#I'll be posting the next parts for the next few days. probably within a week! still editing some things....

[nerdallwritey]

I Want to Live

Summary: He murmured something against your lips. You pushed lightly against his chest, laughing. “What?” “I want to live,” he repeated, seemingly out of breath.  “Of course you want to live, you’re alive,” you smiled up at him, running a hand through his hair. “In all the ways that matter, I mean.” You wiggled your eyebrows at him, clearly trying to be suggestive. He rolled his eyes. “No, you insufferable woman, I’m referring to something Shadowheart said.” OR Raphael asks you and Astarion for a favor, which leads to an important conversation.

Pairing: Astarion x f!reader Rating: 18+ Word count: 14.9k CW: Raphael is a thespian, vulnerable Astarion, Yurgir battle, mentions of killing oneself, Astarion's scars, confessions, reader is an idiot (and a bard), so is Astarion (not a bard, just an idiot), breeding kink (DADSTARION IS IMPORTANT TO ME), smush (smutty mush) Spoilers: Spoilers for Act 2 (in-game dialogue, plot points, etc.) Also posted to: AO3 FAIR WARNING: This is PART 8 in my series, "Beauty and the Bard." Find the masterlist here.

a/n: THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH FOR YOUR PATIENCE AS I WROTE PART 8!!! I've become the busiest woman in the world - my job came to an end and I just started a new one, I'm in a play that my friend wrote this summer, I'm moving at the end of this month, and my power went out for nearly three days this week. BUT! WE FORGE AHEAD! I hope that you all enjoy this new addition and that it was worth the wait!! I was super excited to write this part and hope I was able to do it justice. Heads up: I am EXTREMELY busy for the next few months, so I'll probably take a mini hiatus from writing this series for a hot minute. I will be back, rest assured! I'm also interested in possibly starting a new series starring my Tav, Birdie! Anyways, I hope this part was worth the wait! It was a blast to write!! (Thank you to my beta @kermitwazowski, and the wonderful @arzen9 for reading!) As a reminder, last time, just as you were about to save Isobel from etheric's henchmen, Raphael whisked you and Astarion away for his own personal needs.

Taglist: Moved to the comment section, since tumblr hates sharing fun with friends - please let me know if you'd like to be added to the list!

With a white shock of pain, the cold of the Shadow Cursed Lands crept into your bones, rendering you frozen and disoriented.

What had just happened?

“Astarion?” you called out, remembering that he had been right beside you only a moment ago. “Where are you?”

“I’m here, darling,” you jumped when a pair of cold hands encircled your shoulders before they spun you to look into Astarion’s frantic eyes. He relaxed considerably once he saw your face. “I’m right here.”

You smiled slightly and turned your head a little to kiss one of the hands on your shoulder before looking around. “Any idea where we are?” 

Upon scanning the area, it seemed that you and Astarion were in the middle of the Shadow Cursed Lands, high atop some sort of mountain. You saw what looked to be a heavily trodden path with stairs leading up to this place, surrounded by discarded weapons and pieces of armor. Not far off you spotted flags surrounding what you assumed was a makeshift graveyard. 

Astarion’s eyes followed yours. “If I had to guess, it’s not the Blushing Mermaid.”

In the distance, you saw the roofs of buildings that must have made up the village Jaheira had mentioned. Looking to your left, you spotted the moon shield surrounding the Last Light Inn and witnessed tiny figures flying around the structure, along with blasts of magic from within the building through the windows. You ran towards it to get a better look, your stomach dropping when you realized how far you were from the battle you’d just been so rudely snatched away from.

“Where’s Raphael?” you growled. 

Speaking of the devil, the cambion’s mortal form, which you hadn’t noticed standing at the grand entrance into some sort of temple in the side of the mountain, stepped forward, observing his nails. Behind him, chains hung from the sides of the cliffs and a large door loomed, destroyed, as if whatever had been inside had broken out with a great deal of force.

“Our heroes thought but a treasure ahead,” Raphael said dramatically, “did not consider the peace of the dead. Through the dark they went creeping, and awoke what was sleeping. A new grave they dug, which they themselves fed.”

Astarion clicked his tongue. “How long were you skulking there, practicing that rhyme before we saw you?”

“Until it was perfect,” Raphael said matter-of-factly. “I’ve grown quite fond of you, you know - in my way. I thought it only fair to warn you of the dangers ahead.”

“You brought us here!” you exclaimed. “We don’t even know where we are!”

“Patience,” Raphael chuckled. “There is a creature that lurks in silence and shadow - a creature who, like me, is of the infernal persuasion.”

You crossed your arms. “Is this creature as dramatic as you are?”

Raphael smirked, amused by your annoyance. “In truth, it is carnage incarnate. When you meet this devil of which I speak,” his tone became deathly serious, “kill it. Consider no other course of action.” 

“Hmm,” Astarion hummed. “There’s something you’re hiding. You’re only telling us half that story. Out with it, devil”

Raphael narrowed his eyes. “This creature and I go back a long way. I admit it would be in my best interest as well should it remain trapped in the dark.” He grinned viciously. “Or misplace its head, perhaps.”

“Lovely,” you muttered.

“I should not relish its reacquaintance,” Raphael continued. “Let’s leave it at that.” He turned to you with piqued interest. “You have it in you to author a thrilling finale, if…”

“If?” You took a sideways step towards Astarion who instinctively placed his hand on your lower back.

Raphael’s face took on a scowl. “If you heed this warning: Do not underestimate this opponent. At best you will have the blink of an eye to strike.” 

You looked to Astarion who swept a soothing thumb back and forth along the base of your spine.

Raphael’s voice was dripping with venom when he spoke. “Strike first. Strike true. Defy the odds, for they are distinctly in its favor.” He took a breath to settle himself. “That much I owe the bastard orthon to concede.” 

“Okay,” you said cautiously. “And I assume this is about that favor-?”

He laughed and regained his leading-actor-giving-a-monologue stance. “Don’t think I’ve forgotten about your tale, Astarion.”

“It would be surprising if you did,” Astarion said flatly, “considering I only told you about it an hour ago.”

Raphael laughed again, an uproarious, overly dramatic guffaw. “When the beast is dead, I’ll consider that payment enough to translate the scars on your back.”

Astarion nodded his head towards the devil. “A fairer deal than I expected.”

“You wound me, spawn,” Raphael said, not the least bit insulted. “I always deal fairly. And we’ll close this particular deal soon enough - vanquish the beast, and all will be revealed.”

“As great as that sounds,” you said in mock sincerity, “where do we find this beast of yours? You can’t just lead us into the middle of nowhere, give us a task, and expect us to follow through with no other direction! Our friends needed our help back there!” You thrust your arms to your right, over towards the moon shield protecting the inn.

“Oh, they’ll be fine,” Raphael assured, though it didn’t help you to feel better at all. “But you do raise a fair point. That little Sharran of yours will want to see this place. And I know a shortcut.” “What kind of-”

Before Astarion could finish his sentence, Raphael snapped his fingers again, causing everything to go black once more.

When you were met with the familiar white shock of pain from earlier, you realized Raphael had transported you somewhere new.

“That is not a pleasant feeling,” you said, wiping down your armor to rid yourself of any sulphuric residue. 

“No it is not,” Astarion agreed, standing up straight and running a hand through his hair. “Where the devil are we now?”

“Nice one,” you smirked while looking around.

It seemed that now you were in a temple of some sort, completely made up of purple, gray, and gold marble - stone pillars and staircases and columns sprang up in well calculated spaces, and judging by the atmosphere and the view out into the temple, it appeared that you were now inside the mountain that Raphael had met you outside of. Purple light surrounded you from lit braziers that littered the corners, and multiple large doors gave off an eerie, unwelcoming aura.

“Sharran, for sure,” Astarion wrinkled his nose in disgust. 

“Look at all the bodies,” you said quietly, observing several skeletons scattered around the staircases. “Do you think they were the Dark Justiciars Jaheira mentioned?”

Astarion approached one and kicked its helmet, which let out a dull thud. “They seem pretty dead to me.”

“Hmm…” You looked around, searching for any sign of this devil Raphael had mentioned. “Do you really think Raphael will keep his word if we kill this orthon?”

Astarion stiffened. “I’d trust a devil over a vampire any day.” 

“That doesn’t bode well for me,” you joked.

He chuckled. “I think he likes us.”

“Do you think he loves-”

“Don’t start,” Astarion snapped with minimal bite.

You laughed. “Unfortunately he can be pretty entertaining. But I’d never say that to his smarmy face.”

“He is rather smarmy, isn’t he?” Astarion smiled. “Perhaps if we kill this orthon extra bloody, he’ll invite us for tea and brandy back in his House.”

“An invitation I eagerly await,” you said in your snootiest voice and mimed holding a tea cup on a saucer. 

Astarion mimicked your snootiness and the two of you “clinked” your imaginary cups together while laughing airily.

“Wait,” you paused in walking along the corridor, suddenly catching a glint of red on the floor. 

Astarion halted at your side. “What?” 

You pointed at the ground. “You tell me, vampire.”

The vampire in question pursed his lips. “I’ve said before that I’m not some bloodhound,” he argued. He took a deep inhale and sagged. “But yes, that is blood.”

“Any idea how fresh?”

He considered. “Not very fresh, but not completely stale either.”

“Well,” you said, wrapping your arm around his bicep, “where there is blood, there are monsters.”

Astarion humphed as you both walked forward, following the tiny speckled trail of blood towards a set of stairs. “Is that what you think of me?”

“Noooo,” you said, reassuringly nuzzling your head against his shoulder, “you’re too full of love to be a monster.”

Astarion shoved you away and you laughed. “You’re ridiculous.”

“We are going to talk,” you said firmly, but not unkindly. “I have things to say to you, too.”

Astarion hunched over dramatically. “Blech. Put me out of my misery first.” 

“Not happening,” you said, approaching him again and lacing your fingers through his. 

He tried to hide it, but you saw the flicked of a smile on his face. 

A sudden flash of black at the bottom of the stairs caught your attention.

A displacer beast.

You and Astarion froze on the stairs, and for a moment, the three of you were locked in an intense stare down. 

Then, she bolted down the hall to the left.

“Hey!” you shouted, detaching yourself from Astarion and jumping off of the stairs. “Come back!”

“Darling!” you heard Astarion shout behind you. “What are you doing?! Be careful!”

The pair of you rushed down another set of steps before following the beast into a chamber to your right. 

“What the hells has been happening here?” you asked, pausing briefly in the doorway, then walking forward cautiously and observing multiple dead bodies and piles of gore.

Astarion exhaled heavily. “So much blood…” He looked up suddenly, his hands hovering over his knives. “Something’s wrong.”

“Here in the death room?” you teased, looking around for the displacer beast, but not seeing her. “You’re sharp.”

Astarion rolled his eyes. “Oh ha ha, very funny. Just be on your guard.”

A low growl caught your attention as the displacer beast appeared again on a shattered dais in front of you. 

You strummed a low tune on your lute, casting Speak with Animals. 

“Quiet, darling,” Astarion warned softly. “This could be a trap.”

“Hi there,” you whispered to the displacer beast, as if that would shield you from a trap. “Would you perhaps know where we could find-”

“What’s this?” A deep voice echoed through the chamber as a giant figure seemed to appear out of nowhere. “Fresh entertainment?”

The figure, who you assumed was the orthon, was massive. His head bore jagged, razor sharp horns, and his body was adorned with armor, some of which, you realized with horror, was made of bones. To make matters worse, he had a giant crossbow trained on you. You saw Astarion take a shocked step backwards out of the corner of your eye before he lowered himself into a ready stance. 

“Oh, really good job getting his attention,” Astarion shot at you bitterly.

“But you’re too fresh for this place, aren’t you?” The orthon looked between you and Astarion, before his eyes rested on Astarion. “A dark-dweller, you may be, but there’s a definite whiff of the surface to you.” 

Astarion said nothing and carefully sidestepped his way over to you, standing in front of you and attempting to shield you with his body.

“We could try talking?” you suggested to the vampire. “Maybe we can get out of this without a fight?”

“A new arrival then,” the orthon continued, clearly not perceiving you or Astarion to be any sort of threat. “You burrowed too deep, little rabbits.”

Astarion meanwhile, was still taking in your surroundings. He nudged you with his elbow and gestured for you to look up.

Figures in golden masks looked down at you, all aiming weapons and preparing to shoot if either of you made the wrong move.

You cleared your throat and looked back at the orthon. “Allow us to hop to it,” you said calmly. “We’re just here to talk. Put that thing down-”

“I don’t talk to prey!” The orthon roared. “I-” He paused and Astarion hovered his hands above his daggers again. “There’s something else, almost hidden by your fear-stink.” 

You discretely tried to smell yourself, but Astarion leaned back to whisper, “You don’t actually stink, darling.”

“Right,” you responded quietly.

“Cherries,” the orthon sniffed, “musk… and sulphur.”

“Oh, that,” you said, trying to wipe Raphael’s stench off of your armor.

The orthon exhaled steam from his nostrils. “Raphael! I can smell him all over you! Where is he?! Spit it out! Now!”

Overhead, the masked figures loudly made it known that their weapons were loaded and pointing down at you and Astarion. The displacer beast snarled and paced impatiently upon the dais. 

“What are you doing?” Astarion asked you through the side of his mouth. “The devil told us to kill this thing, so let’s stop chatting and kill it!”

The displacer beast growled and shouted to the orthon: “Master! They’ve been sent here by the perfumed swindler to kill you!” She leaped forward off the dais and began circling around you and Astarion, her teeth bared and her tails flicking impatiently.

“Did he, now,” the orthon chuckled. “Many have tried to fell the mighty Yurgir, but none have succeeded.” 

“What?” Astarion asked frantically. “What did the beast say to him?”

You rolled your eyes. “She tattled on us, basically.”

Astarion pulled his daggers from their sheaths. “Wretched thing!”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” you said, stilling Astarion’s hands, and stepping in front of him so you were closer to Yurgir. “Mr. Yurgir, sir, perhaps we can help each other?”

The displacer beast snorted. “The pretty one has pulled out his meager weapons. It’s clear they are here with intent to harm.”

“Not true!” you said quickly, noting the confusion in Astarion’s expression at having not understood the beast. You strummed a quick Speak with Animals for him so you wouldn’t need to continue to translate. 

Yurgir chuckled again, amused with your distressed display. “Bargaining, are you? A Kara-Tur warlord once tried the same - I made him watch as I ate his concubines and young, then fashioned a codpiece from his skull.”

“Charming,” Astarion rolled his eyes.

“Silence!” The displacer beast lunged at Astarion, who sidestepped her and prepared to attack her with his daggers. 

“Don’t!” you pleaded, preparing to cast a spell with your lute. The air in the chamber tensed significantly.

“Nessa,” Yrugir addressed the displacer beast calmly. He nodded to her and she begrudgingly took a step back from Astarion, who straightened a little and kept an eye on both you and the beast. 

Yurgir sighed, all the while, his crossbow was still trained on you and Astarion. 

“You can’t help. It’s not just walls that keep me here. Not the traps, the dark creatures it hides. Something stronger holds me. A contract.”

Astarion clicked his tongue and crossed his arms. “Figures a meathead like you would get trapped in an agreement with a devil.”

A growl came from the back of Yurgir’s throat. “My patience grows thin with you,” he narrowed his eyes at Astarion who met his gaze unwaveringly. “One more snide comment and it’s lights out, pretty boy.”

Astarion chuckled. “He thinks I’m pretty.”

“Astarion,” you hissed. “Please behave.” You turned back towards Yurgir. “Can you tell me more about the contract?”

For whatever reason, perhaps intrigue, perhaps loneliness, Yurgir indulged your request. 

“Either I fulfill the contract, die trying… or forfeit my freedom. If I leave this place now, I’ll become Raphael’s slave.”

You felt Astarion prickle behind you at the mention of slavery. 

“Personally,” Astarion said angrily, “I’d prefer if you died trying.” 

Without warning, he threw a knife in Yurgir’s direction, which the orthon dodged very easily. Yurgir looked up at his masked minions and nodded.

One by one, they jumped to the ground pointing their weapons at Astarion. Nessa pounced and pinned him to the bloodied marble floor beneath you.

“Wait!” you shouted as Nessa unhinged her jaw to snap in Astarion’s face. You cleared your throat. “Diabolic deals of legend always have loopholes! We just need to find it!”

Astarion struggled beneath Nessa. “Get off of me!” He pushed against her massive head, but she overpowered him with her paws on his shoulders and slashed across his face, causing him to yell out in pain.

Your whole body tensed. “Astarion, stop moving!” 

“Listen to your mate,” Nessa growled. 

“She’s not-”

“Oh please,” Nessa said, annoyed. “You two reek of each other. It’s as if you were attempting to make pups mere moments ago.”

Astarion scoffed but stopped struggling. You cast a quiet Healing Word and the wound on his cheek vanished.

Yurgir lowered his weapon. “Is he done being a pest?”

You laughed nervously. “I’ll believe that when I see it,” you murmured.

Yurgir lowered the weapon marginally, suddenly more comfortable, now that the problem child was pinned to the floor. “Raphael is no foolish story devil. His mind is different. Sneaky. Listen…”

The orthon closed his eyes, trying to remember the terms of his contract. Then, to your surprise, he started to sing.

“Spill all the blood sworn to the night. Silence all prayers; smother each rite.”

Raphael made Yurgir’s contract… a song?

“Wander Shar’s halls; hungry to slay; Leave no Justiciar alive to obey.”

Your fingers twitched on the neck of your lute, eager to accompany him, but not wanting to push your luck. At least now you knew what happened to the Justiciars. You didn’t plan on joining them any time soon.

“Leave none to hear it, then be set free; This song is your oath, swear, swear it to me.”

Yurgir finished his melancholy melody with an anguished sigh, clear that this contract had been his curse for far too long. 

There was something about this song that differed from the ones you’d studied in the past… Something about the final couplet. 

“So he’s the one who slaughtered the justiciars,” Astarion angled his head to look up at you. 

You met his eye and saw his hand flick twitch at his side. One of his concealed daggers glinted in the dim light. Shaking your head minutely, Astarion smirked and pulled the dagger, plunging it into Nessa’s side. She shrieked in pain and staggered to the side, allowing Astarion to spring to his feet.

“What are you doing?!” Your eyes widened in fear.

Astarion gestured at Yurgir as the masked minions closed in on both of you. “Can we kill him now?” He lowered his voice, “Because if he doesn’t die, then Raphael won’t tell me a damn thing about my scars!”

“Would you-”

Suddenly, you felt a slash across your back as one of Yurgir’s minions grazed your torso with their axe. You gasped in pain, staggering forward into Astarion’s arms. He shouted your name, cradling you to his chest and bringing you to a kneel on the ground.

“I’m okay,” you winced. “He slashed me, but it’s not deep.”

Astarion searched your face to make sure you were telling the truth. When he was satisfied by your expression, he released you gently, then got up and approached Nessa. He pulled his dagger from her side and threw it into the gut of the minion who’d slashed you. He went down with a harsh thud.

“How dare you attack her!” he shouted. “If you have a problem with anyone, come after me!”

“Wonderful idea,” Yurgir hissed, before nodding to his minions. 

In a blur of gold and black, the minions and Nessa jumped at Astarion, knocking him to the ground and making him disappear from your line of sight as they surrounded him and began taking hits.

“STOP!” you bellowed, running at them and banging one of the minions in the back of his metal head. He turned and swung his axe at you, just missing. Astarion shrieked from within the wall of enemies.

Yurgir’s face remained impassive as you turned to look at him.

“Tell them to stop!”

Yurgir laughed humorlessly. “You two were sent here to kill me. He seems dumb enough to try and follow through. He must die instead.”

Your fists clenched at your side in a mix of fear, frustration, and anger.

Astarion was acting reckless, and you had a feeling it had something to do with his accidental confession from earlier. So help you gods, you were going to give him a stern talking to once you got him out of this mess.

“Darling!” he yelled. “A little help!”

You heard his knife plunge into the side of a minion, who fell to the marble floor beside you.

Taking a deep breath, you stood your ground. You knew better than to attack Yurgir by yourself. And his minions greatly outnumbered you. 

If only Raphael had poofed you here with your entire party. 

“DARLING!” Astarion shrieked.

“OKAY!” you shouted back, searching your mind to find a solution. 

If you attacked to help Astarion, chances were, you’d both be killed without a second thought and Yurgir would move on with his lonely existence. You almost felt bad for him. No, it would be better if you refrained from attacking and went about this from a different angle.

Perhaps distracting Yurgir from his loneliness was the way to go. You were rather gifted in the art of persuasion.

“The contract is a song! If you want, I could try and help you figure it out!” You strummed your lute for good measure, subtly sending a Healing Word Astarion’s way, along with some Bardic Inspiration. 

Yurgir rolled his eyes. “I don’t want to make it pretty - I want to silence it.” 

Astarion yelped in pain and shouted your name. You heard Nessa growl.

Yurgir trained his crossbow on you once more. “Enough prattle,” he said. “The lyrics are clear: all who hear the song must die. And now, you must die.”

The unmistakable sound of an axe connecting with flesh reached your ears and you heard Astarion cough and wheeze loudly. Your entire body tensed and you unconsciously reached for the scar on your torso.

“Wait!” you exclaimed, tossing your lute strap around so that it rested at your back and holding your hands in front of you to show you weren’t holding any weapons. “Raphael’s a sly lyricist - he tricked you!”

Yurgir raised an eyebrow.

“It’s true!” You turned and gestured to the masked minions gathered around Astarion. “Your followers heard your song and still live!”

Yurgir lowered his crossbow again. “The merregons? They barely have a thought to share among themselves…”

The merregons, as Yurgir called them, paused in their attacks on the prone vampire and turned to face the orthon, their vacant masked eyes staring at him blankly. 

“But they do have ears…” Yurgir muttered.

You moved ever so slightly closer to Astarion, who lay bloodied on the ground, covering his face with his hands, his breaths ragged. Multiple daggers were plunged into the limbs of various merregons as well as in Nessa, who had paused her attacks as well to watch whatever was about to happen. You fell to your knees and laid your hands on Astarion’s wounds, channeling all your magic into Cure Wounds. You prayed to whatever gods were listening that this plan of yours would work. 

Yurgir narrowed his eyes at his minions. “Kill yourselves,” he commanded. “Back to the hells with you.”

Without argument, the merregons turned to each other and swung their battle axes, striking fatal blows on one another. You slung your arms behind Astarion’s back, lifting him up and cradling him to your chest, using your body as a shield from flying viscera and debris. His eyes were wide with shock and pain, and you bumped his nose with yours to bring his focus to you. His eyes softened and you used the distraction of the merregon carnage to heal him some more.

“You’re okay,” you murmured, kissing just below his ear. 

Astarion nodded slightly.

By now, it seemed that each golden minion was dead on the ground surrounding you both. Nessa watched the two of you closely, anger and confusion overtaking her senses. 

“Can I put you back down?” you whispered to Astarion. “We’ve still got company.” You nodded your head towards the orthon and the displacer beast.

Again, Astarion nodded slightly, keeping himself seated upright as you rose to stand. 

Yurgir clutched at his head, his eyes shut tight in frustration. 

“I still hear it,” he groaned. “Seems your theory is wrong.”

With a flick of his head in Nessa’s direction, she pounced at Astarion again. This time however, Astarion was able to roll out of her way and stood beside you, brandishing a pair of daggers he pulled from the dead merregons.

“That’s because you’re not finished yet!” you said quickly, grabbing Astarion’s wrist to stop him from attacking Nessa. 

You eyed the creature menacingly stalking around you and Astarion. The purple sheen of her coat was stained with red. Very likely caused by the blood of the man standing next to you.

The man you loved.

She had to die.

“The displacer can hear you, can’t she?” You squeezed Astarion’s wrist. 

Yurgir looked at Nessa, and you saw the dots connecting in his head.

“Kill her,” you instructed. 

The orthon’s eyes grew sad. “...Kill Nessa?”

Nessa herself straightened and looked at Yurgir with a mix of surprise and deep heartbreak. “Master…?”

Yurgir raised his crossbow. His words were soft: “Stay very still, my beauty.”

With that, he shot Nessa with a deadly arrow, piercing through her side and killing her instantly. You felt the warm spray of her blood splatter across your face and Astarion pulled you closer. 

“Ugh!” Yurgir groaned, clutching at his head again. “I still hear it!” 

With one final squeeze of Astarion’s wrist, you released him and took a step forward.

“Darling,” he reached out after you but you stopped him.

“I’ll be alright, my love.” You winked at him. “I promise.”

He dropped his hand to his side and nodded wordlessly.

You then drew yourself up into a confident posture, similar to how you would perform for crowds back in Baldur’s Gate. 

“My dear hunter,” you said, “isn’t it obvious?” 

A beat of silence passed before Yurgir answered you. “No?”

“Yes, no, darling,” Astarion whispered with a tinge of desperation and confusion. “What are you doing?” 

“Shh,” you hissed at him before turning back to Yurgir. “You must kill yourself. Then you’ll be free.”

“Ohhh,” Astarion breathed, before projecting his voice for Yurgir to hear. “She’s right, you know. Raphael is a tricky bastard, this is exactly the kind of thing he’d never think you’d be able to parse from his insufferable lyrics.”

Yurgir growled. “ENOUGH! I’ve heard enough from you!” He pointed his crossbow at Astarion.

Astarion raised his eyebrows and held up his hands. “Right.” 

Yurgir turned to you, his expression plainly showing that he was at war with himself and your words. He exhaled, steam releasing from his nostrils.

“If you’re wrong about this,” he snarled, “I’ll claw my way out of Avernus and eat you alive - contract be damned.”

“Trust me,” you said, “music and lyrics are kind of my thing. I believe this will solve your problem.”

Yurgir furrowed his eyebrows, once again considering your words, before he tossed his crossbow aside and pulled a gigantic greatsword off of his back.

“Nicely played, Raphael,” he said, knowing that Raphael was probably listening to this entire interaction from somewhere below. “Bastard.”

Without a moment of hesitation to talk himself out of it, Yurgir plunged the sword through his chest, grunting out in pain before the light drained from his eyes. He fell to his knees, then tipped forward, over the edge of the platform he’d been standing on, and landed with a gigantic thud in front of you and Astarion.

Dead.

You released a breath you didn’t know you were holding and slumped forward, putting one hand on your knees, and another over your heart, willing your pulse to slow.

Astarion took a step forward to examine the orthon, not entirely convinced that the devil was well and truly dead. 

When it seemed Yurgir wasn’t getting back up, Astarion spoke. “Does… Does that count as us killing him? That had better count.”

You laughed in disbelief at your accomplishment. “I don’t think it matters, so long as he’s dead.” You walked forward to stand at Astarion’s side. “And he seems to be dead. Aren’t you pleased?”

He was looking at you fondly, but you watched as Astarion put his mask back in place, a flicker of fear in his eyes. “The orthon is nothing,” he said pompously. I’ll have my satisfaction when Raphael makes good on his word.”

You rolled your eyes. Idiot.

“Repeat after me,” you said, wiping some wayward blood off his cheekbone, “‘Thank you for helping me, it was very kind.’”

“Hmm?” Astarion’s eyes widened. “Hrmm,” he whined and looked away. When he met your eye again, he sighed. “Thank you for helping me. It was very kind.” 

You could tell the words pained him tremendously.

“You’re welcome,” you said cheerily before heading back out the way you came. 

You heard Astarion hot on your heels, knowing he’d follow you.

“Darling, wait- ah!” He groaned out in pain and you immediately halted and turned to look at him.

He was doubled over and sank to his knees, clutching his side.

“Astarion!” you cried, rushing over to him and kneeling beside him. “What’s wrong? Did I miss a wound? Where are you hurt?”

He pulled his hand away from his side, revealing a tiny pool of blood in his palm.

“Blasted displacer beast must have nicked me when I wasn’t looking.” He smirked at you, clearly trying to disway your worry. 

You furrowed your brow and summoned the strongest Cure Wounds you could muster. “Hold still,” you said gently. 

The aqua healing magic that emitted from your fingertips created a soothing light that warmed both you and Astarion as it worked on fixing the wound. 

“How did you know that would work?” Astarion asked quietly.

You looked up at his face and found him watching your hands. You smiled. “Which thing? My impressive healing magic? Or way with words?”

Astarion rolled his eyes. “You know I was referring to the orthon.”

“I didn’t,” you shrugged, moving your hands to heal his side from a different angle. “Didn’t know talking would work, I mean. But I had to try something rather than let both of us die in this gross, decrepit temple to Shar.”

Astarion chuckled. “Don’t let Shadowheart hear you say that.”

“I wasn’t planning to,” you said. “Speaking of Shadowheart, I hope she and the others are alright.”

The vampire thought about it for a moment. “They’re probably fine. And if they’re not, I’m sure you’ll figure out some way to save the day.”

“And you won’t lift a finger, right?”

“Not if I can help it.”

You laughed. “Come on,” you said, standing up and offering Astarion a hand, “we should set up camp for the night.”

“I’m sorry,” Astarion raised an eyebrow,”you want to stay down here?”

“Not especially,” you admitted, emerging through the doorway you’d followed Nessa through. “But unless you see Raphael or a waypoint, it’ll be a little hard to get back to the inn right now. And I spent all my magic just now saving your ass from some mindless monsters.”

“Ah,” Astarion said quietly, with less sarcasm than you’d expect. “Yes, you did do that, didn’t you?”

You paused and looked over at him. “Do you want to talk now?”

He laughed softly. “Give me a moment, it’s still fresh.”

You smiled. “Take your time, my love.”

Without speaking further, the two of you made your way through Shar’s temple, attempting to find a suitable place to rest for the night. Sure, you’d only awoken a few hours ago, but talking an orthon and his minions into killing themselves wasn’t exactly an easy task. You felt completely drained, especially after channeling all your magic into healing Astarion.

Upon finding a suitable place to unwind - a grand, abandoned hall with minimal leaks, dead bodies, and foul odors - you slung your backpack off your shoulders, grateful you’d thought to put it on this morning.

Astarion, who’d just finished surveying the room, bit his lip. “Let me help you with that,” he said, coming over to help you unpack your extra camping supplies. 

“Thank you,” you said softly, watching as he pulled out a bedroll that the two of you would likely have to share tonight. 

“Of course, love,” he said absently, before his eyes widened and he looked at you. 

You gave him a gentle half smile and kissed his cheek. 

After a few minutes, your little party of two had a modest fire going in a brazier that Astarion had dragged over to your makeshift camping area, along with a stew heating up, thanks to supplies Gale had lent you for occasions like this when he wasn’t around. You swept your hand over the bedroll, flattening lumps and rearranging pillows to make it as comfortable as possible on the hard marble floor. 

Astarion watched you from a tiny set of stairs not too far off, balancing the tip of a blade on his finger. He, like you, had stripped off his bloody armor and was now lounging in only his plain clothes, which were stained with dried blood from where Nessa and the merregons had pierced through his armor. 

“Enjoying the show?” you asked, very aware that you weren’t being sexy, and were merely fluffing a pillow. 

Astarion didn’t respond and kept staring at you, unblinking. 

“Hello?” you asked, snapping your fingers in his direction. “Anybody home?”

He started, as if coming out of a trance, causing his dagger to fall and slice his fingertip. “Bugger!” he exclaimed, shoving the digit into his mouth.

You clicked your tongue. “Come here,” you said, motioning for him to approach you.

He got up slowly, walking over to you and kneeling on the bedroll.

“Let me see,” you instructed, holding out your hand for him to show you the cut. 

It was a tiny little thing, right at the tip of his right index finger. The bleeding had already ceased. 

“Yikes,” you said dramatically. “Not sure you’ll survive this one.” You smiled and reached into your bag, opting for a bandage instead of attempting another healing spell. 

Before wrapping the wound, however, you brought it to your mouth for a kiss, letting out an overly exaggerated “MWAH!” when your lips made contact.

“Better?” you asked, fastening the bandage in place.

Astarion nodded. “Much.”

“I have a fresh shirt, if you want,” you told him, pulling out one of his shirts that he’d let you keep from your backpack. “All that blood can’t be comfortable.”

“Speak for yourself,” Astarion joked, taking the shirt from your hands and lifting his soiled one over his head. 

Though he was facing you, you couldn’t help thinking about the scars on his back.

“Listen,” you said as his head popped out of the collar of the fresh shirt, “even if Raphael doesn’t have the answers you want, I promise we’ll make Cazador pay for what he did to you.”

A wicked grin came over Astarion’s face. “Oh, I-” He stopped himself. You watched as he grew visibly shy. “Um… Darling, do you have a moment?” When you raised an eyebrow, indicating you were listening, he looked down at his hands. “I think we need to talk.”

You inhaled sharply. 

Oh.

This was it.

The moment you’d been waiting for.

“I’d like that,” you brushed your fingers along his cheek.

His eyes grew wide and vulnerable, and he took your hand in his. “Look, I-”

“Do you know what happens when a devil is struck down on this… charming plane of existence?”

Both you and Astarion deflated.

“Perfect timing as always, Raphael.” You stood to face the devil and Astarion rose to join you.

“I’m nothing if not punctual,” Raphael smirked with a deep bow in your direction.

“Get on with it,” Astarion rolled his eyes. “We were in the middle of something.”

Raphael lifted his head. “My apologies to the flittering lovebirds.” 

You sighed. “No, we don’t know what happens when a devil dies.”

The devil before you chuckled. “It returns to the hells - to the very point where it last stood before venturing to whichever devilforsaken plane it died on.”

“Your point?” Astarion asked impatiently.

Raphael looked between the two of you, observing the blood still speckled across Astarion’s face. “In the case of our friend Yurgir, he manifested in my House of Hope. He returned to me chastened but intact, his wounds healed, his body restored. He thought I would dismember him, but he has his uses so instead I am reeducating him.”

You groaned. “Come on, Raphael, we had a deal.”

Astarion placed his hands on his hips. “We delivered the devil. Now I want what I’m owed.”

Raphael exhaled an amused breath. “We did indeed have a deal. I discovered all there is to know about those scars of yours.” He chuckled unsettlingly. “It’s a rather grim tale, even for my tastes.”

Astarion stiffened beside you, and you sidestepped to be closer to him. You took his right hand in both of yours and held on tight.

“Stop stalling,” you said firmly. “Astarion deserves to know whatever it is you found out.”

Raphael watched your hands before his eyes found your face. “As you wish.” He then turned to Astarion, who was staring at him with carefully masked fear. “Brace yourself, Astarion - we’re about to unveil your destiny.”

You squeezed Astarion’s hand. 

“Carved into that ivory skin of yours is one part of a contract between the archdevil Mephistopheles, and your former master, Cazador Szarr.” 

Astarion’s eyebrows furrowed in disgust at the name. 

Raphael continued. “In full, the contract states that Cazador will be granted the knowledge of an infernal ritual so vile, it has never been performed.”

Astarion sighed. “Sounds like Cazador.”

Raphael raised his voice. “It is called, ‘The Rite of Profane Ascension.’”

You narrowed your eyes. “And what does that entail?”

The devil once again took up his favored performing stance. “Oh, it promises to be a marvellous ceremony. Very elaborate, incredibly ancient, and entirely diabolical.”

Astarion hummed in displeasure.

Raphael smiled at him. “You’ll like this, little vampling. If he completes the rite, he will become a new kind of being - the Vampire Ascendant.”

Your vampire took a curious step forward, and you followed him, still gripping his hand. “Explain,” he said adamantly. 

“All the strengths of his vampire form will be amplified,” Raphael clarified, “and alongside them, he will enjoy the luxuries of living.”

You couldn’t help letting out a tiny gasp. Astarion looked helplessly at you before turning his attention back to Raphael, who was still speaking.

“The arousals and appetites of man will return to him, and unlike Astarion, he will have no need of a parasite to protect him from the sun.”

“Incredible,” Astarion breathed.

You nodded. If there was a way to let Astarion walk in the sun forever, you wanted to hear more about it.

Raphael smirked, seeing how his delicious words had drawn both of you in.

“But,” he warned, “the ritual has its price, as all worthwhile things do.”

“What is it?” you asked before you could stop yourself.

Raphael placed a hand on his hip. “Lord Cazador will need to sacrifice a number of souls, including all of his vampiric spawn, if he is to ascend.”

“No,” you murmured, your voice full of disbelief. You pulled yourself closer to Astarion. 

“Imagine how he felt, then,” Raphael said, “when one of those precious spawn disappeared into thin air.”

This time, Astarion squeezed your hand. 

“The only missing ingredient is Astarion.” Raphael smiled at him, devilishly, for lack of a better term. 

Astarion scowled at the devil, but allowed him to continue.

“You are the final piece he requires to complete the ritual - your scars bind you to it. Your soul will set off a very wave of death, bringing Cazador his twisted life.”

“I won’t let that happen,” you said, more to yourself than either of the men currently in your presence. 

Raphael smiled once more, taking on his performer’s stance one final time. “And that, my tragic and toothsome friend, is that.” He bowed deeply, before rising and giving you both a nasty look. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have business elsewhere.”

Before you could ask any followup questions, Raphael snapped his fingers and disappeared in a cloud of foul smelling black smoke and embers.

Astarion stood still for a moment before turning to face you, his eyes focused on where your hands were joined. 

“Hmm,” he hummed softly. 

You blinked at him. “‘Hmm?’ That’s all you have to say?”

He met your eye. “I was… contemplating. There’s a lot to take in.” Astarion laid his free hand on top of one of yours. 

“Hey,” you said, bringing one of your hands up to his cheek. “It’ll be alright.”

He looked incredibly sad. “What do you think I should do?” 

You considered for a moment. The thought of Astarion being able to walk in the sun definitely had its appeal… but the cost was far too great and you doubted you’d be able to live with yourself if Astarion was somehow able to follow through and sacrifice innumerable souls for something that may have a cure elsewhere in Faerûn. It also sent a shiver down your spine to think of what Cazador might do with all that power. You were so immensely grateful that the mind flayers had kidnapped you and Astarion and dropped you into each other’s arms.

“We can’t let Cazador complete the ritual,” you said finally. “He could unleash terrible horrors.”

Astarion chuckled humorlessly. “The end of my life amongst them.” He exhaled slowly and nuzzled into your hand on his cheek. “Just when I was starting to enjoy it.” He took your palm and kissed it, before his eyes settled on some unseen object in the distance. “He’ll never leave me alone,” he continued. “I didn’t think he would when I was one more wretched toy for him to play with. But if I’m the key to this power he craves, he’ll hunt me to the ends of Faerûn.”

“What do you want to do?” you asked calmly, squeezing his hand once more. 

He sighed, the slightest smile playing on his lips, his eyes incredibly soft as they bore into your own. Then his brow knit together. “I need to take the fight to him.” He stepped closer to you, brushing some hair behind your ear. “And I need you… to help me.”

“Of course I’ll help you,” you said almost immediately. You smiled, your voice taking on a half teasing, half serious tone: “We’ll hunt him down and kill him.”

You weren’t able to add anything else, because suddenly Astarion’s lips were crushed against yours, his hands tangled in your hair. You let out a surprised yelp before meeting his tempo with equal passion and desperation. 

He murmured something against your lips.

You pushed lightly against his chest, laughing. “What?”

“I want to live,” he repeated, seemingly out of breath. 

“Of course you want to live, you’re alive,” you smiled up at him, running a hand through his hair. “In all the ways that matter, I mean.” You wiggled your eyebrows at him, clearly trying to be suggestive.

He rolled his eyes. “No, you insufferable woman, I’m referring to something Shadowheart said.”

You wracked your brain, trying to remember a time when Shadowheart had expressed wanting to live to either you or Astarion. Not that she was having trouble on that front. But nothing came to mind.

“When did she say that?”

Astarion led you over to the bedroll laid out next to the still burning brazier. He pulled you to sit down across from him. 

“While you were dying,” he said softly, refusing to look at you. “Or, while you were sleeping, I suppose, since you’re still with us.”

“Okay, so while I was dying, Shadowheart was reflecting on how unlucky I was and how she wanted to continue living?”

Astarion flicked your nose.

“Ow!” you laughed, rubbing the appendage. 

“This is it,” he said flatly. “I’m trying to have the conversation.”

Your eyes widened. “Okay,” you said, trying to reel in what you were sure was a stupid giddy grin on your face.

“Look,” he tried again, taking your hands in his. “I had a plan. A nice, simple plan - seduce you, sleep with you, manipulate your feelings so you’d never turn on me.”

“I don’t think this is accomplishing what you want it to,” you said, tilting your head questioningly.

“No, you’re right.” He looked up as if asking the gods for help. “I thought it would be easy. Instinctive. I thought that habits from two hundred years of charming people would kick in. And while they did work swimmingly,” his expression melted into one of easy seduction that made you laugh lightly, “you ended up charming me. Much to my dismay.”

“Aw shucks.”

He said your name, his tone laced with annoyance. “Honestly, darling. Could you withhold your snarky comments while I try and get this out?”

You mimed locking your mouth with a key.

Then you unlocked it. 

“Sorry.”

And relocked it.

Astarion sighed and scooched forward, the tops of his knees making contact with your own. “You really aren’t making this easy for me.” He rubbed his thumb soothingly along the back of your hand, despite his complaints. 

You shrunk back a little into your shoulders, smiling sheepishly at him.

He chuckled. “While you so graciously nearly died on all of us, Shadowheart decided it was a good time to talk to me about my, blech, feelings.”

“Brave.”

“Darling.”

“Sorry.”

“Anyway, it was then that Shadowheart told me that I was ready to see the world burn before I saw you get hurt. And she was right. If anything had happened to you that couldn’t be undone, I don’t think I could have come back from that.”

You smiled at him, feeling your insides go all mushy with adoration.

Astarion fidgeted with your hands in his. “She also said something I wasn’t expecting.”

He paused briefly, almost as if willing you to interrupt him again and distract him from what he felt so vulnerable saying. 

“Go on,” was all you offered.

He exhaled.

“She told me that I was allowed to love you.”

You bit your lip and felt your eyes go misty. 

Of course he was allowed! After two hundred years of torture and isolation, the man before you deserved nothing more than to feel love and be loved in return. The fact that he’d been holding himself back from his own happiness and comfort made your heart ache a little.

You allowed him to continue on his own. 

“She said that heartbreak is a part of life. And while I’ve known far more heartbreak than any one person should ever experience in multiple lifetimes, she’s right.”

He looked at you earnestly in the eye, shyness playing at his features.

“I don’t want to be afraid anymore. I want to live.”

You squeezed his hands a little nervously, ignoring the way your palms were clammy against his cool ones.

“Meaning?”

“Meaning you deserve to be loved. Just as you’ve shown love to me.”

He leaned in close, resting his forehead softly against yours.

“I love you,” he whispered. Then added, “You atrocious woman.”

You laughed, a tear running down your cheek. “I love you, too, you beautiful, wonderful, terrible man.”

You threw your arms around his neck and pinned him to the bedroll, nuzzling your face into his neck, taking in his scent and letting all of him wash over your senses. You didn’t want to forget a single moment of this. 

“You do?” he asked softly, staring up at the ceiling above you blankly. 

You sat up on your elbows and looked down at him. “What about anything I’ve said and done in the past few weeks has made you think that I wasn’t already head over heels in love with you?”

Astarion’s face broke out into a massively giddy grin. He held a hand to his forehead and laughed in disbelief. “I don’t know!” he exclaimed. “You get so used to being alone that it starts to feel like that’s all you’ll ever be. I scarcely thought I’d find a bard on a dilapidated beach foolish enough to want to know me and not run away screaming when she did.”

“There’s still time,” you teased.

“Ha ha,” he rolled his eyes affectionately. 

Now it was your turn to rub your thumb along the back of his hand. “If I recall correctly, you just said I’ve shown love to you - If I made it that obvious, why are you still doubting how I feel?”

He sighed for what must have been the tenth time this evening. “It’s only that you could be with anyone at camp and you’re choosing to love me? The one who eats rats and bugs and kills people for pleasure?”

You kissed his cheek, down to the side of his mouth. “You’re also the silliest, sexiest, most remarkable man I’ve ever met. And I seem to remember saying the same thing to you back when we first slept together. That you could have anyone, but you’d chosen me. Why can’t I choose you in return?”

“Because you’re…” He searched for the words. “You’re incredible. And you deserve something real. What if I can’t give you that?”

You bent forward and kissed his mouth, hard. “Where’s my suave vampire? Who is this vulnerable mess in front of me right now?”

Astarion rolled his eyes. “‘Vulnerable,’ sure. ‘Mess?’ Hardly.”

“There he is,” you smiled and kissed him again.

“I mean it though,” he said between kisses. “You deserve something real. I want us to be something real.”

“This is real,” you murmured. “I love you,” you kissed his jaw, “I love you,” you kissed his throat, “Astarion,” you pulled back to look at him with eyes full of devotion, “I’m in love with you. And there’s nothing you can do to change that.”

He seemed dazed, watching you with half lidded eyes. He smiled like a dope. “There’s still time,” he teased. 

You laughed and kissed his mouth deeply. “You’re who I’ve dreamed of meeting since I was a little girl. Someone to see me, and laugh with me, and make me feel like I’m the only one for you.” You pushed a hand to his lips before he could make a sarcastic comment. “Yes, I know you’ve been with thousands of other people, but I haven’t. And yet, you’ve made me feel like I’m the only one who ever mattered to you.”

He smiled softly. “You are,” he confirmed. “I’ve never felt for anyone what I feel for you. None that I can remember at least. But as far as I know, you’re the only one who’s ever cared for me and truly meant it. Yes, you make dumb comments at the most inopportune times, you’re loud and obnoxious, your bleeding heart gets this group into far more trouble than we ever would have without you-”

“Gee, thanks.”

“-and I love every bit of it. You make me laugh, you never make me feel small or worthless for the things that have happened to me or that I’ve had to do in my past, and,” he cleared his throat, deeply embarrassed to be admitting all of this, “you bring out the best in me.”

“Aw-”

“If you say ‘aw shucks,’ I will kill you.”

“You will not.”

“I will not.”

He kissed you instead. 

You wrapped your arms around his neck, pulling him in close. “I care about you. Deeply.” 

He smirked at you. “Oh, really?”

“I swear,” you whispered in his ear, “you’ll never know a lonely day again. Not as long as I’m around. I adore you. I love you.”

Astarion’s breath hitched in his throat. “You… you’re full of surprises, aren’t you?”

“Get used to it,” you brushed your fingertips against the tip of his ear. “You’re never getting rid of me now.”

“Blast!” he chuckled. “And here I thought a grand love confession from a gorgeous vampire would send you running for the hills.”

“You would think that, wouldn’t you?” you laughed. 

He laughed again, a gentle exhale from his nose, and unwrapped your arms from his neck to hold your hands in his once again. He fidgeted with the ring on your pinky. “Honestly,” he said softly, “I have no idea what we’re doing. Or what comes next.” He raised your hands to his mouth and kissed across your knuckles. “But I know that this,” he leaned his forehead into yours and kissed the tip of your nose, “this is nice.”

“You’re nice.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Actually, darling, you’ll find that I am not.”

You smiled. “Shhh, let me enjoy this brief delusion.” 

“With pleasure,” he smirked and bent forward to kiss you deeply. He placed his arms around you and lowered you so that you landed gently on the bedroll beneath you and redirected his attention to nipping and sucking around the bruises on your neck from where he’d fed the night before. 

You sighed happily, wrapping your arms around his back, and rubbing your hands up and down his shirt soothingly. 

“I love you,” you whispered, still enamored by the taste of the words on your tongue.

Astarion moaned and dragged his teeth up towards your ear. “Again.”

“I love you,” you whimpered as he bit your earlobe. 

His hips gave an unconscious roll against yours and you felt him already becoming hard in his pants. You lifted your head to gain his attention and raised your eyebrows.

“Here?”

He shrugged. “We’ve done it in the dirt before, a Temple to the Goddess of Darkness is quite the step up.”

You looked around skeptically. “You don’t think she’s watching, do you?”

Astarion rolled his eyes. “Don’t be ridiculous, what’s so special about one temple dedicated to her here out of the thousands littering Faerûn.”

You bit your lip. “But this one is surrounded by shadows.”

He tilted his head to the side. “Please, I was surrounded by shadows for two hundred years and her eyes never fell upon me specifically.”

“Or so you think.”

“Darling.”

You smiled sheepishly. “You’re probably right.”

Astarion preened. “Of course I’m right. Now please, I’ve never made love to someone before.” He leaned forward to kiss you again but you pulled back with a laugh. 

“‘Never?”

His lips were still puckered, prepared to kiss you, but he blew out a raspberry instead, blowing the curl that hung freely on his forehead away from his face. “I’ve decided I hate you, actually.”

You threw your head back and laughed. “You’re the one who told our friends you made love to me literally the morning after we first slept together.”

Astarion waved his hand dismissively through the air. “I didn’t know what I was saying.” He rolled his hips against yours again, harder now, despite his supposed hatred towards you. “Please love, it’ll be so much better now.”

You rolled your hips in tandem with his, making Astarion hang his head and hiss. “It’s been pretty good before.”

“Well, of course it has, I’m excellent. I wouldn’t let a partner suffer, it’s not in my blood.” 

You rolled your eyes playfully. “But…”

“But,” he said more soberly, “you’re the first person I actually…” He paused on the word. 

“Go on,” you encouraged. 

He met your eye. “...love.” He held your gaze for a moment before continuing. “Last night was one of the most amazing nights of my life because of how loved I felt by you and hopefully, the feeling was reciprocated.” He sent you a small smile, which you returned with an excited and over-the-top nod. “But I think that the fact that I am completely and desperately in love with you is what made it feel wonderful as opposed to… tainted.”

You pursed your lips and attempted to make him smile again. “Are you insulting my skills now?”

He laughed. “No, sweet girl, you were and are marvelous.” He leaned in closer, lowering his voice to something low and breathy. “And I’d like to give it another go.”

You gave him a seductive half smile. “Then give it to me, dummy.”

Astarion lunged forward, laying you flat on your back and devouring your mouth with his own. “Oh, my love,” he moaned against your lips, “you’re all I’ve ever wanted.”

Your heart soared at the compliment, and you chased his lips as he pulled away to look at you with sparkling ruby eyes. 

“I’ve been looking for someone like you my whole life,” you admitted when he bent to drag his fangs along your neck again. 

“I doubt that,” he chuckled, nipping lightly at your skin for good measure. “But do go on,” he urged, spurring you with a roll of his hips, “what were you looking for?”

You sighed happily and wrapped your ankle around his. “Well, I already told you I wanted someone to laugh with, that’s big.”

“We’ve never laughed together,” he licked your ear.

“Not once,” you giggled. “But, I don’t know. You’re no knight in shining armor.”

“Certainly not.”

“And you never sing with me.”

“Nor will I ever.”

“And quite honestly, you’re a little frightening.”

“Thank you, darling!” “But despite it all, you’re kind.” He scowled at your words, but softened when you kissed his nose. “You care about me and the things I care about.” You stopped him before he could argue. “And don’t disagree with me, you stole a lute for me. You fought with Rolan-”

“Who?”

“-when he was being unreasonable and wouldn’t listen to me. And you nursed me back to health when there were honestly better people at camp who were far more equipped to heal me than some vampire rogue.”

“And I did a bang up job.”

“You did,” you laughed and kissed him sweetly. “And now, I can’t imagine my life without that vampire rogue.”

He kissed you again, gently massaging his fingers through your hair and across your scalp. “Then stay with me,” he murmured.

“For as long as you’ll let me,” you responded, meeting his eye with a fierce look that conveyed your sincerity. “And longer.”

One of his hands drifted down your sides and started playing with the ties on your pants. 

“May I?” he asked. 

“Only if you return the favor.”

He smirked and pulled his shirt over his head, folding it neatly and slipping it under your head for extra support. He kissed your cheek before running his hands under your shirt and squeezing your breasts playfully. 

“Honk,” you said, thinking yourself funny.

“You’re not funny,” he said flatly, though his smile betrayed him. 

“You love me, so you have to think I’m funny.”

���Are those the rules?” 

“You’re the lawyer, you tell me.”

By now, he’d removed your bra and taken one of your nipples gently into his mouth. “Mmm-mm-mmm,” he attempted to correct, though he continued sucking the hardened pebble incoherently. 

“Lawyer, magistrate, what’s the difference?” you asked breathily.

Astarion came up for air. “I have neither the time, nor the patience to explain, but know that you are wrong, and I still love you.” He took your other breast into his mouth, biting down a little harshly, and making your back arch. 

“Whatever you say, handsome,” you sighed, rubbing at the tips of his ears and making him moan against your skin. 

“Whatever I say, huh?” He looked up at you mischievously. 

You rolled your eyes. “It’s an expression.”

“You’ll let me have you tonight,” he said, resting his cheek on your breast like a pillow.

You stroked your hands through his hair. “A given.”

“You’ll let me drink from you,” he added, before tacking on a sheepish “please.”

“Of course, my love.”

He sighed and closed his eyes, his brows furrowing in thought. “And,” he said, looking back at you with a shy expression, “and you won’t leave me, once this is all over.”

Your eyes widened. “Oh, Astarion,” you cupped his cheek. “No. No sweet boy, I won’t ever leave you. Not today, not tomorrow, not ever.”

He made a whining sound from the back of his throat. “You say that now, but what if we can’t beat Cazador? What if I return to his thrall?”

“We won’t let that happen,” you reassured. “Believe me, that fucker was dead the moment I met you. Not a chance he survives this.”

Astarion let out an amused exhale. “I appreciate your enthusiasm, my love, but Cazador will not be easy to kill. Especially now that we know about his dastardly ritual.”

You moved your hands from his hair to start rubbing soothingly up and down his back. “You are the missing piece, Astarion. He can’t come into his power unless you’re there. And with all of us at your side, we won’t let him take you.”

Astarion looked up at you skeptically, but saw how determined you looked and softened, pressing his lips to the swell of your breast. 

“Thank you,” he muttered, resting his cheek back against your skin. 

“I fear the mention of your former slaver has dampened the mood.”

Astarion chuckled. “What gave you that idea?”

“Let’s see if I can’t help,” you said, wiggling your hips beneath his, both of you still clothed from the waist down. “Hmm…”

“Hmm…” Astarion mimicked you, idly rubbing his thumb across your right nipple. 

“Star jasmine.”

Astarion raised an eyebrow. “Um, it’s pronounced, ‘Ah-star-ee-on.’”

You shoved him and he laughed. “No, idiot. We’ll have star jasmine growing on the side of our house.”

“Who, ‘we?’ You and me, ‘we?’”

You rolled your eyes. “Yes, obviously.”

“Oh.” Astarion looked pleased. “What else?”

“We’ll live in the Upper City.”

“Staying in Baldur’s Gate, are we?”

“Shush, this is my fantasy.”

He chuckled. “Go on, then.”

“It’ll be in a nice quiet corner of the city. Exclusive to all but the finest of citizens.”

Astarion nodded, fiddling with the ends of your hair. 

“You’ll be a renowned tailor and have a shop downstairs.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Oh, will I? And who says I won’t want to live a quiet life, ravishing my beloved all day?” He kissed your breast again and dragged his fangs along the plump flesh. 

You shivered. “We need to make money, somehow,” you said shakily. 

“And you expect me to be the breadwinner? Selfish little thing, aren’t you?” He continued dragging his fangs along your chest. 

“I’ll be performing at prestigious parties all around town,” you clarified, tightening your hands into his curls. “And you’ll get bored if you’re not terrorizing patriars. What better way than with overpriced, yet exquisite garments? I’ve seen your embroidery.” 

“Dextrous fingers and flowers made of thread does not a tailor make,” Astarion pointed out, nipping playfully at your nipple and moving his dexterous fingers to your still clothed core. “And besides,” he purred, circling your clit, “I’ll want to see my lovely little songbird in action every once in a while.”

You gasped at a particularly delicious rub of his fingers. “Two income households are quite common these days,” you argued, wanting to maintain the fantasy you were making up on the fly. 

“And who’s to say,” Astarion said, kissing just above your naval, “that we won’t become fabulously wealthy on this journey of ours?”

“Fine,” you conceded, “then we’ll live in a mansion in the countryside. Overlooking the Sword Sea.”

“Think bigger, darling,” he massaged your hips, rolling his pelvis into yours, making you aware how hard he still was. “The love of my life deserves a palace erected in her honor.”

You snorted and he pinched your sides. 

“Erected,” he repeated, seeing your eyes crinkle in mirth. “Gods you are a child,” he muttered, before kissing you fiercely. “And I love you very much. Stupidly.”

“Okay, loverboy,” you laughed, “what do you expect our future to look like?” You smoothed some of his curls behind his ears and absorbed the soft look in his eyes. 

“Hmm,” he mused, kissing your neck. “Well, I’ve lived in a rather decrepit crypt of a palace for the last two hundred years, so maybe a palace is out.”

You nodded, absentmindedly tucking your thumbs into his waistband and massaging the bare skin found beneath. “Alright, palaces are off the list.” 

“An estate, then,” he stated, kissing your bare shoulder. “Somewhere we can throw fabulous balls and gossip about the debauchery of our esteemed guests.”

“I like that,” you sighed, as he licked up your throat. “An estate with sprawling grounds, a notably vast library, and secret rooms around every shadowy corner.”

“You’ve been reading too many books, my love,” he chuckled, kissing your jawline.

“And with my notably vast library, I’ll read even more,” you said. “And you’ll read to me.”

Astarion pulled back to grin at you. “Will I?”

You nodded. “I adore your voice. It lilts like a melody.”

He laughed airly. “You flatter me.”

“I love you,” you shrugged, by way of explanation. 

“And I, you,” he smiled. Then his face fell. “Oh gods, is it going to be mushy like this all the time now?”

You laughed again and playfully smacked the side of his head. 

“I jest, love,” he chuckled, shockingly not complaining about you swatting at his curls. “I adore you. May I have you now?” His fingers slipped delicately into your own waistband.

You nodded, your eyes never leaving his. “Please.”

In one graceful motion that you’d come to expect, Astarion removed both your pants and underthings in one go. 

He inhaled deeply. “You smell divine, my sweet.” His fingers swept through your folds, making you jolt at their sudden coolness. “And you’re nearly wet enough to take me already.”

“I like thinking about our future,” you admitted. “I like picturing you happy.”

“Blech,” Astarion stuck out his tongue in mock disgust, but began to circle your clit slowly with his thumb. “Tell someone you love them, and suddenly they picture you happy.”

You attempted to inch your hips closer to his hand. “You like being happy, admit it.”

“Never,” he growled, leaning forward to kiss you again. “But I suppose I like you.”

“I knew it,” you teased, closing your eyes with a blissed out smile as he inserted a finger into your dripping hole.

“Blue,” he said, pumping his finger into you. 

“Yellow,” you responded breathlessly. “What are we talking about?”

“I was also thinking yellow,” he smiled, as if that response made any sense. 

“Great! What are we talking about?”

“The estate, darling,” Astarion rolled his eyes. “I think blue for the sky and yellow for the sun would be quite a pleasant theme as opposed to the wretchedly dark crimsons, greens, and golds found in Cazador’s mansion.”

“Ah,” you whined as he inserted another finger. “Sounds… sounds like the winter solstice all year round.”

“Trust me, darling, there was never any joy or festivities to be had in that loathsome place.”

“Our house,” you said, squeezing your eyes shut to focus on your words, “will be full of nothing but joy.”

“I was afraid you’d say that,” Astarion teased, lowering himself to suck on your clit. 

You gasped loudly and thrust your hands into his hair. He lapped at your folds, never removing his fingers, and sucked viciously at your bundle of nerves. 

“We’ll hold dinner parties,” you sighed, “all the time. If only so you can flaunt our wealth.”

Astarion moaned into your core, bumping his nose against your clit as he licked you up and down. 

Your hands tightened in his hair. “We’ll wear the finest clothes, sleep in the finest bed, make love in the finest bed- ah!”

Astarion pulled you closer to his face, a possessive rumbling low in his chest. 

“I’ll hold you in my arms at night and never let you go,” you dragged your nails down his back.

“Please,” he mumbled against your sensitive skin. 

“W-want that?” you asked as he returned to sucking your clit. “We-we’ll stay in bed, ah- for as long as you like. No expectations to go a-anywhere so do anything. We’ll be f-free.”

The vampire moaned loudly, pumping his fingers extra harshly and hitting the spongy spot inside you that had you seeing stars. 

“Oh Astarion!” you wailed, throwing an arm over your eyes and twisting your free hand into his hair again. “I love you.”

“Then come, damn you,” he whined, squeezing your hip.

“Trying,” you laughed. “Faster.” 

He hummed an affirmation, swirling your clit around with the tip of his tongue and pumping into you harshly. 

“I can’t wait,” you said, feeling the knot in your stomach about to burst, “for our future together.”

Astarion groaned against you, sucking your clit harshly and petting your hip with the hand that wasn’t currently thrusting into you. “I love you, my darling,” he said softly.

The dam broke and you were wailing his name, crying out for him to stay with you and never let you go. 

Astarion for his part, released you from his mouth and continued fingerfucking you through your climax with sweet words: “You are so beautiful, darling. My love. My beloved, so good for me. Staying with me forever. I’m never letting you go, sweet girl.”

You came down with a shuddering sigh, gasping for breath and pulling at Astarion’s shoulders to bring his mouth to yours. 

“Astarion,” you whined.

He mimicked your name in a mocking version of how you’d just whined his. “What is it?”

“I need you.”

He smirked. “A man could get used to shattering one's world, only to have them beg for more.”

“I’m not begging,” you clarified. “I want you, but only if you want me.”

Astarion’s eyes shifted from amused to adoring. He kissed you sweetly. “Oh course I want you, darling. You’re the only one I’ll ever want.”

You sighed, loving this mushy side of him. “Fuck me, then, won’t you?”

He growled, showing off his fangs playfully. “With pleasure,” he said, reaching for his pants and removing them quickly. 

His cock hit his stomach, achingly pink at the tip and weeping precum. 

“Wait,” you said, watching him take himself into his hand and gently begin to stroke himself. “Are you hungry?”

He threw you a wicked grin. “Famished, my love.”

You tilted your head, revealing your throat to him. “I’m all yours.”

He climbed on top of you, nuzzling into your neck with his beautifully sculpted nose. ”Thank you,” he said, dragging his lips across your skin before biting down at your pulse point. 

You inhaled sharply, the icy familiarity of his fangs in your throat sending a pang through your entire body, right down to your core. Unconsciously, Astarion rolled his hips against yours, bumping the head of his cock against your clit. You moaned loudly, making him grunt against your neck. 

“We’ll make love in every room of the estate,” you sighed. “On every possible surface.”

Astarion nipped your ear with a growl before returning to your blood. 

“Our guests will have no idea we fucked on the lounge in the drawing room.”

“Mmm.” 

“On the desk in the study.”

“Mmm.”

“On the very table where they dine with us.”

Astarion gave a gasping breath as he pulled away from your throat and kissed you feverishly. You matched his vigor, reaching down and taking his cock into your hand, pumping it slowly, spreading his precum down the length of him, and feeling how your blood already added to the warmth and hardness of him. 

“Did you get enough?” you asked innocently against his lips.

He licked into your mouth, still tangy with the taste of your blood. “It’ll never be enough,” he said lowly, squeezing his eyes shut as your hand picked up the pace on his length, “but, ah, it’s enough for now.”

You smiled, using your free hand to wipe your blood from the corner of his mouth. “Is it time to make love?”

He sighed dramatically, flipping his hair out of his eyes before staring down at you with a smirk. “Yes, my dearest, I would like that very much.”

“So would I,” you said, wrapping your arms around his neck.

Astarion kissed you softly as he took himself into his hand and lined himself up at your entrance. He searched your face briefly, finding nothing but love and anticipation.

Still, he asked.

“Ready, darling?”

You smiled at him, hoping the small act conveyed all the devotion you could possibly lend to another being in this world. 

“Yes.”

He pushed into you slowly, cooing at your mild wince. 

“You always do so well for me, love, and you feel so good, wrapped around me so snuggly.”

You raked your nails down his back, softening down to your fingertips when you came in contact with the raised skin you found there. 

“No need to be gentle, my sweet,” he said conspiratorially, “I’ve told you, they don’t hurt anymore.”

He pulled back slightly and observed the look in your eye, your gaze locked on something just past his shoulder, knowing that you were thinking about his scars, rather than focusing on him in this moment.

That wouldn’t do.

He bent and kissed the side of your mouth. “Can I tell you what I picture?”

You blinked and your gaze returned to his. “Of course.”

He paused briefly to make sure you were comfortable, before pulling back and snapping his hips forward again. 

“You, obviously.”

You smiled. “I made the cut? How sweet.”

“Yes, it was a tight race between you and Wyll for a minute there, I won’t lie.”

You laughed and Astarion preened, thrilled to see the joy return to your eyes. He snapped his hips into you again, eliciting a surprised moan from your lips. 

“Truthfully though, darling, as much as I’d love to flaunt our love from the most luxurious estate on the Sword Coast,” he kissed your jawline in time with his lethargic thrusts, “I think I’d prefer your quaint little idea.”

You’d closed your eyes and bliss, but opened them again, not sure you’d heard him correctly. “You mean the house in the Upper City?”

His mouth ticked up at the corner. “Yes, my dear.” He leaned down to lick at the fresh wound on your neck, and thrust into you firmly. 

“But, ha,” you exhaled, wiggling your hips in an attempt to get him deeper inside of you, “the sprawling estate? The grand dinner parties? Your fancy balls?” You made to reach for his balls, but he swatted you away. 

He laughed out your name. “I’m serious, love.” He kissed across your chest, allowing you to slowly run your fingers through his curls. “I’ve lived enough of my life in a vast palace with dark halls and looming shadows and it all felt… incredibly empty. I’d rather have a home. With you.”

You felt your eyes go misty for the second time tonight and looked away from his face. “But…” you said, grasping at anything to keep you from shedding a tear and possibly ruining the moment, “you’re the one who said to think bigger. And the estate would never be empty, there would be people over all the time.”

Astarion stopped kissing your chest to look you in the eye. “Is that what you want?”

You sniffled softly. “I want what you want.”

“Darling girl, are you crying?” Astarion immediately paused his motions and cupped both of your cheeks in his cool hands.

“I’m trying not to,” you giggled, shakily. 

“Did I say something wrong?”

You laughed more loudly, and shook your head, a tear escaping your eye and rolling down your face to kiss Astarion’s thumb. 

“No, Astarion, it’s just… I want to build a home with you too. I’d be happy anywhere you are. I love you.”

Astarion grinned and kissed you, rolling his hips and making you both whine into each other’s mouths. 

“Picture with me for a moment, darling,” he said, thrusting into you again, “the little house in the Upper City… scratch that, it would be the biggest house on the block.”

You laughed. “That goes without saying.”

“Our home would be filled to the brim with possessions. Things that belong to us.”

“Like, ah-” you panted in time with one of his thrusts, “-like what?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Astarion shook his head, his cheeks the faintest of red from exertion. “Jewels, perhaps? Gold, obviously. Whatever we want! We’ll buy and take it all.”

“Emphasis on ‘take,’” you teased.

“Oh absolutely,” Astarion smirked, bringing his fingers to his mouth and wetting them before bringing them down to your clit. “There’d be multiple guest rooms for us to make love in, a reading room, a nursery, a quaint little kitchen, perhaps a study for when I’m feeling rather grandiose-”

“Wait,” you sat up suddenly, making Astarion freeze and stare at you with terror in his eyes.

“What? What is it, what happened?” He searched your eyes and brought his hands to your cheeks. 

You furrowed your brow. “What did you say?”

“Which part?”

“I don’t know, you were talking a lot, and you were making me feel so good, but you said-”

“Oh, my study? Well, I suppose we can share it, darling. Though I’d expect to be able to go in there to brood occasionally.”

“No, before that.” You laid back down gently, and he didn’t take his eyes off you the entire time. “Did you say ‘nursery?’”

“Did I?” Astarion looked vaguely embarrassed. “I suppose I did.”

You tried to keep your face neutral. “Do you want kids someday, Astarion?”

The vampire gave his hips a gentle roll within you. “I don’t know…” he admitted. “But with the way you act around those tiefling children, I’d imagine you want to be a mother. And I’d be lying if I said the image didn’t do anything for me.”

You smiled softly at his suggestive eyebrows. “I do love kids. I told you they usually make up the best audiences.”

Astarion rolled his eyes. “Ugh, I don’t know how you put up with all the mess and screaming and excessive energy.” 

You shrugged, rolling your hips this time and making him huff out a small whine. “If you don’t want children, that’s fine. I still love you. That won’t change.”

Astarion looked back down at you with a slightly gooey smile. “Oh, but darling, you love children. And imagine how perfect our child would be. My good looks and charming personality, mixed with your… I don’t know… humor? I guess, if that’s what you want to call it.”

You smacked his arm and he laughed. 

“Whatever children we’d have would absolutely adore you, I hope you know,” you said, reaching forward to grab his hips in a possessive manner you rarely showed. 

Astarion looked at your hands and raised an eyebrow at you. “Would they?” he asked, the uncertainty in his tone betraying his attempt at being suave. 

“Of course they would,” you said, sitting up again. You pushed him back gently, causing him to pull out of you completely. “Lie down,” you gestured to his rolled up shirt you’d been using as a pillow. 

He gave you a questioning look, but obliged. He slowly lowered himself down as you climbed on top of him. 

“Imagine, if you please,” you said, hovering above his cock and taking it into your hand gently. You pumped your own slick down his shaft, making him throw his head back in bliss. “Our home, full of love. Full of joy. Full of our possessions. Full of your possessions.”

You slowly lowered your heat onto him, taking him in slowly, and causing you both to hiss out in satisfaction. 

“Imagine filling me up to the brim,” you bagan to bounce on your knees, “full of you and only you, and creating something that’s purely us.”

“Us,” Astarion breathed, taking your breasts into his hands, “I still love the sound of that.” 

You bent forward to kiss him deeply, rolling your hips to get him to hit just the right spot within you, making you gasp against his mouth. 

“You’d make a wonderful father,” you murmured. “That child would be yours and you’d spoil them everyday with attention and sweets and some misguided but well intentioned gifts.”

Astarion chuckled while brushing a loose curl out of his face. “I’m not going to give the baby a knife, my sweet.”

You gave him a sarcastic, disbelieving look, and he laughed louder. 

“Not right away, at least!”

You kissed him again, slamming your hips against his playfully in a way that had you both moaning. 

The two of you remained quiet for a moment, save for the sound of your skin slapping against his, mixed with your labored breathing and moans of pleasure.

“D-darling,” he panted, digging his nails into your hips, “I’m not even sure if giving you a child is possible with… with my condition.”

Astarion looked at you with a fear you’d never seen before. You cupped his cheeks and rubbed your thumb along his cheekbone. 

“Astarion, my love, I swear to you that it would be okay. We would be okay.”

“But I want that,” he said, a bit childishly. “I want to see you round with my child. I want to see our babe supping from your breast and sucking their thumb for comfort. I want something that’s mine. That’s ours, together. Something I can proudly show the world that I helped make. Something good for once.”

You slowed your hips again and kissed him softly. “You are not defined by what you can offer the world, my love. You’re allowed to live now. You can figure out who you are and what you want.” Astarion nodded, grabbing your hand in his and kissing your palm. “Besides,” you continued, “bringing a child into the world while we have worms in our heads seems like the number one offense of negligent parents in the making. We have plenty of time to figure it all out.”

Without warning, Astarion pulled you off of him, scooped under your ass and flipped you around so you were on your back, and he was on top of you once more. 

“Then for now, let’s pretend I want to put a baby in you,” he snarled, licking the shell of your ear. You whimpered slightly and he chuckled. “Would you like that?”

“Yes,” you breathed, watching him line himself up with your entrance once more. 

“Good,” he said softly before slamming his cock into you and making you cry out in ecstacy. 

He started with a punishing pace, clearly desperate to reach his high and fill you with cum. 

“You want that, don’t you, my love,” he teased, squeezing your thigh before placing your calf on his shoulder. “You want to carry my child and be treated like a queen for doing so. You wouldn’t lift a finger under my watch, beloved. You’ll be carrying precious cargo and I’ll insist on doing everything for you.”

You laughed. “No, you won’t.”

“Shush, darling, this is my fantasy.”

You laughed again at his callback to your earlier joke, and let your eyes fall closed from the bliss of his cock pounding into your sopping wet cunt. 

“Our child would never know pain, if I could help it. They’d be the most spoiled child in the Gate. In Faerûn.”

“Gods help us,” you sighed, trying to make a joke, but feeling too good to commit fully. 

“You would be an absolute warrior of a mother,” he continued, paying wonderful attention to your clit. “So beautiful and patient and kind. I hope they'll look just like you.”

You opened your eyes and looked at your gorgeous lover. “Are you kidding? I hope they’ll look like you!”

“Darling-”

“You, Astarion, who haven’t seen your own reflection in nearly two hundred years? I hope they are your spitting image. The world deserves more beauty like yours.”

Astarion looked at you fondly, as if he might cry. “Oh,” he said quietly, his voice almost breaking, “then in that case, yes, I hope they look like me.”

You laughed, flinging an arm over your eyes, to which Astarion pulled your arm away. 

“I love your eyes,” he said sincerely. “Don’t hide.”

“I love you,” you responded. 

“I love you, too,” he said, nuzzling his nose against yours and picking up his pace again. “Why stop at just one?” he asked, pulling back and wrapping his hand around your calf resting on his shoulder. “We’ll fill the Gate with my spawn.”

“Don’t love that phrasing.”

“Figure of speech, darling.”

“Hmm, we’ll work on it.”

“If saying that is an attempt to keep me from bedding you every chance I get, then it won’t work,” he said, turning his nose up at you pompously. “I intend to bed you whenever possible in our home, regardless of any guests we may have over, or children who might be in the next room.”

The thought of your hypothetical guests overhearing you made you moan.

Astarion grinned.

“Our little home won’t have a single surface where we won’t make love. Much like our country estate.”

You smiled, gasping as he circled your clit. “We’ll- we’ll have both?”

“I’ll need as many rooms available to me as possible to bed you, my love. And a place to escape the children.”

You lightly tapped your calf against the side of his head and he laughed. 

“Only joking my darling, those children aren’t escaping our watch, they’ll be far too clever on their own.”

“Ugh,” you moaned, “I love the thought of you with our children.”

“Go on,” he encouraged, thrusting into you again and again. 

“Reading them bedtime stories. Bandaging their wounds when they fall on the pavement. Bringing them soup when they don’t feel well.”

“Am I a single parent in this scenario?” he teased. “Where are you?”

“Watching you. Taking it all in and seeing the joy on your face when it hits you that you have something that’s completely yours.”

Astarion’s eyes melted and he leaned forward to kiss you harshly. 

“Come for me,” he said against your lips, “I want to feel you milking me for every last drop I have.”

“I love you,” you repeated.

“And I love you,” he smiled and kissed you again, crashing his hips into yours and making you cry out in pure bliss.

With a few more thrusts, the knot in your stomach finally released, and you came crashing over the edge, images of Astarion holding your child, feeding them a bottle, teaching them to read and write and hunt, filling the space behind your eyelids as you called out for him.

Astarion held you tightly in his arms as he pumped you full of his spend, cooing sweet nothings as he went.

“Oh, my darling, my love, my one and only, take it, take it all, it’s yours, someday we’ll have our family.”

Tears glistened in your eyes as you finally came down from your high. It only took a few seconds before Astarion was whispering your name repeatedly and coming down from his own high. He laid his head on your chest as he had earlier and you ran your hands through his hair.

“Making sure it takes,” he said, explaining why he hadn’t pulled out of you yet.

“Stay with me,” you wrapped your arms around his torso comfortingly. 

“Always,” he smiled, kissing the bare skin of your chest. 

“I do want all of that,” you said. “Our life in Baldur’s Gate. We can figure out how to achieve the rest later. Maybe Jaheira or Halsin will know something about vampire offspring.”

“Ugh, darling, must you mention the druids while my cock is still resting inside of you?”

You giggled. “Sorry.”

He brushed some loose hair out of your face affectionately. “I’d like that too, love. I realize now, I’ve never really had… anyone. Not really. Nothing that compares to you. But if you insist on loving and adoring me, I guess I’ll just have to allow it.” 

“I hate you.”

“You love me.”

“I do.”

Astarion hummed in amusement before his expression became more serious. “Once we kill Cazador and get these worms out of our heads, then that life shall be ours. I swear it.”

“We need to do something else first,” you pointed out. 

“And what’s that, my love?”

“Figure out a way out of this gaudy temple.”

“Ah yes. Fuck.”

~~~~~

Meanwhile, back at the Last Light Inn, Shadowheart yelped out in pain.

Isobel, having been freshly saved from the henchmen of Ketheric, ran to her side to examine her wounds.

“Everything alright, Shadowheart?” Wyll asked, pulling his rapier out of a downed Winged Horror.

“You don’t appear badly injured,” Isobel observed.

Shadowheart clutched her right hand to her chest. “It’s this blasted wound on my hand. Lady Shar is not pleased about something.”

Gale adjusted his robes. “Why do I have a strange feeling it has something to do with our missing teammates?”

Lae’zel groaned loudly, while Karlach merely laughed. 

“Nice.”

[xo2dee]

NOW LOADING. .

JJK MASTERLIST

OPIA/GOJO NSFW WEEK 2023 - DAY ONE: EXHIBITIONISM

PAIRING: Gojo Satoru x (Fem)Reader WARNINGS: MDNI/18+ ONLY. Exhibitionism, public sex, voyeurism, spit as lube, vaginal sex, rough sex, dirty talk, panty kink, creampie WORD COUNT: 5,906 SUMMARY: On a night out in the city, you're not exactly opposed to risk-taking. Or: Gojo and you fuck in an alleyway.

A/N: yes i know it says 2023 but most of this was posted back then on ao3 and i didnt feel like posting over here back then. but i changed my mind seeing as these qualify as oneshots as supposed to a linear story with multiple chapters, so i'll be posting all seven of these within the next week or so. pls enjoy!

Beneath the fluorescent lights and the shaking of the train, you felt it. Someone was staring at you, and with the dark lenses of his sunglasses over his eyes, you couldn’t really tell exactly where he was looking, or if it even was him looking at you. And being watched wasn’t necessarily new to you; or, really, when you were watched more than enough times to count by the man who had the ‘All-Seeing Eyes’, you got used to that particular feeling whether it was unwanted or not.

You didn’t mind it per se, but the lingering sensation was enough to make your eyebrow twitch and to run your tongue across your teeth in annoyance. It was always a nagging feeling – an itching crawling along your skin and tickling your nape whenever you knew someone was staring at you, and at first thought you figured it was him. He liked to look at you and liked to stare at you beneath either the shades of his sunglasses, or underneath the dark fabric of his blindfold, leading you to wonder at times if he was really looking at you, or if your senses were playing tricks on you.

Yet when it came to Gojo Satoru, anything was possible and he could’ve been looking everywhere at once.

(And while he liked to look at you in a way, which meant he didn’t necessarily like when someone else looked at you the same way.)

It was a rare night and you didn’t necessarily like taking subway trains, but when you wanted a more mundane night out with your boyfriend you’d take any offer you could. Ignoring the offhand comments about being able to take you anywhere without any waiting time, you wrangled Satoru into sightseeing the city with you, your arm hooked with his and kicking each other in the back of the legs for fun whenever you felt like teasing one another. He’d nagged a few times, effectively shutting up as he dragged you towards a sweets shop and got a total of six orders of dango (eating at least four and a half himself and leaving the rest for you), and when you wanted to move to a different part of Tokyo without randomly teleporting and remaining inconspicuous, you dragged him to wait on the next train to Shinjuku.

Which, in retrospect, probably wasn’t the best for his patience and easing any boredom, but when it was only you, him, and a couple of business men on their way home from work or just random tourists out and about, you figured it wasn’t that bad. Or so, you thought it wasn’t, until you began to feel that nagging feeling and peeked over at him from your phone to wonder if he was gazing at you, only to find Satoru facing completely forward with his lips set into a fine line and glasses covering any semblance that you could see of his eyes.

You leant forward into his space after pocketing your phone into your jacket, leg thrown casually over his own as his fingers curled into the fabric of your skirt to pull it down and pressed yourself against his arm. The nagging sense that someone was looking at you prickled your nape once more when you moved, ignoring it in favor of jabbing your fingers into Satoru’s side, “What’re you looking at?”

The corner of his lip twitched upwards for a moment, his head tilting to the side and it was then you felt his stare, practically seeing the blue through the lenses as he peered into your face. “Nothing important,” he answered, fingers twisting in the fabric of your skirt as he kept tugging it down – you supposed to keep any modesty for you.

You frowned at his tone, eyes glancing off to the side to the window behind you for a moment until you saw it – well, him. In the reflection you could stare freely, your spine tingling whenever you met the eyes of an onlooker you hadn’t noticed before openly ogling at you through the window behind your head. He wasn’t so open about it, sneaking peeks here and there, but it was clear as day at the time his eyes would gloss over whenever he got the sight of you and Satoru. Not so perverse… yet still enough to make you want to roll your eyes at the behavior; as well see the annoyance in Satoru’s posture.

Ah, that was his reason for the stiff legs and death grip on your skirt… It wasn’t unknown for Satoru to get jealous at times; nothing too ridiculous, just an arm thrown over your shoulders or his hand slipping down to grasp at your hip, but it was natural for him wanting to keep what was his, his. And nothing wrong with it, you felt the same, but you knew at times it was something silly to even feel a little green-eyed over.

Your frown lifted into a small smile, looking back to him and leaning close enough to him that your eyelashes kissed across his jawline and your lips were unreadable to the onlooker, “Don’t tell me: you’re mad he’s trying to look up my skirt?”

Satoru’s jaw locked once your words whispered across his skin, a fine eyebrow raising from underneath his glasses as you had to wonder if he was looking at you that time or still pinning the man with his eyes. His thumb smoothed down on your skirt in intervals; stimulating himself and jittering your nerves before he mumbled, “And you’re so nonchalant about this because…”

Lips pursing you casted another glance to the onlooker, realizing he wasn’t necessarily looking at you as much as he was looking at the both of you. Yeah, you figured it out, and if you weren’t someone who didn’t like to openly flaunt around with Satoru, or someone who didn’t necessarily like it when someone stared at you for so long, you probably would’ve been annoyed and grossed out. However, knowing he liked to stare at Satoru…

“Because maybe he’s eyeballing us both?”

His face twisted; nothing in disgust, but more genuine surprise and interest for your analysis. “For what?” his glasses slipped down, both iridescent eyes pinning you to your spot as you only shrugged with a coy grin and looked away as the subway came to a stop at your destination. A short ride; nevertheless, an interesting one that gave you a new coy idea whenever you felt the man’s gaze linger on you as you stood up before it widened in wonder whenever he took the sheer height of Satoru as he stood up as well.

Interesting.

You kept small smile on your face as Satoru’s fingers found your own, a “C’mon”, mumbled to you as he led you out of the underground subway station and into the night air of Shinjuku bustling with nightlife. Neither you or he said anything else about the matter, your steps falling in sync as you only began to sightsee (for yourself mainly) and speak randomly about mundane things. It weighed heavy in your mind however, flashbacks from intimate times before with Satoru making themselves known in your memories as the ordinary night you had wanted to have begun to twist into a want that began to throb beneath your naval and heat your cheeks.

It wasn’t until your palm started sweating in his own that the atmosphere changed, pulling his fingers and palm away from your own to instead thrown an arm over your shoulders, pulling you close and teasing you for the sweat before Satoru casted a glance from over his shoulder nonchalantly. A groan revibrated from his chest against your ear, wanting to look behind you to see whatever provoked such a reaction from him yet stopping short whenever Satoru’s pace picked up and his shoulder was too high up for you to look over.

“Of course…” he pulled you further into his side, your cheek pressing further into his chest, “Y’know, you attract the strangest men.”

“Yourself included?” you teased, tickling his side with your fingers before you gave another look back, lips pursing when you recognized the silhouette of the tourist on subway. In a normal situation you would’ve been creeped out; a guy following you around at night? Yeah, though you weren’t necessarily the most normal person around and had Satoru by your side, and you recognized the dilated pupils he had in the train of the same way yours had dilated whenever you thought back to the many sexual escapades you and Satoru had. And the way you’d never been caught… “What’s the matter, Satoru?” you asked breathily, a coil turning behind your naval whenever you caught his eye from under his lenses, “You can easily remedy this.”

“Well yeah, but I’m more wondering why you don’t seem the slightest bit disturbed,” he noted, fingers dancing across your shoulder as you caught the scent of the mint gum rolling around his teeth.

You shrugged, “I think you’re missing a better picture.”

“Elaborate.”

A light laugh escaped you as you both stopped outside of a narrowing alleyway, his hand falling off your shoulder as you instead reached for it with teasing fingers and a bite to your lip, “Remember that time Nanami almost caught us? You had to cover my mouth so he wouldn’t hear us –” Satoru opened his mouth to intercept, his head turning a fraction to the onlooker just feet behind you both, yet you continued with a squeeze of your hand, “ – but… I distinctly remember you got off from me getting off at the idea that someone might hear or see us.”

Under the orange glow of the streetlights, you could see the blush form; cheeks tinging pink as he recounted the memory with perfect clarity, a lick to his lips moments after and a hard swallow that made his Adam’s apple visibly bob. “Yeah… I remember that,” his hand rose, pulling his glasses off and flicking them closed before pocketing them with a certain heaviness in his eyes, “I remember it very well.”

Bingo.

“Or, y’know, when we were on top of the Tokyo Tower…”

“That’s still my favorite.”

“Or with your Infinity.”

“Hilarious.”

You rolled your eyes at his deadpan and rolled your neck around dramatically, “C’monnnn,” you pulled his hand, but he remained in his same spot, your eyes glinting around the shine of his hair,“Harmless fun? Besides…” you tip-toed closer to him, craning your neck to look up at him as your lips brushed his jawline, “don’t you like it when people know I’m yours?”

Satoru squinted at you, yet a slow expansion of his pupils spoke otherwise for his words. “You’re a… freak.”

You grinned and kissed his cheek, “You love it.”

“I do – God, I do.”

Satoru perked up afterwards, standing up straighter and fully twisting your fingers together as he pivoted sharply on his heel and began to pull you within the dark space of the alleyway. You smothered a giggle when the giddiness and love for the thrill began to welt up inside of you, squeezing his hand only once as you let yourself be dragged into the alley until you both got far enough to be hidden, yet not so completely covered by any eyes that strained hard enough.

Satoru stopped with heavy steps, hand slipping from yours with the slightest bit of apprehension along his expression whenever he turned back to you and towered over your figure, “You’re sure about this?”

A smile graced your face in spite of your roaring want, glad of his reassurance still coming into play. “I should be asking you…”

“Oh…” he looked around your face, hand coming up to stroke his chin as a self-satisfied smirk played across his lips, “Yeah, totally. We’ve done it before soooo…”

“Then we shouldn’t waste time.”

He moved as heartbeat sped up, fingers slipped under your chin, caressing your jaw softly as you smiled up at him before placing your own finger to his lips when he began to lean in for a kiss. You knew if you were going to do it so openly and so publicly, it’d have to be quick. His eyes glinted for a moment, a heaviness to them before meeting with your own as you shook your head, “And there’s no time for that…”

You drugged your words out with a simmering tone, only low enough his ears and only spoken in a way you knew he was familiar with.

Satoru was on you before you could blink, the fading streetlight bulb popping from an impulse of his cursed energy fluctuating out, and you could only realize milliseconds later that he’d been wanting you more than you had been wanting him during the night. His lips molded around your own, mouth crushing onto yours as your back hit the brick wall behind you and he locked your legs around his waist to keep you in his hold. Your clit throbbed trapped underneath your panties, something he was about to remedy for only but a brief moment as his slowly hardening cock pushed against your own want in a slow roll of his hips.

Your fingers dug into his shoulders the same time it happened, a moan trapped between teeth and tongue escaping you as he pushed you higher up against the wall, the brick scratching along your back as the distant sound of shoe scraping against concrete made you both freeze. Your eyes opened only momentarily, enough for Satoru to smack off of your lips with a pout settling on his own as his fingers dug until the bare flesh of your thighs and he called out nonchalantly to the Peeping Tom with a roll of his shoulders.

“Feel free to watch if ya want! But that’s all you’re getting!”

You gaped at his shamelessness, pressing your face into his shoulder with a laugh as his hands trailed up to squeeze your hips. Nearly wanting to kick your feet at the ridiculousness of it all, you could only feel your heart twist with adoration at the overall joy and humor you could share with Satoru; you supposed only you two would be able to snicker in each other’s faces at the idea of someone watching you two have sex… However, Satoru’s own shaking shoulders made you sober up a bit, turning your head to press a kiss to his jawline as you could only treasure carefree attitude he had through all the silliness you two would get into together.

The feeling of your lips on his jaw made him sigh, rolling his neck around until he got away from your face before diving into your own neck. A squeal bubbled out of you, nails digging into his biceps as he kissed your throat first with his teeth coming after that in a playful bite along where he knew a horde of veins sat. The feeling made you squeeze his waist with your thighs, a low throb making itself known once more as you wiggled around to press his dick anywhere near you could it get close to your clit. His own fingers clasped fully around your hips, hard enough to nearly crack his knuckles as his teeth released your flesh and his tongue smoothed over the bite to placate you.

A groan pushed past your lips, wiggling to try and push yourself higher and stow the heat in your stomach, “God, Satoru –”

“Hmm?” He was cheeky in the way he pressed his cheek into your own, flared hot and red with his inhales and exhales steadily growing in intervals and louder in volume.

You didn’t waste any time, cupping his face in your hands to pull his mouth back into your for a hard kiss as he released your hips, tapping his hands on your thighs in a sign for you to unwrap them from his waist. You obliged but only with confusion, jumping down from him as your messy kiss broke with a ‘smack!’, and trailing your hands along his shoulders for an explanation before he smirked and spun your body around expertly (like he’d done that particular move one too many times. Which he had).

Satoru hands found your hips again, walking you forward until you had to brace your hands against the brick wall and his front was pressed securely against your backside, the warmth he radiated generating goosebumps across your body as his treacherous hands moved up and squeezed your tits through your shirt. He relished in your sigh, chin falling onto your shoulder with a sigh as your back arched and your ass pressed into his crotch, “You’re the one who said we have no time.”

He rocked forward and you keened, nails scratching into the brick as his cock pressed up against your pussy and jolted your nerves, peeking at him behind your shoulder with a sly grin, “Yeah, I did, but I’m also waiting on you to get on with it.”

Satoru snorted, humorous and impatient at the same time as he abruptly pulled off of you, leaving you positioned against the wall before he bent down and reached underneath your skirt to snap your panties waistline against your skin. You rolled your eyes and knocked your foot into his calf, a snicker from him following as he leaned to press a chaste kiss to the back of your thigh with a soft bite, “The itsy-bitsy spider crawled up the water spout…”

Oh my God.

Leave it to Gojo Satoru to sing, ‘The Itsy-Bitsy Spider’ as his fingers crawled up your legs (like spiders, you guessed) to pull your panties down. You bit the inside of your cheek as they grew hotter, smothering a laugh as the absurdity you two were engaging in.

Satoru’s long fingers slipped into your panties, tugging them down as you arched your back and stood up on your tip-toes so that he could pull them down your legs and off of your feet. A breeze wisped around you without the comfort of your panties, pressing your thighs together to keep the warmth and wetness safe as you glanced behind you to watch him stuff your damp panties into his back pocket. You wanted to snark at him for it, however all words became lost when he upon you once more, a foot sliding in-between your own to kick your feet apart and slot his covered crotch against your bare pussy as his hand slid up your thigh to disappear underneath your skirt.

He seized your body with a light touch to your clit, whistling lowly into your ear at the clear evidence of your growing arousal with your knees buckling a fraction as his other hand moved back to palm at your breast and the two fingers dipped into your warmth began to slowly rotated atop your throbbing clit. The fire in your body grew, the fluids between your legs egging him on enough to move at a faster pace as you could only rock hips in time and push back against his cock to excite him further. The knot behind your naval began to spin, heat licking up your veins to the nerves on the top of your head at the expert way he could handle your body, a bite to your cheek a moment after your pussy drooled more and a long finger prodded at your opening.

Hips rocking forward to avoid him fingering you, you bent forward at the waist more to protrude your ass further and let your point get across. “No time,” you reminded him in a gasp, eyes glancing off towards the side and your cunt clenching in on nothing when you could see the shadow of the voyeur at the opening of the alleyway. Satoru only hummed, the noise vibrating in his chest through your back as he pulled away from you for moment, the sounds of his belt unlooping and unbuckling followed by the whine of his zipper.

“Then I guess we’re doing this the old fashion way.” There was humor in his voice, perhaps at your over eagerness to get him inside of you, and you had to whine when he was taking too long and you were missing his fingers. Satoru laughed softly, “Relax, baby,” a croon in your ear as a hand slithered up your spine, squeezing your nape softly before it curled over your shoulder with his palm out and awaiting, “Spit.”

Ah, he more than likely didn’t have enough precum or jerked himself off enough the lather himself up, a wry smirk creasing your face as you realized it really was like the ‘old fashion way’ whenever you two would have fast and rough quickies in places you shouldn’t have been. Regardless you ran your tongue across your teeth, rolling your tongue afterwards to produce enough saliva to spit into his awaiting palm. You did so, rolling your eyes at his quip of being overeager and patiently waiting for him to lather his cock up, the burning in your body beginning to ache in your spine and limbs for the rapid zealous want.

And, thankfully, he was back before you could miss him too much, the heat of cock sliding along your slit making your knees buckles and pushed onto him as he laughed and gripped himself to find your opening.

He was lethargic pushing his cock into you, a far cry from the oversensitive way his body coiled up and his manhandling against you, yet the slow press of himself inside of you had your thighs quivering, your cunt squeezing on his cock as he blew air through the cracks of his teeth. Biting your lip deemed well to keep your noises to the minimum, however once fully inside he pulled back out for a moment with one hand intertwining with the fingers of your own still placed on the wall, and within the next he wasted no time to harshly push himself back inside with the full expanse of his cock taking home into your cunt.

The loud moan you gave at the rough thrust was securely caught by his other hand, another one you blubbered into his palm captured as well as Satoru started a slow rock and push of his hips, his cock sliding deliciously in and out of your pussy in a way that made your cunt throb and squeeze to keep him inside. He grunted and widened his stance, your body bending further as it pushed him deeper and you drooled onto his hand with a muffled whine of his name.

His lips found your ear, husky yet with the tinge of that flippant attitude he liked to have, “As much as I wanna hear it, don’t wanna risk a peanut gallery –“ another grunt as he sped up just a fraction, the slide becoming easier due to your cunt producing more fluids and your spit lubed onto him, and you had to push back into him to get him to move faster. “One’s enough –”

You’d nearly forgotten about the onlooker, too engrossed with the man behind you and too obsessed with the coil of heat stoking itself in your body each time Satoru swung into you. The thought made you squeeze him a little too tight on him, a broken groan behind you sounding out as he stopped for a moment and removed his hand from your mouth and the other he folded his fingers over yours and pressed his knuckles into the brick. You heard a small crack from the brick, choosing to ignore it as you pushed your hips back into him, becoming frantic in your pace as the obscene sounds of your pussy reached your ears along with the new breathy moans since your mouth was no longer covered. Satoru fared no better, his breathing getting heavier and that nonchalant attitude slowly beginning to leave him as his hand followed the curve of your waist and his fingers found your clit once more.

Back bowing at the overstimulation, you moved, twisting yourself to the side to push one shoulder into the brick as your elbow bent and Satoru kept your hand held into his and one of your legs lifted upwards as you pressed it against the front of his body. Consequently, your cunt sucked him in deeper, the front of his pants soaked by then and you could only squeeze and sigh whenever he groaned particularly loud in a call of your name at the new position and began to move once more. It wasn’t too quickly at first, yet not gently either, crashing into you as he pressed onto your clit in rapid circles as well and your head could only begin to spin and your body could only follow his doing.

You could see his eyes at the new angle too, the iridescent blue seeming to glow in the dark as they traveled down the length of your body, settling on watching his cock disappear and reappear from your pussy before they moved back to watch your fucked out face. White teeth made an appearance when you met eyes once more as they bit into his bottom lip, his Adam’s apple bobbing with a hard swallow and his head tilting back, “You’re so pretty – fuck.”

The compliment made your cheeks warm; nevertheless you were getting your brains fucked out by your boyfriend, but him just complimenting you that mid-stroke and sounding all breathy while meaning it would always just have a different effect on you. The muscles in your body were beginning to coil, a carnal part of you begging for release as he thrusts sped up more, the slap of your skin against the small sliver of his own filling the alleyway along with the way your moans and cries morphed into heeding gasped that measure alongside the rhythm of his thrusting. A part of you longed to draw the sex out, yet with the way he was putting more and more pressure on your throbbing clit and the way his cock kissed the uttermost part of inside of you, you knew you wouldn’t last long.

And neither was he apparently.

A brick just below your hand cracked again, a fluctuation of Satoru’s cursed energy coaxing your body as he fucked into your harder, “Where –“ his head shook, eyebrows knotting together and eyelashes fluttering while he struggled to keep his composure, “where do you want me?”

“Please – inside. I want – you to cum – inside me.” Your words were jostled by each hard thrust, your shoulder beginning to ache as it was pushed further into the wall from the roughness yet the pain being completely drowned out by the pleasure. You could only focus on him and the ever-approaching orgasm, mentally tracing the spiral inside of you as you pushed up on the leg you still had on the ground to stand on your tip-toes to allow a deeper arch in your back and a deeper carve of his cock into you.

Satoru laughed, throaty and condescending before breaking off with a loud grunt, “You’re insane –“ he emphasized his point by another rough push of his hips, his back bending down so that he could be closer to your face, “Wantin’ me to cum inside while someone’s watching. You must love letting people see me slut you out, huh?” Satoru motioned with his head to your visitor, your eyes trailing of him for once to only widen when you could see the faint movement of them jerking off, biting your lip as the idea made your nipples harden and pussy clench.

“Mm, yes – love letting people – know – I’m yours.”

A snort and Satoru released the hold he had on your hand, gripping the thigh lying along his body in a bruising grip as he slightly pinched your clit, “Yeah, that’s right –“ his back bowed more, bent at the waist so that his whisper would caress your cheek before hiking your leg up higher so that your pussy pitifully taking his cock was on full display for anyone to see, “ – you’re mine.”

The combination of his words and the pinch on your clit had your body folding in on itself, muscles bunching and teeth gnashing together when your hips started to roll to meet him, a sad excuse of your orgasm sneaking up on you to fend it off. It didn’t help that you could still see the voyeur from the corner of your eye still aggressively jerking himself off, the notion of being watched getting fucked by Satoru sending your body into a myriad of different emotions and sensations that turned your resolve into mush. You had to close your eyes to fend it off, however Satoru’s finger on your clit combined with the way he was plowing into your pussy and practical molding you into the brick wall proved to be all too much.

Timing his thrusts with your gasps – in and out, in and out, in and out, in and out, in and out, inandouinandoutOhGoddddddd –

You couldn’t take it.

Eyes reopening, you sent him a pitiful look, one that made him moan obscenely since he knew what it meant all too well. You could feel it unwind, a devasting fall when you already felt the undermine of your undoing, “God – I’m…. I’mmmmm cumming –“

Too soon your words were took from you, his fingers pinching your clit one last time as the coil behind your naval snapped, your pussy shuddering and squeezing what it could of his cock as your orgasm busted free about you. The lone streetlight that had been the only one illuminating you both abruptly busted in time with your body growing taunt as the nerves inside lit a fire throughout you. From your frontal lobe down to the tips of your toes, you felt alive; bursting free a kaleidoscope of colors tinging your vision and emotions alike with a pretty, cotton pink, a color you could only associate with the man still drilling a hole into your cunt. Foggy and boneless, you left your douse in it for a moments, completely forgetting for a moment that Satoru still had yet to cum and had his cock still fervently pressed within you.

The squelching sounds of your conjoining brought you out of your haze first, along with the tired breaths pulling free of your chest before you took notice of his own ragged breathing and broken groans. His fingers had fallen off your clit thankfully, taken to rest on the wall above your head as you could feel the familiar hum of energy radiating around you. He wouldn’t last long.

You clenched around him one last time.

Satoru cursed, fingers digging into the meat of your thigh enough that his nails began to nearly break skin as his thrusts became sloppy and desperate. “Shit – fuck – don’t squeeze –“ a high-pitched whine followed after when you squeezed about him once more, a wry grin on your face when you watched the familiar expression cross his face that made your stomach twist and another tight squeeze to his dick, “Fuck, I’m cumming –”

Eyelashes fluttering over your eyes, you watched him closely. From the discoloration of scarlet dotting his cheeks to his lips swollen from where he either captured between his teeth or the rough kissing between you both and all the way the on how his expression conformed into pure relief as his tongue whined out  garble of your name. It was enough to send a spasm into your cunt, a shudder encasing Satoru’s body as he cried out and wrenched himself fully against you, a gasp falling out of you at the way his cock pushed against that soft inside of you. His warm cum spilled into you deeply, thick in ropes that painted your inside completely white as that familiar warmth flooded your insides. You released the hold you had on your shirt to press down on your lower stomach with a soft hum when you practically felt your pussy shift and mold to allow more space for his cock and cum.

“Mmm.”

Satoru made a noise in the back of his throat when he felt you pressed down, sagging against your body as his rasping calls of desperation and excitation began to dissipate and you both remained still for a few moments in bliss before even thinking about gathering yourselves. You could nearly hear his heartbeat mixing with your own, his body withdrawing from your own as he slowly pulled his leaking cock out of you while you hissed at the hyper-sensitivity and he groaned at the sight of his cum beginning to seep of your gaping hole once he was fully out. “Oh, baby.”

Holding back a snort you began to straighten yourself out as he steadied you, pulling your skirt back down over your hips and smoothing down any wrinkles in your shirt while discreetly watching him tuck his dick back into his pants. He ran a hand through his hair after that, your back meeting the wall behind you as you didn’t necessarily trust your legs to not wobble if you started to walk, and Satoru joined you with a breathy laugh. Rubbing your thighs together you grimaced, holding your hand to him and curling your fingers in a ‘Gimme’ motion.

“Panties.”

His expression morphed into confusion as he let the word hang in the between you both for a few moments. “What?”

“Give me my panties,” you emphasized your point by shaking your hand, palm out, “I’m not walking home commando and with your cum leaking out.” It was bad enough you were already feeling it… along with the stickiness slathered on the inside of your thighs.

He had the nerve to pout, patting his back pocket where you panties were still hanging out for the world to see, “Ugh, that’s so hot though…” It was silent as you stared at each other, one eyebrow of yours raising in challenge as you didn’t really feel like bringing out, ‘Satoru, so help me God’ voice. He rolled his eyes and knocked his head against the wall, fishing out your wet panties and wadding them up in a ball before slapping them into your awaiting palm. “Fineeeee.”

“Crybaby.” You ignored his whine.

You wasted no time pulling them back on, shuddering at the coolness mixing with your heated pussy still raw and sensitive as he saddled up next to you and threw an arm around your once you were settled. You took a long inhale to douse yourself in his cologne, the scent refreshing from the stench of sex while you two began to leave the area you defiled, and Satoru’s humored tone breaking you out of reverie once you reached the opening of the alleyway, “Looks like your little Peeping Tom ran off. Hope he enjoyed the show.”

Almost forgetting about him entirely you looked up and down for a moment, a smirk lining your lips as you noticed substance you nearly scuffed your shoe on, the same type you could feel nearly seeping through your underwear, “He did.”

A, ‘Ha!’ left him once you pointed at the area, drawing you closer as he bent to whisper hotly in your ear,“We should do this again next time.”

“Yeah, next time we should fuck on the beach in Okinawa.”

“…Don’t tempt me.”

[esotheria-sims]

Long Overdue Life Update

Whew, the title sounds kinda ominous, doesn't it?

Lemme say right off the bat that this isn't some Big PSA post or anything to that effect. I'm only checking in because I've been quiet for a while and figured an update is the least I can do. 🙂

Nothing major or life-changing is happening on my end; I've just been shitty at finding the time for sim-blogging these past months due to work and other day-to-day rl stuff, though I have been simming a bit in the background. Mostly going on download sprees and sorting cc, but I'm also about two-thirds through my next BaCC rotation and have a few new hair and handswap wips that are share-ready save for previews.

Oh and also: I got a new puppy! She's a 3-and-a-half-months-old Jack Russel mix and the main culprit for the abovementioned lack-of-time for simming. The cute lil' attention hog wants ALL the cuddles! "PC time? What PC time? Pet me instead, hooman!"

Everyone, this is Lucy!

Other things of note in my life, in no particular order:

We've had relatives from Croatia visiting last week with their kids. The kids are super smart and super cute but with the energy levels of a medium-sized nuclear reactor. It's been fun.

I finally went to see a Rammstein concert!!! 🤯 The experience of a lifetime, holy shit. I literally have no words to describe how mesmerizing that stage was. Like, I shit you not, I have 3 GBs worth of concert footage.

Speaking of metal: Gojira KILLED IT at the Olympics Opening! Also: Turkish Shooter Guy and Norwegian Muffin Man are living rent-free in my head. I'm the worst, I only follow professional sports for the memes.😆

I've been moved to a new division at work and am currently sitting in a small office with the two biggest goobers in the entire institution. Between that and me finally having accumulated enough knowledge + experience to have a clue what I'm doing, work's been pretty stress-free for once.

Conversely, my colleagues from the old division are struggling due to lack of staff, too much work, mismanagement, internal strife, and pressure from both within and outside the institution. I feel so bad for them, but at the same time, a selfish part of me is grateful that I'm not there to suffer the shitshow on my own hide.

I have unanswered asks from (probably) months ago and am Very Ashamed of the fact. I'll get back to you guys, I promise! 😰

[kgymstlle]

just saying

post college au / suna rintarou x fem! reader

— you should leave him cause it really makes me sick!



"i just washed that." suna says as you cry on his living room pillow. you continue to do so though, and upon pulling back, the pillow had stains of mascara where your eyes had been seconds ago.

"sorry." you apologize, rubbing the fabric with the sleeve of your sweater. "you do realize you're making it worse, right?"

you immediately stop. "i'm sorr—"

"apologize one more time and i'll kick your ass out of my apartment." he cuts you off. sure it was harsh, but suna has always been this way. it was all in good faith though— he cares about you a lot, really, but being all soft and using a gentle tone wasn't exactly something he was good at, even if he tried really hard to. tough love, if you will.

feeling suna's piercing gaze, you bring your eyes to meet his. "what did he do this time?"

"he broke up with me." for the nth time, suna thought.

tears voluntarily rolled down your face yet again, and all you heard in response from the boy was a sigh. he wanted to say i told you so— you're better off without him. and with me instead...? shit. he's still inlove with you.

but he's your best friend. exactly. therefore he knows you better, and he'll treat you better. it makes him sick. he thinks you should leave your no-good-(ex)boyfriend for good, and not get back together within a week of calling it quits like the continuous, year long cycle you're stuck in.

"we fought. we were on a date, but he made me pay...said he forgot his wallet at home. he also arrived pretty late."

a total loser, suna thought. you were already struggling to earn a living and despite being aware of this he's still squeezing every penny you have left. that bastard barely takes you out too— come on, the flag is practically waving crimson. i would never do that to you though, the boy thought as he stared at your distraught state.

you paused for a while. "he texted me an hour before i got here. he says that he still loves me." bullshit. suna thought. he knows that son of a bitch is cheating on you. that man knows how to fabricate his words, lying to you since the very beginning. when you gushed about your ex's big house and how he lives all alone, it was quickly debunked when suna drove by that said house by chance... and saw a woman through the window which he later found out was the jerk's mother. he never told you that though, to save you from the embarrassment.

"you don't need him, y/n."

surprised by his words, you tilt your head. "wow. i know you mean well rinrin, but...wow."

exactly. i mean well. i'll also help you get over it— wait, is this still right? the boy shook his head. keep it together, rintarou.

"just saying." he muttered in response, eyeing your next move. you roll your eyes. "anyway, i think i've come to the realization that i've overreacted quite a bit— he did have a very tiring day... and i was so pushy that it probably irritated him."

for the love of god you need to stop blaming yourself for every inconvenient thing that happens. you stand up and wipe your now dry face with your sleeve to remove the smudged makeup. this is the part where suna sighs, he knows you're going to fall right back into your ex's trap.

you fix your composure and hug suna.

"thanks, rinrin. for always putting up with me and my problems." for you? always. he thought. with a few taps on your phone, you slip it into your pocket and head to the door. he already knows what you're about to do.

"when you change your mind, i'll be waiting." you hear him behind you, still seated in the living room couch. you nod at him and smile. "mhm. thanks rinrin, i owe you one."

when you shut the door, suna puts his hand on his forehead and sighs. "i'll be waiting." he repeats. cause after all, he's better than your ex will ever be.....just saying.

[turbulentscrawl]

Could I get an Aesop, Norton and Kevin with a S/O who gets turned into a hunter because they learned too much? Like. Their Significant other was always very enthusiastic about discovering secrets and stuff, and they started acting off because they discovered something BAD. And within a month or so. They moved officially to the hunter manor? 🙏

If that's too much, feel free to ignore or decline!

I put my own spin on this, i hope you don't mind! This is SFW but going under the cut because it plays into the horror aspect of the game. Also, I don't have the time to whip up a kevin header currently and don't have the patience to wait on posting this....so I'll get his made and added later!

Warnings: body horror, angst

The worst part of it all is that you can’t even remember the reason for it all.

You were a seeker, a searcher, always nosing into places and subjects you didn’t belong. You craved to know the world’s secrets and that included the manor’s. You spent long hours, days, weeks, investigating the manor’s records, the histories of its inhabitants, obtaining the aid of…some horrific woman. A veritable snake. She told you something. Something bad…. Something that ruined you from the inside out, necrosing its way through every cell.

The changes come slowly at first, and painfully. Your muscles and joints would ache. Your head would throb. Your bones would move on their own, shifting and stretching inside your tearing meat. You drowned in darkness, and suffocated in blinding lights. The worst moments of your life came to you again! Again! Again! Again! Again! Again! Again! Again! Again!

And when all the pain finally melted away, you were different. The friendly faces around you were once your enemies. Your own face was that of a lion, and the original of it staring back was the clueless lamb.

Aesop

-He showed little interest in your “search for answers.” He wants to understand everything better too, true, but even the detective sorts among you had found few answers. Orpheus, Alice, Naib…. No offense to you, of course, I’m just saying he wasn’t be holding his breath….

-But far be it from this recluse to stop you. He of all people understands what it means to hyperfocus on your work. Work is familiarity, truth, and on some level he can imagine how a tangled mystery might be as comfortable to you as a corpse is to him. They both reveal truths in indirect ways.

-Because of your busybody separation from one another during this time, he likely doesn’t notice the changes right away. He probably finds out from someone else about the aches and pains you’ve been having, the sweats, fever, and all without a match in the records to explain them away. People didn’t get sick in the manor, yet somehow you inexplicably were.

-Then you sleep. For days. You’re still enough that Aesop almost feels like he’s watching over one of his 'normal' patients, like he should be doing your makeup. He’s calm, but checks for your pulse and breathing a lot. That’s when he notices you crying in your sleep.

-And things only go downhill from there. Aesop is generally level-headed, but there’s something about your aura that begins to disturb him. He refuses to leave, to abandon you when something is obviously wrong, but you go more and more still under his watchful eyes. You stop breathing, your skin goes pallid, but blood is still hot in your veins—he gives your thumb a pinprick to be sure of it. Your pillow is always wet because you won’t stop silently crying.

-On a whim one day, he decides to check your eyes. He collapses to the ground when he realizes the sockets are empty and raw. He runs from your room then, and when Emily returns to investigate your body is gone.

-The next day, you return in perfect condition. Healthy, though confused, and with no memory of that last several weeks of pain. You both had a match the next day, and Aesop decided he would focus on protecting you above anything else.

-But the Hunter was new. Eerie, unspeaking, blind…and cried ceaselessly. Aesop was frozen in genuine fear when the other you lumbered by him, choking on pained sobs, perhaps in search of your old peace.

Norton

-He told you from the beginning that it was a bad idea. Norton was not an educated man but he had sense—and experience—enough to know when paranormal shit was not to be trifled with. He still had nightmares about that eye….

-But you went on ahead with your business anyway. He let you, albeit while watching his back a whole lot more. Isolating. Swallowing his dread. You remind him of his mistakes before you even make them.

-He doesn’t think much of your first symptoms. Norton gets sore sometimes, and feels ill. The Black Lung never did leave him, and some days he handles it worse than others. You have nothing like that, though, and after several days of persisting discomfort he remembers that fact and sends you to Emily. She’s as perplexed as him though, and that makes him feel even more nervous.

-He also doesn’t notice for a while that you’ve stopped talking about your search entirely. He asks you about it once, when he catches you staring at the wall in a daze, and feels like a knife pierces his lung when you say you don’t have the faintest clue what he’s talking about.

-He keeps catching you like that. Paralyzed in a particular spot. Watching things, unblinking. When you come to, you don’t remember what you were doing. Your memory starts go slip away like Luca’s does, but somehow it’s more severe. You remember who you are, who he is, but everything else is gone. Some evenings he practically has to spoon feed you dinner because the concept of silverware and food have escaped you.

-Paranoid of what it all means, Norton starts to stay with you at night. But he gets no sleep during those times because all night you moan in pain. When Norton wraps his arms around you for comfort, he wears he feels your muscles twisting and undulating under your skin.

-Norton does not remember the last time he’s screamed, but he did the day after you finally seemed better. After he finally started to relax again. He was decoding in the top floor of the hospital when he heard that familiar moaning coming from below. He freezes at the sound, and when he looks over his shoulder he sees a twisted, stretched figure crawling up through the gaping hole in the floor. He knows the hair, the voice, but nothing else is you.

-And he screams, backed up against the cipher like a cornered animal. Never in his life has he not tried to run for his life, but when this Hunter of you locks eyes with him he can’t. He can’t run from what he didn’t fight harder against. Even when facing Fool’s Gold—himself—he’s never felt so much like a failure.

Kevin

-He’s always known he lacks your foresight. Kevin can’t begin to suspect the truth of things like this place. The sprawling vastness of it, he doesn’t trust himself to comprehend the complexity, the darkness. But you? Well, even if this it all a bit eerie, he’s got faith in your intelligence.

-He plays closer attention to you than the other two. The second you start to look off, he tasks notice. He sees the obsession in your face, the dark bags under your eyes, the way your nose digs deeper into things than before. You become…pushier with people.

-Kevin suggests you take a break, but you wave him off. You’re onto something, you say, and just need a little more understanding before everything unravels. He doesn’t like that word. “Unravel.”

-Which is perhaps a premonition, because it’s a great word to describe what happens to you. When you’re awake—and you are awake for irrationally long hours—you seem positively mad. You whisper to yourself in words that don’t sound human. He catches “Hastur” among them a few times, and “Witch” but once again his own comprehension fails.

-And when you sleep, you scream. The fist few nights it happened, he and a few others came running from down the hall and roused you. You didn’t remember the terrors. Night after night it happened, the response dwindling until it was just Kevin abandoning his own sleep to help you from whatever was terrifying you in your sleep.

-Then, you stopped waking up. He tried everything! Water, those smelling salts Emily had. Nothing would wake you and you just kept screaming, screaming, screaming like you were being dissected in your bed. After three days of not sleeping himself, Kevin carried your thrashing form to the infirmary. He was horrified when Emily suggested restraining and gagging you, but he had no other ideas himself. He slept in the chair nearby for what felt like weeks.

-And one day it all stopped. Kevin woke up, cracked his stiff neck, and noticed you were gone from your restraints. Emily was as confused as he was, but before the panic could build you emerged from your own bedroom, right as rain.

-He pulled you aside and cried in your arms until he passed out himself.

-The next match, though, started his own series of nightmares. Only a few minutes in he heard that scream. That blood-curdling wail that had been seared into his memory. It paralyzed him, and everyone else, on the spot. And then the vestige of your suffering appeared. Dark, shivering, voice raw and pained. The new Hunter that rounded the corner was undeniably you, and Kevin was sure he’d never know another peaceful day again.

[taradactyls]

Progress of Janeuary Prompts and Chapter 43 of Trying to Tread Water

*Edit*

CHAPTER 43 IS UP

8/02/25 Update

Chapter 43 of T3W: As of right now, it's at 8.2k words (almost all of that increase was done within the last few days) and I'm in the home stretch! Between the illness and general busyness it's taken longer than I wanted (and I forgot to post an update last week because of it) but all that's past now so I fully expect it to be posted next week.

I was hoping to get it up looong before Valentine's Day but I suppose there's something fitting about that seeing as it follows directly on from Chapter 42. They're almost part a and b of the same chapter, so it might be a good idea to reread (at least the ending) of it just before this next one comes out. I should also start seriously considering getting the 'what if was smut' and higher-rated bonus/extended scenes into an uploadable state but I won't really worry about that until at least this chapter goes up because my brain is noisy enough right now.

Janeuary: No major updates here, since everything has been jotting down notes and planning. I've also been persuaded, by popular demand, to give 'Dear Lady Catherine' two more chapters to show the crucial moments of how that story unfolds, so that's been added to the to-do list. Everything's going to be uploaded intermittently whenever I finish them even though Janeuary's technically over, since the event still allows late submissions and these little plot bunnies won't leave my head until they're typed out.

I hope you're all doing well and thank you for following up with me and being understanding! Hopefully I'll be giving you lots of goodies soon <3

24/01/25 Update

No real change from last week. I've been busy with the twins turning 3 (!!) and we currently all have a cold.

The Day 20 Janeuary prompt is probably closest to being posted, but when I finish it is heavily dependant on how fuzzy my head feels. Btw, I don't think any of the prompts will be done on the right day but they're all still going to be posted, regardless. I laugh in the face of due dates.

18/01/25 Update

Chapter 43 of T3W: I'm about 5k words in and it's going well. I might have to do some heavy rearranging of the second section depending on how the last goes but I don't think anything has to be scrapped so that word count should only be increasing.

Janeuary: Very behind but still working away (before anyone comes for me: I'm doing this during the times I can't work on T3W because I'm too tired or there's too many distractions and I have to keep pausing, etc. The proper fic requires significantly more brain power and care than quick one-shots).

Also:

I can only see one of these, so unless you sent me a Day 20 prompt about Kitty/Colonel Fitzwilliam (an update on that below) please resend your ask! I think the inbox ate some.

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Janeuary 2025 Prompts done so far:

Day 8: Cravat 'Elizabeth Overestimates her Ability to Tie a Cravat' - Rated G, 3k words, Elizabeth/Darcy, sweet, first kiss, post-canon.

Over the period of their engagement, Elizabeth and Mr Darcy take many long walks. During an unseasonably warm late October day, Mr Darcy loosens his cravat and removes his jacket. Elizabeth finds this a very educational experience. But when it comes time to put them back on, she cannot for the life of her figure out how to knot the cravat properly after insisting she do the honours.

“My dearest, and loveliest, Elizabeth,” he gently began. “You have no idea how to knot a cravat, do you?”

Also Day 8: Cravat 'Inappropriate Use of a Cravat'- Explicit, 6k words, Elizabeth/Darcy, author's first smut, the prompt was from the wildest ask I have ever received but I made it seem normal, smut, established relationship, post-canon, the cravat is part of the smut.

After an absence of some weeks, Mr Darcy and Elizabeth are very eager to be alone together and don’t even make it to the bedroom. As it’s been a while, Mr Darcy doesn’t think he’ll hold out very long if Elizabeth keeps lavishing attention down there – so she ties his cravat around the base of his shaft, to prevent an early end to their enjoyment.

Her surprised gasp was silenced by his lips, her own eagerly parting as she tangled her hands into his hair to keep his face pressed to hers. Pushing Mr Darcy against the wall – door – something, she melted against him, his hands digging into her waist, revelling in the taste and feel of her. “I missed you,” she said again, drawing back to kiss a line down his throat, “so much.”

Day 11: Card Playing Artwork- Which is the banner of...

'A Losing Hand' - Rated G, 2.9k words, Elizabeth/Darcy, canon compliant, falling in love and FIGHTING it, banter, awkward flirting, unrequited crush.

Mr Darcy is falling in love with Elizabeth Bennet, and he is not best pleased about it. His pov of that enlightening card game in Chapter 8 of Pride and Prejudice when they discuss accomplished women.

Darcy could only look at her – the light challenge in her gaze, the slight smile that accompanied it. He could debate with her all day.

Day 16: Gossip 'Dear Lady Catherine' - Rated G, 4.2k words, Elizabeth Bennet/Fitzwilliam Darcy, Jane Bennet/Charles Bingley, Canon divergence, Lady Catherine is in peak form, and facing someone who's allowed to argue back, Character development, Speedrunning Darcy's realisations, Self-reflection

Following the Netherfield Ball, Mr Collins happily gossips in a letter to Lady Catherine that her that her nephew may be on the verge of matrimony… to Miss Bingley. He overheard his cousins talking of the lady’s attentions and quite misconstrued everything. Lady Catherine, as incensed as she could ever be, goes to confront her nephew in London… and arrives in the middle of the ‘Why You Should Not Marry Jane Bennet’ intervention.

Yelling ensues. And maybe more than one instance of self-reflection.

OR

In which Mr Collins has the sacred duty of sharing gossip he wasn’t supposed to know; Lady Catherine is of infinite use, which ought to make her happy, for she loves to be of use; Miss Bingley learns what all her attempts to secure Mr Darcy’s affections have amounted to; and Mr Darcy himself is full of pride and confronted with his hypocrisy.

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Janeuary Prompts in progress/ideas:

Day 13: Christian Name - A few people wondered what Darcy was really thinking in Chapter 42 of T3W when he was talking about how he imaged Elizabeth calling him Fitzwilliam:

“How did you imagine it?” she enquired with a frown. Mr Darcy blushed a deep crimson. “Mostly, mere casual use.”

And I thought that made a great prompt for trying my hand at some more smut.

Day 20: Dearest - An anon sent a prompt for some Kitty/Colonel Fitzwilliam Fluff, and since I've never considered them before it was a fun exercise to think about how that would work! I started a draft of it as I worked out some ideas so this will definitely be happening.

Day 27: Cousins - Toying with the idea of doing a sweet glimpse of 5 or so years into the future, featuring little Bingleys and Darcys. Not sure if that's something anyone's interested in though.

Day 29: Carriage - A missing scene from Pride and Prejudice featuring Darcy and Colonel Fitzwilliam

Day 30: Garden - Another Pride and Prejudice missing scene with Darcy's pov of something Elizabeth mentions in passing.

[royaljude]

Until you came along ~ KM9

Genre ~ little angst/fluff

Summary ~ when the move to Madrid is difficult with a 4 year old, so he hires a nanny for help. Little does he know he'll fall in love…

Warnings ~ I will be using Y/N throughout this!

A/N ~ single dad Kylian! Will have more parts to this!!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The move to Madrid for him was a little rough. Not only did he have to find an apartment…he had to find a nanny or babysitter for his four year old daughter, Élise. He didn’t trust daycares, being a famous football player, single, and having a kid. He just didn’t trust leaving his little girl alone in a strange place. As if he had a nanny, he can get to know them before hiring them.

He’d found a nice apartment just for him and Élise, in the city of Madrid. On the jet ride there, Kylian had come across this page. It was your nanny account, you have about 100+ followers. You posted things with the kids you nannied, keeping their faces hidden though. The people who you’ve nannied for said you were great.

Kylian thought about it for a while, before he had privately messaged you. He asked if within the next day or two if he could meet you for coffee to get to know you. You had politely accepted his offer, the two of you messaged before agreeing to meet for lunch tomorrow afternoon.

Kylian was nervous to say the least, back in France he had his mom to watch her. Yet he didn’t have his mom in Madrid. Kylian looked down at Élise who was taking a nap in the chair beside him. He just wanted what was best for his little girl.

~~~~

The next day came around. Everything in the apartment was set up and furnished, Kylian just needed to do some decorating. He woken Élise from her early morning nap, and got her dressed and ready to go meet up with you for lunch.

Kylian carried her out to the car and buckled her in her car seat before getting in the front seat himself. Starting the car to drive to the place you both decided on. It wasn’t far from his new apartment, so it wasn’t long before he was there. He looked around the small café-like restaurant, making sure he didn’t see you before getting a table. He sat down with Élise next to him in the chair.

You walked in a few minutes later looking around until you saw him. Kylian and you locked eyes. ‘Merde she’s pretty’ he thought to himself. You gave him a small smile before walking over to him, he returned it. “Hey! You must be Kylian, I take it?” You asked once you got closer, holding you a hand to shake his. “Um yeah hi, I’m kylian. You must be Y/N?” He said, shaking your hand and watching you sit across from him. “Yes I am.” You responded.

You look at the little girl next to him, giving her a little smile and wave. “Hi, what’s your name?” You asked politely. Élise looks at you shyly, she looks up at her dad. Kylian gives her a soft nod as his way of telling her it’s okay. “I’m Élise.” She spoke shyly. “Well isn’t that a pretty name for a very pretty girl.” Once those words left your mouth, she smiled and let out a small giggle.

You smiled at her before turning your attention back to Kylian. “So, I'll take the one you wanted to meet for your daughter, tell me what you need, and I can see if I can provide it.” You spoke to him. “You’re lucky, I only have one kid at a time, and my last family I nannied for didn’t need me anymore.” You added on.

The waiter came over and quickly took your orders before leaving.

Kylian takes a second before responding. “Well as you probably know, I play football. We have training from 7:30am to about 2:30pm, and then I’ll let you know when we have matches which will be during the week, or weekend.” He spoke telling you what he needed. “And if it’s not too much to ask, are you okay with like over nights?” He spoke with a questionable tone. “I might have to travel a few times so if you could stay overnight that’d be great.” He asked almost pleading, he was hoping you’d accept the job.

You nodded and thought about it for a few seconds. “Yeah, I can work with that.” You told him. “I do have one thing I always ask people before I officially accept a job.” You said. “Yeah of course, what is it?” He asked. “Are you okay if I take her out? Like to the park, or lunch. That way we aren’t in the house the whole day?” You asked with an understanding tone. “Yeah I’m totally fine with that, I think that's great.”

The waiter came back with your food, you and Kylian each ordered a sandwich, while he ordered Élise just a Grilled Cheese and fries. “What’s your price? Like what’s your pay?” Kylian asked before he started eating. “I pay 20 an hour, but if it’s an overnight it’s 25…” you said after swallowing your bite.

You and Kylian ate and he asked a few more questions before the bill was brought. Kylian immediately grabbed the bill out of habit. “I can pay my half.” You said. “No, no it’s okay. I got it, I wanted to meet you and get to know you so let me pay.” He said, pulling out his wallet. “Okay.” You said deciding not to argue on it. “So can you start by this Thursday?” He asked, looking at you. “Yeah of course, just be sure to text me what time and your address.” You said.

“Yeah of course, well I’ll see you then.” He said and stood up. “Come on Élise.” Kylian said, holding his hand out for the little girl to take. She took his hand and started walking with him out the café, but not before giving you a small wave. You wave back and smile. You couldn’t wait till Friday, you get to start taking care of that sweet little girl, and you get to see him again…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

[the-s1lly-corner]

Master of Me

Not totally sold on the name for the fic maybe I'll change it midway through typing this and forget to take this sentence out haha! Short little fic because TADC is on my mind, probably only going to be slightly longer than my other posts... we will see! Notes: Reader is GN, Gummigoo and the reader are not dating but they are close friends, AU where Gummi was allowed to stay at the circus, comfort fic, limited dialogue, reader doesn't remember anything about their life before joining the circus. like nothing at all. not proof read we die like kaufmo CWs: Gummigoo is still struggling to fully come to terms with the fact that he is just an NPC- really it's just some angst Word count: 1.3k

No one ever said it was going to be easy, and he didn't expect it to be easy. Nor did he expect it to come fast... but he had hoped that within the weeks after joining the circus it would become more bearable. It.. had.. but he wasn't making as much progress as he had hoped. Some days were better than others, where the thought that everything he knew was a lie didn't cross his mind. Other days it hit him hard enough to keep him holed up in bed.

You had been kind enough to share your room with him, Caine had yet to make a room for the new circus member- whether he didn't want to or he couldn't you weren't sure. You tried your best to give the gator some room so he can gather himself on his own time, opting to wander around the circus until it was time to go to bed. Sometimes he would even join you, allowing you to show him the grounds. It was all so different from what he knew in the desert, though... those were all false memories too, weren't they?

Today had been one of those days, that left him too shaken to get up and join the others during the day's adventure. You told the others to go along without you. Everyone but Zooble left, but it's not like they were going to step in to help you pull Gummigoo out of his mind- though they did surprise you by showing some level of support through the form of wishing you luck.

He didn't have the key to your room, so he couldn't lock himself in. Not that he would if he could- he was grateful that you had given him the space, but he would feel terrible for taking it a step too far.

The lights were dimmed, you could just barely see his form sat at the edge of your bed. You noted how the lights looked against the material of his body. If you squinted, you could see small specks of sugar within his lemon lime body. He had noticed you, but didn't say much aside from a short apology- did you need something? Was he in the way? He was about to get up before you stopped him and sat next to him.

"What's going on with you," You asked, though as soon as the words had left your mouth you felt stupid for asking. You knew exactly what was going on, sure you may not know what set him off in particular or what part he's focusing on... but you still knew enough. You watched his white eyes narrow at the floor, as if it was the most interesting thing to him. He sighed after a moment, and lifted his head to stare at you. He was missing his mother today, or at least his idea of her.

"Nothing really happened, did it?" He muttered, referencing everything he could gather from his memories. That seemed to only make things worse, though, seeing as they were all so... limited. Artificial. False. "Oh god, none of it happened, did it?" He added after a few more struggled words clawed their way through his teeth. You sucked on your teeth as you tried to find the right words to say. For a terrifying moment you wondered if NPCs would abstract- what if you said the wrong thing and triggered it?

The words fell out of your mouth before you could stop yourself.

"It was real to you, wasn't it?"

Silence, and he whipped his head to stare at you before pulling his eyes back down.

"It may not have been... real... but they're still your memories, it's still... who you were originally meant to be- you know?" You added, but that didn't seem to help. "I wasn't supposed to find out, I know that much," He said lowly. He sounded angry, but it didn't sound like it directed at you exactly.

Suddenly he looked at you, with enough speed and intensity to make you jump just a bit and scoot back to avoid his snout. "But you don't remember anything from before you came to this... place.."

You only nodded, when you had joined the circus you actually remembered less than the other members- you didn't even remember putting on the headset that brought you here. To you, it was like you simply spawned into existence. You remembered how terrifying that was, how you seemingly came to and had to build everything up with what you were given.

"Just like you... kind of..." You whispered, and with a look he urged you to continue. "You don't remember much of anything from before you... tried to steal the syrup. You hit a.. block.. when you try to remember anything before that. You had... nothing, not to sound like what's happening to you doesn't matter any less.." You trailed off, then attempted to regain yourself. "You..." but your words failed.

"How did you make it work, didn't you ever want to return back to what you had before.. Before.." He stopped. "I almost want to go back, wouldn't that be easier?" He stared down at his hands, a habit you noticed that he picked up. He bunched his fingers together before relaxing them, before tensing them again.

"It was hard at first, for me too.. but," You chewed your tongue. It felt like it was plastic. "I got to make new memories," You managed to spit out. Gummigoo went silent, looking you in the eyes for a long moment before seeming to understand.

"You can't change what's happening, what's.. happened.. or what you were before- regardless of if it actually happened. You're in control now, and you're free to make your own choices now!" You offered a half smiling, hoping you had said the right thing. "It's not exactly like what I went through, I'm not from the digital world, and you are.. but, we were both new to this at some point,"

Quiet.

Then he laughed. He actually laughed, albeit weakly and airily. He shook his head lightly, tugging his hat down before taking a deep breath through his nose. "You're not wrong about that, (Reader)," He let his body relax. He was far from okay, but he was seeming to even out now.

He looked at you again, once more in the eyes. You forced yourself to maintain the contact, before he pulled his face away. His eyes scanned over the room, taking in everything they could see. "I'm in control now, am I?" He said to himself, his hand relaxing as he spoke. He lowered his head a little, before his mouth stretched into a smile. "If I'm going to carve my own path, I'm glad that you've given me the tools," He flicked a glance to you, "I'd be happy if you stuck around,"

You only smiled, before nodding. "Bit hard, since you've stolen my bed! We're stuck together already!"

You pulled another laugh out of him, this time it was a little stronger. "I can't argue with that, I do get rather sticky do I?" He smirked. "You don't have a choice of helping me, if you even think of stepping away I'm going to glue you to me," He joked. He was returning to his usual self, slowly.

"You say that like it's a bad thing," You shot back earning a third laugh.

You could hear the sounds of the rest of the circus returning from their adventure. Had you both been talking for that long? Had that much time passed. You looked to Gummigoo, it didn't feel right leaving him here alone after the conversation you had just had together... so you had decided to stay.

At least for now, for as long as he needed you to stick around.

[blurbfics]

There'd Better Be a Mirrorball | Azriel x OFC [part ten]

Summary: A message is sent and Azriel learns that Eowyn doesn't know how to swim.

Word Count: 8.2k

Warnings: angst, insecurities, implicit jealousy, description and talk of scars, talk of past self-harm, daddy issues, mind-intrusion (learn to ask first, Rhys), Elain. (on a lighter note: sexual tension, fluff, nosy cassian, idiots in love but they don't know it yet)

Minors, do not interact.

a/n: helloo i hope there's still someone interested in my emo babies! sorry it took me so long to get this chapter out, i'm traveling out for a wedding next week so i've been scrambling to get all my last minute things for my trip BUT hopefully this chapter makes up for it. i already have the next few written out so i'll probably post again soon (don't hold me to it, i still need to edit)

part nine

masterlist

"If it's all in my head, there's nothing to fear

Nothing to fear inside

Through the darkness and the light

Some sun has got to rise"

Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Despair

Elain was here.

Granted, it shouldn’t have come as a surprise to her. She was visiting the High Lady unannounced and uninvited after all, and Elain had more reason than anyone else to visit Feyre, yet it wasn’t exactly surprise at the fact in itself. It was a surprise at the defensiveness with which Eowyn regarded her.

Try as she might, she simply couldn’t shake off the feeling of irritation that the sweet female produced within Eowyn.

She’d been shown inside the parlor room by Nuala and Cerridwen; the High Lady was at her side immediately with a grin as she welcomed her inside. As she had done with the High Lord, Eowyn apologized profusely for showing up unannounced but admitted she felt rather guilty for making the High Lady travel all the way to the library whenever they got together, and felt it necessary to visit her for once, taking advantage of the Illyrians’ summons.

But the ever generous Feyre only waved her off and assured her she was always welcomed before playfully chastising her for curtsying as a greeting as she’d come to do the past few times, now a playful act more than anything, before introducing her to her older middle sister, Elain.

Eowyn found her feet glued to the floor as the beautiful fae rose from her seat and greeted her shyly with a sweet and kind countenance that was so pure and… unsullied, that Eowyn found it hard to look at her for long. She had only heard whispers of her beauty, both from the wind and from other faes that had witnessed her unblemished features themselves, but she’d never been face to face with the sweetest of the Archeron sisters. 

She had, however, heard other things about the fae.

Heard that at first, she’d rejected any sign of courtship from Lucien, half brother of the heir to the Autumn Court, and the heir of the Day Court himself; she heard, primarily from Gwyn, that she’d turned her attention to the Shadowsinger and encouraged a brief fling before settling for the one Cauldron-intended for her. She’d heard she was a Seer and that she’d correctly predicted the path Feyre Oathbreaker was meant to take before any of them could correctly decipher her visions, although that she’d learned from the wind and the voices in the water instead.

She knew much about the middle Archeron sister. So much that she knew the young fae, despite her mistakes and the hardships she’d faced, truly was as unsullied and perfect as she seemed.

It made something ugly coil inside her, a feeling she’d never had before, even in the days when any sort of emotion beyond the superficial wasn’t completely foreign.

Despite their pleasant introductions and the cup of tea the High Lady had insisted on pouring for Eowyn, she found she felt entirely out of place as the sisters chatted lightly. Regret began to churn in her stomach for her impulsiveness, making her feel anxious.

She took in three deep breaths and held onto it for six counts, before softly blowing it out for another count of six. She repeated the breathing technique twice more as she settled into herself, opening her awareness to her surroundings before bringing it unto herself, assessing both the negative and the positive emotions battling within her before letting them go.

“But oh Feyre, you should just see these libraries! They’re twice the size of the library in the mountain and they’re just magnificent! Helion gave us a tour himself and said most of the furnishings and the chandelier in the main hall are made of real gold,” Elain gushed, licking powdered sugar off her thumb from the baked goods she’d made herself.

Finding it a safe topic Eowyn could contribute to, she nodded along to her words understandingly, “it is quite grand,” she agreed. 

“Oh, you’ve been?” Feyre asked curiously, causing Elain to turn her attention to her, eyes wide and searching and so full of life.

Eowyn looked away and cleared her throat, “yes, I… lived in the Day Court for awhile. I know the libraries and Helion’s Court well.”

“Are you two friends?” Elain tilted her head.

“Sure, although colleagues is probably a more accurate term” Eowyn chuckled at her earnestness. It was conflicting, this feeling within her. Finding the young fae innocent and enchanting but simultaneously finding herself equally plagued by an anger that was undeservedly projected onto Elain. She felt strangled by the self-conscious feeling that she was too big, too dark, too much, to be around someone who was only in the first stages of adulthood and was only just finding herself in the world.

She inhaled deeply and once again let go of the smoking darkness within her, forcing her attention once more to the topic at hand. “The libraries,” she said abruptly, “you said Helion gave you a tour?” At her confirming nod she continued, “he must’ve told you the histories, then, I imagine. Helion’s quite the established storyteller.”

“Oh yes! He told us of the First Scholars who spent centuries building the libraries that supposedly form a great circle around the heart of the Court. I can’t quite imagine spending so much of your lifetime determined to build all those beautiful temples. It’s truly impressive, what they accomplished, I think,” she spoke animatedly with a pleasant smile, reaching over for her tea. 

“Well they surely didn’t have a hard time at it,” Eowyn chuckled, although there was little amusement in her voice. “The First Scholars loved taking all the credit for ‘funding’ those sanctuaries but always failed to give credit where it was due.”

When both the High Lady and her sister looked at her with owlishly confused eyes, Eowyn swallowed. “Well… Helion must’ve told you all our great pieces of architecture, including the Day Court’s grand libraries, were built by enslaved human laborers?” Feyre immediately nodded in understanding, clearly having heard that part of the histories while Elain only stared at her in horror.

Eowyn felt uneasy, and the way the young fae looked at her didn’t make her feel any less like a wild feral animal trampling through a thin crystal box.

“This was way before our time, of course,” she tried to mend the stricken look on Elain’s face and the concern on Feyre’s as she gently placed a hand on her sister’s arm. “It’s cruel ancient history and unpleasant to talk about,” she continued, as she felt she just couldn’t leave the words alone, “but it’s also history that cannot be forgotten lest we be tempted to repeat our mistakes.”

“And we won’t,” Feyre assured. 

Looking at her High Lady then, Eowyn noticed with relief that she didn’t seem altogether displeased by her revelation.

“Yes, you’re quite right,” Elain agreed in a small voice, her face still pale with anxiety. “I suppose Helion must’ve avoided that part of his lesson for my sake,” she tried to smile, but it came out shy and perhaps a little forced, “you see, I’ve had a harder time at adjusting to fae life than my sisters,” she confessed something Eowyn had detected the second she walked into the room. 

Although Elain had the features and the small slender body of a picturesque perfect female fae, there was something inherently human about her. It was an almost undetectable but ever present sort of foreignness to her actions, almost stilted whereas even Feyre and Nesta had mastered the fae way of effortless swiftness.

That wasn’t to say she was clumsy, she was simply very human-like, much more than her sisters. It was part of her charm.

Despite her sympathy for the girl, however, she found she wasn’t sure how to act around her. Even the priestesses in the library, who had suffered through all kinds of disgraces and tragedies didn’t feel quite as fragile as the former human girl. 

“Is that something you still struggle with?” Eowyn couldn’t help but prod gently.

She believes she knows his ire; she has only foreseen his betrayal.

She archived the whisper for later.

“Not as much,” Elain glanced at her sister and at her encouraging smile, continued, “my adjustment process has been quite slow but I’ve had plenty of support and company.”

“I imagine it can’t be easy at all,” Eowyn empathized genuinely, nodding a bit, “no one can reasonably expect you to be fine with transforming into a different species against your will within a decade, much less a year.”

Feyre nodded, squeezing Elain’s hand, “I didn’t have an easy time of it either. Even now, I still struggle to think of myself as anything other than human.”

“I suppose it should’ve been easier for me, having you and Nesta and Azriel at my side for so long,” Elain squeezed her hand back and as Feyre consoled her, lost in their heart-to-heart, neither sister noticed the way Eowyn’s spine straightened as she tensed. Her inhale was quiet but sharp and she could do nothing but hide her clenched fist under her robes, focusing on the faint sting of her nails digging into her flesh.

There was a shift in the air.

“And here I thought it was access to my gardens and kitchens that got you back onto your feet,” Rhys drawled as he stepped into the room, followed closely behind by the winged males.

Eowyn said nothing as Elain laughed and replied sweetly to the High Lord, standing up from her place on the sofa to greet Cassian with a hug. Tension bloomed in the room as she turned to Azriel. Stoic and unemotional male that he was, Azriel only stood in place as the blushing fae nervously turned to him.

“Hi,” she breathed lightly, her voice so petal soft and light that Eowyn had to bite her tongue to keep her mind focused on anything else.

“Hello,” he cleared his throat, mirroring Cassian’s forward lean into what was the beginning of a hug. Faltering but quickly finding herself, she hugged him back, if perhaps a little longer than she did Cassian.

Clearing her mind of all thoughts, Eowyn turned her eyes away from the scene to find not only the High Lord and Lady observing her intently, but also the General, who ridiculously began to whistle as he snapped his gaze away when her eyes met his, pretending he hadn’t been staring.

While Feyre observed her with curiosity— the kind sparked by a freshly shared piece of gossip that you know just might continue to unfold before you— the High Lord’s gaze was different, not unkind but still calculating.

She couldn’t help it. She quirked an eyebrow at him in challenge.

She was no stranger to the threat of intrusion into her mind, but as she felt the cold long talons of the High Lord brush against the fortress of her mind, she shivered at the sheer power behind such a light tap. Strikingly, she wasn’t sure how or what she did to nudge back at the brushing talons with a teasing caress of her own, as if tickling the underside of the invisible large shadowed claw.

The action seemed to surprise even the High Lord who squirmed slightly as his eyes widened at her and it was the shock of whatever that reaction had been that allowed for her walls to drop for a fraction of a second before she reinforced them again. 

But that second was enough, for as their eyes met, there was something there they both understood— a kindred feeling of someone who had known violence, of someone who understood abuse in a form that was beyond physical. It was the understanding of a survivor that lived both despite and in spite of what had been done to them but now wanted a life to reflect only the best of them, rather than remain drowned in a cycle of existential dread.

She understood him at a deeper level then, and his engagement with the priestesses and the library. Understood why he was so accommodating and encouraging for any and all projects the priestesses brought to him.

“Are you ready to leave?” Azriel pulled her away from her intense eye contact with the High Lord, standing beside her on a chair, directly in front of their hosts, their sister, and the General.

“Yes,” she nodded and stood to follow after him, thanking the High Lord and Lady for having her, if perhaps uninvited (to which they promised she was welcomed at any time, and then playfully chastised her once again for curtsying at them in respect), and calling out pleasantries and farewells as Azriel practically dragged her away.

As she was thanking her hosts, however,  she noticed that Elain’s eyes remained glued to the Shadowsinger; they followed the movement of his arm as he lightly placed his hand on Eowyn’s waist to pull her towards the door, but snapped back up to meet hers when she felt her gaze, widening ever so slightly when they met Eowyn’s, for she was sure, that in that fraction of a second, she had effectively conveyed a clear-cut message to the middle Archeron sister: back off.

Elain visibly shuddered from her spot on the sofa.

Eowyn couldn’t hold back her smug smirk when she crossed the threshold, easily keeping in step with Azriel as they walked out to the balcony.

“I take it you didn’t have to go on a mission right now?” She asked him as soon as they were out of earshot.

“No,” he said distractedly, “what did Rhys say to you?”

She tilted her head in confusion, “weren’t you there?”

“In your head,” he clarified, eyebrows furrowing and she noticed for the first time that he was quite agitated. “Did he go inside your mind without permission?”

“I don’t think he meant to?” The way it came out as a question had her quickly adding, “he didn’t try very hard if he did. I didn’t let him in.” Not the complete truth, but also not a complete lie. It was…strange, that interaction. It wasn’t that she allowed him to read her thoughts, it was that her mind was always so replete with thoughts and information and in such a flurry of awareness of so much around her, that all he got was an overall feel of her. Just as she did him.

“I’ll tell him not to try it again,” he grumbled, yet her response seemed to pacify him enough. Once they made it to the balcony he turned to her, suddenly thoughtful. “I was thinking...” She only tilted her head at him, allowing him time to speak the words on his mind. “Can I ….take you somewhere?”

She startled at that. Questions sprang up in her mind in a rush of: where? Why? How far? How long would they be out? Did she need to go back to the library and get a thicker cloak for the crisp chill in the air?

But as soon as she glanced up and met his hazel eyes, saw a mirroring flurry of thoughts and information behind his honey dipped leaf irises, all questions vanished and she simply nodded.

“Are you sure?” he pressed, taking her brief silence as reluctance.

She raised an eyebrow at that, “should I be worried?”

“No,” he said immediately, then turned to look over the balcony at the city. “Although…I would have to winnow us there.”

Her eyebrow only arched higher, “is it not within flying distance?” she followed his gaze then turned to him quickly with an affronted gasp, jutting out a hip and resting her fist on it as she scoffed, “or are you saying I’m just too heavy to carry?”

He rolled his eyes, but his lips twitched with a hint of a smile, “shut up and c’mere.”

She took a step towards him, and although she’d winnowed hundreds of times, both on her own and with others, she found she didn’t protest when he looked down at her from under a few rogue strands of hair and placed his hands on either side of her waist. She gasped ever so softly at the feel of his large warm hands circling her waist, the weight of his battle-worn marred hands somehow both exhilarating and comforting. Although there was no need for such contact to winnow, the act being sufficient with just a clasping of hands, she instinctively placed her own hands on his arms, firm and warm as they were under his leathers.

Her eyes never once left his.

“We’re here,” he spoke softly, and although she clearly heard his words it took her much too long for her to register its meaning. 

“So soon?” The words left her mouth before she could think it, only realizing how blunt they were when he actually chuckled softly and the prettiest shade of pink appeared on the bridge of his nose.

She pulled away from him then to take in her surroundings, the first thing she noticed being that they were definitely not in Velaris, yet as she went to look around found herself restricted by his hands still holding firmly onto her waist.

He immediately dropped his hands yet she didn’t linger on the strange empty lightness she felt, as if he had been the sole thing anchoring her to the ground.

The lightness lingered as she twirled around, taking in the sight of trees and… well, more trees.

“Where are we?” She asked as she inhaled deeply, immediately soothed by the scent of unsullied nature allowed to grow without intervention from fae or human hands. Despite the lack of paths seen anywhere, he clearly knew these woods well considering he’d winnowed them straight into a small clearing.

“In the Illyrian woods, under a few of its older mountains.” She felt his eyes on her, yet rather than feeling self-conscious and restricted, she felt strangely free and like something within her flourished. 

She hadn’t been fully surrounded by nature in so long. It was more liberating than anything she’d felt before, even the sanctuary of her greenhouse and beloved library.

“What are we doing here?” She turned to look at him to find his gaze already on her.

“I figured since you allowed me to go into your greenhouse, it’s only fair I show you a place of my own,” he inclined his head to the side towards the trees and held out a hand to her. She took it, marveling at the way his strong hand gently curled around hers. 

She thought about his words as she followed him through the trees, not finding herself even the slightest bit frightened or apprehensive. It was dangerous, she thought absentmindedly, how willing she was to follow this male through the ends of the earth.

“An exchange?” She wondered as she digested his words, “what exactly did you take from my showing you the greenhouse?” She asked with an incredulous chuckle.

He stopped and twisted only slightly to look at her, beckoning her with his head to step in front of him. She followed his nonverbal queue, hand still grasping his as she lifted her skirts with her other hand as she stepped over the overgrown tree roots and ducked under branches.

“I got to take in the sight of you in your most natural state,” he stated simply, never detaching his hand from hers but using the other to push the intervening branches away from her to walk through.

With a swiftness born naturally only to a fae who’d grown up amongst nature, she twirled in a single step to look at him, eyes seeking any form of taunt or teasing before lifting his arm above her head to allow her to circle around and step forward with the other foot without losing momentum in her step, finding nothing in his tone or eyes that signaled to any form of mocking.

She remained silent for a while, considering his words and wondering where he would take them. The whispers that came to her were different from those she constantly heard at the House of Wind. Whereas the winds of Velaris carried with them brief declarations or fragments of words blown across the land that just so happened to make their way to her, the whispers among the trees were not intended for her to hear at all. 

The ancient language of the trees cared not if she understood or even wanted to listen, yet as she listened to them murmur to each other she caught hints of long stories shared, all of them deep in overlapping conversation.

Soon, they broke through the line of trees to what seemed like the bottom of the mountains— a moss covered wall of rock that sprouted all kinds of flora she wanted nothing more but to inspect but turned to Azriel instead, tilting her head questioningly. “This is what you wanted to show me?” She tried not to sound judgmental but based on the quiet laugh that bubbled out of his chest, she failed to sound as excited as she meant to.

“Not quite,” his lopsided smirk spoke of his amusement. “You like puzzles, don’t you?”

She narrowed her eyes at him, “are we playing a game, Az?”

At his answering smirk, she turned back to the wall, suddenly determined to beat him at his own game but all she had to do was look at the wall. Truly look at it and the long strands of ivy and moss that covered it to notice the plants themselves served as a veil to the entrance of what looked like a cave.

“In there?” She turned to him only to find him  smiling at her softly before he nodded. He stepped forward first, holding a hand out for her to take before stepping through the entrance of the cave and guiding her inside. It took her a second for her eyes to adapt to the darkness, but once they did she gasped in surprise at the sight before her.

The walls of the cave were a smooth crystalized black glass encrusted into the rock, and the absorbing light within it told her immediately that he’d taken her directly into an obsidian cave. Her surprise only heightened when she looked down to see what looked like a small black pool inside.

“What is this place?” She breathed.

“It’s the underside of an ancient volcano,” he spoke, quiet and still but so clear that she realized that the small gap in her mind that never fully filtered out the whispers in her day to day was completely silent. She couldn’t hear a single thing other than her own thoughts, the sound of their breathing, and the cool sound of his voice. “I thought maybe you’d like it,” he trailed off thoughtfully, “and maybe you’d be interested in going for a swim?”

“A swim?” her voice, only slightly louder than his, echoed through the dark cave, her voice bouncing off the walls going much further than the entrance where they stood. She cringed at the volume and ignored his amused huff before lowering her voice,“how big is this cave?”

He hummed in response, and with the curtain of ivy falling back over the gapped entrance, they were now encased in complete darkness. The cave was so dark that the only light shining was that of his cobalt blue siphons, which didn’t provide nearly enough light to illuminate the cave, especially once he began to take them off. “A few miles in.”

On any other occasion she would’ve balked at his response but she could do nothing but stand still as the sound of his undressing echoed within the cave walls. Suddenly, he stilled, “we can leave, if you don’t want to stay.”

As if that was what took her breath away. “I do,” she elongated the word, “my concern is, how exactly do you expect me to swim if I can’t even see my hand in front of me?”

“You don’t exactly swim with your eyes, do you?”

She glowered at him and he knew it despite the lack of light, if his small chuckle said anything.

“Look, if you don’t want to swim, you can sit on the edge of the rock here and dip your feet in, but I’m going in,” he stated plainly, sounding more animated than she’d ever heard him before in the most un-Azriel-like way.

She opened her mouth, either to ask him who he was and where the real Shadowsinger was, or to ask why he insisted that she touch the dark ominous water, but all words vanished at the realization that this was something important to him. He knew how meaningful the greenhouse was to her and he explicitly said he wanted to share something in kind.

This wasn’t a transactional relationship— friendship, she mentally corrected herself— despite their past exchanges. This was an act of trust and intimacy.

And Mother above, he was excited to show her this place. How can she deny him anything now? In all truth, she didn’t want to deny him anything.

“Where are you?” He called out from within the surface of the water and she startled slightly, realizing she’d been lost in her own mind.

“Here,” she replied immediately, taking a step towards his voice only to stumble over a few rocks before finding her footing. She reached out with her hands, using them instead of her eyes to gauge what was in front of her. As soon as she touched a larger rock, realizing it marked the edge of the dark pool of water.

“Careful,” he spoke and suddenly his hands found her as he held her on the edge of the water. “Here, let me..” He started but trailed off, wrapping one hand gently around her ankle, slowly and barely touching as if ready to pull away as soon as she spoke the words. She allowed him to continue, curious about his actions. Not taking her silence as consent, however, he stopped, “can I help you take your shoes off?”

She nodded, and almost smacked herself at her idiocy, before clearing her throat, “yes, that’s fine. Is- is the water deep?”

“Not here,” he assured her, “the further in you go, the deeper it is.”

Swiftly, he unlaced her boots and she braced her hands on his shoulders as he held her shin with one hand as he pulled the shoe away with the other and tossed it somewhere behind her, “hey!” She frowned looking over her shoulder at nothing, “how am I supposed to find it later?”

His small laugh was a little lighter, and she saw his face in her mind if not in front of her. Saw his eyes sparkle and crinkle at the sides as the corner of his mouth quirked up in amusement. “The shadows will take care of it.”

Oh, right. She forgot about them for a second.

“They must like it here as well,” she murmured, mostly to herself, picturing the amorphous dark creatures roaming every inch of the place at their discretion.

“They do,” he affirmed, “they were born here… or so they say.”

“Really?” She perked up at attention at that, letting go of his shoulders when he tossed her sock off for his shadows to catch.

Without second guessing herself, she took a step back and began to disrobe, starting with her veil.

She heard his breath hitch for a second, and she briefly wondered if he could see her before he spoke up. “They like to say that about every place they think is interesting,” he deadpanned, causing her to laugh.

Summoned by their conversation and her laugh, the shadows twirled through her hair before spinning around her, snatching each robe and layer from her every time she took something off.

Once she was down to her undergarments, she carefully stepped towards the edge of the water. She hesitated, “are you sure it’s not deep?”

“Positive,” his voice appeared near her yet she couldn’t determine where exactly. “Come here,” he murmured and reached out for her, touching her hands first and placing them on his shoulders once again. 

“Oh,” she gasped when her feet touched the hot water, and quickly descended into the hot spring with his guiding hands. “Oh,” she repeated, this time in a pleasured breath. His chest rumbled with amusement once more, and she had half a mind to scold him for continuously laughing at her, but quickly dismissed the idea as she realized she’d never quite heard him laugh this much before.

It was quite a pleasant sound and in all truthfulness, it brought her a sense of pride and satisfaction at being the cause behind it.

That is, until he let go of her and she began to sink. Gasping, she scrambled for his arm once again when her feet didn’t touch the ground.

“You said it was shallow!” She screeched.

“It is,” he insisted, “I’m literally just standing right now.”

She waved her feet, searching for a bottom but could only briefly feel the ground with her toe. She scowled at him and his Illyrian bigness.

“I can’t reach the bottom” she gritted out.

“What’s the problem? Can’t you swim?” 

At her pointed silence, he guffawed.

“Shut up,” she scolded, “I had more important things to do than learn how to swim.”

“It’s a basic life skill,” he continued to giggle. Giggle. “Why didn’t you say something before?”

“You said it wasn’t deep,” she defended herself, “now you’re going to have to pull me along.”

“Fine by me,” he grinned. She could hear it. Wrapping a strong arm around her waist, he pulled her along as he pushed off the shallow end of the hot spring into the depth of its pools. Feeling his powerful legs kick in a practiced rhythm to keep them both afloat, she instinctively wrapped her legs around his waist to keep her legs out of his way.

“Sorry,” she blushed, shimmying her hips away to pull her legs away from him.

“No,” the arm he had wrapped around her waist quickly stopped her in place, sliding down to her thigh and squeezing briefly to keep her close and shift her so she faced him completely, “stay like that.”

Something in her pulsed.

She inhaled sharply through her nose, and gingerly placed her hands on either side of his shoulders, trying to keep if only just a centimeter of distance between their bodies. But like magnets— and by the physical nature of water surrounding them, pushing at them— their bodies pressed against one another, unrelenting in their proximity. 

“Hold on,” he spoke quietly, the only words of warning before he let go of her to use both of his firm arms to swim skillfully deeper within the dark depths of the hot spring. After a moment of his rhythmic movements, she relaxed and tilted her head back, allowing the bubbling hot water to submerge her hair and soothe her weary head. 

Without intending to, she exhaled a soft breath of pleasure at the feeling of the hot water engulfing and massaging her skull, her mind deliciously empty and finally quiet.

Still, there was a string in the edge of her subconsciousness. A tickle of a feeling, a shy invitation. And after a long moment of well-deserved silence, she allowed the soft melodic voice on the edge of the water to fill her. 

Pulling herself up straight, she wrapped her arms around Azriel’s shoulders and hugged him.

“Are you alright?” He whispered, brushing his cheek with hers.

She nodded against his cheek so he could feel it, and with her eyes closed, now feeling nothing but the water surrounding them and him, she replied. “They were born here.”

He inhaled through his nose, “the Shadows? How do you know?”

Slowing down their swimming, he fell into a soft tread.

Her top lip brushed the lobe of his ear when she whispered, “the cave told me.”

He didn’t reply, and when she went to pull away— she didn’t know what for, it wasn’t like she could see him— he quickly pulled her back with a hand between her shoulder blades, his entire forearm somehow hotter than the water surrounding them. She shivered, feeling her very center tighten at the feeling of his fingers brushing the bare skin of her back and his cheek lightly nuzzling hers.

“You can hear it?” He asked, breathing heavily yet he sounded different. Stilted and gritting.

“The water,” she clarified, her body reacting to his before her mind could catch up.

Everything suddenly felt even more electric as she became aware of everything around her.

Her sense of touch, of feel and scent only heightened by the smothering of her sense of sight. She could hear him, hear his thundering heart and rapid breaths, could smell his anticipation and growing arousal. She could feel his desperate need, and feel the tension in the tendons of his broad solid shoulders under her hands, and the tightness of his body as her legs wrapped around him like a python catching its prey within its fatal hold. 

But she could also sense his hesitation.

And that would not do.

“Az?” She murmured, and the sultry knowing voice that left her was not that of the seductive male-eating* fae she was before that. But it also wasn’t the voice of the apathetic and cold priestess. She was someone else entirely. 

He melted under her touch and searched her face with his once again, pressing his cheek to hers before turning it to almost brush his lips against hers, but she shifted her own face away before he could, gliding her nose along his jaw before smiling against it, laughing lightly, “is the hot spring getting to you?” She tried to lighten the mood, yet the solid strength of him under her touch and the evidence of the tension between them affecting him as well made it hard for her to keep a leveled head.

He held his breath for a second, then exhaled a quick breath, shaking his head as if to clear it as well. “Shut up.”

She continued to hold on to him as he swam back to the shallow edge of the spring in silence, and she used that brief moment to replay their interaction in her mind. She was no meek and shy virgin. She had never shied away from her own sexuality, had never been truly coy unless it was tactful. She was no stranger to casual sex and a light play of sexual tension with acquaintances or those she liked spending time with— male or female— but she also hadn’t participated in any form of sex (or sex-adjacent acts) for well over half a century. 

She had begun to think of that part of herself as extinct. Had even considered herself asexual, due to her lack of feel for anyone for such a long time.

Without her knowing, the winged bat male had sparked something feral within her and she didn’t like it one bit, despite how much she very much wanted to consume him whole.

But he was Gwyn’s male, for Cauldron’s sake! How long had she spent encouraging her friend to talk to him, how many hours had she spent gossiping with her in the libraries stairwells— getting shushed by the other priestesses every couple of minutes— about his favorite foods, his favorite books and the simple lighthearted conversations she’d had with him that she’d later shared with Gwyn? (Why she never shared their more intimate conversations with her friend, she didn’t want to consider at that very moment).

As she began to spiral for being a bad friend to both Gwyn, for suddenly wanting to eat her male alive, and Azriel for playing with him the way she had, she pushed herself away from him as soon as they reached the edge, suddenly needing physical distance from him lest she climb the rest of his strong body and wrapped her legs around his face.

Azriel, however, remained just as silent as her from his place only at arms length away, but she knew his silence was of a different kind. 

“I’ve…” she scrambled for something to say, “I've told you about my father before. About how he wanted a daughter.”

What better cockblock than the sudden cracking open of an age-old can of trauma?

Azriel hummed in reply, but didn’t say anything. She heard the rippling of water as he raised his hands to the edge of the spring, using his arms to pull himself up. “Wait!” She stopped him before he could fully pull himself out, “can we… stay a little longer?”

The sound of his descension back into the water was all the acquiescence she needed to hear, so she continued. “Clearly it wasn’t because he wanted to be a loving father to a little girl. He was— he is a lunatic. An arrogant narcissistic lunatic with ideas of grandeur, and all he needed was a five-coin divination from a pseudo-Seer to convince him that he would be the almighty Sire of the one female to bring truthfulness and balance to a world that blindly followed the wrong icons.

“He believed that although we prayed to the ‘feminine gods’ and other religious figures like the Mother, it was truly the males that puppeteered the restoration to order. At the same time, he thought that the High Lords of Prythian weren’t doing enough and were only the beginning of ‘a worthy representation of our world as it should be’,” she deepened her voice slightly to imitate her father.

“Your father sounds vile,” he snarled.

“He’s worse,” she assured, thankful that the tension between them had settled into something more neutral as they fell back into their usual deep but lilting conversations. “Anyway, he’s a prick who believed that his daughter would become the heiress to the Mother’s order and he would be the one orchestrating the way.”

She held onto the edge of the pool as she moved closer, while making sure to keep at least a foot of distance between them. “When I began to show my gifts, he reinterpreted his prophecy to fit me, and molded me to fit the prophecy. So, when he learned that I had this… connection to the elements, he forced me to discern how much and just how exactly they worked. 

“Wind was the easiest of course, but the winds report all kinds of things— some are truths and some are lies, as we know the winds hear everything and travel where they please. He never was one to care about history unless it was his own, so he didn’t care what wisdom the earth shared with me, but fire? ‘Fire is no liar,’ he always told me as a child, and while dealing with fire definitely isn’t pleasant, it was easier than water, for ‘water does not falter’ but I did. He would toss me into the lake and not let me out until the water spoke the words he wanted to hear… and he would keep me in there for so long…”  she trailed off.

She inhaled, pulling herself back to the present, unsure of where she was going with her words, only knowing that this was the moment. This was something he had to know.

“So I’ve always avoided bodies of water. Not so much because of my father, but because I’ve never much liked the cruel secrets the voices within it like to share.”

“I’m…sorry,” he spoke lowly, and he sounded so sad and so defeated that she immediately reached out to touch him. She placed a hand firmly over his chest.

“No,” she shook her head, “stop whatever verbal flagellation is going through your head, I don’t regret coming here for a second,” she spoke firmly. “I’m not even telling you this because you brought me here. I don’t want this to be transactional.”

“Then why are you telling me this?”

“Because I trust you. Because I’ve never told anyone, and I don’t want anyone else to know, but you.”

He fell silent at that, yet inhaled sharply when her finger unknowingly traced a ridged scar on his chest, only an inch away from his thundering heart.

He flinched away from her.

“Don’t.”

She pulled her hand away, “what happened there?”

“Ash bolt covered in bloodbane.”

She nodded slowly, gritting her teeth as she remembered his story behind it. “The day Elain and Nesta were made.”

“Yes.”

“And you… are ashamed of your scars?”

It was such a simple question. An intrusive one perhaps, but not for them, not here. “Yes.”

They both knew she wasn’t referring to the battle scars littering his body. He was ashamed of the scars on his hands, the ones inflicted when he was young and defenseless. The ones that had been forced upon him, not earned through battle and will.

Slowly, she reached out to touch his hand, where it rested at his side nearest to her, but as soon as her fingers grazed the outside of his scarred hand, he pulled away. “Let me show you,” she whispered soothingly, lightly grasping one of his fingers before pulling it up above the surface of the water.

Slowly, allowing him time to pull his hand away if he wanted, she singled out his index finger and brought it to the center of her lips.

She heard and felt his breath falter, but neither of them moved further until she did, guiding his finger to lightly graze over her lips to the left corner of her mouth, where she allowed him to trace her scar there, dragging out towards her ear and ending in the center of her cheek before grazing the line back, over her lips, and over the right corner of her mouth along the jagged line that dragged upward. “Eowyn,” he breathed, but she didn’t stop. She brought his finger to trace the even thicker scar dragged across her neck and then back down under the surface of the water towards her hip, just an inch or two under her belly button and to the side, where a healed yet scarred patch of flesh curdled. As he traced his finger along it though, she could tell he felt the initial wound: the branding of a jumbled insignia that had since been covered by the slightly thinner layer of a self-made burn.

“These are just the most prominent ones. I can’t feel the ones on my back.”

“Who did this to you?” He snarled, voice only barely contained as she let go of his hand. That same hand curled possessively over her hip, his thumb lightly but repeatedly tracing her scar as if trying to figure out what the insignia was, but she had long covered it and made sure it was unidentifiable. “Tell me who did this to you so I can deal with them.”

“That’s not the point,” she sighed, and when he began to protest, she settled her hands on his chest once again to pacify him. “It’s not. They will be dealt with in their due time, trust me. But I wanted to show you what I hide. What brings me shame.”

“That’s different,” he gritted and she felt his body vibrate with repressed emotions under her touch. His grip on her tightened. “Tell me who and I’ll make them pay.”

But she shook her head, “no. They will, when the time is right, but that time isn’t now.”

“How can you say that,” he pushed as he pulled her closer, “how can you show me how they hurt you and expect me to do nothing?”

“Because it’s not about them,” she snapped, “I tell you things, show you things, not because of my father, not because of the ones who hurt me, but because this is me. I am not a product of my abuse, the same way you aren’t a product of yours. These scars?” she held one of his scarred hands to her cheek to touch her own, “they are part of us, and they may reflect only a fraction of the pain in here,” she touched her other hand to his chest, “but they do not define us.”

She felt his body tremble under her touch, from repressed anger, frustration, or just a general flurry of emotions, she wasn’t sure, but no sooner had the words left his mouth— a tortured murmured “can I hold you?”— than she had her own arms wrapped around him tightly, melting into his arms and finding, finally, that which she had been searching for, yearning for, the second he placed his hands on her waist to winnow them there, to a place that was his own. Her chest touched his, and despite the thin layer of clothing separating them it was like their flesh melded together and their hearts beat as one.

This is what she needed. She cared not for anything other than the feeling of belonging that was to be wrapped in his arms. Azriel slid his hands away from her torso, cupping her face between each hand and she pliantly allowed him to. 

She closed her eyes and allowed herself to simply feel. She lost herself to the sensation— not just the distantly familiar feeling of being touched by another, but the particular and distinctive feeling of him. 

Ever so gently, his thumbs traced her eyebrows, slowly tracing back over her closed lids, and she didn’t know when or why but she felt herself tremble under his touch, as he glided his fingers over the slope of her nose before tracing her lips once again. With the most gentle of touches, he traced her scars lightly, once, twice. He cupped the side of her head with one hand, and with the other, traced his finger along the center of her lips, pressing down slightly to part her lips before allowing it to gently plop back in its place.

“Beautiful,” he breathed so softly, it was almost as if he hadn’t meant to say it out loud. 

She let out a small amused tuh, about to point out that he couldn’t even see her through the dark encompassing them, but the words remained in her throat when he quickly traced his thumbs over her smile, inhaling deeply.

All she could do was hold him tight and stay there, linger in the quiet moment of peace, of comfort, and of an intrinsic and deep rooted understanding. His forehead rested on hers, and the tip of his nose brushed against hers but he didn’t try to kiss her again. He simply held her close and breathed her in.

She wasn’t sure how long they stayed there in the depths of the dark cave that gave no way for any sort of light. All she knew was that she didn’t need the light to guide her as long as she had Azriel at her side.

—

They remained in the shallow edge of the hot spring for a long while, lost in tender conversation as she inquired after the cave, how he’d come to find it and who else knew about it. 

No longer hugging, as they treaded lightly over the water, yet never separating completely (always at least holding hands, as he kept her afloat), he told her of his formative years, when he discovered the cave when he was no older than twenty-five. He came here when he needed a breath away from his family, his duties, and even his Shadows, for although he was never without them, this was a place where the Shadows themselves liked to take their time to bask in the comforting familiar darkness on their own. 

Once Eowyn felt her fingers begin to prune, they left the water and with the quick effective help of the shadows always surrounding them, she managed to dress quickly and gather herself to leave the fog of oblivion that had settled over her with his close proximity.

Expecting to be blinded by the rays of the sun, she braced herself before leaving the cave only to find not the sun, but the moon shining down at her through the gaps of the trees. 

She gaped slightly, turning to look at Azriel who seemed just as surprised as her that they had spent almost the entire day in the cave.

“Are you ready?” He asked softly, and when she nodded, he reached for her waist and held her against him as he winnowed them back to the House of Wind.

“I-“ he frowned down at her, eyebrows furrowing as he considered his words. “Rhys is sending me on a mission for a few days.”

“Where?” She frowned immediately. It wasn’t out of the ordinary, of course, as Azriel was often sent out to fulfill his duties. He was never gone more than a few days, of course, but suddenly, the thought of him leaving caused an anxious knot to form in her belly.

“It’s this thing with the Autumn Court. I should be back in just a few days.”

She nodded, but kept silent for a beat. “You.. you be careful alright?”

He chuckled lightly, but this chuckle was softer than the rest he’d gifted her, as he looked down at her fondly. “Are you gonna miss me?”

“Az,” she tapped him lightly in the chest in the imitation of a punch, his eyes glinting with a tender look. “But you will be careful, won’t you?”

“I always am.” 

After only half a breaths hesitation, he bent down and pressed a feather soft kiss between her eyebrows, before he winnowed away.

part eleven

*male-eater = maneater bc i was listening to the song and that is indeed Past Eowyn

taglist: @lilah-asteria , @a-courtof-azriel, @honk4emoboyz , @feyretopia , @mrsjna , @buttermilktea11 , @bravo-delta-eccho , @kylieinwonderland, @adventure-awaits13

[arcane-vagabond]

Hey, so...

This is going to be a LONG post, so please bare with me.

I've been doing a LOT of thinking the past week about what fics I'm doing and when. I've made some decisions that some people are probably not going to like, and I completely understand that, but at the end of the day, it's my blog and my time. I know there have been some fics that people have been very excited for, but unfortunately, things change.

As of right now, Til the Summer Comes Again is getting shelved until sometime in November. I love the fic, and I want to finish it, but I do think it'll be a lot more fun to do in the winter considering it's a Jack Frost fic. This past winter was really hectic for me considering I started a new job after being unemployed for a couple of months, and with the stress of all that and the pressure for other fics, it definitely fell by the wayside. The fic idea is something so special to me, which is why I'm shelving it instead of scrapping it altogether. We will see Jack Frost!Bob again in November!

I am also scrapping my Hadestown fic (In Spite of the Way). I'm doing this because it's such a specific story, and unfortunately, I just don't see myself being able to add anything new or interesting to the story at hand. It would just be a complete retelling of the story that's already there, and that's not something that I want to do.

I am also tabling my Studio Ghibli fics. I'm not sure if I'll ever come back to them, but they've been pushed to the side for so long that it just doesn't make sense to have them on my masterlist when it's becoming clear that other things are drawing my interests away. I'd love to re-explore them farther down the line, but for now, Our Hill of Stars and The Word of the Crooked are being taken off my masterlist. Whisper in the Wind I believe will be started come early September or so and be a part of the Autumn lineup.

Now that Meet Me at the Sea is done, my focus is going to be on finishing Fool's Fare and updating the Dagger Posse Universe here and there. Fool's Fare is most likely to be done sometime in April if I had to guess, which means...

It's time to talk the Sailor-Aviator Summer Cinematic Release schedule!

As we all know, I've just announced the MMATS stand-alone sequel: Down By the Bay featuring one Bradley Bradshaw. But what else is coming this summer? Let's talk about it!

There have been a few of you waiting for my Indiana Jones!Jake fic aka Fortune & Glory, and I'm so excited to announce that it is on the roster for this summer! Tune in to follow Jake and Bucket as they try to secure the legendary staff of Moses before the Nazis do!

Next up on the roster is the long-awaited Mafia fic! Titled after the age-old idiom, Two Birds follows the reader as they unwittingly catch the eye of not one, but two mafia bosses, both standing as the dual heads of the Dagger Syndicate. Two Birds is a M x F x M featuring Jake "Hangman" Seresin and Bradley "Rooster" Bradshaw (No Hangster).

I'm hoping to start these fics anywhere from Mid-May to early June, so stay tuned!!

Meanwhile, I will be dedicating some time to the DPU as well, trying to wrap up some fics within that to hopefully have it finished (or down to the last one) by the summer's end.

If you've stuck around this long, I just want to say thank you. Not only for reading this monster of a post, but for continuing to read my work and for following and supporting me through everything! You guys are the best! Until next time~

[collapsedglasshouses]

LOST IN ALL THE CITY LIGHTS

CHAPTER FOUR aka It's Just A Game ♫ PAIRING: Vinny x Jean (f!singer) ♫ SUMMARY: Jean, part-time streamer and programmer, and her band Join Me In Pieces are invited to be the support for Motionless in White at their upcoming US tour. Adding to her anxiety about meeting the people she had been a fan of for over a decade at this point, is the fact that the internet seemingly seems to think that her and Vinny would be a perfect match. ♫ WARNINGS: SLOW BURN, Jean being an anxious mass for weeks straight, swearing, corny af, mentions of alcohol consumption, mentions of drug use, eventually smut (specific warnings at the beginning of the chapters), too much tension too little spoken words, MDNI, 18+ ♫ A/N: sorry for the late update. i had a terrible flu last week and really couldn't get myself to do anything. but i'll probably post two chapters next week. ♡♡

MASTERLIST || MASTERPOST

Jean took a deep breath as she reached her hotel room. The first full-band rehearsal was over and she couldn’t quite shake off the energy that had buzzed through her the entire day. The adrenaline from performing was still coursing through her veins and as much as she would have loved to focus on the good vibes – on the fact that MIW had genuinely enjoyed their set and praised them – there was something else that kept looping in her mind.

Vinny.

Specifically, the fact that he had been watching her streams for a while. She couldn’t quite wrap her head around it.

Her bandmates didn’t seem to push her too hard about it – yet – but Mars, of course, kept giving her knowing looks. The sly glances, the little smirks, it all screamed that Mars knew exactly what was going on.

Jean, however, was still caught in a whirlwind of confusion. Vinny was undeniably talented, and from what little she knew, he was also just… so damn nice. Too nice. The same guy who could flawlessly drum through the heaviest of tracks was also the one who casually mentioned that he watched her streams that mostly contained of her saying the most unhinged shit. It wasn’t a big deal, right? He was just enjoying it, being a gamer himself, and it was no different from the hundreds of others who tuned in to her Twitch streams.

But the fact that he admitted it during their one-on-one moment kept playing on a loop in her head. For a while. The words echoed, louder than any of the music they'd played that day.

Her mind drifted as the air conditioning rumbled quietly. Everyone else was already knocked out after a long day of rehearsals, and Jean was left with nothing but her own thoughts to keep her company. After a quick shower, she slipped into her bed, scrolling through her phone, trying to find something - anything - to distract herself from the gnawing feeling that was settling deep in her chest.

For about an hour, she just enjoyed her alone time. Her laptop was open, and she was idly scrolling through some code for her side project she was working on. She loved coding – it was a skill that had always brought her peace, a break from the whirlwind of her music career. But tonight, her mind kept drifting back to everything but her project.

Before she could even stop herself, she had opened discord:

jeanscreen: wanna game something?

Jean blinked, pausing. It had only been a few hours since their rehearsal ended, but here she was, reaching out again. She sat for a moment, staring at the screen. She’d almost forgotten about how casually they’d talked that afternoon. How easily it had felt.

sachetti: yeah. you in?

Her fingers flew over the keyboard before she could second-guess herself. What was the harm? They’d already gamed before. It wasn’t anything special.

Within seconds, she clicked into the voice chat, and the familiar sound of Vinny’s voice filled her headphones.

“Sup?” His voice was light, like they hadn’t just spent a full day together in rehearsals.

“Not much. Was just finishing up some coding,” Jean replied, relaxing into her chair. This was familiar. Comfortable.

“Yeah? What, like… are you still working on that project thing?” Vinny asked, his tone curious.

Jean chuckled softly. “Yeah, I’m trying to implement this game mechanics and something keeps failing. It’s a mess, honestly.”

“Well, I don’t know about that exactly, but if you’re looking for help, I can totally give you some tips,” Vinny offered, his voice shifting slightly into that confident tone he seemed to effortlessly adopt when talking about anything drum-related.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Jean said, grinning. She was about to say more when the sound of the game loading up interrupted her thoughts.

“Alright, alright,” Vinny said, his voice brightening. “Let’s play. What’re we going for tonight?”

“Maybe some Phasmophobia?” Jean suggested. It wasn’t their first choice of game, but it always guaranteed plenty of laughs and chaos. Plus, it was easy to talk while playing.

“Sounds good,” Vinny agreed.

And just like that, they were off. The first few rounds were easy, playful, as they casually made fun of each other’s gameplay. Jean could hear Vinny’s laughter in the background whenever she messed up something ridiculous, like trying to get the spirit to talk with awkward questions. 

“Dude, I didn’t even do anything! How’d I almost die already?” Jean laughed, trying to get her character out of the corner where she had somehow gotten stuck.

Vinny was already way ahead on the map, his voice coming through with the usual teasing edge. “Guess you suck. Maybe you should have listened to me and not run in there.”

Jean couldn’t help but laugh, shaking her head. “Yeah, I’ll just go ahead and take all your advice, Master Vincenzo.”

“Good call,” he shot back, the banter flowing so easily. “You’ll be a pro in no time.”

As they played, it felt like the game was a background to something else - something softer. Their conversation started to drift away from gaming, moving into more personal territory.

“So, you ever get tired of streaming? With all your other stuff going on.” Vinny asked out of nowhere. It was one of those questions that seemed light on the surface but hinted at something deeper.

Jean paused, her character still standing perfectly still in the game. She leaned back in her chair and thought about it for a moment. “I mean… sometimes. I love it, but there are days when it feels like a job, you know? I’ve never intended it to be that. The pressure, the expectation to always be on, always be entertaining - it gets to me sometimes.”

Vinny was quiet for a moment before he answered. “Yeah, I get that. For me, it’s different. I like streaming, but I don’t take it as seriously as you do, I think. It’s just… a thing I do for fun.” His words were casual, but there was a certain hesitation in his tone that caught Jean off guard.

“You?” Jean echoed, raising an eyebrow. “But you could. You’re a natural at it. I’m sure you’ve got more than enough fans to build something big.”

Vinny chuckled at that. “Nah, I don’t have the patience for it like you. Plus, I suck at networking.”

Jean tilted her head, not sure whether to take that seriously. “I think you’re selling yourself short,” she said, her voice warm. “But I get it. It’s a lot of work to keep up with. Especially while managing all the band stuff.”

There was a brief silence, a comfortable one.

“Well, you’re good at it,” Vinny said, breaking the silence with an unexpected compliment. “You’ve got the whole Twitch thing figured out, while handling your band stuff and you still do programming projects. I don’t know how you manage it all.”

Jean blinked, caught off guard by the praise. “Uh - thanks?” She couldn’t quite find the right words, not expecting this side of Vinny to emerge so suddenly. Was he actually complimenting her?

It wasn’t often that people she admired would say something nice without a hint of sarcasm or a joke. She swallowed, trying to compose herself. “I mean, I work at it. It’s not easy. Sometimes I feel like I just load a lot of tasks on my back to keep myself busy.”

Vinny seemed to sense her awkwardness. His voice softened slightly. “You’re good at it. Really.”

Another brief silence fell between them. For a moment, Jean forgot she was gaming entirely.

Then, Vinny casually asked, “So, how does a computer programmer end up in a band, anyway?”

Jean leaned back in her chair, her gaze shifting to the ceiling as she thought. “I guess… I thought I’d do the safe thing. Get a degree, get a stable job. But music was always there, you know? We started this whole thing in my second semester. Cat and Will were in some courses with me. Mars I met in highschool and Callum just kinda spawned after he and Mars started dating. And when the band actually started picking up traction, I had to make a choice.”

Vinny listened quietly, and Jean could almost picture him nodding along in understanding.

She chuckled softly. “What about you? Computer science drop-out turned drummer? That’s a shift.”

Vinny laughed out loud. “Yeah, well… To be honest, I really hated studying. Not for the subject, but the people. I just didn’t really click with anyone.”

“That’s hard to believe.” Jean exclaimed before her mind could stop her.

“Why’s that?” Vinny wanted to know and Jean felt her face flush.

“I mean. You’re kind of… I don’t know… Charming?” She said, trying to sound as casual as possible.

“Is that so?” He teased and let out a soft chuckle, causing her to roll her eyes with a smile.

“Don’t let it get to your head.” She warned.

“Oh, don’t worry. I definitely will.” Vinny joked and for a moment they just started playing again.

It was one of those rare moments when both of them didn’t need to say anything more. It was just… understood. The weight of the conversation hung in the air, neither of them rushing to change the subject.

Time seemed to blur as they continued to play, but as the night wore on, Jean realized just how late it was. 

“Shit, what time is it?” Jean muttered, her mind buzzing from both the conversation and the game.

Vinny checked his own screen. “3 AM. Whoops.”

Neither of them made a move to log off. There was no awkward pause, just the feeling that they could keep talking, keep playing, and maybe never leave the space they’d carved out for themselves.

After another beat, Vinny’s voice softened. “We should probably crash.”

Jean sighed, her eyes slightly hurting from staring at a screen for hours, but a strange flutter filling her chest. “Yeah. Probably.”

But neither of them moved.

Finally, Vinny chuckled softly, causing Jean to smile. “Alright. "Goodnight, Jean.”

“Goodnight, Vin.” Jean whispered, smiling even though he couldn’t see it. She logged off, but deep down, she knew she wouldn’t be sleeping anytime soon.

dividers by @saradika-graphics

TAGLIST: @ladyveronikawrites @sitkowski @deathblacksmoke

@bugseatmesoon @circle-with-me @measuredingold @cncohshit @jilliemiw86

@exitwoundsx @vinyardmauro @devilsfuckingdance

[pochipop]

＃GENSHIN IMPACT !! ♡ — ON THE DARK SIDE OF THE MOON (CHILDE X READER).

#. synopsis! — childe knows he doesn't deserve this, but he just can't let you go .

#. characters! — childe .

#. warnings! — angst .

#. word count! — 1k .

#. alt accounts! — @ddollipop (nsfw) @yyolkchi (reblog/spam) .

#. others! — navigation & masterlist .

#. a/n! — this is my "from the vault" era. most of the things i'll be posting for a while will probably have been started anywhere from a few months to over a year ago. i have a huge google doc just stocked with fics that i started and never finished, so i'm trying to wrap some of them up neatly enough to post them and at least let them see the light of day lol.

It’s always lonely at the top.

On nights like this, Childe realizes that now more than ever. Snezhnaya is his home, —but in a more abstract sense of the term. He knows the snow-covered lands and the bitter chill of frost like the backs of his scarred hands, and yet this nation feels less like the soft place he can fall upon each time he returns from somewhere else. It’s the center of his youth, the place that fills most of his heart, but things have certainly changed since he was little more than a young boy who loved making angels in the snow. The world moves faster now; days bleed into weeks in a matter of moments, and there are many times Childe wishes that the weather could freeze time like it does everything else around here.

Still, maybe it’s better that it doesn't. Even if it did somehow, he’s not sure how he’d spend that time anyway. A part of him is all too certain that he’d waste it away, losing sight of his goals within seconds.

He’s always been too driven by madness for his own good.

The viscous truth of it all is that Childe craves acceptance, but doesn’t really like to be loved. Even as you sleep next to him, his arm clutched in your warm, forgiving grip; he doesn’t know how to put such thoughts to the wayside. Selfishly, he wants you. Sometimes, it feels like he needs you. Realistically, though, Childe knows he shouldn’t have you. You’re not much of a fighter, and your only ties to the Fatui are through him, which he holds an insurmountable level of shame and regret for. If not for him, he’s certain your life would be a lot less complicated.

You’ve even said so yourself, albeit only jokingly. Those few little quips hold just enough water for Childe to drown himself in them, though. He wants to push you away as his lungs fill in and oxygen depletes, but you’re so goddamn intoxicating that he can’t bear the thought of parting ways. You snuggle closer to him as if seeking the heat of his body, —as if seeking the protection it offers from any ghoulish figures that could pop up in your otherwise sugar coated dreams.

Childe isn’t sure what he’d do without this, —without the ability to come staggering home to you. Truthfully, you’re more of a home to him now than Snezhnaya has ever been. He yearns for nights like this more than you’ll ever know, more than he’ll ever be able to articulate properly, because Celestia knows he’s never been very good with words.

Not when they’re genuine, anyway.

He can put on a show just fine, put that charismatic mask on and make strangers fall to their knees at his feet. But once they get a glimpse of the monster inside that lusts for violence and bloodshed on every battlefield, they run for the hills. And Childe isn't naive enough to wonder why. He knows, probably better than anyone else ever will, that he is hard to love, and even more difficult to be loved by.

When everything is going steady, he likes to send some ripples through the water just because he can. He pushes buttons he knows he should leave alone, —maybe because he can’t help himself, or maybe because deep down, he wants to push you away. You can’t just up and decide that you want to see him rot his way back into the earth beneath his feet if he flips all the right switches and makes it happen at will. There’s no disappointment to be had there if he’s the one who incites it; like flicking a match and watching your house go up in flames.

If he does it to himself, there’s no reason to be sad about it.

Self-sabotage has always been kind of his thing. Still, here you are with your soft tufts of breath fanning against him, trusting him not to let himself snap to the point of no return and burn everything down around you both (figuratively and literally.) And for the life of him, —Childe doesn’t get it. He really doesn’t. You’ve always wanted a simpler life, one you know he can’t give you. . . But here you are, and he doesn’t have the heart to push you away like he knows deep down that he should.

If he’s being honest with himself, and this is one of the rare times that he is, he knows he should be building his walls high enough to force you out if that’s what it takes. Everytime you lay with him like this, he knows he’s stealing that tranquil life you’ve always wanted away from you, and it eats him up inside. He’s not what’s best for anybody, nonetheless for you.

He knows, he knows, he knows. . . He really should just—

“Hey,” you say softly, and his resolve crumbles away like the walls he tries to build between himself and you. “Can’t sleep?”

Childe looks over at you and pauses for a few moments, admiring the way you love him, even when he doesn’t deserve it. Then he thinks to himself that he’s never truly deserved it, and the cycle begins again. He hums in acknowledgement, and you hold him closer, like you’re trying to mend all his broken pieces back together (even if you don’t know it.) It won’t help him sleep, but it feels nice to be cared for like this. To be loved, to be seen. . . To be stripped bare in the moonlight that spills in from your window is a blessing sent straight from Celestia, and it makes him wonder just what he’s ever done well enough to have ended up here in his lifetime.

“You’re thinking too much,” you say.

He almost laughs, pressing a gentle kiss to the crown of your head.

“Yeah,” he agrees, “I know.”

[makeste]

You still planning to catch up with the rest of the chapters?

thanks for checking in, anon. yes of course I am going to finish reading all of the other chapters. that's a huge part of the story I'm not just going to skip out on, lol. and I'll also be posting individual chapter reaction posts for 342-402 (plus the elusive chapter 321 reaction which I never did finish editing and posting) once I'm done catching up. all of the reactions in my volume recap posts are just excerpts; there's a lot more I haven't posted yet.

I think I'm going to try and make Fridays a general update day, regardless of whether that takes the form of a new chapter recap, an old chapter recap, or just a quick, generic "hey, still alive and working on getting my shit together" update. so with that said, I've unfortunately been busier than expected the past couple weeks, so I haven't read past chapter 374. my energy to do recaps tends to ebb and flow and is generally either all or nothing, so when the next burst comes I'll probably marathon another 5-10 chapters in one go. I also haven't read this week's chapter yet so I don't know if it will be up today or tomorrow, but either way it will be posted this weekend.

a few people have also sent me asks encouraging me to catch up at my own pace and not to feel pressured to write down long reactions if it's getting too stressful, and I just wanted to say thank you for the concern and reassurance. <3 but also, I want to clarify that doing these reaction posts really is my preferred way to read this particular series, even if it takes longer. I genuinely get a lot more out of the manga this way. I notice more details and it forces me to pay attention to things I might gloss over otherwise. and I'd be sitting here making jokes in my head and gushing over the characters nonstop either way, so it's nice to have the additional outlet for it, lol. and of course it goes without saying that I love the fandom interaction that comes from making these posts. that alone is more than worth the extra effort.

anyway so yeah, that's my update for the week! chapter 408 recap will be forthcoming within the next 24-48 hours, and maybe some more ask replies as well depending on how much work I feel like putting off lol.

[just-wrting]

The Babysitter (Part 4)

Title: The Babysitter (Part 4)

Summary: You do your best to get a little closer to Aaron, while still keeping enough distance that you don't catch feelings. The only problem? It doesn't seem like it's working.

Word Count: 2687

Master List Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

A/N: I promised that Part 4 would be what I posted next and here it is!!!! It only took me longer than expected. I also think that despite the migraines and my terrible work schedule I'll be doing my best to post 3x a week. Also yes I know, I didn't post this at 3 AM my time for once.

You stretch and lean back on the couch. Aaron had texted you that plane had landed and that he’d be on his way soon. It's already much later than you want it to be. Jack has been asleep for a while, leaning against you while the TV plays whatever movie is on.

You know you shouldn’t go to sleep now, not when Aaron is so close to being back home, but you can’t fight it anymore. You shuffle Jack into your arms, it's much harder to move a sleeping child than an awake one, and go to the bedroom.

You're too tired to take Jack to his bed, so you take him to Aaron’s room. You push the covers to Aaron’s bed back and climb in. You shuffle the blanket around you and Jack, tucking it under his chin. Within seconds, you feel your eyes flutter shut. You wish you could stay up until toron gets here. That thought doesn't stop you from falling asleep.

——

You wake up well rested to an empty bed. A slightly burnt smell wafts through the house. You race to the kitchen in a panic, worried that Jack has decided to mess with stuff. Instead Jack is standing next to the toaster, with Aaron.

"You should’ve woken me up,” you say as you lean against the doorway. "You nearly gave me a heart attack.”

“I didn't want to wake you. Jack said you had a long week so I thought it was best to let you sleep."

Aaron sets a plate on the table and Jack rushes over to you. He eagerly grabs your arm, and guides you towards the table.

"I helped make you breakfast!"

The way he smiles makes your heart melt, and you sink into a chair.

"Yeah I can see that But is it really okay to eat without you? Maybe I’ll wait a bit.”

Aaron sets two pieces of toast on your plate. The edges are darker than you prefer but you know better than to make a face about it in front of Jack.

"It’s fine. Better to eat it while it's still hot," Aaron says with a gentle smile. "Besides, Jack ate first.”

“That doesn't stop me from feeling a bit bad. How much sleep did you get Aaron?”

His silence is the answer. He got less sleep than you wish he would as is, not to mention how strenuous his job is. You make note to talk to about that habit as soon as you can.

—-

As you pack up your things you hear a knock at the door. You hear Aaron get the door and a voice talking about Jack. Walking to the front door leads to you seeing a mom and son duo.

“He's been talking about this all day," the mom giggles, "I'm so grateful that you’re willing to let Jack come over for a little bit."

You slide up to Aaron and take a look. The kid is Jack’s age, so you guess he's a friend from school. The guess is correct as Jack shoves his shoes on and runs between you and Aaron to go outside.

"I had some stuff to do so it made sense for him to go with a friend.”

"Alright. Just text me when you want me to bring him back. He's always welcome."

With that, the three of them left. You take your time watching Jack get into the car and leave, choosing to stay silent for a minute.

"When did you set that up," you ask, turning to Aaron. "Cause I didn't.”

"This morning. I figured it would give us time to talk about things.”

You nod, "There's still coffee left so we best get to it. I just want a few things to clear up."

A sigh leaves his lips. “I can imagine there's a lot to clear up.

You make both coffees. "I'm not upset with you, if that makes you feel better.

"I suppose it does. I don't know what I'd do if you decided to leave."

"'Probably hire someone else."

"'I don't-" he sighs, “Jack doesn't want someone else."

Your eyes soften as you look at Aaron. He looks exhausted. You want to push him into bed and force him to sleep. You feel yourself thinking about how much you'd like to help him .

“Good thing I love you guys.”

Aaron chuckles. “That’s good. He’d be heartbroken if you left.”

“I can tell. He looks so sad when I have to leave for the night.”

“He does, doesn’t he? What was it you wanted to know?”

You hold the coffee mug in both hands, staring at the surface. There’s only a few topics you want to ask about, you just aren’t sure where to start. There’s stuff about his job, not to mention a topic that you’re positive will be awkward, Jack’s mom.

“Let’s start with an obvious one. Why didn’t you want to tell me about your job? I’m sure that not wanting me to run far away was part of it.”

There’s a pained look on his face. He probably has lots of stories of things happening to people he knows that aren’t agents. You want to give him some sort of comfort, but you aren’t sure what you’d even say.

“You’re right. I also just don’t want you to get hurt. I’ve seen what people will do to people around me and everyone on my team and I was hoping that if you didn’t find out you’d be safer,” he explains, the expression on his face unwavering.

“I’m sorry. I hate to ask it then, but does that choice have anything to do with Jack’s mother? You don’t have to give me details, I just am unsure if I’ll meet her.”

This time, Aaron takes a while to answer. You worry that you’ve asked too much. Clearly something bad happened, and it still weighs heavy on his mind. You choose to focus on your coffee as you try to figure out how to backtrack.

“Forget I asked about it, Aaron. I’m sure I understand enough without you explaining it.”

He shakes his head. “It’s okay. You’re right. My job got in the way and she passed.”

You reach across the table and give his hand a quick squeeze. “You don’t have to say anything else. I’m not entitled to information like that. How about you tell me about this team of yours?”

“I think you’d like them. They do tend to profile everyone however, which can be an issue.”

You give Aaron a smile. “Does that mean you’ve been profiling me since the beginning? And why you didn’t need a background check?”

“Our tech analyst is amazing. She’d find any sort of dirt on you I’d need. Not that I need any.”

“That is a bit terrifying. I’ll make sure to behave I guess. Is she super nosey?”

A small smile breaks across his face. “For sure. Penelope Garcia knows everything I could ever need about you.”

“So do you know everything from my star sign to where I live? Or is that just her?”

“I don’t know any of that. I just made sure you don’t have a criminal background.”

“That’s good. If there’s anything you want to know just ask me. Besides that I don’t have any other questions.”

You down the rest of your coffee and move to the sink.

“Then I’ll get to work. I have some paperwork to get done.”

You turn and look at him. A hand rests on your hip and you frown.

“You’ll do the paperwork after you rest, right? I know for a fact you didn’t get a lot of sleep.”

Aaron looks a bit startled at your question. “I’ll be okay.”

“What time did you get home? When did you go to bed? You slept on the couch, right? When did Jack wake you up?”

“I got home around midnight and went to sleep shortly after. I promise I’m fine.”

You cross your arms and frown. “That doesn’t mean much, Aaron.”

“I’m used to it at this point. Long nights are a part of my job.”

“Aaron, I work with kids. I know how to make you take a nap," you say, Your voice is calm, but you hope he knows you’re serious. "You worry about Jack all the time. Someone has to worry about you.”

“I'll be fine, You don't need to worry about me.”

"Too late. I’m already worried."

Despite the frown, Aaron isn't taking you seriously. His eyes are crinkled and you're sure there's a small hidden behind the coffee mug.

"Since you insist, I'll try to rest. I can’t promise anything."

“I'm sure you'll find the bedroom is nap ready. I swapped out the curtains so it was easier to sleep and brought a fan over.”

Aaron sets his coffee mug next to the sink. You were right about the smile. The corners of his lips are still upturned. You know he’s probably doing this to make you feel better.

—

Thankfully, you’re able to do everything you need around the house. The dishes, sweeping, dusting and various other chores are a breeze without anything or anyone in your way. Things you have been putting off due to a lack of time are officially done. The only place you haven’t cleaned is the master bedroom.

After a few hours, you hear Aaron begin his paperwork. You do your best to not check in on him again, but you can’t help yourself from peering through the crack of the door. His face is set in a frown, and his eyebrows are furrowed. The way he meticulously goes through each page is impressive.

You aren’t sure if he’s eaten, and you can feel the lack of food start to catch up to you. After setting your resolve, you push the door open and lean against the doorframe. Aaron looks up at you almost immediately.

“I know there’s not much in the fridge since I’ve got to go to the store, but did you want lunch? I may not be able to make something that’ll impress you, but I could probably impress a kid,” you joke with a light smile.

While Aaron doesn’t say anything, he gives you more of his attention. You take that as a good sign, and keep rambling.

“Does a PB&J with an apple and milk sound okay? There’s even some leftover brownies that I’ll throw in. That’s something a kid may like, but maybe not something you’d like.”

“Sure. That does sound like something that a kid would like and be impressed by.”

“Of course it is. I cut the apple up which is a superior way of eating it, and they get sugar. Not to mention, sometimes I let them have some chips."

Aaron's smile is less tense, and you feel satisfied. Nothing makes you feel better than knowing you can make someone important to you happier.

“I'll get started on that. Will Jack be joining us for dinner?"

"I thought that it would be a good idea for him to spend as much time as he wants with his friend. It gives me time to get you a contact list for his friends’ parents and that way you can have some free time.”

“If you insist. I already have free time. It's usually a few hours after he's in bed that you’re home. Plus he has stuff he likes to keep "secret" like things for you.”

The frown is back. "What about your dating life? I'm sure that whoever you're seeing wants to see you more."

“Yeah I'm sure that's what my ex would want. I'll make lunch real fast."

You make your escape to the kitchen as quick as you can. Talking about your ex unisn't something you're keen on doing. It was a messy ending.

You push all relationship thoughts out of your head. This is not the time or place to be thinking like that. It's lunch time, which means focusing on making food. Not that making a PB and J is hard.

The whole thing only takes you about ten minutes; you really should just buy an apple slicer. It would save you so much effort. In fact, Aaron's house was missing some of that stuff that would make housework easier.

You do your best to arrange the food on the plate, hoping it all fits. Balancing more than two plates is a struggle, so you choose to grab the drinks separately. Milk is hard to get out carpets if you don’t have the right materials. The smell will attract a pet and that's a hassle. At least it doesn't stain.

"Where do you want me to set this?"

Aaron shuffles the papers into neat piles, creating a space in the middle of the desk. You avert your eyes, not wanting to read the files. Even if they weren’t confidential, it isn't something that you’d want to read. After setting down the plates, you go to get the drinks.

The first few minutes of eating are done in silence. You’d like to get to know Aaron better, you just don’t want to come off as weird. It would suck if he misunderstood your intentions. Not that you wouldn’t date him.

"Something’s on your mind. Did you want to talk about it?”

"No. I think I’ll be okay in regards to what I was thinking about. On a different topic, what do you and Jack do together?”

Aaron looks a little ashamed at the question. You can sense he has a lot of guilt about how things have turned out. The look in his eyes makes you want to comfort him, but you don’t know what to say.

“If you ever want to talk about something, you can talk to me,” you offer. "I won't understand everything, but it's still good to get it out.”

“Maybe at a time when I don’t have so much paperwork,” he says with a sad smile. "I almost feel like-“

"Work has taken over your life? Tell me about it. I love kids, but there are times I wish I choose different job. Like the time all three kids had the flu, so I was cleaning up so much vomit.”

The rest of the meal is spent telling each other embarrassing work stories. Aaron shares things from all his team members, while you tell him the ridiculous things some kids have done. As the stories go on, you find yourself entranced by his laugh. The way his eyes crinkle and the corner of his lips turn up have your heart almost skipping a beat. For some reason, you start to feel self-conscience. Thankfully, the doorbell rings.

"I’ll get it. You probably need to get back to work," you say as you collect the dishes.

You stack the dishes, and carefully close the door behind you. You don't even bother going to the kitchen, opting to just set the dishes on a table nearby. Thankfully, the doorbell rings only the one time. You see the mom from earlier standing there, and swing open the door. Jack rushes in to hug you. You ruffle his hair as the mom starts to speak.

“I’m so glad that Aaron’s finally dating again. Poor man has been alone for too long,” she laments. “How long has it been?”

“I'm not sure. I didn't even know Aaron was dating," you reply with a shrug.

“Wait, you aren’t dating Aaron?” Her face is

turning red. "With how Jack talks about you, I thought maybe. He doesn’t talk about anyone but his dad like that.”

"It's Fine. Can’t blame you for what kids say," you offer with a smile. "No harm done.”

She doesn't say more, instead rushing back to her car. You don’t stop her, figuring that would make it worse.

You'll mention it to Aaron, hoping that he’ll be able to handle it.

For now, you'll be content to make Jack happy by pretending to be whoever he wants. After all, Aaron will have fixed it by tomorrow and there won’t be any more problems.

@rousethemouse @ash-whimsicalfanfic If anyone wants to be added to a tag list let me know!

[angelosearch]

Some writing updates, if ya'll are interested...

Since I substantially overshot my May and June writing goals, I've decided to stretch myself for July... 50k words. Yes, this is how I am choosing to spend my summer. Writing feels great and the sun/heat makes me sick and I have the time so... here we are.

And if you're growing tired of me, do not fret! I am certain that come late August/September I will be scarce. I am writing my brains out now while I have the space because who knows when/if I'll ever be able to do this again.

I have a few irons in the fire, one-shot-wise. I am working on my Squall and Angelo friendship fic request and I'd like to do a little something for That Guy's birthday. I think my FFVIII Bingo Card may be finished this month, but it's not my highest priority.

I am still considering trying again at a 5k AU for ficwip simply because writing Eyes of the Storm was such an amazing experience and cannot stop thinking about it. Hoping I'd recapture that magic. But we'll see.

The final chapter for A New Beginning is in the works, but right now I am realizing I may have gone overboard with the drama, so that progress may have to be undone. But either way, I suspect it will be posted within the next 10 days.

Vessel of Hyne's Grace and FFVIII the Musical may get some love, but both of those projects are very inspiration-dependent.

Chaos Theory. Trust me when I tell you I am working on that constantly. But I have never tried to finish anything like this before, and it's a big trust exercise between me and my writing ability. I have written 3ish chapters of part 4 already but I have no idea when I am going to feel ready to post them. I just want things to come together cohesively and I don't want to have to retcon myself. So it may be a few weeks before an update, but then you're probably going to get like two chapters a week or something.

That's the lineup!!

[lieslab]

Imma keep it short and sweet so I don't freak u out (I'm not a creep i promise lol) but ur favorite writer everywhere. Tumblr and Ao3. I stalk ur page so often its not even funny. But reading ur stories is one of the best parts of my day, and its so weird cause i use it as my motivation to study for the MCAT; I tell myself that I can go re-read ur fanfics if i study well for a few hours. I genuinely just like reading ur works, especially ur angst, and Ur smiling as if nothing happened is my favorite fic I've ever read in my 21 years of life on this planet. But maybe it won't be for long, cause you outdo urself every time. Ur the best, I mean it. 💙

(that was the exact opposite of short and sweet lmaooo sorry)

Oh, I see. We've got a stalker over here, huh? 🙃 I'm kidding. Well, thanks for stalking, I think? I'm glad you like my stuff and it's become something you look forward to. Just as you look forward to reading them, I look forward to writing them.

Good luck with your studies!! I had to Google that because I had no idea what it was. That sounds like something that would hurt my brain and it'd make me cry, probably. So kudos for you for taking hours to study (just make sure you're taking breaks regularly, especially so you don't get overwhelmed)

I love angst and I can't help it. Writing angst lets me tap into my own raw hurt. Writing angst is my therapy. Thank you for reading it!! Since you stalk my Ao3, you get to be the first one I tell. Yippy!!

My next long fic involving Felix starts up next week on the 17th. It's taken me a while to start writing it because I was hit with a horrible wave of writer's block. Thank god it's gone and another long fic starts up soon.

I love writing drabbles, but I think my love will always lay within my longer fics, exploring story lines deeper, and crafting magic. I'll have an intro Tumblr post for it at the beginning of next week.

Thank you for sticking around and good luck with your studies!! <3