#I’ve waited to long to help her and I feel ducking terrible but I don’t know what to do

[honey--bat]

—

[scary-grace]

Enough to Go By (Chapter 6) -- a Shigaraki x f!Reader fic

Your best friend vanished on the same night his family was murdered, and even though the world forgot about him, you never did. When a chance encounter brings you back into contact with Shimura Tenko, you'll do anything to make sure you don't lose him again. Keep his secrets? Sure. Aid the League of Villains? Of course. Sacrifice everything? You would - but as the battle between the League of Villains and hero society unfolds, it becomes clear that everything is far more than you or anyone else imagined it would be. (cross-posted to Ao3)

Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8

Chapter 6

You find out what Tenko’s up to from the news – or from Kazuo, who texts you to tell you that “your friend” is making headlines again. It’s an uncharacteristic move for Tenko, who you know has been trying to keep to the shadows while he gathers allies, and it gets weirder when you find out that he showed up in a shopping center to have a conversation with one of the students from the class he attacked. You weren’t really watching the Sports Festival, but this kid made headlines for repeatedly breaking his fingers while trying to use his quirk. Every so often, quirked people make you really grateful that you don’t have one yourself.

Tenko didn’t get caught. He was long gone before the heroes and law enforcement showed up. But the incident leaves a weird taste in your mouth. He wandered into a mall to chat with a high school student. Why didn’t he talk to you? You’re supposed to be his best friend, his sidekick. He called the two of you hanging out together a date. What could he tell a high school student that he didn’t feel safe telling you?

The question consumes you more than you want it to, so you fall back on your now time-honored tradition of drowning yourself in tasks to avoid thoughts you don’t like. Work, and sitting with Yoshimi through her treatments, and ducking phone calls from your parents, who are moving the whole family – again – and want you to come home and help. Your mom threatens to throw away all your old stuff if you don’t, and even though you took everything you cared about with you when you moved away, the thought of your things being thrown out with the trash bothers you. It bothers you enough that you use your one day off in two weeks to go back to your parents’ house and clean out what’s left of your room.

When you get there, you find half the house out on the lawn, and your mother arguing with the oldest of your younger siblings. “Don’t take that tone with me, Haru,” she’s snapping. “Whatever you think you’re doing, it’s not as important as helping out your family. We need you here to –”

It’s like something snaps in your head, and you’re swamped in the memories of a hundred times where you were told the same thing. You thought that with you gone, your parents would have pulled themselves together, but it looks like not. It looks like they just dragged your brother into replace you. You step forward without thinking, right into the middle of it. “Hey, Haru. Hey, Mom. Sorry I’m late.”

Both of them stare at you. There’s something accusing in Haru’s stare, not that you blame him for that. Your mom looks more relieved than anything else, and with her temporarily neutralized, you turn to your brother. “Go do what you need to do, Haru. I’ll fill in until you get back.”

Haru doesn’t need to be told twice, and he doesn’t wait around for your mom to protest. He books it, and you turn to face your mom again, the feeling of accomplishment at defusing a conflict drowned almost immediately by your frustration with yourself. Two seconds. You’ve been here two seconds, and you’ve stepped back into the part you used to play like you never left.

Your mom hugs you. “Haru’s been just terrible these last few years,” she complains. “Any time we ask him to help, he throws the biggest fit. I can’t count the number of times I’ve told him to act more like you –”

“He’s nineteen, Mom. He’s got his own life,” you remind here, like it’ll help at all. You step back out of her embrace. “I came to sort through my stuff. Where is it?”

She gestures vaguely at one corner of the front yard, and you make your way over, at which point you discover that what your mom described as your stuff is actually only half yours. The other half seems to be every picture and keepsake your parents have of you. You knew your relationship with your parents wasn’t ideal, that they stopped being interested in you the second you stopped being useful to them, but seeing this gives you pause. “Mom –”

“We’re downsizing,” your mother explains. “Take what you want. We’ll throw the rest out.”

Fine. If that’s how they want it, that’s fine with you. The first things you dump in the throwaway pile are every photo that consists of just you and one or both of your parents. There goes the whole first year of your life, like it never happened at all. After that, it gets a little more difficult, because your siblings are in the pictures and it’s not their fault they were born. You find a partially filled photo album, start stripping the pictures you want to keep from their frames, and fit them into the remaining spaces. You don’t have a lot of space for picture frames. And this way you don’t have to look at them unless you want to.

Most of your toys and books went to your siblings as hand-me-downs, usually before you were actually done with them, so most of the things that are yours are things you had to fight to save. Your favorite books, which you rescued by carrying them around in your backpack twenty-four seven. A journal with a lock on it and no key, but you know how to pick locks now, so it doesn’t matter as much as it did before. Then there’s a box that’s been taped, glued, and stapled shut, with DO NOT TOUCH written all over it. You remember mummifying this box when you were ten or so. You just don’t remember why you did it.

You can open it once you’re home. You stack the photo album on top of it and keep hunting through all the pieces of your life that your parents are planning to throw away.

In the end, you can’t take much stuff. You don’t have very much room, and while Kazuo would probably agree to let you store things in his house, you don’t want to have to ask him to do that. There’s not really that much important stuff here, anyway. The books and games from when you were really little? You outgrew them a long time ago, so what would you even be keeping them for? It’s not like you’re going to have kids.

That thought came out of nowhere. You sit back on your heels, frowning at the change of tune. In spite of the shitshow of your childhood and the fact that you’d most likely pass on your quirklessness and put the next generation in the same second-class position as you are, you’ve always seen yourself having children. Not very many children. Two, most likely, and a decent difference in their ages – enough that you could let them have their own time instead of treating them like twins, not so much that you’d run the risk of parentifying the older one even slightly. You think you’d be a good parent, maybe. At the very least you know what not to do.

You’ve been sure of that since you were old enough to figure out where babies come from. This is the first time you’ve had the other thought, and it feels like a certainty. When did it change?

The answer is lurking somewhere in the back of your mind, and you decide you’re not interested in answering it right now. With your stuff sorted, you dump the things you’re not taking into the garbage pile, making sure your mom sees which photos you’re getting rid of. You really should leave after that, but then the rest of your siblings come barreling out of the house, and you don’t think you should leave without saying goodbye.

Isuzu, the oldest of your younger sisters, is in her last year of high school. Music is her thing, and she’s applying to every conservatory in the country – keeping her options open, she says, but you know she means getting away from home. The twins, Shigure and Shinji, are both at Ketsubutsu Academy, training to be heroes. They’ve enhanced their control over their quirks to the point where they can induce specific parts of the vomiting process at will, and they demonstrate it on you, making your throat burn and your mouth flood with bitter-tasting saliva before your mom catches them at it and makes them stop. The triplets, a full ten years younger than you, aren’t even out of primary school yet. They want to be heroes, too.

Your dad arrives, with Haru in tow, as you’re making your second attempt to escape. He hugs you, too, and asks why you don’t come home more – right before he asks you to get the triplets washed up for dinner and check that they’ve done their homework. You almost tell him to go fuck himself, but ultimately you don’t want the fight. You herd the triplets back inside and start with the homework.

Isuzu follows you, not speaking up until after you’ve confirmed that the homework is completed and shooed the triplets off to the bathroom. “How did you do that so fast? It takes me and Haru forever to get them moving.”

“Practice,” you say. “More than I should have gotten. More than you’ll get if you get out of here.”

“I’m working on it,” Isuzu says. She looks uncomfortable, and like she wants to say more. You wait. “I’m sorry I told on you back then. If I hadn’t, maybe –”

You shake your head. “I had to go.” You cover your upper arm, the same motion Tenko made, and a chill runs down your spine. “I didn’t leave because you told them about this. I left because I got into my apprenticeship, and they told me I couldn’t do it.”

“What?” Isuzu looks shocked. “Why?”

“They needed me at home.” You shrug, your nonchalance masking the memory of the bolt of rage that shot through you when you realized what they were trying to do. “The only way to stop it was to make sure I wasn’t home anymore. I wish it hadn’t landed on you and Haru.”

“Haru’s madder about it than me,” Isuzu says. She leans against you, her head on your shoulder. “I remember stuff he doesn’t. Like that friend you had across the street. I don’t remember his name –”

“Tenko,” you say. Your heart lurches into an unsteady rhythm. “You remember him?”

“Not really. I remember you talking about him, though. You always had so many stories to tell.” Isuzu sighs. “Did they ever find out what really happened to him?”

“No,” you say. You did, though. You might be the only one who knows what became of Shimura Tenko, and even you don’t know the details. “I’m surprised you remember. Mom and Dad didn’t like me talking about him.”

“They didn’t like you being sad,” Isuzu corrects. “They don’t like me being sad, either. I’d be sad if it was my best friend who vanished. You said you were gonna marry him.”

“I – what?” Before you can follow up on the absolutely batshit thing your sister just said, one of the triplets comes back into the living room with obviously unwashed hands. “Arisa, I know you didn’t wash those. Go back in.”

Arisa sticks her tongue out at you. “You can’t tell me what to do. You don’t even live here. And you don’t have a quirk.”

“Right,” you say, a moment before Arisa activates her quirk and wallops you with every ounce of the contempt she feels for you. It takes all your self-control to avoid bursting into tears. “I can leave, though. Mom can’t get me in trouble any more, because I’m grown up. But she can definitely get you in trouble. Risk it if you want.”

Arisa glares at you for a moment longer, then heads back to the bathroom. You clear your throat and blink hard, digging your nails into your palm to give yourself something else to focus on. “Even I felt that one,” Isuzu remarks, wincing. “How do you take this stuff?”

You clear your throat again. “Practice.”

You make it through dinner, then book it, telling Isuzu and Haru to look you up the next time they’re in Yokohama and hitting the road before the twins or the triplets can use their quirks on you again. You cry a little bit on the train home, just enough to let off steam, and text your friends, who know what your family’s like and all advised you not to go. When they ask how it went, you send back a sad face.

Mitsuko: fuck them, then. they don’t deserve you

Hirono: come over and get trashed if you want. always makes me feel better

Sho: ooh, party at Hiro’s

Sho: count me in

Yoshimi: I can’t but 💛💛💛

Mitsuru: can I bring Izumi

Mitsuru gets a resounding thumbs-down from everybody for that one. Ryuhei chimes in, saying he’s down for a party, and Kazuo moves the venue to his house from Hirono’s shitty apartment in Kamino Ward. When you get off the train in Yokohama, you head over to Kazuo’s without stopping at home first.

Your friends have varying ideas on how to make you feel better. Mitsuko and Hirono think you should get drunk, so you drink a little, and Sho thinks you should bitch as much as you want about your family, so you do. Mitsuru’s got lots of siblings, so you complain about siblings together, and Ryuhei, not to be outdone, offers to beat up the triplets for you. “My quirk is perfect for it,” he says. “They’ll never know what hit them.”

They wouldn’t – Ryuhei’s quirk is called Reflection, and it bounces any quirk-based attack right back in the face of whoever sent it. “They’re ten,” you say.

“So?”

“Wait until they’re adults and it’ll be legal,” Kazuo says blandly. “What’s in the box?”

“Oh,” you say. You haven’t let go of it, although you relinquished the photo album to Mitsuko and Hirono after extracting promises that they wouldn’t take the photos out. “I’m not sure. I guess I thought it was pretty important.”

Kazuo touches his temple, then lowers his hand. “You don’t know, so I don’t know, either.”

“Let’s open it,” Hirono suggests. Mitsuko is still flipping through the photo album. “What kind of dirty secrets have you got in there?”

“I was ten. Not a lot of dirty secrets at that age.” You hold the box out to her. “Mind doing the honors on the tape?”

Hirono’s quirk is called Slice. It lets her cut narrow lines in any substance she draws her finger over, and you know she’s used it for good and evil at various points in her life. She cuts through the tape, you pry out the staples, and you and your friends from high school look down at the things you thought were worth hiding when you were ten years old.

There’s another journal, which means the one you grabbed was probably a decoy. You don’t remember being this sneaky, but you’re guessing you had a reason, and as you look through the other things in the box, you realize what it was. “I hid this before my memory got wiped,” you say. “It’s all things about my friend.”

“I thought they were just wiping your memories of the murder scene,” Mitsuru says, frowning.

“That’s what they got, sort of.” Memories are coming back to you as you peer into the box, memories of collecting these things, squirreling them away, panic beating at the base of your throat the entire time. “They were going for all of it.”

There’s a plush toy – a corgi, the same kind as Tenko’s dog, because you’d always wanted a dog and your parents always said no. Tenko got it for you for your birthday, the same year you had to go home early from his party. There are a bunch of photos, too, stolen out of a photo album – possibly the same partially-empty album you found when you were sorting. Some are from school. Some are from parties – yours, Tenko’s, Hana’s. Some were pretty clearly taken by Tenko’s mom. Seeing them makes you want to cry.

In the pictures, Tenko’s house is still standing. Tenko’s family is still alive. There’s Tenko like he used to be, dark-haired and grey-eyed and quirkless and happy. The two of you were always happy together, even if you weren’t happy at home. “These are cute,” Sho remarks. “Lots of puppy love going on here, and I’m not talking about the dog.”

You remember that you apparently told Isuzu you were going to marry Tenko and cringe from the thought. “Don’t be weird.”

“If it helps, it doesn’t look all that unrequited,” Mitsuko says, peering over your shoulder. “Check that one out.”

The photo she’s pointing at is from your class’s Valentine’s Day party. You and Tenko are trying to trade valentines, except you’re too embarrassed to look at him while you hand yours over. He’s not embarrassed to look at you. He’s grinning, that same smile that some of the other girls called creepy, the one you still like seeing because you know that it’s real, and he’s holding out a valentine of his own for you.

The valentine Tenko gave you is in the box, although his handwriting is impossible to read when you’ve had as many drinks as you’ve had tonight. In the corner of the box is another, tinier box. It looks like a jewelry box, and when you pry it open, a memory floods over you. There’s a locket inside. You put a picture in it the day before you got your memory wiped, and when you pick it up, you find the picture staring up at you. Tenko. Even five years after he vanished, you couldn’t let him go.

You shouldn’t have had so much to drink. If you were sober, you absolutely wouldn’t be bursting into tears.

Your friends aren’t exactly clear on why you’re crying, but they comfort you anyway, Mitsuko and Hirono and Sho hugging you while Ryuhei and Mitsuru hang awkwardly back, patting your shoulders. The only person who doesn’t get in on it is Kazuo, but Kazuo was never the touchiest, even before his mind snapped. And something’s up with Kazuo tonight. Even through your own mess of emotion, you can tell.

You wait until everyone else is drifting off before you try to get it out of him. “What’s wrong?”

“The HPSC is reactivating me.”

“They – what?” The alcohol’s made you just a little slow – the anger hits before the understanding’s truly formed in your head. “No, they can’t. They can’t, Kazuo! After what they did to you –”

“My provisional license is still active. That means they can.” Kazuo extracts a letter from his pocket and holds it out for you to peruse. You can barely read it. Your vision is swimming with rage. “When All Might crippled the black market, he took down every possible informant with it. Someone is backing the League of Villains. They need to find out who. My quirk is the fastest way.”

“They can’t do this. Not with what happened last time.” Your heart is hammering. Kazuo’s work-study was in Yokohama. When he collapsed, they brought him to your clinic, and you saw firsthand what overuse of his quirk did to him. “It could kill you.”

“There are safeguards, theoretically.” Kazuo’s voice is flat, emotionless. Like it’s been for two years and counting. “If you read further in the letter, you’ll see the protocol they outlined.”

You don’t need to read it. “You’ve got a medical condition. Using your quirk will exacerbate it. They can’t just conscript you like this!”

“It’s done,” Kazuo says. You look at him, speechless with fury, still too close to tears. “I didn’t tell you so you could get angry over something you can’t solve. I told you because I’ve predicted the types of questions they’ll instruct me to ask. I can ask them in a way that will preclude you in the answers.”

You hadn’t even thought that far ahead. “But in order for me to do that,” Kazuo continues, “you must keep yourself out of their search parameters. As long as you don’t directly aid your friend in the committing of a crime, you’ll fall outside their net.”

“Directly aid,” you repeat. “What does that mean?”

Kazuo gives you a look. “Failing to stop something is not the same thing as assisting in it.”

Now you get it. Kazuo’s telling you that simply knowing what Tenko’s up to isn’t enough to get you in trouble. In order for you to come under suspicion through Kazuo’s quirk, you’d have to actually do something – not just to help Tenko, but to help Tenko commit a crime. “I understand.”

You do. But that fury is still bubbling up within you, pointless as it is, at the thought that catching some vague scraps of information about the League of Villains is worth Kazuo’s sanity, Kazuo’s life. “We’ll figure something out. I won’t let them keep using you.”

Kazuo’s eyes are blank. They’ve been blank for years. But every so often you’ve seen a flash of something within them – some feeling, something familiar, something of the boy you knew. “You can’t save both of us,” he says, and his right hand falls from his temple to rest in his lap.

He was using his quirk just then. What was he asking? What did he see? You want to ask him, but he’s just picked up a half-empty bottle of vodka and drained it, and now it’s all hands on deck to hustle him to the bathroom in time for him to throw it back up.

The thought crosses your mind, as you’re rubbing his shoulders and offering him tissues to wipe his mouth, that it would have been easier if you’d fallen harder for Kazuo. If you’d fallen hard enough to cling to him even when his heroic ambitions pulled him away, hard enough to hold on even when the overuse of his quirk destroyed his ability to feel anything at all, hard enough to fight for him even when he doesn’t see a point to trying at anything any longer. It would have been hard, sure. But at the same time, it would have been easier for everyone involved if you’d felt for Kazuo the way you feel for Tenko.

You and Kazuo fall asleep on the bathroom floor, and in the morning, you’ve got a backache and a hangover. So does everybody else, but there’s something at least a little relieving in the fact that you’re all suffering together. You’ve got work, but it’s a half day, and it starts at noon. Plenty of time for you to go home and take a shower and try to sober up the rest of the way.

At least that’s what you think. When you step out of the bathroom in your apartment wrapped in a towel, you step directly into a warp gate, and it swallows you whole.

Kurogiri said he’d tell you what you were walking into the next time Tenko summoned you, but maybe he just forgot. You think you can probably talk Tenko into sending you back long enough to put on clothes. But once your feet touch the ground, it’s clear that you aren’t in the bar, where you’ve been nearly every time Tenko’s called for you. The air is cold and clammy, and there’s a strange smell, half antiseptic, half rot. You know this smell. You remember it from a field trip you took in nursing school. It smells like a morgue.

It smells like a morgue, and it’s pitch-black. You can’t see your hand in front of your face. Where’s Tenko? You can’t imagine him summoning you here without an explanation – which means he’s not the one who summoned you. Who did?

A voice issues from the darkness, deep and almost friendly. “Do you know who I am?”

The revulsion and terror that sweeps over you at the sound of his voice are almost enough to bring you to your knees. But you grew up in a family full of quirk users whose quirks affected the mind and body, and they loved to practice on you. Sixteen years of surviving it gives you the experience to stay on your feet. And when you think about it, you do know who this is. “You’re Sensei,” you say, and the man in the darkness makes a pleased sound. “Shigaraki’s master.”

“Very good,” the man says, but it isn’t – you only remembered to use Tenko’s new name at the last second. “Now it’s your turn. Tell me who you are – and who you are to Tomura.”

“I’m – nobody,” you say. Sensei’s influence over you intensifies, and you keep your feet with an effort. “I’m a nurse. He came to the clinic I work at last year. He’d hurt his wrist.”

“I see,” Sensei says after a moment. “Had you met Tomura before that time?”

Tomura? No. You shake your head, only to remember that Tenko’s master probably can’t see in the dark. “No.”

“But you’ve seen him since.”

“Yes,” you say. “When he’s injured, he sends Kurogiri to find me. So I can help.”

“I see,” Sensei says again. You’re tempted to point out that if the doctor, whoever the doctor is, had treated Tenko’s gunshot wounds, Tenko wouldn’t have needed to call for you in the first place. But that would escalate things. You keep your mouth shut. “Do you possess a healing quirk?”

“No.”

“That’s a shame,” Sensei remarks. “Would you like one?”

“No,” you say at once. Maybe too quickly, given the insanity of the statement. “It’s not possible to give quirks.”

“It is. And they can be taken away just as easily,” Sensei says. You stay quiet, and when he speaks again, it’s a change of subject. “It seems Tomura has taken a liking to you.”

“I – I wouldn’t know,” you stammer. How much does Tenko’s master know? “I don’t know how Shigaraki feels about anything.”

“Thankfully, I do.” Sensei goes silent for a moment. “I suppose it’s wise of Tomura to keep a medical provider in his orbit, even if you would be more useful to him with a healing quirk. What is your quirk?”

Your stomach instantly twists into a knot. “I don’t have one.”

“Mm.” Sensei’s voice takes on a reflective note. “Let’s remedy that.”

The darkness is complete. You don’t see the hand coming; all you can do is startle when it clamps down over your face, enormous and rough and hot. Your breath leaves you in a sharp gasp, too quiet to be a scream but still too close for comfort. But just as suddenly as the hand settled over your face, it pulls away with equal speed. Sensei chuckles, a low, dark sound that makes your skin crawl. “You’ve been dishonest with me, but I can’t fault you for not sharing what you don’t know.”

You’ve been dishonest, yes. It doesn’t seem like he knows about that. But what don’t you know? “Sir? I don’t understand.”

“You have manners. It’s a shame Tomura won’t appreciate them,” Sensei says. “You will understand in time. Kurogiri?”

The mist begins to billow around you – and at the same time, it clears partially, revealing the shape of the man standing before you. He’s terrifyingly large, looming over you, and his face – “I would advise against telling Tomura of our meeting,” Sensei says as you stare up at him in terror, “but that is ultimately your decision to make. You and I will have no further dealings. Tomura has chosen you as a piece in his game. I will leave you to him.”

The terror drowns you. You fight to keep your head above water. “Yes, sir.”

“Sir,” Sensei repeats. “I do like that.”

The tone in his voice breaks your composure, just as the mist closes around you. By the time Kurogiri deposits you back on the floor in your apartment – in your apartment, they know where you live – you’re hyperventilating, panicking, almost out of your mind. “Shigaraki Tomura will call for you this evening,” Kurogiri says. “I do not know his purpose. I advise you to be prepared for either possibility.”

For a date. Or for a meeting with his new allies. You’ve never felt less prepared for anything in your life. Kurogiri vanishes, and you curl up in a ball, shivering. Maybe it’s from the cold. Maybe it’s from the smell of rot. Maybe it’s from the pure terror of meeting Tenko’s master, of the lingering sensation of his hand closing over your face. Whatever it is, you have to get rid of it. And you still have to go to work. You crawl back to the bathroom, turn the shower on scalding, and climb in.

[r1caner]

percabeth drabble, featuring skateboarding and hypotheticals

Percy’s hair sticks up in dark little tufts that refuse to stay down. It reminds Annabeth of a baby duck, sprouts of soft, fine hair like soft, spindly grass. It’s like he’s constantly at sea, his hair wavy and loose and always smelling faintly of salt. Annabeth doesn’t have anything like that, and she’s kind of glad for it. She’s not totally keen to find out what war or wisdom would smell like (it’s blood or dust, probably. She has had enough of those for a lifetime, thank you).

“Do you think you would’ve liked me?” Percy says, breaking the silence they’ve been laying in. “If we’d met and been normal?”

“We are normal,” Annabeth says softly. Percy says nothing, and Annabeth frowns, resting her hand on his arm.

“Not really.” Percy shifts, moving a little closer and holding onto her wrist. “I’d like to believe that we are. And I think we could’ve been.” His other hand moves up to her hairline, his thumb skirting over where the streak of gray hair sprouts. “But we’re not.”

“I guess so.” Annabeth touches the tattoo burned into Percy’s arm, her fingers the gentlest they’ve ever been. “But I don’t regret it.”

“So, would you have?” Percy says. “Liked me?”

“I don’t know,” Annabeth says truthfully. “We were twelve. I thought you were the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen but I hid it for so long. Took it out on you.”

“And did it brilliantly,” Percy says with a nod.

Annabeth laughs. “Maybe if we’d met at school or something I would’ve… made you eat dirt.”

That shocks a laugh out of Percy. “What? Is that something that you did?”

“No,” Annabeth says, “no, it was an example. But maybe I would’ve made an exception for you.”

“Honored.”

“Oh, any time, Seaweed Brain.” Annabeth grins. “You think you would’ve liked me?”

“Absolutely. I would’ve thought you were a know-it-all, but I still do, and look where we are now.”

Annabeth rolls her eyes. “You’re terrible.”

Percy hums. “Know-it-all. Reminds me. Can you help me with Latin later?”

“You’re thinking about school right now?”

Percy covers his face with his hands. “Wish I wasn’t,” he mumbles. “But I can’t help it,” he says, folding his hands and resting them on his belly. “I’ve never done good in school before, and now that I am, I can’t stop wanting to keep it up. Every day in New Rome I miss the city, and now that I’m here I can’t stop fucking worrying about grades.”

“I’ll help you,” Annabeth murmurs. “Don’t worry about it. And don’t feel like you’re wasting your time here. New York will always be here.” She grins. “Thanks to us, I might add.”

“Thanks to us,” Percy repeats, a little sullen. “Thank you.”

“What?” Annabeth asks, holding her fingers underneath Percy’s chin. “You look upset. What is it?”

He sighs. “You're always teaching me things. I wish I could help you with stuff.”

“There’s plenty of things you know that I don’t.”

Percy laughs. “Yeah.”

“I’m serious.”

“Like what?”

Annabeth smiles. “Making water shoot out of pipes.”

“Oh, okay,” Percy says with a scoff.

“No, but really. Like…” Annabeth pokes Percy’s side. “Oh my gods. Teach me to skateboard,” she says.

“No me digas. Annabeth,” Percy says, sitting up on his elbows with his eyes wide, “I’ve been waiting my entire life to hear you say that. That’s a real one. That’s good. We should do it right now. Let’s go right now.”

“Right now?”

Percy smiles, all joy and teeth. “Right fucking now.”

Annabeth picks it up fairly quickly, but still, she scrapes herself all up and down her legs. But a couple of bites of ambrosia and a few kisses from Percy more than help the hurt go away.

[lys1]

This is an Asra x fem!reader. NSFW for sure, porn WITH plot <3 this is my first post on tumblr so feedback appreciated.

——————

You walk through the dusty streets of the Market towards the palace. Hundreds of stalls loom up on either side, alive and vibrant with colors, smells, and tastes. It feels good to be back in the heart of Vesuvia.

You turn to look at Asra beside you, keeping your exhausted pace. It had been 8 days since Nadia had asked Asra and yourself to go check out some mysterious magic happenings on the outskirts of the city. You scoff to yourself, mysterious indeed, it took half the time to even track down the little pixie creatures causing ruckus and mayhem. Eventually, after some exhaustive spell casting and careful teamwork the two of you had managed to return the troublesome pixies to the proper magic realm they escaped from.

You yawn tiredly, loosening the emerald colored traveling scarf from around your neck. It was afternoon now, and the sun was beating down.

"Almost there now," Asra spoke up, breaking the silence. He looked fondly over at you, a smile lighting up his sun kissed face. Even so, you could see that the time away from home had taken its toll on him too. You were both more than ready to hit the hay.

You nod slightly, keeping back another yawn. "I hope Nadia has food for us, I'm starved." The villagers in the towns you had visited were kind and generous, but nothing could beat the delectable food that the palace prepared.

Asra chuckled, "I'm sure that right after we fill her in on the successful pixie management she'll immediately be tending to us like a mother hen. You know how she is, she loves to provide." He pushed back his curls from his face to wipe his brow of sweat, smiling as he too imagined the delicious array of food that was about to be offered. He picked up his pace at the thought, making you jog a bit to keep up.

The Palace gates soon loomed over the two of you, sparkling and gold in the summer sun. The guards at the gate looked up as you approached.

"Ah, the magicians! I trust everything went alright?" One asked, clearly recognizing the famous duo. He smiled warmly, maybe a little starstruck.

Asra returned his smile, "it was simply magical."

You rolled your eyes at the terribly overused pun as the guard gave a hearty laugh. The two of you were waved in and informed that the countess was waiting for you in the dining room.

"Oh even better," you groaned in appreciation. "We get to eat while we talk. I love Nadia." Your stomach growls in agreement. Asra flashes you a beautiful smile as his feet climb the stairs alongside yours.

"And clearly," he adds, "she loves us back!" He was particularly looking forward to some blue tongued skink, Nadia knew it was his favorite.

It only took a couple minutes to reach the dining hall. One of the servers was bustling out the moment You and Asra rounded the corner to the door.

"Oh, hello!" They said, giving a small polite now. "The countess is expecting you! Please, come right in." They moved aside, holding the large ornate door open with one of their hands.

You wink and whisper your thanks as the two of you make your way in. Immediately your mouth fills with saliva at the smell that filled the room. The table was large and being filled with platters of many foods of different origins. The gold dinnerware twinkled delightedly up at you and the red wine glimmered deep and inviting.

"Welcome, friends." Nadia opens her arms, rising from her chair. She had just been sipping on some pre-dinner tea while waiting for her guests. She was smiling, and looking absolutely magnificent in her shining purple and gold robes.

"Hello Nadi," Asra said, joining you and her in a quick hug before seating himself at the table. You follow, sitting beside him as Nadia resumes her seat. The servants bring the last platter of steaming dumplings out at that moment.

You sigh contentedly. "This looks amazing Nadia, I feel spoiled."

Nadia smiles, the faintest blush on her high cheeks. "Anything for my favorite magicians, willing to travel far and wide in aid of Vesuvians in need." She adores, raising her wine glass. "To my dear friends, what I would do without you, I wouldn't know."

You and Asra raise your glasses with her, each of your own cheeks now a healthy pink. Nadia declares the meal to begin and you all dig in.

"Oh my, what troublemakers!" Nadia declares, after hearing the story about the pixies. The food was being relished amongst every plate and the wine was flowing steadily. "I can't believe such tricky little creatures exists." She continues, eyes sparkling as she pours another cup of wine.

"Yes, well, the magic world is something else entirely." Asra laughs, relaxed and feeling full. He was lounging comfortably, one hand gripping your thigh, another holding his gold goblet. His skin was warm and aglow.

You had your own hand comfortably nestled in his snowy white locks, massaging slow circles into his scalp. It had been a long 8 days and you were both happy to finally be able to relax into each other while having pleasant conversation.

"You should have seen the way they caused mischief," you add. “Oh I felt terrible for that village. So many upside down cows to turn over." Asra smiles as you tell the story, closing his eyes and leaning into your gentle touch. It was, to put it simply, the best feeling he could imagine. Well, almost.

Nadia chuckles again. "Well, I'm just glad that they are gone and we can laugh about this." She says, sighing in slight relief. "Vesuvia is fortunate to have two talented magicians like yourself. I am fortunate to have you as my friends. Your well deserved payment is in your guest room."

Asra blinks, "oh, you're offering us a place to stay tonight?" He asked, the gratefulness clear in his tone. You couldn't help but agree, walking back to the shop did not really sound like something either of you wanted to do. Especially, you muse, lifting your glass to your lips, after how many wine jugs the three of you had emptied.

"Why of course," Nadia looks surprised that we even had to ask. "And," she continued, "use of my personal bath this evening. You two more than deserve some relaxation and.. fun." She ends her sentence after a slight pause, giving you both a side glance full of humor.

You feel your cheeks go slightly hotter at the obvious suggestion. However, embarrassment aside, nothing else sounded better right now. You look down at your lover who was now lounging against your lap and smile. Oh how far too long it had been, the pixies had been relentless and had not offered much down time.

Asra chuckles, clearly more comfortable with the suggestion. He always had been a bit more confident when it came to discussing your private life. You found it quite endearing.

"Oh Nadi," he smiles. "You just made this evening even better somehow. I can't wait to take my love there and-"

Nadia waves her hand, laughing at your horrified face. "Please, please, I certainly don't need to know details." She grins, "just go, and take the wine."

Asra didn't need more encouragement and sat up promptly. He looks down at you, a shadow of hunger in his lilac eyes, offering you his hand. You take it, biting your lip as his gaze continues to rake over your body in the sort of way that makes you squirm.

"Thank you, Nadia." You say breathlessly, and a little sheepishly.

Nadia smiles, "anytime." She says, laughter still ringing in her voice. "Now go, before Asra here makes love to you on this table."

Your eyes open wide, shocked to hear her say such dirty words before ducking your head down in embarrassment.

Asra rests his hand on your shoulder and leans down to whisper in your ear, "you heard the lady." His voice is sultry and thick with want. "The table is looking awfully inviting right now."

Quickly, you turn and head out the door, Asra following close behind. The bath is not far down the hall and the two of you make great time. Asra's hand is at your waist, pressing in such a way that you know means desire. You hadn't realized how badly he had been missing you.

You make it to the door and turn to look back at your lover. You gulp at the hot scene behind you. Asra's eyes are half-lidded, purple irises cloudy with lust. His shirt is already half unbuttoned, revealing his delicious golden tan skin, smooth and beautiful. He's looking at you in a way that makes you think he hasn't eaten in a week and you are a five course meal.

He closes in, pushing you against the door and reaching for the handle. "You're terribly slow," he says, voice already rough, desire prominent. He pushes the handle and the latch clicks, the door swings in behind you.

The two of you tumble into the sweet smelling room. Obviously Nadia informed a servant ahead of time of the use of this room because the bath was already filled and steaming. On top of the water pink rose petals float, filling the area with a soft floral scent.

Asra closes the door with a soft click and looks over his shoulder at you. "Oh my dear," he murmurs, taking the couple strides to wrap you up in his strong arms. "I've missed hearing you cry my name, kissing those lips, and feeling your skin." His fingers travel up your waist and over your stomach. They linger, just a moment at the swell under your breast before finally cupping your face in his hands.

You tremble under his touch, body suddenly aching with need. You bring your own hands up to his chest and splay your fingers out so you can feel his heart beating. It's fast and erratic, excited to be close to you.

"Sweetheart," Asra whispers, voice heady. It's intoxicating to hear him talk to you in such a way. You look up at him and catch him licking his lips. You bring your own up to meet his, tongue out to capture his. He groans, melting into the kiss, gripping your hair so tightly it's almost painful.

You gasp, mouth opening and he runs his tongue along your lips, tasting the wine you both had shared. "Delicious," he says against your skin, tasting more and more. His hot open mouth kisses travel from your lips to your cheek, jaw, and finally resting on your neck. Asra loves to leave marks, and he takes your skin between his teeth intending to do exactly that.

Your moan comes out hoarse and you feel heat starting to pool between your legs. They feel shaky and weak, unable to withstand such torment.

Asra steadies you and pulls back briefly, cheeks flushed hot, want written all over his face. "We," he states, "are wearing far too many clothes for a bath."

You laugh and take his shirt in your hands. "I agree," you say, pulling at the remaining buttons. They come free easily and soon a glorious, shirtless Asra is standing before you. You drink in the sight unashamedly, totally enthralled with your lover. Gradually, though slowed by each other's groping hands, you both end up undressed.

Asra grabs your thighs and hoists you up onto his hips. You wrap your arms around his neck and press your breasts into his soft skin. He groans appreciatively, nuzzling his face into your chest breathing deeply, and walks the two of you over to the edge of the bath.

The water is still very warm as it licks your skin. You jump in surprise and moan slightly as it overtakes your aching folds and up over your ass. "Ahh-" you sigh, slumping into the crook of Asra's neck. "This is so good."

Asra hums his agreement before taking your chin between his fingers and directing you too look at him. His eyes are swimming with love, need, and an absolute desire to ravish you. You swallow hard, unable to look away.

"I want you." He says simply, barely above a whisper. He maneuvers your body so your back is against his chest. You lean your head back into him and relax in the fragrant water. Asra snakes his left arm around your waist and trails his fingers from your belly button downwards.

You bite back a squeal as his trained fingers circle the small nub at the top of your slit. He adds pressure, rubbing you in a manner that makes you crazy. Your hips wiggle back and you feel him, hard and straining, pressing into your ass. His breath hitches only for a second before he leans down to pepper soft kisses on your neck and shoulders.

His other hand makes it’s way up to your right breast and he expertly rolls your perked nipples between two fingers. Your whole body shudders in response to his actions.

“Ah, fuck Asra,” you choke out, moving your hips to meet his fingers as he slides them down your slick towards your now dripping hole. He wastes no time plunging two in, enjoying the feeling of your walls tightening around him.

Asra lifts his lips from your skin and brings his mouth to your ear. “You’re so ready for me, aren’t you. Pretty and wet for my fingers, aching to be filled.” He curls them as he says that, relishing in the soft gasps that fall from your trembling lips.

You groan as he licks the shell of your ear, hot breath teasing on the sensitive skin. “You,” your voice falters a second as Asra’s fingers continue to explore your insides in a way that makes you grip his strong thighs on either side of you. “You are ready for me too.” You finally gasp out, finding the strength to grind back against Asra’s swollen cock. You knew if you could see it, it would be an angry red and leaking precum, desperate to be buried to the hilt inside of you.

Asra’s breath comes out in a short gasp that makes you smirk in satisfaction. At least you still have a little control left. That thought flies out your brain a second later when Asra pinches your nipple hard then twists, making you cry out in painful pleasure.

“Watch yourself, my love.” He coos playfully, no remorse in his words. You grit your teeth, taking in the torture that both of his skilled hands are laying upon you. You know what he wants, and it is oh so tempting to give in. You’re almost at war with yourself as your back arches on its own accord in rapt pleasure.

“Oh please, please.” You finally break, body shaking. You reach your arms back and thread your fingers through Asra’s fluffy locks before gripping hard. “Asra please fuck me already.” You plead, unable to care anymore that you were begging.

You feel Asra’s fingers slow to a stop inside you and then remove themselves. You almost groan in disappointment but you know better.

Asra flips your body around so you’re straddling his hips. You gasp when suddenly you’re faced to face with your beautiful lover. He looks positively stunning, the soft moonlight coming in from the high windows bathing him in a pearlescent light. His skin is glowing with a cool sheen, and his breath is leaving parted lips shallowly. Not to mention, his hard cock straining against your stomach, just begging for attention.

You bring your hand down and rest your index finger lightly on the slit. Asra shudders at the touch, but certainly not complaining. He’s slick, just as you expected, and you lightly circle his tip.

“You go on and on about how ready I am.” You tease, “but look at you, practically cumming into my hand already.” You lift your fingers and bring them to your mouth, tasting his salty sweetness. Asra’s diet is rich with fruit and vitamins, and oh how you loved how he tasted as a result.

Watching you lick your fingers coyly has Asra’s eyes drooping with lust. “My dear, oh my love,” he whispers. “How I am going to fuck you until I fill you with that cum you love so much. Because it’s true, you love it don’t you.” He says, voice sugar sweet, expecting an answer.

You blush, despite your best efforts. You look at him, but he only blinks in return, waiting.

“Yes,” you whisper, voice thicker with need than you realized. You give up trying to be bashful. “Yes, yes. I love your cum, how it tastes, how it feels when you fill me up. I want it so bad.” You beg, looping your arms around his neck so your lips are just inches apart. “You have my heart, soul, and body.” The words tumble out naturally, “and gods, do I need you now.”

Asra bites your bottom lip harshly before fully overtaking your mouth with his. He’s moaning, almost desperately, into you. “I love you, my dearest one.” He pants, gripping your ass with his hands. You feel your hips being lifted up and your body quakes knowing what’s coming.

You feel the tip of Asra on the heat of your slit and you sigh deeply, “I love you too, Asra.” You say, bending your neck so your head rests on his muscular shoulder. Your lips find a sweet spot on his neck, an anchor, as he lowers you down onto him. It’s tantalizingly slow, allowing you to feel every inch as you sink lower in the water until he’s fully sheathed in you.

“Oh gods,” Asra groans, both from feeling you pulse around him and from your playful lips on his neck. “You are a gift to me.” He says, breathless from the feelings.

You smile, in delight from your lovers sweet words. Slowly and carefully you lift your hips up, at the same time dragging your tongue up his smooth neck to his ear. You suck and nibble on the lobe as you find your rhythm, bouncing steadily on the thick shaft. He feels absolutely amazing in you, filling you perfectly.

Asra grips your butt underwater with his strong hands and leans his head to the side, giving you better access. He guides your hips to a steady pace, humming appreciatively when you comply. “It has been far too long since I’ve felt your sweet pussy squeezing me like this.” He says, without skipping a beat.

You don’t have time to blush before he picks up the pace, leaving you moaning loudly into his ear as he hits the spot that makes you crazy. “Ah fuck, I agree, I do agree.” You manage, finally finding the words.

The water sloshes around your two bodies, stirring the rosy scent into the air. It’s smells amazing and makes you dizzy with pleasure as every sense seems to be met. Asra huffs gently next to your ear, holding you tightly against his body.

You savor the feelings of your chests sliding against each other, the feeling sleek from the warm water and sweat mixing. Your hips meet his, snapping against each other with quick splashes, making you see stars as he hits every time the spot that has you go wild.

The muscles in your lower stomach tighten and you know it’s only a matter of time before you’re screaming Asra’s name for the whole palace to hear. “Baby,” you say breathlessly, kissing any skin you can reach. His cheek, the corner of his eye, his plump lips. “I’m going to cum.” You whisper into his mouth. He swallows your delicious words and licks your lips in response.

“I love when you do that,” he says, a slight chuckle in his words. He wraps his arms tightly around your middles before bringing his hands up to your shoulder blades and raking his nails down your spine. You shudder at the erotic feeling and arch your back against his hands. He sighs happily when you give him access to this gorgeous view, stretched out before him, stomach and tits shining gloriously in front of him. He puts his mouth on your bellybutton and licks up to the cavity between your breasts.

“Oh mmm,” he hums, pleased with the sweet taste of your skin. “You are a delicacy amongst gods.”

You flush looking down at his lustful face, sucking on your skin, leaving marks where only he will see. He latches on to one of your nipples, moaning in immense pleasure at the feel of it in his mouth. When he nips at the sensitive skin you jolt, a small disruption in the steady bounce of your bodies.

“Damn,” you curse, words choking in your throat. Your nails dig into Asra’s shoulders as he re-establishes the torturing rhythm that has you shaking desperately against him.

“Let go for me,” he suggests in a sultry whisper that has you reeling with a feverish desire. The pressure in your core is building at an alarming rate as Asra thrusts into you, filling you every time to the point where you can barely hang on.

“I-“ you falter, eyes rolling as you feel that familiar tingle across all your limbs. Oh gods, you can’t stop it now. “Asra, oh fuck, ASRA-!” You scream head thrown back. Your walls clench, and the knot comes undone. It’s amazing, you almost want to laugh in pleasure at the feeling of coming around Asra’s cock. It’s so good you almost forget to breath.

Asra curses under his own breath as he fucks you through your high, barely holding on himself. You bring your head back down and kiss him deeply, tongue joining his. It’s a short lived battle to hang on and in a flurry of short gasps you feel him cumming inside you, unable to stop himself from the uncontrollable waves of pleasure that come from your hot walls clenching around him.

You both continue to kiss each other lovingly, slowing down gradually until you’re sitting on his lap. Eventually, you pull away a couple of inches, looking into your beloved’s eyes.

“Hello,” you say, smiling at your favorite magician. Asra’s eyes crinkle as he smiles, looking at you through hazy eyes. He kisses you again, gently, pleasantly.

“Hello,” he returns, after a minute. He runs his hands up your back, massaging as he goes. “You,” he adds lovingly, “are so beautiful.”

You smile adoringly. “Thank you, Asra.” You remove yourself from his lap and wade through the water towards the collection of bottles on the wooden shelf nearby. You grab a few that you felt suited the two of you best and turned to your lover. Asra had lifted his arms to rest on the sides of the bath and was looking at you with admiration.

“May I wash your hair?” You ask setting down the bottles, but keeping a lilac scented shampoo for Asra. He smiled at you, his face soft and kind.

“That would be amazing, my love.” He said, leaning his head back into the water to dampen it. You squeezed some of the lovely smelling shampoo into your hand and waited. Asra emerged a moment later and kissed you adoringly on the nose.

“Thank you,” he breathed. “For always taking care of me.”

You kissed him back, a peck, before turning him so his back was facing you. You rub your hands into a lather before working them into Asra’s soft hair.

“I always will, forever.” You say softly, happier than ever.

[tarydarrington]

"Alright, everyone," Veth says with authority, and everyone else quiets down. "Tomorrow is the big day."

Caleb sighs and ducks behind his drink. There is a speech coming. This is exactly the sort of ceremony he had hoped to avoid by having this get-together at his home rather than the bar Veth had suggested. It's only five of them, tonight; Beauregard and Yasha are always in town, and Veth had insisted on coming. And Essek, of course. He's not sure when the elf's presence at his side became an of course, but in a careful way, he likes it.

“As the person in this world who cares the most about Caleb--”

Essek silently quirks an eyebrow at that, and it doesn’t get past Veth.

“Alright, come on, just because you got him into bed and I didn’t doesn’t mean--”

Caleb clears his throat loudly, and Veth’s smile snaps back into place.

“As Caleb’s oldest, dearest, truest friend,” she says, and Essek manages to look dignified even while rolling his eyes, “it is my humble duty to tell you all how amazing he is on this momentous occasion.”

“You know, I am starting a new job, not getting married,” Caleb murmurs in her direction.

“And we’re all very proud of you!” Veth replies.

Caleb takes a long drink as the others chime in with agreement. Yasha shoots him a sympathetic look, and he returns a tight smile.

“Come on, man,” Beau says from where she leans against the table, “aren’t you excited, at all?”

He takes a long breath. Excited is a word for it. Ready to vomit at a moment’s notice is perhaps more accurate. The Soltryce Academy is tricky. He’s been back there a few times in recent weeks, for interviews and preparation, and each time, it’s felt like walking through a dream of a place the mind could not quite capture properly.

For whatever purpose, Trent has always wanted Caleb - Bren - to follow in his footsteps. Those footsteps feel a touch too literal in those hallways.

“Caleb?” Beau’s voice brings him out of his thoughts. “You still with us?”

He shakes his head. "Ja. Entschuldigung. There is a lot to think about."

Veth lowers her glass, frowning. "Nobody threatened you, did they? Because I'll have words with them."

"No, nothing like that." Not lately, anyway. He sets his own drink down on the table. "Just a bit worried, perhaps."

"Worried about what?" Beau asks flatly.

Caleb lets out a long breath, looking down at the floor. Where to begin? He’s worried that everything will go wrong. Worried that he’ll turn up with his clothes on backwards, or spill coffee down the front of his shirt, or trip over his words before the lesson even starts. Worried, most of all, about what comes after.

“I hope that I will not…” He searches for the right words. “I hope that I will be able to serve my students well enough,” he settles on. “The examples I have had were, ah….” Trent Ikithon is not one he wishes to emulate.

Essek frowns. “Carve your own path,” he says. “Someone as brilliant as you are needs no one to emulate.”

“Ja, well, that is fine for throwing together a spell or two, but I imagine the students will need a little more structure.” These are young minds. Any mistakes he makes will stick with them. He, of all people, knows just how much.

“Maybe you could ask them what they want from you,” Yasha pipes up. “You know, make sure you’re doing alright.”

Caleb lets out a long sigh. “Ja, maybe. That is a good idea.” Of course, it also requires that the students in question trust him enough to give him a straight answer.

They sit in relative silence for a moment, working away at their drinks. He hopes Veth doesn’t resent him for stepping on the atmosphere.

“Seriously, man, you’re gonna be great.” Beau knocks back the rest of her drink. “You’re already the best professor I’ve ever known.”

“I do not think the owl counts as a point of comparison,” Caleb deadpans. “Regardless, I will settle for not making a fool of myself for a first impression. That will be difficult enough.”

Beau shrugs, and reaches over to refill her glass. There’s a devious look in her eye that makes him nervous. "So why don't you practice?" she asks.

Caleb looks at her warily. "Practice?"

"Yeah, man." She gestures at the others. "Here's your class. Teach us something."

Before he can object, she’s already begun to pull an armchair toward the coffee table in the center of the room. Soon enough, three more seats have joined it, all on the same side. She throws her arms wide with a challenging grin.

“First day,” she says. “Don’t be late.” With that, she flops down onto the rightmost chair.

Transfixed in bemusement, Caleb watches as Yasha and Veth rush to occupy the next two seats in the makeshift classroom. The Expositor commands a room, it seems.

“Are you comfortable with this?” Essek murmurs as he brushes past as well. “I am willing to be the, ah... wet blanket, if need be.”

Caleb sighs, briefly twining their fingers together and squeezing once before letting him go. “Not comfortable, no, but it’s not a bad idea.”

Someone wolf whistles from the peanut gallery, and Caleb turns a fond glare on them all. All three of them are, of course, the picture of innocence. He shakes his head as Essek settles down primly in the last remaining chair. It’s not exactly the picture of an academic setting, with their glasses of half-finished booze still on the table in front of them and the lot of them draped over armchairs and ottomans.

“Alright,” says Beau, who has not even bothered to put her drink down. She makes a trilling sound that he thinks is probably meant to emulate a school bell. “Hit us.”

"We will be brutally honest," Veth promises. "Which means we will tell you honestly how perfect you are."

"Or if there's anything you could do better," Yasha adds.

Caleb stares back at them. It’s nothing he hasn’t gone over in his own head a hundred times. Even once or twice, to a captive audience of cats. It’s a short class. It will be over before he knows it.

The others look up at him expectantly. Watching him. Waiting. Caleb clears his throat.

"I, ah... feel a bit silly,” he admits.

Without a word, Essek waves a hand, and the familiar faces before him shift to those of strangers.

It’s almost embarrassing how much it helps. Caleb takes a deep breath and lets it out, running through the lesson plan in his head.

"Guten Morgen, class, I am, ah… Professor Widogast." It's the first time he's said that particular pair of words out loud.

"Whoo!" the student who is not Veth shouts.

"Yeah!" the student who is not Beau chimes in.

Caleb gives them a look and straightens his coat. "This is Introductory Transmutation, in room 142, so if you are all in the correct place--"

"Professor?" The student who is not Yasha raises her hand.

"Ah, ja, Miss…"

"Lionett."

Not-Beau slaps a hand over her own mouth and mutters, “Holy shit,” into it.

“Was that too much?” not-Yasha whispers.

“Babe, it was so hot,” not-Beau hisses back.

Caleb clears his throat. "Miss Lionett, do you have a question?"

Not-Yasha seems to suddenly remember her role, and she folds her hands in her lap. "No," she says, "I have to use the bathroom."

Caleb pinches the bridge of his nose as not-Beau bites back a giggle. “Ja, okay, go.”

“Don’t let her go!” not-Veth interjects. “She knew it was almost time for class; she should have gone earlier.”

“Dude, if she has to pee then she has to pee,” not-Beau protests.

Pointedly, not-Essek raises his hand.

Caleb lets himself sigh with relief. “Ja, Master…?”

“Gross, Professor, we don’t need to know about your weird sex dynamics,” not-Beau says.

Not-Essek’s face blooms red, and Caleb presses a hand to his face to hide the same. “You know very well, Beauregard, that it is an honorific.”

Not-Beau shrugs, looking very pleased with herself as she takes another sip of her drink. Not-Essek glares very polite daggers at her before clearing his throat.

“Thelyss,” he answers.

Beau cups both hands around her mouth and boos.

“No, it’s better that he’s honest,” Veth says. “We already know he’s a terrible actor.”

“Herr Thelyss,” Caleb says, raising his voice above the heckling. “Do you have a question?”

Essek leans forward, resting his elbows on the table in a gesture that’s much too endearing. “I wondered what you will be teaching us today, Professor Widogast.”

Caleb tries not to dwell on the way the title hits differently on Essek’s voice, instead straightening up and waving one hand behind him. An illusory chalkboard appears in the air behind him to polite applause from Veth and Yasha. Back on track.

“Well, this is your first day,” he says. “So I know that - Beauregard, please remove your feet from the table - I know that most of your other teachers will be spending time going over the material that you will be covering this semester, but, ah…” What is he meant to be doing with his hands? They feel limp if they’re at his sides, but too formal behind his back and too awkward in front of him. Perhaps he should have a lectern? Somewhere to rest them, or shuffle with papers?

His gaze drifts back to his “students,” who all blink back at him expectantly. Essek inclines his head as though to prompt him on. He clasps his hands in front of his chest, hoping it will do for now.

“Right,” he continues. “Ja, so I thought we would take a look at something more practical to start. We will leave the reading for tomorrow; you have enough of that today.”

He waves his hands again, and behind him, a set of runes and diagrams appears on the chalkboard. Above it is written the word Prestidigitation.

“So, ah, partner up,” he orders. “Introduce yourselves. If there is someone on their own, a group of three is perfectly acceptable.”

“I call Miss Lionett,” Beau shouts, grabbing Yasha’s hand.

“Can I go to the bathroom, first?” Yasha asks.

Caleb gives her an incredulous look.

“I really do need to go,” she says.

He gestures towards the hallway, and she shuffles off. In the meantime, Veth and Essek scoot their chairs closer together. Caleb’s gaze lingers questioningly on Beau, who shakes her head.

“She’s not learning anything tonight, man. Go ahead.”

“Ja, okay,” he says distantly.

It feels silly, explaining the spell to this motley crew. Beau has leaned back in her chair, arms crossed, eyes glassy, clearly not paying an ounce of attention. Essek has produced a piece of paper upon which Veth occasionally scribbles, though the way he periodically nods approval at Caleb’s points betrays his own prior knowledge of the subject. After a few minutes, Yasha returns and attempts to take down notes of her own.

“Is everyone following along?” he asks after a while, knowing it’s a futile question.

“Yep,” Beau lies.

“Hmm.” Yasha hums.

“Perfectly,” Essek says.

“You’re doing amazing, sweetie,” Veth confirms with a wink.

He continues, running them through the various applications one by one. Beau gives him an occasional “uh huh” that he believes not one bit. At one point, he catches Essek take a passing glance at Veth’s paper, widen his eyes, and lean forward to murmur something to her. He isn’t sure he wants to know what that’s about.

“Let’s keep focused, please, everyone,” he reminds them.

Essek waves a hand to signal him to continue. Nothing too scandalous, then. He goes through the final few points, then comes to stop in front of the chalkboard, hands awkwardly clasped again.

“Okay, that is it,” he says. “You have as much time as you require to finish the spell, and when you are finished, I would like one person from each group to demonstrate.”

He gives the others a questioning look. It’s one of the points he’s most worried about. A way to take pressure off some of the slower students could just as easily be a way to unintentionally foster competition and resentment. But none of them objects, so he gives them another nod.

“I suppose we should skip the demonstration portion,” he mumbles.

“I can do it,” Yasha chirps. Without warning, she swings the massive greatsword from her back and sinks the tip into the table, making the others jump. “I made a small mark.”

Caleb covers his eyes with one hand. “Ja, will it go away in one hour?”

Yasha silently places her drink down over the indentation. Caleb sighs. It isn’t as though he has very many guests, anyway.

“I can probably swing producing an odor, for you,” Beau offers. “But I figure you probably don’t want that.”

He ignores her, and instead gives Essek a tight smile.

“Well, would my second group care to demonstrate?”

Beau jerks a thumb in Essek’s direction and fake-coughs to Yasha, “Teacher’s pet.”

Essek ignores her and sits back, fingers working in those little patterns he draws when something has piqued his curiosity. “I believe so,” he says, and nods to Veth.

Caleb raises his eyebrows as all eyes turn to Veth. Though Essek had the courtesy to leave her a halfling, her features and coloring are entirely different - but that wide smile as she stands and rubs both hands together would give her away, no matter the face it was set in. And as Beau swears under her breath, Yasha and Caleb look on wide-eyed, and Essek watches with a smirk, she pulls her hands apart to let loose a shower of sparks.

“You… learned the spell,” Caleb says numbly. He hadn’t imagined any of them were actually paying attention.

“It was an excellent lesson!” Veth replies.

As she takes her seat again, Beau and Yasha give her a smattering of stunned applause. Essek clears his throat pointedly.

“And I guess, maybe, Essek gave me one pointer,” Veth amends with an eye-roll.

“Hey, so your partner system worked,” Yasha points out.

It had. The lesson had worked, the procedure had worked - his teaching had worked. There’s still a little voice in his head reminding him that Veth is brilliant, and an adult, and perfectly capable of learning things like this without even so much as his help - but he can’t deny that it’s his guidance that taught her this particular spell. ‘An excellent lesson,’ Veth had said. In this moment, he’s inclined to believe it might be half true. Caleb realizes very suddenly that he’s beaming.

With a snap of his fingers, Essek dispels the disguises. The soft smile on his face - his real face, and Caleb always misses it dearly when it’s hidden - says he hasn’t failed to notice Caleb’s relief.

“Danke, all of you,” he says sheepishly, waving a hand to vanish the chalkboard.

“Thank you!” Veth says. “For the shiny new spell and for the masterclass in professoring.”

“You were really good,” Yasha agrees. “I’m, uh... I’m sorry about the table.”

He dips his head to hide the way his face is flushing. They exaggerate, the lot of them. But there is something to be said for having friends who will say such things. “Ja, well,” he says, “I am not convinced it will translate to an actual class, but I will hope.”

Beau takes another swig of her drink, wiping her mouth afterwards. “Dude, we were the worst and you still managed to teach somebody something,” she says. “Those kids have nothing on us. You got this.”

He offers her a smile, retrieving his glass from the table as Yasha, Veth, and Essek do the same. He hopes it’s true. He hopes that, separate entirely from his ability to teach them the how of magic, he will be able to keep them safe. That he will be able to keep from passing on any damage he received in his own time in those halls.

He catches Essek’s eye, and the knowing look there puts some of the anxious buzzing to rest. He will be better. He will struggle, most likely. He will stumble, inevitably. But he will give better than he got. He’s been practicing that part for years.

“To Professor Widogast!” Veth shouts, breaking him out of his thoughts.

“Professor Widogast,” the others echo, and Caleb smiles.

“To my very good friends,” he replies.

“To the hottest professor the Soltryce Academy has ever seen,” Veth shouts in response, and Caleb nearly chokes on his drink when Essek casually clinks his glass against hers with a nod.

They drink together. Caleb thinks, just a little bit, he might be excited.

-

thanks @peregrintook for reading this over and telling me it wasn't the worst thing i had ever written (in much more generous words than that), and @saturdaysky for catching me red-handed last time i deleted it and being so kind about it 💜

[hotwings0203]

I feel like Dabi would be the type of dude who would bully you incessantly at the LOV and for the life of you you can’t figure out why. He’s always around you and making snarky comments or pulling your hair, trying to catch you messing up on missions. You’re sure he hates you, and you do well to stay out of his way, or sometimes when you feel bold you’ll offer a quip of your own. The bullying increases whenever you talk to other guys at the bar, especially when you make Tomura crack a smile, Dabi’s breathing down your neck the second your leader leaves, calling you terrible names and pushing past your boundaries.

Cw: language, nsfw, noncon, manga spoilers, some angst?

In a perfect world, Touya would not have been abandoned and rejected by his family. In a perfect world, Dabi would not exist, and Touya would be eating dinner with his family right now as he shows his little brother how to properly wield fire to its fullest extent.

But there was no such thing as a perfect world, and therefore Dabi did exist. And Dabi doesn’t care for anyone, or anything.

Or so he tells himself.

“Slut”

“Nothing but eye candy, and shitty eye candy at that”

It’s nothing you haven’t heard before, but it doesn’t make it any easier to ignore him

“What was that all about, huh? The fuck are you and crusty snickering about?”

Fed up with his continuous antics, you decide to mouth off a little too.

“Oh nothing, just talking about how adorable you and Hawks would make as a couple. And wipe that sneer off your face, it looks like some of your staples fell out of your mouth.”

It’s nothing too snarky, but in a second he’s shoving you in some dark room, forearm pinned against your throat as his hand is lit up with blue flames merely inches away from you, snarling in your face.

“You wanna be funny, bitch? I got jokes of my own too, why dont I show you what happens to dumb little girls who don’t know their fucking place? I think that would be real funny.”

But his hand is stopped from drawing near your wide eyes when you both hear Twice and Toga calling everyone for their next meeting.

He pushes you away from him, giving you a murderous look over his shoulder as he leaves the room, not paying mind to the way you slide down the wall in the dark.

You take extra precaution to try avoiding him for the next few days, not even making eye contact with him when you two get teamed up for tasks. He never mentions the room incident, if anything he acts as if it never happens. It’s like whiplash for you, he tries to weirdly talk to you more but all you offer him is mumbles and hums of agreement.

The conversation is never long, but it starts to be less talk of degrading you and more of begrudging questioning of what you’ve been up to. You never engage, opting to pretend like you never heard him, and strangely enough he leaves it be.

You give him a side eye one day as he joins you at the bar (much to your discontent), downing your glass just to fill another.

He says nothing as he slides into the stool right next to you, and pours a glass of whiskey for himself as well.

It’s awkwardly silent, you’re not sure if you should leave or not, but you’d be damned if you try to initiate small talk with this psycho.

But then, he speaks.

“Is Shigaraki sending you on the mission to get that UA kid?”

His gravely voice rumbles and cracks from his usual lack of use, and he clears his throat after he talks.

“No.”

“Oh.”

This is excruciating, you think to yourself as he mulls over the drink in his hand for a silent minute or two.

Toga calls you over thankfully at the exact same moment, and you breathe out an inaudible sigh of relief as you slip off the stool to join her.

“Wait-“ Dabi grabs your arm and you flinch out of instinct, expecting a slap or a burn to come from him.

He sees your reaction and shakes his head dismissively, letting you go and muttering a “Nevermind”. You don’t ponder over it as you trip over your own feet to join the eccentric blond.

A week passes, and then two. With each day you maneuver your way around him, request to be partnered up with different people in private, and busy yourself in random tasks. Every time you pass him by the bar he lifts his head from whatever he’s doing and tries to maintain eye contact with you, even going so far as to open his mouth to say or ask god-knows-what.

You try to ignore the foreign hopeful glint in his glacial eyes as you walk right past him, ducking your head as you do so.

It drives Dabi crazy.

He can’t handle any more rejection, he thought his family would be the last straw for him to ever want recognition or love validation from again. He wants to talk to you, to hear your voice as it snaps back with witty comebacks of your own that he secretly enjoys so much, even if it means he has to force it out of you with hateful words. He wants to feel your hair underneath his scarred hands, even if he has to mask the soft wanting of you in forms of yanking the strands. He wants nothing more than to see your eyes fill up with no other sight than him and think only of him, even if it means he has to corner you and scare you into submission.

But your silence is something he’s not used to.

Well, to be fair, you weren’t silent completely, but the only sentences he was hearing from you nowadays was when you were speaking to Shigaraki or the other League members.

You were the only idiot who didn’t notice the smoke curling from his nostrils and ears comically when he’d finally see you stop your stoic act just to open up to other men apart from him. Spinner, Twice, and Compress backed off almost immediately from talking to you for too long when they’d see the look on his face as he watched you surrounded by them, but Tomura would merely smirk from behind your shoulders and keep a level gaze with his subordinate, knowing fully well why he was so pissed off.

You began to notice the weird energy at the base soon after the rest of the men would keep curt conversations with you in comparison to your long talks about video games, sex, and life after you would all win the war.

So you thought it would be best to ask the most semi-normal person there that wasn’t fueled with testosterone and aggression.

“I just don’t get it, why are they all being weird? I mean, we all used to talk so much and now they just...try avoiding me. Except for Tomura of course, he’s still normal I guess. But he always has this smirk on his face when I’m with him and I can’t figure out why.”

Toga stops cleaning her blood-laced needle to give you a sly look, all fangs and glinting white.

“And Dabi?”

“What about him?”

She sits back on her haunches and cocks her head at you. “You really don’t know what’s happening here, do ya?”

“No,” you roll your eyes in exasperation. “But I’ll gladly take any theories here, since apparently I’m the only one who doesn’t get it.”

“He likes you.”

You gape at her for a moment and then burst out laughing.

“What? That’s crazy, he doesn’t like me, he hates me!” He can barely stand being in a room with me, all he does is talk shit and harass me.”

The blond curiously licks at a bead of red from the top of the weapon and you cringe when her own tongue rips from the sharp point.

“You say he can’t stand being in a room with you, so then why is it that he’s always there? He might talk shit, but he talks to you out of everyone else right? Regardless of if it’s something mean.”

You’re thoroughly flabbergasted. She had a point, but it was too much to wrap your head around. She cheerfully hums and gets up to flounce around the room, cleaning her already-tidy room up to a T.

“And that little silent treatment act you’re giving him isn’t helping either. I swear, Jin told me Dabi almost burned his mouth off that one day you, him and Spinner were talking about GTA. He totally cornered the poor guy and threatened his life if he didn’t stop talking to you.”

“You’re joking.”

“Am not. He wanted to do the same to Tomura but I figure he wants to keep his job, so he won’t. Doesnt make it any better for him when you’re all chummy with the one person Dabi can’t stand the most, though.”

No wonder your leader was so smug whenever you two were in the same room, your attention solely focused on him.

You run your hands down your face, moaning about the whole situation being fucked. It’s just your luck that you couldn’t take a clue, but to be fair, how could you? Being called worthless and a waste of space wasn’t exactly what you had in mind for flirty banter.

“Soooo what’re you gonna do now? I heard he’s gonna try talking to you for realsies like, tomorrow or something.”

“Tomorrow?” You yelp, jumping up to your feet. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner? I can’t face him!”

“Oops,” she giggles, twirling with outstretched arms around her room and falling down onto her bed.

“Oh god, I can’t do this. I don’t even know if I like him! He’s such an ass, and even when he tries to come off as normal he’s just so..unsettling. I don’t think I’ve ever had a good conversation with him.”

Toga props her elbow up to rest her chin on her hand, frowning in thought.

“Why not just tell him how you feel?”

You snort and fold your arms. “Yeah, because the psycho arsonist is really gonna take the word no well.”

“Hmm.. I see what you mean. Oh well, whatever you choose, I’ll support you!”

And with that she skips out of the room sing songing for Twice to make a clone for her.

You were fucked.

And sure enough, the next day he approaches you, hands stuffed in his pockets and an almost bored look on his face.

“Yo newbie, I gotta talk to you for a second. Come with me”.

You look blearily up at him through eye bags and mussed hair, a direct telling of your sleepless night. Your stomach drops when you hear his words, but you nod your head and take a deep breath, mentally preparing yourself of the speech you practiced till the sun rose.

No one else is bothering you both today, Shigaraki having gone to visit All For One and the rest of the League left to their own devices. It was something you weren’t so comfortable with, but you doubted a hero would come to save you.

He leads you through the short winding hallways, each step of his growing louder and heavier as the space started growing smaller. Finally, he reaches a dimly lit room and stops outside the door, gesturing for you to go in with a casual wave of his patched wrist.

“After you.”

You raise an unsure eyebrow at his uncharacteristic show of consideration, and do as he says. You’re sweating bullets, fists balled so that your nails are digging into your palms, and vision going in and out of focus as your eyes begin to adjust to your surroundings.

A loud bang pulls you out of your stupor, and you whip around at the sound.

Dabi is already staring back at you with lidded eyes, leaning his weight against the door, his arms crossing over each other.

You shift on both feet, picking at your nails nervously.

“So, what did you wanna talk about?”

He says nothing, but just observes you, his head slightly tilted as if you were some abstract art piece.

“Dabi.”

“You got a lot of nerve, y’know that?”

He pushes himself off the wall and advances slowly towards you, hands stuffed in his trench coat pockets.

You immediately back up with raised palms, sputtering indignantly at his offensive movements coming closer and closer. However you thought his ‘confession’ would go, this was most definitely not starting out like how you planned

“Excuse me? What’re you talking about-“

“I know what you’re doing. You think whoring yourself out to ol’ crusty and the rest of the guys here is gonna make everyone forget just how useless you actually are. What the fuck do you even do here? You fuck up half the missions which I have to come bail your ass out of, you constantly put us in jeopardy by being all friendly with everyone, and you can’t even keep your mouth shut when I need to let off a little steam, as I rightfully should.”

In a perfect world, Dabi would be the light of your eyes, the hero of your world. In a perfect world, Dabi would be able to hold your hand in his smooth one and tell you that he wants you so much that it impairs his rational judgement and makes him say things he doesn’t mean. He’d tell you that your presence is like a weight lifted off his chest, your presence means he doesn’t have to think or worry about the outside world, he just wants you all to himself without anyone interfering.

But this is not a perfect world, and Dabi is not a hero, but rather one of the worst villains.

So he does exactly what one does as a villain.

Instead of a loving look that he knows he’s incapable of, Dabi looks down into your horrified gaze as he traps you against the wall between his scarred arms, spewing misplaced venom at you.

“I don’t know what your problem is, but you need to chill out. First you go ballistic on me ‘cause I talked to Tomura for no reason, then you act all weird and quiet as if you’re some decent person, and now you think you can just bring me in here and tell me how worthless I am? Go fuck yourself, seriously.”

You scoff and make your way to push him but stop when he does what he did a couple weeks ago. You hold bated breath as he casually brings an inflamed hand to scratch at his face as if he can’t feel the hellfire emitting from it, and let out a whine of distress as he lowers his head mere inches from yours, lips almost touching.

“Stop talking to the rest of the guys,” he breaths. “Stop smiling, laughing, or going near anyone who isn’t me.”

You wonder if he knows how insane he sounds. He does, but that’s nothing he doesn’t know already. If anything, it solidifies in his mind that if he is to be as bad as the world has made him out to be, then he is acting exactly fit for the role.

“Why?”

“I don’t need to give sluts like you a reason. It should come as easy, right? What’s putting out for one more person?”

Your eyes are brimming with tears now, your stoic facade showing cracks as you sniffle a little bit.

He eats it up and groans watching salty rivers cascade down your cheeks. Suddenly, he feels as though he can no longer hold back anymore, he feels as though if he thinks for one more second he’ll combust.

So, acting on instinct, he surges forward and presses his lips against yours, swallowing your cries of distress and holding your hands above your head in midst of them frantically beating on his chest.

Your lips are so, so soft compared to his and it’s making him sink deeper into this instinctual daze. He puffs against your writhing lips as he thrusts his hot tongue in your mouth.

You try to bite him but when his hands heat up against your skin you resign to your fate and wail, allowing him to pull his hips flush against yours and start humping your thighs.

He draws back and bites your lips, teeth clacking against yours as he does so. You open your terrified eyes and blanch when you see the look on his face.

Lust is clearly drawn everywhere, from his blown pupils to his heaving chest, all the way to his flushed face and wild eyes. He looks as though he’s about to eat you alive and it’s appropriate that you feel like a lamb about to be slaughtered.

“Dabi, wait, please stop-“

But he cuts your pants off again in favor of slamming his hips against yours again and grinding impossibly hard on your legs, the friction of his jeans catching on your clothed cunt and forcing a mewl out of you.

“I’m not gonna stop. I’ve had enough of you teasing. You’re mine now, and if it takes burning our dear leader alive and this whole place down for you to understand that then I’ll fucking do it.”

He thought that terrorizing you would ease the empty feeling in his heart, that continuously berating you would force him to see you as what he always said you were, just another empty headed cunt. He thought that distancing himself from you and focusing on other things would make him forget about the soft feelings he longed to share with you, feelings he thought perished in the fire he was in when he was a young boy .

Even now, there is an ache in his chest as he hears you beg for him to stop, to let you go, that you’re sorry for whatever you did.

But this is not a perfect world, and not everyone gets their way in life.

You should really learn that, because Dabi already has.

And so Dabi will act accordingly to what life has put out before him .

[sweetsbfreex]

a styles vacation to Hawaii

Summary: a little continuation of this family. The styles take a vacation to Hawaii with mild bumps in the road. 

a/n: no warnings, but harry is not famous in this. I’ve never been to Hawaii and do not much of the hawaiian attire/culture, i just did research and put what i found. If there’s any misconceptions or if i’ve offended anyone by accident pls lmk!

Pairings: Dad, Husband!Harry

“Honey, you have to let go so we’re not late for the plane” Harry grunts, trying to stealthily pull Ava away from her hold on Milo. 

“No! We can’t leave Mimi” she cries out, cuddling her face into the pup’s fur even more. 

“Mimi has to stay with nan, honey” From his tone you can tell he’s losing patience.

It’s a definite eyesore. The whole situation takes place on your mother's porch. You were all meant to say your goodbyes before the three of you–– no Milo–– go off on a small vacation to Hawaii. 

Ava is holding on to the australian shepherd, not letting up one bit. You would think she glued herself onto him without anyone knowing, with how she latched on.

Milo in front of your mother's feet, enjoying what he thinks is a hug it seems. Only letting out long whines when Ava's sobs get out of control.

Harry is standing behind Ava, bent at the wait trying to pry her off her best friend.

You're crouched beside her, a hand on her back, trying to convince her to let go.

Ava's poor grandmother stands in the doorway. A look of agony on her face as she watches it all go down.

The–– now three year old–– has been throwing a hissy fit in the car, holding onto Milo's paw. Ever since Harry informed her how they were going to her nan's house to drop off Milo and then hurry to the plane. She saw the news like a terrible taste in her mouth, while she stared at you both in the rearview mirror eyes widened. 

You know how much the two love each other, but you didn't expect her to throw a fit like this.

“Ava I know you’re upset but, you gotta let go honey so Mimi can have fun with grandma. Don’t you want to go on the airplane, hm? Weren’t you excited about it?” You ask her, beginning to unclasp one hand and go for the other, trying to bring into your arms.

But with quickness, she remembered the only way she would be able to go on this vacation. Without Milo, she wraps her arms around Milo again. 

“Baby, Milo has to stay. Dog’s aren’t allowed in Hawaii” At this moment, Harry is willing to try anything.

“They’re not?” she asks, tilting her head back a little to see her father’s face. 

“Nope, Milo won’t have fun there. He’ll have more fun with Nana” he tells her, bringing his thumbs down to wipe away the tears. 

“...I wanna stay with Mimi!” 

Milo doesn’t eject this idea, letting his chin rest on her small shoulder. You and Harry huff in frustration, glancing at each other. Your mother...well she’s had enough of whatever foolishness you and H are pulling right now. 

“Okay enough of this” your mother starts, gaining everyone’s attention. “Ava, honeybee, Tell Milo and your grandma see you later and let go of him so you can have fun on your trip with your parents.” She says this with a stern, yet loving tone. Down to business and nothing else. 

“Yes nana” she mumbles, placing a few kisses to Milo’s cheek and glides to your mom. 

You and Harry look at each other in an instant, eyes wide at the way your mother fixed the problem in less than a minute. A mutual look of what the fuck, as in the what the fuck were you possibly doing wrong. 

“Thanks mum.” Harry says sheepish, looking at the calming little one swaying in your mother’s arms.  

“Yeah thanks mom” you say, standing up straight.

“No problem, Now get going, before she fusses again”

You all exchange your see you laters. Ava has yet another sweet moment with Milo. While Harry tells her she won't be staying in Hawaii forever and Milo won't stay with Nana forever. As you're driving away you all wave at the two, Ava yelling to Milo.

“Bye Mimi! See you soon! Don’t chase a squirrel when I’m gone!” She yells out the window, her arm waving in the wind. 

You and Harry share a chuckle. Despite what she may think, Milo has never chased a squirrel in his life. She's watched it once on a cartoon and it somehow filled her heard with the imaginary scenario. 

When both her grandmother and bestfriend are out of sight, she turns her head to the other window. A solemn look on her face, looking out the window like the Kermit the Frog meme. 

You play the Frozen 2 soundtrack for the less pouty girl behind you. But when you don't hear the shrill sound of her singing, you look behind you to see an upset look upon her cherub face. 

Her bottom lip is juts out, her hands fisted and arms crossed. 

“You okay?” you ask her, turning in your seat to cradle her knee. 

She’s dressed cutesy in a matching sweat set and a cute beanie rested over her plaits. 

“No. I’m upset and I wanna yell” she looks at you, resting her case, before she turns her head back to its original spot. 

Harry peeks at the interaction through the rear view mirror; an eyebrow quirked. One hand on the wheel while the other takes its natural spot in your lap, your fingers tangled with his. 

“Why are you upset?” you ask. 

“Because…” she groans, trying to figure out her ‘big feelings’. “You left Mimi and now he’ll hate me” 

“He won’t hate you, you’re his favorite person” 

“You guys don’t love me either!” She whines, glaring out the window. Wigging in her spot, causing your hand to fall from her knee. 

“That’s not true! We love you” you exclaim, in a loving manner. 

“Then get Mimi” 

“Mimi is staying with grandma Ava, enough.” Harry’s voice catches her attention immediately. “ It's okay to be upset but Hawaii doesn’t accept dogs, remember?” 

She only huffs, dropping her hands from her chest. 

“Can you play the when I am older song, please mommy?” she almost whispers.

You accept her request, turning so you’re seated right. Playing the song and hearing her sing eases your glazed stare a bit. Releasing a breath and closing your eyes as you rest your head against the window adds a bit to your release. 

Harry raises the entangled hands away from your lap, placing an adored kiss to the back of your hand. Sending a quick questioning look your way. 

“I’m fine” you send back, in a smile. No mother wants to hear those words.

He can’t do much with him driving and with Ava in the car. So he places a kiss to the back of your hand once more, and extends his hand so he caresses the back of your neck. 

“You’re doing a great job, stop being so hard on yourself” he encourages.

If your mom was here she’d give you a tip or two on how you and Harry are too soft on Ava. You couldn’t help leaving all the disciplining to Harry, you probably were definitely too soft on her at times.  

-

Through all the pouting, belting of kid songs, and Harry's annoying jokes and teasing. Five hours later you've made it to the resort. 

At the moment, Harry was checking you both in while you and Ava looked around the gift shop. When you feel someone’s arm come around your shoulder, you jump. But the feeling of his cold rings and brings you down. 

“Scared me, don’t do that” a breath of relief follows as you tilt your head back onto his shoulder. He gets the memo immediately, leaning down for a peck to the lips. 

“Made a friend in the lobby.” He tells you like nothing. Eyes shifting at his little girl looking through the stuffed animals and keychains.  

“Are you okay?” you ask in disbelief. 

“What?” he laughs, one eyebrow perched.

“Like in the head”

“I’m not following…”

“Why are you so good at making friends with strangers this easily? Seriously.” 

He laughs you off like it’s nothing, but it’s uncomic. You wish you could blame it on being shy, but compared to Harry it was not that easy for you to chat up strangers enough that you become acquaintances. 

Your husband could make friends with a duck if he wanted to. Everywhere you went. Whether in the ice cream shop a few miles away at home or the park where you took Ava all the time .He was always chatting with someone, in the end pulling you in. 

He only laughs it off, beyond doubt enjoying the look on your face. “We agreed to save each other a seat at the Luau tonight, for whoever gets there first. Talked to the husband actually, but you’ll see”

“You’re insane” you tease him.

“Can I have this?” A teal, stuffed sea turtle is thrusts in the direction of you and Harry. 

“How do we ask nicely” you say. 

“Can I get this?” she smiles, a smile so sweet, your tooth hurts from looking at it. She’s the most adorable thing and knows exactly how to use it to her advantage. 

“My sweet little baby.” Harry crooned, advancing to her, lifting her into his tattooed arms. Placing a series of kisses to her plump cheeks. She giggles, never wanting the affection to stop. “You can have it,” he tells her. “Let’s go to the till.”

“Harry you didn’t even check the price” you chimed in. 

“Shh. We’re having a moment” he acknowledged. He outstretches his arm, so his palm meets your face gently. You laugh into it, before you smack his wrist away, then placing a light kiss to his wrist when he whines.  

-

It’s some hours later. You’re all getting ready for the hotel’s hosted dinner/Luau tonight. The three of you took a two and a half hour nap. 

You were touching up your light makeup while Harry got Ava ready. He lost two rounds of rock-paper-scissors and now must deal with the havoc that is dressing Ava. 

“Baby, get the trousers mommy picked out for you” you Harey him tell Ava. 

“Trousers?” She says the word with confusion, “Don’t have trousers babe? That’s a silly word.” 

Then you hear the raspy laugh of Harry. 

“Your pants, get your pants and your top too” 

Not even a minute later do you hear Harry asking her to stop wiggling around. 

Harry walks in the bathroom, a giggling Ava sat on his hip. 

Harry adores a very laid back...dad look you could say. The back of the white wife beater he’s wearing get’s covered by a black button up shirt with flamingos patterned all over it. He’s also wearing  a pair of shorts and his favorite vans. 

Ava’s tucked into a set. a cami top with matching flared pants and sunflowers ornamented the black fabric. 

“Oooh look at mumma, beautiful huh?” he asks Ava, extending one hand towards you, once you clasp your hands in his, he spins you letting his eyes sink in.

“Yeah!”

“Thank you both” you smile as Harry tugs you in for a swift kiss. 

You had picked out an angelic, ivory crochet set. The top you’re wearing shows off your midriff and the long, flowy skirt matches with beautiful lace detailing. 

You turn to Ava to give her a kiss on her cheek. “You look so handsome.” you tell Harry, letting your hand run through his hair. “And you look so adorable, you like your outfit?” taking her from Harry’s hands. 

“Yeah, I like the flowers–– Can I have some too?” she points to the plethora of makeup products spread over the bathroom counter. 

Looking over at Harry for his confirmation, he nods. You take the brush running it over the blush, before brushing it over her chubby cheeks and her nose.

“Tickles,” she laughs, pushing your hand away. 

“Are you ladies ready to go?” 

-

“Wow! Look the fires!” She points at the lines of tiki torches submerged into the sand, jumping as she sits on your hip. 

The layout is stunning. There’s a stage for the performance, round tables spread out everywhere across the beach, and a buffet in the back. 

Most of the tables are already filled, albeit the show was to start in like twenty minutes. 

“There they are, over there” Harry indicated, his hand waving back at a family of four. 

With Harry’s hand settled on your back, he weaved the three of you to the table. 

“Hey Shawn.” Harry greeted, their hands clasped together as they brought each other in, clapping each other on the back. 

Shawn was a tall man, a few inches taller than Harry, and very built. He had amazing brown skin, clear like a mirror, and was bald––which he pulled off effortlessly. 

“This is my wife, y/n and my daughter Ava” he smiled at the two of you, while you shook hands with Shawn and asked Ava to say a hello. Which she did, like bursting a ball of energy as put her hands out for a handshake like she watched her parents do. It caused a laugh out of everyone. She didn’t know why they were laughing at her, but she enjoyed the attention. 

“This is my wife Avni” you hugged, as close as you could, with a petite, expecting Indian woman. She was radiant as she smiled at you and Harry. “These are my kids Grey and Aster” you shook hands with them both. 

Grey looked about Ava’s age, bouncy coils moving as he bobbed up and down in his seat. His sister, who looked in her tweens, sported the same hair texture. Aster more silent of the two sent her greetings kindly. 

“And the third is still cooking in here” he laughed, setting his hands down on Avni’s early protruding belly. 

With that joke, you understand exactly how the two of them got to know each other, as Harry joined in with his laugh. The wives chuckled amongst themselves. 

“How far along are you?” you solicited.

“Three and a half months” Avni smiled proudly, rubbing both hands around her belly. 

You cooed, “It’s amazing, you’re literally glowing. You're making me miss being pregnant” you joke. 

“Okay! Enough of that. One little devil is enough.” Harry tickles your side, as a result you jab his side with your elbow gently, as he grins down at you. “We’re gonna go get some food,” he informs the couple.

-

Now everyone’s sitting around the table anticipating for the show to start. Conversation running pretty smoothly. The four of you were even able to make a few plans for the week you are here for. You had gotten a high chair for Ava to sit and eat in, but she wasn’t having it. Failing around while reaching for you.

 In result, she’s now sitting in your lap, bouncing side to side. Munching on her French fries, chicken, and sipping on her pineapple juice. 

“Taste good?” Harry asks his toddler. 

“Mhm” she hums, shoving her thumb into his face. 

“I can tell” he chuckles, extending a napkin to wipe her face clean. 

You tilt your head down closer to hers, to see sauce around her mouth, some of it on her cheek even. 

“Daddy.”

“Hm, baby?”

“Mimi would like this, he loves the chicken mommy gives me” 

“You give Mimi your chicken?”

“No”

You both laugh it off, not seeing the point in correcting her. 

“Who’s Mimi”

“Mimi is our dog, he's big and he can talk!” Ava answered, her voice ringing with excitement. 

“Dog’s can’t talk!” The high-pitched voice of Grey argued, eye brows pitched together. 

“That’s a fib, Mimi talks to me all the time!” she defended. 

Thankfully,  the show was beginning, two young women and four young men came out on stage. Dressed in their traditional Hula attire. 

You and Avni shared a grateful smile, knowing neither of you would know how to suppress their little spiff. 

The dance is mesmerizing and it was nice with the sun almost setting as a background. Light hues of orange shaded the sea as the night took over the rest.  Everyone watched in awh, clapping when it was appropriate. The women’s skirt flowed amongst the air like water.  

Harry’s arm propps on the back of your chair. During the performance you feel his fingers run against the back of your neck. 

You turn your head towards, trying not to disturb the entranced little girl on your lap. “What?” you mouth. 

“It’s beautiful” he whispers to you. 

“I know” you tell him, smiling when he rolls his eyes at you. 

At some point in the show, the original dancers plus a few more stepped off the stage. An array of Lei’s on their arms, watching as they put Leis around their chosen person’s neck. During this time a woman walks behind Harry, setting one around his neck. 

You laugh at the shocked look on his face and the way he fixes his posture. She places a grip onto his arm, making him stand up so she could guide her to the rest of the others. Avni gets chosen too. 

The smile on your face makes your face hurt as you watch Harry “dance” up there. The man definitely didn’t have the bet rhythm but he’s having fun and you loved that. 

“Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!...” Ava cheered on her father, clapping her hands. Harry looks towards her, waving. She gets even more excited chanting his title louder. 

She's Not interrupting anything, you’re surprised he heard her in the first place. But also not, she always knew how to project her voice when needed. 

A little over a minute goes by when Ava raises her hand and keeps it up there until you’re able to flag down someone for a lei, which you both get. The both of you walk up to Harry and you set Ava on the ground. 

A slight circle forms as you three hold hands together. Just swaying. Sometimes letting go because Harry wanted to spin the two of you. It’s a beautiful image, you're sure. All the glee you could hold in your body transpires in the way you danced with them. 

When you’re walking back to your hotel room, your arms are hooked with Harry’s and your head rests on his shoulder. An almost asleep Ava in his arm. He stops to bring his free hand around your neck, pulling you in for a kiss.

“Thank you for giving me this, I love you” he whispers against your lips. 

-

Last night, after the dinner and the Hula, Ava had facetimed Nana. To be honest, she had wanted to say a goodnight to Milo, but talking to her grandmother was always a plus. She was still dressed in her outfit, you and Harry getting ready for the night, so you could then focus on her. 

She sat up against the headboard, Your giant phone–– compared to her hands–– held in her tiny ones.  You were looking through her duffle bag for her pyjamas when you heard…

“Look Mimi, I saved you chicken”, her small teeth bared, holding up a piece of her chicken from dinner. Your phone is now being propped up against a pillow. 

You looked up to watch her pull a piece of chicken from her...pant pocket. 

That was the point you reavulated yourself as a parent and had to think about what kind of kid you and Harry were possibly raising. 

“Harry!” you called for him.

He walked out, an eyebrow quirked.

“Look.” you hiss, voice low.

‘God…’ Harry thinks. “Where’d she get that chicken from?” he asks, running his towel over his hair. 

“Her pocket! Why are you so casual about this?”

“Angel...you had a baby with me, what’d you expect?” he questions, seriously questions you this.

“You’re fixing it then, Mr. mini-me”

-

Presently, you’re all at the beach. Three towels and three umbrellas lay in/on the sand. You’ve rubbed sunscreen on Ava twice now and have had to remind Harry three times. After last time there was no way you’d be rubbing aloe vera on him all night. 

“Baby you’re dripping it.” You sigh, reaching over to wipe her chin of the chocolate ice cream she was eating, from a cup you might add. “Do you want me to feed it to you?”

“No, thank you” she replies, kicking her feet out. 

You’ve all swam a bit, but now are on a mini break from the water and saw they were selling ice cream close by. 

It’s pretty quiet between the three of you, too busy enjoying your treat. 

She gasps, “Daddy you’re a fibber” Ava says indifferently, slurping even more of her ice cream from her spoon.

He guffaws, caught off guard from her statement. He shifts towards the two of you. The way the wind blows his hair and the sun makes the green in his eyes even brighter catches you off guard–– the sight of his abs doesn’t hurt either. 

You also knew it wouldn’t be long until his hair gained some highlights and his freckles would be more prompt. You couldn’t wait.

“How’m I a fibber, messy?” squinting down at her.

“Look!”she points, “There’s a puppy right there” 

There is, you turn your eyes to where her fingers point to see a woman walking a black Dachshund.

Harry turns his head towards him, a sad look on his face. “You’re right baby. I’m a fibber. I’m sorry”

Ava hurls from her seat to latch her arms around his neck, “It’s okay daddy, now Mimi can come next time” she tells him.

If there’s one thing about Ava, it’s how much she hates sadness. Unless it’s from her. Then it’s perfectly okay. She hates sadness so much, she particularly had a dislike for the character from Inside out. Until you had to explain to her how sadness is something that is okay and needed from time to time, Like in the movie.

After her round of affection towards Harry, she emplaces herself into his lap.

“Daddy. Mommy.”

You both hum an answer. 

“It looks like a hot dog” she eyes the dog while it trots down the sand. 

“It does huh?” Harry answers, brushing her flyaways back. All while you laugh into your palm.

Your hands feel tingly when you wrap it around Harry’s neck, pulling him into you. His head lays against your shoulder. 

Definitely a vacation to remember and cherish.

-

if you enjoyed pls don’t forget to reblog or give feedback if ur up to it <3

[jadequeen88]

Smart Girls Make Fast Learners

NSFW 18+ ONLY. MINORS WILL BE BLOCKED!

My contribution to the BNHarem’s monthly collab. The theme was SEx work. ⛓This piece is a first real deep dive into darker themes and was actually really, really exciting to write. 🖤 A massive thanks to my dear friend @libiraki​ for beta reading this.

TW: yandere behavior, toxic relationship, degradation, non-con, dub-con, degradation/praise kinks, mind break, oral (M and F receiving), over stim, loss of virginity, mentions of physical violence.

DISCLAIMER: I do not condone this type of relationship. This is a work of fiction and if this happens IRL please get out of the relationship!

There is a very specific type of dread that occurs when you discover that the person you built your world around has been lying to you. Tamaki Amajiki was experiencing this brand of betrayal for the first time in his twenty-one years on a rainy Tuesday in October in the dim lighting of your dorm room. His grip tightened around the open laptop as he stared at glimpses of flesh in the thumbnails of the many, many videos posted to the site. Previous live streams with thousands of views. He gulped down the bile in his throat as he scrolled through the videos. His shock and disgust morphed into a pure rage as he counted up the live streams that you’d had since first kissing him. 12. There had been twelve. Three times a week for the past four weeks. 

Those big doe eyes that looked into his eyes as you tentatively licked the tip of his cock for the first time… mere hours later they were rolling in the back of your head as you got off for strangers on the internet. He couldn’t take it. You were his first… everything… he knew that you hadn’t been innocent in your past. The way your tongue expertly wound around his when you first kissed him amongst your plush pillows and goose-down comforter reminded him of the fact. The low violet LED lighting of your bedroom made him feel like the two of you were in your own ethereal world. He could forgive you for not waiting for him as he’d waited for you. 

For the past four years, he kept to the shadows. He was there when the football player from freshman year cheated on you with one of your terrible friends (and when it happened the second, third, fourth time). He was there to binge your favorite shows with you (“*insert current guy you were fucking* just doesn’t get it, he’s not into it. I’m so glad I’ve got you to watch it with!”) He bit back the heartache that would wash over him when you’d pet him and coo over him… you didn’t see him as a man. He wanted to bend you over and prove he could fuck your brains out. He KNOWS he’d be perfect for you. But he never rejected the attention. He smiled and accepted whatever crumbs fell from your table. Whether it be helping you study or letting you complain about your shitty friends or your shitty jock boyfriends or your shitty parents… He gave and gave and gave… until that one day, 35 days ago to be exact, a shift in the tide occurred.

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“So why don’t you have a girlfriend, Tama-kun?”

“Wh-wha?”

Tamaki dropped the pencil he’d been using and before he could bend to get it himself, your hand was on his thigh and he was putty in your grasp. You giggled and cooed over him like you always did, but this time you did it while assaulting his mouth and neck with your skilled tongue. This time, for the first time, you made Tamaki feel like a man. Like YOUR man.

⫸⫸⫸⫸⫸⫸⫸⫸⫸⫸⫸⫸⫸⫸⫸⫸⫸⫸⫸⫸⫸⫸⫸⫸⫸⫸⫸⫸⫸⫸⫸

Over the next few weeks, Tamaki had become quite skilled in pleasing a woman. It only took a little guidance to have him sucking at your clit with just the right amount of pressure. He learned on his own how to couple that with his long, delicate fingers twisting and pumping in and out of your slick hole. You’d cling to his silky hair, pulling him closer as a constant stream of praise tumbled from your lips:

“No one has ever made me feel this good.”

“Your fingers are perfect Tama-kun”.

“I love your mouth on me so much, baby.”

The first time you came on his face, Tamaki knew there was a god because he’d found heaven between your thighs.

But that was gone now… ripped away with one mouse click on the night he was going to finally give you his virginity. He had held on to it like it was a treasure. A treasure he’d present to you one day wrapped up in life-long devotion and worship... But Tamaki wasn’t in heaven anymore. He wasn’t going to worship you tonight. For the first time since laying eyes on you, Tamaki wanted to hurt you.

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You turned the shower off and dried yourself. Wiping the condensation from the mirror, you couldn’t help but smile at your reflection. You felt like this was going to be the first time giving your body to someone. Tonight was a redo. You were wiping the slate clean. Your first time would no longer be underneath the football captain in the passenger seat of his truck, left feeling sore and unsatisfied. It was going to be with the guy you should have noticed long ago. It would be soft and slow… passionate and filled with sweet words and caresses… limbs tangled in soft sheets that smell like lavender and vanilla. 

You applied your lotion and moisturized your face. The red lace adorning your body was arranged perfectly, accentuating the soft swell of your hips and chest. With one last glance in the mirror and adjustment of your bra, you opened the door to the cool air of your dorm room…

...And saw Tamaki looking murderous. 

His eyes slowly left the screen to meet your gaze. His tear-stained face had never looked this harsh. His normally sweet eyes were narrowed and red from crying. The sweet lips you’d licked and sucked with such tenderness were hard and cold as they pulled upward in a grimace.

The only thing he said before rising from the bed and setting aside your laptop was your camgirl username. Then he was on you before you could draw a breath to explain.

⫸⫸⫸⫸⫸⫸⫸⫸⫸⫸⫸⫸⫸⫸⫸⫸⫸⫸⫸⫸⫸⫸⫸⫸⫸⫸⫸⫸⫸⫸⫸

Tamaki always thought he liked you best on top of him showering him with kisses and threading your fingers through his hair, but he had to admit… having your arms tied to a bed frame with the silky sash of your bathrobe cutting into your skin was doing things to him. When you sniffled, face stained with tears and snot, his dick twitched in his boxers. The whines you were choking back behind the silky red panties stuffed down your throat sent chills up his spine. You had to learn the hard way not to spit them out after a harsh slap echoed against your skin when you fought back the first time.

Tamaki stood back to survey the mess of skin, spit, and tears for a moment. You were a blank canvas for him to mark up with his rage and lust. You tried to hide away your bare pussy by clenching your thighs together. It only spurred him on.

“Do you have any clue what you’ve done?” he hovered over you, sleek muscles rippling over your own soft body, “I waited, and waited, and WAITED,” he bit down on the side of your exposed neck and you screamed behind the silky gag, trying your best not to expel it from your mouth and receive more punishment.

“I want to give you everything, Y/N,” he licks over the bite, almost apologetically, “I don’t want to hurt you. I didn’t want it to happen like this… FUCK, why?! Why did you ruin this?” his long fingers dug into your cheeks as he forced you to meet his fiery gaze. You couldn’t help whimpering and sniffling back more clear runny snot. You were so humiliated at how disheveled and disgusting you must look. His head ducked into the soft spot between your neck and shoulder and you felt him sob. 

Despite the abuse he’d inflicted upon you in the last ten minutes, you nuzzled your cheek into the top of his head in an attempt to comfort him. And he let you… he hated himself for it and he hated you for making this all so hard for him.

“No… no, no, no,” he rose from the bed to set up your ring-light and laptop, ice running through your veins at the sight. Your mind couldn’t accept what was about to happen.

“I’m... I’m not letting you get away with this,” he shook his head and pulled at his hair as he finished setting everything up, “If you’re insisting on being a slut, you’ll be MY slut. And everyone will know…” he jerked your ankle to force you flat on your back.

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Maybe if he’d let the gag out of your mouth, you’d be able to tell him this was just a job to you. That it was clinical… that he was the only one who had ever been able to get you off, that his face was the only one you’d come on… that you needed the money since your parents had disowned you…

But you only laid there, accepting whatever he was going to dish out. You knew he was hurt. You weren’t stupid. You overlooked him while knowing how he felt about you. It took years of horrible one-night stands and countless frat parties pretending that whatever guy you’d picked that night was interesting for you to come to your senses. You hated yourself for being so blind for so long… You adored Tamaki, truly. And you hated yourself for all the times you’d hurt him… so you swallowed your fear and tried to prepare yourself for whatever came next.

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Any soft parts of Tamaki that you’d grown to love were gone, hardened by heartache and desperation. After angling the laptop to get the perfect shot, he started the live stream countdown. Subscribers started trickling in, commenting on how this was a pleasant surprise since it wasn’t one of your regularly scheduled streams. You shut your eyes to pretend this wasn’t real.

Without fanfare or warning, Tamaki ripped apart your thighs, exposing your bare slit. A raw shrill was pulled from your lungs, your back arching from the sting of an abrupt slap. Neurons fired off in your brain… were you in pain? Was it pleasure?

“Since my girlfriend likes to keep secrets from me, I can’t trust what comes out of her whore mouth,” he emphasized his point by stuffing his fingers past your lips, pushing the soaked silk further into your throat, “So she’s going to keep this gag right here until I can fuck the truth out of her,” he trailed his fingers along your reddened folds. Were you getting wet? Horror and shame blossomed in your chest. The fact that you were growing aroused wasn’t lost on Tamaki. His foreign, sadistic grin was back… aimed directly into your soul.  

“So that’s what you like, huh?” His nails bit into your thighs leaving tiny crescents behind, “I’ve been too nice? Too soft?” He pushed your thighs impossibly wide, the stretch causing you to moan. He hovered over your core, onyx orbs blown wide with a mix of hate and lust. Tamaki looked like the devil himself and you wondered just how fucked up you were for wanting his punishment.

He opened his mouth and lolled out his tongue, never severing the desperate gaze you both shared, his intertwined with hunger, yours with fear. You’d never noticed how long and thick his tongue was and couldn’t help but wonder how it would feel caressing every ridge and crevice of your inner walls. He flattened the warm, wet muscle and pressed it along your slit. As he slowly slid it closer and closer to your burning clit, you whimpered and bucked your hips chasing the pleasure you knew he was capable of giving… but this was not your sweet boy and he wasn’t doing any of this for your pleasure.

He slung his arm over your lower stomach and growled into your drenched lips. You were pinned down, helpless against his torturous tongue. Fresh tears pricked at your eyes as you remembered how he’d let you pet him and buck into his face, how sweetly he’d ease you into a gentle release. Not this time… it was all teeth and sharp sucks, his tongue forcing you open violently. You were being shoved over a cliff and despite the horror and violence of what was happening to you. You were approaching an orgasmic state at record speed. Tamaki caught on and doubled down. The arm that wasn’t pinning you into the mattress pulled your leg down straight, your knee in a death grip. The new angle made the sensations even more intense. His face pressed harder into your core and you noticed that at some point, he’d started weeping, small sobs vibrating against your skin. The overwhelming mix of emotions and the vigor in which he was eating you shoved you over the edge.

He kept going along at the same speed with the same determination through your orgasm until it became painful. You pushed past it as best you could, allowing him to sob into your over-sensitive skin until he had his fill. As the pain started intermingling with pleasure, your legs shook and the gag couldn’t hold your screams back any longer. You released against his tongue once more, both of you sobbing. He laid against your thigh for what felt like an eternity before he lifted himself to lay on top of you, his hip bones digging into your soft thighs. You could feel the bulge through the thin material of his boxer briefs. Your hips rose to meet it, a pleading gesture filled with the desire to comfort and please him. Your eagerness encourages his mercy, there’s a meek cry that leaves your lips when the damp silk slips from between your teeth.

“Please baby… I’m so, so sorry I didn’t tell you…” your voice was as weak as a kitten’s cry and Tamaki couldn’t deny it made his heart (his dick) clench.

“Say it…” his lips were close enough to kiss, but you resisted… fearful of what he’d do if you did.

“Say what, Tama?” your eyes were wide with concern and confusion. You were desperate to please him.

He turned your face to the camera that you’d forgotten was there and the gravity of the situation crashed around you again. New tears leaked from your stinging eyes as Tamaki whispered into your ear.

“Say that you’re a lying whore…”

“I..I’m a lying whore…”

The last syllable broke as your abused throat grew accustomed to speaking again. He rewarded you with a soft kiss to your cheek and your eyes closed at the tender gesture. The familiar pain in your chest welled to the surface causing even more tears to escape.

“And tell everyone that you’re my own personal slut”

You repeated the phrase to the audience behind the screen and he hummed with approval, trailing one finger along your wet cheek. 

“Good girl…” the praise sent shivers through your wrecked body.

“And tell them from now on, your boyfriend will be the only one making you come… that they only get to see you be HIS slut.”

You noticed the chat going absolutely haywire at your announcement. Before Tamaki shut your laptop, you realized you’d made three times as much as you’d ever made before and a twisted sense of accomplishment filled your cloudy mind.

“Please,” your voice came out in a croak, “Please untie me. I wanna make it up to you,” his clothed bulge was burning into your core and you could tell he was close to breaking.

“Please let me make you feel good. I’m so, so sorry,” the clench of your thighs around his waist made him whimper.

He reluctantly pulled away to sit on the foot of the bed. The way he curled in on himself hugging his knees made him appear so small, so fragile… a complete change from the man who’d just manhandled you into restraints.

“You’re a liar…” you almost didn’t hear the whisper, his face buried into his knees.

“Please!” you were losing feeling in your hands and all you wanted was to be free to comfort him.

His eyes met yours and it was your Tamaki again... Your sweet boy… the snarling, green beast that threatened to devour you was sleeping now after it reached its fill of violence. He crawled over your body and released your restraint. Before you even regained feeling in your hands, you wrapped your arms around him. You littered his collarbone with sweet kisses and apologetic sobs. He began to melt into your affectionate gestures and you wrapped your legs around his waist pulling him impossibly close. Wet lips met and your tongues fought against each other for dominance. Hips began to roll against each other, increasing pressure until you both gasped. 

The violence was gone, but this was still not a gentle coupling like you’d been planning. Tamaki pulled away and freed his straining cock from his boxers. The skin-to-skin contact made your eyes roll back into your skull. You felt his long fingers grasp your throat, squeezing to remind you just how powerful they were. You shuddered in response, arching upward into his touch, chasing that high his dominance was giving you.

With one swift motion, Tamaki speared you onto his cock. With the minimal prep he’d given you, the stretch was agonizing. This was by far the largest cock you’d ever taken and it stole your breath from your aching lungs. You moaned earning a visceral reaction from the boy on top of you.  

Tamaki stayed as still as he could. He refused to come so soon… not when he’d waited so long for this. He tightened his grip on your throat and tentatively rocked his hips into yours. It didn’t take long for it to progress into the most frantic love-making you’d ever experienced.

There was no other way to describe it, he was hate fucking you… biting and sucking your chest until blood bloomed under your skin… hammering into your sore, sticky cunt with total abandon… he was using you like a toy, taking out all his frustrations on your body.

It was ecstasy.

When his hips stuttered as he met his release, the spasms of his tip against your gummy walls sent you into a painful orgasm. You were spent and it seemed like he was too. Your fingers twitched over the crown of his head, wanting to run your fingers through his hair but too scared to initiate any contact with him. As if he could read your mind, he grabbed your hand and placed it on his head. You sighed and began carding through the tangles, gently undoing them. You felt a stream of tears running down your chest as you worked your fingers through his strands. Lifting his face gently, you met his teary gaze with your own.

“Don’t…” he drew in a shuddering breath, “ever lie to me like that again…” the monster behind his eyes stirred quietly, a malicious glint in his eye, before shifting back into your gentle boyfriend. 

“Never, I swear to you, baby…” he lets you lift his chin gently to meet your lips. His eyes close and he sighs into your kiss. His muscles relax and when his eyes open again, his warm, adoring expression falls over your face. The hand that wanted to choke the life out of your eyes minutes ago now caresses your jaw tenderly,

“I trust you…” his lips turn up into a grin that’s just a little too wide, “Because you’re a smart girl, aren’t you?” his top lip brushed against your still trembling bottom lip…

“Y-yes…”

You were fucked. This whole situation was fucked up and you weren’t blind to the fact. But as Tamaki nuzzled into your neck placing soft kisses and whispering praises into your skin, you let yourself bask in the gentleness of the moment…

Because you were a smart girl and smart girls learn their lessons quickly... 

[kaepop-trash]

i love unintended consequences and all those little snippets you’ve written for it 🥺 i hope it’s not too much to ask but i would really like to see how johnny would pamper her when she’s pregnant/deal with the pregnancy side effects and him as a dad 🧸no pressure tho, stay safe and drink lots of water!

I loved this ask so much because I think most people feel nervous talking about the more unsavoury parts of pregnancy. I've heard people talk about how terrible some stuff was, including the decisions that should be made. I always write keeping in mind that this is a predominantly young audience and if I'm going to write for them, I might as well try to give a more honest, mature perspective on these things. Thanks for letting me explore this anon!

You didn't mention it so I kept this more fluffy and didn't add any smut.🙈

I'd gladly write more of this anytime.

WC: 2.5k

___

(Y/N) got up from the couch immediately when Sooyoung came and stood in front of her. It was Johnny who grabbed Sooyoung's arm before she could, helping her sit down comfortably. She gave him a grateful smile before turning to (Y/N).

"I can't believe I'm having twins." She sighed, grinning nonetheless.

"You definitely look like you're having twins." She looked down at the space between them, Sooyoung's belly bigger than what Joohyun's had been at eight months.

"I feel like it too." She mumbled, turning to Johnny, "Have you seen my husband?" She asked.

"He's speaking to your doctor on the phone, trying to get a room. Should I go get him?" Johnny asked dutifully, already getting out of his seat. Sooyoung smiled in a way that (Y/N) could distinguish, but Johnny just cluelessly waited.

"No, that's okay, Johnny. I'm sure he'll find his way back. Why are you so nervous?" She chuckled, grinning wider when Johnny fumbled.

"You're about to go into a room to give birth to two children simultaneously. I don't know why you aren't nervous." He gave her an uncomfortable smile, rubbing the back of his neck when both (Y/N) and Sooyoung laughed.

"I've been having contractions for 16 hours now. The only thing I want right now is for them to just come out." Sooyoung groaned as another one hit her, reaching for the paper cup in (Y/N)'s hand with the now practically melted ice chips.

"I'll go see where Mark went with the ice." Johnny eyed the cup. "(Y/N) will be here with you." He pointed at his own wife, giving her a serious nod before walking away.

Sooyoung turned to (Y/N) with the same smile as earlier. "He's very sweet." She grinned.

(Y/N) gasped as a joke, putting a hand over her mouth. "It took you seven years to realise that? Motherhood is changing you already." She laughed when Sooyoung shoved her shoulder with her own.

"I've always known it obviously. Do you think I would have let you marry just anyone?" Sooyoung scoffed. "What I mean is, he's being very sweet about this." She pointed at her belly. "Makes me wonder why you haven't thought about it yet. You've always wanted kids." Sooyoung said a little slowly, trying to avoid her gaze.

"We've talked about it obviously." (Y/N) looked away, "We've talked about it a lot." She blushed, thinking back to all the “talking” they did.

"But?" Sooyoung questioned. "Is he scared or something?" She furrowed her brows.

(Y/N) scoffed, "It's not him.” She laughed, pushing her hair back. There was a pause as (Y/N) tried to put into words a sentiment she had been holding close to her chest for a long time now. "I think I need to quit my job before I think about having a child. It's–" She winced, "I don't want somebody else to raise my child while I'm at a job I hate. You know how I will about that.” She paused again, biting down on her tongue.

"So quit." Sooyoung shrugged, rolling her eyes when (Y/N) looked up at her with a tired look.

"It's not that simple." She fidgeted with her hands.

"Yes it is." Sooyoung put a gentle palm on her best friend's hand, "You already know what you want. You're afraid to stop working because you've done it your entire life and because it’s all you’ve seen growing up. But it's fine, we all have to move on from old things to make way for new ones."

"It's not just that." She sighed

"(Y/N)." Sooyoung's voice was stern, "I think at this point it's a little unfair to Johnny if you still think that you need to be a contributor for him to respect you. I don't say anything because I know that after everything you struggled through, being successful was important to you. I know." Sooyoung paused, the tightening grip on (Y/N)'s arm signalling another contraction.

(Y/N) checked her watch, "That was 10 minutes, you're almost there." She encouraged her through the pain, rubbing her back soothingly. Once it passed, she sat back with a sigh.

"Just quit. Spend a year with your husband, think about kids then. If later you think different, you're qualified enough to find a job anywhere. Make mistakes, (Y/N). But don't just sit like a lame duck. Life's too short to waste it between decisions." She spoke as the pain slowly subsided.

"You're already gaining your mom wisdom." (Y/N) smiled endearingly at her, grateful for having the most loving people around her.

"It's all the reflection I do between the late night tossing I do because my stomach is too big." Sooyoung groaned as another contraction hit her already.

Mark finally stumbled from the corner with a paper cup in his hands, curse words spilling out of his mouth as he approached till a passing nurse clicked her tongue at him.

___

“I want one.” She sighed, putting her head on top of the finally cooing baby. For an hour now, Johnny and (Y/N) tried their best to get the twins to stop crying.

Sooyoung and Doyoung finally went to bed a while back and Mark lay sprawled on the couch, passed out after his turn to watch the new members of the family.

"Yeah?" Johnny whispered, lips tugging. He rocked the other one in his arm, positively gleaming. It made her heart flutter.

She sighed a little deeper, hugging the baby closer to her chest, “Yeah.” She nodded. “But–” She stopped to lick her lips, feeling like she was shielding herself with the child. Johnny’s smile fell and she shortened her hesitation. “I want to quit my job.” She took a deep breath to help find courage, “My mom was always working and I love her, I really do. She’s taught me how to survive by myself, how to prioritise my worth over everything.” She paused when the baby in her lap cooed, gazing down to look at her with a smile. “But when I look back, my fondest memories involve Sooyoung’s mom. She taught me how to cook, how to care, how to be compassionate.” She felt a lump building in her throat.

“Sooyoung’s mom was the person I called when I broke my arm, she was the one who advised me when I had my first heartbreak.” (Y/N) closed her eyes, “I love my mom, I want to give my children her values.” She took a shaking breath, terrified of her own words. “But I want to be the person my children come to when they want comfort.” She hugged Sooyoung's daughter, thinking about the loving life she would have.

“You don’t have to justify yourself, (Y/N).” Johnny said tenderly. “But I appreciate that you wanted to share that. I know you don’t talk about your parents. You carry so much by yourself.” He slid closer to her, resting the baby down on his lap. “I know you never make a decision without beating yourself about it constantly. If you think it’s what you have to do, I’m always going to have your back. That’s marriage.” Johnny looked down when the baby reached his arms out, laughing and picking him back up to rock again.

“Okay.” She nodded, “I’m going back home and quitting. We can talk about this properly then.” She felt overwhelmed.

Johnny bit down on his lip, looking at his friend’s son and then covering his ears, “We can start trying now though, right?” He wiggled his brows.

She sat back and laughed as quietly as she could, “I don’t think he can understand you.”

“Let’s not risk it with Doyoung and Sooyoung’s kids, yeah? Doyoung nags and Sooyoung scares me.” He sounded serious.

She laughed a little more, earning a babble of approval from her friend’s newborn daughter.

___

Johnny woke up at the sound of the bathroom door shutting. He slipped out of bed, noting the time on the bedside clock and sighing. He rubbed the sleep out of his house and ventured to the kitchen.

He knocked on the bathroom door softly, smiling when he heard a grunt.

"Just leave me alone." He heard her say softly. Johnny grinned, opening the door.

"But you're so sexy when you're heaving." He spoke as he entered, frowning when he saw her on the floor trying to keep her head up, dizzy again. Johnny put the glass of gingerale he came with down on the counter, wordlessly coming to sit behind her. He pulled her between his legs, rubbing soothing circles on her back. She rested her head back on his chest and Johnny tried to pat off the sweat on her forehead.

She gave him a grateful smile, one he mirrored despite her eyes being closed.

"I'm so tired of this." She sighed, "Does that make me a bad human being?" She whispered reluctantly.

Johnny clicked his tongue, "It makes you human." He pushed more of her hair back, just in time for her face to contort as he leaned over the toilet again.

"Five more months, baby." Johnny tried to lighten the mood, chuckling when she sat back and elbowed his side.

"Don't make me hit you." She warned, earning a quick okay from him.

They sat there for a while, when she looked like she wasn't going to puke again he poked her cheek.

"You want to take a shower? It always makes you feel better." He offered. She gave him an exhausted nod.

"I'll do it, you go back to bed. You have work tomorrow." She started moving away from him but he stopped her, turning her gently to face him.

"We're in this together, (Y/N)." He reminded her, hand going to her slowly emerging belly.

"It's just a shower." Despite her words, her eyes were drenched with gratitude.

"It's just work." He countered, slowly helping her get off the floor. She tugged on his arm, making him look down.

"You're perfect, do you know that?" She told him with glistening eyes.

"A few hours ago you were blaming me for knocking you up." He tapped his chin.

"I'm more changeable than usual lately." She shrugged.

___

Johnny grabbed (Y/N)’s arm to help her sit down. It was one of the less comfortable days of her second trimester and the long car ride it took to get to the vacation home wasn't helping.

"Wow," Yuta laughed, sitting back on the couch. "Look at how big you've gotten. There's a whole baby cooking inside you." He sounded equal parts amazed and amused.

"Shut up." She frowned, "If you choose now out of all possible moments to talk about the magic of childbirth I will make you rub my swollen feet." She threatened him, making Yuta lift his arms in surrender.

As she said that, she turned over to put her feet in her husband's lap. Johnny didn't need to look down to start rubbing them.

"What did he do?" Yuta laughed, pointed at Johnny.

"Get me pregnant, for starters." She crossed her arms in front of her chest. "And it's already huge because of his giant genes too." She tried to re-adjust herself at the new angle. Johnny noticed her fumbling, reaching for a pillow and putting it behind her back.

"You love me." Johnny kissed the air between them. "She loves me." He turned to Yuta,earning a scoff from both of them.

The doorbell rang and Mark spoke from the kitchen saying he'd get it.

"Oh my god, (Y/N)" Jungwoo said when he walked into the room with Yeri in tow. "You've become huge!" He gasped, pouting when Yeri smacked his arm.

(Y/N) turned to Johnny, an annoyed pout already dancing on her lips. "I'm starting to believe that this weekend getaway was a bad idea." Johnny laughed, reaching one hand over to squeeze her hand.

"Haechan isn't even here yet." Johnny reminded her, eyes turning up with delight when she groaned.

"If one more person talks about how big I am, I'll sit on them." She warned.

Johnny grinned and almost immediately she regretted her words.

"Come here, big girl." He extended his arms and beckoned her to him. She threw a pillow with an annoyed whine.

___

(Y/N) woke up out of habit more than anything else, eyeing the clock on the table first and then realising that the monitor was uncharacteristically silent for what was feeding time. When she turned over, she smiled and understood why.

Before she even reached the door, she could hear Johnny cooing at their newborn. A tired smile of unabashed pride rising on her lips.

"You're going to get so big and strong." Johnny cooed, once she came to the door, (Y/N) saw him dangling a toy over the child's outreached arms. "You're already such a good baby, aren't you? You get that from your mom I can tell." Johnny sniggered to himself, "You don't to cry or fuss." He leaned down to kiss their forehead.

(Y/N) leaned against the doorframe, watching the exchange with an amused smile.

"But you're always reaching for your mom. Always looking around for her. You get that from me." There was a glow of pride in his eyes. "We're both a little lost without your mum around, aren't we?" He rocked up and down till he heard a small giggle, a short laugh leaving his lips at the sound.

Johnny put the toy down to reach for the bottle on the table and (Y/N)'s heart squeezed with more love for her incredibly thoughtful husband.

"I can't believe you're my little baby." Johnny grinned as eager, tiny hands reached out to grab the bottle. "I'm going to teach you how to throw a ball and give you your first beer someday. Maybe we can both learn how to make your mom's cake." Johnny laughed to himself, "I'm going to love you so much." Johnny scrunched his nose when a little hand wrapped around his finger. "I'm the luckiest man in the world and you're proof, you know that?" He whispered, eyes glowing despite the dim light in the room. "All this because your mom thought I was a hairy ghost." He giggled to himself.

"You need to stop talking about that." She finally gave in, speaking up. Johnny looked up, wide eyed before grinning when he saw her. "Plus, it was a witch."

Johnny laughed, tired but content. "Just know now. I'm going to tell our kids this till they're sick of this story. Then I'm going to tell their friends and their spouses. Even the other's kids are going to grow up listening to our story." Johnny stuck his tongue out at her before giving her a love struck smile as she came closer, "We're my favourite story." He leaned over to kiss her forehead as she stood in front of her husband and child.

"I thought that was Iron Man?" She raised a brow.

"Oh damn." Johnny winced, "Tough choice." He clicked his tongue. She rolled her eyes at him, reaching down to tickle the baby's belly.

___

Send me an ask about a character from one of my fics in a scenario and I’ll write a drabble.

Character from: Unintended Consequences

[rainbows-fanfics]

Our Nightmare (Chapter 21)

Summary: Sally moves in with the man of her screams. But there  is still so much she has to learn of Halloween Town, and what it’s like  living with The Pumpkin King.

A sequel to Two Dearest Friends,  where the Christmas incident never happens. But there are still many  ends that haven’t been met, and much for these two dreamers to learn as  they start to spend their deaths together.

Pairings: Jack Skellington/Sally, Dr Finklestein/Jewel

–

Note: This is a SEQUEL to my other story, TWO DEAREST FRIENDS. To read the original story, go here.

--

The Mayor of Halloween Town grins as he swipes his hand across a page, effectively signing the last document for that afternoon. He sorts the paper into its rightful place with a satisfied hum. He moves to address the next stack of paperwork, preparing to organize them. As he grabs one, a tall man enters the room and catches his attention. He looks down from his desk to find Jack Skellington ducking through the doorway, helping someone else through. He tilts his conical head at the sight of Sally Finklestein. He helps himself down to address them both.

 He tips his hat politely. “Jack, you weren’t supposed to come in until later this afternoon. Is everything alright?”

 “Perfectly terrible, Mayor!” The skeleton replies. “In fact, we’re here to ask you to call for a town meeting?”

 “A meeting? May I ask what it’s for?”

 “We have some big news to share with everyone.” He squeezes the ragdoll’s hand. “It’s important they make it, if they can.”

 “..Big news? I haven’t heard anything like * this * in a long time!” He scrambles to grab his megaphone and collects his hearse keys. “--Expect everyone here in an hour! You can count on me!”

 He rushes out of the room with excited steps. As soon as they’re alone, the Pumpkin King turns to his fiancée. She’s looking at the floor and fidgeting with her seams. He grabs her hands and brings her attention to his face. He pulls on the loose threads and fastens them while she’s not looking, offering a confident smile on his lips.

 “It’s happening! Aren’t you excited?”

 “I am.” She can’t help matching his keenness. It’s always contagious. “I’ve been preparing all morning. I’m ready for any questions, if they have them.”

 “-That’s what I want to hear!” He winks proudly, moving to set the podium. “If you need to step out, I don’t mind. Just let me know…we’ll need a signal, won’t we? Wink at me two times if you’re getting-”

 “I don’t think that’s necessary.” She giggles. “If I’m going to be the Pumpkin Queen, then I need to get used to Town Meetings, right?”

 “..Exactly right.”

 He sets down a piece of paper with a prepared speech and some notes on it - in case Sally gets off-track. He’s already memorized it this morning. But he has a feeling they won’t need it - as this is something one speaks of from the heart( or lack thereof). Sally sits down in a chair as he prepares everything, waiting until they start. The longer time drags on, they can hear voices - sounds of claws scraping against the floorboards and footsteps frantically finding seats. In about an hour, it’s crowded behind the curtain. The Mayor finally steps in with a proud look plastered on his light face. He wipes some sweat off from his forehead.

 “Everyone's here! There’s a full house there! I’ll be handling the spotlight like always, if that’s alright with you?”

 “Perfect.” Jack situates himself at the coffin podium before looking at Sally. “-Are you ready?”

 She takes a deep breath.

 —-

 Monsters are piled onto the Town Hall’s benches, shoved against one another in close proximity. This may be the fullest the place has ever been - Witches hovering on broomsticks from above, while little creatures and children sit on the floor in front of the stage. The Hanging tree and his Hanging Men are in the back like they usually are. The Halloween Town Band is pressed against the wall - along with Jack’s numerous friends scattered through the seats. They’re murmuring amongst themselves and squirming in impatience, perking up once the curtains are drawn. The Pumpkin King is finally revealed to their eager eyes.

 They’re curious to see Sally Finklestein sitting in a chair beside him. She keeps her hands clasped politely in her lap, trying to avoid their stares. The room darkens as a spotlight becomes the only source of light. It’s guided to Jack Skellington’s thin figure by the Mayor’s careful hands, finally tearing the citizens’ gazes away from the lone ragdoll.

 She sighs in relief.

 “Horrible afternoon, everybody! Thank you all for coming. There’s something important we want to tell you all!”

 “Is it about Halloween?” A voice asks from the crowd. “There’s only 10 days left!”  

“10 days! 10 days!”  

 Excited cheers sound from around the room. Grotesque monsters pump their hands and claws in the air, howling and screaming in anticipation. Jack holds his arms out to calm them down, ensuring it’s quiet before he continues on:

 “-Right you are! But there’s no need to worry. Everything is going smoothly for the celebrations this year. We’ve called this meeting for something else…    ”

 The eyes in the room become inquisitive. He lets the silence drag on to emphasize the importance of the news, his grin growing wider the longer it carries on. Eventually, he moves a hand to gesture to Sally, where the spotlight follows and focuses on her. She tries to shield her eyes from the bright light.

 “Sally and I are engaged..!” He finishes.

 Series of shocked gasps come from around the room. He turns his skull to see their reactions. Many eyes widen as jaws simultaneously fall agape. The citizens’ attention comes to the woman, who uncertainly stands from her seat. There’s no sound beyond frantic whispering. She takes this opportunity to reach the podium, where Jack Skellington politely moves out of the way. She taps her fingers a few times before working up the courage to speak:

 “Um…hello.” She leans forward, waving weakly. “As you heard, Jack and I are engaged now, so…that means I’ll be taking the title of Pumpkin Queen…I-I’m ready for your questions, if you have any?”

 She feels like she’s doing terribly. She frowns at her fiancé. He gives her an encouraging thumbs-up. She turns back to the crowd, who look to be thinking to themselves. Children twiddle their thumbs as monsters murmur to each other, none brave enough to speak up just yet. After a minute of waiting, she grows uncertain and glances at the paper below her. The room is no longer silent, but it’s full of hushed whispers and people muttering to themselves. She isn’t sure if this is any better. So��she starts speaking:

 “I know it may be…strange …to see someone like me as your ruler. I don't know everything there is, but…I’m prepared to learn. I want to take care of all of you, as you have welcomed me so kindly. I’ll be someone you can depend on - to believe in what’s right. I may not be the scariest like Jack, but I’ll bring everything I can to our Holiday. To make each one more horrible than the last.”

 Her small speech earns admiring smiles. The room erupts into applause. She perks up at this response. Now creatures aren’t afraid to start asking questions - the small children upfront raise their little hands. Their fingers wiggle desperately as her eyes crawl over to them. She’s more than happy to call on a few.

“Will you be a nice leader?” The Mummy Boy asks. She nods her head.

 “Yes, I will try to be.”

 Ethan raises his hand. “Will you make sure we get lots of candy?”  

 “Of course.”

 Adults start to raise their hands. Her attention moves to them, nodding in the direction of a ghoul sitting up front. He stands and tips his hat politely, fidgeting with his thin fingers as he uncertainly peers at Sally.

 “How do you plan on ruling the town? And what will you contribute to Halloween?”

 She thinks hard on her answer. “-I want to be orderly. I know how hectic things get every October, so I’d like to keep us all in one piece. Myself included!” She laughs at her own joke, earning chuckles from the audience. “As for Halloween, I’ll continue with my services as the town’s seamstress. I don’t plan on changing my job.”

 The monsters look impressed with her answer. She responds to a few more inquiries from the crowd, until no more hands are raised. Everyone is satisfied. She brushes her hair back as the skeleton takes his place, patting Sally on the back. He whispers a compliment into her ear before turning to address his citizens.

 “Thank you all for your support. I’m happy to know you’re as satisfied with this decision as I am.” He grins.

 The Undersea Gal calls from her seat. “When’s the wedding!?”  

 He answers with ease. “-We’ll send out the invitations when we can, but we’d like to get through this Halloween  first  ! I’ll be teaching Sally about our Town and holiday in the meantime.”

 They agree with this decision, promising they’ll be patient. Jack and Sally are sent a multitude of congratulations and horrible wishes their way, which they take with gratitude. Everyone is eventually dismissed. People gossip with each other on their way out. This time, the Witches and other women don’t pass Sally irritated looks as they leave - instead, they give ones of respect. The feeling is mutual this time around, as she smiles right back at  them.

The Halloween Town Band come to personally congratulate them, teasing the Pumpkin King on ‘what took so long’. They're happy for them and say they look forward to their wedding. The Hanging Tree expresses similar feelings when he speaks with Sally. Once their friends leave, the two are finally alone. He comes to the shorter figure and wraps his arms around her frame, digging his skull into her hair.

 “You did wonderfully.” He tells her, moving back to brush the yarn from her eyes. “You’re going to take good care of them. I know you’ll be a great leader.”

 She buries her face into his suit. “Thank you.”

 —---

 Sally observes the last-minute preparations for Halloween. The Town Hall is busy at this time. Jack and the Mayor work in every spare minute they have, to double-check everything on their lists and ensure all is ready. She offers help when she can, and is happy to organize and read things for them. Her fiancé tries not to overwork her right away and hands small things for her to check, which she is happy to do.

 When Halloween comes, she assists the Mayor with organizing everyone to their places. She directs them on where to go while he reads their names off the papers. This process goes by quicker than it used to. He expresses his thanks for her help, and they get an early start on the celebrations. She joins in with the dancing and singing in the Town Square, surprised to finally    understand the lyrics to their song. After a few years of listening to it…she knows what to say with them!

  “Say it once, say it twice! Take a chance and roll the dice!”  She sings. The Witches cackle overhead as they continue the song, flying on their broomsticks towards the moon in the night sky:  

 “-Ride with the moon in the dead of night!”  

 Jack Skellington joins the celebrations, by Sally’s side. They dance, sing, and laugh together - the creatures around them cheer. Spirits are incredibly high by the time the song is finished. They’re left jumping in excitement, waiting for the Mayor to hand out the awards and trophies. They sit together on the hearse as they wait. She rests on her scarecrow’s side. This time, there are no women reaching and screaming for him - he’s rightfully given his space with the love of his death. People look at them admiringly.

 He holds her hand tightly, enjoying this new sense of freedom he’s never felt before.

 —--

 Their trip to the human world is taken early, meaning they have more time than usual to spend there. Jack’s elated to bring Sally with him again. Knowing how things went last time…he wishes for everything to go right. So he watches himself carefully that entire night, ensuring he’s not overdoing anything. He’s relieved to see her excited while he scares, asking him to do tricks and wanting to see what he can do. They go around scaring humans until they’re well into the night. They only have an hour before they have to return to Halloween Town.

 Jack Skellington has an idea.

 “Sally? Do you remember how I told you that you have scaring potential you don’t know about yet?”

 She blinks. This was so long ago, but she remembers it as bright as day. “-I do. Why?”

 “I think I’ve figured it out!” He grabs her arm and looks at the stitches with an interesting expression. “We can dismember your limbs!” At her confused look, he elaborates. “-Losing your arm doesn’t mean much to  you, but if the same thing happened to *humans*, it’s quite deadly. They might faint on the spot!”

 “So…it’ll scare them?” She asks with a growing smile.

 She remembers when he first took her on a tour of Halloween Town. He got excited when she lost her arm in front of him. It was the first time she’d ever seen the childish excitement in his eye sockets - the same one he has right now. It brings butterflies to her stomach, in hopes that she can impress him and scare others like he believes she can do. He perks up, trailing his thumb over her thread.

 “Exactly! I have the perfect plan…if you’re interested to try it?”

 She grins.

 . . .

 Jack’s idea is genius. She never would’ve thought of something like this herself.

 She’s sitting innocently on a pumpkin in a grass field, tending to her stitches and humming a song under her breath. She’s undoing them to loosen the threads as much as she can, so they will fall off easily once the time comes. She makes it look like she’s tending to them and trying to sew herself. She knits her eyebrows together as she pretends to struggle with one stubborn knot in particular, earning some concerned looks from some nearby humans.

 One of them is a young girl, dressed as a bumblebee. Sally notices the stitching patterns on the costume, giving the impression it's homemade. Another is a boy her age dressed as a ghost with a sheet over his figure, while they’re joined by a smaller child wearing a cowboy outfit. They approach the ragdoll and she quickly averts her gaze, focusing on her arm and tugging at the long thread.

 “Do you need any help?” The girl offers. She looks up, acting like she hasn’t seen them prior to this moment.

 “Oh! It’s fine, I’m just trying to sew my arm back on. See?”

 She presents her sewing needle to them. They look at it with curious eyes. The boy in the ghost sheet tilts his head quizzically when she brings it closer to her arm. It’s inches away from making contact. The skepticism is apparent in his voice.

 “What is this? Some kind of gimmick? Lady, we don’t have any cash-”

 Without warning, she punctures her skin deeply with the needle. This earns startled gasps and screams from the humans. She feels no pain, but pretends to wince - hand shaking as she tries to pull the needle out, failing in her attempts. The kids step back as the bumblebee girl narrows her eyes. She moves forward and rests a hand on her hip, laughing as she points at Sally.

 “Ha! Nice trick, but we know that’s fake! If it was a REAL needle, then-”

 She finally manages to pull it out, and the thread in her arm coincidentally falls with it. Her arm completely detaches from its socket and lands on the grass below them. She acts surprised while the children shriek at the sight. There’s no further word as they run off crying, refusing to look back. The ragdoll sits there in bewilderment as she watches them go.

 Jack Skellington surfaces from nearby shadows, laughing at the sight. He picks up her arm and goes through the trouble of stitching it back on. She’s still staring at the spot the humans once were in. Once she comes to terms with the situation, her eyes grow big as an excited grin spreads on her lips. She turns to her Pumpkin King.

  “Jack! Did you see that?” She asks giddily. “I scared them!”

 “-That you did!” He helps her to her feet. “They didn’t see it coming!"

 “That was amazing! It was so…fun! I-I feel excited, I-” She struggles to find the right words. “Is this what it’s like? To…to scare people?”

 “Quite an experience, isn’t it?”

 “My first scare!” She boasts proudly, twirling on her heels. She stumbles for a moment and he catches her upon instinct. She grabs his hands. “I want to do it again!”

 He chuckles. “See? You’re plenty scary.”

 She insists on doing it again, so he makes another plan. Like last time, he has her lure in the humans - making them curious as she stitches herself. Her appearance is enough to beckon them forward to get a better look. They’re fascinated with her doll-like features, at how real her stitches appear and the textured yarn hair sitting on her head. By the looks on their faces, they’re doubtful she’s even *real*. He takes their temptations to advantage - jumping out and screaming when they get too close. They run away, howling and scrambling to get away.

 He and Sally laugh when they’re gone. She clings onto his figure as she wipes the tears from her eye, having a blast so far. She moves to press an intimate kiss on his lips. He’s taken by surprise but returns the affection - holding his ragdoll close in his lap.

 She’s breathless when she pulls away. “Thank you. For showing me what it’s like to scare and…helping me.” She looks away, her skin now a light purple. “I never thought I could do this.”

 “The Doctor may have built you for other things, but you have so  many strengths, Sally.” He tightens his grip around her. “You’re talented. I’d like to scare with you every  Halloween.”

 “This is the most fun I’ve had in my whole life. I don’t think I want it to ever end.”

 They look up to gaze at the night sky above them. They calm down from their exhilaration to enjoy the scenery - listening to the sounds of owls hooting and children running in the distance. The stars twinkle beautifully as they observe them. The screams and scares are a delightful noise. Sally nestles into his embrace as they sit there. He moves his hand gently across her face, melting at the way she leans into his touch.

 He sighs. “I don’t want it to, either.”

 —---

 When November comes, Sally wants to be prepared. There’s a lot ahead of her, so she takes this opportunity to properly work out a schedule. On the weekdays, she plans to be in her seamstress shop offering her duties to the town. On the weekends, she joins Jack and the Mayor in the Town hall to assist them and learn how to properly manage Halloween. She becomes busy from this routine.

 “The first couple of months are the busiest,” Jack informs, stapling papers and handing them to her. She puts them where she’s told. “We have to start over with the planning, so we get the  important   things out of the way first.”

 “-You mean everything?” She sweats. He laughs and pats her head, bringing a wonderful feeling into her stomach.

 “It feels like it, but don’t fret! Things will mellow out over time…with your help, we’ll get through this quicker! That means more time to spend together. You want  that, don’t you?”

 She can’t argue.

 They spend the next few months tending to the town. She joins Jack as they listen to the citizen’s scare ideas and rate their demonstrations, where they show the officials what they can do. Then she goes around Halloween Town collecting the extra materials from Halloween night, to return to their inventory. Other activities include helping monsters collect any bats and snakes that may have escaped, as well as jotting down any changes to the Halloween song.

 . . .

 It’s January when they finally have enough free time to end their days early. Sally & Jack retreat to the Skellington Manor to cool off from the day’s events. They find this the best opportunity to start planning their wedding - something they’ve both grown excited for, after being occupied with everything else. Jack is happy to start this process and spends a considerable amount of time talking about it with his fiancée.

 “I think we should hire the Band for music,” Sally suggests. “They’ve been such good friends to us, and they’re very talented! I think they’ll do a wonderful job.”

 “No question about it.” He writes this down. “And who were we thinking of inviting?”

 “We’ll invite our friends, and my…family…” She feels strange describing the Doctor, Jewel, and Igor this way. It’s pleasant. “Anyone can come, really.”

 “I think we’re better off inviting everybody to your coronation, with a little less  people for our wedding.” He chuckles. “So it’s not terribly overcrowded. I know it can be overwhelming for you.”

 She relaxes in her seat. “That’s a good idea.”

 “-And what about your dress, dear? I have to prepare a suit as well…these things can be costly..”

 She perks up with this subject. “I can make those! I’d love to sew my own dress. I can even make you a suit if you’d like!”

 “Wonderful! That saves us on the cost.” He scribbles this down. Ideas begin to fill her mind on the details of their clothes. She wiggles around in her seat excitedly. “And what theme do we-"

 *EEK!*

 The couple is interrupted by the loud shrieking of the doorbell. Sally jumps in her seat while the skeleton drops his pencil with a sigh. He dismisses himself politely, moving to answer the front door.

 The Mayor of Halloween Town waits on the doorstep impatiently, shifting his feet as he stands there. He notices Jack’s tall frame and jumps at how quickly he is answered. They’ve already finished their business for the day - what more does he need? The Pumpkin King tilts his skull at the sight - his arms aren’t filled with papers, nor is he holding his usual megaphone…it looks like he came here in a rush. He rests a hand on the door frame as he looks at his friend curiously.

 “Mayor, what a surprise to see you here! Is there something you need?”

 “Jaaackk….” He looks around, leaning forward as he wrings his hands together. “They’re in the Town Hall..!”

 “..Who?”

 “B-Boogie’s Boys!” He exclaims. "They came in demanding to speak with you! When I told them you left, they got upset and told me to come and get you! I don’t know what to do, I tried not to get you involved-”

 “-The trick-or-treaters?” He stands up straight, looking in the direction of the Town Hall. “What on Halloween’s name would they want?”

 “I don’t know! But, please, get to them as soon as you can! They’re always up to trouble. I have to get back before they get into anything!”

 He doesn’t wait for a response before rushing down the steps. He bumps into innocent citizens in his way and mumbles apologies as he runs back to the Town Hall. His behavior makes Jack Skellington puzzled. He closes the door to grab a few things before he heads out. Sally notices him putting on his jacket and rushes over before he can leave.

 “Where are you going? Who was it?”

 “The Mayor. Apparently those three pranksters are at the Town Hall. They want to speak to me.” He huffs, buttoning his suit. “Can’t imagine what for, but I don’t think it’ll be good.”

 She thinks for a moment. “Can I come with you?” He looks at her curiously. “It’s been so long since I've seen them. And I…want to know how they’re doing. Without Boogie around.”

 “But why? They  kidnapped  you.” His ribs ache when her eyes droop sadly. “I don’t think what they did should be forgotten.”

 “I know. But…we haven’t seen them around for awhile. They wouldn't have been causing trouble if we didn’t hear about it.” He hums indifferently. “I don’t want to give them the benefit of the doubt again. They lied to me. But…I-I just want to  know  .”

 He looks at her for a long time, her eyes continuing to plead with his sockets. He eventually caves in with a frustrated noise. “-Fine. But if they lay a hand on you, I’m NOT going to let it slide.”

 She presses a kiss on his cheek. “I know. Thank you.”

 He exhales through his nose, taking her hand and clutching it close to his chest. He opens the door and patiently helps her down the steps. They make their way to the Town Hall, only to hear terrified whimpers. They follow the noise behind the closed curtains and notice three small children throwing rocks at a shaking figure sitting at his tall desk. The Mayor notices them coming in and weakly points in their direction.

 “There! See? He’s here now! Leave me alone!”

 Lock, Shock, and Barrel whip around. They find their King standing across from them, looking angry as he shoves his hands on his hips. Sally joins his side, sharing a similar expression when she crosses her arms. They drop the small rocks in their hands and approach the two, hiding their hands behind their backs. They bat their eyes in an innocent manner.

 “Jaaaack!” Shock greets. “It’s great to see you!”

 “How’s the family?” Lock teases.

 “You’re looking thin!” Barrel adds.

 “What are you three up to?” He asks, getting straight to the point. “And why are you terrorizing my coworker?”

 “We were just passing the time ‘til you got here!” The small devil defends. The Mayor fumes in the background. “We thought you’d never show up!”

 “--Answer his question.” Sally cuts in sternly.

 “We wanted to say we’re sorry. We didn’t get a chance to tell you!” Shock drops her mask, and her cohorts do the same. “We know how busy you’ve been…”

 “Sorry for what? Threatening, beating, and kidnapping Sally, then trying to feed her to your boss? It’ll take more than that for me to believe you.”

 Barrel steps forward. “We know it was bad, but we were only following orders! The boss would’ve been mad if we didn’t get her!”

 “-And we didn’t want to make Oogie angry…” Lock adds with a frown.

 Jack Skellington looks at them with unimpressed eye sockets. The Mayor takes this opportunity to slip out of the room when they’re not looking. Sally’s harsh gaze falls when she looks at their faces. She’s never seen them this genuinely upset before. The frowns they wear look real…she doesn’t believe they’re faking it. The skeleton remains apprehensive as he stands up straight, tapping the side of his arm impatiently. They haven’t gotten through to him.

 “We also wanted to…thank you, I guess.” Lock mutters under his breath. He perks up.

 “Did I hear that right?” The devil rolls his eyes. He isn’t going to repeat himself. Jack quirks an eye socket. “-What for?”

 “-For getting rid of Oogie!” Shock interrupts impatiently. She kicks some dirt with her boot.

 He grows quiet at their confession. He’s a little confused why they’d thank him for killing their boss - an arguable ‘father figure’. But he wasn’t ever a good one, if he were to guess from their reactions. He expected the trio to resent him after what he did. It wasn’t his intention to kill him that night. Rage had blinded him, and he acted without thought. But knowing they want to thank him…makes him believe he did the right thing.

 “...So we wanted to make it up to you. To show we’re sorry.” Barrel brings up.

 “Yeah. We heard you two were getting married or something. So we can help with that, if you want.” Lock spits out.

 Sally butts in with wide eyes. “Do you really mean that?”

 “You can give us another chance.” Shock clenches her gloved fists. “We want to prove it! So you better give us something to do!”

 Jack crosses his arms. “You three are going to cause trouble and I know it. There hasn’t been a single Town event where you didn’t prank someone or pulled a stunt. There’s a reason you’re banned from them. I will not have that at my wedding.”

“Aw, c’mon!” “Pleaaaase?” “We’ll prove it to you!”  

 Sally's in full agreement until she notices the looks on their faces. The way they’re on their knees, begging…like they truly  care   about this. The look in their eyes seems genuine and…different. They don’t hold the usual mischief like she’s seen before. She decides to test their words and firmly moves forward, stopping when she’s in front of the children. She leans down to get a better eye-level with them, making sure she has their attention with this next question:

 “Are you three *really* happy now that Boogie's gone? You’re not lying about this?”

 They nod their heads. Almost too quickly for her liking. “Of course!” “Yeah!” “Honest!”  

 She still feels a little unconvinced. “Really? You don’t feel any other way about this..?”

 She keeps eye contact with them, never breaking their stare. Shock is the one to cave in, looking at the floor and shrugging. “I mean, we’re disappointed and all, but we’ll get over it. We’ve been trying to!”

 “He was scary,” Barrel mutters. Lock nods in agreement.

 “He hit us a lot. If he didn’t do that, then he threatened us. We didn't like it, but we couldn’t say anything…but now that he’s gone, it doesn’t happen anymore.”

 Pity hits her hard. Her phantom heart grows cold hearing this. She wants to embrace them. But she remembers what happened. She can’t forgive them right away. They’ll have to prove that they’re really sorry for what they’ve done. Boogie may have been the manipulator behind it all - but they need to rebuild their reputation in town. They’re guilty of their own wrongdoings. And she…wants to give them that chance, as stupid as it may seem.

 “Alright. You three can help, if you promise you’re serious about this.”

 They look happy with her approval, smiles lighting up their faces. “We are!”

 Jack groans as Sally returns to his side. He doesn’t argue - he’ll respect her decision. She *is* the one they wronged to begin with, and needs approval from. He’ll have to go along with this - but he’ll make sure things still go as planned. So that these three won’t get in the way of anything. The last thing he wants is trouble on the most anticipated day of his death.

 “Can I be the ring bearer!?” Barrel asks, jumping up-and-down. Jack is quick to shoot down this idea.

 “No. Zero has that job. You can be…an usher.”

 “An usher?” He tilts his head.

 “You lead people to their seats and help them leave when the time is right,” Sally explains, remembering what she’s learned about weddings. Barrel looks indifferent with this idea, but agrees anyway.

 “What about me?” Lock asks impatiently. The skeleton thinks about it.

 “...You’ll be a page.” He grins. “You open doors for people, fetch them what they want, and run any errands we may need on the big day.”

 “Aw, what!? You’re making me an ERRAND BOY!?”

 “If you want to make it up to us, then that’s what you’ll be.” He continues with a challenging smirk. “-Unless you change your mind..?”

 He opens his mouth to object. Shock smacks him upside the head with her hat. He goes to punch her until he notices the looks on Jack and Sally’s faces. He lowers his fist and pouts, turning away from everyone. He mutters a ‘fine, whatever’ under his breath, earning proud looks from the skeleton and ragdoll. They move their attention to the witch, who bashfully looks away under their stares. They think for a moment.

 An idea pops up in Sally’s head. “Shock, would you like to be a flower girl?”

 “Flower girl?” She scrunches up her nose. “That sounds dumb!”

 “It’s not! It’s wonderful, really. You get to toss petals from wilted flowers down the aisle. I know a lot of little girls who would love to do it…! What do you say?”

 She glances at Lock and Barrel, who giggle and tease her in return. It sounds so…girly! But they didn’t get ideal positions, either. Hers sounds a lot more important than their jobs. For this reason, she smirks in triumph and agrees - making Sally delighted as she stands back. The three children put their masks back on and say goodbye to them, running out of the room and inevitably encountering the Mayor again. He hollers at the sight of them - but they pay him no mind for once, leaving the Town Hall without a further exchange.

 Jack and Sally share an uneasy glance.

 “Do you think we can trust them..?” She asks quietly. She feels guilty for accepting their help without consulting him first. He shrugs in return.

 “They won’t be handling anything valuable, so it should be fine.” His expression changes as he rests a hand against her cheek. “-You didn’t have to do that, you know. You’re not obligated to give everyone second chances if they’ve wronged you.”

 Her eyes lower. “If I’m going to be the Pumpkin Queen, then I want a fresh start. I don’t want to be a cruel leader…I’d rather believe in the good of everybody.”

 He rests his forehead against hers and intertwines their fingers together, sighing as he closes his eyes. ‘She’s too good for this world,’ he thinks.

[witcher-and-his-bard-archive]

Someone Else (I'm Still Right Here)

also on ao3

minor warning for Geralt coming on to Jask when he doesn't know who he is, but nothing comes from it. 

 They've hardly been in town long enough for anything to go wrong and yet, Jaskier finds his thoughts interrupted by banging on the door of their room. If it was Geralt, he would simply let himself in even if he didn't have his hands free to open the door properly, so it must be important. Jaskier rises from the bed, setting his lute aside with a sigh. He detests being interrupted while he's working for anything less than an emergency - and judging by the fact that the knock hasn't come again, this is hardly an emergency.

He saunters to the door, pulling it open to find the face of the innkeeper's wife staring back at him anxiously.

"Sorry to interrupt," she says, "it's your Witcher, sir. Something's happened and no one is... well, they're all afraid to get too close to him. They called in the healer from the next town, but-"

Jaskier frowns. The contract was for a pair of drowners, not even a nest of the damn things. Geralt could have taken them out in his sleep - so what went so terribly wrong?

Jaskier lets himself be led downstairs, doing his best to mask worry with intrigue, but it isn't working. The innkeeper's wife leads him to the edge of the forest where her husband is waiting, a look of pained concern on his face. Jaskier's stomach drops as the man just points into the trees, and he hurries forward without delay. If the people in town won't help Geralt, he will certainly do his best.

When he finds him, Geralt is in a bad state. His eyes are still dark from the potions - probably why the locals wouldn't come near - and there's blood streaked down the side of his face.

Jaskier stays quiet. It's bad enough that Geralt can hear his pulse racing, he doesn't need to make his fear any more obvious to him. He kneels down on the soft ground, assessing the damage before moving him. He's learned from experience that one wrong move can make a wound worse rather than better.

"Okay," he says once he's satisfied. "I'm just gonna pull this off," he taps on Geralt's left pauldron, "make sure your head is the only thing you banged up." Jaskier frowns as he says it, but Geralt seems, as usual, unconcerned. He's much better behaved than usual though, which strikes Jaskier as being particularly odd.

He ignores it and pushes through, tearing an already ripped piece of Geralt's shirt to wipe away some of the blood. Geralt will be grouchy about it later, but if Jaskier replaces it, he can't be too angry. He does his best to clean Geralt's skin and he finds just the one injury - a hefty blow to the head. Not that it seems to be bothering Geralt any.

But when Jaskier cups his jaw, tipping his head to one side, Geralt hums. It catches him off guard and Jaskier jerks back to look at him.

"Your hands feel nice," Geralt breathes and leans into the touch. Okay. So maybe the head injury is more serious than it appears. The innkeeper's wife said a healer was coming, Jaskier will mention it to them when they arrive. Or maybe it's just the blood loss. Either way, the healer will be better prepared to deal with it than he is.

"What are you doing here?" Geralt asks.

"The innkeeper's wife came to collect me. Figured someone ought to come and collect you."

"No one else would even get near me."

"Yes, well, I'm not everyone else, am I?"

"Hmm. Guess not."

Jaskier comes around to look at him, straddling his thighs and Geralt leans forward, resting his head on his shoulder and nuzzling into his neck.

"Yes yes," Jaskier hums, "I know you're tired, darling, but we have to get you up and back to town."

Geralt is reluctant, but he lets himself be hauled to his feet and doesn't even complain about Jaskier propping him up as they make their way back toward town. He's quiet, which is to be expected, but Jaskier is worried that he's keeping something from him, that he's worse off than he seems because Geralt seems quite happy to let himself be assisted - something he would regularly fight against.

As they make it back to the inn, Jaskier knows everyone is watching them and he scolds a couple of them for not offering to help when a man was injured. He takes Geralt up to their room and ducks out from under his arm, leaving him alone for a moment so he can get the fire lit and ready the bed for him. But before he can do either, he finds himself pressed up against the room door with Geralt's face mere inches from his own.

The dark veins and darker eyes are… sexier than they have any right to be and Jaskier swallows back a groan, pressing a gentle hand to Geralt's chest. The Witcher is still woozy and unsteady on his feet, but he resists being pressed back and Jaskier frowns at him.

"Mm, as much fun as this is, I doubt you'll think so highly of me in the morning, darling." Geralt smiles slyly and, for a split second, Jaskier worries that he's become Geralt's quarry, that the toxins running through Geralt's body are really as bad as he always claims they are and that he is, in fact, in real danger around him. But then Geralt leans in, bumping his nose against Jaskier's and any thoughts of fear dissipate immediately.

Instead, Jaskier ducks down and away, holding both arms out as Geralt follows him.

"Geralt," he asks, "what's gotten into you? Not that I mind, but-" he eyes him carefully and Geralt just grins at him again.

"Don't be coy with me, bard, this is what you brought me here for."

"Um. No? I brought you here to rest, to put you to bed not take you to bed, and find you something to eat. This is our room, Geralt, not my room. They only had one left and I didn't think you'd mind-"

"Our room?" Geralt interrupts and Jaskier nods. Worry creeps in and he looks closely at Geralt. His eyes are black still, though the veins are retreating and he seems brighter than usual, not so gloomy.

"Yes?"

"Why would we be sharing a room," Geralt huffs, "I've only just met you."

Jaskier gawks at him. It's not like Geralt to play games, that's Lambert's area of expertise - and this is stupid and obvious even for Lambert's tastes. But something is off about Geralt tonight. The worry turns to fear and Jaskier suddenly wonders if the man he's brought back is his Witcher at all.

He's never met a doppler, but he's heard Geralt tell stories about them. For the most part, they're harmless, but Jaskier suspects they can be paid or bribed like anyone else and the thought of a stranger here in the room with his things, with Geralt's things-

"I thought you wanted sex," maybe-Gealt says again, slightly confused but not at all dissuaded. Normally Jaskier would take it as a compliment that he was still so enthusiastic about fucking him, but this feels very, very wrong. And yet a part of him still considers it.

If it is a doppler, there's no harm really. He's consenting and Jaskier is more than happy to fuck a man with Geralt's face (he doesn't think too much about how that will affect him after it's fine). Right? But there's still a nagging feeling that this isn't a doppler. He'd know, he thinks, if he brought someone else home with him.

"Can you just-" he says, backing up toward the bed where his bag is sitting on the floor. Maybe-Geralt just watches him with confusion as he crouches down and pulls his dagger from his pack.

It's just a little thing, but it's pure silver, gifted to him by Geralt in case of emergency.

"I'm not going to hurt you," Jaskier says, holding it out, "I just need you to touch this."

Maybe-Geralt gives him a questioning look but reaches out and takes the dagger from him, turning it over in his hand. Nothing happens.

"Hmm," he says, "nice weight, well made. A little decorative maybe-"

"Doesn't hurt?" Jaskier asks and maybe-Geralt, who is seeming more and more like just Geralt laughs.

"Not unless you stab someone with it."

Jaskier valiantly ignores the little smirk and shuts his eyes.

"Okay," he says, "start at the beginning, what do you remember?"

"I… woke up in the forest and then you showed up," he smiles at him and Jaskier is already preparing a refusal.

"Listen, Geralt, I am your friend and you would probably even argue that-"

"How come? You're very handsome and you've been helpful and kind-"

"But it's not like that, Geralt. It never has been. I offered once and you were… less than impressed with me." Geralt says nothing and Jaskier takes the opportunity to reign the conversation in. "Can I clean you up now? Something is obviously wrong and we have to get you to a doctor."

"They said a healer was coming."

"I was thinking of someone a little more professional," Jaskier says and Geralt gives him a look. "We have a mutual friend who may be able to help. But for now, you've got me and I'd like to take a look at that wound."

Geralt relents and Jaskier finally succeeds in getting him sat on the bed without Geralt trying to come on to him again. He pulls Geralt's hair back and ties it out of his face, it'll need to be washed later, but he's not going to try and explain how it's fine for him to wash his hair but not fuck him right now.

The wound itself it's so bad, a bit swollen, a bit bruised, but the actual gash is small and very manageable. He cleans it first with water and then with vodka and applies a good amount of salve. He doesn't know which herbs Geralt combines for a poultice, so he bypasses that for the time being; when he gets him to Shani if the wound isn't healed on its own, she'll be able to tend to it.

He finds linen wrap at the bottom of his bag and presses it to Geralt's forehead, gently wrapping it around and tying it at his temple.

"Should be good for now. I'll go down and have supper brought up. Do you want a bath?"

"No. Thank you."

"Alright. Just… stay here, I'll be back."

As soon as the bedroom door is shut, Jaskier closes his eyes, but he waits until he reaches the main floor to lean against the wall and sigh. He has no idea what he's going to do. He never thought he'd be sad to see the day Geralt tried to get him into bed, but it feels so wrong. He'd rather spend the rest of his life failing to impress Geralt than spend another five minutes with him like this.

He takes his time ordering food, half-hoping that Geralt will be asleep by the time he gets back to the room, but their supper is ready quickly and Jaskier reluctantly takes it back up to their room, setting the tray on the table beside the bed.

Geralt at least spares him conversation while they eat and then Jaskier sets the dishes aside and strips out of his clothes for bed, already dreading having to share a bed. He keeps his shorts on and waits until Geralt is already in bed before climbing in after him.

The fire is burning low already, so he's not worried about it, but he blows out the candle beside the bed and pulls the blankets up over himself. He faces out into the room, preferring not to see Geralt right now. It feels weird to want to avoid him and it makes his chest ache because this is Geralt, but it's not. He just wants his Geralt back.

He shuts his eyes and tries to sleep but Geralt is cuddly like this, shifting closer and pressing up against him. He gets an arm around Jaskier's waist and Jaskier squeezes his eyes shut. It's everything he thinks about during the long nights sleeping around a campfire, but he can't let himself give into it. But it feels good because it's Geralt's arm around him, Geralt's chest pressed to his back, Geralt's breath against his neck. He very nearly whines because it's so damn unfair.

But then Geralt's lips press against the back of his neck and a little gasp escapes his lips, unintentionally. He ignores it the first time, but then he does it again and when he shifts closer, Jaskier can feel the length of his cock pressing against his ass. And fuck, that's hard to turn down, but Jaskier wrenches himself out of Geralt's arms.

"I can't," he whispers, unconvincing even to himself.

"You want it, though," Geralt hums, "I can smell it on you."

"Maybe," Jaskier confesses, "but not like this. Not when you don't know who I am. Not when fucking any other person in this place would be the same for you. I can't, Geralt. Go to sleep."

Jaskier hates how disappointed Geralt sounds when he pulls away, but he doesn't try again and Jaskier almost finds himself wishing he would. He tugs the blanket a little tighter around himself and pulls his knees to his chest, trying to force back the fear that he might not get his Geralt back.

In the morning, Geralt wakes first and Jaskier is relieved to find himself alone in bed, although he worries about where Geralt has gotten to. But when he drags himself out of bed, he finds Geralt packed and ready to go with a hearty breakfast waiting for him.

"What's all this?" Jaskier asks, "trying to get away from me all of a sudden?" It comes out more bitter than he intends and he winces at the tone of his own voice.

"You were so sad, last night," Geralt says quietly. "I don't know how to fix this, how to remember you, but I thought you'd want to get started early. I had breakfast brought up." He offers a soft smile, gesturing to the food and Jaskier's heart flip-flops.

"Oh. Thank you."

"I've eaten. Take your time and we can leave when you're finished."

"Right."

Geralt just sits on the bed while Jaskier eats his breakfast and contemplates the fact that this is still his Geralt, as much as it doesn't seem like it. His own things are still ready to go and he has no idea who to go to to collect the reward for the drowners, but it couldn't have been much anyway, so he's not worried about it. Geralt won't be pleased about it when he remembers himself, but there's only so much Jaskier knows how to handle and he wants to get Geralt to Shani as quickly as possible.

They head out mid-morning, and Geralt insists on letting Jaskier ride, which is… nice, in a concerning way. Roach is equally confused and concerned, but Jaskier does his best to comfort her. Thankfully, they aren't far from Oxenfurt or Jaskier isn't sure how he would cope.

Geralt walks alongside him, happy enough apparently to let Jaskier ride. He hums as they travel, a low wonderful sound that had Jaskier's heart fluttering, but it tears him in two because the song is his which means Geralt does remember something, but he's also so sad to see him this calm and relaxed knowing his goal is to take that away from him.

For now, he won't say anything, will just let Geralt enjoy the journey. When and if they find a way to get his memory back, he'll explain everything and give Geralt the chance to decline if he wishes. The selfish part of him hopes he doesn't.

They carry on in much the same way, but even when Geralt talks, Jaskier struggles to find it in himself to be too enthusiastic about anything. He's already in a difficult spot and he just wants to get through this, whatever the outcome. But it's obvious Geralt notices and that he's trying to distract him from it.

Jaskier tries to cheer up a little, if only for him, but he finds it difficult because he knows Geralt can tell how he's really feeling. But Jaskier appreciates the effort, either way.

"Remind me where we're going?" Geralt asks and Jaskier realizes he hasn't told him, Geralt just trusted him not to be leading him towards certain death.

"To Oxenfurt," he says, trying to sound cheerful, "it's one of my favourite places on the continent. I have a friend who practices medicine, she should be able to help."

"You don't have to pretend for me. I know you're sad, I know you miss him. Me. I wish I could give you your friend back."

Jaskier's heart clenches and he takes a steadying breath. "I'm fine," he says, "and I can't miss him, he's you and you're right here." He feels odd, like he's talking to a child, but Geralt just smiles at him, softly but like he doesn't believe him. Jaskier wouldn't either, he's never been good at lying to Geralt.

There's a heavy silence that falls after that and for some time they continue forward unspeaking. Jaskier twitches to feel the silence, to sing or talk to something just to keep from thinking that Geralt is upset with him. Then, abruptly, Geralt speaks.

"What kind of man am I?" Jaskier doesn't even have to think to answer that.

"You're kind," he says, "more than anyone gives you credit for. You always try to take the less violent route, even though your job is to kill monsters. You're generous and loving and you care so deeply for your friends and family."

He pauses for a moment, swallowing a lump in his throat. Because he's not included in that group. He knows Geralt must care for him, but not in the way he loves Eskel or Lambert, or even in the way his friendship with Shani or Zoltan comes so easily to him. Next to him, Geralt is silent for a moment and then.

"Jaskier are you-" Jaskier shuts his eyes, dreading whatever is coming next. "Do you love me?"

"Of course I do," he says, forcing cheeriness into his voice, "You're my best friend."

"But it's more than that, isn't it?"

"Geralt-"

"I know I don't really know you, but I… think I love you, too."

"Geralt, don't say that," Jaskier shuts his eyes tightly, "you can't know that."

"I feel it."

Jaskier wants to scream. It's so unfair to hear those words from Geralt's mouth and know they’re not true. He pushes Roach a little quicker forward, but Geralt stops him.

Roach comes to a full stop and Jaskier grows frowns at Geralt as he comes to stand next to him. Geralt raised a hand up, cupping his jaw and guiding him downward.

"I feel like you won't hear it from me again, so I love you." He's soft, almost breathless, and when he stretches up to kiss him, Jaskier doesn't stop him.

It's just soft, no urgency, no want for something more than just a kiss and Jaskier can't help but lean into it just a little. Because those are Geralt's hands on him, Geralt's mouth against his own, soft and slow.

But Geralt moans softly against him and Jaskier remembers himself with a start. He pulls back from the Witcher, almost unseating himself, but Geralt steadies him.

"I'm sorry," he breathes, "I can't, it's not fair-"

"To me?" Geralt asks and there's sadness behind the humour in his voice.

"Yes."

After that, they spend the rest of the day in silence and Jaskier feels bad for Geralt - he can't imagine losing his memory and not knowing who he is - but he can't stand the fruitless hope. Because Geralt doesn't love him, he's made it known that they're not friends and how could Jaskier hope for more when he can't even attain friendship?

Then again, the man walking next to him now still is Geralt. He doesn't feel like Geralt and he doesn't act like Geralt, but he is. Jaskier isn't sure how people usually react when they lose their memories, so he doesn't have a basis to judge by, but it is still Geralt.

When they stop for the night, Geralt sleeps close enough to keep him warm but doesn't cuddle up like he did the night before and Jaskier hates himself for it. Maybe Geralt has a chance here at a new life, one where he can be happy and not weighed down by the memory of his childhood. And if he does, if he wants it, who is Jaskier to deny him that?

He's not sure he could be a part of it, though. Even thinking about him now, wishing Geralt would come a little closer, curl an arm around his middle, he feels like he's betraying his friend, betraying the old Geralt as the case may be.

Either way, he'll get Geralt to Oxenfurt so they can speak to Shani and see if there's anything that can be done. If there's not, he doesn't have to worry about making the decision to leave or stay, but if there is- If there is a chance Geralt can regain his memories, Jaskier has to let him make that choice alone and then make his own depending on what Geralt wants.

They reach Oxenfurt a few days later after what feels like a month-long journey and Jaskier is just glad to be somewhere warm where he can have his own room and not have to worry about wanting to be close. He leads them immediately to the inn and rents two separate rooms. It's fairly costly and he's reminded of the reason they needed to take the last contract, but he could be in Oxenfurt for a while depending on how this goes and he'll be able to pick up work easily enough.

Jaskier heads up to his room and makes sure Geralt gets settled, then he heads down and orders food and a bath up to Geralt's room before heading out to find Shani.

The first place he looks is the hospital, but the nurse working informs him that Shani has her own clinic now and she's located near the centre of town. Jaskier thanks her and doubles back, following the directions she'd given. Shani's clinic is tucked between two other buildings and Jaskier knocks before entering. There's no one inside but it's only a moment before Shani emerges from a back room, the neutral look on her face quickly growing into a smile. When Jaskier doesn't return the gesture she frowns.

"I take it this isn't a personal visit," she says and Jaskier can feel something inside him slip. He shakes his head.

"No, I'm sorry. I- we need your help."

"Geralt?" she asks and the last bit of his self-control gives way and he chokes on a sob. "Hey," she says, "come sit down."

Shani guides him to a back room and sits him down on a plush soft, surprisingly nice for a medical clinic. She shuts and locks the door behind them and sits next to him.

"What's wrong?"

"It's Geralt," he chokes, "hes'-" he takes a deep breath, swallowing back another sob. "Shani, he doesn't know who he is. He doesn't know who I am."

"Oh. What happened?"

"I wasn't there. I just- they came to get me because no one else would get near him. It was just supposed to be a drowner contract but he got hit in the head or something. I don't know what to do."

"Where is he now?"

"Back at the inn."

"Here?" she asks. Jaskier nods. "Why don't you take me to him, I'll take a look."

"I- I don't know if he'll want to be fixed? He came with me but Shani, he seems happy."

"Why don't we go and see him first. We'll figure out what's wrong before worrying too much, hm?" Jaskier agrees and Shani packs a bag and they head for the inn.

They find Geralt in his room, having eaten and bathed and he looks good. He's got his hair down around his shoulders and he's shirtless and Jaskier has to avert his eyes. He takes a seat in the corner and lets Shani introduce herself and asks to look him over. Jaskier stays quiet and watches cautiously as Geralt easily lets Shani look him over. Once she's finished with his body, she examines his head.

"Well," she says at last, "you obviously took a pretty hefty blow to your head, but the good news is it should be simple to reverse the memory loss."

"Good," Geralt says quickly. He spares a glance for Jaskier before turning back to Shani. "What do we have to do?"

"It's simple really, just a shock to your system should do it. I have a friend who can help."

As Shani goes into the details, Jaskier tunes out. He hears something about neurons, but he's more concerned about getting Geralt alone for a couple of minutes before he makes a decision. He loves Geralt, wants nothing more than for him to be happy, so he wants him to go into this knowing everything Jaskier can tell him.

"Can we have a moment Shani?" he asks and Geralt looks at him as Shani nods and ducks out of the room.

"You want to do it?" Jaskier asks and Geralt nods.

"Why wouldn't I?"

"You're happier like this," Jaskier whispers, "Geralt, I've never seen you this relaxed. In twenty years, you've always been miserable. I just- I want you to make an informed decision."

"You say you want me to be happy," Geralt says, "but since I told you I didn't know who you were you've been so sad. How is it fair for me to be happy like you say when you're still suffering." He tips Jaskier's chin up with two fingers and looks into his eyes. "What I said before, I wasn't lying. I don't know where all these feelings are coming from but I know you are so important to me."

He pulls up a smile and Jaskier knows how this is going to end. And he'll be happy to have his Geralt back, but know him like this? To know this Geralt wants him, even in some weird, imaginary way? He doesn't know how he'll be able to continue.

"Okay," Jaskier relents. "I just… wanted you to know what you were getting into."

"I'm sure it can't be all bad. I have you."

Jaskier's heart clenches, but he doesn't get another chance to speak because Shani enters the room. Thankfully, Geralt has stopped touching him, but he's still close and she gives Jaskier a look.

"I put out a call to my friend," she says, holding up a box that looks vaguely familiar. "Xenovox," she explains, "Marilla is a mage. She should be here in the morning."

It's late afternoon now, so that means spending another night at the inn and Jaskier is torn. On the one hand, he wants Geralt to be back to normal, but on the other- he's selfish and he wants Geralt like this. He wants so badly to have anything and- no. No, he can't.

Shani leaves them shortly after assuring Jaskier that it will be alright, that Geralt will be fine. He wishes these were better circumstances, that they had come to visit Shani instead of asking for her help, but she waves him off with a smile.

"Come and visit when things are back to normal," she says, "I'll see you in the morning."

Jaskier sees her off and then returns to the room to find Geralt sitting on the edge of the bed, contemplating. He's still shirtless and Jaskier finds it hard to look at him directly. He sits in the bed next to him, hands folded in his lap.

"Well," Geralt says, "we have the night. Things will be different after I get my memory back, right?" He turns, reaching out to cup Jaskier's cheek. "Be with me tonight," he breathes, "just for tonight, let me take care of you while I have the chance."

Jaskier huffs a humourless laugh. "That's the problem, you always have the chance, but you never want to take it."

"Then let me now," he hums and his hand falls to Jaskier's thigh.

And it's so tempting. Because Geralt is right here offering everything he's ever wanted, if only for a night. But this is not the Geralt he fell in love with. This is not truly his Geralt's consent. When Jaskier looks up, it's obvious that Geralt knows his answer before he even speaks.

"I'm an idiot," he says softly, "to not jump at the chance to be with you. If I don't remember tomorrow, I want you to know you're important to me." Jaskier nods weakly, but he can't find the words. "Maybe we should turn in early? We have a long day tomorrow, I think."

Jaskier nods and he lets Geralt pull him down to the bed and tonight, he lets himself be held, curls into Geralt's hold and presses his nose into his neck. He doesn't let himself think, just buries himself in Geralt's scent, so warm and familiar and shuts off his mind.

Jaskier awakes to a knock on the door and realizes he's still in his clothes from yesterday. Geralt answers the door to Shani and Marilla, and Jaskier is only just climbing out of bed when they come into the room. He gets a look from Shani, but if she's feeling any particular kind of way about finding him in Geralt's bed, she doesn't say anything.

The actual process doesn't take any time at all. Marilla comes in and does something to Geralt, what she does is unclear but he falls unconscious and Jaskier panics at first, but Shani holds him back.

"Sorry," she says, "I should have warned you."

Jaskier does his best to make Geralt comfortable in the bed and he leaves with the two women to let him sleep. He thanks Marilla desperately and asks her to stay until he wakes, but she tells him she has other business to attend to and after dipping down to kiss Shani briefly, she disappears down the stairs.

"Friend, huh?" Jaskier asks and Shani smiles at him.

"Don't try to change the subject."

"Actually, can I ask you about something?"

"Of course. Why don't we get a drink, he could be out for a couple of hours."

They head down to the common area and Shani orders them a pair of drinks while Jaskier finds a table out of the way. He's never understood why Geralt likes corner tables, but right now he gets it. He doesn't want anyone to talk to him and he just wants to be able to sit and drink with Shani.

When she returns, she slides his drink across to him and slips into her seat.

"What did you want to ask about?"

"Uh," Jaskier starts, turning his mug in his hands, "when I first took Geralt back to our room, just after he was hurt. He tried to kiss me. He… thought I was bringing him back there to fuck him."

"Oh."

"You don't sound surprised."

"I'm not, really. I'm surprised he acted on it, but-"

"What does that mean?"

"Geralt doesn't have any brain damage," Shani explains, "something just… got knocked loose, so to speak. He was still him, Jaskier. His thoughts, his feelings? That was all him, Jask."

"You're telling me-" abruptly, the memory of Geralt telling him he loved him comes back to him and his mouth goes dry. "You're telling me that was just him?"

"Mmhm. Without all the baggage and self-loathing."

"I don't- he can't- if he wanted me that way, I would know."

"Would you?" Shani asks, "because I think you would be the last person to know. Wait till he wakes up, talk to him."

"Yeah, I know. Thanks, Shani, for this and for everything."

"Happy to help."

They finish their drinks and Shani heads home. Jaskier thanks her again and promises to visit when things are better and waits until she's gone before heading back up to Geralt's room.

The first thing Geralt knows when he wakes up, is a pain in his head. He blinks awake to find himself in a bed in a nondescript inn. A better look around finds Jaskier asleep in a chair next to him, but he stirs as Geralt sits up and then he's scrambling to pass Geralt a mug of water.

He feels woozy, but Jaskier's presence soothes him; he knows from experience that Jaskier would never let anything happen to him and is willing to risk his own health and safety to assure it. There's no one else he'd rather see upon waking. But he doesn't remember falling asleep. The last thing he remembers is taking a hit and stumbling away from the scene.

"Geralt?" Jaskier asks gently. He looks up and the first thing he notices when he looks at Jaskier is how sad he is. The emotion wafts off of him, but Geralt doesn't need his heightened sense of smell to be able to tell.

"What's wrong?" he mumbles, his voice thick.

"Tell me what you remember. From the start."

Geralt thinks back, going through the events of the hunt, none of which are very interesting until he was thrown into a tree. Water hag, he remembers, chucked mud and blinded him. Then he's stumbling away, all three monsters dead and then- fuck.

His gaze snaps up to Jaskier's face, looking for any sign of recognition, but he remains eerily calm, even as Geralt recollects kissing him, pressing him up against a wall and- fuck, what was he thinking? The more he thinks about it, the more comes back to him, but in bits and pieces.

Kissing him, touching him, pressing up against him in bed. The memories are all foggy, scattered, but they feel too real to have been a dream. But Jaskier shows no signs of being assaulted by him.

"I'm-" he starts, but sorry doesn't feel like it's enough. Jaskier is open with his affections, but he wouldn't be okay with that.

Geralt tries to push himself up, to get out of bed and away from Jaskier because he can't stand the thought of doing something like that. He can't remember why he did, but the more he thinks about it, the more real it feels.

"Geralt," Jaskier says firmly, "I'm not mad. But I think we need to talk if you're up for it."

He doesn't want to talk to Jaskier. He would rather find out from someone else, he can't bear to hear the words from Jaskier. And he knows Shani was there. Shani and another woman who he didn't recognize.

"Where's Shani?" he asks.

"She's gone home, darling. Are you hungry? Can I get you anything?"

Geralt looks up at him and he feels hopeless. Jaskier is exhausted, he can see the bags under his eyes, the dark circles. And he doesn't seem any less sad than he did initially. It doesn't take much to realize what happened.

"I'm sorry," Geralt mumbles, "about what I did- when I kissed you, I-"

Jaskier stops, already halfway toward the door and sighs deeply, stopping in his tracks before turning around.

"Okay," he says, "we're talking about this now, then." He comes back and seats himself on the end of the bed, facing him. "Tell me exactly what you remember, Geralt."

"I remember taking the contract, fighting off the drowners - and a water hag - got mud in my eyes, stumbled and something hit me, threw me into a tree. Probably one of the drowners pushed me. I took them out, started back toward town but I must have passed out, the next thing I remember is-"

"Me."

"Yeah. You took me back to our room, I thought you were- I thought you wanted sex."

"I know, you were fairly adamant about that."

"Fuck. Jaskier I'm sorry-"

"You didn't know who I was. If a handsome stranger took me back to his room, I'd think the same. When you didn't know who I was I was… terrified. I didn't know if I'd get you back." They're both silent for a moment and then Jaskier prompts him to continue.

"I remember that. I remember talking to you," he lowers his eyes, "I told you I loved you, I don't know why." Immediately Jaskier's sadness intensifies and he catches it in the twitch of his lip, the way he glances away.

"You asked if I was in love with you," Jaskier explains, "and told me you loved me. What else do you remember?"

"I remember asking you to- suggesting we- I propositioned you. And I remember being in bed- Jaskier, did we-?" He can't imagine anything worse than sleeping with Jaskier while he's not himself, than having the chance to be with him and not truly being present in the moment.

Because he certainly won't have another chance, especially not now that he's gone and muddled things up.

"No," Jaskier confirms and for the first time a small smile tugs at his lips, "not that you didn't try. But It didn't feel right. I knew when you had your memories back, you'd hate me for it and I couldn't-"

"I could never hate you," Geralt interrupts, "if anything I'd hate myself for pushing you into it."

"No," Jaskier says, shaking his head, "Geralt you don't understand. I wanted to. I wanted so badly to just say yes last night when you asked me. I tried to work it around in some way that you wouldn't hate me for taking advantage, but every time I just feel terrible to even think about it. The reason I didn't sleep with you is because I couldn't bear the thought of fucking you when it wasn't really you. Because I didn't want him, even if he was you. I wanted- I want this you."

"You do," Geralt snorts, "someone who throws himself at his friend because he doesn't remember, someone who tells him he loves him unprompted-"

"Do you think," Jaskier suggests, and it's clear by the look on his face that he's considering his words very carefully. "That maybe what you said to me and what you did- what you offered," he corrects quickly, "was because you do have feelings for me?" His voice shakes just faintly and Geralt can smell the anxiousness coming off of him.

It's cloying, overwhelming and it mingles with the scent of sadness and fear and just the faintest hint of something hopeful.

"It's just that Shani said there was nothing wrong with your mind, it was still you in there when you asked, when you said that." Jaskier looks up at him and Geralt feels years of emotion welling up inside him and he doesn't know how to hold it back any longer, not what Jaskier is asking him outright.

"Jaskier, I-" he takes a deep breath, focuses on a mark on the blanket between them. "I don't remember everything. But I did mean what I said. I do… I love you," he whispers, "I didn't want you to think less of me or," he glances up and Jaskier's eyes are shiny like he's trying not to cry. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean for you to find out like this."

"I'm not sad," Jaskier says, "Geralt, I have been following you around for half my life, caring for you, singing about you and you didn't think for maybe a moment that I could love you back?"

"You-" Geralt stumbles over his words as Jaskier's confession sinks in. "You sleep with everyone. Everyone but-"

"You don't even call me friend, Geralt. Why would I try and take you to bed with me thinking you don't care enough to call me your friend?"

"Oh."

"Oh? You didn't consider that?"

"You're not my friend," Geralt says, by way of explanation, "but you're not a lover, either. You're not a brother. Not a comrade. I don't know what you are."

"Oh."

"But you could be… a lover?" the word feels strangely heavy in his mouth and he nearly regrets saying it at all until he sees the way Jaskier's eyes light up. A smile tugs at Geralt's lips and he leans forward, reaching out to take Jaskier's hand, tentatively turning it over.

"Jaskier," he whispers, "can I kiss you?" A wide grin spreads across his face and Jaskier tips forward toward him.

"Darling, I thought you'd never ask."

[words-etched-in-her-skin]

Hello, dears! Sorry I’ve been a bit inactive the last couple of days, but I’ve been working on finishing this 😏The third installment of my House Dimitrescu series on Ao3! I hope it’ll help quench some of your thirst 😘

Xx.

You weren’t sure if anyone had ever actually died from utter gay panic before - but you were almost positive that you felt your soul try to leave your body as soon the soft fabric of Alcina’s nightgown hit the ground. Every mountainous curve accentuated beautifully by the multitude of candles that filled the Countess’ bedroom. 

“Is this the body that you’re so desperate to worship, my pet?” Alcina asked, allowing her hands to trace down the landscape of her abdomen. 

“Ah.. Y-yes, my lady.” 

“Mmh.. you do smell quite divine when you blush, my pet.” She replied, leaning over you. “All that blood… rising to the surface.”

(Ahem...) 

“Erm..” 

Your voice cracked with fluster, bringing a low and sultry chuckle from Alcina’s throat. Every glorious inch of her exposed to you as she made her way over to the door leading to the bath.

 “Since you’ve promised me a proper body worship.. I think I shall bathe first.” She said, giving you a smirk. “You may join me… if you wish.” 

“Y-yes, my lady. Of course.”

You could already feel the fierce flush spilling over you as you watched Alcina’s large frame slip through the bathroom doorway, ducking slightly as she did. Her silhouette sharp against the backdrop of the washroom. Every inch of her becoming more luminous with each candle that she lit. The delicious smell of spiced musk wafting through the warm air as she turned on the water.

“Come, pet.” 

(Ah, pretty sure I just did that… quite a few times)

You couldn’t help but blush at the thought, immediately rising from the bed. Your body sore in ways that you never even knew possible. A deliciously dull ache, reminding you of just how much you had taken - of just how much Alcina had given you. 

“Yes, my lady. My apologies.”

She waved her hand dismissively, the muscles of her forearms flexing as she did. Steam rising from the bath - dancing over her - elegantly encasing her curves as she leaned over the tub. Her fingers slowly tracing over the surface of the water as she locked her eyes onto yours   

(Yep, and I’m suddenly feeling very parched.)

“Smells almost as delicious as you do, my pet.” 

“Erm… thank you, my lady.”

“So flustered already.. and you haven’t even begun to touch me yet.”  

(Yet.)

"Well.. you do have quite the effect, my lady." 

Alcina chuckled. "Yes, I'm well aware of that, my pet." 

You had no doubts that she was, the sheer presence of her hard to ignore. Whether it be chasing scared villagers, desperate to not have their blood drained by Alcina or her daughters - or the pure, unfiltered thirst that she could evoke in even the purest of nuns -  you knew for certain that Alcina had always known of the effect she had on others. 

“I would expect nothing less, my lady.” You replied with a smirk, watching her eyes grow slightly darker. 

“There are not many people who would dare speak to me in such a way, you know.” She said calmly.

You averted your eyes. “I’m sorry, my lady.” 

“Heh… I did not say I didn’t like it, pet.”

“O-oh.. I..”

You swallowed hard, very aware of the deep flush that was rapidly spreading across your naked body. Alcina only chuckled, slowly lowering herself down into the tub. The tepid water swallowing her curves in the most delicious of ways. You tried to look away - cast your eyes aside - knowing how severely some had been punished for just a simple glance in her direction - but the way her mouth parted slightly, letting out the most exquisite of moans, would allow you to do no such thing. 

(Fuck… aah… brain… glitch) 

“Pet?”

You cleared your throat. “Yes, my lady?”

“It would be much easier for you to bathe me if you were actually in the bath.”

(In the… aaaaaah)

“Y-yes, my lady. Of course.. it.. would absolutely be easier… yes.”  

She smirked. “And I’m sure it would help those… sore muscles of yours.”

(Fuck.)

“Erm...”

Alcina, being the thirst-inducing Goddess that she was, was the only person in existence who could chuckle in such a way that would instantly make you wet. It was like sugared honey - smooth and sultry with just a tiny bit of rasp to it. You moved to the other side of the massive tub, settling in behind her. The heat from the water immediately dulling the ache, a reminder of just how sore you would be in the morning. 

“Better?”

“Much, my lady. Thank you.”

“It’s the least I could do.. considering.”

You didn’t even have to look at her to know of the heated smirk that was painted perfectly across Alcina’s lips. She handed you a washcloth (or a towel, in your case) - soaked in the most exotic of oils - sighing with relief as soon as you began to massage it over the length of her back. Crystalline beads of sweat dripping deliciously down the small of her back, and you couldn’t help but wonder if she had only filled the tub halfway to make it easier for you to bathe her - or to be able to fluster you to no end. Your bet was on the latter. 

“My lady?”

“Mmhm?”

“May I ask you something?”

“I supposed that would be alright, my pet. Just as long as you keep those hands of yours moving.” 

“Of course, my lady.”

“Good pet.”

(Fuuuuck.)

You blushed furiously, clearing your throat again before continuing. “Well, it’s just that.. Well, I.. was talking to the girls the other day, and they had mentioned that… “ 

You paused, taking a deep breath.

“Go on…”

“Well, that.. I’m the first human that has been kept at Castle Dimitrescu that wasn’t solely here as food or service? Is that.. true?”

“Well, my pet… I'd say that, technically, you are here to… service me, are you not?” She replied with a chuckle, looking back over her shoulder.

“Ah, yes… of course.”

Alcina, immediately picking up on the disheartened tone to your voice, quickly continued. “But yes… my pet. You are the first that I have kept for more... personal reasons.” 

“O-oh… ah… may I ask.. why?”

A large ripple of water on an otherwise still surface as Alcina shifted her body uncomfortably, thinking your words over. You knew it was a long shot - getting the Countess to share her feelings for you - to delve into things that weren’t inherently connected to the pleasures of the flesh (whether it be food, or otherwise.) - but you had to know. Alcina cleared her throat, letting the water drip deliciously down her arm as she ran her fingers through her hair. 

“Bold of you to ask such a question, my pet.. “ She paused, allowing a deep flush to spill across your body before continuing. “But… considering how you’ve earned yourself an official spot as  a member of this house, I suppose you have the right to know.” 

“Thank you, my lady. That’s very kind of you.”

She waved her hand dismissively. “Yes, well… think nothing of it, pet.”

“Of course, my lady.”

You sat in quiet for a few moments, allowing the Countess to gather her thoughts - not wanting to ruin any chance at finally seeing her open up. 

“When you first arrived… I admit, you were meant to be just a food source. Maybe a servant… but.. even that first night when we had you down in the dungeons, I felt a pull towards you. I even had Daniela check in on you in the middle of the night to make sure you were alright.”

“You… you did?”

“You intrigued me, my pet. Which is something that you’ve continued to do with each day that you’ve spent in this castle.” She took a breath, looking over her shoulder at you.” And, well… you were quite ill that night. We weren’t sure if you would even make it.” 

Thinking back, most of your early days in the castle were a blur to you. You could remember leaving your home - though, you were not entirely sure of the reason -,and then getting yourself caught in a terrible storm before reaching the castle. You remembered being tired - clothes soaked straight through to your body - and being utterly cold. The next thing after that was feeling warmer than you had in days - and Alcina’s concerned face looming over you.

“You were gorgeous even then…” 

Alcina’s voice trailed off, a far away look in her eyes as she turned her face back to the front. Rendered completely speechless, you sat in silence for a while - thinking over her words.. (She thought I was... gorgeous.. even then??) You swallowed hard, no longer sure if the relentless heat that was spilling across your body was from the bath itself or her disarming words. 

“You’re very quiet, my pet.” She said, breaking the silence. “Did my answers not satisfy your curiosities?” . 

“No, my lady. I mean.. Yes, they did. I’m just…. trying to process everything you’ve said is all.”

She hummed softly, rinsing her hair before slowly lifting the length of herself out of the bath. Droplets of water deliciously dripping down each of her exquisite curves. You had never seen her look more beautiful. The firelight from the candles flickering warmly in the reflection of the water that danced upon her fair skin. She was a literal masterpiece - art in motion - as she made her way out of the tub. . 

“Take all the time you need, my pet. I’ll be waiting.”

“Heh… And here I thought my lady didn’t like to be kept waiting.” You replied with a smirk, daring to tease her.. 

“I don’t.” She replied, a sharp glare cutting straight across the room - reminding you of who she was - that quickly turned to a smirk. “But, considering how… sore you must be, I will make an exception.”

“Yes, of course, my lady. Thank you..” 

She gave you a small nod, water trickling down the landscape of her as she dried herself off in a teasingly slow manner - her eyes never leaving yours. (Yep. Literal. Gay. Death.) You swallowed hard, earning a chuckle from her as you averted your eyes, blushing. 

“You’re quite beautiful like this, my pet. Utterly flushed and dripping for me.”

(::whimper::)

She chuckled again, the tip of her tongue skating over her bottom lip before she swiftly exited the bathroom. It took literally everything in you not to immediately jump from the tub. You knew you were eager for her - to taste her, to feel her skin against your lips -  and who could blame you? You allowed yourself a few moments, soothing your muscles for a minute before beginning to drain the water. The sweet musk of her swirling around you like the steam that now rose from your eager body. You made quick work of toweling yourself off, your feet carrying you off into the other room without as much as a thought. 

“Hello, pet.”

Your mouth went completely dry, breath hitched - her illustrious body sprawled across the length of the bed. Miles upon miles of flesh just begging to be touched - explored - worshipped in a way that only the body of a goddess deserved to be. 

“H-hello, my lady.. you are… fuck…” 

Alcina chuckled, shaking her head - a knowing look upon her face. “I’m quite aware of the effect I have on you, my pet.. but I appreciate the sentiment, nonetheless.” 

“I’m sorry my lady.. you’re just… stunning, to say the least.”

Her eyes grew a little darker, more hungry. “Thank you, my pet. Now… I think you’ve kept me waiting long enough, wouldn’t you agree?”

“Yes, my lady.”

“Good. Change that.”

(Fuck… I…)

The instant pool of heat that began to stir in your core - your juices immediately flowing - all just from the tone of her voice. Cool satin sheets welcoming to your overly flushed skin as you climbed onto her bed. A fierce anticipation sweeping over you as you settled down next to her. It was far from the first time you had been allowed to touch the immaculate body of Lady Alcina Dimitrescu, but it was the first time she had given you the okay to do so in such a manner. 

“Before we begin, pet… you are to address me only as Mistress for the rest of the evening, is that clear?”

“Yes, Mistress.”

“Good. While I may have agreed to such an intimate request, I am still in control. Do you understand?”

‘Yes, Mistress. Of course.”

She responded with a nod, laying her head back against the pillow. “Excellent. Now.. as you were, pet.”

You moved slowly, straddling her hips. Alcina’s eyes practically luminous - golden spheres drinking you in as you settled yourself down on top of her.

“What an exquisite view I have from here.”

“I’m pretty sure mine is better, Mistress.” 

“Such flattery, my pet.”

“Utter truth, my Mistress.” 

You watched as the slightest hint of pink began to paint it’s way across the sultry lines of Alcina’s face - unable to keep yourself from blushing in turn. Her body, slightly cool to the touch, impossible to ignore against your heated skin. Her skin - scarred, perfect - the most beautiful handwritten map that you had ever seen - and you were desperate to explore it. The faintest of moans escaping from her slightly parted lips as the warmth of your mouth found the soft skin of her neck. A mesh of soft kisses and heated bites dancing their way across the steadily growing flush of her body. The low, husky sounds that reverberated through her chest each time that your teeth scraped across her skin, was a melody within themselves. Another bite to her collar bone, your tongue licking over it as you slowly began to make your way down. Her thick fingers in your hair, guiding that eager mouth of yours exactly where she wanted it to go.  

“You have quite the talented tongue, my -ah!.” 

You muffled a deep moan to her response - the length of her nipple finding your mouth, filling it - arousing you to no end. A pool of juices steadily collecting beneath you as you cupped her breast with both hands, indulging your tongue with as much of her as you could.

“Mmh… lower, my pet.”

“Yes, Mistress.”

You nipped at her sensitive skin before pulling away, earning a sharp inhale from the Countess. A smug smirk against her skin as you continued your way down the miles of flesh that made up  the landscape of her illustrious body - each mountainous curve more delicious than the last. Your soft lips caressing over the faint lines and imperfections that so beautifully decorated her body. Repositioning yourself, you settled down into the heated spot between her legs - her sweet musk rolling over you as your tongue skated over the sensitive skin of her hips and thighs. Her nails scraping up the sides of your neck before firmly tangling her fingers back into your hair. Her hips moving in a way that told you just how badly she wanted you - needed you in a way that she had never needed another. 

“You may go lower, my pet.” Her voice was thick with want, body flushed from nothing more than the touch of your lips - the sting of your teeth - the warmth of your tongue that danced so eloquently across her body.

(L-lower.. ?)

“I… Mistress?” You asked, pulling back hesitantly as your mind mulled over her words. Being intimate on that level was not something Alcina had ever indulged you in. Though she had had her tongue inside of you more times than you could count - she had never, not even once, suggested that you return the favor. 

“You heard me, pet.”

“Of course, Mistress.”

You settled yourself down even lower between her thighs, mouth watering at just the thought of tasting her. Her juices shimmering in the candlelight as they dripped down the front of her core. Every cell in your body set a blaze as you readied yourself, breathing in deeply.

“Oh, and.. be a good pet and touch yourself.” 

(Mmph.. fuck.. I)

“Y-yes, Mistress.”

“I can smell how wet you are, my pet. Practically dripping for me all over again?” She chuckled, smirking before laying her back down onto the pillow. 

‘Yes, Mistress.. I.. I am” 

“Good.. and, pet?”

“Yes, Mistress?”

“Make sure I can hear you.”

You swallowed hard, mouth going completely dry. “Fuck.. yes, Mistress.” 

She hummed softly, spreading her legs for you a little further as you positioned your hands just right, the familiar feeling of your own fingers gently parting your lips. And oh, how right she was.. you were absolutely dripping for her - exceedingly so. The scent of her skin was almost overwhelming as you placed your mouth over her clit, immediately moaning at the taste of her. Your own juices flowing steadily as you slowly slid three fingers into yourself, making sure to be careful of your sore muscles. The sheer size of her hand holding you in place as the width of your tongue licked over her, causing an immediate arch to her back. Her perfect hips rising up to meet you, her soft folds enveloping you as you did your best to explore over every inch of her throbbing core. It was times like this you were thankful for having such a long tongue - to have the ability to unravel such a gorgeous creature. You nuzzled your face in closer, drinking her in, letting every inch of her overwhelm you. Your own hips moving in unison as you began to fuck yourself steadily. Your long fingers deep inside of you - her body writhing with each delicious moan that you allow to escape into her.

“You are quite exquisite, my pet. And that tongue of yours… mmmh.” Her moans ripped through her throat like a rumble of thunder, licking over her bottom lip before she continued “I can only imagine what other skills you've been hiding from me.” 

You had never heard her voice filled with so much desire before - so much need - and it was only fueling the primal urge that was slowly taking over your body. You sucked over her clit, using your whole mouth - practically devouring it. Her warm juices dripping down the front of your throat as you did your best not to waste a single drop of her. Your long fingers matching the pace of her hips as you continued to bring you both closer to the edge.

“I want you to fuck yourself harder, pet.”

(skjdfidlfdjfodjogj)

The command - the tone - the use of vulgarity that so rarely found it’s way out of Alcina’s eloquent mouth, sent a lightning bolt of heat through your body so intense that you felt your hips immediately jerk in response. 

“Mmph, fuck Mistress.” You moaned into her, earning a chuckle. 

“Precisely.”

You muffled a second curse against her, swiftly picking up the pace of your tongue and fingers. Her hips moving so beautifully in unison that you would have sworn she was a dancer in her past life. She was artistry in motion - a goddess of all things pleasing to the eye. The length of her hand firmly holding your head in place - pulling you closer, desperate to feel you inside of her- and you were more than willing to give it to her. You repositioned yourself slightly, forming your four fingers and thumb just right. An exquisite moan escaping from her lips as you teased them over her entrance. 

“Mmh.. such a generous pet. Just be sure to keep fucking your- ah!” 

You slid the width of your hand deep inside of her, sufficiently cutting her words short. A cascade of moans ripping through her body like an untamed beast - sucking over her clit as you left your hands to continue to wreck the both of you. Juices dripping - fingers curling - tongue relentless against her clit as an all encompassing force of pleasure began to overtake the both of you. 

“Are you close, my pet? Will you come with me?”

She asked, her voice softer than usual and you moaned a yes into her. Strong, purposeful thrusts as Alcina’s large frame began to arch beautifully from the bed. Your hips jerking as they matched the pace of your obedient mouth. A unison of voices screaming out as the fireworks behind your eyes moved into a full white out. Unyielding waves of pleasure crashing over you like a ravenous sea - bodies shuddering, breaths hitched - your talented extremities only letting up when Alcina finally fell breathless against the bed, juices soaking the satin sheets beneath her. Resting your head against her inner thigh, the smell of her upon your lips as you closed your eyes, you steadied your breath. Her skin, flushed - heated beneath you. 

“Well.. you have proven yourself a good pet, indeed.” Her voice low and sultry as her hand fondly caressed over the side of your head.  

“Thank you, Mistress.”

“‘My lady’ is perfectly fine, pet.”

“Of course, my lady.”

You placed a small kiss to her inner thigh, completely unaware of the sudden blush that it brought to her face, Her fingers gently stroking over your neck as she hummed in content. 

“Now.. rest up. You promised the girls some quality time tomorrow, and I wouldn’t disappoint them if I were you.”

You smiled, a warm sense of belonging spilling over you. 

“Wouldn’t dream of it, my lady.”

[five-rivers]

Changeling Chapter 1

A DP Fae Au fic. I've been promising you this for so long XD. I can hardly believe I'm finally delivering, even if it's only one chapter for now.

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Chapter 1: In the Beginning, There Was an Offer

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They studied legends. According to those legends, today, Beltane, was a time of renewal, of birth, of fertility.

It was not supposed to be… this. Their dreams weren’t supposed to be crushed today. Not under this sun, not under these blue skies and among softly blooming flowers.

This kind of news should have come with rain. It should have come with storms.

Maddie wiped tears out of her eyes and Jack patted her on the back. The air smelled sweet and dusty at the same time. The bench was uncomfortable.

“We could try adoption,” said Jack. He sounded shocked, too. Drained. His voice was pulled taught over a great hollowness. “Lots of people adopt. We can- can do some good in the world, maybe.”

Maddie sniffed and cried harder. She’d wanted her own children, and Jack knew it. Adoption was all very well and good, but at this point the suggestion felt like some consolation prize, and she felt terrible for even thinking it was, because Jack was right, it could be a good thing, and…

She wanted children. Her own children.

“Excuse me, I believe I can help.”

There was something about how he said that, about how the voice wound and slipped through her ears that had Maddie’s head snapping up. The man who stood to the side of the bench wore a long coat with a deep hood. Symbols, symbols that Maddie had spent hours, days, weeks, researching were stitched into the fabric. His eyes glittered in the shadows. The fingers of his hands, clasped in front of him, were too long, their coloring faintly lavender, as if they had been dipped in ink and retained the stain even after they’d been washed clean.

This was not a human.

“How?” asked Maddie, feeling hope drip back into her limbs even as Jack tensed behind her. “How can you help?”

.

“We shouldn’t have done that,” said Jack as they drove home. “We really shouldn’t have done that. Maddie, they’re evil, there’s always a catch and it’ll always be looking for a way to push us into it.”

“The catch is in the open,” said Maddie, leaning back against the seat of the car and closing her eyes. “It isn’t as if it’s in the fine print and we’re going to stumble into it. We have one, and then I get my tubes tied, or you get snipped, and we go on with our lives.”

“What if we have twins? Triplets? Maddie, we should have talked about this.”

“There wasn’t any time,” Maddie said defensively. “I had to decide right away.”

“What are we going to do if we have twins, Maddie?”

Maddie bit her lip, her eyes opening without her full permission as she thought. “We know how to deal with things like him.”

The car jerked just a little to the right as Jack failed to suppress his flinch. “Do you remember our work on motivations? On why they take artists, musicians, children?” he asked. He forged on without waiting for an answer. “Creative sterility, we called it. For this one to be able to cure sterility, he has to be powerful. I don’t think nails in pockets and inside-out clothing is going to stop him.”

Such protections were hit and miss to begin with. One faerie might hate bread, another might love it. The sound of bells would drive off one, and another would wear them in their hair. Even cold iron was no guarantee against them.

“We’ll have to find something better, then,” she said, firmly.

.

Maddie laughed. Not a twin. A single child showed on the ultrasound monitor. A girl. A beautiful baby girl. Perfect.

On the other side of the bed, Jack sunk into a chair, obviously relieved. “She’s healthy?” he asked the OB/GYN.

“Completely,” she said. “This is quite the miracle the two of you put together here.” She shook her head. “We must have gotten something wrong during our examination. I can’t even begin to tell you how sorry I am to have put you through all that, and I won’t blame you if you wanted to find a new doctor.”

“It’s fine,” said Maddie, patting the woman’s arm. “It happens.” Yes, being approached by a powerful fae just ‘happened.’ “The important thing now is to make sure there aren’t any complications.”

.

They made sure Jazz was born on a Sunday, with two middle names, one of which Maddie made sure to forget. They scheduled her baptism for as early a date as possible, even though both Jack and Maddie were as lapsed as it was possible to be.

Precautions.

Jack had his surgery only a month later.

They were safe. They had won.

The family of three snuggled together on the couch. Well, Jazz snuggled inasmuch as a newborn was able. They watched TV.

“Jack, dear,” said Maddie, roused to awareness by a news story about a rising young businessman. “Is that our Vlad?”

Jack blinked at the screen. “I think you’re right,” said Jack. “I haven’t seen him since college. I don’t think we’ve talked to him since college.” He frowned. “Did something happen? The three of us used to be so close… He was the only one in the whole folklore department that would put up with our theories, do you remember?”

“I don’t know,” said Maddie, trying to remember. “It was like he was there one day, gone the next.”

“Do you think he’ll mind us getting back in touch?”

“Only one way to find out.”

.

(As it turned out, Vlad did not particularly care to get back in touch.)

.

Jazz was not a normal child.

She saw too much. She understood too much. Her teeth grew in early. She learned how to get the milk out of the fridge at about the same time she learned how to walk. Her eyes were too large, even for her age. She didn’t start talking until she was almost two, and when she did, it was in complete sentences. She took to responsibility like a duck to water. No, she demanded responsibility, from waking up the family in the morning to answering the door. She loved rules and games, and the rules of games.

But they had never raised a child before. Perhaps this was simply how they were. Perhaps this was within the expected variety of humanity.

Most importantly, Jazz was theirs. Completely.

.

Maddie was not terribly concerned when her period missed a few days, or even when it was late by a week. But when it started pushing two…

She bought a test.

It came back positive.

.

Danny’s birth was different from Jazz’s in almost every particular. Instead of being infused with a sense of joy, proceedings were overshadowed by dread. Jazz had been born in a hospital. Danny would be born at home, behind every ward and protection Jack and Maddie could conceive of. The midwife they hired was more than used to odd belief systems and threw a few of her own traditions in as well.

It couldn’t hurt.

.

It didn’t help.

After the birth, Maddie held Danny in her arms. He’d been born in a caul, which had been slightly alarming, even though Maddie had known that it was a thing that happened regularly, and that, by most accounts, it was lucky.

He was such a tiny little thing. Smaller than Jazz. Which made sense, he was a little premature.

“I won’t let anything happen to you,” she promised him, whispering into the silky, wispy curls on top of his head.

Someone knocked on the door. Maddie jerked her head up, even though the front door wasn’t at all visible from the basement. Jack flinched hard enough to drop the towels he was holding. The midwife froze.

“Hospitality,” croaked Maddie. Those rules were always humanity’s first defense against the uncanny. Don’t want something in your house? In your life? Don’t invite it in.

Although, she had arguably already invited in the fae they were worried about. Hence all the other contingencies.

The knock came again. And again, louder.

Jack let out a sigh of relief. “It can’t get in,” he murmured. Then he smiled, broad and bright. “We just have to wait it out.”

Maddie nodded, tears in her eyes. The knocking continued. This was far from ideal, obviously, but she’d been half expecting the fae to simply rip through the wards like tissue paper.

Perhaps the theory that more powerful fae were more bound by custom, more vulnerable to their weaknesses, held water? She and Jack had always dismissed it as fanciful, but they’d never been able to gather evidence before.

Then, a sound that made her heart stop.

“I’ll get it!” called Jazz, childish voice muffled by distance and the obstacle of the floors above. She’d been told not to answer the door when Danny was being born, to wait patiently in her room, but for all her unusual maturity, she was only three.

Faster than she’d ever seen him move, Jack bolted for the stairs, pushing aside several pieces of furniture and medical equipment in his haste. He took the stairs four at a time and nearly taking the door off the hinges.

He wasn’t fast enough.

“Who are you, mister?”

“Me?” said a voice Maddie had prayed against ever hearing again. “I am your uncle, my dear. Did your parents not tell you about me?”

.

Jazz tipped her head to one side and stared up at the man, making her eyes extra big. She knew it made a lot of people uncomfortable when she looked at them like that, so she treated it as a kind of test.

The man smiled, kind and patient. He was kind of funny looking, but in a good way.

“No,” she said finally. “Are you Mommy’s brother or Daddy’s brother?”

“Ah, you already know about uncles, then. I was worried I’d have to explain. May I come in? I would like to greet your little brother, as your parents promised I could. I have gifts for both of you.”

Jazz liked gifts. “Okay,” she said. “But I dunno if Danny’s been born yet. Mommy said it can take a while. And I dunno if he can have gifts, yet. He’s gonna be really little. That’s what all my books say, and also the internet.”

“Jazz! Don’t!”

Jazz turned to see her Daddy skid around the corner, just as her uncle stepped across the threshold.

“Not quite on time, I fear,” said uncle. “Young Jazz has already let me in.” He patted Jazz on the head. She ducked away and stuck her tongue out, like she always did when Daddy did that. “Having greeted my niece, I would like to see my nephew.”

.

The fae did walk past the rest of the wards as if they weren’t even there. It didn’t even break them, just ignored them. Some of them he even commented on, as if approving.

He gazed down at Danny with his otherworldly eyes. The midwife had retreated to the corner of the room, refusing to look at what was happening. Jack had attempted to attack the fae with his bare hands, only to be pushed away with something approaching gentleness by an invisible wall. Maddie didn’t know where Jazz was. Upstairs, somewhere, hopefully.

“So beautiful,” the fae said, brushing Danny’s forehead with his off-color fingers. Faster than Maddie could react, he had a pair of scissors in his hand and was cutting off a lock of hair. “A lovely child.” The lock of Danny’s hair disappeared into the fae’s coat.

If Maddie didn’t know better, she’d call the expression on the fae’s face love. But she did know better. Love was as incomprehensible to the fae as fae laws were to humans, so she’d call it by its true name: avarice.

She tightened her grip on Danny, as if she could keep the fae from plucking him from her arms.

“Not now,” said the fae, after another moment. “Soon, I should think.” It ran a hand over Danny’s head. “Soon.” The fae looked up, meeting Maddie’s eyes. “I will return,” he said, “in one year.”

“For what?” demanded Maddie, unwilling to get her hopes up.

The fae blinked slowly. “For his birthday.” He tilted his head. “To determine whether or not he is ready. Perhaps, also, to visit my niece.”

“You stay away from Jazz!” snarled Maddie. “You have no claim on her.”

The fae merely shrugged, then smiled, slyly. “She does, however, have a claim on me. I promised her gifts, before your husband whisked her away.”

“Gifts,” repeated Maddie, hoarsely.

“For the sister of my child, yes,” said the fae, voice and face as calm and even as ever. “Would you ask me to forswear myself?”

“Then,” said Maddie, “you can leave them here, with us.”

“You will give them to her?”

“Yes,” said Maddie, through her teeth. She did not say how long she would let Jazz be in the presence of these ‘gifts.’

“Very well, then,” said the fae, pulling a number of boxes out from beneath his coat. “One year. Be prepared.”

And, with that, the fae faded from view, as if he had been an illusion all along.

Danny was still with them. Their son was still with them. Still theirs.

“One year,” she said, breathless. “Only one year.”

“One whole year,” corrected Jack, rushing to her side. “You’ll see, Maddie. Next time, that fae won’t know what hit him!”

“One whole year,” echoed Maddie, weakly.

“One year to prepare,” said Jack. “Look what we did with half that time! We’re Fentons! We can do it!”

“We can do it,” breathed Maddie. “One year. We’ll be ready.”

Jack nodded, firmly. “We’ll be ready.”

[soulmate-game]

Useful Part 2

fluff with a little hurt and comfort. If you want answers as to the lack of angst, look through my recent posts for an explanation. 

—* — * — * —* —* 

“Wait, you have a WHAT?” were the first words that the rest of the Gotham-based vigilantes heard when they finally were able to track down where Damian had gone. Dick looked over at Bruce, who was noticeably tense. No surprise there, the man had just found out that he had a second biological child. One who was apparently a superhero already, without his intervention, and also apparently had a tragic background in the League of fucking Assassin Assholes. Not to mention that Damian’s track record with meeting siblings wasn’t great, even if this one wasn’t actually new to him. Nobody had any real fear of Damian relapsing on his no-kill rule, they knew he had matured far too much to be at risk of killing for something as immature as sibling rivalry anymore. 

But there was still fear. Because this new Wayne was an Unknown Factor, and as a rule the Bats hated Unknown Factors. And they had no idea what the relationship between the two had been before they had been separated, or what it would become now. 

“That wasn’t Damian’s voice,” Dick helpfully pointed out the obvious. Bruce only frowned, doing his best (and failing) to hide his anxiety about what they would find. Silently, the group inched forward to the edge of the abandoned building they were on top of so that they could look over at what was happening. What they saw was a girl, presumably the same one who had been in a ladybug onesie and had fearlessly begun to ask them to leave Paris— until she had laid proper eyes on Robin and fled, that was. That girl was sitting down next to an unmasked Damian, who had his arm around her shoulders and let her lean into his side. He even smirked cheerfully at her question before continuing to speak to her. 

“A dragon-bat. I knew you’d love hearing about him, I’ll introduce you when you come visit the Batcave. His name is Goliath,” Damian admitted smugly. Despite the familiar attitude and pride behind his words though, his spying family couldn’t help but notice that he kept periodically rubbing the girl’s (they really needed to find out her name) shoulder in reassurance. None of them missed the tear tracks on both of their faces, or how red the girl’s eyes were. Clearly they had missed something big. 

But nobody wanted to try to figure that out yet. This scene was too precious, too breathtaking for them to interrupt just yet. They had never seen Damian this vulnerable around someone outside of their little circle before, someone from the Time Before Bruce, no less. Most of the time, only Nightwing was able to see this side to Damian. And usually the roles were reversed, with Damian being the one consoled. They had never seen him in the position of the comforter before. The pillar of support. 

It really cemented just how far he had come. 

So they watched silently as the girl flinched, pulling away a bit and hunching in on herself. The laugh she let out was small and overflowing with self-degradation. 

“You make it sound as if the rest of your family actually wants me to visit,” she replied sourly. Damian gently cuffed her over the head, frowning. 

“Two things,” he held up two fingers from his free hand. “One: They will. They accepted me, and I was— well, you remember how I used to be. Once they actually meet you, and process the fact that there’s another Wayne now, they will bombard you with more welcoming than you will know what to do with. Two: It’s Our family, Marinette. Not mine, ours.”

Well, at least they had a name now. But it seems like they had bigger issues now, like Marinette’s clearly damaged sense of self. Jason and Tim traded knowing glances; it wasn’t hard for them to guess where, or how, she might have been damaged enough to think so lowly of herself. 

They watched as Marinette shook her head. 

“I don’t know. It’s one thing to try to… to get to know you again. We used to be close before… everything,” she haltingly argued, voice small and frail and uncertain. But she never once looked away from Damian’s eyes, trying to convey as best as she could what she was feeling. “But they’re different. They don’t have any reason to trust or like me, Dami. And I’m bad at, well everything, but especially,” she waved her hands frantically as if indicating the whole situation they were in. “I mean, listen to me! I can barely articulate right now, and I’m talking to someone I’ve known my whole life! I’m a mess. Nobody wants a mess.” 

It was Damian’s turn to snort, and he pulled her right back into his side. “Please. If anything, that’s exactly the type of child Father goes looking for. We’re all a mess. Especially Father, trust me.” 

“You’re just trying to make me feel better,” she accused suspiciously, but sank into his sideways embrace anyway. Damian chuckled. 

“No, I’m being honest. He’s terrible at emotions, not that I really have much room to talk. We all are pretty bad with them. But he’s the most obvious when it comes to that issue,” Damian smirked over at his sister conspiratorially. “For example. He still tries to tell people that he works alone, and pushes people away because he has this intense desire to protect, but doesn’t know how to say “I don’t want you to get hurt, stop worrying me,” so instead he says “Go away, I don’t need you,” only for us to see through that nonsense and remind him that the amount of people in his team is in the double digits already. He doesn’t want to admit he cares about us and is vulnerable—”

“Sounds familiar,” Marinette teased with a watery grin, startling a short laugh from her twin. He nudged her a little roughly (but not to roughly) and playfully glared at her. Marinette just giggled.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he lied with a grin before waving his free hand in dismissal. “Anyway. Another example. He has no idea how to tell a stranger, “hey, I’m your father and I will not reject you. In fact, I’m completely willing to adopt you right this moment and whisk you away to Gotham and relative safety and hire an entire team of therapists to help you and buy you half the world if you asked for it,” so instead he and the rest of our emotionally constipated family just lurks on the edge of a building in broad daylight eavesdropping on us and expects us not to notice.” 

“Wait what,” Marinette’s gaze instantly whipped up towards the sky, taking only half a second to locate the aforementioned eavesdroppers. Everyone except Bruce at least had the courtesy to duck down and pretend not to be there when they noticed she had seen them, leaving Batman standing seemingly alone on the concrete roof. Marinette blinked once. Twice. Then turned to Damian. “I’m gonna blame the fact that I didn’t notice them on emotional turmoil, because there is no way I’ve gotten THAT rusty.” 

Damian smiled, but didn’t laugh. He knew that was a deflection to try and distract from Marinette’s quickly resurging self-consciousness. Her hands were already trembling again, and the fear from only minutes ago had resurfaced. The insecurity. He could practically see the words “I’m not good enough,” written in her irises. 

“You’ll be fine,” he whispered, standing up and pulling her with him. “If anyone has to worry here, it’s me.” 

“What the hell are you talking about?” Marinette whisper-hissed right back, eyes wide in disbelief and confusion. “You’re— You! Mister Perfect!” 

Damian rolled his eyes, and his self-deprecating smirk matched the laugh Marinette had given just a few minutes earlier. “For the League, maybe,” he shrugged. “Never the Wayne family. Which is why I know you’ll be fine. If they put up with everything I’ve done and still call me one of them, they’ll accept you with barely a second thought.” 

Marinette’s next argument was cut off by the sound of a dozen soft footfalls stirring up dirt not far ahead of them. The BatClan had landed from the rooftop. 

Marinette gulped. 

But if there was one thing— one thing she still remembered from her days as Marie Al-Ghul, it was how to fake pride and confidence. She straightened her shoulders automatically, lifted her chin, and pulled away from Damian’s supporting arm around her shoulder. Damian let her. 

A little bit of old resentment flared up in him as he saw Batman walk up close enough to comfortably talk with them. Resentment that he no longer held onto, but that had haunted him nearly every night of the first two years he spent with his dad. The realization that maybe his twin was the one that was meant to be a Wayne. Marie had the blue eyes, the compassion, the more specifically detective-oriented mind. The calm head. Sometimes. Marie was exactly who he imagined when he thought of a naturally born member of the BatClan. Stubborn, clever, morally just. She had risked immediate death just because she refused to fight him, for crying out loud. Because she didn’t want to hurt the boy who used to be her best friend. The only ally she had ever had, growing up. 

Meanwhile, he still had issues reigning in his anger sometimes. He had too much blood on his hands, he was more of a battlefield tactician than a long-term strategist. Still stubborn, but also completely unaware of the pain he brought others with his words or actions a lot of the time. He used to be such a rage fueled little demon, and thinking about how his sister fit the classic Wayne outline more thoroughly than he did had made him destroy more than a few practice dummies in frustration. 

But now, looking at Marinette trying so hard to appear strong and proud when he knew she was still so shattered inside, relief overpowered the old and dull resentment. This was what she needed, he could sense that easily. She, just like him all those years ago, needed Bruce and the others to start to heal her and reforge what the League had badly molded. 

“... Marinette, I suppose?” Damian nearly facepalmed at his father’s awkward attempt at a conversation starter. Marinette herself was clearly too keyed up and overthinking things to even register any amusement at the lame attempt, merely nodding with an overly serious expression on her face. 

“Marinette Dupain-Cheng, Monsieur Wayne. Or that’s my name nowadays, that is,” She stumbled a little in her response before clenching her fists and forcing herself to continue as calmly as she could muster up. “My birth name was Marie Al-Ghul.” 

Bruce’s eyebrows visibly furrowed underneath his cowl. “Was?” 

“I…” Marinette finally looked away, shame creeping back onto her face. “I was explicitly told that I was stripped of the Al-Ghul name and would be killed if I ever dared lay claim to it again. So I not-so-legally changed it. And I was later adopted.” 

Several sharp gasps or the hiss of breath through teeth bit through the quiet breeze. Nobody was necessarily surprised, Marinette could see it when she looked through her eyelashes and examined the winces and sympathy on the faces of the vigilantes before her. Batman’s shoulders were stiff, as if someone had paralyzed only his shoulder blades. 

“And the people who adopted you?” Batman pursued. Marinette couldn’t read his tone very well, but it sounded vaguely angry so she quickly raised her hands in a placating gesture and her eyes widened significantly. 

“They’ve been amazing! They don’t know anything about my past, or who raised me, but they are endlessly patient with me. I mean, honestly! Sabine caught me when I was trying to steal one of her gold bracelets in Hong Kong— and I know I’ve never been as good of a combatant as Dami, but I’ve always been better at sleight of hand and stealth so honestly that’s impressive— and she saw my dirty eight-year-old face and for some reason decided, ‘yeah I want this one as my daughter’ and roped Tom right into it and next thing I know they somehow tailed me to my hideout? I still don’t know how the hell they managed that, but Tom had a huge plate of steaming buns and I was so hungry and suddenly it’s two years later and I’m adopted and we’re on a plane to Paris—” Marinette threw up her hands. “I still don’t fully grasp what happened sometimes.” 

She belatedly seemed to realize that she had just gone on an entire breathless rant at the speed of sound, and slapped her hands over her mouth before lunging into a deep bow. “I apologize! I spoke horridly out of turn!” 

To her surprise though, she was met with a soft laugh instead of a scolding. She jerked in surprise, whipping her head up only to see Batman holding a hand over his chin to hide his large grin. It only took another second for the boys behind him to laugh a lot LESS softly. Nightwing strolled over casually and swung an arm around both her and Damian’s shoulders, playfully nudging her brother with his knee. 

“I think she fits right in, don’t you little D?” 

“Of course,” Damian scoffed, though his eyes were playful. “She is a Wayne by blood. She ‘fits in’ more than you strays.” 

“Dami!” Marinette whipped back to him and puffed out her cheeks. “That was uncalled for!” she barked. Damian held his hands up in surrender. 

“Relax,” he said as soothingly as he could manage. “They know I’m joking,” he dropped his hands and a knowing smirk took over his face. “And besides, now you’re relaxed so my plan worked,” Marinette could only blink at that. She… did feel more relaxed, actually. “Also. I told you you’d be accepted easily. They already consider you one of us.” 

“Wha— there’s no way—” she frantically looked at each of the older men around her, but each of them just shot her a smile or grin and a short nod. Her shoulders and jaw both fell, and it broke a little of everyone’s heart. 

Marinette looked so utterly shocked, bewildered to be accepted as if it was still something profoundly foreign to her. And there was that disbelief in her eyes, that distrust that screamed that she expected some sort of lie here. That told that she thought this would all crumble away at any second. If anyone had any reservations about bringing her into their inner circles, it vanished right that moment. She needed support, or she’d crumble away and they all knew it. 

“How about we start by talking about the situation with Hawkmoth?” Red Robin spoke up, walking forward to stand beside Batman. “I assume that’s a little more in your element?” 

Damian silently vowed to thank Tim later for that. In a silent, completely anonymous way of course. Couldn’t have Tim thinking they were friends or something now, could he? Marinette instantly straightened up and nodded, her confidence returning with a little more sincerity this time. 

“Yeah. Yeah, let me transform again. It’ll be easier to explain.” 

—*—*—*—*—*

It was three weeks later, on Marinette’s third now-weekly visit to the Batcave, when the question finally came up. Jason had asked to spar with Marinette for the first time, having seen her in action as Ladybug and wanting to test the girl when she didn’t have superpowers to rely on. Damian hadn’t been down in the cave to warn him, and the result was Jason’s gut sinking as Marinette scrambled as far away from him as she could, eyes wide and chest heaving in the beginnings of a panic attack. 

“Shit,” Jason muttered before he quickly knelt down and did his best to talk her down, to calm her until her breathing slowed and her pupils were back to normal. It wasn’t long afterwards that Marinette started hugging herself, refusing to look at him. But he wasn’t going to just back down, he wanted to solve this issue. If even the mere suggestion of a spar was enough to set her off, he needed to figure out why and fix it. 

So he carefully lowered himself so he was sitting only a foot away from her, resting his arms across his knees casually. 

“Sorry,” he apologized. “Didn’t think it would be a sore subject. That’s on me.” 

Marinette just shrugged, but didn’t answer him. She just buried her face in her arms and took a shaky breath. 

Jason let the silence linger for a while before trying again. “Does this have to do with certain Asshole Assassins?” 

That startled a slightly hysterical bark of laughter from her, and she had to wipe away a few tears when she raised her head and finally turned it in his direction slightly. Not enough for her to be looking at him,  but just a subtle turn to show that she was listening and speaking to him. “Yeah.” 

“You know, you never told us why you got disowned,” Jason tried to make his words as casual as possible, but wasn’t surprised when Marinette still stiffened and took a sharp breath. He didn’t push. The stage was set, and he’d wait until either she took the opportunity to open up or told him to leave well enough alone. Her tongue flicked out to wet her lips, and her foot tapped on the ground a bit. Clear signs of her anxiety around the subject, and Jason’s hopes vanished a little. He would probably have to wait longer for her to be ready to share.

But, to his pleasant surprise, he was wrong. She took another few minutes to gather her thoughts, but she did eventually open up to him. 

“I refused to fight Damian,” she admitted. “It was… We were seven. It wasn’t supposed to be a fight to the death, but it was a very important spar. We were using live weaponry, and we were told to fight until we couldn’t anymore. Whoever fell first would be relegated as a mere soldier, and have to fight for status like any other assassin in the League. The winner would officially be named as G— as Ra’s Heir. I didn’t want to fight, because I knew Damian would win but I also knew that it wouldn’t be as easy as Ra’s probably expected if I gave it my all like he wanted. I knew both Damian and I would be heavily injured if I did as he asked, and it wouldn’t be worth it. If I misjudged anything, any single hit, I could have accidentally injured Damian permanently and ruined his worth in Ra’s eyes, and that wasn’t an option. I didn’t care that throwing the fight was as good as giving up my life, because at least I could be sure that Damian kept his. I could make sure that he was treated well, or as well as anyone could hope for in the League anyway. I could, with only a few words, make sure he became indispensable. Ra’s and Talia never liked me as much as Damian anyway, I figured… I figured it was nobody’s loss,” She swallowed heavily, clenching her eyes shut. “I was always just the spare. The extra. Damian was their crown prince, the one with actual value. Even to me. I saw him, and I saw everything I wanted to be. I… I tossed down my weapons and let him stab me, because I figured I owed it to him for being such a failure in comparison to him. That I owed it to him to do everything I could to make things easier for him, since I was just an unnecessary obstacle—” strong arms wrapped around her, and she turned to sob into Jason’s chest as he just silently held her. 

“Idiot,” Damian whispered, making Marinette jump. Her twin sat only a few feet away, though only Jason would have known when exactly he had gotten there with them. He shook his head at her. “I never would have gotten as far as I did without you,” he whispered, looking up at the cave ceiling. “You were the only real rival I had. When you left, everything was either too easy or nearly impossible, nothing was the same as trying my best against someone who was just as good as me. And when I got here and met the others, I didn’t think any of them were worthy of taking your position, you know,” he scoffed a bit as he got lost in his memories. “That’s why I hated Tim for so long, I think. He reminded me of you so much that I wanted nothing more than to punch him for daring to replace you—”

“Heh, the Replacement twice over, huh?” Jason joked. Damian chuckled with a small eye roll. 

“Plus, he just has a really punchable face,” Damian added, trying to distract from the emotion behind everything he had just admitted. “Part of me thought you were dead. The other part refused to believe that. And seeing Tim and how some of his mannerisms were the same as yours,” Damian shrugged a little. “It stung. Especially that second year, when I started to regret that you never had the chance to come here and join them with me. Meet them with me.” 

Marinette sniffled. “... Who are you and what have you done with Dami? He’s never this sappy.” 

Damian flicked a pebble at her head with a good natured glare, successfully diffusing the serious air a little. Marinette wouldn’t ever be normal, and it would take a while before she was no longer fragile, but she could get there. Especially now that her bridges with her brother had been mended, and and a whole new family had cropped up to help support her. 

She was glad Damian had convinced her to try, again.  

[airplanned]

All the Trashy Novels Part 29

It’s a long one, because it’s the smutty climax.

Part 1...Part 28

***

Link pulled his horse to the side of the road as they were riding past the wetlands, right before the fork away from Zora's Domain.  She stopped and waited impatiently as he crouched down in the tall grass and snuck towards the water.  What was he doing?  It was impossible to tell with him.

A minute later, he shouted, "Ha!" and stood up with his hands cupped together.  He came up to her horse, lifted his hands for her to see, and uncupped them.  Inside was a dragonfly.

"Oh!"  She slipped off her horse to bow her head over the cave of his hands and peer inside.  When it launched itself upward, she meeped and jumped back, laughing and pressing a hand to her chest as it darted off.  At some point she had taken hold of Link's wrist.

He smiled at her and shifted, twisting their hands until hers was locked in his, and then pulling her off the road and towards the water.  He caught her another dragonfly, and she caught him a frog, explaining its medicinal properties and how one day she would use it to run experiments on him.

"You're already running experiments on me," he said.

"No.  You are assisting as I run experiments on myself."

"What experiments will you run first?"

"I need more data points.  Duration and intensity of the glowing.  I need a survey of the other factors that may be involved before devising a more strenuous set of experiments."

His mouth quirked, as if he were trying not to laugh at her.

She shoved him into the shallow water.  

A second later, he'd grabbed her around the middle and pulled her down with him, and splashing and spluttering, she'd had to fight her way to sitting.  He grinned at her, and she covered his face with her hand.  He took the opportunity to lick her palm, and she shrieked and ranted about how gross he was all the way to the citadel.

There they stopped for the night: one last night sleeping in a bed in exchange for playing princess as the general gave a guided tour and then hosted them at dinner.  But the tour turned out to be much more interesting than she'd expected.  A team of Sheikah had brought in a handful of guardians with the intention of adding them to the citadel's defenses.  They were a bit behind those from the Royal Tech Lab, and had to be aimed manually, but they still outstripped the cannons.  The general and the Sheikah soaked up every word she said, and soon she was gesturing wildly with her arm half inside a guardian, her face streaked with grease.

"The general's in love with you," Link whispered as he walked her to her room.

"Don't be ridiculous."

"Everyone here's in love with you."

"No, they're not.  They're just too far removed from the castle and haven't heard the terrible gossip about me yet."

"Okay, but if you ever need a fake Akkalan boyfriend, I bet he'd volunteer."

"I do not require a fake Akkalan boyfriend."  She paused at her door.  "How is your fake townie girlfriend?"

"We broke up."

"Oh?"

"She didn't like that I was leaving town for so long.  And she didn't like that I was going with you.  She's very jealous of you."

"Well," Zelda said.  "She should be.  Everyone here is in love with me."

He nodded.

"Everyone at the castle will be disappointed."

"They'll get over it."

"What will you do the next time you get a bite mark on your neck?"

He lifted his eyebrows.

She lifted hers back.  Then she closed the doors behind her and went to bed, smirking.

They reached the Spring of Power late the next day.  As Link set up camp, Zelda ducked away to see the Goddess statue.  She didn't change into her prayer dress or step into the water.  She couldn't sort what she wanted into words that might reach the Goddess.  She was out of practice praying.  Instead, she bowed her head and clenched her hands before her, gathered all the worry and hope and pleading that tightened in her chest and mentally projected it into the heavens, hoping the Goddess would hear her.

Link gave her a cautious look as she returned.  She realized that she usually left her prayers feeling lost and worthless and small.  Link must have noticed.  He must be expecting more of the same.  But this time felt different.  It wasn't a gladness that she'd heard others describe, but maybe the hope and determination that had pushed her on for the past few days was bolstered by the Goddess.  Then again, maybe it was the absence of a sense of defeat.  She gave Link as honest of a smile a she could as she accepted the bowl he passed to her.

"I'm alright," she said.  "I'm going to figure this out."

"I know you will."  He said it so easily that it disarmed her. 

Because of the depression in the ground, the sun seemed to set earlier than usual.  They ate in silence, and she pretended the warmth on her face was from the fire. 

She snuck a few looks at him--his posture easy, the planes of his face lit orange in the light.  He was handsome.  She'd never thought about him that way before.

She blinked, handed back her bowl, and retreated to her tent.

She arranged everything to her liking. She had a comfortable bed roll and a number of blankets fit for a princess.  She had a soft glowing lantern and a pocket watch and the Sheikah Slate and a journal with a pencil.  She made sure the pencil was sharpened.  She changed into a shirt with fine embroidery around the collar and a softness that belayed wealth, but it was also far too big for her, fitting a bit like a sack that barely covered her rear.  She didn't wear anything else.

She was suddenly overwhelmed with nerves.  But she took a shaky breath and stuck her head out of her tent.  "I would like to run an experiment.  If--if you have a moment."

He looked up from the fire, his interest piqued, and she ducked back into her tent before he could see how badly she was blushing.  Once in her tent, she put on as much bluster as she could to hide her nerves, ordering him to remove his boots and his sword and his shirt.  She thought about asking him to remove his pants, but that seemed a bit pushy.  Maybe she needed to be pushy?  "And your pants," she said.  "But your undergarments can remain."

She then had him lie on his side on her mat.  "You will observe and take notes," she explained, showing him were the pocket watch and journal were.  She tucked her hair behind her ears, lay down facing him, and hooked her leg over his hip.

He looked mildly surprised, but went along with it.  And that was weird, right?  This was weird.  She was taking advantage of how he couldn't deny her.  She was royalty and possibly the key to saving everything he knew from destruction.  Maybe should should find a way to--

"You're over-thinking it," he whispered.  He'd made himself comfortable, resting his head on his arm and a hand on the small of her back.

She huffed.  Then she closed her eyes and worked her hand down her body.

"Want me to help?"

"I don't want you to be too distracted to record your observations."

"Right.  Good.  Because this isn't distracting at all."

She pinched him with her free hand, and he laughed.  It was soft and low and she could feel his breath against her face.  It did more to arouse her than her own hand, which slid between her legs.

His hand moved to her bare hip, and once he did, she could feel how much she moved against him, how much her hips rocked.  He didn't try to control her rhythm or hold her still, and she found her movements growing even more animated as the pleasure built around her.  She bit her lip and breathed.  

His voice was soft like his laugh when he murmured, "What are you thinking about?"

"What you would say if you were talking to me."

"What would I say?"

"'That's it, Zelda. That's so good.'"

Not missing a beat, he said, "You're so good, Zelda.  The way you move, the way your whole body moves.  You're so emphatic.  In everything you do.  Your whole body moves when you talk.  And now, Goddess look at you, the way your shoulders move and your back arches."

Her shoulders rolled even more, her breath coming quick.

"Call me something sweet," she said.  In her head, he called her darling, and it wasn't quite right.  She always stumbled over it.  She couldn't hear it in his voice.

He leaned in to kiss under her ear, sending a shudder down her spine.  He whispered, "You're my peach."

She gasped, her hand picking up speed, a spike of pleasure rocking through her.    His hands wandered inside her shirt, down her leg.  Dizziness crept in around her edges.

"That's it.  That's it.  Let go.  I've got you."

He had her.  He would catch her when she fell.

"Look at me."

She tried twice to blink open her eyes, and when she finally managed, he was there, a heat in his eyes and adoration on his face.  The rhythm of her hand stuttered, and then his fingers had replaced hers, picking up the rhythm she'd set as he pulled her fingers into his mouth.  It all happened so fast that she thrust her fingers against his tongue a few times before realizing.  His eyes darkened and then rolled as he moaned and sucked greedily at her fingers.  The movements of his hand matched her own, except steady and sure when she faltered, when her body jerked, and her breath caught and caught and caught.  Link would catch her.  She threw her head back and grinned, riding every wave, letting herself fall.  She grabbed the back of his neck and pulled him into a kiss as she burned and burned and burned, still smiling against his mouth.

"Zelda?"

She blinked dreamily up at him, and there was a click as he snapped her picture with the slate.  He turned it around to show it to her. 

She was glowing.  Her whole body surrounded by a halo, her skin golden as if she had become the sun.  The picture smiled dreamily back at her.

"You've been glowing for two minutes and fifteen seconds and counting."

"You timed it?"

"Of course."

She beamed at him, and she could see from her hands on the slate that she was glowing more brightly.  Beams of sunlight radiated off her.  

She reached for Link's cheek and closed her eyes and reveled in the warmth in her chest, the shape of it, the pressure of it.  It was like...happiness?  A warmth of affection that had been there for a while, but had never before tapped into the power of her soul.  She hadn't let it.  She'd held it at bay.  She had pushed it aside to berate herself and turn her insecurities outward.  She'd thought the Goddess was spiteful, but the Goddess was love, and she rewarded those who loved.  To protect her country, she first needed to love it.

"Link?"

"Yeah?" He brushed hair from her face.

"I don't hate you."

"You sure?  That was a little fun."

"Only a little?"

"This is better."

She laughed and dragged him in to kiss her as she glowed.

***

Part 30

[waitimcomingtoo]

In Case You Don’t Live Forever

~chapter twelve rewritten~

Pairing: Peter Parker x Venom!reader

Synopsis: you are Peters greatest love and Spider-Man’s greatest enemy

Series Masterlist

With Carnage’s weight on top of you, you couldn’t really move. You didn’t have the room to shift into Venom and you were starting to lose consciousness.

“You think you can beat me? You shouldn’t have even come. I’ll win this fight in no time.” Carnage laughed and easily pinned you down. You tried to break free but couldn’t. You could only watch as Carnage unhinged his jaw and bent down to bite your head off.

“Incoming!” You heard a triumphant call from above you. Spider-Man swung down on a web and kicked Carnage off of you. Carnage went tumbling back before landing on his feet and growling.

“Taser web!” Peter announced and shot another web at Carnage. It landed on his body and electrocuted him, promptly knocking him off the building. Peter quickly ran to you as you shifted back to yourself.

“Are you alright?” He panicked as he helped you up. You groaned a little at the dull ache throughout your body. You were a little sore but ultimately okay.

“I’m alright.” You answered. “Nice shot, lover.”

“Thank you. I’m still mad at you for that break up scare.” Peter joked as he dusted you off.

“Understandably so.” You laughed as Venom healed your wounds.

“But I’m still gonna help you kick Carnage’s ass.” Peter followed up. “Since you believe in me and all.”

“I do. But maybe a little less with the teen romance cliches and a little more with the killing of the deadly Alien?” You teased as Peter seemed to forget the situation you were in.

“Right.” He nodded curtly. “On it.

Carnage had climbed back up the building and was ready for more. Peter got into fighting stance and you transformed into Venom.

“Do you think this fight is off the record for my article?” You asked as Carnage swung at you. You ducked and swiped at his knees. He howled in pain before turning to Peter and charging.

“I think once someone tries to eat you, it’s free reign.” Peter called as he dodged punches from Carnage. You were impressed. Peter was putting up a good fight.

Carnage turned back to you and punched you in the gut. You retaliated by punching him in the jaw and ripping at his outer layer of skin to reveal Cletus inside.

“Cletus, you can stop this. You don’t have to be a killer anymore.” You yelled desperately.

“I’ve always been a killer, baby. You can’t change me now.” He laughed and bonded back with Carnage. Carnage kicked you in the stomach and sent you tumbling off the building. You fell freely for a moment before shooting a web and slowly lowering yourself to the ground. Peter dove off the building after you after hitting Carnage with several taser webs.

“Are you okay?” You panted as you turned back into yourself. You almost couldn’t believe you were having the biggest battle of your life with a boy you once delivered mail to. Peter took off his mask and went to check if you were okay.

“I am.” He nodded. “Are you?”

“I’m nervous, Pete.” You confessed. “He’s a lot stronger than us. There’s a lot on the line here.”

“I know.” Peter sighed. “But we’re Spiderman and Venom. We can do anything as long as we’re together.

“Alright Tiger. Save that energy for our wedding vows.” You teased him to lighten the mood. “Do we have a strategy?”

“I was thinking you keep fighting him and I pretend I’m dead down here. You can weaken him and then I’ll spring up there and ambush him. It’ll be a sneak attack. We’re gonna Trojan horse this son of a bitch.” Peter said excitedly. You laughed at his eagerness.

“That’s not really a Trojan horse. Nothing is inside anything.” You pointed out.

“You’re inside us.” Venom said as she came out in her snake like form. Peter pointed at her.

“Blammo.” He nodded. “Trojan horse. See, Venom gets it.”

He and Venom high fived, finally getting along.

“Impeccable plan Peter. We’re starting to like you. We don’t want to eat your liver as much anymore.” Venom complimented. Peter looked terrified.

“You wanted to eat my liver?!” He gasped.

“And kidneys.” Venom stated. Peters eyes went even wider.

“That’s enough. Trojan horse on three?” You asked. Everyone put their hands in the middle. Well, you and Peter put your hands and Venom put a tendril.

“One. Two. Three.” You counted. You broke and mentally prepared yourself for what was to come. Peter shot a web at the neighboring building and slid up it, upside down, like a spider. You laughed at his action, though it seemed completely normal to him. You felt a sudden sadness strike your heart at the sight of him. This could potentially be a deadly situation.

“Peter, wait.” You said suddenly.

Peter slid down his web and waited. He was still upside down but you didn’t mind.

“If we don’t make it out of this, I want you to know that I’m sorry. I’m sorry I broke up with you when I found out your secret. I didn’t know how great of a team we’d make.”

“It’s okay, Y/n. I still loved you even when I was mad at you. Nothing you can say or do will ever change how I feel. I told you, I love you more than anything. Even when you broke my heart and insulted my Star Wars bedsheets.” You opened your mouth to laugh but you were interrupted by Carnage roaring from the top of the Oscorp building.

“That’s our cue.” Peter said, getting ready to slide back up his web.

“Wait.” You said again. You approached him cautiously and carefully rolled his mask down just below his nose. Peter stayed perfectly still.

“Be safe.” You whispered, and pressed a kiss to his lips. It was a bit awkward seeing as he was upside down but it was still perfect. It would always be perfect as long as it was Peter. Peter kissed you back to the best of his ability, putting his hand on the back of your head for support, until he needed to breath.

“If I don’t make it back, know that I love you.” You said tearfully as you rolled his mask back down.

“If you don’t make it back? Wait, Y/n-“ Peter was about to protest so you pressed another kiss to his covered mouth before shooting a web towards the top of the building and flying upwards. You landed with grace and transformed into Venom. Carnage smiled a toothy grin at the sight of you.

“You can still join us Venom! There’s nothing we can’t do! You’re no different from us. Don’t act like you are.”

“We may be no different, but we are better.” You answered firmly.

“Fine. Be that way. Sorry it had to come to this.” Carnage said, though it sounded more like Cletus speaking. Carnage pulled out a match and looked down at your feet. You followed his gaze and noticed you were standing a in puddle.

“Gasoline.” You said fearfully. Carnage knew your weakness. He had that big terrible smirk on his face. But you saw something in his eyes that his smile wasn’t telling you. Fear. He was afraid. You tried to form a plan as quickly as you could.

“Some people just want to sit back and watch that world burn.” Carnage drawled. He lit the match and flicked it at you. You quickly jumped out of the way as the fire roared to life. Carnage seemed as eager to stay away from it as you were. There was now a large fire at the center of the rooftop and you and Carnage circled around it.

“Carnage told me that sound is dangerous to symbiotes.” Cleatus said suddenly. “Did you know that?”

“Sound will hurt you too.” Venom growled. “Don’t do anything stupid.”

“I did something smart, actually.” Carnage said as he pulled out a remote. “I brought ear plugs.”

With that, he pressed the remote and the speakers on the roof began to emit a shrill sound. Your whole body shook and you could feel yourself separating from Venom.

“Hold on!” Venom cried. You did you best to stay together but the sound was too powerful.

“I can’t.” You yelled. Venom shot out of your body and you slumped to the ground. Carnage charged towards Venom, who was nothing but goo and picked her up. Then, he threw her like a frisbee into the night. You had no idea where or how far away she landed.

“No!” You cried. You panicked briefly before assessing the situation. You and Venom had been separated before and Venom found her way back to you. You didn’t die last time because you didn’t have any fatal injuries. All you had to do was stall until Venom made her way back. As long as Carnage didn’t injury you that badly, you could survive. The problem was, you were now weaker, slower, and had absolutely no fighting skills. Carnage was surely going to use that to his advantage. Carnage stalked over to you and raised a claw, ready to swipe.

“Any last words?” He growled. You suddenly remembered something.

“Yes. Thank God for Tony Stark.” You answered and pressed a hand against your chest. Your suit formed around your body and covered you like a second skin. Carnage looked surprised at your action. It wasn’t much but at least you had some protection until Venom came back.

“You think your little suit will protect you? Nothing will protect you from me. Now, you and Venom are gonna watch each other die all because you were too selfish to join our side.” Carnage sneered. You took notice to how Carnage “me” and not “we.”

“Venom isn’t even here.” You spat. Carnage hesitated.

“Cletus, I told you the plan was to separate Venom and Y/n so we could kill them in front of each other. What did you do with Venom?” Carnage asked in an annoyed tone.

“I’m sorry boss. I forgot. I tossed it off the building.” Cletus’s voice answered sheepishly. You watched them carefully. Their relationship wasn’t like yours and Venoms. It wasn’t equal.

“You ruined the plan. Just like you ruin everything. You’re pathetic! You’re nothing! You can’t do a single thing right!” Carnage yelled.

“I’m sorry boss.” Cleatus whimpered.

“I’ll do it myself.” Carnage growled.

Carnage turned back to you and grabbed you by the throat. He raised you up and dangled you over the edge of the building. You had done this exact thing to Peter so many times and now it was coming back to haunt you. You looked down at your dangling legs and saw the long way down to the ground. The fall was a certain death. You didn’t see Peter anywhere and you knew it was because he was on the other side of the building, waiting to sneak attack. You looked back at Carnage with tears in your eyes.

“You don’t have to do this, Cletus. I know you think Carnage is in charge, but he doesn’t have to be. You don’t have to be his puppet anymore. You can separate from him and we’ll kill him together. I’ve done it before. Please, be human. Don’t be a monster. You don’t have to kill me.” You pleaded to Cletus, hoping he would hear your through Carnage’s body.

“He will never separate from me, fool. I own him. He’s nothing without me.” Carnage growled.

“It doesn’t have to be this way, Cletus. You said you can’t change, but I know you can. I believe in you and I know you’re capable of doing the right thing. You don’t have to be a killer anymore. You can be a hero. The city will love you if you protect them from Carnage. I’ll write the story myself.” You tried again. Carnage tightened his grip around your neck. You were losing the ability to see and breath. But you could sense something. Hestitation. You might’ve been getting through to Cletus.

“Shut up!” Carnage shouted. His hands suddenly felt weaker around your throat.

“You told me you were glad I was telling your side of the story. This is your chance to change your story. Rewrite the ending. You can be the hero this time.” You begged one last time.

“He will never be the hero. I didn’t make him a killer. He always was. And that’s all he’ll ever be. Now, any last words?” Carnage asked with a grin. You noticed him faltering. There seemed to be an internal struggle going on.

“Yes. Do you know what the capital of Thailand is?” You asked the through short breaths. You were going to die of asphyxiation before he even dropped you.

“What?” Carnage asked, visibly puzzled.

“Bangkok.” You said through gritted teeth as you swiftly kicked him in the crotch. Carnage doubled over and let you go. You plopped on the ground, right near the edge, and gasped for air. Carnage recovered quickly and let out a low chuckle.

“Clever girl. Bangkok. And you hit me in my…whatever. You think a kick to the groin is gonna stop me? Nothing can. The world will know my name.” Carnage declared. He picked you up and threw you across the roof. You tumbled and groaned in pain. Little bits of gravel stuck to your face and hair. Carnage ran to you and kicked you in the stomach. You wheezed and barely had time to recover before he punched you in the face. You felt the metallic taste of blood filling in your mouth. You heard his evil laugh amongst the blaring sound of the speakers. He straddled you and pounded relentlessly onto your face with a series of blows. His huge claws left your face battered and bloody. He raised his sharp claws in the air and plunged them into your body. The suit deflected the claws as well as it could, but they couldn’t fully stop them from entering your body. You felt the full pain of his sharp claws in your abdomen. You were so weak, you couldn’t even scream. Carnage gave you another hit to the jaw, knocking your face to the side and you began to see double. Double…Spidermen?

“Didn’t anyone ever tell you a woman should never be hit, not even with a flower?” Peters voice rang through your ears. Through your blurry vision you saw a taser web hit Carnage in the chest and electrocute him. Peter pounced on Carnage and punched him several times in his face, feeling absolutely no fear at all. Peter felt one thing, rage.

“Don’t you ever touch her again.” Peter growled in a voice you had never heard before. Carnage got up and began to fight Peter back. You wanted badly to get up and help, but you were too weak. You could only watch as Carnage ultimately began to win the fight against Peter. You felt hot tears streaming down your face, along with the blood running from your nose, mouth, and forehead.

“Don’t hurt him.” You cried weakly as Carnage swiped at Peter, leaving a deep scratch in his chest. Peter fell to the ground. You managed to drag yourself over to him just enough to see him. He was unconscious, as expected. His masked eyes were closed. Your heart ached for him.

“Come on Peter.” You wheezed. “Come on Spider-Man.”

The eyes on Peters mask snapped open and he jumped up. He immediately dodged a punch from and kicked Carnage in the chest with full force. You watched them fight and heard a slinking sound form behind you. You still couldn’t move your body, but you could stretch your arm out and felt around the ground. You felt something warm touch your hand.

“We got you baby. It’s gonna be okay.” Venoms voice sounded in your head. You let out a happy laugh of relief.

“You came back.” You said weakly but happily.

“We will always come back.” Venom assured. You felt your body beginning to heal. The puncture wounds in your chest closed and your face stopped bleeding. After just a minute, you were able to stand up. You grabbed the remote and shut the speakers off. You saw Carnage about to throw a punch at Peter so you quickly shot a web at his fist and pulled. Carnage looked at you, not expecting you to be alive still. His fist never made contact with Peter, who was looking at you with adoration. You could tell, because his mask was torn and one of the masks eyes was broken. You could see tears in his soft brown eyes. You transformed into Venom and yanked on your web with your full strength. He flew towards you and was met with a hard punch. He laid on the ground in pain and you ran to Peter to check if he was okay.

“Hey.” You breathed out. Venoms face opened up to reveal your own so you could talk to Peter. You wanted to run into his arms and apologize to him. You wanted to hold him and never let him go.

“Hi.” He said shyly. You felt like you and him had this exchange a thousand times. This time felt different. He was so close to you but he felt worlds away.

“Thanks for saving me. The Trojan Horse plan worked.” You complimented.

“It wouldn’t have worked if you didn’t put up such a good fight.” Peter said back. You smiled fondly at him, turning completely back into yourself now.

“I’m so sorry for what I’ve put you through. The breakup and now this.” You shrugged sadly. “I hate seeing him hurting you. And I hate hurting you myself even more. I’m so sorry Peter. I’m so so sorry.”

The fight wasn’t looking good. You wanted to tell Peter everything in case you didn’t get the chance later.

“Don’t do that. Don’t act like we’re saying goodbye. We will win this, Y/n. This isn’t goodbye.” Peter said firmly, taking a step towards you. You looked at him weakly.

“But if it is…”

“It isn’t.” He interrupted.

“But if it is.” You said, taking his hands in yours. “I need you to know that you are absolutely the one I want to be with. I promise that if we make it out of this alive, I will never leave your side again. And if we die-“

“We won’t.” He interrupted again.

“But if we do, it’ll be okay.” You smiled sadly. “Because if I die by your side then I died in my favorite place to be. I love you, Peter Parker. I need you to know that. Can you repeat that back to me so that I know you know?”

“I’m not doing this. We aren’t going to die, Y/n. This is-“

“Please.” You interjected. Peter sighed deeply and took off his mask.

“You love me.” He repeated. You reached up and touched his face.

“How much?” You asked quietly. He looked up at the sky to keep from crying.

“More than I’ll ever wrap my head around.” He answered, quoting the song you had sang to him earlier that day. It felt like a million years ago.

“That’s right.” You smiled at him, despite the ache in your chest. Ever since the first time he said hello to you, you hoped he’d never say goodbye. And though neither of you wanted to admit it, this was your goodbye.

You stared at each other momentarily before Peter began to lean in for a kiss. You leaned in as well, but were violently yanked back by a firm grasp. Carnage spun you around and punched you in the face. Peter ran to your aid but Carnage knocked him in the head with a with a steel rod. Peter fell limply to the ground.

“Peter!” You cried out, and immediately clamped a hand over your mouth. Carnage wasn’t supposed to know his identity. You tried to go to Peter but Carnage held you down. He looked at Peters unmasked face and laughed.

“Wow. I never would’ve guessed that Spider-Man was just a little boy.” Carnage laughed.He put up a pretty good fight. But not good enough.”

He went over to Peter and punched him abruptly, rendering him unconscious.

“Stop!” You cried. “It’s me you want! Not Spider-Man. You said you’d leave him alone.”

“Cletus said he’d leave him alone. And Cletus has no power.” Carnage answered. You stared at Carnage with rage before letting out a little laugh. Your laugh grew louder and Carnage looked at you with confusion.

“What’s funny?” Carnage demanded. You continued to laugh.

“That’s it. That’s your weakness. Cletus has no power. Carnage controls Cletus like a puppet master and Cletus has no say. I should’ve known that’s how your relationship worked. It makes total sense.” You said as you stood up and slowly approached Carnage.

“Why does that make sense?” Carnage asked. You shrugged.

“Because Cletus is boring.” You said simply.

“What? I’m not boring.” Cletus’s voice came out. You smirked as your plan began to work.

“Yes, you are. You bonded with a killer symbiote and what did you do with it? Kill people. Boring.” You said in a sing song voice. Then you faked a yawn. “I bonded with a killer symbiote and together, we killed bad guys and made the city safer. We saved Earth from Carlton Drake and now, we clean up New York. That’s pretty unexpected of us, wouldn’t you agree Venom?” You asked. Venom swirled around your hand and nodded.

“Absolutely. Very unexpected of us.” She said eagerly. Carnage looked lost.

“I can’t say I’m surprised though. Cletus has always been boring. Right Venom?”

You asked Venom again.

“Right again, baby.” Venom responded. Carnage’s face opened up to reveal Cletus’s beet red one.

“I’m not boring! I’m a serial killer! That’s not boring!” He yelled. You watched as Carnage struggled to take over Cletus’s face again. He lost the battle, and Cletus shifted back into himself. You had never seen him standing before. He was shorter than you thought.

“A boring serial killer. You’re literally the most generic and prolific serial killer I’ve ever seen. Let’s see, you’re a white male in his mid to late thirties who killed women who resembled the girl who broke his heart in high school. Boring. I just described about a thousand serial killers. I mean, killing women who looked like someone who wronged you? Please. That’s an incredibly common motivation.” You faked another yawn just to rile him up.

“It’s so common, one might even call it boring.” Venom taunted. Cletus looked furious.

“Shelly broke my heart. She deserved to die. That’s not boring!” He yelled at you. You turned your back to him and smiled.

“How did Shelly break your heart? I always wondered. It didn’t say anything about it in your file. Just something about a…school dance?” You asked as if you didn’t know the answer. Cletus face reddened with embarrassment.

“A spring fling.” He muttered. You could tell he was reliving the memory by the look on his face.

“That’s right. A spring fling. What happened? Did she reject you?” You asked curiously. Cletus looked haunted by the memory. He merely nodded.

“Did you know that with a simple google search I could find out the names of your classmates in high school? I didn’t find anyone named Shelly but I did find a Michelle.” You told him. “Michelle Jameson. Does that name sound familiar?” Cletus’s eyes snapped to you and saw tears forming in them. You smiled directly to his face.

“Michelle.” He whispered.

“You asked Michelle to dance that night, didn’t you? But Michelle didn’t want to dance with you, did she Cletus? She wanted to dance with Tobey Garfield. Because after all, Tobey was the captain of the football team, played the drums in the school band, and made high honor roll every year. And you, you were just-“

“Boring.” He finished your sentence. “She called me boring. The whole class heard. They all laughed at me. I was humiliated.” He said, tears rolling down his cheeks. He suddenly looked angry. “I wanted her to pay.”

“And you made her pay. 17 times with all the women you killed. But they never filled that empty hole that Shelly left, did they? Nothing could fill that hole. Nothing until-“

“Carnage.” He finished your sentence again.

“Yes. And Carnage promised you great things, didn’t he? Things like world domination and revenge. I bet he even promised you no one would ever laugh again.” You said cautiously. You had him right where you wanted him. Cletus nodded sadly.

“But he didn’t live up to those promises, did he? He ordered you around, made you call him boss, degraded you. He said you were a team but you weren’t.” You shook your head. “He was always in charge and you just had to go along with anything he said. Am I right?” You asked. Cletus looked at you.

“Exactly right.” He said.

“That’s not what it’s like with me and Venom, you know. We’re a team. Equals. We don’t control each other. I protect her and she protects me. Does Carnage protect you?” You asked compassionately. Cletus shook his head.

“He makes me feel worse.” Cletus cried. You put your hand on his shoulder.

“Cletus, if you kill me, your story will never come out. No one will ever know the pain you went through.” You spoke softly. “You can stop this. You can take back the control.”

Cletus looked at you hopefully for a moment. His eyes quickly faded back to fear.

“No I can’t. I will never have control.” He said sadly before merging back into Carnage. You gasped in fear and turned into Venom. You and Carnage fought again. He wrestled you to the ground and pulled Venom away from your face. He brought his fist down many times until your nose was broken and bleeding. Everything ached, even your teeth. Your eyes were swollen shut and you couldn’t see. You thought you were going to die right there, but Carnage was knocked off of you by a blow to the head with a steel pipe. Peter stood above Carnage with the pipe still in hand. Carnage pounced on Peter for the second time and began to throw him around like a rag doll. He beat Peter senseless and tossed him off the roof like garbage. You let out a silent scream. Carnage went back to you and delivered another blow to your gut. He dragged your towards the fire by your leg and held your leg close to the flame. Venom retracted back into your skin, exposing your leg. Carnage took the opportunity to snap your leg at the calf. You screamed in pain. He stepped on your broken leg and you nearly passed out from the feeling. It felt like your leg was on fire, and for all you knew, it could’ve been. You spat in his face with with acid spit but he dodged it.

“Beg for mercy.” He demanded.

“We will never beg a man for anything.” You spat in his face again, this time hitting him and burning him. Carnage picked up your hand and put it in the flame. Again, Venom retracted and your flesh was exposed. Carnage broke your hand and you let out another scream. He picked you up and threw you over the flame. You landed hard on your side and felt Venom slipping back into your body.

“We’re losing.” You cried.

“We know. We’re trying to heal you as fast as we can. Just hold on, baby.” Venom said desperately. You nodded as you watched Carnage approaching you again. You braced yourself and cradled your broken hand. He picked you up again and this time, sent you tumbling through the fire. Venom completely retreated into your body as you rolled. You suit was beginning to disperse as well, leaving patches of skin exposed here and there. Carnage targeted those spots and dug his claws into them. You let out a cry of pain. You knew you couldn’t last much longer. You couldn’t stand because of your broken leg, so you began to roll yourself towards the edge.

“Oh, I see. You want to see your boyfriend. Alright. Go ahead.” Carnage cackled as he kicked you off the building on the same side Peter was tossed off of. You landed on the ground and heard several ribs crack. You scooted yourself up against a wall and held your broken hand against your body.

“Venom, what’s happening?” You wheezed. You felt pain with every breath you took.

“You’re getting hurt faster than we can heal you. You need to stay here and rest for a few minutes so you can heal. It’s absolutely vital that you don’t go back up there. You will die almost instantly if we’re separated again.” Venom answered. Your odds weren’t good. You had troubled catching your breath and figured your lung had collapsed. You were in critical condition. Your whole body hurt. Everything inch of you was either broken, bloody, or bruised. You slowly felt your lung inflate and your leg beginning to heal. But you still had a million other injuries that would require more time. You looked around and noticed Peters body near you, conscious but not moving.

“Peter?” You gasped for air.

“Stay still! We’re not even close to done!” Venom ordered. You ignored her and dragged yourself with one arm to over to Peter. He stirred but was too injured to move. His fingers twitched as he attempted to reach out and touch you.

“Stop moving! You’re dying!” Venom pleaded. You suddenly heard ambulance sirens wailing and noticed a police man just a few yards away. If you could muster enough strength to shout you could be taken to a hospital. You looked between the police man and Peter.

“Peter is dying.” You croaked. Peters eyes were open but you could hear his heartbeat. Your biggest fear was coming true.

You gave the police man one last look before uncurling your broken hand from underneath you and placing it on Peters shoulder. The simple move sent your body through worlds of pain.

“Go.” You whispered. Venom knew what you meant and would never dream of complying, but and she also knew there was no use arguing.

“We love you.” She stated. She sounded miserable.

“And I love you.” You responded, doing your best to sound happy for her.

With that, Venom left your body and went into Peters. Peters body began to stir again as you felt yours beginning to shut down. You watched as cuts on his face healed and he gradually gained more movement in his body. You could hear his heart beat return to normal and you sighed happily against the pavement. You watched in joy as Peters body sprang up, as if he was pulled on a string. It reminded you of when you first bonded with Venom.

Peter transformed into Venom and began to climb the tower. You watched as the two people you loved the most ran to freedom, leaving you on the pavement to die. Your vision began to fade from red, to white, to black. You could see the outlines of some people standing before you.

“Oh, isn’t she lovely?” A woman’s voice said.

“She’s beautiful. I can see why our son loves her.” A mans voice answered.

“Now, you know if Peter heard you say that he’d object and say that women are more than their looks.” Another’s mans voice said with a chuckle. He sounded older than the first man. The man and woman laughed.

“Of course. May taught him well.” The first mans voice said. Your eyes drooped as you saw one last figure approach you. You could only see their shoes.

“Y/n?” The voice asked. The voice was soft and sweet. You didn’t recognize it at first, but it sounded so familiar.

“Y/n? Is that you baby?” The voice asked again. You forced yourself to look up and saw a woman standing before you. She had kind eyes and a warm smile. She picked you up and held you in a tight embrace.

“Everything’s okay now, Y/n. Mommy’s got you.” The woman said. You let yourself relax in her embrace. You didn’t feel any pain anymore. You felt tranquility wash over your aching body.

Then everything went dark and you went to sleep.