with marked interest, fingers interlocked beneath his chin, supporting it. You took the spoon from your own coffee, and used it to stir his. You slid the cup back to him, and he caught it in his left hand. He brought it wordlessly to his lips, seeming not to care about the still piping temperature of it. You watched as his plush lips disappeared around the rim of the cup, hiding all of his features from you, save for his eyes. They stayed interlocked with your own as he sampled your concoction.

You tilted your head at him, and gestured to the coffee cup as it left his lips and returned to the table.

“How is it?”

He was quiet for a moment. His gaze, still locked with yours, only seemed to intensify. You felt as if he were skinning you with them. Salt on so many wounds. The hair on the back of your neck stood on end. 

“It’s sweet. Not bad.”

His tone had taken on a sense of languorousness, dark and slow. You swallowed the saliva that had been gathering in your mouth, and were almost certain Sylus was able to catch the sound of it sliding down your throat by the way his gaze drifted to your neck. You couldn’t hold it, and your own eyes drifted to the tiles. They were strange. Black and white, checkered. The more you tried to look at them, the more they blurred together. They swayed in your vision. You concluded that looking at Sylus was the better option. He was sipping at the coffee you had made him, his phone open on the table. 

“No service out here.” 

He murmured the statement into his cup. You leaned over the table, peeking at his phone. He was right – not a single bar. 

“Scared?”

You nudged his knees apart under the table, and put one foot in his lap. His hand immediately came to rest on your ankle, and squeezed idly up your calf. He blinked at you, lips curling up on one side.

“Are you? All alone out here, with a bad man like me. No one to call.”

As he spoke, his evol pinned your wrists together in your lap. He was grinning. You made a show of pretending to struggle against your bonds. In the back of your mind, you knew that despite your own strength, you wouldn’t have been able to break them. He had held you captive just like this more than once when you first met – and so did the linkage. The memory was fresh and distant all at once.

“What will I do now that the one person I’d call for help has turned on me, and is holding me captive?”

You were smiling, teasing, and saw something come over Sylus’s features. Something he tried to school into his usual expression. Something you couldn’t place. Then suddenly he was standing, and instead of sitting across from you – he sat down next to you, throwing an arm around your shoulders. The bonds of his evol were gone without a trace. His warmth seeped into you, his sudden proximity finding your heart thudding away at its cage. His casual closeness was a delicious form of torture. You wanted more than anything to put your hand on the meat of his thigh. It touched yours, flush. He spoke, leaning his head towards your ear.

“I don’t need bonds to keep you near me anymore. Isn’t that right?”

You watched as Sylus’s hand crawled into your lap. He wrapped his fingers clean around your wrists, connecting them with his thumb, replacing the shackle of his evol. You could feel the calluses of his palms, the roughness of his hands. Your breath was stuck in your throat, the blood rushing to your ears and face. You lowered your voice to a whisper, feeling narrowly aware of the fact that you were technically still in public.

“I don’t mind being bound to you. By you. As long as you’re by my side.”

There was a shift in Sylus’s body, a spike of energy radiating off of him, and he leaned impossibly closer to you. So close that you could hear his lips part from each other as he prepared to speak. The sound of the footsteps of the waitress returning seemed to stop him. He let some of his weight off of you – but his fingers didn’t release your wrists. You didn’t want him to. It wasn’t like being shackled – it was secure. Safe. Protected. You forced your eyes from the pretty bouquet of your hands and his, and craned your neck around Sylus’s big body to see what was being brought to you. The waitress had arrived with a whole damn cart of food, steaming hot dishes of all types of breakfast items. Omelettes, sausages, pancakes, bacon, waffles, hash browns, toast – the works. She was organizing them neatly on the table with practiced ease. The combination of the sight and the smell made your mouth water. Sylus thanked her, and you caught the undercurrent of enthusiasm in his tone. He gave your wrists a final squeeze before releasing them from his grasp. You mourned their absence despite yourself. 

You turned towards Sylus at the same time he turned towards you.

“How are we going to–”

“Eat anything–”

You stopped yourself as you realized your sentence was crashing into his – or was it his into yours? Sylus put a set of silverware in your hands, wrapped in a cloth napkin. He started again.

“Eat anything you’d like.”

You appraised the food before you. Sylus seemed to be waiting patiently for you to make the first choice – so you picked something that looked good at random. A stack of pancakes, with a generous pat of butter on top. Perhaps too many pancakes. You unrolled your silverware, and spread the butter on top of them.

 Satisfied that you were eating, Sylus pulled a plate towards himself. It was mostly meat, coupled with a side of eggs. You watched him in your periphery. It was good to see him eat, a sort of vicarious satisfaction. You liked the sound of the click of his teeth on his fork, the movement of the muscles in his jaw. Even the sound of his chewing was good. What you couldn’t eat, Sylus did. You hadn’t initially pinned him for a big eater because of his refined tastes, but you came to find a man his size consumed a considerable amount of food. You ate next to him in relative silence, and his elbow bumped yours, occasionally. Neither of you mentioned it. His thigh hadn’t stopped pressing against yours, either. In reality, the booth was too small for two people to be eating next to each other – but again, neither of you mentioned it. 

As for the food, nothing was wasted, and you came away a little too full. You wiped at your mouth with the cloth napkin, hoping to catch any mess. Sylus had produced a comically large roll of cash from his pocket, and was putting it into the fingers of the waitress, who seemed too shell shocked to know how to respond for a time, and then collected herself, thanking him quietly. Her eyes came back to you, and you sat up a little straighter under her attention. The question of why he couldn’t use his card briefly crossed your mind.

“I hope it’s not too strange of me to say, but the two of you are a beautiful couple.”

You almost instantly found the words to correct her, not wanting Sylus to think you entertained the idea, that you had any misconceptions about your place in his life. No, we’re not dating, he’s my best friend. But Sylus was quick to speak, stopping your statement before it could even start.

“Thanks.”

The waitress nodded, floating away with little clicks on white kitten heels. She wiped the already clean bar with a rag. Your stomach was practically in the soles of your feet. Somehow, his lie scathed more than if he had told her the truth. You knew it was easier than explaining, saving him the effort of articulating the strange closeness of your friendship. Still, it put a slippery hope in your fingers that you had tried so many times to let go of. By now, your hands were permanently imprinted with its shape.

You dreamt of Sylus often. 

Sometimes, these dreams differed little from reality. Mundane happenings, not of any note. Sometimes things were strange, off. Sometimes, you dreamt you were Sylus, sure and strong. A man bent over at the waist before you, somewhere devoid of light. Your evol had already cut out his tongue. There was nothing left, save for a punishment. A cane in your hand. You swung it into his soft abdomen.

Thwack!

Then, against his spine.

Thwack!

He crumpled before you.

But this wasn’t that kind of dream.

You were somewhere achingly familiar – Sylus’s bedroom – or perhaps a cave. Dark and warm. The air warped around you, unable to keep its shape for long. Sylus was holding you around the waist as you straddled him. But his hands were creeping up, locking around your ribcage, lifting you up just so you were looking down at him, directly into his face. There was something peculiar there. Something different. A shadow on his jaw, above his head. When you tried to chase these shapes with your eyes, they dissipated like the smoke from his lungs. You tried to feel them with your skin, instead. You cupped his jaw with your palm. Felt the sharpness of it, the proud bones of his face. But there was that eye. That right eye of his, so irresistible in its pull. It called to you with your own voice – or was it his voice? You couldn’t be sure. His lips weren’t moving, but you heard him, still. Not with words. His feelings merged with yours like cool water trickling from your scalp, down your spine, absorbing into your skin. Impressions, ideas. Memories.

…need me. Use me. Claim me.

His right lid was open and inviting before you. He hardly blinked. It was as if he was waiting for it. Expecting it. Wanted it. His aura was palpable with excitement, breath coming quickly.

You parted your lips, tongue slipping out between them. You closed the distance between his right eye and your mouth. Your tongue met his eye, first the tip, then flat against it. It was wet against wet. Sylus’s hands around your waist squeezed, scratched, but made no move to push you off. He took a great shuddering breath. 

A bizarre copper-salt taste, the tissue more delicate and pliant under your touch than you could have ever imagined. You curled your tongue around it, slipping it under the bottom lid and against his tear duct. He was shifting underneath you, body racked with tension, legs just short of thrashing. But his hands kept you firmly in place. He was making sounds, you realized, with each movement of your tongue. Soft grunts and whines, pleasure and pain indistinguishable from one another. He was hard underneath you.

…take me. All of me, and more. Use me.

Slowly, slowly, you felt your tongue slide into the space behind his eyeball, through its inner corner. It was coming away easily, announcing its new home with the slick, wet sounds of release from Sylus’s socket. It fell away with a schluck, into your waiting mouth, still white hot with the life of him. Without warning, it dissolved, shrinking there in the heat of your throat, until it had melted away like snow, leaving only its essence behind. You swallowed. A sweet, melancholy floral taste. A cavernous pain sat in the center of your hips, a splitting and a reconnection of the sacrum. There was an ache that was deeply satisfied, an emptiness, filled. You were one with him, finally.

Your eyes snapped open in the waking world. 

Sweat was sticking you to the silk of the sheets, and you turned on your side to escape from it. The air felt cool on your back where your body’s fear had soaked through your nightgown. As you turned, you became acutely aware of another body next to yours. This was not your room.

Sylus.

You were in his bed, after all. You feared to wake him with your movements, but he was already turning towards you. You faced each other in the dark. You could just barely make out his features, cast almost blue in the lack of light.

“Are you alright?”

You were certain he hadn’t been sleeping. His voice lacked the roughness that it would take on when he had just woken. His hand brushed the hair from the back of your neck, releasing the heat that was trapped there. You shuddered, involuntarily. 

“I had…a dream. About you.”

You weren’t sure how to quantify it. Neither bad nor good seemed fitting descriptors. 

“What kind of dream?”

His fingers dislodged a lock of hair that your sweat had stuck to your forehead, and then returned to holding the back of your neck. A grip that possessed. You were reminded he could see clearly in the dark, for his eyes had a kind of phosphorescence to them in the deepest of nights. Outside, the rain battered at the windows of Onychinus’s base. 

You weighed the truth of your dream. You and Sylus shared many things, some of which were beyond your understanding. There was a tie there that Sylus couldn’t offer you a full explanation of. You teetered between the fear of his disgust, and your all consuming trust in him. The latter won out.

“It was so strange. I... ate your eye. You were seizing underneath me, in pain or…I don’t know. But you didn’t want me to stop. You held me in place. Told me to keep going.”

Sylus’s fingers stroked the back of your neck, sending a tingling sensation shooting up and down your spine. You adjusted your ankles, rubbing them together under the blanket. His voice was coarse. It melted into the dark, as if it were a part of it, coming from all around you.

“Were you satisfied?”

“I’m…not sure. In the dream, I think so.”

Sylus braced his other hand around your lower back, and drew you to him so that you were laying on his pillow, just above him, your body against his. Your lips hovered just next to his right eye. 

“Then it was a good dream.”

tags: @villain-of-the-dark, @withering-dream

[ekingston]

Hello! So sorry to bother, but have you had any updates on the Word-Stream/Speechify situation?

Just one: like I posted on Xitter and Bluesky last night, as of yesterday afternoon, the links to individual works as they were listed on WordStream are gone from both Google and Bing. Hurray, right? Surely we’re all sick of this whole debacle and there’s far more important things to worry about. If all is well that ends well, surely there’s no need to still be angry.

Well, I am. Here’s why:

When I checked on Wednesday, the links to my own work on WordStream were still listed. So rather than it taking a week after Cliff Weitzman first hid the fanwork from view, it took a little over a week from the moment he first promised privately that they would be deleted. Which, fine. Perhaps Cliff didn’t really know what he was talking about when he gave that timeframe. Or maybe he told a little white lie to create the impression that he always intended to do the right thing. It seems more likely to me, though, that Cliff still believed—even after the backlash he received—that he would get away with honoring only individual takedown requests. Or worse, that he needed just a little bit more time with the stolen material to figure out an alternative way to profit off it—preferably without us noticing, this time.

But who knows? I certainly don’t! All we can do is speculate, because publicly, Cliff Weitzman has remained completely silent on his copyright infringements. All we got was the initial justifications he and his sockpuppet accounts used in comments on the original Reddit and Tumblr posts. After those were so understandably ill-received, Cliff only ever communicated with a few individual authors who contacted him directly and repeatedly, blocking people who addressed the issue on Twitter and quietly distancing himself from WordStream by deleting a blog he’d posted to Speechify.com dated December 20th—where Cliff promoted WordStream’s platform specifically to fanfiction readers. (See my enormous timeline post for details and screenshots of said posts before they were taken down.)

And this is why I’m still angry: As long as Cliff Weitzman faces no real consequences for his actions, he won’t see a need to own up to his mistake; and as long as he’s able to delay taking responsibility, this isn’t over. This didn’t end well.

After all, wasn’t this the next-best scenario for Cliff, second only to him turning WordStream into a (for him) effortless, infinite money-making machine? He took something we provided for free and fed it to AI so he could more easily put it behind a paywall; we found out and protested; Cliff quietly erased all evidence of his crime; and we went—almost equally quietly—away.

I want to make sure you know that I continue to be genuinely amazed and intensely grateful for how quickly the news about WordStream’s copyright infringement was shared—and continues to be shared—throughout fandom, on tumblr in particular. If it hadn’t been for our collective outcry here and on Reddit, WordStream would very likely still be up in its original form, and Weitzman would be reaping the benefits (those subscription prices were steep) today.

But it’s been frustrating to see that, with the exception of mentions in articles on Substack and Fansplaining (the latter of which is a particularly awesome and thorough read on fandom’s decontextualization) and a Fanlore listing, our outrage never really spilled out beyond the safely insulated, out-of-the-way spaces that are tumblr, a handful of subreddits and bluesky. And I believe that—unfortunately—we are collectively responsible for that part, as well.

Most of us seemed content to only spread the word by circulating the same two posts on tumblr. (Have we all given up completely on every other social media platform? Am I the only remaining straggler?) And soon after Cliff Weitzman hid WordStream’s fanfiction category from view, our interest in the issue took a sharp dive even there. Are we genuinely deceived into believing the issue has been fully resolved? Do we truly fail to realize that Weitzman’s refusal to admit that what he did was wrong left the door wide open for the next greed-driven tech bro to wander through? Or is the true naivety in thinking that, as a community, we can keep this kind of attack on fandom from happening again? Has our disillusionment already gotten that bad?

However the situation spins out from here, Cliff’s actions will set a precedent. If we fail to show Cliff and his ilk that attempts to profit off fandom’s unpaid labor have consequences, their tech companies will keep trying until something eventually sticks. They might be a little smarter about it next time; obscure their sources a bit better, maybe leave the titles and the authors’ names off. Or maybe they’ll go a bolder route: maybe next time they cross the line they’ll do it boldly enough for IP holders to take notice and stop tolerating fanwork entirely.

Doesn’t that make you angry, too?

There’s this whole other mess of thoughts I would love to be able to untangle about how commercial influence is contributing to the steady erosion of fandom’s foundations, but I’m tired, and other people have said it all much more eloquently than I ever could. Seriously, go read that article on Fansplaining. Or listen to the podcast version of it. Better yet, as long as you’re wearing your noise-canceling headphones, go listen to a podfic of one of your favorite fandoms’ works, and enjoy the collaborative joy and creativity of the people who Cliff Weitzman refuses to believe exist. (In one of Speechify’s other blogs, Cliff claims there are only 272 podfics on AO3. Would you like to run that ChatGPT prompt again, Cliff?). Honestly, much like Cliff Weitzman’s infuriating denial of the fact that fandom fucking has this covered, thank you very much, there’s so. Many. More. Things for us to talk about. There’s the connotations of WordStream’s dubious ‘upload’ button, for instance, or the fact that the app scraped (and in some cases, allegedly, still lists) copyright-protected original fiction as well, or WordStream’s complete lack of contact information, which is illegal for an internationally operating app. And oh! Has anyone reported more thoroughly on Cliff’s app’s options to ‘simplify’ or ‘modernize’ uploaded works, or—my own very favorite abomination—to translate them into something Cliff calls ‘Gen-Z Language’? Much like his atrocious AI book covers, it would be hilarious, if it didn’t make steam come out of my ears.

Anyway, there it is. I highly recommend you do all of that. And then, if you aren’t familiar with it already, go do some research re: fair use and your rights as the copyright owner of your works. A good number of people commenting on this controversy expressed stunned surprise or fearful hesitation about claiming any sort of ownership of their fanfiction. The more informed we are about our rights, the more willing we will be to defend them.

Please don’t stop writing or sharing your work. If you can’t bring yourself to work on your WIPs today (trust me, I get it), post about this situation instead. Tweets, skeets, whateverthefucks—about WordStream’s theft, about how this reflects on Speechify’s already shady business practices, about how Cliff’s actions and justifications have personally affected you. You’re welcome to share or copy my posts on these platforms, but since Cliff already blocked me, I very much prefer you post your own. If you do, call Cliff Weitzman by his full name and tag or include both WordStream and Speechify to ensure Weitzman will recognize he has both a personal as well as a professional stake in handling the situation with integrity. Leave your concerns in reviews on the Speechify app. (We weren’t provided with a more appropriate place to put them, after all!) Consider calling for a Speechify boycott until Cliff accepts accountability for his actions.

Do avoid making exaggerated claims, and don’t call for physical retaliation against Cliff’s person or his property. We don’t want to give him or Speechify even the weakest of grounds to claim defamation or threats of violence. Focus on the facts: they’re incriminating enough by themselves. Show Cliff that we’re determined to keep bringing up his company’s wrongdoings in public spaces until he demonstrates that he understands why taking these freely shared fanworks and monetizing them was wrong, and takes steps to ensure it won’t happen again.

One last thing—and this is really more of a general reminder—please stop suggesting I handle this situation for you. People have come to me asking for action items. The resulting flashbacks to my days as an office assistant were extremely upsetting. In all seriousness, casting me as some sort of coordinator or driving force behind this backlash actively hurts the cause. Not only does it downplay fandom’s collective efforts, it also makes our message extremely vulnerable. It would be all too easy for Cliff to silence one singular source. Wikipedia will not maintain mentions of this controversy as long as it leads only to Easter Kingston’s attempt to summarize what happened as it was happening. You only know my name because I stumbled upon WordStream’s theft and decided to get my friends involved. I am not more knowledgeable, more skilled or more angrily invested in this issue than you are (or can, or should, be). I draw pictures and I write stories and I worry about the shift I’m seeing in fandom after having been on this ride for even a few pre-livejournal rounds.

I’m not going to stop doing any of those things. But I am going to allow myself to step away for a bit, make my wife dinner, and catch up on our shows.

I trust you’ve got it from here.

[tojiscrack]

wherever you are right now, good morning/evening/night… that was a mouthful, but i’m not sure how else to start this.

it sounds serious, i know, it’s not, don’t worry, but i like being dramatic, haha, you know me ;) i have a small announcement to make — i say ‘small’ ‘cause it really can be done in one or two short sentences, but i’d like to give you some context and reasoning because i care about every single one of you reading this, all 470 of you, and i’d hate to leave you without an explanation.

i’m mainly addressing my LL (liar, liar) readers, ‘cause i seem to have a big following and a large number of people who interact with me because of that piece of work, but this also goes out to the very few people (and i’m not being dramatic when i say very few people, lol) who are loyal readers of SOANO (start of a new obsession).

i am going on hiatus.

yeah, i know, boo, tomatoes, the story was just getting started 😠 , etc, etc.

and i apologise.

genuinely, from the bottom of my heart, i’m truly, deeply sorry.

you’ve been forced to tolerate my extremely sporadic updates that were only just starting to get better (some updates would come weekly, whereas others would take two more weeks, but never an entire month like before). i really am sorry. i know what it feels like to enjoy a story and then be left on a cliffhanger (of sorts?) when the author goes on a hiatus — mini or not.

i think this long message will answer most of the questions you have in mind, the first being ‘how long will you be on hiatus for?’. and i do have a straight answer for that:

five months.

i know, it’s a lot. again, i apologise. i can’t apologise enough, but let’s keep the questions going.

the one i know you’re all wondering — why am i going on hiatus in the first place?

just to be clear (for those of you who have genuinely become close friends with me through interactions) i’m alive, healthy, and well! i’m not falling out of love with writing, i’ve not fallen out of love with LL or SOANO (no matter how slow the updates for the latter seems to be) and i’m not feeling pressured by writing either of these stories for you all!

the reason is quite simple… school :/ exams. MAJOR ones.

when i started writing SOANO, i was around 15 years old (give or take a few?) and i had no major exams at all to focus on. halfway through writing SOANO, i was met with my first set of important exams at 16. for those of you who are not british and/or not aware of the uk education system, GCSE’s are the exams that dictate which sixth-form college you go to. college, as in, not university-college, but the last two years of high school (junior + senior year) that are the only two years of sixthform/college.

when i started writing LL, i was in my first year of college at 17 (this time last year), and so the only ‘major’ exams i had were mock exams that would prep me for my university predicted-grades. i am now in my second (and final) year of college, and the exams during may and june will dictate the rest of my life. that includes which uni i go to, whether i’ll even go to uni at all, what course i’ll take at uni if i do end up going, etc.

you get the idea. these are important exams. the most important ones that i’ll ever have to sit this year, and starting tomorrow, i have 130 days to turn my very-average-grades around to three A’s (or perhaps two A’s and a B) to get into my desired uni.

unfortunately, i can’t do that if i spend most of my time writing up very lengthy chapters for you.

why can’t i split my time accordingly, even if it means going back to the once-a-month updates? because i am so incredibly, stupidly behind on content for the courses i’m taking right now that i can’t even afford to waste 30 minutes on doing anything other than praying and studying. that’s just the sad truth of it.

again, i’d like to apologise for the inconvenience. i’ve received so many lovely dm’s from so many of you (and i answer every single one, you know that) and in the conversations that many of us have had together, a lot of you use the story (LL) as a safe haven, an escape from your own messy school lives, almost in the same way that i use it to escape my messy school life. some of you have mentioned that you pull all-nighters simply to reread it all as if you’re reading it for the first time. a few of you have mentioned how this story was an escape from the tragic events of canon, which was exactly what i intended for it to be like during the planning process, and i’m still so overwhelmed and flattered by the growing love i’ve received from both old and new LL readers.

will the story be temporarily taken down?

absolutely not.

i considered it for a time, but after acknowledging those comments i mentioned above, i decided that what’s left of LL right now (170k+ words divided in 10 chapters) can still be a safe haven for you whenever you need it. i also knew that i wanted everything to look the same for when i’d return in late-june of this year. leaving it up would also mean that newer readers (future readers) would join the family too, and we love a full house ;)

will i still be active on tumblr during the hiatus?

yes! maybe not as frequently as before (like answering messages in my inbox every day) but i’ll definitely be active enough to get through any messages, comments, asks, etc, within the span of a week for sure. you can still tell me about your shitty day in my inbox, you can still vent to me about an encounter with a guy you hate in my dm’s, and you can definitely still send in silly things about LL or SOANO. i’ll still be active, it’ll be like i never left, only, without the fortnite-ly (not a word, i’m well aware) updates.

LL’s one year anniversary is coming up in a couple of days, and i wanted to release a new chapter in time for it, but looking at my exams and how much cramming i’m already going to have to do for it without writing on top of that… i reluctantly acknowledged that it just won’t be possible.

i think i’ve addressed everything… this is a little awkward now, lol.

once again, i apologise for any hurt or inconveniences i might’ve caused, but i myself don’t enjoy the idea of not writing for 5 months any better than you probably do. 0-0 i enjoy writing, it never felt like a chore to me, and i’m going to miss it during the next 5 months that i’ll be spending alone, grinding overtime like hermione granger…

please wait for me, my little liars <3

love, mother hen sumaya

[beef-brisket]

Charlie gasped as a spear touched her throat. Once Adam and Lucifer realised she wasn't following, they turned and saw a short haired woman standing behind Charlie. Her spear outstretched.

Exorcist: Holt! In the name of the Father!

Charlie's eyes widened and slowly turned around. The woman's mouth hung open as she looked at the taller woman, her spear dropping.

Vaggie: C-Charlie...?

Charlie smiled and gently cupped her check: I'm so glad you're okay-! I thought they would have made you fall!

Vaggie leaned into her touch, resting her hand on top of Charlie's: N-No, I didn't fall. They... made a lot of threats. But I'm okay. And you're... with Adam?

Charlie glanced back at the two men who had unreadable expressions: Uh, yeah. It's a long story. Look, I think I'm going back to Hell, so maybe I'll send word to you somehow.

Vaggie: Okay, love. If not... maybe I can see you during the extermination-.

Lucifer: Extermination?

Adam: Hey, babe? Maybe not now.

Lucifer glared up at Adam: "Not now"? What do you mean by that? I'm the king, I should know about whatever this extermination is.

Adam rolled his eyes: Don't throw that king bullshit around with me. It won't work. Second, there's a lot of shit going on in Hell that you need to know about. But that's a conversation for when we get back.

Lucifer wanted to argue but decided not to. This wasn't the time or thr place, and he wasn't sure what headspace Adam was in.

Kissing her girlfriend, Charlie promised to see her again before going to the men's side to continue their way.

Charlie: Okay, we should be further enough away for you to open a portal, Lu.

Lucifer nodded and did as suggested. As Adam and Charlie walked through the portal, he felt eyes on him. Turning around, he saw Michael standing a few yards away.

He couldn't read his emotions. His face was blank, and his eyes looked dead. It was actually unsettling. But with a glare, Lucifer stepped into the portal and arrived back in Hell.

Once he stepped foot into his palace, he saw Adam checking over Charlie, making sure she was okay.

Charlie: I promise Adam, I'm fine! Really!

She laughed as he checked her hair and face.

Adam smiled: I don't know, kid. I could have sworn you were fighting the first man by yourself.

Charlie scoffed: Like he was a match for me.

Adam smiled. He felt bad for not really working with her when it came to her powers. Life seemed to keep getting in the way.

Adam: That's good to hear... I uh... how about later on, I show you how to do some cool shit, yeah? I've kinda been slacking on that front.

Charlie beamed: Really?! Can you show me how to summon a weapon?!

Adam: Sure, kid!

Lucifer: Adam. Can I speak to you out here?

Adam glanced at Lucifer before turning back and reassuring Charlie. He walked over to Lucifer, and they left the room.

Adam: What's up? Why do you sound so serious all of a sudden?

Lucifer: ...I understand it might be hard for you, Ad. But I need to know what happned once you arrived in Heaven.

Adam tensed: ...Why?

Lucifer: Did they tell you anything? Whatever this extermination is, I need to end it and gather as much dirt on Heaven as possible.

Adam sighed: Babe. You're fighting a war you can't win. And Hell has enough of those already.

Lucifer: Please, Addy. I... I'm in control, I need to know.

Adam: ...you've been in control for a few days. You can't rush into this, you know-?

Lucifer: Just- TELL me, Adam!

Adam: ...they told me how pathetic I am. Is that good enough for you? Or do you need it more words? How about this, they read me the letter you sent. Over. And over. They threw your ring at me. Told me you hated me. You never loved me. They cut off my fucking legs and arm, Lucifer! They didn't say anything interesting, just how much they want me dead and how funny it would be with my blade. So, don't pull your king of Hell shit out on me. I'm fucking, Adam! And Adam's had a rough fucking day. alright?!

Lucifer: Adam- u told you the latter was a lie-!

Adam: Oh yeah? Was giving them your ring a lie?

Lucifer: Yes-!

Adam: Then why didn't you grab it?! They threw it around and you didn't take it!

Lucifer: I'll make a new one-!

Adam: That's not the fucking point-!

Lucifer sighed; Then what is?!

Adam: I gave you that ring! I picked it out! Specifically for you! And you just... gave it to them... fuck, maybe it's a stupid thing to be pissed about, and it doesn't help that I haven't been laid in nearly a week, but fuck, Lu. I've... felt like fucking shthese last few days. First Seth and then Heaven... you gave me to them... like I was nothing to you. And maybe I am... Look. I don't want to talk about this now, I have to train the kid. Like I said, I would.

Adam rubs his face and walks out of the room, leaving Lucifer alone with his thoughts.

Lucifer: ...Shit...

I miss our God!Adam Au

Sequel 👀

In Canada Eh! Lmao

CANADA FOREVER

Yes plsss! I miss our stupid, power-hungry boy 😫😫

[numberonetacostan]

I've become so obsessed with toitacopad PLEASE I need breadcrumbs 🙏🙏

Hello and welcome!!!^^ Thank you for coming to me, I see that you are starving and urgently need some toicopad to keep you alive!!!!!!!! I've got you!!!!!

Okay, this one is more related to toicopad than about toicopad, but!! Silver Spoon would take note of the fact that the other two British cast members are Mepad's partners, and avoid him like the plague. Clearly Mepad has a type, and Silver Spoon simply can't handle yet another adoring fan pleading for his attention. (He yearns for Candle and does not want to risk getting involved with Mepad as he's busy pining for her).

Between Taco having trouble sleeping after years of homelessness, and Toilet being a silly little fella, I think it would be sweet if Mepad read bedtime stories for the two of them. His voice would of course be soothing to Taco, with him making her feel safe in general, and Toilet would get very invested in whatever story he was reading to them. As a mepad, I'm sure he has plenty of fairytales and other public domain stories to read to them, yeah?

Toilet and Mepad would be so good for Taco's self-image. Being loved by both of them, of course, would do wonder for her, but they would be some incredible personal cheerleaders, yeah? Mepad is gentle and soft about it, while Toilet is excited and loud about it!! Regardless they are both very proud of her progress, and always let her know it.

Mepad is always helping everyone!!! He's always assisting!!! Toilet and Taco would frequently kidnap him to make him take a break. Maybe get his screen polished, clear out any clutter in his storage, fully shut off as he charges for a bit, etc.!!! Mepad will be engaging in self-care and having some me-time, and that's that!!!

Toilet would be a great help in Taco and Mepad finding hobbies outside of the show as well. Their entire lives had revolved around it, so they don't particularly have well-explored interests separated from Inanimate Insanity. But that's not the case for Toilet!! He's had a life and experiences outside the show, he likes to draw, he likes to eat spaghetti!!! And I'm sure he'd have plenty of ideas for Taco and Mepad to try, as well as be down for trying plenty of new things with them!!!

Taco is the only one of the polycule to have arms, and thus is responsible for the hugs!!! She wouldn't be very open with physical affection at first, especially not in front of other people, but I think she'd come to really enjoy hugs eventually. Getting to hold the people she loves close to her would be rather soothing, especially with her history of losing those she cares about, yeah?

I think the polycule would start off with Mepad dating both Taco and Toilet, but the latter two not dating. Taco probably wouldn't like Toilet much at first, with him being so loud and likely even reminding her of her season 1 persona and all of the grief associated with it. But between Mepad's love for him and all the time they spend together sharing Mepad, I think she'd eventually come to enjoy his presence. She'd be very reluctant to admit it for quite some time, but his silly energy and mindless fun charm her. On Toilet's end? Mepad has a pretty and fancy girlfriend and he has a little puppy crush on her!!! <3

[kbookblurbs]

Wind and Truth - Brandon Sanderson (Stormlight Archive #5)

4/5 - midseason-finale ass book; he needs to scrap this editor; this book simply never ends

MAJOR SPOILERS BELOW!! LIKE FIRST LINE!!!

We finally come to the end of the first arc of the Stormlight Archives and they are going to need a new name. Before we dive in, I want to clarify that I did enjoy this book! I think it tackled a series of very hard-to-conclude plotlines in a relatively good way, and I think it sets Sanderson up for success in the latter half of this series. With that said, I'll be splitting this review into four parts:

Kaladin, Szeth, & therapy speak

The Spiritual Realm plot

Azir

Book mechanics

Kaladin, Szeth, & Therapy Speak

Now first of all, anyone who's read anything I've written knows I love Kaladin - he's one of my favorite characters of all time and his journey through depression is one of my favorite parts of this series. That said. I find the whole timeline of this healing to be highly suspect, and his attempts at therapizing embarrassing at best and deeply annoying at worst. What context is there for him to go from literally attempting suicide in the last book to semi-competent therapist in no time at all? Need I remind Sanderson myself that there is no time skip between the end of RoW and WaT?

The language is also just bafflingly modern in a way that nothing in this series has been before, but we'll get to more on that later.

The flip side of this criticism is that Szeth's plotline was easily my favorite of the book. His completed arc might rise to rivaling Kaladin's (thus far) in terms of how much I enjoyed it. His backstory is so tragic (slay for the almost successful military coup though?) and I truly believed he wasn't going to make it through the book until the very last page. His moments with his father, in the past and present, brought me to tears more than once.

The Spiritual Realm Plot

This whole plotline took too long and frankly, it was boring. Watching Shallan slay her demons for the umpteenth time and deal with Formless again and kill her mother again was, and this may be controversial, not a very interesting plot point to me. She's done all this before. I feel that this book, as a whole, gave diminishing returns on her pagetime to character development ratio. I also don't feel that Shallan, with all her everything else, needed a Herald as a mother as another twist, but maybe that will be more relevant in the future. For that reason, and that reason only, I'll bite my tongue on criticizing it unnecessarily

While it was nice to see Renarin and Rlain get together, I have to admit that Renarin's POV didn't add much for me. I think Sanderson could have written the entire plotline for these two from Rlain's perspective and it would've been far more interesting since he is, in my opinion, the more interesting character between the two of them. Renarin's POV does not reveal anything that isn't already clear from other POVs.

I also just wanted more of Ba-Ado-Mishram. She was haunting the story but not present. I understand that's likely for later plot reasons, but it did make this section drag. Dalinar contributed to that but  we don't have time to get into that right now. I was happy he died though (long overdue, in my opinion).

Azir

Adolin #1 character of all time? The only one to save their assigned city and did it with 0 Radiants and the power of friendships? Nobody is doing it like him.

I loved the founding of the Unoathed and, particularly, Yanagawn's development. I'm really hoping that Yanagawn becomes a more important character in next major arc, since he was so sweet here.

I did not love that we spent probably 25% of the book in Azir fighting battles. Contrary to the opinion of Sanderson many fantasy authors, there is an upper limit on how many battles you can include before I get tired of reading them. There's only so many ways you can swing a sword or block a pike etc etc before I'm bored.

Book Mechanics

Overall, I find this concluding book to be much weaker than the other 4 in the series. Whereas it had seemed that the pacing was improving in Oathbreaker and Rhythm of War, here we were back to all over the place. While I liked that he split the plot into each day leading up to the contest, the timeline genuinely made no sense.

Beyond that, this entire book was filled with oddly YA-style prose that has never appeared in the Stormlight Archive until now. I think whoever edited this book must be different from the other four because, in my opinion, it was much too modern, not as tight, and frankly, not as good. And I know this might be controversial, but I did not think Maya calling Adolin a slut was funny. Why would she even use that word? Whore or prostitute would've been acceptable because they've been referenced here before but I found that example and others like it to be jarring.

Conclusion

I liked this book, but it's by a longshot my least favorite in the series. It was too long and frankly, some of the characters didn't even sound like themselves. I know that Sanderson can do better than this, but it leaves me a little wary for the next arc.

There's lots here I didn't cover (Jasnah my beloved, Sigzil! I'm in mourning) but this was already quite long. DMs / ask box are always open if you'd like to chat more.

[nintendoteuthis]

Splatoon sits at an odd crossroads of human exceptionalism (being that they canonically influenced inkfish evolution, and the entire game would not exist without them) and human insignificance (they destroyed themselves, went extinct like everything else does, and life went on)

[toxiccaves]

still on that robot kick

[ifellintothestyx]

The funny thing about JC defenders is that they always try to argue that JC refusing to cover the Wens and side with WWX was the correct political move. In the short term, perhaps, but in the long term, that was proven wrong in the books themselves.

(It's even funnier thinking that correct political moves exist in a bullshit political system that blatantly serves only the gentry, is held together by hearsay and rumors, and has no actual system of laws that can serve as a basis to accuse, judge, or punish someone.)

So how was JC's refusal to side with WWX and the Wens considered the "correct political move"? Reasons include that the Jiang sect was still recovering from the war, that going against the Jins would result in another war that would end in major losses on the Jiang sect's side, and that the Wens weren't and shouldn't have been a priority for JC at all.

Let's clear a few things up. The Jiang clan was not the only clan recovering, so were the Nies and the Lans. In the aftermath of the war, it's not explicitly stated how well the other sects were doing, so we couldn't really tell if the Jiangs were worse off than the other three. It could be noted, however, that the Jins retained much of their wealth and influence, so much so that Jin Guangyao was able to take the position of Chief Cultivator with little to no opposition. The main point, though, is that at that moment in the aftermath of the war, we could not easily assume the Jiangs were the worst off, as the other three sects also lost many disciples in the war, and we didn't really know how much the other sects recovered.

For the second reason, if a major war somehow did happen again, this time Jiangs vs everyone else, everyone else would lose. WWX's presence single-handedly helped them win the war against the Wens. A war between the Jiangs and the jianghu would be based on numbers, which reflects the war between the Wens and the jianghu. The Wens had more disciples, and no matter how many LWJs or NMJs you got up your sleeve, numbers make a big difference in war. That's why WWX's skills were a critical part in winning: he is a one-man army of thousands. He could easily make up for the gap in numbers. That's why the Jins kept trying to get rid of him—they were nervous about so much power belonging to only one faction: the Jiangs. JGS couldn't exactly claim his desired role as Chief Cultivator if a younger, smarter, and more powerful individual was still around to keep him in check.

Finally, we get to the part of why I'm making this long-ass post on a caffeine-driven rage. See, the point of trying to stop a powerful faction from committing atrocities is to stop them from thinking they can do it whenever they like. The Jins were given a pass to do whatever the hell they wanted to a small, outcasted faction (the Wens), and they proceeded to take that pass as a pass for everything else. Nobody stopped them from torturing the Wens, so what's stopping them from allowing a mass murderer like XY to run wild in an attempt to create their own WWX? Definitely not NMJ, hahaha, because, y'know, the hypocrites in the gentry have already decided that whatever the Jins do is alright so long as it's not their problem. An exterminated clan isn't their priority. So, what was stopping XY from going out and doing it again to SL's sect? Absolutely nothing! Because the Jins could cover it up and no one could say a word despite how suspicious it was, because hey, remember what happened to the last guy that spoke up against the Jins?

Calling out the Jins on their crimes against the Wens, who were elderly and children save for WQ and WN (who JC owed his damn life and core to), would have created a precedent of not allowing massive crimes to slide under the radar. But because the opposite happened, because nobody fucking realized that apathy and selfishness don't fucking help in the long run, two sects were exterminated because JGS and JGY were basically given an "okay, fine, just keep that bullshit away from us". That's not actual justice. That's not "morally grey". Allowing people in power to trample over others just because it doesn't affect you personally is not sustainable, because what happens when it's you they've decided to trample over? Are you going to complain? Are you going to look to others for help, when you personally couldn't be bothered to offer your hand to those who suffered? When the reason the people trampling over you gained that power is because you allowed it?

The unopposed killing of WWX and the Wens led to the political climate that allowed the massacres of two sects because the Jins were trying to protect and satisfy their pet project. It led to the murder of NMJ because JGS/JGY wanted to keep people from checking their power. If JC couldn't find it in his heart to be sympathetic to the Wens, fine, but at the very least, he should have considered the potential harm in rolling over and giving a political faction too much power.

[dyinggirldied]

It might be just me but I feel sad that Shang Qinghua is a footnote of a character from his own novel. Yes, he is the cute, loser, overworked, pathetic hamster that the fandom loves to pick on and coos and relates to at times. But within the SVSSS universe, he is the creator of the world but is sidelined and dismissed, MXTX doesn't care about giving him a name outside of his villain (og SQ)'s name, not even a mention like she does with Shen Yuan, the now Shen Qingqiu.

You might argue that at least there is Mobei Jun, the only one who love SQ is his literal dream man which is great but their relationship gonna needs a lot of therapy/advice from their friends because unlike with Luo Binghe, who is half human and has spent time as human in human world enough to understand human culture and needs, which is wildly different from the violent demon world.

[fumifooms]

The ultimate dogboy in Dunmeshi to me isn’t Laios, Lycion or even Kuro. It’s Mickbell.

Little dog man’s never had enough. Little dog man has someone in his hands already but it’s not all that he’s wanted and craved. He’s hungered for so long and now he doesn’t know what can quench it. When you’ve been hungry, once you have something it’s hard to not binge eat it because you never know when you’ll lose it. He wants more from them, more of them, more to chew, more safely locked within his teeth, more to taste on his tongue. Hungry greedy unkempt misbehaved. I think he loves like a dog I think he slobbers and digs his teeth in because he doesn’t want to let his bone go and he’s hungry and starved.

And he’s not like Laios he’s not like Kuro he’s not like Lycion, calling him a dog in any way would be the greatest offense to him but also it’s true. Sorry. Dogboy against your consent. You better be ready to unpack a lot of stuff you don’t like hearing about yourself!!!! The unwilling dogboy analogies are the most interesting ones get out Laios and Lycion. Mick doesn’t want to be a dog, it’s dehumanizing, demeaning, but he is, he loves like a dog.

Feeling dehumanized and demeaned by loving so much, by being walked on a leash by your feelings until your body acts on instinct like it’s primal and animalistic, for feelings you cannot control, and you’re drooling you’re drooling you’re clawing teeth snapping but you’re on hands and knees begging for scraps and treats. Just a dog picking up crumbs of a fine meal from where it’s dropped on the floor, affection from coerced hands, peanuts of self-esteem from judging others, anything to soothe while surviving.

It will come back by Hozier save me. "I love like a dog" and everyone is unhappy about this, it’s too much for everyone involved, 10/10. Dunmeshi animalistic metaphors you never miss. Stray dog mick. If I don’t use a dog motif in my mick fics it’s not me someone is impersonating me

This was my train of thought for the mickbell & kuro web weaving i made a while ago I guess. Dog imagery mickbell you will always get to me…

Little dog man wants a white picket fence family and house, somewhere someone to belong to :( Okay that’s more Kuro actually, happy to just have his little kennel day after day just following his owner, shackling yourself for the love. Ough.

Mickbell, my ultimate dogboy... He plays the part so well (derogatory)

Coughing blood

[sysig]

Take care of him (Patreon)