#OBSESSED WITH THEIR SILENT COMMUNICATION SKILLS | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

fatesundress · 1 year ago

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⭑ life of the party. tom riddle x reader

summary. when one game is ruined, another begins.

tags. explicitly fem afab reader, smut with as minimal plot as i can physically allow myself, minors SCRAMMM, loosely implied hogwarts university au as always, flirting via mutually assured jealousy, impeccable communication skills, established relationship, the guy the reader is talking to gets annoyed she doesn’t want him but he doesn’t do anything, religious undertones that might have accidentally become overtones, party setting (background drinking & general degeneracy), probably the meanest tom i’ll ever write and i still tried making him nice because lots of heavy jealousy tropes are misogynistic icks fo me, fingering, piv, a little degradation but that's life, fawwwk the weeknd but the song this is based on is so sexy, etc

note. Me writing this: nightguard: ON, religious themes: RIFE, shame: ABOUNDING. i am so embarrassed by this. have i mentioned smut doesn’t come naturally to me? i don’t even know how i got here. i’m on heelys at the proverbial skatepark and everyone else apprenticed under tony hawk. Do you understand? ok.

word count. 4.5k

request. yes!

He is what he is. Stoic, sacred, silent and then verbose. You knew he had his fixations before you knew him at all — no one made top of every class without a shadow of obsession to contrast the glint of their excellence — but you could not anticipate how that obsession might translate when applied to a person. You’re not sure he had either.

He is what he is. The muggle world taught him religion and in it he learned only the tenor of devotion. When his fingers take your jaw, trace slow at the stripes of your thighs, steady your hips from under you and hold tight, there’s reverence in it. His kisses don’t wane with the months gone by; they soften with purpose. They rouse with hunger. His eyes don’t waver. Should a good man gaze upon his altar? Should he smile like sin when he gets on his knees?

He does.

Tom Riddle is what he is and you solemnise in equal part.

You don’t come to these things often, taken aback by the sight of the Slytherin common room in ribbons and banners tattered within the first hour of the night. Bottles glow green in the lake-light on every available surface, scattered about the place and spilled in sticky puddles.

You’re a wallflower tonight, though not for lack of options. You observe from a comfortable distance the drunken antics of new adults, free to carry their liquor in hand rather than hidden away in pockets and pillowcases. There’s something vaguely entertaining about it, intoxicating where someone else might mind their business and actually get intoxicated, but you see no harm done. Whispers fall on your ears before the rumours make their rounds, couples slink away in the darkness where someone in the crowd might not notice, and the night’s first instance of someone hurrying up the stairs in tears comes barrelling right past you. You invent a story for why to keep yourself busy.

It’s all just buzz.

Now, if you don’t come often, he certainly doesn’t.

Tonight, he has, and for reasons explicable but few, you’ve found yourselves on opposite sides of the room.

It began on the green couch by the window with a chess set spilled across the velvet — a bet you made with him upon arrival; you find wizard’s chess trite, Tom finds it feckless, but it makes for a good challenge.

What else could convince a man so perpetually controlled to pour himself a drink? And you imagine, from his perspective: what else could convince a woman so determined to outwit him?

It’s for no nefarious reason — to slight him or see him stumble — but because you love the fractions of relief that colour him, soften him, temper him. It’s because he loves you in every shade, in every pliancy, in each and every fervour. But mostly it’s because you love kindly to best him, and he loves mirthfully to best you.

So you play. The game is slow and teasing, hard to see in the ripples of the lake, and toppled over in the final moves (which you’ll insist you were winning) by the same swaying body that spills its drink down the front of your dress. And so you’re up, brushing your index finger over the corner of Tom’s sudden scowl. You whisper like a joke not to kill anyone but he’s so quick to look like he might that you consider repeating yourself with more conviction.

You poke at the spot where his jaw is tense. “I’ll be right back.”

Drying liquor from lace is a matter of precision even with magic, and this is half-gelatinous like someone raided the kitchen’s supply of jelly and steeped it in something offensively alcoholic. You utilise the clearer light of the Slytherin girl’s lavatory, wetting your dress before evaporating the water from it. There’s the matter then of transforming the stained fabric back to its original colour, and you huff in the mirror at having a game you thought you didn’t care much for ruined so close to its end.

You care about Tom, though. The omphalos of your issue resides there.

(It is fair to say most of your issues reside there.)

With only minutes gone by, the common room crowd looks doubled when you return, and though you wade through you’re pushed back like debris caught in a tide, the bodies more stubborn rubble than you. So you retreat, stand flush at the wall with your arms crossed, and wait for Tom’s eyes to land on yours. To, perhaps, open your mind and let him in, tell him exhaustedly from afar that the game is at rest and you’re ready to leave.

But even he’s hard to find in the bodies unified in breath, flux like a big set of lungs — and nothing about Tom blurs into the background.

So you wait. You wallflower. You pour yourself a drink.

The moment stretches on longer than anticipated, and after many detached observations of the room, someone else finds you instead. He’s tall, blond to Tom's inkwell black, kissed by summer sun even as autumn soothes its blister. Your gaze wavers back to him a few times though his own is uncertain for all its focus. He seems to be waiting for you to stop, perhaps for the silhouette of someone else to slip by and prove you were looking at them instead. When no one else comes, he traverses the crowd with a straightened inch of pride, stepping through new colours until he’s close enough to you that the light settles emerald-black and you can see the great chasm of his beauty up close.

His freckles are carefully dusted, his structure strong, all squarish, rugged lines and shades of August.

The chasm is not a lack of allure, per se, it’s just a lack of him. One man’s August to your adherent’s December, the intention of his warmth, a thing that does not come to him like everything else but that he makes and makes and mends when it lapses because he does not want to see you cold. The singular reward of a rarity like that.

“Hi," you say, glancing over a broad shoulder.

“Evening," he responds. He takes you in with a look of (unappreciated) appreciation. “I don’t believe we’ve met.”

“No, we haven’t.”

He extends a hand. “Oliver Belby.”

“Pleasure.”

You don't offer much in the way of conversation. He’ll vie for your attention regardless of how much of it you offer. So you lean against the wall where the buzz of sound prickles your hair, let him talk, let his hand come up to rest beside your head, and you find Tom.

He’s right where you left him, a new clearing in the crowd making space for your eyes to meet.

His are ice even at a distance. As if you proselytise — as if you could — kneel for another man or let one kneel before you, all of your trysts together faithless.

They aren’t. He must know they aren’t.

But you put yourself here and standing at the target of his gaze has never been marred by the severity of it.

You decide then; when one game is ruined, another begins.

In truth, you can’t deny the element of theatrics in the way Tom denies everyone but you: his soft, penitent smile, the apologetic cant of his head, how his eyes can find you in any crowd and whoever is clinging onto his every word that night will follow his gaze and deflate when they discover you at the end of it. Sometimes it’s harsh. Final. He lacks the patience of pretence.

Sometimes, the week is dull. Sometimes, the whoever is undeterred. Sometimes you’ve pushed him here.

No — You’ve never done that before. This is new.

So it’s one of those weeks, and one of those whoevers, on an anomaly you may as well have directed the encounter yourself, and Tom is half-indulgent as he forces his eyes away and you force yours to stay.

You watch him from across the room as the woman drapes herself across the arm of his chair. There's a furious blush on her cheeks even in the dark, a pretty disarray to her shoulder-length hair, skirts pleated over knees she faces toward him. She smiles and offers him a glass of something, and you know for certain Tom understands this game because he accepts it, eyes flicking back to you as he swirls the glass in contest.

To that you take an inappreciable sip of your own.

“ — Which is why no one has even attempted to kill one in decades. And capturing one is another thing entirely. My mother works with the Greeks on occasion, and the nearest she came to a den was in the twenties. If she had gone any nearer I wouldn’t be here.”

“Hm?” You look back at the man in front of you. His lips glisten with having licked them between every phrase.

“The manticores,” he says, undeterred.

“Right. Five-X beasts, aren’t they?”

“That’s what I said. I heard from one of my mother’s colleagues that — ”

The woman is whispering something in Tom’s ear, her hair on his cheek. He’s looking at you as if you had said the words. You don't shy away when Oliver leans in to whisper too. It's a strange, fractured language. Too intimate while too detached. Whispers from across the room, desire from another in the place of desire for each other. But the strangeness should not surprise you anymore. This is Tom: beautiful and wicked and the one you chose.

“ — And Nundus are worse. Deadliest creature there is — ”

She’s laughing about something, the woman. Half-reserved, she’s angled toward the party despite her leaning on his shoulder and the dissipating inches of distance.

“ — They stalk in silence. Think of the size of one, right? They’re apex predators… so commanding and still they could be in front of you one instant and gone the next.”

You engage with detached interest. “Really?”

And now Oliver barricades your view, his other hand coming to rest on your other shoulder.

“Do we have any classes together?”

You blink up at him. “No.”

“No, right,” he says, eyes darting to your lips. “I’d remember you.”

His hand comes up to cup your cheek, and you wonder if for some men one-sided discussions of class five beasts qualify as foreplay.

You place a hand on his chest, eyebrows raised and half a startled smile curled.

“You’re not going to kiss me," you inform him.

His face falls, but with it, at least, does his hand.

“Did you hear me?"

“It’s loud,” he decides suddenly. “Can we go somewhere else?”

You’re not sure you believe that.

You duck under an arm and search the crowd again. The woman is on the arm of the chair looking thoroughly dismayed, and for good reason —

Tom is gone.

Your breath is caught.

“This isn’t… You’re not going to…?”

You flash Oliver with a glare. “So you did hear me.”

He makes a pathetically sad face, and you think: it’s a wonder he made it this far when his courtship evidently hinges on the subject of his affection not listening to a word out of his mouth.

“Goodnight, Oliver,” you say tersely.

“What was that for, then?” he asks, and it comes out practically whined.

“That was talking.”

“But you’re —”

“Belby.”

He is what he is. It shouldn’t surprise you when he appears beside you all fatal rage on a quiet lead, narrowly fixed to you.

Tom’s cold is his median temperature, yes, but in moments like this it’s as much for you as his handmade warmth. He’d pluck the fingers off a boy like Oliver. The digits would string eaves like icicles.

Oliver is looking between you and Tom like something terrible has dawned on him, hands urged to his pockets to soothe the flames your unveiled ties to a man seemingly singed him with.

“Riddle — Mate, I didn’t… I didn’t know she was…”

Tom’s voice is flat, edged with something that makes his monotony sound merciful. “Pity. If only you knew as much as you talked.”

Oliver’s mouth opens and closes and opens again, but wisely he settles on silence instead of excuses, and wastes no time fleeing slowly into the crowd.

The instant he's stolen by the wave Tom's eyes are on yours and they’re molten. You move to say something but his patience was for show — he’s dragging you by the arm out of the common room and into one of the dungeon's empty classrooms without giving you the chance.

“Tom —" You start to protest, mouth twisted in a scowl. “Tom, you're being —"

He shuts the door behind you and locks it with such delicacy your breath catches at the question of how badly he's holding himself back right now.

“I'm being what?"

“You're…" It's hard to formulate an answer when he's like this. “It was a game. Don’t pretend you weren’t playing too."

Tom inches in, chest rising with angry breaths. “A game, was it? Did he know that?"

“Did she?” you hiss.

“It certainly became apparent when she was discarded so that I might retrieve you.”

“It was as apparent to Belby, judging by the way he was left gawking.”

“And with great restraint I let him. A mercy I didn’t take his eyes so he was left without the ability.”

You roll your eyes. “Oh, now I understand; the problem wasn’t the game, it’s that I played it better than you.”

He looks at you for a long time before casting a silencing charm on the room.

Oh.

Oh — your heart barrels off somewhere. You’re without it for a moment, breathless in the wake of the implication of a spell like that.

“Tom," you say politically, “It was hardly a matter of rescuing.”

He nods imperceptibly. “No, it wasn’t.”

“So we’re in agreement.”

He hums a non-answer.

Each step he takes forward, you take back. It's a peculiar way to have a conversation, but part of the game, you suppose.

Interesting he’s still playing.

You still gasp when you inevitably hit the wall, hands going to the carved edge of a windowsill.

“You’re terrible when you win,” he whispers. His lips brush your ear.

You shudder, mouth dry as you press against his shoulder. “You’re worse when you lose.”

His mouth drags down your jaw but he refuses to kiss you, still withholding something, still holding back in some terrible, electrifying way. Instead one of his hands starts to dip down your side. You shiver as he grazes the skin of your breast, exposed by the cut of your dress, and continues down your waist. His mouth traces your bare shoulder as his tongue makes a slow pass, skin beneath leaping at his careful ministrations.

With long, slender fingers he's pulling your dress off button by button, torturously slow, and you feel mocked to have cleaned it earlier. You feel foolish to have left knowing the night would have ended like this regardless.

“Tom,” you say. His name is followed by staggered breaths. Your fingers are clutching the windowsill.

The air is thick as he watches you, flesh exposed by each undone catch. And still he will not kiss you, even as his lips trail along your collarbone and you start to tug instinctively at his belt. He makes the barest sound of disapproval and spins you to face the window, your hands urged on instinct to press against the glass.

“Tom...”

He hikes your dress up your thighs. It clings to your hips, a meagre two buttons left attached to keep it from falling.

Your wand clatters as his fingers work the clasp of your bra and his teeth skim your shoulder, leaving little bites he laves at softly with his tongue. You shudder, arching into him, searching for friction. His touch traverses the shape of you and stops feather-light between your legs.

“Tom —”

“Quiet," he admonishes, a little tut.

Your skin jumps at the caress of his fingers tracing deceptively timid up your thighs, like he hasn’t done this before, like it’s care and not punishment. His favourite oxymoron: the gentlest torture, the cruelest succour.

His index draws upon the lace of your underwear and tugs it aside with a tenderness that makes you gasp. Is there a way to press harder to the glass without breaking it? Is there ever enough to grab onto when he gets like this — so singularly focused on ruining you?

One of your hands latches onto the arm half-disappeared in your skirts instead, clinging steadfast to the white of its sleeve, your body swaying as if at sea. He keeps you steady, but this is his crown achievement: that he is all there is that can do it when you’re so singularly focused on being ruined by him.

The sinews of his forearm work imperceptibly under your fingers as he appreciates the newly unfettered flesh, two digits sliding between your legs, and he makes a satisfied sound against your shoulder at the wetness he finds there.

You’re swallowing air with a moan stuck in your throat; too dry, you realise, and feel like you’re choking when he starts to move, gripping his arm somehow tighter.

As a rule, you know how much he loves this, but it’s tenfold under his jealousy and you think deliriously, probably wrongly, that for how much he enjoys pushing you you enjoy pushing him to get here. You’re his and he’s yours, there’s no doubt in it — but what he can reduce you to — this desperate creature, writhing and panting, trying in vain to satiate herself with a simple finger — this is the translation; the fruition of his fixations put to a person rather than a subject. This is what it is to be his.

Tom’s mouth opens in a smile at your throat, and there it feels more like bared teeth, a smile that is as animal as it is pretty.

And still he whispers with all the affection of a lover, your name peppered between kisses.

His fingers inch inside you and curl. You’re wedged in the perfect balance of his discrepancy; your disciple and your devil. He worships you in white. He ruins you in it too.

Now his name comes out in a babble, wet, half-drooled. A nip pinches the little space beneath your ear and you clutch impossibly harder to his wrist, your free hand squeaking down the window pane as you grind on his palm. He crooks his fingers against a spot that has you seeing stars, thumb pressed to your clit in a subtle motion, and you feel yourself tip off into an unknown he aquaints you with often. In a blurry, flickering moment, the light gleams somewhere beyond the stained hues of the window. And that should be it. The edge is at your heels and you should be falling. But the sinful press of him at your back commands you to lurch against him, and when you moan for more he pulls his fingers free.

You stumble weakly into his chest, startled.

“What… What?”

“Ask me for it,” he says, his voice hoarse, markedly wanton in spite of himself. But there is hunger and there is greed. There’s a sacrificial lamb and there’s a hunted one— there’s religion and there’s Tom. He invents something that demands greater devotion.

And the sound of leather rasping serge and metal clinking metal reels your conscience in. There are no stars. There’s just him. His belt is coming undone.

“Tom.” You swallow. “I told you —”

“And I want you to ask.” He cups your jaw in his hand, thumb tracing your lower lip. “Nicely.”

Your mouth opens for him and you shiver, pressing further back for contact he doesn’t allow. Instead another small tut is whispered at your neck, relinquished to a kiss.

His finger brushes your teeth when you speak. “I want you.”

You feel him shake his head and you all but whine.

“I want you inside, Tom — need you — please.”

“Please?” he echoes mockingly.

“Please,” you say in an uneven voice, and when your tongue grazes his thumb he eases it further into your mouth with an appeased hum.

And so his zipper comes down and you hold your breath with the weight of your dress at your hips.

He pushes inside you with minimal pause, slow still, to relish the way your little pants hitch, stop, and shudder out in a broken moan; the way your breath is guided by his rhythm, how you’re shaped by him, fitted around him. You careen forward and your palms flatten on the window, trembling at the first thrust. Your fingers quiver down the glass.

Tom pulls you into him on the second, patience abandoned. His lips chase your pulse. His grip on your jaw tightens as his thumb pops free with a string of spit. He nudges deeper at a new angle, your body forced as far as it can lean back, gasping heavenward when your head falls helplessly onto his shoulder.

It’s profane. Your ears almost dull to the sound of his hips snapping against yours, the obscenity of your skin on what he offers of his, but you waver between earth and something else, brought back to him by the torturous sight of the edge he stole you from. Always brought back to him.

He’s gripping your jaw in one hand as he pushes deeper, and your fingers are lost for purchase on his forearms, trembling to hold onto something.

When he pulls out of you at your brink again, you practically cry out. But you understand when he spins you around again, hiking you up against the windowsill, your shoulders hitting the cool glass with a gasp you barely register in the fog of your desperation. His eyes are dilated to midnight rings. The weight of his desire is frightening. The insistence to claim you better yet.

He wastes no time before slamming into you again, pausing at the hilt to watch your eyebrows wrench together before resuming his pace. When your mouth falls open, he swallows the noise that tries to come out of it.

It doesn’t feel like a kiss. It feels like the prolusion to a bite.

His fervour is all the reminder of how you got here in the first place; the teeth, the force, the grip on your waist. There’s a rough sound he makes in your mouth that you taste more than you hear. The vibration of him is everywhere. You’re too hot and it only occurs to you because your fingers are clawing at fabric instead of skin that he’s fully dressed and your last button has finally snapped, lace pooled on the classroom floor as he fucks you. The thought is consigned to oblivion as quickly as it came. It doesn't matter.

You're clutching at his shoulders, the nape of his neck — trying to kiss him back, but you feel torn in two by the intensity of his ministrations, a low, immolating pressure building in your abdomen. He’s proving something with you, and his is a relentless, unending appetite. You don't really stand a chance. You think you've known that from the start.

Tom is all-consuming. Tom is a force of nature, a whirlwind that sweeps over you. He leaves you breathless and somehow needing more as he wraps his hand around the small of your back and seizes you in place.

Still you find yourself wanting to be held tighter.

“T-Tom —" you sob through the kiss but he doesn't give you enough air to do it. He pushes harder, a rasp at the back of his throat, some carnal thing. He’s not withholding your release now; he’s spurring you towards it.

When he withdraws his lips from yours, his brows are furrowed in concentration. There’s a fine lustre of sweat on his forehead, stray curls pulled across dark, wicked eyes. The sight of him alone is condemnable, but it isn’t for you.

He likes to watch you like this. When your moans dissolve to the torn syllable of his name, again and again. The veneration. Your choked litanies.

You give them to him.

Sleeves drawn up by your body’s baser instinct for skin, you’ve carved a canvas of praise into his arms, marked up to his elbows where your fingers had jerked upward to rake at his back. This time, when you find the cliffside, nothing stops you from teetering off its edge. Flames dance across your skin in an explosion, your collar damp and bitten, your waist in Tom’s vice-like grip. One hard thrust and you’re falling.

The stars are blinding. You decide then they were made by him.

Your head lulls back as shocks of pleasure course through your body, the coil snapped, the hard shape of him inside you demanding impossibly for more. You stumble through the light, vision blurred, praying and praying and praying. His grip comes to find your jaw again.

You keen, addled through the ecstasy, barely conscious of the way his panted breaths hitch at the sight of you in his hands, soft-eyed and puddy.

He always comes apart soon after you, but it happens rarely that your body is so taut on the wire of rapture that his twitching inside you takes you with him.

This time it does.

You sink against him, thighs numb and wet, one hand slipping dumbly from his figure and swiping across condensation-foggy glass. The second orgasm is an aftershock of the first. It’s slow. It feels like being caught from the last fall. You land in Tom’s arms and they’re holding you through whitened knuckles. His eyelashes flutter, ink-dipped twines of quills, and he steals the shaky sigh from your mouth by pressing it to his.

You kiss lazily and softly. The room feels sheeted in static. The electricity lingers on both of you.

It’s hard not to fall against the window when he slides out of you. You slump on quivering legs into his chest instead, heaving, spend trickling down your legs.

Tom holds you close, adjusting his trousers before sinking down to settle you on his lap. He wipes the sweat from your face and presses his lips to the feverish skin it plastered. Forehead, cheeks, nose, chin, whispers of your name down your jaw like a prayer answered. Your eyelids flutter shut and he kisses you there, too. His lashes tickle.

You love him more than you worship him. You think he likes that more.

He grabs your forsaken dress from the floor and slips it over your bare shoulders, summoning the snapped button back in place before he begins to meticulously clasp the rest together again. His mouth leaves a path at the skin under each one before it closes, and you hum in dizzy gratitude.

“That was,” you say in a very worn voice, “a terrible way to reinforce not making you jealous.”

He glares at you from one of the lowermost buttons and you giggle sleepily, curling a hand into his hair. “Don’t look at me like that. You liked it too.”

He leans back up at that, tipping your chin with his fingers, gaze darting over the wrecked state of you with a pleased gleam in his eyes. “You liked it? What a modest interpretation.”

Now it’s your turn to glare.

He is what he is — pursuit of buttons forgotten as you’re laid down on the moonlit floor to be reminded just how much you liked it.

taglist. @lyis @indimoss @poddzi @esolean @d1anna @maripositanoctruna @mentally-in-northern-italy @ronniemaximoff1234 @moobell55 @jaerang @ramayantika @saltwaterbythesea @acube07 @togenabi @adazito @kitcat334 @blaurghhh @shutupfinn @jaymeeshayden @lilu842 @leaosee @garfunkelworld @definitely-not-captain-america @multiplefandomstan @mangoesareorange [ note: inexplicably, a bunch of my tags aren't working. i tried to fix it but if you didn’t get a notif i’m sorry! ]

#tom riddle #tom riddle x reader #tom riddle x you #tom riddle x y/n #tom riddle smut #tom marvolo riddle #voldemort #voldemort x reader #tom riddle imagine #tom riddle oneshot #tom riddle fic #tom riddle fanfiction #harry potter fanfiction #wizarding world

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sink-me-in-your-ocean · 8 months ago

Text

The Light Over the Darkness

Lucifer Morningstar x Lilith!fem!reader

WC: ~5300

A/N: @endhisbloodlineinmyesophagus thank you for reading this first. And no thank you for getting me obsessed with a new fictional idiot.

Content warnings: fingering, p in v sex, unprotected sex, praise kink (if you squint and tilt your head). 18+ only. Minors DNI.

NSFW below the cut.

It is a gorgeous day in the Garden. Though, every day is a gorgeous day. Every single day is perfect beyond comparison. It would be even better if your companion did not exist.

You went off on your own again, wholly unwilling to submit to Adam’s irritating daily routine of assigning uninspiring names to all of the things and creatures. Or - even worse - the non-routine version of simply lounging about lazily. This was your only course of action. You wandered far off into the Garden, and just as daylight began to break over the horizon, a sound caressed your ear in the lightest touch.

In the distance, you heard a voice. It sang a melancholy tune so far from the triumphant trumpet sound of heavenly melody you’d heard before. It was like a dream.

No, not a dream. This was a voice emitting an enticing tune you couldn’t resist. It called to you, pulled your very heartstrings. Your brows knit together in concern.

You must find this beautifully tragic voice.

You strolled further through the Garden, clinging close to an idle river. As the voice drew closer, you stepped along a fallen tree that cast itself as a bridge over the river. You made it across and walked into the line of trees posing as guard to what lies beyond. Past several rows of thick trees there was a clearing, open and spacious, and filled with wildflowers.

Wildflowers and the most beautiful creature you had ever seen.

Lucifer was lonely, although not any more lonely than he had felt in Heaven. His brothers and sisters never accepted his way of thinking and there was no chance of him and his Father ever seeing eye to eye.

He had purposefully gone to a most remote corner of the Garden, knowing his father would do something drastic again if he found him interacting with his two perfect human pets.

Lucifer sighed, closing his eyes and singing how he felt. The agony in his chest flowed out and he felt slightly better. He figured that was as good as it would ever get.

Until he turned over his shoulder upon hearing a snap of a twig, and he saw her.

The being attached to the - now silent - voice turned towards you and your breath caught in your chest. His face was beautiful, pale as the brightest cloud in the sky, with eyes that shone golden like the sun. His hair was the color of the very light itself, gorgeous and silken.

He wore strange, white billowing coverings, and something nagged in the back of your head at the lack of your own cover.

“Are you alright?” You chastised yourself for the tremor in your voice, but you couldn’t help it, your communication skills were lacking. Adam wasn’t a conversationalist in the slightest and the times you did speak to him left much to be desired.

“No, no I-I’m not.”

“What happened?” Your gaze snagged on the red pigment on his back, his covering gaped open - torn and bloody. You started approaching him before realizing you were moving, then you stalled out of apprehension.

“I was evicted from my place in Heaven. I am… I was… an angel. Now I’m here in the Garden, though I surmise I’ll do something to get myself kicked out of here before long too.” You had never known someone to sound so utterly defeated and broken.

You walked further towards the angel. “The blood. You’re hurt.” You shook your head, realizing you were quite literally just stating the obvious.

“Oh, this?” He gestured to his back and you nodded, continuing to draw nearer. “He took my wings. I can’t ever go home without them.” His eyes met yours, and concern colored his expression, “But don’t worry about me, the bleeding stopped, and it doesn’t hurt anymore. Well, at least not physically.”

The pity you felt for the creature grabbed your heart, wrenching it tightly within its grasp. You were about a handful of steps away from him now, and you stopped, leaving him his space as you changed the subject. Continuing to ask him personal questions felt too intimate and wrong. “Your song, it sounded beautiful.”

The sigh he let out was almost musical, “I was simply expelling the ache from my chest.”

“I see.” Your expression softened. “If you ever sang when you were joyful, I suppose it could move the very mountains.”

His demeanor changed, he tried to hide it by looking down, but you saw the smile on his face. He shook his head and raised a brow at you, “Aren’t you supposed to be, I don’t know, with a certain someone?”

“Who, Adam?” Your accompanying laugh was breathy and uncomfortable, “No, he, uh,” your tongue temporarily tangled itself, “he’s the worst.” The last three words were an admission of guilt, coming out like a tiny whisper.

His eyes widened exponentially. “He’s the worst?” He began to cross the last bit of distance between the two of you, ending up a step away.

“The worst.” You reply, feeling a weight lifting off your chest with the confession.

“Hm.” There was a glint in his eye, something was inside him waiting to get out, you could sense it. “Would you like to spend your time with me today?”

The question left you temporarily silent, then you composed yourself.

“With a fallen angel?” You paused in faux contemplation, he watched you closely, his eyes begging for an answer, “Yes.”

Relief covered his face, “Take my hand.”

“Okay.”

He led you through the flower field and back to the edge of the river you had crossed. He walked with you at a leisurely pace as the river carried along beside you, flowing downstream.

The water rushed louder and louder as you continued down its serpentine path, and soon there was a drop off. Mist curled up from the edge and you followed the flow of water with your gaze.

A glorious waterfall cascaded down the cliff side. Luscious greenery and florals edged the water - a soft border contrasting the roaring of water.

The spray of water made a strange coloring appear seemingly out of thin air.

“A rainbow.” He offered in explanation, following your line of sight.

You looked at him, the happiness that filled your soul at that very moment overshadowed anything you had previously felt in your life thus far. Even the day you discovered the taste of ripe peaches.

His smile was brighter than the morning sun cresting the horizon. It was warmer than the sun too, you felt it skin deep.

The rest of the day continued in a similar fashion, with him guiding you to new sights and sounds and life. It excited you, enticed you. It made you feel almost like light itself, like you were glowing in his presence.

You returned to Adam that night, for no other reason than you felt that was what you were supposed to do. As Adam fell asleep nearby, your thoughts were on Lucifer. His beauty, his ethereal grace. He captivated you with a mere look and you were helpless to resist his complete charm.

When he had spoken of the heavens, you were left with one question: Why?

Why would his brothers and sisters not stand by his side?

One final realization permeated your thoughts and settled in an ache within your heart as you succumbed to rest: How lonely it must be for him. A former angel. Now cursed to walk in the Garden without anyone like him. Doomed to be without his family for… forever.

A single tear slid silently down the side of your face as you stared up at the stars from your place on the cool ground. You didn’t know how long it took you to fall asleep that night, but once it took you, you were deep under.

You heard his voice in your dreams that night.

The next day you rose before dawn as you always did, though this time with a fuel hurtling you along you had never felt before. A giddiness tingled in your fingers and toes with every step as you retraced your steps from yesterday.

Days, then weeks passed in a manner just as your first day of meeting the fallen angel, sans the melancholy of his newly fallen status as he accustomed to life in the Garden.

His life with you.

He never brought up Adam again, not since your first meeting. In consideration, you didn't bring up his Father to him. It was an unspoken truce.

Lucifer took you everywhere you had not seen before, and he frequently hummed and fabricated sweet, alluring songs throughout the days. New creatures, new flowers and fruits of the trees. New feelings as well. Though that you figured was caused only by yourself, and you pushed it down, listening to him tell you about creation.

“He said, ‘Let there be light’ and I was here.” He paused, “Well, not here in the Garden here, but here. Alive. Existing.”

“So, you just floated up there somewhere?”

“Yes and no. It’s hard to explain. It feels impossible, actually.”

“If anyone can think of the words so eloquent as to describe something, it’s you, Lucifer.”

A pink color tinged his cheeks, and he looked down at the grass tangled beneath his feet. “You’ve got to stop saying things like that.”

“Have I made an offense? Oh, Lucifer, I only meant that you would be the most capable person to describe something so beautiful. You’re so beautiful so it must come easily to you to describe the beauty around you.”

His gaze timidly met yours. “You… you think I’m… beautiful?”

You felt compelled to say more than just a ‘yes’. “Of course. Lucifer, you’re the most beautiful thing that I have ever seen, or could ever dream of imagining.”

His cheeks reddened more. His golden eyes softened in a way that told you he had been waiting to hear those words for an eternity.

“Lucifer?” You took a shy step towards him.

“Yes?” He finally met your eyes fully, but took a step back until he was firmly against the bark of a willow tree.

You continued forward, propelled by a pull within your chest, until you were toe to toe with him. “Can I…” You searched his face. His soft, sweet face. “Can I do something?”

A slight smile lit up his face, brightening the space even under the dimmed canopy of the willow. His voice came out as a whisper. “Anything.”

Your hand brushed the light hair that had fallen between his eyes to the side. Your other hand touched his jaw, tracing along to the underside of his chin and tilting his face up. You angled your face slightly downward, eyes still locked on his, and leaned in. Then, you closed your eyes, letting your instinct guide you the last bit further.

Your lips met in a gentle kiss.

His apprehension and yours melted into the softness of the touch you shared. You pulled back for just a second, searching his face for reassurance. He responded by kissing you back, over and over and over again. His hands went to your face, as though he didn’t want to be apart from you for even a moment.

Your fingers entwined themselves in his silken hair and he did the same with yours.

The two of you didn’t part from each other’s hold until the sun had almost slipped away completely.

You barely had time to bathe in the stream before night fell around you. You missed his light.

The rest of the evening, even feeling the comfort of the fire made by Adam, you closed your eyes and your thoughts belonged to Lucifer. You watched Adam pass out unceremoniously and touched your fingers to your lips. The memory held there still tingled.

You felt something powerful surge within your middle. It was a deep hunger. An ache as sharp as a burr or a thorn. It dug into you, pulling and twisting within you. A thirst that could not be quenched by even the coldest stream water.

An urge within you begged to return to Lucifer tonight, but you knew you couldn’t. You needed to wait.

Wait and see.

See if he felt the same way when the sun gleamed upon you tomorrow.

The instant you saw Lucifer the next day, warmth traveled from your head to your toes.

You smiled at him and he beamed at you, holding out his hand for you to take. Your fingers intermingled with his and you let him lead you to a part of the Garden you hadn’t been to yet. The grass began to fade into dirt and small pebbles, as though this part of the world had been forgotten by the green.

“Where are you taking me?”

Lucifer reassured you with a grin, “To see something I discovered last night. It’s not much further.”

He led you to a cave entrance. It greeted you with open jaws, its mouth stretching far and wide, ingesting the light with a neverending pitch darkness.

You froze, your feet rooting themselves to the ground. You dropped his hand, placing your palm over your heart. “Lucifer, it’s dark in there. We’re not going inside, are we?”

He gave you one of those brighter-than-the-sun smiles again. “Don’t worry, we won’t be going far. It’ll be much lighter inside, I promise.”

You couldn’t so easily wipe the unsure expression from your face. He noticed.

“Take my hand. Please?” Lucifer extended his left hand to you. As you took it, the air around you cooled, bringing goosebumps to your arms, and you had a feeling that something was about to change.

You allowed him to lead you inside. The nervousness you had felt seemed to melt away with his soft hand enveloping yours. Once you were past the cave mouth, the darkness swallowed him and then you. You grounded yourself in the sounds of his feet and yours along the cave floor, which was covered with soft dirt and devoid of any sharp rocks.

“Lucifer?” The trepidation came flooding back as soon as his hand left yours. You quavered and the darkness drowned out your voice. “Lucifer?”

“This way, my dear.” His voice offered you a beacon of hope in the black void of the space. You thought you heard him lightly chuckle, the sound beckoning you, guiding you onward without form or shape.

Suddenly you saw a blue-green light. You approached it just as it faded out, leaving you in complete darkness again.

Your foot nudged something soft, then your other foot stepped into a puddle that glowed around your toes as the water rippled. You squinted and the color faded away once more.

A bright light made you wince, almost uncomfortably. Your hand covered your face to act as a shield.

“Here.” You heard Lucifer speak close by, and as your eyes adjusted, you realized he held a ball of warm, yellow light in his hand. You also realized that the soft thing laying next to your foot was his rumpled white covering.

Your mouth went dry at the sight of him. A tension wound its way into your chest. His pale shoulders, his trim waist, his…

“Watch this.” He said, lifting his palm up and the ball of light suspended itself in the air. Lucifer created another ball of light, then another, warming the cavern with soft light. When he was finished, he grinned at you, “Are you ready to see what I found?”

“Wait, that wasn’t what you wanted to show me? That was - I, I have no words, you just - you just made light with your hands.” The startlingly impressive feat had you staggering between words.

That satisfied smirk of his was enough to silence the entire world and every question in your mind. He shook his head from side to side. You could barely believe it, he had even more to show you. There was nothing left to say, so you answered his question with a resounding, “Yes.”

“Watch me.”

As if you could do anything else. You couldn’t take your eyes off him, you were entranced as you watched him step into the pool of water which you realized, connected to the puddle you were standing with one foot in already. It was shallow at this end and he waded further out.

A light blueish-greenish color swished with his every movement in the water. Lucifer paused, waist deep in the water. A sharp exhale ghosted between your lips as you tried not to focus on the small of his back. The color went away when he stood still, but came back when he dipped his hand in, bringing it under the water and then to the surface, letting the water drip down from his fingers and open palm.

You didn’t know if it was intrigue or the allure of Lucifer that guided you further forward, to be ankle-deep in the water, but you divert your attention to watching the color grow and fade around your feet. “Lucifer, what is that?”

“It’s bioluminescence.” He replied, and sunk down into the pool, his body now mostly shielded underneath the water.

“What is bioluminescence?”

He turned towards you with a look that said ‘I’m so glad you asked’, and explained in great detail what it is.

Your eyes were wide as you listened to him speak. Sure as it did before, the water sparkled to life within the ripple you made, with blue shimmering below your feet as you stepped in, the water encircling your ankles. You couldn’t help the contented smile that made its way onto your face. You also couldn't help but move closer to him, going back and forth between watching the colors fan out from around your calves, then knees, then thighs, and watching his mesmerizing expression as he shared his knowledge with you.

You stood next to him, where he sat with his head and shoulders well above the water, and you couldn’t resist touching him. Gingerly, your fingers brushed through his hair, bringing it out of his golden eyes again. He looked up at you as you spoke, “Lucifer, thank you for bringing me here. For sharing this with me.”

Even in the dim light, you could see his face turn the color of a rose, his expression becoming timid suddenly. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Because you’re divine when you teach me new things.” You answered honestly, you didn’t know any better.

His eyes softened. “Will you join me? Please?”

“Yes.” You took his offered hand. The gesture was innocent - he was bracing you as you fully got in the water - but it made you feel a way that you couldn't name yet.

His hold on your hand tightened slightly and his other hand slid up your thigh as you lowered yourself in.

The two of you settled in the water, the blue fading out at the surface which sat at about mid-chest level.

You slowly moved your hands through the glowing water, when you broke the surface tension the glow ran in rivulets down your fingers and forearms. You repeated the action, mesmerized by the incredible color. Then, you flicked the surface of the water, sending a splash in Lucifer’s direction.

“Hey!” He exclaimed, returning fire by sending a tiny splash your way. “You’ll get my hair wet!”

“Oh sweet and wondrous Lucifer, I’d hate to ruin your majestic hair.” Your tone was saccharinely sardonic. You sent another splash of water his way.

“Stop that.” His gaze changed as he spoke. Something dark hid beneath his surface, and you wanted to find out what it was.

“Why?” You playfully splashed at him again, your body succumbing finally to the warm temperature of the water, relaxing in its embrace.

“When you do things like that, it makes me want to kiss you again.” His gaze drifted downward.

“When I do what, exactly?” You crawled towards him, to the shallower area. “Tease you? Or when I tell you how perfect you are?”

He just nodded, biting his lower lip. You knew it was in response to your praise. “May I kiss you again?” His words were soft, contrasted by the heat of his stare. He looked at your lips with a hunger that dwarfed the pangs you felt before a meal. This was a predatory gaze, but you gave in nonetheless.

Absolute certainly colored your voice. “Yes.”

With your permission, he leaned in, brushing a strand of hair away from your face with a gentleness that rivaled a feather’s touch. You stayed stock still as he closed his eyes and pressed his lips ever so softly to yours.

Lucifer pulled back slightly, and upon seeing your eyes still open, a question formed in his expression. He didn’t get to ask it before your lips were back on his.

You kissed him like you needed him more than breath in your lungs. Your whole body felt ignited by the action. You kissed him over and over, planting close-mouthed to open-mouthed kisses to his soft lips.

The kiss continued to deepen from there, and soon you were tasting him with your tongue. Your tongue led an exploration inside his mouth that made your head feel light and airy. His taste was intoxicating. And he was just as committed to discovering your mouth with his tongue in an even give and take.

Lucifer was the forbidden fruit, and you were too weak a woman to resist.

You were temptation incarnate, and he was too prideful to concede. Not when he had come this far. Not when he had already lost so much. He needed you more than anything.

You opened your eyes to be greeted by a comfortable darkness surrounding the two of you. “Lucifer? Your lights, they’re not glowing anymore.” Though this time, you were no longer afraid. The blueish shimmering in the water was brighter without the yellow lights. It was enough for you to see the shape of his jaw, the curve of his lips, the sparkle in his devilish eyes.

“I’m sorry, I guess I forgot about them when I was kissing you.” A tremulous breath left his lungs. “I could forget about the entire universe when I kiss you.”

“Then kiss me again.” The demand spoke itself before you could even think.

With the way he responded, you would have assumed he never intended to ask your permission. His kiss stole the breath from you, stole the thoughts from your mind. Every press of his lips to yours, every stroke of his tongue to yours, was shatteringly delicious. You could think of nothing except him. Him and a previously unknown need rapidly surfacing.

“Lucifer.” You felt a change happening in your body, a fire that started from the kindling of his kiss. Almost weightless in the water, your hands clung to his shoulders as you crawled into his lap and he sat back to welcome you. Your legs were bent on either side of him, your knees resting in the soft silt of the shallow pool.

You lowered yourself down to sit in his lap and almost moved back, jolted by his body’s reaction to yours. Something hard and thick pressed against your middle.

He pulled back, breaking a particularly heady kiss to offer an explanation you didn’t ask for. “This is how you make me feel.”

You understood. In that moment, your base instincts took over. His feeling was evident on the outside, while yours was purely internal.

At least, you thought your reaction to him was all internal, until he moved his hand from your waist. His hand moved slowly around the swell of your bottom to where your leg met your center.

“Lucifer,” you jerked slightly, nibbling his bottom lip, “that tickles.”

“I mean to please, not to tickle you, my sweet.”

You were about to ask him what he meant when his long fingers swiped along your center. A sound escaped your lips that sounded animalistic, almost a whine.

“I truly mean to please you.” He pressed a chaste kiss to your lips. “Tell me if you want me to stop at any time.”

You shifted in his hold, seeking his delectable fingers again. When you spoke your voice was low and demanding, “You’ve already stopped, and I want to feel that again.”

“Yes, my lady.” He nodded his head in reverence to you and his fingers found your center again. He parted your folds, rubbing the length of his fingers along your slit before brushing them against a part of you that sent a shockwave to your spine.

You jolted this time slightly, your eyebrows pulling upward in surprise at the foreign feeling.

He noted your reaction. “If you need me to slow down I will.”

“Don’t you dare.” Your lips found his again, the blueish glow of the water sloshing up between the two of you as you sought to be closer to him. You slightly rose back up on your knees to give him better access to your intimate flesh.

Lucifer continued his ministrations. He was only too happy to take advantage of your position. His fingers caressing your sex made you whine again. Then, he pressed one finger inside of you and you inhaled in a ragged gasp.

“Is this okay?” You barely registered his words as he languidly pumped his finger inside of you.

You nodded, delighting in the sensation his finger was providing, and delighting in him. Once you were used to the feeling you whispered, “More.”

He pressed a second finger inside you. Your body temporarily shuddered as it adapted to the intrusion.

You felt an ache eclipse your body, deep inside you, and your instincts told you you needed to be closer to him. In a way that two people could be joined together. His fingers continued to stroke you and he kissed you deeply again, tasting you, cherishing you.

“Lucifer,” you pulled back, lightheaded, a pleasurable feeling was building in your middle, but you needed more. “I -”

Your words failed you as he removed his fingers. You were about to protest when you felt his hardness between your legs. Your center was throbbing with need, and you felt fevered and frenzied without him. Your body craved him.

“I need you inside me, Lucifer.” You wiggled your hips, sloppily kissing his neck and up to his earlobe.

“Are you sure?” His voice was so dark and low.

“Yes.” Holding to his shoulders, you dragged your wet center along his length to punctuate your answer.

“How could I possibly resist you?” Lucifer’s expression was that of a man starved, and you were certain he meant to devour you. “Eyes on me, I want to see those beautiful eyes of yours as we do this.”

You obey him as you feel his hand reach between the two of you. Then you felt the tip of him. Right there. Right against your core. Just the tiniest movement and he would be inside you.

Greedily, you shifted your hips down slightly, never taking your eyes from his gaze. Unable to stop yourself from the all-consuming closeness you felt to Lucifer. Watching him, wanting him; all the while knowing there is no going back now. And yet, not wanting to miss a single moment. The sensations below and Lucifer - curse his name - drove you to this madness, this ecstasy. He pulled you down, his fingers digging into your waist.

There was a sharp pain as you felt yourself stretch to accommodate his length. A burning sensation that made you want to move in the opposite direction. Then, as soon as it came on, the pain subsided. It was replaced by a delicious, honeyed heat that speared through your middle as he gave you more and more. He moved slowly, holding you as delicately as he could.

You watched his lips change from a thin line of steely determination to an open-mouthed pant, a groan escaping from his throat. The two of you were finally hip to hip, as close as you could possibly be, with him hot and heavy and incredible inside you.

You couldn’t tell if it was you that was trembling or him. Maybe it was both. His grip on your hips tightened, drawing you up, your sensitive spot grazing the plane of his pelvis in a torturous motion.

“Open your eyes, my sweet, indulge me.” You didn’t realize you had closed them.

You obeyed his ask, “Oh, Lucifer.”

“How does it feel?”

“You feel - ah - better than anything,” you cried out as he snapped his hips to you, “What are you doing to me?”

“I’m acting on our desires, my sweet.” His breath stuttered, as though he was fighting something internally. “No one else will ever have you like this.”

“I’m yours, Lucifer, all yours.” Your sensitive spot grazed his pelvis again, making you gasp. “You’re perfect.” Your fingers tangled in his soft hair as you kissed him deeply, fervently.

He responded by groaning into your mouth, and when you broke the kiss to lay siege to the skin of his neck, he moaned breathily in your ear.

You were a quick learner. “Darling Lucifer, do you like it when I tell you that I’m yours?”

“Yes -” He hissed. His breath was rapid now, and he picked up his movements, meeting every thrust and guiding you with his hands on your hips.

You felt a buildup starting again in your center, picking up from where his fingers had left off earlier. The friction was driving you to a point of no return. A moan tore its way through your chest, reverberating off the cavern walls.

“Lucifer, I’m yours, all yours.” You cried out his name as he slipped one hand between the two of you, using his finger to gently apply pressure to that spot that made the edges of your vision cloud over.

His name was a litany of prayer as he thrust into you over and over while his finger sated your clit. You clung to him with your remaining strength as you felt your body collapsing under waves of pleasure. The sensation was enough to drown you, to pull you under, but his continued motions kept you afloat.

You gasped, whined, moaned for him, telling him with and without words how you felt. Your legs shook and your hands trembled as they went from his shoulders to around his neck, pulling him in so you were chest to chest. Your entire body felt like it was falling apart and being made whole simultaneously. Your release crashed over you in a multitude of waves.

“I’m yours, Lucifer.” You felt him still inside you, thrusting as deep as he could as he breathed raggedly, filling you with a deep, pulsating heat, a broken sound leaving his lips. He held you like that for a while, the two of you clinging to one another tightly. The rising and falling of your chests and shared breaths returning back to normal.

How could anything return back to normal after this?

With one hand you caressed his cheek, opening your eyes and seeing the weight of his expression, “Luci-”

“You meant that, didn’t you?” His eyes searched your face, looking for hints.

You didn’t need to confirm what he was asking. You knew. He knew the answer as well, but he sought reassurance. “I do. I’m yours.”

He sighed heavily, resting his forehead to yours.

You kissed him, savoring the feel of his lips against yours. “And you’re mine.”

#hazbin hotel smut #hazbin hotel x reader #hazbin hotel x you #hazbin hotel imagine #hazbin lucifer #hazbin lucifer morningstar #hazbin hotel lucifer x reader #lucifer x you #lucifer smut #lucifer x reader #for ducks sake

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lis-likes-fics · 1 year ago

Text

Music to My Eyes

Pairings: Finnick Odair x deaf!fem!Reader Word Count: 7.5k words Warnings: Mentions of the Games, so killing and death, mentions of trauma, my attempt at writing sign language, pre-Katniss, no Annie... A/N: Hey, everyone! I watched the Hunger Games a few months ago and had a mini obsession and decided to write for it and only now just got half of my fic done. Since it was running as long as it was, I decided to go ahead and split this into two different parts, but I swear the rest of it is being planned and written. Also A/N: Just FYI, anything written in /slants/ is an indication of something being signed because explaining every little sign just does not work. And, also, Hecton Leary is absolutely done by Peter Capaldi in my mind...just in case you need a visual. I was watching a lot of Doctor Who during this so, get ready to see those intense eyebrows all over the place in this, lmao. Also Also A/N: Special thanks to my beta-reader @killerqueen-ofwillowgreen who I will be crediting more bc I literally forgot to last time and she's too amazing for that! Thanks, Vee! 💖

You don't love wearing dresses—especially not extravagant ones like these, more expensive than likely your entire district as a whole. You also don't love parties like these where you have to wear said dresses, surrounded by tons of people generating body heat and stuffing the room full of perfumes and colognes that make your nose and eyes burn. Your feet hurt from the heels your designer paired with your outfit, and the air is active with words and voices that overwhelm your brain with too much information to take.

Having Hecton beside you is a relief at least—not completely lost in a sea of people as he and you communicate with two rich sponsors from District 1 dressed just a slight less dramatic as you but just as exaggerated.

You watch their lips, painted over with bright colors complementing their attire, as they speak to you. "It must be so hard, isn't it?" the woman asks, spending too much time on "so" as she speaks slowly for you to comprehend. You want to roll your eyes. "Flailing about all the time just to get a few words out?"

The man next to her agrees, nodding his head. You can see his throat shift, and you assume he's hummed a response.

Hecton's hands move with skill as he speaks, partly as aid in translation for you but mostly for the performance people are looking for.

You feel like your lips are going to fall off, you can almost feel them twitching at the ends from how long you've been smiling at all these people who don't know anything about you and assume they know everything.

You widen your smile to show teeth and shake your head, continuing to be as respectful as you can with your social tolerance running low.

Your hands move and, out of the corner of your eye, you can see Hecton speaking as they do. "Not really," he translates. "It's natural for me."

The man puts a hand over his heart and turns to her. "Oh, you poor thing," he says rather dramatically. Hecton doesn't dignify his words by translating that for you—not that you needed it in the first place. His hands remain still, folded in front of him. The man glances toward them, and you can see his brief disappointment at his words not receiving the glory of illustration.

You glance up at Hecton, your smile intact as you slightly squint the corners of your eyes in a silent plea. He answers you gracefully, turning his attention back to the fashionable vultures in front of him.

"This was wonderful," he says, "but I believe our little lady is excited to meet other guests here tonight."

Hecton is an older man with grey hair, pale eyes, and intense brows. Upon looking at him, he isn't the most approachable man. You don't just say no to him—especially as a past victor of the Games who certainly triumphed by a long-shot. He is not weakened by age, but he's definitely wisened by it. Although sobered by surviving the horrors of the Games, it neither slowed nor ruined his life, it simply gave an abrupt end to what little childhood people of Districts like yours can obtain.

One look at the finality on his face and they were fully ready to end their (rather insulting) conversation. They turn to one another, making these awful pity-faces as they hold each other's hands and turn back to heartily agree. "Of course." She puts too much emphasis on the words. "Goodbye, dear."

You nod gently and look toward Hecton for confirmation as he places a hand on your back and turns with you. You both walk away from the conversation gratefully, still smiling for everyone else in the room but moving your hands in silent conversation.

/These people are exhausting,/ you complain, entirely within your right with the way they treat you.

Hecton sighs, looking at you with eyes that understand your struggle. /Just keep them happy./

You nod, remaining light-hearted for both your sakes as you offer a genuine smile before you slip back into a customer service front. /I know, I know./

Lots of eyes are on you tonight, but none so keen as a certain boy across the room. He has basically been watching you all night, intrigued by the way you've been communicating, by the way you draw so much attention without having spoken a single word since you arrived.

He has seen you around a few times—on television, at other parties. He knows your face and that you won the Games like him, but he's never paid enough attention to actually know anything past that. But now, observing you all night, he's interested enough to ask.

His elbow brushes the guy next to him, a victor from another district he doesn't care to specify right now. "Who is that again?" he asks, not taking his eyes off of you as his friend turns to look. "I've seen her a couple times, never remember."

He looks at you and then back at him. "Her?" he gestures vaguely toward you. He nods.

"Victor from District 10, she won the 67th Games." He takes a sip from his drink, leaning back against a table with a hand in his pocket. "Surprised everyone cause she," he shrugged, "can't hear or something."

That definitely caught his attention as he turned full bodied toward him. "Really?"

"Yeah," he swirled his drink around. "She's nice…in a little bunny sort of way." It's not necessarily an insult, more than it is him calling you soft-hearted and skittish.

He walks away without a word, finally making his way toward you to quell his curiosity as he approaches you and takes his sweet time about it.

Your back is turned to him. He briefly wonders the best way to get your attention on the way over, knowing you hate being tapped by the way your shoulders flinch and you strain a smile when you turn.

Then again, no one likes tapping.

When he reaches you, he just folds his hands behind his back and smiles. "Hello," he says simply. Hecton turns at the greeting, prompting you to do the same.

"I'm Finnick. Finnick Odair," he greets with a smile of his own as he regards the both of you. He watches the way the old man's hand moves on his name. Your hand reaches out and interrupts him as you place a gentle palm on top of his. He makes a face—it's not annoyed, just teasing.

You turn back to Finnick, your performance smiling still intact. Hecton speaks while you sign. For a moment, Finnick thinks he'll understand the movements you make—Mags doesn't speak, she has to use her hands to communicate all the time, surely it couldn't be that different—but he is proven wrong when words don't match waves.

"I know who you are. You won the 65th Games, you're from District 4." Finnick thinks, briefly, that your friend's voice doesn't match you at all (which is obvious, of course, but he feels it's worth pointing out).

"Well, then," he responds with a slight chuckle, only glancing for a moment at the way Hecton's hands move as he talks, "I'm flattered you know me. Unfortunately, I couldn't say the same for you…"

You seem surprised by that. He thinks it may have something to do with the way that you haven't had many moments away from conversation since you arrived. Everyone has been too taken by you, too interested in snatching a few minutes.

Your hands don't start moving in that curious way Finnick likes to watch because words are already being spoken. "Mr. Odair, this is Y/N Y/L/N. I am her mentor and translator, Hecton Leary."

Finnick holds out a hand, which each of you shake. Out of courtesy, he doesn't start talking again until after your hands are free. "Wonderful to meet you both. And, please, Finnick is fine. There's no need for formalities when we could be friends, right?"

You still smile as you begin to sign, though your brows furrow. /Why exactly do I want to be your friend?/

Finnick doesn't understand, looking at Hecton for translation. He only says your name, a sort of reprimand as he continues to smile.

/I'm only being honest./

Where you expected frustration from not understanding, you find amusement in Finnick's eyes as his genuine smile widens and he looks between the both of you. "What am I missing?"

Hecton looks at you, raising a large brow and waiting for your reply. You sigh gently and shake your head, remaining civil as you begin to sign.

"Sorry," he speaks for you. "I look forward to establishing friendship with another fellow Victor. Maybe one day we'll…" Hecton gets quiet as he just watches your hands continue to move and your lips continue to smile, full of amusement.

/We'll frolic in the woods together, holding hands and singing songs./

Hecton turns full body to you. He holds his palms apart and brings them together swiftly without clapping them. /Y/N./

You smile wider and hold your hands in surrender, the tiny sound of a giggle slipping out of you. You're otherwise silent as your hands fly. /I'm joking! Tell him it was nice to meet him, and I look forward to being friends./

Hecton eyes you momentarily before relenting, turning back to Finnick with exasperation. "She says it was a pleasure meeting you, and she looks forward to your friendship."

Finnick raises his brows, bowing his head gently. "The pleasure is all mine." He's a charmer, and he makes that clear by reaching out and slowly, softly taking your hand in his (his grasp is so gentle that you could easily take your hand back if you wanted and he wouldn't stop you). He bends forward, pressing his lips to the back of your hand. He straightens his spine and watches you fondly. "Until we meet again."

As he lets go of your hand, he bows his head once more before he walks away. You and Hecton watch him leave. He raises his own brow at you. "Is that blush I see?"

Your hands are quick and exaggerated as you move them. You know he's joking and you're not blushing, but his teasing makes you. /No!/

Hecton's smile is wide and open and you know he's laughing at you, so you call him out for being mean. He drops it just as quickly, once the joke has faded to a funny memory and you both are back to mingling with people who do not care about you.

The halls are empty this late in the night. Everyone has retired to their rooms or taken an early train home. It's peaceful, wandering the halls this late and being undisturbed by curious eyes and ears watching you like some wild animal. You enjoy the silence—the physical silence of steady air and only one set of footsteps to track instead of hundreds.

At the end of the hall you wander now is the elevator that takes you to your level. Hecton will be wondering where you are—and if not, it's probably time for you to retire for the night before the victor's interviews with Lucky tomorrow anyway. As you make your way toward it, the lights bright and beckoning, you stop in front of it and click the door button.

It's as the doors are sliding open that you realize you're no longer alone in the dead of this night. You feel it in the prickle of your skin, the change in the weight of the floor beneath you. You look over quickly where the side of your face heats with a new presence.

You see Finnick approaching you, seemingly pleased to see you as he smiles at you, stopping short of the doors to offer you first entry. You grin hesitantly, your confidence from before waning a little with the absence of your mentor and translator. If he tries to talk to you, you're probably going to have a rough night. You press the tenth floor button. He presses the fourth.

Finnick isn't as pessimistic, glancing at you out of the corner of your eyes as you stand with your fingers tangled and your eyes toward the ground. You don't look nearly as cocky this time around—in fact, you seem nervous, refusing to even give him that small, awkward smile you usually receive when stuck in a space next to someone you don't know.

Finnick licks his lips, and speaks before he can correct himself. "Hello," he says, giving you a charming smile before immediately remembering your certain disability.

His curiosity grows when you raise your head, glancing his way but not quite committing.

"Oh, right," he mumbles. His added words spark your attention once more as you finally look at him, moving your hand in a talking motion.

"Yeah," he responds. "How did you know?" You're deaf, but you could tell that he was speaking without even looking at him?

He watches you think for a moment, staring off to try and figure out a way to tell him without Hecton to aid you. You look at him again, raising a hand palm down and shaking it.

"Shaking?" he guesses, raising a confused brow.

You gestured around the elevator, your face etched in concentration, determined to be understood. You sometimes forget how hard communication can actually be for you.

"The room?" he tries. "The room is shaking?"

You make a face, one that says "not quite".

He thinks for a moment, putting your gestures together before it dawns on him. "The air is moving."

You smile, far too happy to have successfully gotten a point across.

Finnick's brows raise, though not in a mocking or upset way. "Is everything really that sensitive for you?"

'It has to be,' you want to say, but you can't. You can read lips, but moving your own to try and copy them is a completely different story. Instead, you just nod and agree.

"I heard that's how you won the Games," he said, before adding on the end with a genuinely impressed smile. "Very cool, by the way." He had spent an embarrassing amount of time—or it would be embarrassing if he actually cared about that—asking party comers about you. Most of the information he got was about the Games, always about the Games. He got the same answers from just about everyone about how you were just so sweet and how it was so inspiring how your lack of hearing helped you to win.

As much as that sweet grin on your face made you want to smile, he wasn't technically right. So you shook your head, and he watched you raise your hands to cover your eyes.

"You were blind?" he wonders, but that doesn't make any sense and he doesn't feel very smart for asking now.

You shake your head and do it again, this time pulling your hands away and then covering your face again.

"You hid," he answers. That makes more sense.

You nod and he hums.

You didn't win the Hunger Games by killing for being killed, you didn't win by joining alliances or traveling in groups and pairs. You won the Games by running and hiding until everyone had killed each other.

When the Gamemakers used their tricks and schemes to flush you out of your hiding places, you found another one to lay low until the end. Yes, there were times when you had to fight for your life, but you were no strong competitor. It was dumb luck that you won. Right up to the end, facing off with the almost-champion after having been hunted down by Mutts. He killed them, and then he tried to kill you.

And that was when your disability was labeled your greatest weapon.

Maybe one day you'll be able to tell him that.

The doors slid open to reveal Finnick's floor. You both linger there in the elevator for a moment, trying to decide what to do from there.

Truly, you should have just waved at him and let the doors close to take you to your own floor. It was late already, you needed to rest.

But…

"Do you like sweets?"

Yes, you do.

You nod, answering his charming smile with a shy one and being upset with yourself in the back of your mind for falling for his obvious charm. If you got hurt, it was on you and no one else. But who cares?

You, you care. Maybe not enough, though.

You follow him off the elevator and into the common room. The kitchen is just off of it, with a long table cleared of dinner but still adorned with snacks—fruits and a few deserts. Finnick slides over a plate of cookies as you take a seat. They're chocolate and very good.

He sits across from you, a little too keen in the way he leans forward. He picks up a cookie between his thumb and forefinger, playing with it absent-mindedly as he speaks.

"Is that," he waves one hand, "usually how you communicate?" He hopes he doesn't sound offensive and takes a bite from his cookie.

You don't seem offended as you shrug. He watches you move your hand like you're grasping a pen, shifting it around in a circle. He understands and, like a dog, goes to grab the supplies for you, dropping his cookie back on the table with little to no regard. He's not necessarily upset about his obedience, if anything, he's happy to let you boss him around—not that you have been—if it means quenching his genuine curiosity with how you operate.

He slides you a notebook as he reclaims his seat, gently slapping a pen on top with a cheeky grin. He seems proud of himself. You hold in your chuckle as you write with the best handwriting you can with the quickness of your scribbles.

/Signing or writing./

Finnick reads it off. He thinks your handwriting is pretty.

"Does it get tiring?" he asks, cookie forgotten in crumbs on the counter. He absent-mindedly pushes it to the side so he can lean closer. "Moving your hands like that all the time?"

His question is one you get often, a repeated question every person asks to suit their shallow interest in you. But you can't bring yourself to be offended or annoyed. Finnick doesn't seem shallow, his curiosity runs deep and his kindness deeper. You're not sure you could take anything he says with offense.

You simply shake your head. /Easy as it is for you to talk,/ you answer honestly, adding the gesture for "speak" at the end to try to be helpful.

He shouldn't be impressed, but he is. "Oh," he says, brows raised in vivid interest. "Is it easy to learn?"

He's full of questions. He knows he probably sounds like a child, piling them on top of each other like tidal waves. But you don't seem upset, so he carries on.

You shrug again.

/Would not know. Depends on person./ You look up at him, and then you add, /You want to learn?/

The way you write is interesting to him. You don't do it in full sentences in an effort to keep it short and simple. But you also don't use contractions, though you try to write as quickly as possible to keep up the feel and consistency of actually speaking.

He smiles slyly and pretends to be shy about it, bowing his head and looking up at you through pretty lashes. "Maybe," he says. "Could you teach me?"

You mirror his expression, bowing your chin toward your chest and smiling at him. /Maybe./

You finish your cookie and rip off the first page to turn to another. He watches you write out the alphabet, quickly scribbling a very poor illustration of a hand gesture underneath each one. It takes a while, longer than you wished for it to.

Finnick doesn't mind. While you're distracted with the activity at hand, he's watching you. You're very pretty, he thinks. With the way you sit to draw, you keep your body open and give yourself the room you need to still see him as you work.

You've got kind eyes. He doesn't think you get that enough. Everyone calls you a sweet girl, but they usually follow it up with something along the lines of "even with her issue".

But Finnick just thinks you're pretty and kind. That's it. No exceptions.

He wants to learn about you without the tainting of word-of-mouth or television programs. He wants to know you. The stuff you love, the stuff you hate, everything that makes you happy, and the stuff that makes you want to throw chairs. He wants to know what your favorite color is, if you like to dance or paint or swim.

Before he can keep daydreaming about whether you like cats or dogs, you look up at him to show off your work. You think it's sloppy. He thinks you did great.

You start going through it with him, showing him the hand signs as you get to them with a patience that amazes him. Once you've gone through the whole of it once, he lifts his own hand to try it out. He looks weird and silly, and you smile as he tries his best.

When he offers a poor attempt at a 'Q', a giggle manages to slip. You probably don't hear it, but Finnick certainly does. His face lights up at the sound. He had heard you make little more than a sigh. Managing to pull a giggle out of you—especially one as pretty as that? It's like winning the lottery.

He goes through it with you a couple more times before he straightens his spine. "So…"

He points to his chest and holds his hand out, slowly moving it to fit the gestures he's tried.

F. I. N. N. I. C. K.

You nod quickly, beaming from ear to ear at how quickly he's picked it up already. You point to yourself and spell your own name out. You move slowly, giving him time to connect each letter to each sign as you go. And when you finish, he spells it himself. A nearly perfect copy, (although perfect may be generous, he's definitely trying and it shows—that's perfect enough in your book).

You carefully tear the page out and set it to the side so he can still see and write excitedly on the next page, your writing almost terrible with how quickly you scribble. /Natural!/

You sign the word after. He copies you, and then tries to spell it out. He gets it right for the most part—even though you're pretty sure you saw him use an 'X' instead of an 'R'.

He really wants to impress you. He doesn't make that subtle, and you're honestly happy he doesn't. It makes you genuinely giddy, the way he's so eager to learn and show off his new skill (a skill he's literally been practicing for no more than ten minutes). You don't realize how far onto the table you've learned. Your hands would brush if you moved them an inch closer.

"I'll keep at it," he replies genuinely at your proud smile. He had no idea someone so silent could be so pleasantly loud. Your ecstatic movements and wide grins compensate for your lack of vocalization. When you speak through your hands or the notebook in front of you, he almost swears he can hear a voice he hasn't heard in place of it, so kind and pretty. Like a song.

You smile too fondly at him, taking in a soft breath before looking down at your hands and sitting back again. You'd gotten ahead of yourself. You don't correct it as much as you should. You're just as fond as you sit correctly in your seat and watch him with intense interest.

After a moment of comfortable silence, you pick up your pen again. He watches you write something down. You turn the book around for him to see.

/Mentor cannot speak?/

"Mags?" he wonders. You nod, tilting your head. "No."

You write again. /Cannot sign?/

"No."

You tilt your head and furrow your brows, a silent inquiry. He shrugs, "Never learned."

You contemplate for a moment, rubbing your neck gently before taking the notepad once more. You show it to him.

/Can teach./ You point to yourself, offering a small grin.

"Really?" he furrows his brow.

You shrug. Why not?

Finnick stares at you a moment, searching your eyes for a joke he knows he won't find. So why would you be so open to helping her? Maybe you're just weird.

His lips curl in a smile. "I'll ask her."

Your own smile grows.

He drums his fingers on the table, watching you watching him. He thinks for a moment, just staring, before he opens his mouth.

"So obviously, you can read lips." You nod. "Were you born deaf?"

You nod and reach for the notepad once again. It takes you a moment to write this time. /Parents did not find out til 2. Was a quiet kid. Did not realize until I never started speaking./

He's so interested in everything you tell him. He hangs onto your every word like pure gold. "So you've never heard anything before? Ever?"

He feels like it's a dumb question. Of course not. But you hesitate, glancing off before you nod.

/Yes./

His eyes go wide with wonder. "How?" He crosses his arms and leans forward on the table.

You thought for another moment, trying to find the best way to phrase it to keep it simple. You tap the pen against your lips and click click click it.

/Before the 67th Games, my team gifted me hearing aids. Thought it would help./ You pull away for him to read, staring at the page before taking it and adding in a new line, /Didn't think I'd make it deaf./

The look on your face told him how much that bothered you—or, at least, a whisper of how much it used to bother you. He thinks you may be used to it by now…

"Seemed to work, huh?" he asks with a slight chuckle in an attempt to brighten your mood again.

But you shake your head as you pull the notepad back. /When Games started, too much. Ripped them out and ran./ You sigh gently, swallowing thickly. /Couldn't handle it./

He listens in, his full attention heeding your words. "So you never wear them?"

You shake your head. /Do not like to./

He nods gently. "Because it hurt?" he asks, trying to understand.

You think for a moment before raising your hand and shaking it like before, meaning a different thing this time. /Kind of,/ you write.

You sigh and raise your hands, loosely clawed in front of you as you bring them into your chest in fists. Then you pick up your pen to translate. /Trust me?/

He nods. "Yeah."

/Sure?/

His second nod is more firm. "Yes."

He watches you grab a hand towel. You lift it up, gesturing to him with it and he nods his approval once again. You step behind him and tie it around his head to cover his eyes.

After you blindfold him, sure that he no longer has sight, you turn off all the lights and spin him around a couple times before you lead him into the living room.

Without his sight, Finnick is reduced to having to let you lead him where you want him. And he trusts you. He sways on his feet for a moment, standing still when you stop guiding him again.

"Can I look now?" he asks, his hands out by his side blindly if not for anything but balance.

He hears your voice, the slight sound of you clearing your throat before humming gently, like you're feeling for it. Then he hears your broken response, unaccustomed to actually speaking.

"N-o," you mumble. He smiles a little, and you think he's weird—in a good way.

After a moment of silence where the both of you just stand there and do nothing, he feels you begin to remove the towel from his face. You don't give him a chance to adjust to the dark, you just flip the closest light on and let him have it.

He winces, shielding his face as the shock sets in. You smile gently as you apologize, rubbing your fist over your chest in a circle. When his eyes adjust to the light once more to look at you, your smile is still a fond apology as you motion to your ears.

He breathes lightly. “That’s what it felt like for you?” You make a “bigger” motion with your hands as you nod. “That’s awful,” he mumbles.

You shrug as you begin to walk back to the dining table to grab your pen and notepad again. As you take a seat on the sofa, you bring your legs up under you and invite him to sit beside you. He watches you write something as you prop the notepad against your thighs. You show it to him when you finish.

/What do you like to do?/

He is happy to answer as he settles back and thinks for a moment before offering his reply. You sit and talk back and forth for a long time. You don’t really keep track as you learn that Finnick loves to swim and he dabbles in cooking when he can. You learn that he likes the color blue, but his favorite color is probably white. You learn that he is a “live life like it’s your last day” type of person because of his experience with the games (a philosophy you have adopted yourself in a smaller intensity). You learn that he’s more fond of the quiet than the rowdy crowds he’s grown accustomed to.

Finnick learns that you also like the water, but you enjoy sitting under the surface and feeling like the world is just as silent as you in a way that isn’t so interesting to the rest of the world. He learns that you don’t have a favorite color but you always say green, that you’re not a people person but everyone thinks you’re a person who loves people, and that you like to watch Hecton play the guitar while he lets you set your hand on the body of it to feel what he plays.

You don’t know when you fall asleep on the couch, laying against the back of it with your head turned toward the large, cushy pillow that supports your head. You’re curled up against it, and Finnick thinks you look precious. He’s not long after you as he dozes off on the couch. Neither of you touch at all, hands to yourself as you let the night ease on around you. But the presence is comfortable enough, you’re happy for it.

But sometime in the night, you don’t know when, how long the passage of time had gotten to be, the calm that had set over you slowly began to fade and slip into something a little more unnerving. Uneasiness sets in your bones, makes you queasy as your fingers twitch. You hum, a groan that slips from between your lips and rouses Finnick as he opens his eyes and glances your way, eyes still heavy with sleep.

He starts to sit up as he sees you shift, your breath quickened and your muscles twitching. He calls your name gently, a first instinct he immediately realizes isn’t going to work. He hears you hum again and begins to reach a hand out. His fingers hardly brush the skin of your arm when your eyes suddenly open. You’re muttering something intelligible to yourself as you glance around frantically, eyes glazed over and movements full of adrenaline.

“Woah, you’re good,” he tries as you grip the cushions on the couch. It’s too warm and it’s cushy and you don’t want to be up there anymore. He’s still trying to ease you, hands out like you’re a frightened animal ready to attack him. You slide off the couch and onto the floor, where the cold hardwood greets your skin as you catch your breath, your face tucked between your arms as your whole body heaves for air.

He lets you stay there, concern written all over his face as he tries to figure out what the issue is. He guesses they’re just nightmares, bad, ugly nightmares that he, himself, has faced over and over and over again. He waits and waits and waits for your body to steady and for your breath to calm, keeping his hands out but away as he waits for you to recover.

When you’ve calmed down again, you lift your head and sit back against the floor, turning toward him with lethargic muscles, your adrenaline already waning as the exhaustion from before trumps everything else. You catch the movement of Finnick’s lips from out of the corner of your eye and turn to see him speak. “What’s wrong?”

You breathe in slowly, filling your whole chest as you gather yourself enough to answer. You stroke a circle over your chest with your fist, a movement he remembers seeing you do earlier when you were apologizing to him. He shakes his head gently, slowly shifting off of the couch to join you on the floor, giving you space as he props his elbow on the cushion.

“S’okay,” he says, his lips moving gently around the word. “What happened?”

You breathe out slowly, still centering yourself. You lean toward the table, sliding the notepad over with lazy movements. You contemplate before writing. /Vibrations./ You show it to him and he tilts his head. /I sleep with my hand on the floor. It lets me know if someone is coming, I can feel the footsteps in the ground. It wakes me up and keeps me out of trouble./

The way you write is different now, filling the missing blanks of words you’d usually leave out because they were unnecessary. Like you’re too tired to summarize, letting the words do their job as you slump against the table like you haven’t slept in ages and are simply going through the motions.

He moves slowly, letting you see what’s happening before it happens as he sets his hand atop your own on the table. You don’t move, glancing at his hand and letting it happen as his skin brushes yours. He feels honored.

“Well,” he says, “you’re safe here.” With me.

You manage to pull the corners of your lips up into a small smile, turning your hand so his rests in your palm. You raise your free hand to your chin. /Thank you./ You take a moment to sit there, looking at each other and enjoying the feelings of your hand in the other’s. Then you pull your hand away regretfully and pick up your pen.

/I should get back to my floor before my people worry./

He reads it off and nods. “Yeah, you’re probably right,” he sighs, already moving to stand to his feet as he holds his hand out to help you, hoping you would accept. When you do, he smiles. You lift yourself to your feet and give him another of your best in this condition.

You pick up the notepad one more time. /Thank you for the sweets. And for the company. I liked talking with you./

He puts a hand to his heart, too heartfelt to be teasing as he dips his head slightly. “My pleasure.”

Finnick walks with you to the elevator, standing by you in silence after the button is pressed as you both wait for the doors to slide open. When they do, you step in and offer yet another warm smile as you sigh and wave, mouthing the word “bye” as you depart from him, sad to go. He mouths the word back to you, though you’re not positive he spoke them as he offers a small wave of his own.

The doors shut and Finnick misses you already.

The blaring lights, (otherwise) deafening crowds, and extravagant costumes are something you get used to and never get used to all at once. All the attention is on you, and it's your job to make sure they are entertained as you make your way onto the stage with Hecton's at your side.

Lucky is standing, that unnervingly large grin tearing his face in two as he watches you excitedly. His hand is extended toward you, both to show you off and welcome you in.

"Hello, my dear!" he exclaims theatrically as he takes your hand. He places a kiss to your knuckles and then shakes Hecton's hand as well. You all take your seats, your smile the picture of thrilled.

"It's been a while since we have last spoken, hasn't it?" He stops dramatically and then says, "Well, a while since I spoke to you, at least." The air is on the fritz with cheers and laughter and more clapping as you look around at everyone. Lucky's laughter is just as wide. "How have you been, Y/N?"

You look at Hecton, your smile and his set in perfection. He speaks as you sign, beginning his role as your ultimate translator. "I've been great, Lucky. I've missed you!"

His big brows furrow as he slaps a hand over his heart. He turns to the adoring fans. "Oh, isn't that sweet?" He laughs again and looks back at you, his expression calmer but no less dramatic. "I have also missed you, my dear. Now, tell me, this is a tour for some of our previous victors, have you met any of them yet?" He leans in like you're sharing a secret.

"I'm glad you asked, I have. It's been great getting to be reacquainted with old friends and making new ones."

"Ooo," he says, looking around and encouraging the crowd to join in. "New ones like who?" He sits up straight and brings a finger to his lips, glancing away and smiling slyly. "I know I have it from a reliable source that you were mingling with District 4 Champion, Finnick Odair." He leans forward with narrowed eyes. "Do I sense something blossoming?"

He and the crowd tease you, making lovey dovey noises that you don't hear but definitely feel as you glance at Hecton and he raises his thick brows in amusement.

"Oh, Lucky," you smile like you'll laugh as Hecton continues to read your hands. "I wish I could agree, but who am I to say?" You shrug it off with a sigh.

"Oh, really?" he jabs. "Because when I brought it up with Finnick, I believe he described you as 'a special kind of beauty'." This riles the crowd up even more, they cheer louder and the air feels suffocating. You smile through it.

"Did he now?"

"He did."

Lucky laughs dramatically, Hecton laughs less dramatically, and the crowd eats right out of the palm of your hands.

"Well," Hecton says as you catch the attention again, "you know I'm not one to gossip."

"Ohh, not just this once?" He says it like he'll cry.

"I wish I could."

He sighs heavily. "Oh, well." The crowds 'aww's and you give an apologetic smile to them all. Lucky leans over and takes your hand in his, which you then cover with your own. "It has been lovely catching up with you, my dear. And you, too, Hecton, my friend." Hecton nods. "I hope to see you again soon, both of you—I do so love our talks!"

"As do I, Lucky. As do I."

He puts both hands over his chest this time, smiling with sadness to see you go. "Would you give us a kiss before you go?"

You stand to face the crowd and kiss your hand, blowing it out to them as they scream and shout for you. You beam and look at them all, waving happily.

"Oh, fantastic!" Lucky exclaims as he stands to join your side, Hecton at the other. He takes one of your hands again. "It is always a pleasure."

"The pleasure is all mine."

He turns to the adoring audience. "Our Silent Spectacle, everybody!"

They scream and shout and you press your cheeks to Lucky's before you and Hecton leave the stage. Even after you're past the curtain where they can no longer see you, you keep the smile as wide as you can until it trembles out of place.

/Very well done, Y/N,/ Hecton congratulates.

You huff out a tiring breath, massaging your cheeks before regaining your posture and masking your frown with a much softer smile as you respond. /It's exhausting./

He offers a sympathetic look. /Maybe so, but they love it./ He glances at you again, noticing the fatigue in your eyes and your twitching lips, the nerves kicking from overuse. He sighs, taking your hand and turning you to him.

/You've got to keep them happy./

You look at him, how his words reflected a deeper worry, a double meaning that surpasses the gratification of your adoring crowds. Your eyes glue to his own, solemn, sober—a fair contrast from the faces surrounding you, drunk on the sap of their own self-importance.

/I know,/ you nod.

The tense moment is interrupted as a new player enters the arena. Hecton is the one to turn first, redirecting your attention toward the person approaching you. You immediately smile, an instinct by this point as you turn your gaze on your next audience. It only takes a moment for you to recognize the person, and your smile comes a little easier.

Seeing the situation before he approaches, Finnick wonders whether or not it would be appropriate to interrupt. But when your mentor turns and you turn with him, and you smile a more genuine smile upon seeing him, he finds that he doesn't really care if it's appropriate right now.

"You're quite the personality," he says as he steps up, smiling himself as he tilts his head.

"They love quiet, happy girls," Hecton translates as you sign. Finnick really doesn't think his voice suits you, coarse and thick with an accent hard to find.

"That, they do," he nods. He licks his bottom lip, "So you'll be headed back off today?"

You turn toward Hecton, your jaw clenching briefly before you turn back. "Soon. I've got some business tonight and then we'll be off tomorrow."

"Business?" he raises a curious brow, taking a small step forward as his lips quirked. "What kind of business?"

You tilt your chin, a nervous kind of smile on your lips as you move a hooked finger from your nose to your cupped hand. "Nosey," you tease, though Hecton speaks it flatly.

"Oh, it's a secret?" he wonders, even more curious now. He doesn't speak like a creep as he continues, holding that same teasing feeling while also offering his genuine curiosity. "I have a thing for secrets, y'know. I can keep it safe for you…"

You do it again, with a little more delight this time. Again, Hecton's translation holds no ounce of the delight you give off as you talk to Finnick. "Nosey," he repeats, this time with a little more sternness to get him to stop asking. You give him a side glance, but he isn't affected.

Before you can communicate anything else, Hecton's sets his hand on your lower back. It isn't patronizing, he's just used to guiding you, your protector.

"Come now, Y/N," he says. "It's time we were off."

You sigh gently but nod, still smiling as you glanced up at him. You begin to wave to Finnick, but he speaks as you're waving your hand.

"Am I free to visit down in District 10?" he asks, his tone light and playful to avoid sounding as hopeful as he feels. He's just met you, and he wants to know you.

You nod quickly, too eager. You move two fingers over your fist, missing the way Hecton doesn't translate. But Finnick can figure that one out himself.

His chest floods with relief. "I'll keep it in mind."

You wave. /Goodbye, Finnick./ The way you sign his name is different. Where he is expecting to see the familiar letters you showed him last night, he finds a wave of your hands and a fond smile.

He winks at you. "Goodbye, sweetcheeks."

You scrunch your nose, circling your hand over your belly. /Gross./

Hecton is already walking you away as Finnick blows you a cheesy kiss, mirroring the one you'd done for the audience earlier. You wave him off, smiling and shaking your head as you go.

When you're far enough from him, walking away from backstage to wherever you were headed now, Hecton's intense brows are furrowed in what you can only assume is annoyance at his distrust in Finnick.

/You seemed familiar./

/Stop./

Music to My Eyes taglist: ... This is a temporary taglist for those who want to be tagged in the sequel to Music to My Eyes, Finnick Odair x Reader. Please keep in mind that once the second part is posted, the tag will disappear. Feel free to DM, comment, or send me an ask to be added, if you would like. Or simply add yourself here...

#finnick odair #finnick odair x reader #finnick odair x you #finnick odair x fem!reader #finnick odair fanfic #finnick odair fanfiction #fanfic #fanfiction #the hunger games #the hunger games fanfic #the hunger games fanfiction #finnick odair fluff #reader insert #female reader #deaf reader

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obeymematches · 6 months ago

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♡How to keep Satan obsessed♡

Yall been liking my posts from 2021 and it reminded me that i started doing this series-

● Okay the worst thing you can do is try to control him. Tell him what to do and how to do it and that's the last straw before he loses interest. Yes he is very independent and he loves his freedom. Telling him to "text/call when you get there" is also more negative than positive.

● Regarding independence, he also prefers you being your own person, not really depending on him. See you don't have to be a houseowner, you don't have to ask him for permission to spend time together, that's not what I mean, but if you center your life around him he is going to feel overwhelmed.

● He also has a hard time tolerating jealousy. Aren't you grown? Don't you trust him? Why do you have to make a fuss? You are supposed to know him better than this. He would never cheat on you even if his hands are forced to. He doesn't like anyone so if he likes you; you are supposed to feel special & not attack him with things that didn't even happen. Peak stupidity in his eyes.

● Pretending to listen to him but not actually paying attention; instead of that just tell him you don't care, something else is occupying your mind right now and he is being too much. That sounds rude but it is still better than him wasting his breath. He gladly comforts you if you are actually upset; or if you just genuinely don't care it's better that he knows.

● Keep your interactions with people he dislikes to the bare minimum. It might be better for his soul to heal and make peace in the long run - but you are not supposed to force him! You have nothing to do with his beef in any of the cases. Let him be his own man in his own pace. He might never forgive someone and that's also ok! Don't try to change him; but if he needs it be there to support him!

● With him you'll need good communication skills. Being passive aggressive turns him off quickly. Don't even think of the silent treatment. He'll just break up then and there. If you are upset with him/anything and need to be left alone to think for a while, just tell him exactly that! Good communication also includes telling him with your own words that you love and appreciate him! Makes him feel confident! Reassurance is always a good point!

● He definitely enjoys well-thought-of surprises. It could be a handmade gift, doesn't have to be anything extravagant. Just spoil him from time to time, it really does make him feel appreciated!

● idk how to put this but i think he doesn't like horoscopes and crystals as he is trying to be the most rational person to ever exist, so he doesn't like topics like these at all. Personality types are on thin ice also. It's not a total turn-off for him but if you base your entire life around these things he is not going to be interested for long.

● I think it is obvious but he likes his partner to have opinion on lots of things. Hold a proper conversation about intellectual stuff. You don't have to have ambitions or things to achieve in life but if you usually reply "i dunno about that", "never-ever heard of it", that's not gonna end well.

●Yes he is introverted but that doesn't mean he sits at home 24/7 - sometimes he loves going to places, doing and experiencing life, and if he constantly has to nag you to go on a date he is going to get bored fast. It's OK if sometimes you'd rather stay in, don't get me wrong, but literally never going anywhere/only going if he argues about it, is a red flag.

#obey me #obey me satan #obey me swd #obey me!#obey me shall we date #obey me satan x mc #obey me satan x you #obey me satan x reader #satan obey me #obey me hc #obey me hcs #swd obey me #omswd #omswd satan

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remembrancer-of-heresy · 5 months ago

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The Maiden and the Knight

Summary: Lucius meets a mortal girl who understands his perfection and skill in fencing. And he experiences new destructive feelings.

Lucius The Eternal/fem!Reader

Warnings: Dark romance, Yandere, Obsession.

By the Throne, how I love these hedonists and degenerates

Lucius strived for perfection, and although he loved art. But his main passion remained the use of the sword. The remembrancers admired his skill, but the Space Marine knew that it was not the same. They flew like bees from one warrior to another, continuing to create new work one after another. While Lucius continued to hone his fencing skills.

You were one of the many remembrancers on the Pride of the Emperor. Not the most famous and not the most outstanding. You could easily get lost among all the artists, composers and poets. Somehow, you not only managed to meet him in person, but also asked to become his personal remembrancer.

This didn't surprise Lucius at all. He is one of the best, if not the best, among the Emperor's Children. Mortals are obliged to praise him through paintings and poems. But over time, his acceptance of you gave way to confusion, surprise... inspiration.

You didn't just admire his skills, you analyzed them. You watched every movement, trying to catch the best images. Well, when he made special moves, you completely fell silent in pure admiration. This was usually how mortals reacted to a primarch, good music or magnificent architecture. But all your adoration was focused on Lucius's sword.

It was flattering.

In the end, he still asked you why a mortal girl like you were so interested in following the swordsman. You were so small and fragile, you never held a sword in your tiny hands. But smiling, you admitted that your grandfather and father were swordsmen. Therefore, you were given a love for the art of war, although you could not taste it.

Oh, you didn't have to. It is the job of the Space Marines to protect humanity. The Emperor's children were recognized to participate in the most brutal battles, carving a path to a great future with the sword. And you needed to capture this image. And especially the image of Lucius himself. After all, he is the best one.

Over time, you both began to communicate more and more. You told the man about fencing on other worlds, the history of the knights of Ancient Terra. About their duty and oath. Lucius never thought he could become as attached to a mortal as he is to you.

After Laeran, Lucius noticed that he began to enjoy your company even more. With your voice and knowledge about knights and swords. Unexpectedly for him, Lucius was hooked by the part about the role of women in the history of Ancient Terra. Like beautiful maidens wishing farewell to men before the war, they waited for their return. How they showed signs of attention in the form of ribbons on spears... and how knights shed blood with the name of their beloved on their lips.

The Space Marine tried to find a rational explanation for his obsessions, but could not. An attempt to ask the Apothecary about his strange condition was also unsuccessful. Halfway through, Lucius decided to stop and try to deal with these thoughts himself.

And with the way his body reacted. Every time before going to bed, when he thought about knights and ladies, he felt hot. Every time he put himself and you in their place, his throat became dry. But it would be so lovely. You with tears in your eyes, red lips wish him good luck in the war. And your gentle arms give him a ribbon. Or a lock of hair. A kiss.

You didn't seem to have changed. Despite Lucius's obvious patronage, you refused to go to the temple, arguing that you were scared. After all, quite recently dangerous xenos lived there. The Space Marine was just touched by this. That's right, his job is to fight, and your job is to be afraid and seek his protection.

Alas, your connection was broken for some time. Lucius had to fight against his brothers on Isstvan III, to protect the Emperor. He vowed to serve humanity. But the honor of Saul Tarvitz boiled his blood and he succumbed to anger. The mere thought that Tarvitz would be called heroe and Lucius would not be appreciated filled him with burning hatred. And one tiny thought that you would love Saul's skill... no, a lady should only have one knight.

He won't share.

Lucius finds you in your room. You are still as small and vulnerable, hastily wiping away your tears, trying to smile. Oh... the swordsman knew what tears taste like, but for some reason he wanted to lick them. Just the thought that he and ONLY HE evokes such emotions in you...

“I was afraid that you would die,” you gasp and come closer to him. - “I was so scared. It's horrifying. Everyone seems to have gone mad and only a few remembrancers like me are holding on. I was so sad and lonely, I-I thought”

“Kiss,” the man said in a heavy voice. Noticing your blank look, he swallowed. How beautiful. - “Kiss my sword. I killed my brothers with you in mind. Am I not worthy of attention from my lady?”

Your eyes filled with tears again and your lips trembled. And yet Lucius smelled... a strange smell from you. He couldn’t explain why, but he knew for sure that you yourself liked these new feelings. Eating and swallowing. Such delicious fear. And the fact that only the swordsman can see this... was an excitement.

Lucius carefully watches as you approach the outstretched sword. You don't even have to tilt your head. Your reflection sparkles exquisitely in the blade of the weapon and Lucius gasps as he sees your lips touch his sword. He desperately wants to plunge the blade into you, but he holds back.

After all, he must protect his lady.

#warhammer 40k x reader #space marine x reader #emperor's children x reader #lucius the eternal x reader #warhammer x reader #warhammer 40k #Yandere Space Marine #tw: yandere #space marine #tw: obsession #emperor's children

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jomamaofficial · 2 years ago

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Laundry and Taxes (Loid Forger x Wife!Reader Angst Oneshot)

A/N: Hello my lovely toes, I am back from my hiding and I bless you with this SpyXFamily fiction. Istg, this anime is so wholesome but it has so much angst potential. It was killing me that no one decided to create some gut-wrenching angst no comfort. So here I am. My asks are open for any requests or just a conversation. I would love to give back to our little community here. Please remember to take care of yourselves, and enjoy :). CW: Minor mentions of hand-guns (because of Anya). Masterlist Word Count: 2204 Summary: In your small found family– with your husband, daughter, and dog– you were content. Content with your normal routine of playing spies with Agent Anya, and setting up the evening coffee and hot cocoa, after your husband came back from his work. Cold War tensions grew yet your small familial unity sustained your peace. But what happens when the war approaches its desired end, when the leaders of Westalis and Ostania finally unite under peace?

——————————————————————————————————

You saw yourself in the pink-haired young girl playing in front of you. Black sunglasses on, with frames too large for her face, you chuckled at the way she rolled around the cosy apartment, hiding behind Bond one moment, hiding behind Pengi the Penguin another. Her hands were raised in front of her face, mimicking a tiny hand gun.

She was obsessed with spies.

She wanted to become one when she grew up, “to protect world peace”.

I guess you two weren’t that different.

Like mother, like daughter. Although it often haunted you that you were only her second mother. Yes, you were Anya’s ‘Haha’, yes, she told you she loved you. But you still hesitated to accept your role between Anya and her ‘Chichi’, Loid. You felt as though… it wasn’t your place to intervene between the daughter-father combination, often feeling as though your use ended on the day of Eden College’s interview.

Although you had no right to feel upset over being so… disposable. You couldn’t even perform the basic tasks of a mother and a wife sometimes.

Cooking? Loid made dinner everyday.

“It’s not that she doesn’t like your cooking, Y/N. She’s just a picky eater. It’s a terrible habit I failed to acknowledge when she was younger and now, I believe Anya’s just stuck with it”.

Laundry? Loid kindly asked you to stop doing the laundry for his and Anya’s clothing after you mixed up the colours and temperatures. Loid had to wear a pink shirt to work for three days. And poor Anya. She was in tears when she saw her favourite wool-knit sweater, four sizes too small, lying limply amongst the sea of baby pink.

You saw Loid’s face go blank, when you opened the machine, your eyes shut in an internal sigh as your cheeks matched the hue of his shirts. And Anya was just crying as she held onto her sweater.

From then on, you were gently reminded that Loid had no trouble washing his clothes and Anya’s.

“Don’t worry about it, Y/N. I’ve been doing this for a while now, it’s honestly second nature to me”, he said with a smile.

Eventually, Anya repurposed her ruined favourite sweater for her little plushies.

Everyone was happy, yet the colour pink and wool scribed disappointment on your features, a symbol of your failure as the Forger wife and mother.

Cooking failed, laundry failed. You had basic mathematic skills, you could maybe tackle the taxes? But don't even start about taxes. It was the one thing he never allowed you to touch. Documents were brought in and out of his locked room, swiftly and silently.

You never felt like the proper wife for Loid Forger. And you never felt like the proper mother for Anya Forger.

Yet there were times like this, where you could see your reflection in Anya’s innocent game play, where you felt as though you did belong in the Forger household.

Clad in a black pencil skirt and a white button down Anya ‘borrowed’ from Loid, you revealed your hiding spot from behind the corridor wall, exposing Anya with a loud, “you’ve been caught, Agent Anya!”

Anya turned around slowly, an unexpected smirk on her face.

“Well well, Agent Haha might have caught anyone else off-gaard. But Haha forgets…” she snickered, pulling out two small plushies from behind her back, “Anya is Agent Anya, the best detetiv in the world!”

To your surprise, she launched the plushies in your direction, laughing in victory.

As one plushie hit your arm, you feigned injury, crying out as you slid down the wall. “Oh no! I’ve been struck by the greatest detective in the world! What was my boss thinking of setting me on this mission against the one and only, Agent Anya?”

Anya laughed and smiled at your declaration of loss, gathering her fellow ‘agents’ to finish the mission.

“Don’t wovvy Agent Haha, you did well for your forst time! You can onwy get better from now”.

It had been nearly a year with this bundle of joy and she never failed to make you smile.

You took Anya’s hand and saluted her.

“I hope to learn from the best onwards. Please accept my defeat”, you bowed, your lowered eyes stuck in nostalgia.

Anya was obsessed with spies. You were too. It was a long phase that lasted until your late teens. But one could argue that it still tumbled around your heart, catching you by surprise here and there.

You wanted to marry a spy when you were younger. It was your only dream.

Although you were glad that your childhood dream never became true.

Because spies could never stay. And it was much easier to be the one who left, than to be the one who was left. That was a universal belief, it seemed.

So you were also glad that Anya had no intentions to marry a spy either. She just wanted to become one, that’s where you two differed.

You heard the faint jingle of keys as the rapid clock hand approached six. And there he was, your husband, walking through the door with his hands preoccupied with two big, brown paper bags.

“Chichi!” Anya exclaimed, tearing her hand away from yours to clasp the grey fabric of her Chichi’s trousers.

“You’re back!”

Loid was taken aback, weight shifting off-balance. You stood up to free his hands, his eyes silently thanking you.

He gently shut the door behind him before ruffling his daughter’s hair.

“Of course I would come back, Anya. A person can’t just disappear out of thin air”.

“Spies can!” Anya retaliated.

Loid stared at her. Silent. No apparent emotion in his eyes.

You couldn’t help but giggle at Loid’s blank face. He never understood spies. Whenever Anya would bring them up, he zoned out: with a nod here and there and a simple response, he always found a way to turn the conversation elsewhere.

It was how you felt with politics. You never quite understood it, but if someone was passionate about it, you would listen in with a few polite ‘mhms’, and an “interesting!”. But most importantly, you would do whatever you could to direct the conversation elsewhere – it was a trait you shared with your husband. Now who learned from who, that was up for debate.

“It was in the wast episode of Bondman!” she explained, tugging him towards the living room, where she sat in front of the TV and elaborated on the newest episode.

Listening to Anya’s adorable voice, you walked into the kitchen, placing the bags on the kitchen aisle. Your body followed the daily routine you had grown to love so much: your hands worked on autopilot, sorting the filter system, pouring the water, adding the coffee beans that were always placed on the bottom shelf of the far-right cupboard. And of course, you could never forget the packets of cocoa powder on the shelf just above, with Anya’s little mug– stained slightly on the inside but white nonetheless, with a band of yellow on the top. And of course, the mandatory bags of tiny marshmallows just beside it, because Anya always wanted a handful of marshmallows on top of her cocoa. It was your normal. A normal you grew to crave so much.

To love so much.

“He disappead just wike that, in thin air! Never to be found again by anyone!”

Loid sighed.

“If only you could focus on your studies as much as you focus on this show, Anya”.

You giggled from the kitchen, swiftly sorting the items Loid had bought, cross checking it with the grocery list stuck on the fridge door. The coffee was nearly finished, although you hoped it would filter faster.

“I wonder what Anya will do now that Bondman is finished”, you added as you placed a pitcher of milk, a bowl of a few sugar cubes, and Anya’s mug of hot cocoa on your plain white tray.

“Will she finally study?” you asked, walking over with your simple white tray, as you did everyday.

Anya’s eyes widened as she grabbed the tiny mug with her tiny hands, the stars in her eyes still shining as the tiny marshmallows reflected in them. Just like always.

Loid reached for his mug, a simple white cup with a black band around the top. He reached for the pitcher, the tension in his shoulder dissipating as his wife sat next to him, with her own simple white cup with a coloured band around the top.

He poured the right amount of milk in your cup and dropped an extra sugar cube in yours, passing a tiny tea spoon to stir.

This was your normal. But perhaps, it was also his.

Perhaps, your body also inched closer to his, and perhaps, his hand lingered for a second longer when he passed your coffee.

“Chichi and Haha are flirting”.

“No we are not!” you both defended, although her observation was far too frequent to deny internally.

Loid took another sip of his coffee, losing himself in the comfort of the sofa cushions.

“Your Haha asked you a question, Anya”.

Anya pouted at her Chichi, unhappy that he redirected the conversation again.

This was the Forger’s normal.

So in a year or two, when Anya began to willingly study without Loid’s constant presence, it seemed… different.

But one could suppose that ‘different’ wasn’t always terrible.

It was different to hear the deafening silence coat the walls of the Forgers. It was different to see Bond without your pink-haired daughter chasing him around with her ‘spy-gear’ and ‘Silencer gun’. Instead, you saw Bond in front of your daughter’s locked door, where she was silently studying, or silently napping.

Sometimes she would silently cry, her suppressed sniffles and weeps echoing through the hollow of your mind.

Your ear would be pressed against her wooden door, with Bond’s empty eyes watching, attempting to decipher her whispers:

“Chichi won’t … if Anya isn’t an Imperial …”.

“Anya will never … Chichi again if Anya doesn’t …”.

“Anya can’t … Haha’s coco if Anya doesn’t study”.

You would look back to Bond, his eyes reflecting the Forger household. It was rumoured that animals knew more than humans sometimes. And how you wished you could know what Bond knew.

And when the evening shrouded its last ray of light into your shared apartment, the clock ticking to eight, Loid and you still sat together. Although it was different because it only lasted a minute. Because Loid would politely thank you for his coffee and walk away into his room, the milk pitcher left untouched.

But it became painful when it became normal for your evening snacks to be placed back inside the plastic containers, and stowed away on the top shelf of the far-right cupboard. And every time you opened that cupboard, on the far-right, your chest constricted as three packets of untouched marshmallows stared back at you, lying against the bored packet of cocoa powder. And up in front, you could see that hollow white teacup, collecting dust as the yellow band on top turned sickly.

Sometimes, you would turn the television on, as you battled the hunger in your heart. Two years ago, you would have to flick through multiple cartoon channels to browse the adult selection. Now, the first channel was always the news, reporting on the decreasing Cold War tensions between Westalis and Ostania.

“Peace in Unity”– it flooded the screens and streets of your small little world.

The message spreaded as the war contained.

However, the message troubled you heavily. The Westalian and Ostanian governments claimed that there was peace in unity, yet your familial unity starved your peace and fed your tension.

But the weight finally crushed your troubles when the Forger household was filled with noise once again.

Your eight-year-old daughter finally left her room to point towards the fridge door.

It was different, because the noise wasn't the bustling laughter of your daughter’s beautiful giggles. They were gut-wrenching wails that suffocated her throat. Eyes all red and swollen as her running nose dripped down her lips, mixing with her prickles of sorrow, which burnt against her tiny face.

There was a note with neat cursive printing the sheet in blocks.

Your dream was to marry a spy when you were younger. But as you grew up, when fiction became an unachievable utopia and horror became the justifiable present, it seemed as though your dream was already fulfilled, three years ago. But this was different.

Because this dream made your smile too heavy to remain on your gentle face. And the blood that thumped violently behind your eyes, rose your heart just to drop it again. So as your stomach raced, with Loid’s omurice clashing with the constrictions in your abdomen, and chest, this dream was different because you didn’t seem to wake up from it.

It was much easier to be the spy who left, than to be the wife who was left. Or so you thought, until your blurry eyes stained the last sentence, the ink blending into mush as your hands gave away and dropped the freshly written note from your grasp.

Because in another life, I would have really liked just doing laundry and taxes with you,

Loid Forger Twilight.

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slasher-fucker-and-sucker · 7 days ago

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could you do Yandere Cassandra Cain headcanons with a gn s/o who is a fellow vigilante?

1. Cassandra sees her S/O as her one tether in a chaotic world and is fiercely protective. She's obsessed with their safety, to the point where she’d rather keep them close than let them face any potential danger alone. It doesn’t matter if they’re equally skilled; she always sees herself as the one who has to protect them.

2. Being stealthy comes naturally to Cassandra, and she takes advantage of it to follow her S/O, even if they’re unaware. If they ever questioned how she knew so much about them, she’d just smile quietly, her dark eyes unreadable.

3. Cassandra has a habit of keeping tabs on anyone she perceives as a threat to her S/O’s attention or safety. She might “warn” other vigilantes or even rivals to stay away, either through intimidation or by orchestrating situations to push them out of her S/O’s path.

4. When her S/O is headed on a solo mission, she’ll try to tag along “just to be sure” they’re safe. If she can’t come, she’ll insist they tell her everything afterward—and becomes noticeably irritable if they leave any detail out.

5. Cassandra may use physical gestures—holding their hand, standing close, or brushing a hand along their arm—as subtle ways to keep her S/O grounded and subtly remind them that they’re hers. It’s her way of being affectionate while also reinforcing her attachment.

6. She might not express it verbally, but Cassandra becomes visibly colder if her S/O is spending too much time with anyone else. Her stare becomes sharper, her body language tense, as she silently communicates her disapproval until they’re alone together again.

7. Though intense, she does have genuine feelings for her S/O. Sometimes her yandere tendencies will soften into pure, silent adoration, especially during quiet moments. She’ll trace their features or hold them close as if they’re her entire world.

#yandere cassandra cain #cassandra cain x reader #batfam x reader #yandere headcanons #dc headcanon

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catscidr · 9 months ago

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flowers blossom beneath the scalpel - chapter two: poor self soothing skills

a/n: hehe new chapter (ꈍᴗꈍ)♡ more storybuilding because im a sucker for slow burn chapter warnings: none wc: 3,8k

“I still don’t understand why you chose me to deal with this guy.”

You take a languid sip of the drink you held with both hands, courtesy of Neuvillette, who was sitting across from you at a table outside of Café Lucerne. After you had been picked for the whole project to rekindle Snezhnaya and Fontaine’s relationship with each other, you had agreed to meet up with Neuvillette in the morning to report on everything that occurred. Partly to report to the Iudex the stock you had given out to the Harbinger so he could cover the costs, but also to discuss whether he should relay the job to someone else.

The atmosphere with Neuvillette was a distinct, but welcome, contrast between what you felt in the air in the flower shop with Dottore last night. Being near the Iudex was like laying in a meadow of wildflowers while basking in the sun; his presence was refreshing, his words brought everyone comfort and his presence made people feel safe. All things that were foreign when compared to the short amount of time you spent speaking to the Harbinger.

With the sound of people going about their day in the streets, the café employees serving customers, idle chatter all around them, you thought about how much you would much rather sit here in the warm sun and speak to Neuvillette than spend another second in Dottore’s presence- especially so late at night. The man didn’t have a particularly nice aura.

“My apologies. Though, be assured that it’s nothing personal,” the Iudex says, pulling you out of your short daydream. “You were simply the best match for the doctor’s goals; he requested to study the inner machinery of the gardemeks, however, letting him do so proves to be too risqué considering what he has achieved.” Neuvillette takes a sip from his own cup and pauses to gather his thoughts, a pensive expression adorning his face. “We came to an agreement and settled with letting him study Fontaine’s flora. You were the best candidate for the task,” he explains calmly, looking at you with sharp but soft eyes, gauging your reaction carefully.

This was... frustrating. You, being a people-pleaser, couldn’t bring yourself to refuse Neuvillette when he asked you if you wanted to work with him and other members of the community to, loosely, he said, additionally work with one of the Fatui Harbingers.

You had both discussed it for the first time around a week ago when he stopped by the flower shop to purchase a bouquet; and after some polite conversation, Neuvillette had asked you to meet again to discuss something important. At the meeting, he brought up the changes in Fontaine’s political relationships and eventually, after some back and forth, you begrudgingly accepted his offer.

Which felt more like a request. Or a favor.

Thinking this would have been a one-and-done deal she didn’t pay too much attention to it (apart from losing a night’s worth of sleep about it). But it was no big deal, truly. You thought this would be a one-time thing, since, really, what kind of person would ask a normal citizen to meddle with political affairs?

The Iudex, apparently.

You had gone silent when Neuvillette told you that the doctor would be coming by the flower shop as often as he would want to. Understanding that this meant you would see him an unfortunate number of times, you slumped over the table and sighed, doing your absolute best to keep your composure in front of the judge. Of course, since he was obsessed with knowledge and practically anything that would give him new perspectives in the world, Dottore would stop by often since it meant he would get to extract whatever he could from the plants and, by association, you. The thought made your head hurt- you hadn’t known him for longer than twenty-four hours and you already wanted out. With everything swirling in your mind, you figured it would be useless to voice your concerns to Neuvillette since he had expertly dodged the topic of longevity last time you brought it up.

Currently you were wracking your brain trying to find a solution to your predicament. “Why not the have that other flower shop in Quartier Lyonnais do it?” you ask, though it sounds more like a whine to the older man.

“Ah, it was actually the first... suitor, for lack of better words. However the owner, Miss Florentine, looked as pale as a ghost once I mentioned the Fatui. I did not wish to cause her further distress, so I decided that I should not press the matter further with her even though she has remarkable knowledge when it comes to biology,” the white-haired man said slowly, almost as if he still felt a pang of guilt for scaring the older lady. Which he did, since you could see thin clouds rolling in.

It caused you to sigh for the nth time. Now you just felt at a loss; sure, it’s better that the person put in charge of working with the Second Harbinger Il Dottore isn’t a frail, fragile elderly woman, but there had to be someone better fit for the job. Someone that isn’t a young woman with... issues. Someone that can speak to strange men in positions of power without having the urge to stop, drop, and roll off a cliff.

“Yeah but...” you mumble against the table, hesitantly lifting your head to rest your chin in the palm of your hand. Your eyes meet Neuvillette’s with furrowed brows, and the man has to will away the urge to apologize again; this was important, you were basically his last resort. “...How long will this last?” you ask meekly, finally giving in. If anything, you hoped that whatever was up there would have mercy on you and Neuvillette would say only a few days, or a week, or—

“A year.”

You would have choked on your drink if you had taken a sip from it. At first you thought you misheard him or that his answer was a joke, but when you held his stare and saw that no, he wasn’t fucking with you, you swear you felt your heart drop down to your stomach. A beat passes, then two, and then the silence becomes stuffy and incredibly uncomfortable. The more you stared at Neuvillette, the more you saw his composure falter as he shut his eyes and breathed out a sigh through his nose. You couldn’t even hear the noise of people chatting around you, gossiping about whatever was going on in their own life, free of the danger that came with being around a member of the Fatui. You distantly try to think of what mistake you made in the past to land yourself in this situation.

“I’m... aware that this may be an unfortunate circumstance,” the man says after a heavy, pregnant pause. “However, I implore you to listen to my explanation first.” Still stunned into silence, you take a moment to weigh your options.

Option A; you say fuck no and refuse, go back to your normal, boring life and make cute flower arrangements for couples and sell nice plants to people with a green thumb. You bask in the normalcy of your life before you get visited by a strange person in the middle of the night, wearing the familiar gray mask you saw the Fatui agent with Dottore wear, and get murdered in your own apartment where no one can hear you scream because the Harbinger ended up holding a grudge against you for not upholding your end of the deal and put a hit on you out of spite. Or option B; you say okay I’m listening and sit there, trembling in fear while overthinking the changes you’ll have to make in your schedule to accommodate this arrangement.

The choice was incontestable.

“Okay I’m listening,” you say quietly, inhaling when you speak. If he notices your discomfort Neuvillette doesn’t point it out, and instead he nods, grateful that you’re still with him— physically, at least. The Iudex takes one last sip from his porcelain cup, sets it down gently and folds his hands in front of him as he straightens his back to explain the situation— properly, this time.

“A year is the initial agreement we have come to with the cryo Archon, but even so, it is still susceptible to change. It might be reduced to merely a month or two, or the Tsaritsa and the Second Harbinger may decide that it would be beneficial to extend the agreement to two years.” The Iudex pauses, mulling over his next choice of words. “The ball is in their court. Lady Furina and I have been the ones to initiate this deal, and as per the cryo Archon’s request, they are responsible for how long this agreement will last. Unfortunately, there are things I cannot divulge to you, but please be assured that your life is not in danger at the moment.”

You bite the inside of your cheek to prevent yourself from repeating his last sentence, completely and utterly bewildered at the implications.

Another pause stretches between the two of you. You had unconsciously curled in the fingers of the hand you had been using to hold up your chin, forming small dips into the skin of the area your cupid’s bow from your nails. You lower your hand down on the table, messing with the rim of your cup as you lose yourself in your thoughts. He clears his throat awkwardly to get your attention back on him before you start to overthink again.

“I can... pull some strings and have a gardemek or two standing outside of your shop, if needed. To make you more at ease,” he clarifies. The proposition definitely wasn’t unwelcome— in fact, you already felt just the slightest bit relieved. Surely, it’ll be reassuring to know you have two 7 feet tall robots waiting for you right outside the door when you’re meeting with the Harbinger. You stop your mind from wandering too far, before you start thinking about Dottore attacking you.

Neuvillette sees right through you and uses it to his advantage, seeing as you were slowly but surely warming up to the idea of being tangled in this mess. “If anything is to happen, you know where to call and where to find me. Though I assure you, he also has his side of the deal to uphold, and he seemed particularly eager to work with us.”

“Eager?” you repeat, puzzled. Last night the doctor had seemed irritated, if not downright pissed that he had to speak to you. He had messed with you for his own entertainment, and from what you could tell with just one encounter, he didn’t seem like the type of person to enjoy working in groups. “Yes,” Neuvillette nods. He says your name gently and places a gloved hand on your fidgeting one, “Please trust us, we’re aware of how irrational this situation may be for you, but believe me when I say you will do just fine”

His touch brought you some comfort despite the plethora of scenarios running rampant in your mind. You blink and keep your eyes closed for a moment, taking a deep breath to still your thoughts. Forcing yourself to stop thinking about the Harbinger, how he towered over you, how sharp his teeth had looked, how he could easily—

“Okay,” you huff, opening your eyes to look up at the man sitting in front of you, lips curled downwards slightly. Almost immediately you notice a hint of mirth swimming in his silver eyes, but it fades before you can be sure of it. “Wonderful. You have my endless gratitude,” he says with a small smile. Pulling his hand back from atop yours, he adjusts his cravat and pushes his chair back to stand.

“Well then, thank you for your cooperation. If you have any questions I will be in my office, so do feel free to come and see me if the need arises. Unfortunately, I can’t stay longer and chat, as Lady Furina has asked me to go back to Palais Mermonia as soon as we were done discussing the logistics.” He nods curtly, “I do hope that next time we cross paths it will be because you are reporting good news.”

As he pushes his chair back into the table and begins to make his way out of the small cafe area, you shout his name and unceremoniously slam your hands on the table as something pops up in your head, needing an answer before he leaves. “Wait, Monsieur Neuvillette! I have a question!”

The noise startles him, a concerned expression flashing across his face before he regains his composure and tilts his head, patiently waiting for you to speak. “Of course. What might it be?” Your mind blanks and you steal a glance around you, seeing heads turned towards you and the Iudex. Most people go back to whatever they were previously doing before you accidentally made a scene, but you spot a few figures still watching you, essentially eavesdropping without the subtility of it.

“Um... will I get paid?”

...

You had called one of your coworkers to take over the shop today as soon as you left the cafe; anyone would be as frazzled as you were if they received the same news you did, in your defense. You needed some time to think over what this meant for you.

First, you’d be getting acquainted with one of the scariest people in Teyvat, then you’d need to teach him what you knew about plants and whatever else he wanted to know, aware of how volatile his personality was. All of this information you were aware of, and you weren’t sure it could get any worse; but then you found out you had to do all of this labor completely unpaid. Which, in retrospect wasn’t all that surprising, but still. A scoff leaves you as you grumble to yourself, shoes tapping harshly along the pavement as you make your way back to your apartment.

You fail to notice the lack of clouds hovering over the city of Fontaine. While walking back home, you start typing away at your phone to take note of things you’ll need to purchase in order to make your life easier— and to preserve it.

First, you’d need a power bank and an extra charging cable for your phone. What if he were to hold you hostage and your phone lost its charge? You’d need to get the battery filled up to call for help. Then, you think you might benefit from getting hand wraps. Carrying a pocketknife would probably turn sour if he were to find it in your pockets since he could easily use it against you, so having your fists ready to throw a punch at all times is a good option, you muse. Plus, you’re sure you saw some guy with black boxing wraps walking behind Palais Mermonia, so it can’t be that weird for you to have wraps on your hands, too.

You get to your apartment building in no time, almost bumping into a lamp post only once. Maybe you should have started your shopping list at home instead of on your way. But either way, you insert your key into the lock and open your door, grateful to be home today. You’ll be able to properly prepare yourself, both mentally and physically, for the time you’ll be spending with him. And if your first impression told you anything, it’s that you would need to be prepared for anything. Your mental capacity will need to be in top shape at all times.

“Hopefully he doesn’t show up while Clarisse runs the shop,” you mumble to yourself as you kick your shoes off, tossing your bag on the kitchen table as you make a beeline for the fridge. All of that panicking really did a number on your cortisol levels and the small slice of tiramisu you had earlier did nothing to help your hunger.

After scouring the fridge for something to eat, you settle for a simple but hearty sandwich. Sat on your couch, you eat your meal while watching the local news and browsing through your phone. Increased sightings of blubberbeasts on the shore, overlay advertisements for the Steambird and Chioriya boutique, a group of people wearing yellow vests protesting the court’s decision to allow members of the Fatui to apply for a Fontainian visa, and next week’s weather forecast.

“Why do they even bother with the weather if they get it wrong ninety percent of the—”

You choke on the bite you had been chewing and drop your phone in your lap to reach for the TV remote, thumb twitching as you hit the rewind button. Swallowing your food, you give the television your undivided attention and listen to the news reporter saying something about a new law that just passed that allowed members of the Fatui to apply for an official work visa.

“...Shit.”

A news reporter held up a microphone to a protestor with a sign that said Send the Spies Back to Snezhnaya as he ranted about his job, unreliable media and the court system as they both stood near Palais Mermonia, the rest of the group of protestors standing further away, chanting “No to Fatuus.”

“If we let the agent people get legal passports to Fontaine, then what about the big fish?” the man in the yellow vest exclaimed, gleeking as he spoke. Some got on his beard. “Our land will get invaded! It’s like the metaphor when you put a fish in a pot and turn up the heat except, we’re the fish!” The reporter brings the mic back to her to ask “you mean the frog?” and the man, flustered, doubles down on his nonsensical metaphor.

“It’s not just the agents,” you mumble to yourself, reaching for the remaining half of your sandwich to eat. As you continue paying attention to the impromptu interview, your mind drifts. If you came across someone with a strong opinion of the Fatui while you were with The Doctor, would they accuse you of plotting against Fontaine? Would they try to get the court’s attention, and when Neuvillette inevitably comes to your defense would that person start rumors that the court is corrupted? You felt a headache begin to throb in the back of your head.

Too mentally exhausted to deal with any of this you turn off the television and grab your phone, dragging your feet as you make your way to your bedroom. I’ll put the plate away later you thought to yourself, slipping underneath your covers to rest your bones. Holding your phone above your face you type away a text to send to your coworker; “I’ll come in to help you with closing later, it that okay?” She responds almost immediately with a curt thumbs up— “must be a slow day” you huff, amused.

It only takes you a few minutes to drift off, the soft whirr of your air conditioning unit lulling you to sleep.

You awoke three hours later, disgruntled from your nap. You didn’t particularly enjoy taking naps, nor did you fall asleep on purpose, but your body was just so overwhelmed that it had to shut down for a bit to let you think clearly once again. You open your phone and look at the time— 4:42. With a grunt you shove the duvet off of you, sling your legs off the bed and think about what to do.

“I’ll do some chores, and then I’ll go buy the things I need and go help Clarisse,” you say aloud to no one in particular, stepping out of your room to take care of that dirty plate you had left on the coffee table in the living room. You wash and dry the plate, take out your trash, sweep the floors of your apartment and do everything you can to pass the time before you eventually have to go out again. Noticing that the time now read 5:20, you figure it should be fine to head out to the store to grab what you need. You fix your bedhead and take your uniform out of the dryer, you swiftly put it on and grab your bag, ready to head out.

...

You make it to the flower shop at 7:02, right as Clarisse was about to lock the door to prevent customers from wandering in. You wave at her, placing your bag on the cash register counter since it isn’t necessary to go all the way to the break room, and tie your apron around your waist, ready to help her out.

“So how was your day off?” she asks with a quirk of her lips, tone slightly snarky. You couldn’t blame her for prodding, really, so you figure you should probably be as honest as you could with her.

“Something came up and I had to, uh, take some time to myself,” you say vaguely. It wasn’t that you couldn’t trust her with the news you received, but with all the bad press the Fatui had it was hard to gauge how she would react to the fact that you’d basically be working with a Harbinger. You weren’t really all that close with Clarisse, she worked part-time at your shop and you never hung out with her outside of work. Her working hours basically consisted of when you couldn’t make it to work, whether it be because you had to take a sick day or something else that you didn’t plan for. Usually, you can simply flip the OPEN sign to the CLOSED side, but when you were in a tight spot, you’d call her to cover for you.

The arrangement was a confusing one, but you appreciated her help, nonetheless. Not enough that you’d go ahead and tell her that you would be working closely with The Doctor, though.

Your half-assed answer was good enough for her, though. Your coworker hands you a broom, wordlessly pointing to the tipped over plant with dirt strewn all over the area around it. You glance at her and she shrugs, muttering “kids” quietly as she gets back to cleaning the store. The two of you get some work done; counting the cash register, restocking the plants on display and watering the flowers that needed it, and as you’re making the plants on display look even, Clarisse taps your shoulder to grab your attention.

“Actually, I just remembered something,” she begins, glancing away for a moment before meeting your gaze. “A customer was asking for you earlier.” You raise a brow and tilt your head, giving her your full attention as she fidgets with her hands. You wipe your hands on your apron, getting rid of the dirt that had accumulated on your palms, and turn to face her properly.

“You couldn’t help them?” She shakes her head, “He specifically asked for you. I didn’t catch his name, but he said he would come swing by the store again tomorrow. Told me to relay a message, too.” She brushes back a stray braid behind her ear and clears her throat. “And?” you say, urging her to say something.

“He said he needed more sweet flower specimens.”

next chapter -> not here yet! previous chapter -> ch. 1

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