#Perhaps enjoying a bit the last moments of following the running series

[longagoitwastuesday]

Can't believe I've been watching JJK for around two months and I'm still in episode 14 of the first season

[piningforstan]

Memories

Part One | Part Two

Summary: You’re relieved to see your husband alive, but you have yet to learn at what cost.

Pairings: Stan Pines x F!Reader

Word Count: 5.9k

Warnings: memory loss, it’s a bittersweet fic (let me know if there’s anything else)

A/N: I could honestly stay in this story forever. I hope you enjoy! (If you don’t think the small attempts bits of humor are funny, just do me a favor and pretend like they are)

Life moved on, of course, even though it felt like yours had ended. The town needed rebuilding. Newspapers and media outlets needed to be dealt with — Ford recommended telling reporters that there had been a series of animal attacks. But most townsfolk just wanted to forget. The lasting effects of the memory gun meant they preferred to just pretend like nothing happened.

You busied yourself however you could, clearing fallen brush and trees, reuniting families, making do with whatever food you could find and cooking for anyone who hungered.

And when you weren’t focused on resurrecting the infrastructure of Gravity Falls, you focused on doing it for your family. Dipper had withdrawn inside himself. Mabel practically resided in Sweater Town. And Ford largely made himself scarce as he puzzled out ideas for getting Stan’s memory back. So you invited Dipper to join you for nonsensical errands and you laughed your way through Mabel’s favorite movies and you always made sure that Ford had something to eat.

You had time for everyone, it seemed, but Stan.

He floated along the edges of your day to day life, suspended in a state of limbo — wanting to participate but not knowing whether his presence would be tolerable or not. And you didn’t want to provoke his already weakened mental state so you let him be, an observer to a family that he had been the nucleus of.

“Oh, uh, mornin’.”

You were sitting at the kitchen table, staring at nothing in particular when Stan shuffled in, donned in his boxers and wife beater. It ached to see him how you had so many other mornings. Perhaps that’s why you avoided him; to do so was easier than confronting this pain.

“Stan. Good morning.” You sat up a little straighter. “Coffee is made already.”

He grumbled his thanks. You noticed that he grabbed his favorite mug, one Soos bought him that stated WORLD’S GREATEST FARTER, without thinking. There were small, fleeting moments like this that made you believe that he might regain his memory. But they often slipped away, just like Stan clearing his throat and saying, “So, uh, we’re married?”

“Yes,” you said, inhaling sharply. “Thirty years.”

Stan wrapped one large hand around the mug. He let out a whistle as he reclined back on the counter. “No offense sweetheart, but that doesn’t speak highly of your intelligence.”

You can’t help it. You croaked out a laugh. “No, no it doesn’t.”

“How’d I do it?”

“Do what?”

“Keep ya around for thirty years.” He gestured in your general direction, veritably flustered. “I don’t need to ‘member much about myself to know you’re too good for me.”

“Well, you could be very convincing,” you supplied after a moment of consideration.

Stan scoffed. “Bullshit. What’s the real reason?”

You eyed him, then said in a resigned voice, “A wife can’t testify in court against her husband.”

A beat of silence ensued, followed by the loudest belly laugh of anyone you’ve ever known. Stan clutched at his chest, coffee spilling over his mug and onto the floor. He all but wheezed out, “I knew it!“

“It was my idea, actually,” you said, smiling fondly at the memory, “we had only gone out a few times when it happened. You wanted to make a run for it. Even though we hadn’t known each other long I already knew that I didn’t want to go a day without you. So we got hitched at the courthouse and the case was dismissed on account that I was the only eye witness.”

You were surprised to discover that relaying the story brought you more comfort than sadness. It fanned the dying ember of hope inside you.

Stan processed this information. “What was the crime? Must’ve been bad.”

“If I told you ‘stealing my heart’ would you believe me?”

“I’d believe you’re a shitty liar.”

Stan pestered you for an answer but you staunchly refused to give it to him, if only to prolong the conversation even more. Eventually you lapsed into a comfortable silence, but after thirty years of marriage, you knew that Stan hadn’t given up, rather reconsidered his angle. It wouldn’t be the end of that conversation.

Only the dredges of your coffee remained but you sipped it every now and then, taking the time to study Stan when you didn’t think he noticed.

Did he realize that he remembered more than he thought? Like the mug, for instance. The way he stood. How he moved around the kitchen. How much did the memory gun erase? You read once that memories consisted of just the last time you remembered something — a great portion of your life would pass without recollection. But the feelings stayed the same. You might not remember specific moments of your mother being kind to you, but when you looked at her your chest swelled with affection for her.

Was that how Stan felt now? Wading through residual feelings and sentiments without the memories to attach them to?

“Listen, uh.” Stan rubbed the back of his neck. “I know this is weird ‘tween us. But I-I hope we can be friends. Still. If you want.”

Hopefully your expression did not betray the stab of pain in your heart. “I’d like that.”

Apparently, rebuilding your friendship with your husband meant him “Stan-napping” you.

“If it’s Stan-napping wouldn’t that mean you’re the one being —”

He flapped his hand. “Shhh, shhh, shhh.”

You grinned and slid into the front seat of El Diablo like normal. Gum wrappers scattered the ground at your feet, along with a lighter and several cassette tapes. You inserted one, faint rock music playing from the radio. A laugh escaped you. “Remember when —”

You stopped. Stan smiled sadly.

“It’s a’right. Promise. Tell me anyway.”

And so you did, retelling the story as best as you could in detail. Stan listened intently as he drove, interjecting his own comments and questions, laughing at all of the parts you knew he would. The tape had played on repeat during a week that you spent running a con in Arizona. An unsuccessful one at that.

“You really did all that w’me? Now I really don’t trust the likes of ya.” Stan drove with one hand on the wheel, the other resting on the door with his elbow out the side.

“In my defense, I was always more of a reluctant volunteer.” You focused on the trees flying past, silhouetting Stan’s handsome features and his easy smile. “But I would follow you anywhere.”

It’s an embarrassing admission.

You stumbled over your words, but Stan was quick to cover for you. “So I didn’t need to Stan-nap you?”

“No, but I’m still glad you did.”

“And to think, all of the work I put into it.” Stan feigned clutching his chest in indignation.

You snickered. “By all of the work do you mean withholding caffeine from me until I agreed? That was more of a hindrance than anything. I would’ve said yes much faster with coffee.”

“Noted. Anything else I should know?”

“I can also be persuaded with chocolate.”

Stan mock-glared at you. Whenever he spoke, he used his hands in big gestures, emphasizing whatever point he was making. “Wait, wait, wait. Chocolate? What happened to followin’ me anywhere?”

“I’m just saying it helps,” you told him.

For the duration of the ride you regaled him with whatever tale that came to mind. Eventually the trees thinned out and the lake came into view, water shimmering. An outcropping of cliffs hugged one side of the lake, extending an almost natural awning over the small hut Stan parked in front of. Picnic tables dotted the sparsely grassy area and families darted in and out from between them, children laughing with sticky faces and parents chasing after them waving napkins.

“Ice cream?” You climbed out of the car, the door swinging shut behind you.

Stan watched the children with soft fondness, making faces at them as they passed. Together you walked down the worn path to the counter manned by a pimpled teenager.

“Ford said I should do things I used to like to try and jog my memory,” Stan said. He peered at the menu — 107 flavors! it boasted — instead of meeting your curious gaze. “He, uh, told me we used to come here.”

“We did.” Your throat felt thick.

He had kissed you for the first time on that picnic table over there, when dusk had settled and fireflies lit up the night around you. You had been sitting on the table with Stan slotted between your legs. His mouth was cold from the ice cream but soft and sweet tasting, dancing across your tongue. You never cared for mint before that day.

When it was your turn to order, Stan persisted that you deserved a senior discount. The teenager caved, leading you to roll your eyes as Stan put his change in the tip jar only to draw out more than he put in. He took the first taste of his mint, double-scooped cone and winked at you.

“You’re insufferable,” you said with a laugh.

“He made it too easy,” Stan replied. “Sucker.”

You sat down at one of the empty tables. No one approached you but they cast glances in your direction, undoubtedly interested in the hero of Gravity Falls. If Stan noticed he didn’t say, challenging you instead to an ice cream eating contest until one of succumbed to brain freeze.

Stan had a voracious appetite, as did you, and you won out in the end. Stan, as a result, had to jump into the lake with his clothes on.

“Wait, before you go.” You couldn’t hide your amusement as you leaned up on your tiptoes and wiped ice cream from the corner of Stan’s mouth. Your thumb lingered. Recognition flashed in Stan’s eyes, then disappeared as soon as it appeared. Had you imagined it? “Um, there.”

“Thanks, kid.”

A moment passed between you, the span of a few heartbeats, before Stan braced himself. He yelled, “TELL MY STORY!” before racing off towards the shoreline of the lake. You doubled over with laughter as his youthful sprint soon turned into a hobble, the wind carrying Stan’s curses back to you. He collapsed on the sand mere inches from the lake.

Concern worried the edges of your mind. You called out to him, “Stan? Stan!”

No response.

You smiled sheepishly at the townsfolk observing the whole situation, then trotted after Stan. Upon inspection he was still breathing, one hand draped on his chest. The sand crunched underfoot as you stood over him. “Did you die?”

“Maybe.” He cracked open an eye. “Does that make you an angel?”

Your worry vanished. Staring up at the sky, you searched the clouds for an answer about why you still put up with this old man. “No use flattering me. This doesn’t hold up your end of the deal.”

“Yeah, yeah. Gimme a hand, would ya?”

You reached down for his hand, but instead of meeting yours it clasped around your wrist, pulling you down on top of him. You cried out in surprise. The water lapped at the pebbled beach, soaking through your clothes as Stan caged you with his body and rolled you both into it.

You shrieked in protest. Entrapped in his arms, he hauled you out into knee-deep water. It was no use trying to fight against him, though you gave your best effort. He could’ve held you like that all day and you knew that when you twisted to face him, it was only because he let you.

Somehow you winded up with your hands on his chest, his shirt plastered to his skin and revealing a glimpse of the body beneath. The moment reminded you of how young Stan made you feel, still blushing over him. He never treated you as if you were old or frail and you might as well have been in your late twenties again, when you first met, not a crease or wrinkle in sight.

Stan cleared his throat and the spell broke.

You removed your hands and stepped back, already missing the warmth of his proximity. In an attempt to ease the tension, you quipped, “I won’t forget this, Stanley Pines.”

Stan’s mouth twitched into a smile, eyes soft. “Neither will I.”

Stan assured you that evening that the outing had roused a memory, but you knew that he just wanted to console you. It didn’t matter. You were determined to recreate as many memories as possible, some alone, others including Dipper and Mabel. Great fun was had by all but you could tell, sneaking glances at Stan whenever he looked away, that it wasn’t registering.

Dipper and Mabel’s last days in Gravity Falls were swiftly approaching. It was a general consensus in the Pines household to pretend that this was not happening.

“You know, you could go with them.”

Admittedly, while watching Stan entertain Dipper and Mabel with an outlandish story, you forgot Ford was sitting beside you. The sinking sun created an orange glow over everything, glinting in Ford’s glasses as he waited for your answer.

“Who?” You asked, distracted.

“The kids.” Ford made a flippant gesture towards them. “Back to Piedmont.”

“Oh.” You hadn’t given any thought about it. It was, after all, never your plan to leave Gravity Falls. Was Ford trying to get rid of you?

Ford continued, “Just…I see the way you look at Stan. I know it hurts that he doesn’t remember.”

“It does.” You grew a sudden interest in the fray of your jeans. For the kids you put on a brave face, recreating memories with enthusiasm, but in truth, each one that failed was a stake through your confidence in Stan's memory.

“My theory might be incorrect. Or just an outlier in Stan’s case,” Ford added with afterthought, never the one to admit failure. Unlike you. “It doesn’t seem he will ever recover his memories.”

“We can’t give up, though,” you said, voice wavering with emotion.

Ford’s jaw feathered. So much of him reflected Stan down to the last detail, but with an air of superiority that Stan lacked. “Stan told you about Stan-o-War.”

A statement. Not a question.

“Yes.” Irritation raised under your skin like an itch you couldn’t scratch.

“I want to take him out. On a boat. Explore the world like we promised each other.”

“What boat?”

“I have one,” Ford vaguely promised.

“What about The Shack?”

“We can leave it to Soos. Assuming that you go with the twins.”

“Why would I do that?”

A lull happened in the conversation as Dipper and Mabel exploded in uproarious laughter at something Stan said. You suspected Ford was gathering his words. “I’m afraid that if we carry on as we have, the stress on Stan’s mind will break it completely. We need to face the music.”

“I’m not giving up on him,” you gritted back.

Ford heaved a sigh. “I’m not suggesting that you do. I don’t think you ever would. But we have to do what’s best for Stan.” He put his hands on his knees and pushed up, his shadow falling over you as he stood. “Just think about it.”

And think about it you did. A lot.

You still hadn’t come to a decision a week before the twins left. Ford informed you that he planned to surprise Stan after they left, leaving you with the decision of staying with Soos or going with Dipper and Mabel. Could you just…up and leave?

Reportedly, their parents were looking for help; from what you understood, a divorce lingered on the horizon. It brought comfort to you to think about caring for them during a tumultuous time. Not to mention you couldn’t stand the thought of not seeing them every day — but to gain it at the risk of losing Stan?

“Penny for your thoughts?”

Stan strode into the room, dapper in his Mister Mystery suit. Your cheeks heated. Too many times you had been caught this week lost in your thoughts. “Oh, I —”

“No, seriously. I need a penny.”

You opened the register. He proceeded to take said coin and spin some elaborate tale to a group of tourists about how it had been crafted from a rare alien metal. Stan sold it for “only ten dollars” after pretending to meditate on the offer, chuckling as the unsuspecting tourist walked away.

He tapped the money into his sleeve. “Okay, but really, what’s eatin’ at ya?”

“I’m just sad about the kids leaving,” you told him after a pause, which wasn’t a complete lie. Unable to bear the flicker of sadness across his face, you panicked, racking your brain for something else. “We should…throw a going away party for them.”

A party? That was the last thing you needed to concern yourself with. But Stan had already latched onto the idea.

“Hey, that’s not a bad idea. We could promote the Shack, invite their friends, exorbitantly mark-up entry tickets.”

Stan listed each idea on his fingers. Although you regretted suggesting it, it filled you with warmth to see him invigorated by the notion of a party. You couldn’t steal that away from him now.

It shouldn’t have been a surprise to you that Stan was an expert party planner considering he was the life of one wherever he went. He got to work assigning roles and soon after you were hiring a caterer (Greasy Sue’s), a DJ (Soos, who insisted you call him despite being in the same room), and security (the man you only knew as “the one with the tattoos”).

The more you inquired, the more people wanted to participate. It opened your eyes to how much the Pines family impacted the town over the last few months. It was heartening, to say the least.

And by the time the party started, everyone in Gravity Falls was either attending it or volunteering at it. Everywhere you looked there was someone you knew, someone there to celebrate the people you loved most.

“You think they were surprised?” Stan’s booming voice floated over the music.

Strobe lights flashed overhead, casting him in an array of colors as he parted the crowd to your side. Dressed in dark slacks and a deep v-necked shirt, gold chain nestled in a patch of chest hair, Stan cut a perfect image of himself in the ‘70s. And although the outfit invoked memories of a younger man, you found this older one much more preferable.

“Definitely,” you replied.

Stan leaned down. “What?”

“I said definitely!” The music blared, pulsing through the whole building like a living thing. It didn’t help that Mabel and her friends had acquired full access to the speakers that Wendy’s dad lugged in earlier.

“What?” Stan wrapped one hand around your waist and pulled you in, putting your mouth dangerously close to his ear.

Heat flooded you. You yelled, “Let’s go outside!”

“Lead the way!”

To your pleasure and mortification, Stan removed his hand from your waist just enough to rest on your lower back, steering you through the crowd of partygoers. The cool night air was a balm to your heated skin as you stepped onto the porch.

Stan strayed from you long enough to shoo away two people kissing passionately on the couch — Blurbs and Durland— before patting the spot next to him for you to sit down.

“Are we old or is that music too loud?” Stan asked. He fished a cigar from his pocket and lit it.

You were entranced by the smoke curling from the end, the fixture of the cigar resting against his bottom lip. You swallowed and uncrossed your legs, then recrossed them.

“All that matters is that the party is a success,” you said.

Stan chuckled. “Heh, it is, isn’t it? Little twerps didn’t know what hit ’em.”

A small eternity passed in which you hunted desperately for something else to say. Stretched out above you on an inky canvas, the stars shone, rendering you small and insignificant. You stared up at them as exhaustion claimed you. You were so tired of thinking, of inventing conversation, so you said the one thing you knew to be irrefutable.

“You’re a good man, Stanley.”

He guffawed. “Don’t let anyone hear ya say that.”

“It’s true.” Since that day at the lake you had been careful not to touch him, but now you put your hand on his knee. “You’re a good man. What happened doesn’t change that. Your memories do not amount to your character.”

The corner of his mouth quirked, and you could tell he was fighting a swell of emotion. “I wish I could do better. Everyone has these…expectations of me. I dunno how to live up to them. I want to be that person.”

“You are that person, without even thinking about it. You’re still passionate about your family. And you’re clever and brave.”

“I’m, uh, not complain’ or nothin’ but I can see the disappointment in your eyes. And-And not just you. Everyone.” He took a drag from the cigar, chest expanding with an inhaled breath. Stan blew the smoke out slowly. “I’m a stranger in my own life, ya know?”

Ford’s words, his expression grim, emerged: We have to do what’s best for Stan.

Tears sprang to your eyes but you willed them away, swallowing until your throat no longer felt quite as thick. It wasn’t fair to push Stan to be someone he couldn’t remember by clinging to a past that only you knew.

Maybe Ford was right.

Maybe the best thing for Stan was to shed the weight of these expectations and carve out a new existence for himself. He would be thrilled to explore the world with his brother — who might as well have just been introduced to him considering the time they spent apart.

There was no room for you in this new life. You knew he could never look at you without thinking about his shortcomings, even if they existed only in his mind. You were standing on one side of a chasm, yelling at him; Stan on the other side, but he was too far away to hear you.

“Well that got depressing.” Stan stubbed out the cigar, ash crumbling. He stood and held his hand out to you, eerily reminiscent of how Ford had last week. “C’mon, dance w’me.”

He looked nervous to ask you this, which dumbfounded you — you would do whatever he asked. The quiet observation made you smile.

You took his hand and allowed him to pull you back inside, a sense of bittersweet finality settling over you as you did.

The party prevailed. People were drunk on the cheap beer and good company, cheeks reddened, smiles wide. When Soos played a string of throwback songs, Stan animatedly swung you around the dance floor, surprisingly graceful for his age and size. Every touch and graze seared through you, and Stan’s gaze lingered on you in a way that heated your core and stole your breath, his dark eyes glinting with customary mirth.

A particularly enthusiastic move spun you nearly into the beverage table. You stumbled but Stan was upon you in a moment, catching you and steadying you with his hands on your waist.

“You okay?” He inspected you from head to toe, then chuckled. “Heh. Guess I don’t know my own strength.”

One moment you were like that — brimming with happiness, entangled, chests pressed together — and the next Stan had pinned you to the wall, the darkened corner lending plenty of privacy to his wandering touch and fervent kisses. You kissed him back with similar urgency.

There was no part of him that you hadn’t mapped at one point or another, though it felt jarringly now like new territory, the same broad shoulders and thick arms but somehow different.

And you wanted to explore all of it.

With your teeth you tugged at his bottom lip, teasing open his mouth in order to get a better taste. Stan, pliant and obedient under your lead, sighed in pleasure. Nothing you did sated the need inside you to consume him, devour all that he offered so that you could never miss it again.

Stan had just moved his hand from your ass down along the curve of your lower thigh to lift your leg up around his waist — hardly an appropriate position for a Grauntie, you thought vaguely— when you were interrupted with unmistakable cheering. “Get ’em! Get ’em!”

Stan ensured to cover your body with his own as he whirled on Tyler in a move of unexpected gentlemanliness. The next words out of his mouth? Not so much.

Stan rasped, “I swear to God if you don’t get outta my sight right now I’m gonna rip out your eyes and sew them on whatever horrible affront to nature I have in my shop. Now scram.”

Tyler paused. He breathed out a small, “Get ’em” then turned tail and fled.

You covered your mouth to stifle your laugh.

“Pervert,” Stan grumbled.

“Can you blame him?”

“Nah. I’d watch us, too.” Stan grinned then, renewed in his delight. He gestured with his chin towards the door marked EMPLOYEES ONLY. “Wanna get out of here?”

“I thought you’d never ask.”

The music, muffled by distance, sounded like an erratic heartbeat from the living room chair where Stan pulled you on top of him. You both laughed as your knees protested against the maneuver, Stan carefully guiding your legs to rest on either side of him. He kissed you at once. It was as if there had been no interruption from before, his hands in your hair and your fingers clumsily working the buttons of his shirt.

Stan shifted to accommodate the subsequent unbuckling of his gaudy belt, taking the opportunity to also unburden you from your top. Your entire being seemed to warm as he admired this new development, gaze drifting lazily, drinking in his fill. Stan always made you feel desirable. Even after your skin freckled and your breasts no longer held their perkiness.

Smiling with the ease of a contented man, Stan reached out and brushed a thumb under your collar. “How’d ya get this?”

You froze. You didn’t have to look to know what he was talking about — a tiny, heart-shaped scar.

The obvious shift in attitude made him recoil. His features spasmed with regret.

“I should know that, shouldn’t I?”

Your chest tightened. You whispered, “Yes.”

“Damnit.” He breathed your name. “I’m sorry. I should’ve known better than to say anything —”

The rest of his apology fell on deaf ears. You awkwardly climbed off his lap and collected your shirt. The shag carpet nearly swallowed your bare feet, having kicked off your shoes sometime after crossing the threshold into the house. Stan sat motionless, watching you. 

“You don’t have to apologize,” you quietly said.

Stan’s fingers flexed, an effort not to reach out to you again. “I fucked up. I’m sorry.”

“It…it’s okay.” You felt, somehow, as if you were both shrinking and expanding. The words you managed to eke out next sounded hollow. “We shouldn’t have done this.”

“What?”

“It wasn’t a good idea.” For the second time that night, tears burned your eyes. Stan, upon noticing, leapt out of the chair but you stepped out of his reach, wrapping your arms around you.

Stan deflated. Actually deflated, shoulders curving into his usual rounded posture. “What’s going on? Listen, I shouldn’t have said —”

“It’s not that,” you interrupted.

But wasn’t?

Not exclusively, you corrected. It was a whole jumbled, tangled mess of things. We need to do what’s best for Stan.

You couldn’t do this to him. To yourself. Couldn’t cycle through these moments of normality that inevitably tainted themselves. Like oil in water, you couldn’t separate one from the other. You had been delusional to think that you could defy that basic logic.

You would do anything for love, wouldn’t you?

Didn’t that include letting it go?

“I can’t do this, Stanley,” you told him. You were floating above yourself, presiding over the conversation in incorporeal form. “I-I can’t move out of the past. And I want to move forward, I do. But it’s impossible, and I can’t have both. I can’t.”

Tears flowed steadily down your face now.

Stan moved to console you but must’ve thought better of it. “What are you saying?”

“I’m going to go to Piedmont. With the twins.”

“What? What about us?”

“There is no us anymore, Stan.”

His throat bobbed uncertainly. “I know that it’s not like before but I…I’ve really enjoyed our time together. We could make this work.”

You shook your head. Sobs racked you, great shuddering, choking cries.

Stan stepped tentatively forward. “I dunno what to say.” His mouth worked as he searched for his next words. “We’ve made so many new memories together. Ain’t that enough?”

Was this really happening? You couldn't believe that it had come to this, all of those years. You didn't have any words for the emotions wholly encompassing you. 

“Look, kid, I —” Stan’s brows twisted up in grief, in regret and confusion, “— I wish you would stay. I think I’m fallin’ in love with you again.”

The pleading tone of his voice proved exactly why you needed to leave. Realistically you could never have him this way, and you would only hurt him because of it. Stan deserved more than a constant reminder of the consequences of his heroic deed.

You turned from him. “I’m sorry, Stan.”

Your name from his mouth sounded like the prayer of a man desperate for salvation. “No. Please. Please don’t go. Don’t leave me.”

Heart heavier than it had ever been before, vision blurred, that’s exactly what you did.

As anticipated, the next day brought an onslaught of tears and goodbyes. You traipsed the halls of the Mystery Shack alone, ghosting your fingers over the chipped paneling and peeling paint. You were married to the old house as much as you were to Stan. Deep down you knew that you would return, but it didn’t make the goodbye any less difficult.

You avoided Stan at every possible turn. Only when you all piled into the car with your luggage did you force yourself to acknowledge him, fatigue creasing his face. You wanted nothing more than to comfort him. But this would be good for him — no more sorrow, no more pain. After the bus departed, Ford would surprise him with the boat and he would start a new life.

The walk from El Diablo to the bus station seemed to stretch on forever. You held Mabel’s hand while Dipper pushed ahead, feigning bravery, though last night you heard him crying softly in his room. So much had transpired over the summer, and now the days of adventure and laughter were over.

“I made these for you,” Mabel said. She handed Stan and Ford a pink sweater each, the former putting it on immediately and glaring at his brother to do the same. “I’m gonna miss my Grunkles.”

Ford smiled wistfully. “We’ll miss you too, kiddo.”

“C’mere, sweetie.” Stan brought Mabel in for a hug. It didn’t elude you that he used the endearment he chose before the memory wipe.

You felt as if your chest might burst from all of your suppressed, cresting emotions. Dipper bid his goodbyes next. The bus rumbled to the station then, kicking up dust, and the four of you fell into a tightened embrace.

You pulled away last. Stan regarded you with large, reproachful eyes as you kissed his cheek. “Goodbye, Stanley. We’ll see each other again.”

“Uh, yeah. Yeah.” He looked jarred by the interaction, a faint blush burning his cheeks.

Ford dipped his chin in your direction, a silent acknowledgment between you. Your lower lip trembled. But, as you turned to Dipper and Mabel, you summoned your most convincing smile and led them to the bus. Stan and Ford ensured that the driver allowed Waddles on the bus, who squealed his delight at entry. The duo, Stan outfitted in his brass knuckles and Ford with his gun, watched over your departure like two handsome, vengeful guardian angels.

Your bus seat creaked as you settled down into it, Dipper and Mabel on either side of you.

“To Piedmont,” you said.

“To Piedmont,” Dipper echoed. His grim smile had you reaching out to hug him again.

Mabel sadly waved Waddles’ hoof out the window. You couldn’t bear to look out it, staring straight ahead until the bus gained traction on the gravel road and the bus station — and your heart, your home — shrank in the distance.

For a long time the only sound was the bus chugging along and the only other rider, a snoring old man. You weren’t sure what the twins were thinking. Perhaps they were recounting their many adventures just as you were, Stan starring in most of yours.

No. No Stan. You needed to be brave.

You tried valiantly to raise morale. “We had so many great memories this summer. Fishing, swimming, being with Wendy and Soos and —”

“Grunkle Stan!”

You nodded somberly, adding, “And Grunkle Stan.”

“No! Look!” Mabel clambered in the seat, stabbing her finger at the window. Both you and Dipper righted in order to peer around her sweatered form. Sure enough, there was Stan, running to keep up with the bus and waving his hands.

“Wait! Stop!” He yelled, panting. “Stop the bus!”

“We have to stop the bus. He wants to tell us something,” Mabel said, eyes wide with urgency.

You eyed Stan, stumbling over rocks and roots, knowing that he wouldn’t last much longer. You signaled for the bus driver to stop; after the Waddles incident, he was only too willing to obey. The bus sputtered to a halt and the three of you piled off, Mabel and Dipper darting out in front to meet Stan’s breathless approach.

“Stan, what are you doing?” You shielded your face, blinking into the sun.

Stan doubled over, hands on his knees. He signaled that he needed a minute. You stood, smiling sheepishly at the bus driver, who looked less than impressed to be waiting. You started, “Stan —”

“I remember!” His face absolutely beamed. “I remember. I remember it all.” Stan grabbed Mabel’s shoulders. “You eat glitter when you think no one is looking. You told me once that you invented invisible ice cream but couldn’t find it when it fell on the floor.”

It was Dipper’s turn next for this onslaught of information, brimming out of Stan like an overflowing sink. “You! At the beginning of the summer you thought Mabel’s pet rock was an alien tryin’ to blend in. You were freakin’ out because it kept movin’.” Stan burst into laughter. “But it was just ME!”

“Grunkle Stan!” Mabel and Dipper leapt to embrace him. He hugged them tighter than you had ever seen before.

He remembered? He remembered?

“Don’t think I forgot about ya.” Stan released the twins, crossing the space between you in only two strides. “I’m sorry, doll, ‘bout everythin’.” His large hands cupped either side of your face, gaze roaming over you with renewed wonder. “Everything is so clear now.”

Your lip wobbled. “You remember?”

“Yes I remember you beautiful, crazy woman!” Stan laughed and suddenly he was wrapping his arms around your middle and lifting you off your feet, spinning you in a circle. “I remember! I remember!”

You put your hands on his shoulders to brace yourself. “Stan! Stan! Are you sure?” You couldn’t let yourself hope again if it wasn’t true, fluttering in your chest like a trapped bird.

He set you down again, grinning like a child. “Like hell I’m sure. When…When Bill went in my mind, I ‘member thinkin’ that I could never lose you. None of you. I suppose I was s’scared of it that I repressed it deep enough to protect the memories. Then when you got on that bus, when I thought I lost you for real, it all came rushing back.”

“Really?” Tears strained your voice.

“Really.” Stan’s features softened. “I understand now why you fought so hard to get these memories back.”

A sound of strangled, delirious joy burst from you and you threw yourself against him, arms encircling around his neck. Stan’s mouth hovered near your ear, lips brushing the outer shell of it. “I love ya, doll. Even-Even when I didn’t remember why, I loved ya.”

“I love you, too,” you sighed into the crook of his neck and shoulder. “I can’t believe this.”

“Well, believe it.” Stan retracted enough to study you, curious and awed all in one. “You can’t get rid o’me that easily.”

“I-I really thought…” you shook your head, unable to get the words out. You just held him tighter.

“I know. I know, doll.”

You didn’t need to speak to understand each other, to know what the other one was thinking. When he held you now, he held you with thirty years of memories, a bind stronger than even the ring on your finger.

Mabel broke the embrace, tugging on Stan’s shirt. “What happens now?”

In the distance, Dipper and Ford were chasing Waddles. Stan observed this, then took a long look at you before turning to his niece. He waved off the bus driver, saying, “You ever been on a boat before, kid?”

A/N 2.0: In my head, they all get to go on their adventures together and reader homeschools Dipper and Mabel and they’re a big, happy family.

There’s little nods to the Swooning Over Stans dating game by @gfdatingsim and By Steps and Inches by @funkingrunkles . Memories is kind of my love letter to both stories that I enjoyed so much. (So if you read this, thank you💕)

[supernovafics]

𝐏𝐄𝐀𝐂𝐄

pairing: exboyfriend!steve harrington x fem!reader

word count: 3.2k words

summary: in which you and steve run into each other at a party. it’s been months since you two last talked— which was during a conversation that had ended on the sourest of notes— but now here you both are at a party that neither of you really even want to be at. just for a moment it feels okay to pretend that everything is fine between you two, but then it gets too hard. and instead, it’s unspokenly decided that perhaps this is the chance for you both to get that closure that neither of you got all those months ago

warnings: steve’s pov, explicit language, cigarette smoking, mentions/slight descriptions of a toxic/bad relationship, brief mentions of cheating (not reader or steve), brief mentions of stancy, lots of angst

author’s note: i really really enjoyed writing this and it made me realize that i would love to do more stuff in steve's pov,,,, also now that this is up that means that the folklore series is finally finally done! thank god! (full "folklore" album series masterlist here!)

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。. .・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。

“our coming-of-age has come and gone. suddenly this summer, it's clear.”

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。. .・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。

He told her that he was going to find the bathroom. 

What Steve didn’t tell her was that it wasn’t because he actually needed to use it, but because he just wanted to use any excuse to get away from her for a bit. 

Jill was really nice, but this first date proved that they had absolutely nothing in common— the dry conversation during dinner and the disagreement on the movie choice when they made it to the theater were prime examples of that disconnect. 

Steve had assumed that after the movie she would want this date to end as much as he did. But then they were exiting the theater and she was saying that they should go to this party, and he said, “Sure, why not?”

Now he wasn’t sure if said the right thing.

She knew a ton of people at the party, and so did Steve, but the difference was that there was no one that he wanted to engage in any sort of conversation with. It had barely been two months since he graduated, but a part of him hated going to parties now.

He wandered around the house— he wasn’t even entirely sure whose house this was— and pretended to search for the bathroom even though he was actually headed nowhere in particular. In his mind, he told himself that he would walk around for five minutes and then go find Jill again.

He walked upstairs, following the quietness and letting the loud sound of music and never-ending conversations fade away. All he wanted was silence and a moment to himself, maybe to think of some excuse to tell Jill about why he was going to head home but she should stay and keep hanging out with her friends if that was what she wanted to do. He was very well aware that the guy he used to be in high school would call him a loser for leaving a party on a Saturday night when it wasn’t even ten o’clock yet. But, Steve didn’t care, and that was what he would call progress. 

He opened the door to the first random room he spotted and immediately saw someone sitting by the open window in the corner. He didn’t even give himself a chance to see if he recognized the person before he started closing the door. He quickly figured that if someone was sitting in a room by themselves during a party, it was probably because they wanted it to be that way; it was what he wanted right then.

“Shit, my bad,” Steve mumbled half-heartedly. 

Your quick and unbothered, “It’s okay,” came out loud enough for him to hear before he could fully close the door and it made him stop midway.

It had been so many months since the last time he saw you, since the last time he even heard your voice, but he was still able to recognize it immediately.

He looked at you again. You were slightly illuminated by the moonlight and streetlights outside, and he was surprised that he didn’t notice it was you from the moment he opened the door. 

Your name fell from his lips in a whisper, but you heard him almost too clearly. 

“Steve,” You breathed out, turning your head and squinting at him in the darkness. He noticed your demeanor change; you sat up in the chair you were sitting in and pulled your legs off of the one that was across from you. It was easy to tell that you were surprised to see him. “Hi.”

“Hey.” Steve wasn’t sure if he should walk over to you, he was feeling the same way you were in that moment, but he did so anyway. 

He sat down in the chair that was now empty across from you. He noticed the cigarette in your hand and watched you take a quick drag of it. 

“Um, can I bum one?” He asked. He had quit smoking months and months ago, but he was perfectly okay with bringing the old habit back for a night if it meant getting to talk to you for a little bit longer; although, maybe that was something that he shouldn’t have wanted to do.

“Mhm,” You nodded at him and pulled your pack of cigarettes out of your jacket pocket.

Steve grabbed one from the pack and then took the lighter from your outstretched hand as well. “Thanks.” 

Right then, everything somehow seemed easy, normal even; the silence that filled the room didn’t feel unbearably awkward or weird. Just for that moment, it felt okay to pretend that everything was completely fine; like there wasn’t such a messy past between you two.

It was easier to do that than to talk, or even think, about the last conversation you two ever had with each other, which happened days before you left to spend Spring Break with your Aunt in Texas. It was a conversation that could more so be described as an argument— the worst one you two had ever had— and it led to the most tense and abrupt ending to your relationship.

You left early for Texas the next day and never came back. Steve had to find out from one of your friends that you decided to stay and finish out the last few months of your Senior year there.

Maybe it actually wasn’t so easy to not think about the past and pretend that everything was normal. 

“I, uh, I didn't know you were back in Hawkins,” Steve said, taking a quick look at you and then going back to staring out the window. 

“Yeah, I just got in this morning. My mom wanted me to come back for the Fourth of July fair thing this week,” You quickly explained and then took another, longer drag of your cigarette before continuing. “I’m also, um, not leaving again… My mom knows someone that’s opening a bookstore at the new mall, so I’ll be helping out there for the time being. She really wanted me to come back here and I think she knew that books would be the only way.”

I also really wanted you to come back. Steve wanted to say that, but he didn’t; it would’ve only shifted the conversation in a direction that wasn’t at all lighthearted.

“I also work at the mall,” He told you instead. “The ice cream parlor; Scoops Ahoy.” Right as the words left his mouth, he immediately wanted to take them back. Just for a second, he forgot about how completely embarrassing his current job was and once he remembered, he wished that he never brought it up. “Actually, please forget that I just said that.”

“Why?”

He sighed. “Because I have to wear a sailor’s outfit as my uniform, and I don’t want you to ever see me wear that.”

You let out a laugh, and Steve forgot how much he missed hearing that sound; he loved it.

“Okay, when’s your next shift? I wanna make sure to see you in that outfit as soon as possible.”

Steve shook his head and instead of answering your question, he changed the subject. “Anyway, I’m surprised you decided to come to a party on your first night back here.”

“I was dragged to this by Ally, and then was promptly ditched by her when this guy started flirting with her,” You told him, leaning back in your chair and crossing one leg over the other. “What are you doing here?”

“I'm actually on a date right now,” Steve answered. For some reason, he decided not to mention that the date had been bad.

You nodded at him after a moment of letting his words linger in the air of the bedroom. “Cool. That’s nice.”

Hearing you say those words in this moment, immediately reminded Steve of the first time you two had ever talked, because those were the same words that you had said to him at a completely different party. And in this moment, they even sounded the exact same as they had back then too.

That night all those months ago on New Year’s Eve, Steve sat down next to you on the couch in Kyle Thompson’s living room and said, “This is one of my favorite movies;” Risky Business was silently playing on the TV in front of the two of you. You simply looked at him for a second before saying, “Cool. That’s nice,” and things probably should’ve ended there. There was something about your entire vibe right then that made him think that you didn’t want to talk to anyone, but that only made him want to talk to you more.

And somehow him changing his approach and not trying so hard to be charming— and instead simply being honest and nice and just himself— worked. You and him ended up talking the rest of the night; both of you had just gone through break ups so the conversation almost immediately went to that. Your breakup— which involved you catching your boyfriend cheating on you in the library at school— happened only a few weeks earlier and it was the reasoning behind your melancholy at the party. You hadn’t been in the mood to talk to anyone, let alone a guy. 

But, Steve noticed how your sadness and cold demeanor managed to fall away as you two kept talking; being vulnerable in ways that usually never happened between two strangers. But, the fact that you two could relate on something that had happened so recently in your lives made you not feel entirely like strangers. 

When the clock struck twelve, signaling the start of a brand new year, you softly kissed his cheek and he did the same to yours. He had desperately wanted to slot his lips against yours, but in that moment that kiss on the cheek felt like enough. 

That night was the first time that he truly felt happy since he and Nancy broke up barely two months earlier.

Now you were cold again and that probably meant that this conversation by the window should be over. But, just like the last time, Steve still wanted to talk to you. He wanted to spend the entire rest of his night with you instead of Jill, and he knew exactly how much of an asshole that made him. 

“How was Texas? The new school and everything,” Steve asked, he was both curious to hear about it— there were so many moments over the past few months where he would wonder how you were doing there— and he also just wanted to keep talking to you right then. 

“It was really nice, and it felt good to have a fresh start for a bit,” You started. “My Aunt works at the high school in town, so that made it a lot easier for me to enroll and finish out my last months there. And the school was pretty much the same as it is here. Much to my surprise, not everyone was wearing cowboy hats and boots everyday to class.” The joking tone in your voice was very evident and it made Steve smile. You looked at him just for a second before focusing your eyes out the window again. “How were, um, things here?”

For some reason, that was actually a hard question for Steve to sum up in one easy answer. Mainly because the completely honest answer was a long and complicated one. 

During the entirety of his Spring Break, which he spent mostly at home and going to one stupid party, Steve thought about how he could fix things between you two once you came back— he didn’t believe that the way things ended that night, that argument, truly marked the end of everything forever for you two. 

And then those first few days after Spring Break when you didn’t come back, but he still thought that maybe, hopefully, you would, were absolute hell— he was confused and upset, equally at himself and at you. Once he finally found out that you definitely weren’t coming back, he convinced himself that maybe you and him were something that wasn’t supposed to be fixed. 

And forcing himself to accept that actually made things feel a little bit better for him. 

“Good. Pretty boring. But, overall, good,” Steve finally said, deciding to keep his answer short because it just felt easier to do so. 

You took a final drag of your cigarette and then flicked the butt out the window before looking at him. “We’re both happier now, right?”

Steve considered your question for a moment.

He definitely knew that he was a better person now than how he was before, he was definitely healed from all of that past shit— what happened between him and Nancy and what happened between him and you. But, he wasn’t exactly sure if he was happy that you weren’t in his life anymore. 

Before anything had even happened yet between you two all those months ago, you both had kept telling each other that you were better off as friends and that you both shouldn’t rush into another relationship so soon. But, neither of you listened to one another’s excuses, even though perhaps you both should’ve.

He was kissing you only three weeks after the new year’s party— standing outside the front door of your house, the prettiest smile on your face when he pulled away— and days later, you were calling him your boyfriend and he was the one smiling so damn happily.

Steve finished off the rest of his cigarette and then met your gaze. “I think things are better now, but I don’t know if that really makes me happier.”

“I think I missed you a lot while I was gone. Even though I kept telling myself that I shouldn’t,” You told him and he was a little surprised by your honesty right then. “Sometimes I would wish that I didn’t run away from you. At least, not like how I did. I’m sorry.”

Steve hated that you were saying sorry to him in that moment because he felt like he was the one that had more stuff to be sorry for. Or, at least, he was equally at fault with how quickly everything fell apart between you two. 

“I'm really sorry too,” He said softly. 

That relationship that you two had, as brief as it was, was something that probably should’ve never happened in the first place. Neither of you were remotely ready to be in something serious again. But, Steve thought that this time and this relationship would be different— better than the past ones— and so did you. 

He was so convinced that he didn’t need to worry or even think about really processing everything that happened with Nancy, the heartbreak he felt from that, because he was going into something new that felt as if it was simply meant to be. 

However, that was almost immediately proven wrong. At times, the relationship was worse than your previous ones. He’d get jealous over the littlest of things, and you couldn’t find it in you to fully trust him about almost anything.

Breaking up was inevitable and it definitely was for the best, you both were inadvertently hurting each other. But, what made it all so much harder was that the feelings you had for each other were real; he loved you and you loved him, so much, so deeply— you both just had shitty ways of showing it. 

You stood up from your chair then, breaking your gaze from Steve’s. “I’m gonna go.”

“Wait,” He stood up too and followed you to the shut door. 

You turned to look at him again. You didn’t give him a chance to say anything before you started speaking. “And what I said to you that night during our argument, I didn't mean it.”

Steve couldn’t help but look away from you then because being reminded of something that he had tried his hardest to forget about made him inwardly wince.

Before tonight, your last words to him had been, “I hate you. I can't do this anymore.” Those eight words had hit him so fucking hard, they felt like the worse punch to the gut. But maybe the comment was warranted because he had just accused you of flirting with some guy at a party the two of you had gone to earlier that night.

“I know. I didn’t mean what I said that night either,” Steve responded. You were about to turn around again, but then he asked, “Can you stay? Can we talk some more?” 

He wanted to ask you more about Texas. He wanted to hear about even the most mundane things you did there. He wanted to playfully make fun of the fact that he could hear that you now had the tiniest hint of an accent. 

Steve wanted to do a lot of things right then, but he especially wanted to ask you when you were starting your job at the bookstore because maybe that would mean he’d get to see you again after this moment. And he didn’t even care that if he saw you at the mall, it would probably mean that you’d see him in that dumb fucking sailor’s outfit. 

For a second, you just looked at him, before saying, “You’re on a date right now.”

He reluctantly nodded at your words. “Yeah.”

“She’s probably looking for you.”

“Maybe.”

“You should go find her.”

“I should,” He nodded again and then shook his head as he softly said his next words. “But, I don’t want to.”

You were so close to each other right then, and it seemed as if you both realized that at the same time. Sitting in the chairs had been different, you were still somewhat close to one another but also far enough that the thought of crossing any lines wasn’t on either of your minds. 

Now there was barely a foot of space between you two and it almost felt like second nature to touch one another.

Steve took a tentative step closer to you, gauging your reaction for a moment, and you seemed okay. And then it was almost like a ping pong match started, both of you going back and forth with making some sort of move. You closing the rest of the distance between you two, Steve’s hands gently finding your hips, and then yours circling around the nape of his neck with your fingers running through the grown out hair there. Somehow that small touch felt amazing to him, he missed the feeling of your hands in his hair. 

At this point, he wouldn’t have been afraid to admit that he missed everything about you.  

And maybe it was dumb of him to think, but he also found himself even missing the relationship. The communication between you two had been bad at times, horrible even, but everything else was always so good.  

He still loved you, he was realizing that now, and now he wondered if that would ever change. A part of him didn’t feel entirely scared to say that to you either, even if you no longer felt the same.

Steve tilted his head down a bit, letting your noses brush and ghosting his lips over yours. 

Your mouth was just a breath away from his and he could’ve sworn that you were gonna do it and press your lips against him. But then you were pulling away and slipping out the door. Your voice was soft as you said your last words to him.

“See you around, Steve.”

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。. .・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。

“no, i could never give you peace.”

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。. .・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。

let me know ur thoughts<333

[brabblesblog]

Ch 4: I sought whom my soul loveth: I sought him, but I found him not.

Astarion has ascended, and she has stayed with him. Life in the Crimson Palace isn’t as idyllic as it seems. Is there a chance for their relationship to go back to how it was? Or is it too late for the Ascendant and his consort?

This series is about Ban, my Tav, and the Vampire Ascendant. Will be angst and smut, with sprinkles of fluff.

This fic is a softer take on Ascendant!Astarion and of the changes he undergoes after the rite. Can Ban handle the change, and if a chance came, would she choose to run? And can the Ascendant win her back in time? Inspired by the concept of vampire wives and that IGN interview with Larian that discussed the ascension.

Professionally edited by @editing-by-night

Astarion has finally found where his consort has gone to, and attempts to bring her back.

Read on AO3.

Masterlist.

“For what it’s worth, you did the right thing.”

Gale’s voice startled Ban as she sat at the desk of the room he’d graciously loaned her, furiously trying to wipe her tears. He’d walked in at an inconvenient moment, a common occurrence for him. Gale took a seat nearby, reaching out to place a hand over hers. He found her hand a bit damp, but he didn't mind.

It had been a tenday since she’d fled the Ascendant’s clutches, ten days since she had last seen his face. She’d thought it would be easy, forgetting her captor. But he had also been her beloved, and in his absence she found it easier and easier to excuse his misdeeds and only miss the good.

She hated herself for that.

“I miss him,” she said, voice rough from weeping. “I shouldn’t. I should be enjoying my time here, planning for my future - anything.”

Anything, other than thinking of him, of longing for someone who no longer existed.

“I’m sorry, Gale. I’ve been a terrible guest.” She stood, about to start pacing the now well-trodden path she frequently followed in this room.

Gale didn’t offer any false platitudes. Instead, he reached out to squeeze her hand. “It’s not your fault. It never was. In the end, ascending was his decision to make, quite like how it’s also his decision to be whatever he is right now.”

If she had put in more work, done better in talking him down, perhaps things would've been different. He had been so afraid and lost; he’d needed her guidance and she had failed. But Ban also knew she wouldn’t have had the heart to deprive him of the ritual’s gifts. Her feelings about it hadn’t been worth him giving up everything he stood to gain. And so, with only a brief effort to dissuade him, she’d helped him when he’d needed it.

That train of thought brought forth a fresh wave of tears. Instinctively she reached out for Gale, wrapping her arms around him and burying her face in his chest, where the orb once was. For a moment, she imagined being back in Astarion’s arms. Her Astarion, with his cold hands and a heart that beat a little too slow.

Gale’s warmth was a far cry from that, but the comfort he provided was still very welcome and much needed. He wrapped his arms around her, his voice quiet and full of an emotion she couldn’t quite pinpoint.

“I’m sorry, Ban. Had I known this would be how you and Astarion would end up… I don’t know.”

Maybe I’d have tried harder to be the one for you, he thought. It wasn’t the right time to say it. It might never be. But he’d be there in any capacity she needed him to be, regardless.

“You’d what?” she said. “There was nothing to be done. No one can see the future - even you, Gale. It is what it is. I just have to move on.”

At first, there had been some worry about Astarion showing up and dragging her back. A quick visit to Elminster and a favor had addressed that issue. Gale now had wards placed around his tower and around Ban herself, preventing the Ascendant from making contact without permission.

She lifted her head, meeting his gaze. In the warm firelight he looked rather handsome, and his brown eyes widened as they both realized just how close their bodies were.

They’d spent most of these past ten days together. Gale had been keeping her company and showing her around Waterdeep. Ten days that had in all honesty been wonderful, that were very reminiscent of the early days of their adventure, days when Ban had spent more time with Gale while her budding romance with Astarion was in its infancy. Gale had told her then that he felt something for her, but she had chosen the vampire instead.

For a moment, in the height of her misery and loneliness, she wondered how Gale’s lips would taste. She swallowed down her despair and threw caution to the wind, leaning in.

The kiss was soft, hesitant… and different. She felt Gale’s breathing pick up, his beard tickling her as he deepened the kiss. He felt like warmth and kindness and safety, and she tightened her hold around him in welcome.

Gale broke the kiss, his pupils dilated and his chest heaving.

“I- I don’t think this would be a wise move,” he began, “but I don’t mind that as much as I would like to.”

He reached for her again, but she shied away.

“You’re right. It wouldn’t be fair to you. I don’t think I can ever give you what you really want, Gale. Even back then.” Since meeting Astarion, she had never felt anything for another.

Gale’s face darkened a little. “I understand. But Halsin-"

Ban shook her head. “Halsin understood and accepted that I could only give so much. Could you?”

The wizard bit his lip. On the one hand, he wanted to say yes, and damn the consequences. On the other…

“You know me too well,” he said, smiling sadly. “However, if your heart does find itself having room in the future, please do think of me.”

Ban laughed bitterly. An image of Astarion swam in her mind, that shocked and stunned expression he’d made when she’d told him she had chosen him over Gale. The utter disbelief on his face, melting into surprise and pleasure when he’d realized she’d meant what she’d said. She shoved the vision away. Even now, after everything that had happened since the rite, she’d chosen that damned vampire again.

“You already have a place in my heart, Gale,” she said carefully. “Just not the piece you want. In the future, that may change; but right now I cannot give you that which is still tangled in another’s.”

He nodded, resigned. “For now, that is satisfactory.” He looked away, taking in the room he was letting her stay in, the rows of books lending it a cozy, homely atmosphere. “I shall turn in for the evening, then. You’re always welcome to knock on my door if you need to.” He gathered some courage, enough to press another quick, chaste kiss on her lips, and left her in silence.

The nights were never easy, and when she finally laid down, she found the bed too empty and sleep difficult to achieve.

The next morning, Ban was woken up by a commotion, seemingly coming from right outside her window. She could hear a loud bang every few minutes - a sound very reminiscent of the one the statue of Shar had emitted whenever someone stepped too close and triggered the wards around it. She opened her eyes to see dawn had barely broken, sunlight streaming through the windows. It took a moment for her thoughts to sink in.

Her eyes widened at the realization. The wards.

“Ban!” the Ascendant called out the moment he saw her peek out through the open window.

He stood outside his carriage, an ornate monstrosity of black and gold. With him were a number of summons, both werewolves and skeletons, which he had apparently been attempting to send through the wards to no avail. After another failed attempt, he crossed his arms and glared up at her.

“Hello, you ingrate. Are you truly going to stay cooped up in there forever, Ban? I can wait just as long!” He strode forward, pausing to take a cursory, disdainful look at the tower. “And here I was thinking you hated being stuck in one place. At least the palace has better ambience than this dump.”

Ban sighed. She had to admit he looked glorious in the morning sun; the rays caressed his silver curls, making them appear to sparkle in the light. His eyes were sharp and intense, equal parts anger and another emotion she couldn’t quite place. He was dressed in his red and black doublet, the one he knew to be her favorite. She decided she liked him like this: at her mercy, for once.

“I’m surprised you’re here, Astarion. I had thought you would just find some other bride,” she bit out, relishing the way his eyes widened in surprise at her choice of words. He bared his fangs, realizing that she now knew the truth.

“No one else would do,” he retorted, recovering his composure and slipping back into his usual confident demeanor. “You of all people ought to know that. Now. Let me in.”

She shook her head. “Sorry, you’ll have to figure that out for yourself.”

The Ascendant growled, then barked an order for his minions to step back. If they couldn’t, perhaps he could. He approached the invisible barrier, hands reaching out to it slowly.

One loud bang later and he was on his ass, hair and clothes disheveled, staring in shock at the tower. He made another attempt as a bat, only to be sent flying. An attempt as a cloud of mist ended similarly.

He changed back, angrily trying to comb his hair and smooth his clothes back into place.

“I see Gale’s skills have improved somewhat,” he grumbled.

“A little gift from Elminster, actually,” Gale answered, greeting the Ascendant from the doors of the tower. They stared at each other, not six paces apart, separated by the invisible barrier.

Astarion seethed. “Happy now, Gale? Happy you’ve stolen her, when you never could before?”

Gale shook his head. “I have done no such thing. You pushed her away yourself. You needn’t any help from me in that regard.”

For a moment, Astarion was feral. He bared his fangs and he tensed as if to pounce at the wizard, stopping a hairsbreadth away when he remembered the barrier. As he collected himself, he saw Ban approach; she stopped beside Gale, watching him.

“What do you want, my lord?” Her voice was dry, face affecting a bored expression.

“You. Back home with me.” His answer was instantaneous. Pacing back and forth, much like a predator toying with its cornered prey, he smiled. “I’m not leaving, pet, until you come back with me. And I have all the time in the world.”

Ban considered this, recognizing it wasn’t an empty threat - he could very well set up camp at the gate of this tower, trapping them all inside. This was a stalemate she could not allow to drag on, for Gale’s sake. She sighed and whispered to Gale, who nodded.

“Fine. I will at least allow you into the tower. We can talk. But." She smiled back at him, and it was a cold thing. "I have the same spell around me as this tower does. You cannot touch me. You are also not allowed to harm anyone else.”

She drew herself up, trying to appear as confident as she wished she felt. “Is that agreeable to you?”

Astarion clenched his fist. He wanted to fight back but knew it was a lost cause. “Agreed. Now let me in,” he hissed.

Gale waved his hand, and there was a soft hum as the barrier disappeared. “Only you, Astarion. No ghouls,” he added.

Glowering darkly, the Ascendant acquiesced, following Ban and Gale into the tower.

Ban sat opposite Astarion, hands fidgeting in her lap. Gale had left them to talk in her room; now that she was alone with him again she felt oddly glad of it.

Astarion let out a small sigh, looking as though this was just one more errand he had to do. He’d accepted the offer of tea from Gale; his crimson eyes peered indifferently at her over the rim of his cup as he sipped.

“What will get you to come back?” He almost sounded bored.

“Definitely not that tone,” she snapped, irritated despite herself. Did he expect her to simply fold?

He crossed his legs, watching her a little more intently now. His face betrayed none of his inner turmoil.

“What can I give you, then, to make you want to be with me again?” That sounded better, he hoped.

“Your old self.”

He seethed, lips curling into a smile that was all teeth. “What old self, Ban? I’m still me. I’m still the Astarion you love.”

She laughed at that. “You’re right. I studied everything I could get my hands on, for a while. I even asked Gale to look into it. I tried to understand why you’re so different. I thought the rite destroyed your soul.” She shook her head. “But no. You’re you, just worse.”

Astarion bristled. Worse? When he’d become the most powerful vampire to ever exist? “I was weak! I was worth nothing. Why would you want that over this?” He gestured to himself, as if to remind her of what exactly she stood to lose. “I can give you the world - have been giving you everything!”

“Give it to someone else. I need the Astarion I fell in love with. Not you. Not the riches or the power or whatever other trinkets you offer.”

He felt his anger rise, and felt the urge to shout, maybe even lunge at her. But he quelled the impulse long enough to think: Would his anger help anything? Would screaming and threatening her work, when he couldn’t even lay a hand on her? He weighed his options and decided to remain civil until a better solution presented itself.

“I was pathetic,” he intoned. “Worth nothing. You can’t possibly want that. I’m better now. Don’t you want that for me? For you?” He made an attempt to widen his eyes, to appear more vulnerable.

She was not convinced. “I let it happen for you,” Ban said, averting her eyes as she revealed her shame. “Personally? I would have preferred you to stay the way you were; it would have meant that you would still love me the way you used to, would let me love you the way you used to. But that’s a selfish thought, and it’s far too late for regrets.”

She locked eyes with him. “You were everything I wanted, Astarion. Now none of that man remains.”

She wouldn’t admit to him that at times, that man still shone through, that she still saw glimpses of him within the Ascendant. To admit that would give him an advantage, a carrot to dangle in front of her. He’d tell her to wait, to be patient, to allow him time to let his walls down. Would he even mean it? She doubted it, but she was almost sure she’d acquiesce if he pleaded. The ability to resist his vulnerability was never a skill she had possessed.

He stared at her for a long, tense moment. “The man of your dreams, the hope of him, is your own worst enemy. That… spawn… is gone. I am he, and he is me. Except I’m more.” He set his teacup down on the side table and leaned forward, slowly encroaching on Ban’s space.

“Don’t you dare speak ill of who you were,” Ban snapped, her temper getting the better of her. “I have let that happen again and again. I’ve had enough.” She glared at the Ascendant, at the man her treacherous heart still loved. “You may be more now, but you are also so much less - in all the ways I need. You were more than enough before, and this version of you could never even come close to the man you were.”

Astarion seethed anew. He instinctively lifted a hand to grab hers, to tell her that he was all that he’d ever wanted to be and more. Better. Why couldn’t she understand that? Why couldn’t she simply accept all he has to give, accept that he was doing all this for both of them? What was a little less freedom in exchange for everything else? He wasn’t his master, he wasn’t out to hurt her.

But as his hand came close to her skin the wards responded, and he was sent flying back with a loud bang, the chair he'd been sitting on broken into pieces behind him.

He groaned a little as he got up from the floor, his fury renewed at the indignity, but he quickly forced himself to calm. His body hurt and he tried not to wince; powerful as he was, he wasn’t invulnerable. Astarion waited a moment for his breathing to settle. When he spoke again, his voice was more level and seemingly more resigned.

“If you cannot accept who I am now, so be it.” He kept the facade up, refusing to let himself show any sign of sorrow, especially when he felt it as keenly as a dagger in the heart.

“I can find another you in a lifetime; probably in less time than that.” This was a lie, but he forced it out, needing to keep a shred of dignity.

“Then you’ll end our bond? You’ll end this miserable connection we have?” Ban said this with a mixture of relief, hope, and to her shock, dismay.

His eyes widened. “How did you- oh. Gale’s told you, hasn’t he? Is he to be my replacement? He’s always wanted you, even back then.”

He smirked. “He won’t be half the man I am, pet - you know that. Only I can fuck you the way you want to be fucked. Only I can make your body feel the things you so want to feel. Only me,” he drawled, taking a step towards her.

She didn’t take the bait, although the way his voice lowered made a pleasant shiver run down her spine.

“Just say it, Astarion. Will you break our bond, or will you not?”

The bond he’d created when he’d turned her into his vampiric spouse: the mental connection, the ability to feel when the other was in great pain. Gale had explained it all to her. Ending the bond required a simple ritual - but it required both hers and Astarion's consent.

He shook his head. “No. I won’t. I can’t even touch you, my treasure. What does it matter whether the bond exists or not?”

His voice lowered in pitch, the aggression slipping away. He tried to keep his anguish hidden when he spoke again but didn't quite succeed.

“Besides. If I break the bond, I’m not certain I can keep protecting you from the sun, or keep lending you my other gifts.”

This surprised Ban and she nodded, accepting his reasoning. “I suppose you’re right. Thank you, I guess. I expected you to take them back the moment you realized I’d left.”

Astarion shook his head. “Wouldn’t do to have my precious treasure burn in the sun,” he said sadly, and there it was again, that softness that made her want to rush back to his side.

He gave her some space, taking several steps back, and chose to be honest for once. Astarion figured it might win him back some grace and might make her think there was a chance for him to be what she wanted him to be.

“If none of my other words are worth anything to you, then at least remember this: I respect that you chose to leave.”

She looked up in shock.

“You were always worth more than just this,” he murmured. “I always felt that you were… degrading yourself, in a way, being my consort.” He looked away, as he always had in moments of vulnerability. “I did try, Ban. I tried with you, in the only way I know how.”

Try as he might to tell himself that he was doing this to manipulate her, the truth was far more complicated.

She shook her head, refusing to accept. “You never actually tried, Astarion. If you did, you’d be him again.”

He’s still in there. Just let me in. Just let your walls down. Let me love you.

She stared at him, eyes cold in spite of the thoughts that plagued her mind.

He weighed his words. This could be the final time they saw each other, if he played his cards wrong. Part of him refused that idea, rebelled against it, wanted to gnash his teeth and bite at her and force her back, dragging her if that was what it took. But the other half, the smarter half, told him to allow her this and bide his time. He’d always been good at manipulating her heart, right from the start. He could do it again.

What he’d never say, especially to himself, were the real reasons he was letting her have this. He saw that she wanted this, that she needed this, and all he’d ever wanted was her happiness. That her Astarion still existed, and he was letting her go, because he didn’t deserve her. He never had, but it had never been truer than now, when he had broken her.

“But I would have ruined your love, used your trust until you were nothing.” A small smirk crossed his features, but it came across as more melancholic than anything. “Better that be someone else’s fate than yours, darling.” He used her old nickname again, the smirk shifting into a wistful smile.

Ban softened a little at these words, glad he was finally showing some small sign of progress. She found that it hurt her too, to lose him, but she didn’t fear him knowing that.

“You’ve already ruined my love, Astarion. If you think you’ve spared me that fate, it’s too late.”

A small glimpse of the old Astarion was visible as the mask slipped. Ban saw him swallow and take a shaky breath, she could almost feel the knife twist in his heart until he stiffened up and recovered.

“Well. Better that it end now at least, than have it last for however much longer. I’ve divested myself of my former self. Maybe you’re the final attachment I need to let go of.” He dusted off his suit to give his hands something to do before meeting her gaze again. The longing in her eyes sent a sharp bolt of pain through his chest; for a moment - just a moment - he considered groveling on the floor for her love.

But that was beneath the Ascendant, and he always won out in the end. He straightened up.

“This is farewell, then, Ban,” he said, “I hope this is what you want.”

He walked away, then turned his head back towards her, reminding Ban of the first night he’d bitten her. When he had thanked her and gone to hunt.

“I’ll still always love you,” he whispered, and for those few seconds it was him.

Without another word, he was gone.

[one-piece-aus]

Whumptober Day 17

Kid x Reader

Ahoy! Remember that angsty Kid story I wrote last year for Whumptober? I saw you guys wanted a sequel so I decided to write the prequel to that from Kid's POV! (I do have the idea of making this a series but I need more motivation) Anyway, if you can read the other part to this HERE

Enjoy the story! ^-^

"Kid, you've been acting different lately," Killer said as he stood beside his friend.

"You don't have to remind me," Kid growled, shifting his stance while keeping his arms folded as he leaned against the school's gate. His eyes were fixated on a group of friends walking by... no, he's only looking at one person, you.

"It's the girl, isn't it?" Killer stated, following Kid's gaze.

Kid grumbled in response and averted his eyes from the group to glare at the ground. Even with you out of sight, you weren't out of his mind. You haunted his mind and wouldn't leave, ironic because you didn't exist to him before Ms. Makino paired the two of you for an English project this year.

"When are you gonna tell her?" Killer asks turning back to the redhead.

"I don't plan to."

"Why not? She gets along with us just fine," Killer pointed out, which is seen as a good sign in the Kid Gang since most of the girls who try to run after them have a distaste for most of their members.

"She's probably already dating that goth freak."

"Who is?"

Kid and Killer turn to see Law approaching them.

"Fuck off Trafalgar!"

"I came to ask a favour, I thought I was going look for a way to bargain but it looks like you need information." Law smirks.

Killer glances at Kid who is already growling at Law, "Kid, if you don't want to ask her directly to find out, this is the next best thing."

"I know," Kid growls, loathing at the thought of asking Law for something. "Fine! Do you know if [Y/n] is with that freak Hawkins?"

Law shook his head. "I've seen Basil hang around [Y/n] but he's not dating anyone. He says romance is nothing but delusions and a distraction in high school, maybe you should heed his words Eustass."

"I don't ask for your opinion Trafalgar!" Kid flipped him off.

"Well you did ask for information, and now you gotta pay up."

"Like hell I will after-"

"Do you know if [Y/n] is with anyone?" Killer asked for Kid, figuring if they get more info Kid will help Law without a fuss.

"I don't, but if anyone in this school would know, it's probably Basil," Law shrugs. "He knows her the most, probably the only one who knows her. Not even Strawhat or his friends know about her, and that's hard to find these days."

"I know her."

"Sure you do Eustass, but I suggest talking to Basil."

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

"You wish to know if [Y/n] is single?" Hawkins questioned, closing his locker door and turning to Kid.

"That's what I just asked."

"May I inquire why?"

"I just want to know," Kid told him, folding his arms.

"To answer your question, no, she is not with anyone at the moment," Hawkins stated. "However, if you're wanting to pursue her, I would advise against that."

"Let hell you'll stop me!" Kid shouted, side-punching the locker beside him.

"I'm not saying I will," Hawkins said. "But I think you should reconsider."

"What do you mean?" Kid asked narrowing his eyes at the blond.

"Knowing [Y/n]'s past, it's clear that you're not suited for her."

"And what? You are!?"

"No, our relationship is as she once stated 'loners who stick together', but you, on the other hand, are a bit more complicated now that you've developed feelings for her."

"That's none of your business!"

"Perhaps not, but it is [Y/n]'s business and as someone who has known [Y/n] for quite some time now, I can't help but be concerned about her well-being," Hawkins states while maintaining eye contact with Kid. When the redhead doesn't respond, Hawkins walks past him to go to his club when he stops. "There's more to [Y/n] that you haven't seen. If you're serious about this, I suggest you find out before you go any further."

Kid stood there, hearing Hawkins' footsteps echo further down the hall.

Did he really not know you? Sure, Kid might not know your childhood or the other schools you went to, but he didn't think that'd be a big deal. He hasn't been to your house yet either but most families wouldn't want a member of a gang in their house... No, that's not an excuse. If he's going to get to know this side he hasn't seen, he has to set that aside.

Kid decided that the next time he sees you he'll take you around town to see if he could take a step closer to knowing you. At least, that's what he wanted to do, but you were making it hard to do.

You no longer stayed in your shared English class, always asking to study somewhere else. He never saw you in the halls, not even when Hawkins walked by. You were nowhere to be found at lunch, and if you were in a club at the end of the day, Kid didn't see you in there because he checked every club meeting to find you.

Two weeks passed since this started, and Kid normally didn't like assuming these kinds of things, at least not when it comes to his friends, yet his mind couldn't stop whispering this thought to him.

You were avoiding him.

Tag: @gnarlycrys @roseoftrafalgar @bookandyarndragon

[brookriver-mudlark]

Shot-by-shot commentary of one scene from Transformers: The Last Knight

A few months ago, I remembered this movie was a thing, and looked up a clip to see if I'd be able to sit though it just for Optimus.

The short answer is no.

The long answer is that this single scene has driven me insane.

Bear in mind, i have very little context for this scene, so i will primarily be riffing on it from a cinematography angle. Buckle up!

Let's start with this...beautiful? aerial shot of gray metal guys running on a gray metal slope, their considerable scale reduced to that of ants on a plate by the speedy camera.

These two climb out of the structure. Their spatial relation to the rest of the scene is never established.

Aaand now the metal guys are running down from the other side of the screen. Did the camera keep spinning between shots?? Anyways, they start pummeling Optimus.

Cut to Optimus being pummeled from the front. With a bit of planning, this could have been continuous with the previous shot, but...oh boy. Oh boy. Let's not start with that just yet.

Don't forget, girl is here! (This is the last time she shows up in this scene.)

Oh right, Cade was in the corner of the last shot. He gets up, starts running in the opposite screen direction of where Optimus was in relation to him earlier,

...and immediately slips and falls in the next shot. You get to enjoy the moment in lovely slow-motion.

Optimus then explains what is currently happening in the scene for the benefit of anyone staring slack-jawed at the screen by this point.

Then the knights go back to beating Optimus up. One guy takes an axe to his back edged side down, and it doesn't do jack except knock him flat.

Also, Cade is here.

This guy finally comes to deal the killing blow.

What follows is a series of barely connected slo-mo jump cuts of the device on Cade's arm unfolding,

followed by a fast series of time-breaking cuts to show a single sword strike,

oh my god they keep cutting

wait WHO IS THIS, WHERE WAS HE ...oh my god, i scrubbed backwards, he's supposed to have been near Cade the whole time, what

Then there's a dramatic spinning shot, which would have been a cool moment to show the walking props knights holding their swords up in abrupt reverence, but instead we mostly just watch Cade look around in confusion while Optimus grovels.

We interrupt the spinning to inform you that this scene was filmed during golden hour.

Back to spinning. I guess you don't have to worry about the 180 degree rule if your scene spans the full 360, huh?

Cade looks over at Optimus, and Optimus looks back. ...Followed IMMEDIATELY by a fast pan of planes flying behind some knights; my eyes

Optimus keeps talking. His speech is about as continuous as the shots.

We finally get a quiet moment to hold on that last shot for a while, and listen to Cade give a pep talk to a war general who's seen countless human lifetimes' worth of pain and loss.

And that's all that Optimus needed to pick himself up.

We get a triumphant shot of Optimus straightening up, rallying his brothers in arms to rise up against Quintessa...

And for one moment, perhaps your brain can feel a glimmer of joy within the soup of semi-consciousness it's now sinking into.

...

If I watch the whole movie, I will die.

That's all, folks!

[mismaeve]

Her Tortured Soul, Part Three

↳ Her Tortured Soul Part Three, Thranduil x Reader, 18+ Warnings: angst, followed by smut. Minors DNI Word Count: 3.2k A/N: And here is the third and final part of this short series. I am immensely proud of this. I will note that those of you who I have tagged that do not wish to read the smut, there is going to be a banner separating the story from where the spicy bits start, so keep an eye out for it. You can't miss it though. That said, feedback is always strongly encouraged, greatly appreciated and sorely needed. Enjoy!

It felt like a lifetime had passed since you last had feasted your eyes on the grandeur that was the Greenwood palace. Much like your heart felt on the inside, with rays of undisturbed golden sunlight spreading its wings to embrace your beating soul, so did its warmth descend upon your beloved’s kingdom, filling the halls and pathways with radiating light and vibrating life.

The previously felt gloom that had always seeped through your skin, penetrating your flesh, and finding home deep within your bones, had given way to hope as you walked among the waking at last, no longer a fleeting ghost of the elusive dream realm.

The sweet tingling sensation in your stomach was near agonising, fluttering butterflies swarming and tickling your insides ever tirelessly as you, accompanied by his guards, were escorted to the throne room high above the countless halls and chambers, to be presented before the King of the Woodland realm.

One by one, the guards posted on both sides of the carved bridge turned to face you in one swift motion with a saluting stomp of their feet on the paved ground as was customary when welcoming a guest of great importance and rank such as the Lady of Imladris.

Pale eyes interlocked with yours almost instantly the moment you were brought before him, the guards, each taking a bow before slowly backing away and leaving you to their king.

“My Lady, I had not thought to see you here in Greenwood,” courteous words filled with icy wonder flowed down from the throne he was occupying.

You wondered how well he would play his part of keeping up this ruse if he knew that you hadn’t come as the Lady of Rivendell, wife of Lord Elrond.

How you ached to run up the stony steps leading to his throne and tell him the news, to throw your arms around his neck and kiss him with all the love you bore for him, unconstrained by guilt and remorse, not held back by your vows that had been said in vain regardless of your good intentions.

You couldn’t. It wouldn’t be proper. He didn’t know yet; it would have to wait until the rest of the formalities and courtesies were observed and duly executed.

“I bring news from Imladris, my lord. Perhaps we could speak in private, the matter is rather sensitive I’m afraid,” you offered a timid bow of your head while your eyes remained peeled on Thranduil.

Your beloved watched you for a moment before he rose to his feet and allowed his slender legs to carry him down the steps to be stood in front of you. The distance between you was respectable and appropriate given the circumstances yet you could swear your nose immediately caught the familiar and cherished scent of him.

“Leave us,” his order sounded all over the room and was quickly followed by the obedient parting of his guards while Thranduil’s pale eyes remained pinned on yours, a flicker of annoyance dancing in his dark pupils. Silence saturated with tension flowed between you while you waited for his diligent servants to leave the throne room.

“What are you doing, coming here in this manner?” he demanded to know, not trying to hide the exasperation that was laced with his accusing tone.

“I can’t say what I have to say here. Could we go somewhere less predisposed to interruption?” you asked having brushed aside his icy bearing. After all, how could you hold him responsible when you had given him no warning of your imminent arrival.

“How many ways are there left for you to torture me in, I wonder,” he hissed under his breath.

“Your being here, the mere presence of you is excruciating. I cannot subject myself to being alone with you.”

There was a hidden plea underneath his frozen façade, one coming from a broken ellon who dared not hope for something so far out of his reach.

“I am asking you to trust me,” you murmured patiently while your hand reached up to caress his silky-smooth cheek. His eyes closed at the tenderness of your touch, and you felt him lean into it before in a blink of an eye, Thranduil jerked his head back and left your hand hanging empty in the air between you.

“This is no dream; why are you so eager to tempt fate?” his whispered words bore every ounce of his tortured soul, laden with want of the one thing he could never possess as his own.

“It goes beyond that, and you know it. All that I am asking of you, is that you take one final leap of faith,” you spoke calmly while your heart was all but on the verge of making you beg him and plead with him, do most anything to get him in a room alone with you where you could deliver him the delightful news.

“I cannot, I will not risk compromising your honor,” Thranduil shook his head, his words sounding the finality of his decision.

“Mine or yours?” you raised your chin in contempt.

Color drained from his already pale complexion at the mention of his honor. You knew better than to question it, but you felt as if he had left you no choice, stubborn and unyielding as he was, he would oft break before he would bend.

“You think I care about my honor?” he lowered his voice and took a step closer to you.

“I would let it be dragged through the mud from here to Valinor if it meant keeping yours intact, so do not insult me by suggesting otherwise.”

Thranduil’s breath was like blazing fire on your face, the quickened heaving and falling of his chest only mere inches from your own body sent a fiery jolt to the pits of your stomach. And when the towering king’s darkened eyes dropped to your lips, you saw the reason why he wouldn’t be left alone with you clear as day. Frustration was dripping off him like hot wax from a burning candle.

“I’ve left him,” you broke the silence at last. Your whispered words were barely audible, yet Thranduil had heard you all the same, for his eyes immediately found yours in a quick sharp glance.

“Tell me of the madness you have caused so that we might hope to salvage it somehow,” his words, low and quiet as they were, somehow still thundered inside the spacious room after he had closed the door to his private chambers.

“There is nothing that needs salvaging, my love,” you reassured him and proceeded to tell him about the conversation that had taken place between you and Elrond only a couple of nights before.

Thranduil had listened motionlessly and soundlessly to the tale that you had brought forth, an account of hope born of the ashes from a gruesome heartbreak, your long-awaited opportunity to be together at long last, after decades of having been forced apart, suffering needlessly, and forced to contemplate whether this world was meant for you after all. All of it, the anguish, the torment, the insufferable pain, coming to an end once and for all in the light of the mercy and forgiveness bestowed upon you by an unlikely ally.

Silence gathered and endured inside the four walls of his lavish chambers while the Woodland King contemplated the turn of events you had brought to his attention. You had expected to see delight but found none on his placid features, even his pale eyes seemed to be miles away while he appeared to be staring right through you, as if having forgotten that you were there to begin with.

“Say something,” you whispered not being able to withstand the deafening silence any longer.

Thranduil slowly closed his eyes, his breath leaving his lungs in the same instant as he opened them again and looked at you with all the sorrow his flawless features could possibly harbor. Your heart sank in your chest at the gut-wrenching look he bore, his eyes resembling vast seas of great despair that held no hope of ever running dry again.

“It doesn’t change anything, meleth.”

You had to strain to hear him, so defeated he sounded, as if his very will to live was slowly seeping from his body, one drop at a time. Your heart winced at his words, rebelling at the very idea of what he was saying. Try as hard as you could, you failed to see reason sound enough to support his preposterous words.

“It changes everything,” you declared firmly, shaking your head violently you hoped to dismiss the uneasy sensation that was beginning to take root inside your mind, the fear of him not wanting you now that someone else had discarded you. Your soul revolted at that unimaginable notion.

Only your beloved didn’t rush to cast aside your growing fear.

“It changes nothing!” Thranduil raised his voice, making your heart jump inside your chest at the unexpected harshness.

You blinked in utter disbelief, refusing to believe what you were hearing, the most horrible words imaginable rolling off his lips with no care for the devastating impact they would have on you.

“How can you say that?” you choked out, your throat gripped by the paralyzing dread that had also made your tongue run as dry as the barren lands to the South.

Horrified and frozen you watched him stride over to the windows, both his hands gripping the hard stone frame on either side, pale fingers digging into the rough and impenetrable surface in hopes of lending some of its stone-hard stability.

“You are still his wife and will forever remain as such.”

You could practically taste the disdain in his voice. Even with his back turned to you, you could see and feel the aggravation washing off him and coming at you in waves you couldn’t possibly hope to survive.

Frustrated, you took a few steps towards his frame, unwilling to back down from what you knew in your heart was right.

“You forget, we burned the parchment,” you had started to remind him but his abrupt turning around on his heel made your words die inside your mouth before they could reach your lips. With dark eyes blazing, his gaze pinned you to where you were standing with your eyes wide and mouth slightly ajar.

“There is more than one way in which we are wed to one another,” Thranduil’s raised voice erupted within his chambers while his face mirrored the fury that gripped him.

“Burning a paper does not erase that bond,” he added bitterly.

In the face of his wrath, a smile was slowly spreading across your lips, the horrid look you had born earlier, melting away like spring snows, revealing the softness beneath. You shook your head slowly while Thranduil looked on in bewilderment, presumably unaccustomed to bearing witness to someone who wouldn’t shrink away at the sight of his rage.

“Then it will please you to hear that I’ve never been his wife,” you confessed with a timid smile.

A shadow of disbelief flickered in his pale eyes at the sound of your words, as quickly as it had come, it was gone in a heartbeat when he narrowed his eyes and gave you a measuring look.

“All those years together and you never,” Thranduil trailed off, not being able to bring himself to utter the words that had given him sleepless nights for decades when he would curse the fate for forcing him to love you.

You shook your head and smiled reassuringly. It was the truth. In your decades together, there had been no intimate relations between Elrond and yourself. You had been his wife in every way there was save for that.

“How?” Thranduil breathed out with his eyebrows furrowed, his pale eyes piercing through your flesh in search of the truth carried within your soul.

You allowed your smile to grow warmer, to show him the love you bore for him written plain across your features in case there had ever been any doubts hidden away deep within him, where he himself wouldn’t have dared to venture on his own free will.

“It was always ever going to be you,” you murmured.

 A barely audible gasp came unbidden from his lips. Something shifted in the room you were in, you couldn’t see it clearly, but you could feel it intimately. Thranduil’s walls had started to tumble like stone.

He closed his eyes and shook his head as if some part of him was terrified that it was all a lie, a beautiful illusion crafted by powers and forces beyond his control.

“See for yourself. Make me your wife right here and now,” your words dripped with sincere willfulness as you moved closer to him, slowly closing the space between you. There had been enough distance separating you for too long, it was finally time you bound yourselves as one.

Before you could react, he was towering over you, his dark eyes going straight to your lips as his hands clasped your face and pulled it up to meet his.

“Make me yours,” you breathed out against his mouth before his lips claimed yours in a kiss overwhelmed by decades of longing, laced with desire that had nearly burned him alive while he had only dreamed of making you his.

You parted your lips and welcomed his kiss with a need that mirrored his own, your tongue lacing with his hungrily while he guided you backwards in the direction of his bed. Starved hands roamed across the fabric of your riding-cloak before unclasping it and flinging it to the side; impatient fingers traveling from your neck to your shoulders where they slid the thin silk straps of your dress over your shoulders thus making it trickle down your body and pool at your ankles.

Thranduil’s kiss grew deeper and more demanding, commanding your complete and irrefutable surrender to him which only fed the already blazing warmth deep in your core where your desire for him was all but beginning to surge through the rest of your body.

Suddenly your back was met by something cold and hard. You imagined it was the wide and intricate bedpost, but before you could even think to open your eyes to inspect, he had hoisted you in his arms, wrapping your legs around his waist and pinning you to the carved post with no chance of escape even if you had been in need of one.

You could feel his own arousal when he pressed his body against yours, a hard bump grating at your lower belly in a teasing manner, yet you knew better than to think he was going to waste time with toying with you when your past experiences were compelling him to hasten matters along. While he would worship you for the centuries to come, tonight he would claim your body and soul for himself.

Breathless you poured your very essence into his kiss, your hands finding their way into his hair and tugging at it while Thranduil quickly relieved himself of his heavy robes, followed by his tunic before his hand grasped yours and pinned them to the bedpost above your head by your wrists. His mouth proceeded to venture past your lips, to your jaw and continued its hungry descent down your neck where he sucked on your flustered skin, each movement of his lips accompanied by the increasingly more pressing rocking of his hips.

You bit your lip in hopes of stifling the moan that was building deep within you, your insides all but quivering and dripping with anticipation of what was to come when Thranduil’s mouth claimed yours again with a dark hunger you had never felt before.

Before long, he had placed you on his featherbed after he had discarded the rest of his clothing, his naked form now towering over you like a most perfectly crafted and shaped mountain, his eyes sparkling with feverish greed.

He lowered himself enough to take your mouth with his burning lips, muffling your breath and forcing you to obey his will while his hands explored your naked body, the soft pads of his fingers caressing and brushing over every inch of your skin until reaching the entrance to your core.

You gasped against his mouth when his finger slipped past your slick folds and into your soaked heat. Something rumbled deep inside his chest as he slipped a second finger in, exploring the dripping core of unrestrained desire. The sweet curling and swirling motions of his fingers inside you began building towards something far greater than mere anticipation. Your breath grew heavier, laden with unyielding want for more while your already frantically beating heart began to race.

“Not yet, not like this,” Thranduil’s husky voice breathed out hot against your lips before you felt him retrieve his fingers from your heated depths, leaving an unpleasant emptiness in their absence.

“Please,” you heard yourself whimper, unable to wait any longer, your body all but aching for his as if your very life depended on it.

You wouldn’t have to beg again.

You felt Thranduil adjust himself before plunging deep inside you with a single hard thrust, the force of it making your insides burn and protest to the unaccustomed presence. You threw your head back against the soft pillows, crying out in pain at the throbbing fullness deep inside you.

“It’s going to hurt but it will pass soon, my love,” Thranduil murmured lovingly, his fingers moving to stroke your hair while he planted tender kisses near your mouth, on the tip of your nose, on the softness of your closed eyelids, your temple, and your jaw.

Soon he began moving, gently and slowly at first but as the pain started to give way to the blissful sensation you had felt earlier, prompting your hips to fall in with his rhythm, his thrusts grew deeper and harder.

His mouth left your lips to venture to your neck, grazing the soft skin with his teeth while he continued to lose himself in you, growling and grumbling in rapturous delight every time you curled your hips to meet him halfway, his throbbing length bringing you closer to your ultimate release with every thrust he made.

Panting breaths mingled and laced together in the air around you as Thranduil claimed you repeatedly, pushing you closer to your inevitable undoing while he himself was bound for the same stars of near ethereal bliss.

“Please,” you heard yourself gasp on the verge of your decadent release before your nails dug into the silky soft skin on his back, prompting a near feral groan to escape his lips as he slammed into you harder and harder until you arched your back and were met by a million stars while sweet, agonizing waves of pleasure crashed down upon you one by one, knocking the air from your lungs and forcing you to groan in euphoric delight.

Thranduil found his own release shortly after, biting down into the sensitive skin on your neck while he spilled himself deep inside you with a guttural groan of his own before his body collapsed on top of yours.

“Mine at last,” he sighed in your ear.

A blissful smile crept onto your lips as you breathed him in.

Mine at last, you thought to yourself before closing your eyes.

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[littlemourningstarr]

Malady

Sekh is sick, and it's up to Astarion to convince him to rest.

Read below or on AO3!

Pairing: Astarion x Transmasc tav

Part of the Eternally Yours series!

Tags: Transmasc tav, sickfic, fluff, vaginal sex, post game

Astarion roused from his trance to the sound of coughing, from across the house. He frowned, buried his face into his pillow, arm stretching out, and finding an empty bed. He grasped at the sheets, as if by sheer force of will he could make Sekh materialize.

With a tired sigh, Astarion pushed himself up, standing and stretching in their dark bedroom, his joints pleasantly cracking. Unsure how late in the morning it was as the shutters had been perpetually closed and the heavy curtains drawn tightly shut since they moved in, Astarion dressed- just in case Yenna was about.

He opened the bedroom door, heading downstairs slowly, just in case a curtain had been opened to allow the rest of his little family to enjoy sunlight.

The house was blissfully cast in candle light, and Astarion found Yenna sitting in a large chair that he liked for reading, Grub resting by her arm. She had her arms folded. “I was waiting for you to get up.” He looked at her, a bit perplexed- and then heard the coughing fit again, from down below.

In Sekh’s workshop.

Astarion frowned, heading for the hatch and opening it, climbing down into the large basement. It was littered with shelves and tables, filled with various flora from the Underdark that- with a bit of tender love and care- seemed to be willing to thrive in the dark, even on the surface.

Sekh was sitting at his work table, his hair tossed up in a messy bun atop his head. He was slouched slightly, leaning over, working on something, still dressed in whatever clothes he had thrown on after waking. The larger, oversized cardigan was one Astarion had been forced to mend a few times now, thanks to some slight spills with concoctions that were just a bit acidic.

Before Astarion could get lost in watching the drow work, Sekh’s shoulders shook as he coughed. His hand left the table, moving to presumably cover his mouth, stifle the noise.

Astarion frowned, walking over, pausing just behind him. “You’re sick.”

Sekh jumped, looking up at him, having not heard Astarion’s silent footsteps. His cheeks had quite the flush to them, his eyes a bit glossy.

“I’m fine,” he said, but his voice was a rasp. He winced upon hearing it, knowing he sounded anything but.

Astarion clicked his tongue in annoyance. “I warned you last night, but you just had to stay out in that rain. It was frigid!” Astarion dragged his fingers along Sekh’s cheek, the heat beyond anything he had ever felt on the drow, even in the throes of the most intense passion.

Sekh’s eyelids fluttered over Astarion’s cool touch.

“You should be in bed.”

“Too much to do,” Sekh whispered, as Astarion moved to brush a few wild, free strands of hair from his forehead. “And the society is expecting me shortly. I need to finish, get dressed-'' he cut off to cough again, covering his mouth and shaking with the sheer force.

“Oh like hells are you leaving this house.” Once Sekh’s coughing stopped, Astarion nearly hoisted him up from his chair. Sekh complained loudly, but the vampire ignored him, taking his hand and leading him back towards the ladder to the main level. “Yenna!” Astarion called as he climbed up, Sekh following- which was good, because Astarion knew he couldn’t physically drag the drow up alone.

The girl hopped out of the chair she still inhabited, as Astarion pulled himself out of the hatch and turned, helping Sekh out as well. Even through his sweater, Astarion could feel his feverish heat.

“Would you be a dear and go visit Blurg and let him know Sekh will not be leaving the house today.” Sekh frowned, folded his arms- a childish pout at being ordered around. Astarion ignored it for the moment. “And perhaps ask if he may have anything for his fever.”

“Leave it to me!” The girl was running for the door before Astarion could do more, her cat jumping and following her. She was always eager to visit the Society anyway- being sent over on her own probably felt like a treat.

“And you,” Astarion said, turning to Sekh, “back to bed.”

“Astarion-”

“Sekh.”

“Starshine-”

“Sekh’met.” Astarion folded his arms, and the drow sighed, bowing his head. The fact that his stubbornness didn’t push the argument further was proof enough that he must have felt wretched.

“Let me get my notes at least,” Sekh asked, “I can read from bed.”

Astarion’s look softened, and he gently guided Sekh away from the still open hatch. “I’ll get them,” he said, not moving until Sekh was halfway up the stairs, calling back that he needed the notes on Bulbfruits specifically.

While Astarion had no real interest in whatever grew in the Underdark- he didn’t need his lover to specify. He knew exactly what Sekh was studying currently- he’d been at the Society of Brilliance’s Lodge more nights than he can count as the drow fervently discussed the flora. This had been the most recent topic for a month now.

Astarion let himself back down to the basement and over to Sekh’s desk. It was littered with open journals, loose papers in the drow’s scrawling, sketchy handwriting. Possibly the worst Astarion had ever seen.

It made him smile.

Astarion picked up a few, setting them aside when he was able to determine they were not on the correct weed. He set them neatly in a pile, thinking that perhaps if Sekh were to get some rest maybe he could sneak back down here and tidy up- just a bit.

He ended up with one of the journals and a few loose scraps of paper. He made his way back up the ladder, closing the hatch, and then up to their bedroom. Sekh had lit his bedside lamp, had shed his large cardigan and was working a brush through his now free, still tangled hair.

It had grown so much over the past eight months, since the Brain- and hadn’t been dyed in the last two, since they had been reunited with their companions. All of the pink had faded, leaving only Sekh’s natural ginger.

Astarion preferred it like this, but he never said so. He knew Sekh’s hair dying was sentimental, and he wouldn’t take that away from the drow.

Sekh set his hair brush down, happily taking the reading materials from Astarion. The vampire crawled onto the bed, settling next to Sekh and taking up the brush, working it through his thick, silken hair. The drow opened the journal, quietly reading to himself.

When Astarion was satisfied that the tangles were all removed, he gathered up Sekh’s hair, began braiding it slowly. Sekh glanced at him, a little smile crawling onto his flushed face. Astarion caught it and returned the smile, leaning forward and kissing his warm cheek, as he tied off the braid.

Astarion slid his arms around Sekh, happy to soak up his feverish heat, as the drow went back to reading silently. It wasn’t long before Astarion could hear the door opening, and Yenna’s quick footsteps running up the stairs.

She was getting lighter on her feet- Astarion was rather proud of that. He’d been spending time with her in the evenings, teaching her all of the fun ways to sneak around, the showiest ways to twirl a dagger. She would never be defenseless again.

She burst in, arms full of a very large tome and a few small pouches, spilling the contents on the bed, and nearly losing her footing. Before Astarion could reach out to brace her she was back properly on her feet, grabbing one of the pouches and passing it to Sekh.

“Blurg said this will make you feel right as rain,” she announced proudly, “in a few days,” she added, and Sekh groaned. He flopped back onto his pillows, and Astarion rolled his eyes.

“So dramatic,” he mumbled, taking the pouch and pulling the bottle from it. Sekh glanced at him, his face screaming really- as if Astarion had the right to call anyone dramatic.

“He said it’ll help you rest and with the fever.” Sekh blindly reached for the pouch Astarion had discarded, not sitting up as he fished out a small, hand written note. The vampire assumed it listed whatever was in this and how to take it.

He trusted the Hobgoblin and his Mindflayer to not poison Sekh. Strange company as they were, Astarion knew they had become some of Sekh’s closest friends.

“Blurg said it’s really gross though,” Yenna pointed out, tossing one of the other, much smaller pouches onto Sekh. It landed on his belly, and whatever could possibly be inside must have excited the drow, because he shot back up into a sitting position-

So fast that he reached up for his head, as if he’d made himself dizzy. Astarion reached over and rubbed his back soothingly, as Sekh opened the pouch and shook out a small, round, red speckled candy.

With a grin large enough to split his cheeks, he popped it into his mouth. Astarion had only ever tasted them second hand- from Sekh’s still sticky lips in countless fervent kisses- but they were sweet as honey, with a spice that he imagined could burn open the drow’s airways.

The Hobgoblin made them, whatever spice coming from some plant in the Underdark. Astarion knew Sekh had recognized it immediately, but he could never for the life or death of him remember the name.

Yenna had another small pouch, presumably of her own, which she tucked into her pocket.  “He said if you’re feeling okay and bored this book should keep you busy.” Sekh gathered up the large, well worn tome before Astarion could, opening it and leaving it on his lap. The vampire knew he’d have to wrestle it away from his lover soon if he wanted Sekh to actually get some rest.

“Thank you, Yenna,” Sekh said, “I’d hug you but I do not want to get you sick. Wait…” he glanced at Astarion, “Can I get you sick?”

The alarm in his voice was cute.

Astarion waved him off. “No darling, you can’t.” Whatever virus the drow had wouldn’t have anything to take root in within Astarion. He only ever worried about sickness in someone’s blood.

Astarion climbed out of the bed, guiding Yenna from the room. He did echo Sekh’s concern about not wanting to get the girl sick. He could argue that he didn’t want to have to play nursemaid to two people- but in reality, he was fairly sure his chest would crack in half if he heard Yenna so much as cough painfully once.

Good thing Yenna always had plenty to entertain her outside the house. Most days if she wasn’t with Sekh down in his little mad alchemist lab she was running about the city, Grub in tow. She’d made friends, Astarion knew- and he was proud of her for it. Granted, the little thing had never been shy, she’d proven that when she’d first approached Sekh, a gods damned drow, whom she had never met in her life, when they’d first arrived at Wyrms’ Crossing so many months ago.

“Make sure you’re at the Elfsong before dark,” Astarion advised, “I’ll come walk you home.”

“I could walk myself home,” Yenna pointed out, and yes, yes she could, and Astarion was sure that if anyone gave her trouble she’d give them twice the trouble back-

But he and Sekh weren’t willing to risk it. She was still a child, and any city after dark wasn’t a place for a child to be alone.

“You know,” Yenna added, as Astarion tried to tidy her hair a bit. It was getting quite long, but still shaggy. She had a few small braids scattered throughout the mess that he had painstakingly done. She wasn’t one for frills of any sorts, but she’d indulged him. “If we file my teeth to look like yours, no one would bother me.”

“And out with you,” Astarion said, face scrunched in mock annoyance as he pushed her towards the door. She laughed, before turning and wrapping her arms around him. Astarion dropped the annoyed act, lifting her up and spinning her once, just to hear her laugh into his chest. “Whatever you do, just remember-”

“Don’t get caught,” Yenna finished, as Astarion let her down. He grinned and waved her off, and she was out the door so quickly Astarion barely saw a flash of the sunlight, outside.

Astarion went back upstairs, found Sekh exactly where he had left him, flipping a page in the large tome. The medicine Blurg had provided was definitely untouched, next to him. He glanced up as Astarion leaned against the doorframe, folding his arms- and his stare was enough. With a sheepish look- and Astarion would never, ever tell Sekh how utterly precious it was- Sekh picked up the bottle and opened it, downing a mouthful. His candy was already long gone.

He made a face, closing the bottle and setting it on his bedside table. “As bad as whatever Omeluum had you drink in the Underdark?” Astarion asked as he crossed the room.

“Gods no, nothing will ever be worse than that.” Astarion settled down next to him, reached out to brush his hand along Sekh’s forehead. He felt even warmer than he had earlier. Astarion frowned, but Sekh leaned into his touch, ginger lashes fluttering as his eyes shut, enjoying how cool the vampire was in comparison to him. “You feel nice.”

Astarion chuckled, pulled his hand back just to tuck it behind Sekh’s neck, under his hair. He shivered, and Astarion leaned in, brushed his chilled lips against Sekh’s flushed cheek.

“I feel like I’m on fire,” Sekh admitted, turning, eyes flicking to Astarion’s lips. The vampire knew the look well- the same look Sekh gave him anytime the drow wanted to kiss him, but found some- typically quite worthless- reason not to.

Astarion pressed a slow kiss to his mouth. His lips felt like burning flowers, silken but so hot. Sekh sighed against him, one hand fisting in Astarion’s shirt. The vampire traced his tongue along the seam of Sekh’s lips, and when the drow sighed, pushed his way in.

He could taste the ghost of the candy, that familiar honey and spice that he was coming to equate to Sekh. But over it was the bitter, herbal flavor of the medicine, a heavy, almost dirt like taste.

“You taste awful,” Astarion mumbled, even as he stole another kiss. Sekh pulled back, laughing so hard that he had to cover his mouth as it dissolved into a coughing fit.

“You still kissed me,” he pointed out, once he could speak again. Astarion hummed in response, reached for the tome in Sekh’s lap and shut the book. For a moment the vampire thought Sekh might fight him on it- but the rebellious look was fleeting, and Sekh let Astarion heft the book over to his bedside table.

Astarion pulled the blanket back, and fought down a bemused smile as Sekh tugged his shirt off and tossed it away, flopping down onto the sheets and reaching for his pants.

“I’m too hot,” he mumbled, catching Astarion staring. The elf would be the last to ever complain about Sekh stripping of his clothing. Instead he reached out, dragged his fingers along Sekh’s bare stomach, along his navel, pausing at his pelvis. Sekh gasped, arched into the touch, before he reached up, covered his own mouth with his hand, shocked at the reaction himself.

Well.

“I can cool you off,” Astarion offered, working quite hard to keep his voice tender and not suggestive. Sekh didn’t even hesitate at the suggestion, squirming out of his remaining clothing and asking, skin to skin?

Astarion climbed out of bed to strip properly, leaving his clothing folded on the floor. When he crawled back into bed, he reached for Sekh, pulled the drow’s back flush to his chest, stretched out across his body. Sekh squirmed, sighing, as Astarion’s arm hooked around him, hand splayed on his belly.

He burned hotter than the hells, against Astarion. A heat unlike anything Astarion had felt. He’d be alarmed if Sekh didn’t seem to be functioning so well and already medicated. Astarion leaned down, nuzzled into his neck, dragged lazy kisses along his pulse.

Sekh squirmed, little breaths escaping him, and Astarion’s hand slid lower along his belly, without thought. He caught himself as his fingers grazed the soft skin of Sekh’s mound, instantly moving his hand to Sekh’s hip.

“Sorry darling,” he mumbled, almost embarrassed that he’d fallen into wanting to touch so quickly.

But Sekh just reached for the hand on his hip, squeezed Astarion’s fingers and whispered in a slightly hoarse voice, “Would you?” He guided Astarion’s hand back, slid it over his mound, and Astarion could feel the twitch in the drow’s hips, wanting to grind against his hand.

And oh, who was he to ever deny his drow?

Astarion slid his fingers along Sekh’s lips, past them, groaned because still he burned even hotter. He teased his clit slowly, felt his lover shiver against him. “Love,” Sekh breathed, and Astarion kissed at his pulse again, murmured sweet little nothings that rang far too true in his heart. His touches were slow, teasing circles, knowing exactly how to slowly bring Sekh up to an ecstatic high.

Sekh continued to squirm, to grind against his hand. Astarion couldn’t stop the way his hips canted against his lover’s plush ass, his own cock stirring over the heat, over Sekh’s little breaths, over knowing he was the cause of even just a moment of bliss for this man.

Astarion slid his fingers off Sekh’s clit, got a frustrated little groan that turned into a needy whine as his finger teased at his entrance. He didn’t push inside- as much as he wanted to- simply dragged the wetness he found back up to Sekh’s hard clit, sliding over it again and again and again now.

Sekh tipped his head back, grinding against Astarion’s fingers. The vampire could tell he was so close already- knew every little tick of his desires, his body. He moved to Sekh’s ear, whispered, “can you come for me?” and the drow arched, cried out his name, shaking as his orgasm wracked his body.

Oh, Astarion it would delight for eternity that he could speak this man into euphoria.

His touches slowed but didn’t stop, easing Sekh through his orgasm. The drow writhed, creating a delicious friction against Astarion’s now fully hard cock. The vampire jerked his hips against him, bit back a growl, tried to tell himself to take a breath, to relax.

This wasn’t about him. Not this time.

Yet as Sekh began to calm, he purposely pushed back against Astarion, making the thought feel fleeting. The vampire pressed his face into Sekh’s hair, inhaled a shaking breath. “It’ll pass,” he mumbled, knowing Sekh was all too aware of his aching cock.

Sekh hummed softly. “It doesn’t have to…”

“Sekh.” The drow craned his neck to catch Astarion’s eyes, gave him one of his dazzling smiles that always stopped Astarion’s undead heart, made his belly cramp up with how much love could be visible in just a single curl of the man’s lips.

“I want you to,” Sekh said, adding, “if you want to.”

Astarion bit his own lip, fangs poking against tender flesh. Because gods he did want it, he wanted to be locked inside this man every waking second of eternity. And just knowing he was wanted, endlessly-

Astarion grasped at Sekh’s thigh. “Hook your leg up over me darling,” he murmured. Sekh did as he was asked, his leg hooking up over Astarion’s hip. Astarion grasped his own cock, teased himself along Sekh’s slit, loved the little breath that rushed out of Sekh. He smiled to himself, before easing in slowly.

Sekh’s body was hotter than it had ever been, a sheer inferno that had Astarion’s mind going white hot blank. He groaned, buried himself into his lover far quicker than he meant to, felt his stomach knotting up in a warning that this wouldn’t last.

Sekh shuddered, reaching across the bed to grasp at the sheets, squirming and writing against Astarion, a silent plea for him to move, to stroke each nerve inside his body. Astarion moved his hand back to Sekh’s cunt, two fingers siding around his clit, jerking at the hardened bud to match each desperate thrust he gave him.

Sekh’s mouth fell open, little cries and mewls spilling into the air. He was panting within seconds, pushing himself back to meet each of Astarion’s thrusts. The vampire growled, got his mouth on the crook of Sekh’s shoulder, teeth holding him, but not breaking skin.

The drow shuddered, started whining bite me, over and over again, as Astarion thrust into him with abandon. Gods he’d meant to be softer, but Sekh was making it impossible.

“No,” Astarion breathed, as much as he wanted to. The feeling of Sekh’s skin breaking for his fangs, the trickle of his sweet blood along Astarion’s tongue, always took their love making to a level Astarion didn’t know was possible, had never been able to fathom before Sekh.

But he wasn’t out of his mind enough to think biting Sekh was a good idea while the man was ill.

Sekh groaned, but didn’t push further. Instead he tried to tighten his leg draped over Astarion, to pull him deeper.

Astarion moaned, the sound followed by a full body shudder from Sekh, over it. Astarion was so close, he could feel his muscles coiling into knots, his stomach tight, his balls fucking aching. Gods damned,it felt nearly pathetic, he’d barely been inside his drow, but, but-

Sekh could undo him in seconds.

He switched his movements to quick strokes of Sekh’s clit, refusing to take his own bliss without the drow joining him. Sekh whined, turned his head and bit at the pillow, muffling his little noises as Astarion felt his body clenching around him, right on the edge-

It was Astarion, moaning his name, unabashed and adoring, that sent him over the edge. That sent Sekh into a second, sobbing orgasm, his leg tightening on Astarion, pulling him impossibly deep.

With a relieved groan, smiling, Astarion let himself come, staying nestled into Sekh’s fever hot body, as the drow’s waning orgasm milked him fucking dry. It was moments of pure, unadulterated heaven.

And then Sekh was relaxing against him. Astarion moved his hand so his arm could lock around his partner and nuzzled into his neck, peppering soft, affectionate kisses along his skin. He felt slightly less warm, somehow- and Astarion hoped the medicine was helping.

Astarion stayed inside Sekh until the drow squirmed, finally pulling away. The room’s air felt frigid compared to his heat, but Astarion bit back any complaints, as Sekh rolled onto his back, looked up at him with drowsy eyes. “Tired?” Astarion asked, and Sekh nodded. Without even a moment of thought, Astarion was climbing out of bed, taking a few moments to clean up the mess he’d left on his pretty darling.

Normally he’d be more than happy to slide between Sekh’s legs and lick him clean, but he didn’t want to push the man. He needed to rest.

Once done, he crawled back into bed, and Sekh pushed up against him, wrapped his arms around him and settled just below his chin. “You don’t have to stay,” he whispered, even as he held tightly to Astarion.

The vampire chuckled. “I don’t believe I could move if I wanted to now, pet.” He paused, before adding, “Not that I want to. To be clear. I don’t.”

Sekh laughed, but it was a slow, half asleep sound. He was fading fast. Astarion kissed the top of his head gently, fingers tracing along his damp spine.

“Sweet dreams, my love,” he whispered, intent that when Sekh awoke, he’d be the first thing he saw.

[violethargreeves]

The Druid - Slasher series

Druid!Connor Rijkers x Fem!Virgin!Reader

TW: obsessive behavior, blood, murderer, mention of drugs and alcohol, s3xual assault, slasher violence, smut, vaginal fingering, oral (f! receiving), masked man, lots of cussing (i'm also just a girl), Connor being overprotective- best friend's brother.

The story line was changed a bit but nothing too drastic, ENJOY!

Word count: 3.7K

The cold thud of the iron dor hitting the wall echoed throughout the whole apartment complex, followed by Kit Jennings desperate pleads for help.

A drug dealer, sex addicted, professional in order disturbance screaming for help running up the stairs.

Not a single soul would dare to step out of their dear homes to help the desperate mess Kit was. His death was nothing more than a simple disturbance in the non-existent peace of the apartments.

But you dared.

You were home alone and slightly opened the door, crossing eyes with Kit before grabbing his bloody hand.

Your hands touched for a splint second before the masked killer pushed him back. Your hand was immediately ripped from his as your eyes crossed the lifeless mask of the killer.

The purple lights coming from the killers mask was the last sprinkle of life Kit Jennings saw before being stabbed five more times before falling to the ground once more, blinking twice.

Whatever happened next, you didn't bring courage of yourself to see enough. The very next second, you shut your door closed while you forced your own silhouette against it.

The loud punches on the door followed a dark, lingering, modified voice sweet calling you.

"Darling...open for me."

Your heartbeats got caught up in a quicker pace as air couldn't leave your lungs.

Your vision became blurry with the tears surfacing your eyes, the panic pressing you entirely down while your senses shut off.

The last thing your heard before dying on yourself were the words of a sweet serial killer;

"I ain't hurting you, love."

The last thing you knew was that the door opened but you couldn't do anything about it.

Your death came.

THE SOLSTICE |

A YEAR AFTER

Nothing but a regular morning where the sun bathed your window with light; a reminder to wake up, as if you had slept anyways.

The last year crime haunted you constantly, reminding you how lifeless and desperate was the look on Kit's face in his last moments.

You couldn't remember anything after the door opening, your only proof that the killer entered your apartment where the bloody marks of his chunky boots on the light colored floor.

The smell of his blood was carved in your memory, as much as you wished the answers of your chemistry exam were.

You had a long day coming, perhaps your last one.

The hallways looked the same as a year before: cold, depressing and lonely.

Not a single soul could be spotted around while you stepped carefully on each stair step, jiggling a full trash bag beside you.

You found your way quickly, shoving the trash bag in one of the huge cans at the parking lot.

You got lost in your own thoughts: Kit Jennings ran through the same parking lot.

Bleeding the life out of himself.

Screaming for help.

"Morning, princess."

The sudden movement startled you, who turned around immediately to seek for the voice.

His morning face looked puffy but never less majestic than always.

His dark eyes stared deeply onto your soul, even when you pretended not to see his look falling slightly to your briefly exposed cleavage.

His smile turned into a smirk a few seconds after, waiting patiently for you to answer.

His shirt was a bit fallen to the side of his left shoulder, exposing a bit of his toned chest.

His arms flexed when he opened the trash can, throwing his own bag inside.

God, his arms where double the size of your head. All you could imagine was the way that his arms would crush your neck if he wanted to. How he could easily manhandle you as he wished so.

Jesus Christ.

You bit your lip while carelessly admiring the damn greek god in front of you.

Your mind was flying a bit too away to care that he may have noticed long ago the way that you were eagerly looking at him.

That man was a fucking monument.

"Y/N?" Stealing you from your trance of prohibited fantasies, your best friend's brother called you again.

"God! Sorry, Connor. Good Morning." You felt embarrassed by how he was looking at you.

His arms crossed while he towered over you, watching you bite your lip nervously.

Of bloody course he noticed you eye-fucking him.

"You were never too discreet, where you, darling?" His hand grabbed your chin, forcing your head up to look at him.

Your eyes met while you felt the familiar burning feeling consume your stomach whenever you felt Connor too close.

The door of the back hanging open was the reason for you to push him away while you tried to put yourself together.

"Connor, Y/N, good morning." Angel's voice sounded sleepily while he opened the trash can, looking both of you up and down before going back inside smiling.

You knew you couldn't have anything with Connor. You couldn't imagine how Jen would react to that and you didn't really felt like loosing one of your best friends.

You offered Connor a glance before going back inside, immediately meeting Jen in your way back.

"Hey, where were you? I was waiting for our breakfast." You felt her glaze burn over you while you tried to form a coherent phrase.

"Shit, so sorry. Got caught up with chores."  Yes, you were a fucking liar.

But do you know what else do you wanted to fuck? Conn-

"Hey sis." Connor shoved his hand up Jen's head and you questioned yourself when the hell had he gotten there since you didn’t hear the door open at all.

"You asshole! I spent 30 minutes doing this shit." She referred to the hairstyle that he almost ruined, hitting his chest back.

“Let's go, pretty. We're leaving, finals week." She grabbed you hand while you waved weirdly at the other Rjikers, leaving while trying your best to forget about the past tension in the air.

THE SOLSTICE |

TWO DAYS

Two days after a completed year, half of the school was dressed as the so-called Druid.

In the meantime of an hour you couldn't bear hearing anything coming from a male's mouth anymore.

"Do you want to feel me shove something down your throat?"

The most torturing and ridiculous pick up lines were the only thing that their brains could possibly work to say.

Jen had already been harassed by one of the boys at the lab, talking about her mother's suicide in such cruel and hypocrite way.

After the bell rang, you ran to the parking lot expecting Jen and Saadia, but none of them appeared.

While you waited outside alone, you felt your body freeze while a hand caressed your waist tracing an up and down motion over your shirt.

Immediately turning around, you met the cold blooded killer's mask staring right at your pretty face, holding a machete on the other hand.

"Shut up or i kill you." His deep tone hit you but you couldn’t bring yourself to recognize who was it. The machete was resting against the curve of your neck and you couldn't feel the metal enough to decide if it was real or not.

How come there was no one at the parking lot?

"Please..." A quiet whimper left your trembling lips as your hand got up to touch whoever in their chest.

"Your adorable when you beg." He laughed loudly, throwing the machete on the floor and turning both of you around, in a motion where your back would be facing the wall.

You felt panic wash through you as he ripped off his mask.

"Charlie, WHAT THE FU-" You immediately recognized the stranger's face while screaming. He stopped you there, shoving his mouth on yours while pushing both your wrists against the wall aggressively.

You bit his lip and felt his blood come into your own mouth as he moaned out. Feeling his grip tighten, you kicked his balls certainly, watching as his hands immediately went to find his pain spot, setting you free.

You were quick to walk away, meeting Jen and Saadia at the entrance.

Both of them looked at you scared.

Well, you had blood that did not belong to you staining your lips, death grip marks on both your wrists and your hair certainly looked a mess.

"Are you okay?" Saadia's worried look hit you immediately while she held you close.

"I- Charlie-" You couldn't bring yourself to formulate an answer as your lips started to tremble and your eyes flooded with shiny tears.

Jen was quick to understand and bursted outside, looking for Charlie and finding nothing more than a cheap copy of the Druid's mask that he left behind.

As you walked yourself home, you felt most citizens glare at you. You were on the Dead Pool as first of the list. Everyone was convinced you were going to die soon enough.

Your lonely thoughts never left your head as you walked silently to your own apartment, ignoring Dan’s loud voice at you.

At the end of the hallway, Connor watched you walk alone. You weren’t as shiny as usually. You were the ray of sunshine that cleared up his gloomy days.

You never left your apartment that night.

But your unexpected visit did.

The Druid watched you sleeping peacefully on your couch, dressed in nothing but a pair of a shirt that didn’t belong to you and laced panties.

The killer’s fingers traced their way up your tights as light as a feather feeling your skin crawl at the motion.

Their fingers got hypnotized at the draws of the lace in your panties, enough for them to keep admiring you in your peaceful sleep.

Your angelic figure didn’t take much space at the couch, giving them enough space to set themselves comfortable beside you.

The night was silent and your silent snores took their mind over.

You were theirs.

Whether you liked it or not, you were their property from now on.

And whoever dared to touch you, would have a fucking neon target on their backs.

Oh, how he loved you.

His personal and dear princess.

THE SOLSTICE PARTY |

THE TRUTH

Your visit to a random costume store got you more stress than happiness, Charlie couldn’t help himself in bothering anyone around him.

“Hello, cutie.” His eyes locked on your figure as you left the fitting room dressed in your costume.

“Fuck off, Charlie.” He took a few steps on your direction getting you to take a few back.

Jen and Saadia where at the other fitting room and Connor was at the other side of the store.

Once again, you were on your own.

“What’s up, bitch? No one coming to the rescue?” You felt yourself panic as you realized you were trapped.

For the first time feeling your survival instincts kicking in, you grabbed a small chair and threw on Charlie’s figure, only to find Connor behind him looking flabbergasted.

“Hey.” Your weird smirk to Connor made him feel warm inside, how cute you looked forgetting about the murdering rage he felt seconds ago.

The Druid certainly had his next victim. He just didn’t promise it would be you.

THE SOLSTICE PARTY |

THE ANNIVERSARY

The Solstice party was all everyone at school ever talked about. Actually, everyone at the city.

You could only predict one thing: The amount of Druids there would be nothing but bizarre.

Also, the amount of murderers didn't even need to me mentioned. Frank Dixon had his head chopped off, Cassidy was melted with acid, Xander isn't even to be mentioned, Mrs. Greenberg was dissected alive.

Anyways, that didn't stop reckless teenagers to go celebrate with uncountable drugs, drinks and messy sex.

You couldn't judge much though. You were one of these.

Your fairy fantasy called a bit of attention, specially for someone who barely exposed their body so much.

You, Connor, Jen and Saadia were sitting peacefully at a couch watching everyone do whatever uncontrolled teens do.

The bright lights got you distracted for a while, everything was a bit too bright.

Jen went to grab a drink, Saadia went with her, you guess? Both were gone.

Then, it was just you and Connor.

You looked up at your companion only to find that he was already looking at you.

You felt your cheeks heat up as embarrassment took you over.

"I think i'm going to the bathroom." You gave him a sly smile while you got up.

"Do you know where's it?" He looked at you confused. You were not exactly the party type and you've never been to the solstice party before.

"I have my ways, pretty boy." You winked at him and suddenly couldn't recognize where all that courage came from.

He put his hands up, surrendering and smiling at you with that pretty mouth of his.

Little did you know that moments after you left, he was quick to follow you.

In your way to the bathroom you realized the path which led there was dark. Even though it was dangerous with all the possible murderers, you went with it.

Yet, an arm in front of you stopped your way all of a sudden.

You were quick to look up to the person's face, only to find Charlie once more dressed as the Druid.

"Looks like we meet once more." He looked at you as a shiver went down your spine. You didn't have an immediate reaction as you watched he grab you closely. You tried to scream but his hand was quick to close your mouth. Even if he hadn't, the loud music would be enough to no one hear you. "What about we finish what we started a while ago?"

You tried to fight him only to end up with a cut on your neck from a knife you hadn't noticed he held against you.

As your back faced the wall, you tried your best to scape from him in such a dark alley.

Charlie used to be inoffensive on his jokes. Not anymore, apparently.

Charlie smirked at you as he tried to force your clothes out, only for you to watch as his face became totally pale and blanc in expression.

A baseball bat suddenly went through Charlie's head. You had no reaction as you looked at his back to see the real fucking Druid, holding a silver baseball bat that now was really bloody.

His mask was glowing in purple that lighted up you face as he held Charlie and gave you space to run.

And you did, as fast as you could go through the darkness only to find yourself lost in another dark alley. Just not as dark as the other one. A few of the party's lights could be seen from there, which was easier to possibly run away from the killer.

You were breathless and lost, feeling the cold from the wall behind you as you touched it trying to take control over yourself.

You were so focused on yourself you couldn't hear the sound the Druid's chunky boots made hitting the floor while he walked up to you.

When you came to notice, the Druid was face to face with you caging you to the wall, once more.

"Are you okay, princess?" His voice was deep and a familiarity on it hit your brain, but you couldn't think right.

His mask came to the crook of your neck as he towered over your much shorter figure. You could feel his breath through the small hole of the mask and you asked yourself why weren't you running.

You did know he was a killer. Yet, you weren't as scared as when Charlie came close to you. A familiar delight took over your chest as his voice sounded again.

"He won't hurt you anymore. No one ever will." His breath hit your ear and you felt your whole body grow hotter.

You were mentally cursing at yourself for feeling that way. He was a murderer and had just killed someone in front of you.

Yet, you couldn't help feeling horny at how close he was.

God, you were pathetic.

"I-" Took you a moment to form a coherent phrase as all of a sudden you felt warm, wet kisses being left on your neck. "Are you going to hurt me?"

You couldn't see his face and didn't dare to. But you heard his giggle.

"Never, princess."

His gloved hands met your waist and you felt a pool of your own arousal accumulate on your underwear.

One of his hands moved to the band of your mini skirt, playing with it.

"You are really pretty, do you know that?" Both his hands traveled down your skirt to find themselves under your tights, pulling your legs up to circle his waist.

"I-I've never-" Your breath got caught up in your throat. "Oh god."

You moaned loudly as you felt one of his gloved fingers press firmly against your sweet button.

The friction on your clit made you jump a bit, humping yourself accidentally against his crotch.

"Can i make you feel good, princess?" Your eyes were closed as you knew he was unmasked. His lips found a way to yours as his hands slid up and down your tights.

Your lips together were in a slow and hot motion as your hands met the back of his head, only to encounter the fabric of his hoodie over his head.

As you pushed him closer to you, his tongue slipped inside your mouth in a sloppy and messy kiss.

You had little to no experience, but, kissing him? God, was like meeting heaven without ever entering.

He broke the kiss apart just to look at yours still closed eyes.

"I need you to answer me, princess." He watched closely as your whimpered when he grabbed the flesh of your butt.

"Yes, please." You could feel your voice tremble but you couldn't care less. You knew how wrong you were but you couldn't help. You've never wanted anything harder.

The next second you didn't think much as you felt his hand cup your pussy over your underwear.

You left out a pornographic moan as he was quick to slid your underwear to the side just to slid a finger over your already wet folds.

The wet sounds that left your pussy made you feel hotter than before, your face heating up while grabbing the back of his hoodie, too worked up to even think about who is it or to even open your eyes to his unknown identity.

Still holding you close to his waist, you felt him going down and kneeling on the floor.

With your legs over his broad shoulders, you felt as his hands slid back and forth over your tights and ass.

You opened your eyes to find yourself a bit disappointed. His mask was up his head, which meant you couldn't see anything.

But you could feel.

He slid your panties back to the side only to aggressively shove his tongue over your wet folds, loving the sound of your moans as he pleasured you.

He hummed into your pussy as he licked another strip of it. The shocks it sent over your whole body had you whimpering loudly, as you pushed his head harder over you.

He smiled going down on you, sucking on your clit grinding his teeth lightly against you.

Feeling you moving more over him, he forced his tongue up your clit in an eight nonstop motion.

The pleasure you felt was unmeasurable as a totally new feeling. Christ, you couldn't keep yourself quiet. You were moaning loudly nonstop as he kept sucking you off.

He felt your legs shake as you discovered that new feeling of that knot ready to untie on your lower belly.

Feeling you shaky, his grip on you became stronger, pulling you to himself and sucking on your clit harder.

As you were each second closer to your high, he felt you wet enough to be able to take his fingers.

Whilst sucking on your clit, he guided one of his now ungloved fingers to your tight entrance, pushing it in.

After that, everything felt like a blur.

He pumped his fingers in and out of you as his teeth brushed lightly against your clit at his aggressive motion.

The feeling of him filling you up with only his fingers felt too overwhelming followed by his wet and hot tongue sliding against your most sensitive spot.

He curved his finger inside of you only to hit that spongy spot, snapping the tight knot in your belly and getting a scream out of you.

He smiled while licking you clean, getting up still holding you high with one of his hands, offering the one that was in your pussy for you to lick clean.

Getting his mask right on the face, he got up to stare at you doing a good work.

"Such a good girl." He murmured as you sucked his finger off. You whimpered as he took his finger out of your mouth, feeling you get your consciousness back after getting out of the high your orgasm brought you.

"Keep your eyes open, sweetheart." His ungloved hand slid to his mask, which he pulled off to kiss you now seeing him.

Your lips closed against each other as you felt your own taste on your tongue. You tasted sour and a bit sweet on his lips as you recognized it coming of yourself.

You just then realized he was unmasked. And told you to keep your eyes open, not that you exactly obeyed.

As you opened your eyes you felt the heavy gaze of Connor Rjikers over you.

Just in that moment you realized what you've done. And with who you've done.

In that dark alley and alone with a serial killer you realized he was not just a murderer. He was the guy you were in love with, your best friend's hot brother.

[paragonrobits]

Movie Review - Holy Musical B@man!

I am a simple person, with simple tastes (albeit ones that periodically have me wistfully imagining people incredulously asking me if my brain is broken or if my entire life to date has been an incredibly elaborate bit I am doing), and my tastes in movies are fairly straightforward. Oh, yes there are certainly layers to it; on the proper occasion, perhaps one day my reviews will give me room to ramble on about my undying fixation on ‘robots and nonhumans as personhood’ plot elements, or extensive use of practical effects, and my love of bathos (or, as I always assumed it to be, the dramatic changing of register for comic effect, but apparently that’s a different thing), and it is this last point that I keep thinking about with Holy Musical; namely, ITS REALLY GOSHDARN FUNNY.

I’m not a very emotionally demonstrative person. It’s not that I am consciously detached or try to limit my expressions, but I am NATURALLY not a very emotive person; it’s just not natural or easy for me to express myself with the same extremes as other people do. Sometimes this is a problem; around my family I find myself having to constantly overact because they get upset and take it personally when my normal reactions are subdued. When I find something funny, I usually only have a small response; a small laugh, a little giggle, something like that. And when something gets a big belly-busting ‘oh god someone send help I can’t stop’ laugh, that’s either me making a TRULY HORRIBLE pun so awful I can’t even say it before busting up laughing, or I really was having the time of my life enjoying something.

This movie is the latter; whatever else it has going on, it got me a TON of laughs, over and over, and for that, I really have to appreciate it. Whatever else it has going on, it is genuinely and consistently funny.

On a broad strokes basis, this movie strikes me as being something of a reconstructive parody; specifically of the darker and edgier Batman, with both the first two Nolan Batman movies and Frank Millar’s well known (infamous, in my book, as I REALLY don’t much care for it) The Dark Knight Returns. Early stage Batman of this musical is definitely a comedic depiction of Batman at his most, to quote Overly Sarcastic Production’s take on the matter, ‘Punisher in a silly hat’. I normally DON’T like this take on Batman at all; I can’t stand people who go online and sincerely say that Batman is a billionaire that beats up poor people or reduce a nearly 100 year old running character to some pithy remarks so they can feel like a smart aleck for a few minutes. Yet somehow, this play makes it work for me; it’s probably because its just SO over the top and coming from a place of love that I really don’t mind, say, Batman depicted as an overzealous hunter of criminals that’s willing to pop out PLANE-MOUNTED GUNS on a guy who technically stole from his own till by forgetting to put in some money before he left.

Following a brief falling out with Alfred (who is essentially all of Batman’s friends in disguise, including Lucius Fox, a joke that had me wincing in discomfort the moment it popped up and feeling profoundly relieved when it just moved on, only to be repeated a few more times; frankly, I feel that if this has come out a few years earlier, we would be seeing outright stereotype racism jokes; the corners of the Internet this would have been popular around at the time went nuts for that and I hate that), Batman ultimately turns a new leaf when he meets Dick Grayson, in this portrayal played off more as a brotherly character rather than the more familiar depiction of them as a father and son duo. There is a LOT of Burt Ward’s performance as Robin from the Adam West Batman series, and this brings me to the fundamental point.

I feel that this musical is all about Batman starting out as a dark and edgy jerk-face with an overly zealous approach to crime and playing all the worst borderline fascistic interpretations of the character to comic excess, to gradually mellowing out as he befriends Robin and becoming a much more genuine and humane character, and with the campy tone, by the end of his character arc he resembles nothing less than Adam West’s famous depiction of Batman, played straight and with love, and I HAVE to appreciate that; it's sort of a love letter to camp and not being ashamed of its roots, as a lot of the ‘comics can be SUPER SERIOUS and we don’t have to be gross and campy’ attitude tends to go.

Batman’s villains are similarly extremely campy and they’re an absolute BLAST; virtually every line from them is packed to the brim with thematic puns and in particular I really like this musical’s take on Penguin; less a mob boss guy, and more of a heavily bird-themed crime villain who can’t go more than a few words without working in bird puns, and I LOVE IT. Everyone is like this, from Poison Ivy to Catwoman (And this alone is probably an indicator of this musical’s lean towards the likes of the West Batman show, as Catwoman hasn’t been considered a rogue in QUITE a while and her portrayal here is a dead ringer for that era). Of note, Joker off-handedly dies off screen early on. I say GOOD RIDDANCE. His role is instead filled by Sweet Tooth, an absolutely delightful villain chock full of furiously quick candy puns, genuine menace and a ton of fun pretty much every moment he’s on screen.

He’s very clearly a Joker stand-in, but without the kind of baggage that Joker himself usually brings on board. Its with him that we have a scene taken directly from the iconic ‘choose who dies’ bit from The Dark Knight, but instead voting on whether Robin lives or dies; I was struck at them in the death of Jason Todd, which never fails to impact me. (Perhaps not as much as harshly as Jason Todd outright referencing it in Injustice 2, but this is pretty close.) He adds in a Harley Quinn analogue, who carries both the blatant abusive dynamic and being a legitimate threat in her own right despite her silly demeanor. Interestingly enough, despite my assumptions that he was an original creation of this project, he actually IS a pre existing character, but a very minor one; he apparently has only had a couple of appearances prior to this and was considered forgettable even by the standards of one off gimmick villains. I consider this the equivalent of someone bringing back the Penny Plunderer as a genuine villain without losing a bit of campiness.

I mentioned before that I feel this musical covers elements of the Nolan movies and Millar’s work. From the latter, we have other superheroes periodically making appearances throughout, and here’s where we get SUPERMAN. Now, I’m honestly pretty defensive about works, especially parodies, getting Superman right in any capacity; I get REALLY touchy about it, and honestly, I think this movie does better to give Superman an antagonistic role than The Dark Knight Returns did, even with a similar scene (albeit with Obama rather than Reagan); instead of being a government stooge, this take on Superman is deeply insecure and resentful of Batman’s popularity despite his own vastly greater power and success, which also feels like something of a meta commentary on Batman often being perceived as a better character than Superman. (PErsonally I feel a guy in his 30s who has mastery of ALL the skills and martial arts disciplines, despite individual ones taking a LIFETIME to learn, is even more inherently absurd than a superpowered alien that happens to look exactly like a human, but that’s a whole different rant.) We see a bunch of other heroes throughout, most especially Green Lantern who has a running gag of being late for a Thing with Solomon Grundy (I don’t know if Grundy was picked for specifically starting out as a Golden Age Green Lantern villain, but I’d like to think so), and is portrayed as a shlubby Brooklynite, which is honestly a take that feels… right. Not sure why, but it does!

Ultimately, it comes down to Batman outright just asking Superman for help, because he’s the only one that can do things on that scale; essentially having him drop his ego and pride to sincerely ask for help, which feels like a really nice way to directly address the rivalry that is applied to them in a lot of comedic works and come to terms between them, and Superman doing the famous Reeves Time Warp spin (which was alluded to earlier in the movie) to undo catastrophe.

This in particular cemented a feeling that the movie is essentially about Batman developing from a parody of his darkest and most edgy characterizations set off by people imitating the vibes of the Dark Knight Returns and the Nolan movies, through a storyline that incorporates aspects of both into its plot, and at the end, through his friendship with Robin (a character notably absent from the Nolan movies save for Rise, and honestly I don’t feel that counts), and embracing the most fun and campy aspects through Robin, THE old school campy character, developing into something akin to Adam West’s Batman.

That said, Batman himself is a bit of a hard sell here. He’s a fun character, no question, especially as the movie progresses. But while he IS fun, he generally does work better as a straight man and it’s hard to say he handles that super well, at least to me. I do think Batman being just as quirky and weird as his cast is appropriate, but he’s mostly interesting not on his own but how people react to him. A lot of his best bits here are when he’s part of a larger scene, or people are reacting to him; his manchild mannerisms and demented behavior get a lot funnier then. They’re never bad, but they’re not really GREAT per se.

But all the same, it IS a genuinely fun experience that had me busting out laughing like a self-satisfied hyena, and you know what, I love it just for that alone. A great watch, all around!

Some other things of note:

- I really liked how no one seems to know what a robin is. “What is that, some kind of lizard?” And Robin’s parents being assassinated by one is honestly so bizarre but I can see that being a thing in the DC universe.

- Pour one out for poor old Killer Croc, who died as he lived; poisoning the water supply in the tradition of camp villains of old!

- People just… knowing that Superman is Clark Kent is honestly kind of a gas. Yes, there ARE reasons why he maintains his secret identity, but it's fun for the people involved to play it as a non-issue.

- Not a gag but Plastic Man looks fantastic in his brief appearance.

- Also not a gag but I read Garth Ennis’ Batman Reptilian not too long ago, and I’m struck by how both these works seem to poke at the idea of a much more brutal and callous Batman. Not much of a similarity, true, but it is striking how they go in opposite directions; this one opts for escape into the blessed realms of camp, while the other… well, it’s a Garth Ennis work, its exactly what you’d expect from the person who made the Punisher (and a completely non-ironic take) a signature character. If you HAVE to have Batman being the sort of person who takes glee in plane weaponry, I’d rather it be played for comedy.

- There’s a LOT of similarities between this and the much later Lego Batman. Apparently the people who made this even commented on that!

- Okay, okay, Robin determining his hero identity in a parallel of Batman’s is hysterical. SEARCH YOUR HEART. IT IS TRUE.

[twilightzonecloseup]

1.02b Dreams for Sale

Director: Tommy Lee Wallace

Writer: Joe Gannon

Cinematographer: Bradford May

Summary:

On one sunny afternoon, a family is enjoying an idyllic picnic in the country. Mom (Meg Foster) and dad are setting out lunch while the twins play monkey in the middle with their golden retriever. It’s a celebration for the family as they’ve bought a new house and dad got a pay raise at work. Strangeness seeps into what should be a perfect scene when mom’s brain starts playing tricks on her. She could have sworn that she heard dad open the bottle of champagne twice. She could have sworn she already set the chicken out on the blanket, but it’s still wrapped up in the basket. These glitches in perception amp up until mom can’t take it anymore. She screams and wakes, as if from a nightmare, in a pod hooked up to a computer, in a row of pods hooked up to computers. Screens advertise “Fully Interactive Dreams” including a “Country Picnic.” She steps out of her pod to find a massive enclosed facility in varying shades of gray and slate blue. A technician approaches her and quickly diagnoses the problem. He assures her that he’ll get the machine up and running so that she can finish the last six minutes of her allotted dream time. Then, of course, she has to get back to work. Mom wakes up on the picnic blanket, her head resting on dad’s lap. She tells him about the horrible dream she just had. Back at the facility the dream machine has had a major malfunction and the technician calls for help, but it’s too late—she’s dead.

More about Dreams for Sale:

When the first season of TZ ‘85 was made, the team had the luxury of putting together each of the stories before the series went to air. This had two distinct advantages within the show’s anthology format: 

1. flexibility in the lengths of the stories and 

2. ability to mix and match which stories to pair up. 

Approaching each segment as a standalone short film without a hard runtime to stick to meant that no story was forced to overstay its welcome, and no story would have to be jammed into too short of a time slot. Thinking back to TZ ‘59, there are stories from seasons 1-3 & 5 that could be even better with a shorter or longer runtime. There are also plenty of stories from season 4 that were detrimentally inflated to fit the longer time slot. Having the freedom to tell the chosen stories in the amount of time that the creative team felt was appropriate must have felt like a real boon. Overall, I think it works, though perhaps it was too much of a departure from the format of the original TZ for audiences. After all, the third season of TZ ‘85 returned to the 30-minute format of the original series and that season’s ratings grew as it aired. Maybe the format reminded the contemporary TV audience of Night Gallery (1969) more than Twilight Zone? It’s speculation of course, but as I’ll delve into further as this project continues, the viewing public’s expectations for anything branded with The Twilight Zone, can be very particular. 

Dreams for Sale is the first shorter segment of the series that went to air. One could certainly build the story out to something longer—it has more than a little in common with the feature-length film The Matrix (1999)—but it’s very striking as a vignette. 

Dreams for Sale works well as a segue between the other two segments of this episode. (In contrast to Night Gallery’s use of shorts, which always feel like non sequiturs.) The previous segment, Wordplay, has a similar progression to Dreams: very grounded, relatable moments where the protagonist questions their perceptions ramping up to a preternatural degree. Tonally, however, it has a bit more in common with the following segment, Chameleon. Both are more inclined toward science-fiction and the challenge to the protagonist’s understanding of the world results in a reshaped concept of their lived reality. 

One last note: This was the first story to air not directed by Wes Craven. Instead, this installment was done by Tommy Lee Wallace, director of the unjustly maligned Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982) and the justly maligned It (1990). Since this post is going up in the middle of Spooky Season, I’m gonna take a second to recommend Halloween III for seasonal viewing. (Not if you’re afraid of bugs though!) Halloween III was an interesting but failed experiment to take the Halloween franchise in a broader direction. BUT, I think if you take Season of the Witch on its own terms as a horror movie set at Halloween, and not as part of the franchise, it’s enjoyable and strange. It’s got a real eerie vibe and a way-too-catchy commercial jingle.

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[lake-archive]

Chapter 40 - That One Visit

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Fandom: Ensemble Stars

Series: Alte Liebe Rostet Nicht

Characters: Izumi Sena, Ritsu Sakuma, Leo Tsukinaga, Tsukasa Suou, Arashi Narukami, Anja-Sophia 'Ann' Wolff (OC) (mentioned)

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Sure, hiatus is hiatus. That never meant the following however: Izumi staying back and just letting those guys and Naru–Chan off the hook. Especially not when they had to put in a bit more effort due to him missing out on some idol activities. He didn’t slack off either of course, trying his best to keep up with his usual routine and to be in tip top shape! Sure, he is living under the same roof as a literal sloth but that didn’t stop him! He had his routine and that was that! Nothing could stop him! Not like someone was going to anyway.

Regardless, today marks one of the days where he would check up on his unit mates, right when they were practicing. They better not be slacking off after all! Or he would make sure to give them a good earful and whip them into shape if he really has to! He has the time after all. But would he get the chance to? Of course not. Because the moment the guys would even notice him the first one to dash over to him would be Naru–Chan, her looking so excited whenever seeing her childhood friend. And it was always overwhelming.

“Haha, look who decided to show up just now~!” She even announced which made the others turn without hesitation. The next one jumping in was Leo, always.

“Oh, Sena! Hello hello! We’re doing juuust fine~ See see? And yes, I’ve not forgotten one meal ever since your absence! Wahaha!” He announced, always loving to point the last part out like a little kid. 

“You better…” Izumi only sighed, having no longer any words left for this. That Leo managed to pull his own though… Impressive. That or the others took over that duty in the meantime. One of those things… As long as Leo was still alive and didn’t run off.

“ Guys ! Would you give Sena–Senpai some space!?” Kasa–Kun was always around for that, ready to prevent a possible escalation… Yet he was always too late. Then again, not like anyone could manage them to begin with. It was a lot on a little boy like him probably. “Besides, we still have something to discuss.”

“Aww, come on Tsukasa–Chan. Just for a little while? It won’t be long.” Naru–Chan countered, as upbeat as she liked to present herself.

“But—”

“Let them Suu–Chan. They’re just excited to see Secchan.” Kuma–Kun interrupted, trying to calm Kasa–Kun down perhaps. “Well, things have been a little different without him around. I see why not.”

“Hah, fine… Don’t make it too long though.” The youngest seemed to give in way too easily into those demands.That or he just didn’t have the energy… Which was understandable. 

“Oh, are you delivering another bento?” Leo asked with no hesitation. “Sena, did you forget where the office was? And I thought I’m forgetful!”

“Wha— No! Do you see anything in my hands!?” Izumi responded. Where was that coming from!? 

“Juuust wondering~”

“Ugh… I’m here to check up on you guys.”

“Aww, you’re still thinking of us. How sweet of you~” Naru–Chan said rather teasingly, then chuckling. “But we’re doing fine. You don’t have to worry about us.”

“Fine can mean a lot of things with you guys…” He countered. “No, really. It can mean more than you might think…”

“You don’t trust us anymore? My, how hurtful Izumi–Chan.”

“Don’t twist my words around! Can’t I come here just because!?”

“Just because huh~ How unusual Secchan.” Ugh, now Kuma–Kun was joining in on this. “Are you missing us already~?”

“I… In… Not even in your dreams!” His lips would deny with a huff yet the words were not entirely true. ‘Missing them’ would be a bit of a stretch but he does enjoy his time with them. That much was true. So perhaps he was going to look forward to these days once more. 

“Rude…”

“Sh… Shut it Kuma–Kun! I’ve already got someone else messing with me! I don’t need a second one!”

“Huh? Someone else is messing with you?” Naru–Chan’s ears caught wind of this. Of course she would notice that right away. Drat! He and his mouth… “My my Izumi–Chan~ Do you have to tell us something?”

“No! Why would I—”

“You sure? You and Miss Ghost get along pretty well lately!” Leo threw in. “You’re like more than besties now!”

“Wha— Why do you bring her into this now!?” Izumi shouted, forcing his embarrassment to tone down. 

“I agree with Tsukinaga–Senpai on this one I’m afraid.” Kasa–Kun is against him too!? Are they all against him since he left or what!? “You and Ann–San are very close. The days you two were just screaming at each other so loud that everyone heard you up to the highest floor still feels surreal.”

“Right right!? I knew Suou would catch on!” Leo nodded. “It’s been soo long! Sadly that also took an inspiration source away from me but… Can’t be helped.”

“Tsukinaga–Senpai!? Are you being serious right now!?”

“That’s Tsukip for you.” Kuma–Kun chuckled, the only one somewhat unfazed. “But seriously, are Secchan and Ann–Chan a couple now? Is this where we are supposed to congratulate him?”

Wha— When did the conversation turn into that nonsense!? “Hah? Me and her? Pff, no way.” Izumi scoffed in the end, but it was true. A couple? No way in hell! “Alright… Maybe friends… Kind of. Yeah, I would go that far. But there’s nothing else between her and—” “Hooold it there Sena!” Of course the composer of the group had to interrupt. “Listen to yourself for a second.”

Izumi crossed his arms. “Why?”

“Repeat what you said. But slowly. Very slowly if you have to.”

“Ugh… Stop beating around the bush. What are you on about Leo–Kun?”

“Ok fine. I’ll just say it. You never called Ann–Chan by ‘her’ before.”

“Don’t be— Wait a minute…” He stopped for a second there. Did he… Actually… He was forced to think back about conversations he either had with Ann or in her presence. He never really thought about it and reflected on it fairly closely. He… Wait… He did refer to Ann as ‘she’ recently! When did he do that!? And why did she never point it out!? In fact, she was acting like always towards him, without a care in the world! Actually no, scratch that, she should’ve said something before. When he was referring to her as a ‘they’, right? It was because he didn’t see her as a woman then. He didn’t want to, he refused. Her? A woman back then? No way. He couldn’t. Ann and a woman, in what world— Hold on, don’t tell him he started to see her as a woman now!? If he thought about it very closely for a short moment… Did he seriously start to see her as a woman here!? And she didn’t point it out!? She didn’t even point the ‘they’ out! Does she even care!? Maybe she doesn’t! Actually why was he wasting his thoughts on that now!? What the actual— “Huh… Could it be…” He heard Naru–Chan speak up all of a sudden which made him get back to reality, yet the confusion was written all over his face. Even more once she continued to speak, asking:  “Izumi– Chan… Are you in love?”

As if he had been caught red handed he noticed his cheeks litting up, staring at her in disbelief. She said it! That woman actually said it! She had the guts to point it out! Just like that! “In love!?” He repeated, nearly yelling. “Don’t make stuff like that up now! It’s not very funny you know!”

“Oh I wasn’t being funny. I was being totally serious here~” She chuckled, a victorious smile on her face. “But don’t answer. I think I already know. Best of luck Izumi–Chan~”

“I said I’m not— Why you…” He nearly growled, not wanting to think about it. That was an outrageous claim. In love!? He!? With Ann!? Did Naru–Chan fall on her head or something!? Ugh.. Why was he being so defensive though? N… No way he… Actually… Maybe… Was he?

When thinking back on some things… Was there a chance? The two were kinda on dates before after all. And ever since seeing more of her, let alone living with her… Things go smoother. He kind of liked it actually, growing fond of her. At first he thought it was just because she was the little girl from years ago and it might play a factor. He would lie if he said it didn’t. But… Even before that… To some degree… Ugh, that’s a headache to think about. Did he seriously start to see her that way now? He wouldn’t know when, he just hated it that Naru–Chan’s outrageous claim could hold some weight. Ugh, not like these feelings would be returned though.

“Anyway, change of topic.” He quickly said before anyone else could get a funny idea. “I’m not seeing Patch anywhere. Did you leave him somewhere Kuma–Kun?”

“Hm? Nyeli?” The one responded with a question before nodding. “Yeah. Ann–Chan is sitting him. He’s in her office.”

“So he’s fine at least. That’s good to know.”

“Hmm~? Wanted to see your girlfriend and your little bro—”

“Don’t you dare finish that!”

Just when he thought the worst was over…

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[pagesfromthevoid]

I'm always down for exploring Benedict and Miss Everlys alone time !

Whatever the Poets Say | b.b. | 17

Benedict Bridgerton x fem!reader

Word Count: 2.7k

Warnings: Sexual undertones. Heavy petting.

Author’s Note: Thank you for your patience with this, honestly. It’s been a wild couple weeks and I’m so tired. But I had to get this done! Enjoy!

Series Masterlist | Talk to Me!

Dearest readers,

Last night it seems that the Everly and Bridgerton family had a bit of a falling out. If rumor is true, Mr. Benedict Bridgerton was seen exiting the gentleman’s club with the Viscount and Colin in tow, inebriated and yelling about his devotion. It certainly woke the streets up. Perhaps it was because of what happened with the Queen and her misguided attempt to expose me. Or perhaps something from the past was dredged up before the wedding.

Regardless, Mr. Bridgerton was seen with his brothers following, yelling in the streets about winning back his beloved Miss Everly. Sources say that even the Viscount himself was in on whatever the three men were up to –some are saying it was even his idea. Perhaps there is a romantic bone in that body of his after all. 

Did Mr. Bridgerton go home last night? Or did he find himself tucked away in a quiet corner of the future Mrs. Bridgerton’s bedroom? 

Only time will tell.

Yours truly,

Lady Whistledown

“Your bedroom is not what I imagined it would be,” Benedict hummed as he lounged on her bed, looking around.

She was latching the window and drawing the curtains, waving at Anthony and Colin who looked up at her sheepishly. Once her curtains were closed, she turned and faced Benedict, who was still flush from however much alcohol he had consumed. But he was enthralled by her bedroom, looking around it with a bright smile. Excited by the sudden entry to her private life; as if he was being given something invaluable. 

“Have you imagined my bedroom before?” She asked, brow raised and a teasing grin on her face. 

“I have imagined many things of yours before,” he admitted, sitting up on her bed now. “Your bedroom, your bed, your pillows. Everything that you touch, I have imagined.”

“I cannot decide if that is very sweet, or very strange,” she admitted with a small laugh as she finally crossed the room to him. 

Benedict’s legs opened, and his hands reached out to her hips. Her cheeks flushed with heat as he pulled her to him. He tilted his head up, looking at her with hazy eyes as she rested her hands on his shoulders gently. Something about this position —Benedict’s hands on her waist as he sat on the edge of her bed, and her standing between his parted legs —felt more intimate than she imagined it should. 

“I thought I lost you,” he whispered, rubbing gentle circles with the pads of his thumbs. 

Her hands drifted down his arms, squeezing his biceps timidly. “You would need to do much worse than bed my modiste, Benedict. Though perhaps we try not to find out how much worse, hm?”

He nodded almost frantically, fingers stilling against the fabric of her nightgown. She watched him for a moment, smiling softly as he gazed up at her. One hand remained on his arm as the other raised, running her hand through his hair softly. Benedict hummed in response, closing his eyes as he relished in the feeling of her touch. 

From where she stood, for once she was able to properly look at him. Benedict was taller than her and while they had spent plenty of time admiring one another’s features, being able to look down at him for a moment was something to savor. Though, as her hand ran from his hair to his cheek, she smiled sadly down at him. Even with his eyes closed, she could see they were still puffy from crying, with dried tears caking the corners of his eyes. He wasn’t exaggerating when he said he had been a wreck all evening, it seems. 

“You are so beautiful,” she murmured, stealing his words from earlier in the evening. “I cannot believe you’re mine, Benedict.”

His eyes opened, and he looked up at her with a broad smile that crinkled the corners of his eyes. He leaned into her touch, pulling her closer by her hips. “I am yours; forever and always.”

“Forever and always,” she repeated with a soft smile, both hands now resting below his jaw and holding him there as she admired him still. 

Benedict whispered her name, soft and sure, as he tugged her closer. His hands tried pushing her nightgown up, but she stopped him. He looked up at her, his brow furrowed as she shook her head. “Please,” he pleaded, looking up at her still. 

“As tempting as you may be,” she explained, running her thumb over his cheekbone gently. “You will be sober when you have me, Mr. Bridgerton.”

“Even if it is before the wedding?”

His voice was hopeful; sinfully hopeful as she nodded. Her own smile said it all. “Even if it is before the wedding.”

Her confirmation seemed to ease Benedict’s desire for the moment as his grip loosened on her. But he kept his gaze fixed to her face as he tried to formulate his next request. “Am I still allowed to sleep beside you, at least?” 

She couldn’t help but laugh some, nodding as she pulled back from him. “You did come all this way…”

“And I am truly too exhausted to make a bed on the floor.”

She rolled her eyes as she slipped her robe off and set it on her chair. She could feel his eyes on her, practically burning a hole through her nightgown. Benedict watched her every move as she padded across the wooden floors, slipping under her covers with ease. Then, she rested her hands in her lap, waiting expectantly. 

“Oh, right,” Benedict sputtered, pushing himself off her bed. 

It was far more amusing than it was seductive to watch Benedict pry off his clothing, truthfully. He struggled to untie his ascot, tugging it a little too hard before tossing it aside. And he fumbled as he kicked his boots to the side, certainly making anyone awake aware of his presence. His hands ran through his hair, messing it up further as he decided what he needed to do next. His suspenders were haphazardly yanked off next, tossed to the side with his boots. 

His hands hesitated at the top button of his shirt though. For a moment, he considered simply leaving it on —but after a few seconds, he glanced up at her. She had her thumb to her lip, biting at the nail, as she watched him closely. Waiting with baited breath, it seemed, for his decision. Benedict grinned to himself, looking down for a moment as he felt the heat rush to his cheeks, before he finally unbuttoned his shirt slowly. 

Benedict did not meet her eyes as he undressed, carefully pulling his shirt off his body before discarding it. But he could hear her sharp inhale as he did; and it made him smile to himself. Swallowing hard, he took two rather long strides before he found himself at the edge of her bed, and he slipped under the blankets beside her. Her thumbnail was still being bitten anxiously, and he was looking at his hands as he tried to conceal his smile. 

It was not the first time Benedict and her shared a bed. However, it was the first time she had seen him in a state of undress. 

“I…goodnight, Benedict,” she whispered, voice trembling some as she reached to blow out the candle at her bedside. 

Benedict hesitated a moment before leaning over as she returned to her spot in the bed. She gasped softly as he captured her lips with his. But as quick as he kissed her, he pulled back with a smile. “Goodnight, my love.”

                                        *****

When dawn broke, she found herself wrapped in Benedict’s arms, cheek pressed to his bare chest. He was still soundly sleeping, arms wound around her shoulders with his cheek pressed to the top of her head. With him still asleep, she took a moment to wiggle from his grasp carefully –trying not to wake him –so that she could pull away and truly admire how handsome he was. She rested on her elbows, weight on the bed, as she looked him up and down for a moment, memorizing the curves of his body before her eyes settled just above where the blanket rested on his waist.

This was the closest to a naked man she had ever been; and he wasn’t even naked. He was simply shirtless. But he was there, in her bed, and she couldn’t help but wonder what more there was to see about her future husband. She kept her hands to herself, though, simply admiring him with a soft smile. Well, she kept her hands above the blankets –she couldn’t help herself as she rested one hand against his chest, feeling his steady heartbeat as he slept. Chest rising and falling slowly, peacefully.

Was this what she got to look forward to every day, then? Waking up to Benedict, asleep in their bed. At peace, and calm? It almost felt like a dream, to be so in love with him. To be so lucky as to have him.

His hand covered hers suddenly, and she jumped a bit, surprised. Benedict’s eyes opened, half lidded from sleep still. But he was smiling down at her, lazily. “Good morning,” he whispered, though he was clearly still half asleep.

“Good morning, love,” she returned, sitting up now and resting her back against her pillows. “How are you feeling this morning?”

He yawned, rolling to his side to nestle his face into her side as he draped his arms over her stomach. His voice was muffled as he spoke into her nightgown. “Far better than I expected I would. Though, I got to wake up to you –so I feel wonderful.”

“Flattery gets you very far,” she teased, running her hand through his hair as he pulled himself as close as he could to her.

“How long have you been awake?” He asked, peering up at her from his spot against her side.

“Not long.” She hummed a bit, looking out towards the window but the curtains were still drawn. Only a sliver of sunlight crept into the bedroom, though she wasn’t going to leave her place beside him any time soon.

“Ah, so you were watching me sleep, then?” He teased, rolling onto his back finally to look up at her properly. She kept her eyes on the curtains.

“I was not simply watching as you slept,” she countered, crossing her arms over her chest as she pouted some. “I was just…admiring how you look when you are asleep.”

“You mean when I am half naked in your bed.”

There was a smile in his voice as she finally looked down at him, feeling her cheeks warm from embarrassment. “You make me sound so crass.”

“So you were!” He teased, sitting up beside her now, that same grin on his face.

“Well, I do not know what else you would expect me to do!” She argued, flustered as she looked down at her hands. “You are the first man I have ever had in my bed –I think it is only fair that I’m curious.”

“You’re very pretty when you’re frustrated,” he offered, tugging now at the fabric at her waist. “Come here.”

She looked up at him, frowning some as he pulled her into his lap. Her legs rested where her head would lay, and she sat sideways in his lap now. Benedict reached up, pushing a stray hair behind her ear. His free hand took hers, moving to drape it around his neck. 

“What are you curious about?” He asked, voice soft as he lifted her other hand and followed the same motion. Her hands intertwined behind his head loosely. Her breath hitched her throat, and she tried to pull back but Benedict took hold of her wrists gently, keeping her in place. “You do not need to worry, my love. I am not going to make fun of you, or hurt you. Please, let me satisfy your curiosity.”

She bit at her lip gently, swallowing hard as she looked down at her lap. If he listened close enough, she was certain Benedict would be able to hear her heart pounding in her chest. But he whispered her name softly, lifting her chin to make her look at him again.

“What are you curious about?” He repeated, still soft. Still gentle as he held her in place by her wrist and chin.

“I…I am curious about…” Words were suddenly very difficult to form, which for a writer was a problem. But she didn’t know how to phrase what she wanted to say. Truth be told, she didn’t even know what she wanted to say. “I have read plenty of books,” she settled on saying, taking a breath as she tried to steady her racing heart and trembling hands. “And I know the…general idea of what happens between a man and a woman –how it should feel; how it does feel. But I am…well, I am curious about…” Her eyes dropped to his chest, and she pulled one hand away from his neck to trace her hand down his front carefully. Timidly. “I am curious about everything, Benedict. About you; about how you feel against my skin. How you sound, and taste. I…I am just…”

“Curious,” he finished, setting his hand over hers. “Can I…can I show you something?” 

Her brow furrowed some but she nodded meekly, allowing him to shift her out of his lap and back onto the bed. He kept her hand in his, pressed against his beating heart. Much like hers, it was racing in his chest. Threatening to burst through at any moment. Her eyes remained on his, unsure what he was doing as he slowly drifted their hands down his chest. His skin was smooth but littered with freckles that spread across his body like stars in the sky. Her hand began to shake as he continued to draw her hand down, closer to his stomach where he tensed slightly as her hand pressed against it. It was then that she realized what he was doing; or, where he was going. 

Benedict’s and her hands stopped right above where his pants hit his hips. Her breath caught once more in her throat as he looked at her, waiting for her to tell him to stop. But she didn’t; instead, her hand left his and trailed further down itself. Running her hand over his thigh that was hidden under the blankets still. He leaned his head back some, taking a moment to savor in her touch as she finally ran her hand over the growing bulge in his trousers. He sucked in a breath, and she yanked her hand back –eyes wide as she looked up at him, worried she hurt him. But he shook his head, taking her hand once more.

“It’s okay,” he reassured, kissing her knuckles one by one. Then the pads of each of her fingers. “Do you see what you do to me? Even the slightest touch…” 

Carefully, he placed her hand back on him, pressing down just barely. He took another breath, closing his eyes for a moment before he released her hand. She waited for just a second before she pulled her own away. Benedict leaned back, watching her with that crooked grin of his, unable to help it as he adjusted himself in the bed. Her silence was far from uncomfortable; he could see the gears turning in her head as she processed what he had just done.

Her hand reached for his now, fingers wrapping around his wrist gently as she lifted his hand and pressed it against her breast carefully. Benedict inhaled sharply, looking down at her now as he adjusted his hold on her –understanding what she was trying to do, though he showed her where she seemed to really want to be touched as he cupped her breasts in his hands. She was shaking, and he could see it as he pulled away.

“You do not have to –”

“You’re trembling,” he pointed out, pulling her back into his arms now. Her back pressed against his chest as he spread his legs, settling her between them. “We will take things as slow as you need, my love.”

Slow was not what she wanted, truthfully.

———

Taglist: @queensgirl718 @drowninginaseaofbooks @severewobblerlightdragon @wildflowerel @just-an-ace-elf @kamala-khann

[rayshippouuchiha]

Ray-Ray, do you have any headcanons for a Ready Made Family AU: Kyoraku Style? I feel like he and Ichigo would make a great pair, because Shunsui is known as a womaniser, whether he is exaggerating or not, but Ichigo has her sisters to protect and she isn't gonna take any of that from him.

Okay okay okay! I got another ask that immediately made me think of this one:

Ray darling I have this AU rattling around in my head where Ichigo kills the Kenpachi(not Zaraki) without knowing how he is. Like the 11th is out in Rukon for some reason and the dude messes with one of Ichigo's friends Ichigo stabs him. He now has a division he has no clue what to do with and he's not allowed to refuse. Also, Ichigo has absolutely zero tolerance for the anti-kido, no helping your friends bullshit. I've no clue what do with this so just shouting it into the void for others

And I realized it would fit perfectly into this AU!

So! We've got an Ichigo who, through a series of events, has ended up on her own in Rukongai with two little sisters to raise and care for.

All three of them need food to various degrees as well as shelter but even with Ichigo eating way less than she needs to be on the regular and spending more than one night out under the stars while she works to bring in money, it never seems to be enough.

But Ichigo is strong and her power seems to only grow with every fight, with every hardship she overcomes. She is an uncharted ocean of reiryoku who spends her days and nights with her teeth gritted, trying desperately to keep her power from leaking out, from alerting anyone to the truth of her abilities.

It is, in fact, what had caused the final fallout between her and Isshin.

Isshin had wanted her to submit herself to the fate of becoming a Shinigami but Ichigo ... Ichigo, for all that she could hold her own in a fight and often enjoyed it, had only wanted peace. Had only wanted a life of her own with her sisters safe at her side and, perhaps, one day something warm and sweet to call her own.

Isshin had disagreed.

Ichigo had been forced to insist.

And now her life has become a string of fights with only brief moments of peace between them. Has become this delicate balance between staying hidden and pushing herself desperately to become stronger and stronger because the twins need her to be the best she possibly can be.

So she hunts hollows, tracks down thieves, does construction, lifts and carries freight, fights gangs and petty criminals, and deals with all of the darkness that the Shinigami all too often overlook, safe as they are in their glorious fortress. Anything and everything she can do to provide for the girls.

She gains a bit of a reputation in the outer districts as someone to call on when the Shinigami will not help. And so, in the end, no matter how much the idea makes Ichigo's teeth itch, she becomes some bastardized form of substitute Shinigami in all but name and rank.

But at least she stays hidden from the powers that matter and she holds onto that last bit of freedom with ragged hands.

It gets a little easier when Yuzu and Karin grow a little older, able to be trusted with a neighbor or on their own for a few hours here and there and freeing up Ichigo to find even more work.

It's not perfect but it's a life, one Ichigo is almost proud of even.

So, of course, a Shinigami has to ruin it all.

Ichigo is carting crates at a bakery closer to Seireitei than she normally likes to get. She makes an exception for this place because the woman who runs it doesn't mind watching the twins and has a habit of plying them with treats throughout the day as Ichigo works.

She senses the trouble first, hears it second, and has to wait precious seconds before it comes into her sight range.

A Shinigami. A captain too from the looks of his clothes.

Ichigo grits her teeth, grabs at her reiryoku with all her strength, and vows to keep her head down.

Which means, of course, that the Shinigami, a handful of his followers trailing behind him, heads directly for her.

Or, to be more accurate, the shop she's working at.

He's loud, boarish in appearance as well as attitude, but the way he shoves rudely past Ichigo without sparing her a glance is actually preferable.

His rudeness to the shopkeeper is more grating but Ichigo simply shoulders another crate and goes about her business.

But then ,,,,

"Brat," Ichigo hears the Shinigami hiss.

And that word sets the hair on the back of her neck on end.

She half turns just in time to see the Shinigami draw back one massive hand, obviously intent on striking someone down.

Ichigo has enough time to register just what, who, has drawn his ire before her mind blanks and her body moves without her consent.

One second she's standing across the shop, a crate on her shoulder and another at her feet, and in the next she's standing in front of the Shinigami, one arm raised to catch him by the wrist, Zangetsu settled firmly in her free hand as easily as breathing and Karin cowering behind her.

"Touch her," Ichigo says flatly, "and it'll be the last thing you do."

A hush falls over the entire area, even the Shinigami's followers go completely silent as they straighten to attention.

"Is that a challenge, little girl?" The captain sneers as he jerks his arm free.

"It's a fact," Ichigo tells him simply, not bothering to try and stop him. Because it is. Peace might have been Ichigo's dream but there is nothing and no one she would not destroy to keep what is hers safe. "But if you want to take it as a challenge I've got no problem making sure you learn the lesson."

The captain laughs, his followers laugh, and Ichigo can't help the way her mouth curls up just a bit at the corners in a snarl.

"I am Kenpachi Kiganjo," the captain, Kenpachi, announces then, one hand already reaching for the zanpakuto on his belt, "and you are going to die."

"Well," Ichigo says, a hand gesture sending Karin scurrying away with Yuzu to hide behind the counter as she tightens her grip on Zangetsu's hilt, "you're welcome to try but I'm warning you now, I've got shit to do later so I'd rather make this quick."

~~~

The shockwave from their clash blows the windows out of the shop but Ichigo can't focus on that at the moment.

~~~

The fight is long and brutal and ends with far more blood than she enjoys.

Ichigo has no interest in killing this Kenpachi Kiganjo, has no interest in the trouble that killing a Shinigami-taicho will doubtlessly bring her.

But he leaves her with no choice.

He refuses to stay down, refuses to accept defeat gracefully.

And the one time Ichigo tries to end the fight and walk away, the one time she tries to show him some degree of mercy, he turns his attention towards the twins yet again, mouth spewing out filth.

So Ichigo does the only thing her instincts and her nature will allow her to do to someone who would speak of what is hers in such a manner.

She puts Zangetsu cleanly through his spine.

He's dead before he realizes she's struck.

Again silence takes over the street.

And again Ichigo pays it no mind.

Instead, she cleans Zangetsu's blade and turns her back on the rapidly cooling corpse.

A long low whistle has the twins poking their heads out of their hiding places, their screams of "Ichi-nee" filling the air as they run to her side.

With the girls wrapped firmly in her arms and all of her efforts to fly beneath the radar thoroughly ruined, Ichigo doesn't bother to pay any attention to any of the other Shinigami who have begun to clamor for her attention.

Instead, she takes a deep breath and steps.

~~~

It doesn't end there of course. Ichigo's luck isn't that good.

Now she's being hunted.

Shinigami seem to be around every corner, her description on all of their lips.

Some manage to find her but she leaves them all beaten and bloodied but alive in a pile behind her.

Instead of the regular beatings discouraging them it only seems to make them more eager, more determined to get closer to her.

It takes months before she sticks around long enough to listen to any of them talk.

To be more accurate they start to ambush her in groups and scream at her as she's busy fighting.

When she finally gets the majority of what they've been trying to tell her, Ichigo just thinks they're all even more ridiculous than before.

There's no way she's going with them back to the Seireitei because there's no way she is a taicho now. She wants nothing to do with Shinigami and she didn't even go to the Academy, which is a fact that makes them all seem even more rapturously delighted for some reason.

Only they don't relent. Weeks more pass and they keep coming, day after endless day. They interfere with her attempts to find work, scaring off any who would hire her and not leaving her in peace long enough for her to hunt Hollows or gang members.

In the end it's the one called Ichinose, a tall and stoic Shinigami, who manages to convince Ichigo to at least visit Seireitei. It is, he says, the only way she might be able to get herself out of the situation she's found herself in.

So, with the twins tucked somewhere safely out of sight, Ichigo goes.

Ichinose is, thankfully, quiet and polite company for the entire trip. Though the speed they move at might also have something to do with that. Ichigo does not, after all, have the better part of a month free to make the trip to and from the inner parts of Seireitei. Haste is necessary.

She doesn't like the whispers or the way people stare at her in her simple and obviously threadbare clothes. Doesn't like any of it at all. But this is her only real option. The Shinigami will not leave her alone and she needs them gone more than she needs to avoid Seireitei at the moment. If this trip will do that then no amount of whispers and stares will stop her.

Ichinose is leading her through a large courtyard when someone finally stops them.

"Oh," a voice, warm and husky and filled with a lazy kind of cheer, calls out then, "who's this little beauty, Ichinose? Don't tell me you're taking her back to the 11th. Haven't seen Kenpachi in a while but she'd be wasted on him."

Ichigo feels the way a scowl immediately crawls its way across her face even as she turns to face the speaker.

"Such a mean expression," the man, tall and handsome in a disheveled sort of way beneath his straw hat and ridiculous pink kimono, practically purrs at her. "It doesn't suit you, little flower. Bet I could make you smile a lot better than Kenpachi ever could."

Frazzled and irritated, run ragged by the stress of the past few months, Ichigo reacts instinctively when he reaches out to grab her hand.

Her fist buries itself right in his smug face and he folds like his strings have been cut.

"Ah," Ichinose speaks up from her side then only to send ice trailing down Ichigo's spine with what he says next.

"I'd like to introduce Kenpachi Ichigo," Ichinose says, "our new 11th Division taicho. I've brought her to tour her new Division."

"Hey," Ichigo cuts in then, rounding on Ichinose with her eyes narrowed sharply, "I thought you said I could get out of this mess if I came here."

"I lied," Ichinose says placidly, barreling on before Ichigo can erupt at him, "Kenpachi-taicho, please meet Kyoraku-taicho, captain of the 8th Division."

Ichigo freezes and turns slowly to stare down at the man whose nose she's very clearly broken. The second Shinigami-taicho she's laid hands on in the past few months after years of avoiding any trace of them.

And in that moment all she can think is

"Are all the taicho here such assholes or am I just special?"

[fan-fantasies]

What a Fool (P.2)

A/N: hey guys! I just wanted to take a moment and ask a favor. I would be honored if you guys would reblog this series or comment on it. The likes make me happy too but I was super excited for this series and it didn’t get the reception I was expecting. I would just like it to reach more people. Thanks for reading!

Warnings: sexually suggestive content, swearing, terrible writing

Pairing: mostly Finan x reader this part

Masterlist

Part One // Part Three

————————————

Uhtred decided to travel back to Winchester for the time being so his men could rest and enjoy themselves. There was peace for a time so he did not see why he should deny them some simple joys.

Once you arrived, everyone went straight to the ale house. You went to sit on the end up Finan pulled you down between him and Osferth. Sihtric scowled at him but you missed it.

“So, maybe we should save some coin and share a room?” Finan suggested to you.

“So I can be kicked out at the first sign of a willing whore who wants to bed you? No thank you,” you laughed.

“I am practicing chastity, lady!” He said. Everyone at the table burst into laughter. “I’m insulted!”

“And I’m the pope,” Osferth said.

“Maybe I’m saving myself for the right woman,” he said, looking directly at you. Something about the look in his eyes sent a shiver down your spine. You were not blind and knew that Finan was handsome, many women had thought so. You also knew he was a good man and a great warrior. The two of you flirted quite often but neither of you cared enough to take it further. Perhaps that was changing.

You all settled into comfortable conversation and the food was actually decent. Finan kept an arm around your waist, holding you close to him. You didn’t think too much of it, as you were all pretty affectionate with one another. You leaned into his side as you listened to different stories being told.

“Have you thought more about my offer?” Finan asked quietly, his closeness making your whole body warm.

“I don’t see why we couldn’t save some coin,” you replied.”

“I’ll make sure you have the comfiest bed in Wessex, my lady,” he chuckled.

“I’m holding you to that,” you said. You felt like someone was staring a hole through your head so you looked up, Sihtric shooting daggers with his eyes. His gaze was fixed upon Finan and his look softened when he looked at you. He seemed almost pained and you were confused.

The night ended rather uneventfully, everyone venturing off on their own. You left Finan to get the room, waiting by the stairs.

“Up and last door on the left. Best view in town,” he winked.

“I’m pretty sure I have the best view right now,” you smirked.

“I can think of ways to make it better.” He stepped closer to you and your heart began to race. He paused only inches away from you. He leaned in and you bit your lip, nervous for what was to come. “Are ya gonna go up?”

“What? Oh, yeah!” You said, turning on your heel and running up the stairs. Finan followed behind leisurely, allowing you to reach the room first. You opened the door and saw that there was only one bed. “You’re sure this is the room you asked for?”

“Positive. Best view in town, best bed for my best girl.” He set his bag down next to the bed and began to take off his armor.

“Well you better not bring back any whores if we’re sharing a bed,” you told him coldly.

“I have no intention of having anyone but you in this bed,” he replied. By the time he was finished undressing, he was left shirtless with just his underpants on. You took off your top few layers, feeling comfortable around him. You had all been through so much together that seeing some skin never bothered any of you.

The bed was big enough for two, but Finan still laid pressed up against you. You could feel his hard muscles through the thin fabric of your nightdress against your back and it sent your mind spiraling. All of your innocent flirting and teasing touches had never amounted to anything before, but now might be your chance.

“I can practically hear ya thinkin’. Relax, would ya?” He chuckled.

“I’m relaxed,” you mumbled. His hands trailed up your back and started to massage your shoulders.

“You’re stiff as a board,” he said. You had to admit, it did feel good. You soon let yourself relax into his touch as he worked on your shoulders. His hands traveled lower, massaging your lower back as well. You accidentally let a moan slip out as you rocked your hips back into his, losing yourself in the pleasure of the moment. You swore you could feel a hardness pressed against your ass but before you could think more of it, his one hand moved to grip your hip, pulling you from your trance.

“I’m sorry,” you whispered sheepishly.

“No need for apologies. I just don’t want you to think I’m being indecent or trying to ruin your virtue,” he said. You had to laugh at that.

“What’s gotten into you, Finan?”

“Just trying to treat you the way you deserve to be treated is all,” he said. You rolled over to look at him, a playful glint in his eyes.

“Well my virtue was ruined when in fell in with your rowdy bunch so don’t go trying to protect it now,” you laughed.

“I don’t want to be indecent then,” he smirked.

“And if I want you to be?” You asked, voice barely above a whisper.

“Then I’d be happy to oblige, but I need you to tell me what you want.” His face inched closer to yours and you could feel his beard tickling your face. You clenched your thighs together to relieve some of the pressure building.

“Finan, I-”

“Wake up! Uhtred needs us!” You both jumped at the sudden knocking on the door and yelling. You recognized Sihtric’s voice.

“It is the middle of the night!” Finan yelled back.

“And Uhtred needs us!” Finan looked absolutely furious. Sihtric continued to bang on the door, earning angry shouts from other guests.

You sighed and climbed from the bed, throwing your clothes back on quickly. Finan followed suit and you both ran to the door.

“What’s wrong?” You asked.

“Something about a fight and he said he wants Finan to find him and you and I should go find the man he was fighting.” Finan glared at the young Dane, knowing exactly what he was up to.

“How are we supposed to know who it was he was fighting?” He didn’t answer. “Sihtric, how are we to know?”

“How are we to know there was even a fight to begin with?” Finan questioned. You looked between the two men who were staring daggers at one another.

“What’s going on?”

“Nothing.” They both answered far too quickly.

“Sihtric, was there a fight? Does Uhtred actually need us?”

“It was a test, my lady, to make sure you’re always prepared.”

“Seriously? You men will be the death of me.” You stomped back to your room and closed the door behind you.

“That was dirty,” Finan chuckled darkly.

“No one said we had to play fair,” Sihtric said. “You’re trying to steal my woman, of course I’m going to do whatever I can to win.”

“She was about to be my woman before you interrupted us.” Finan opened the door and turned around. “I’d cover my ears if I were you, I can be a screamer.”

Finan closed the door on the rather pissed-looking Dane. He began to strip again but stopped when he noticed you seemed to be asleep. He took off his shirt and crawled into bed.

“(Y/N)? You awake?” He asked. No response came. He sighed and settled next to you. You waited for his breathing to even out before you opened your eyes. You looked at him peacefully sleeping beside you.

You wanted him, man, did you want him. But something in you made you hesitate. You were certain he’d be a good hump, but what if that made things different? Different with him and different with your group? Then your mind went to Sihtric. Was it fate that he interrupted you at that moment? Perhaps it was a sign- but a sign of what?

Sleep was not easy to come by that night between the handsome Irishman snoring loudly beside you and the thoughts screaming even louder in your mind.

The Last Kingdom Taglist: @cornervase @camillabrady @moldy-khunt @stray-bi-kids

[inhuman-obey-me]

Excuse me! it’s just me, this blog’s stalker because your works amazing. I kinda am in love with your demon’s nature series. I if I could request something. Could you possible do MC seeing the brothers do something that is “demonic”. Similar to what happens in the series. Thank you!!!!

Hello!! Haha, thank you -- we’re so glad you like our content! ;u;

And I’m glad that you enjoy the Demon’s Nature series! It’s been a lot of fun to write.

Sorry this took a bit! I wasn’t sure if you wanted this to be something with one of the brothers or all of them, so I ended up doing little short blurbs for each of the brothers and MC accidentally catching them doing something demonic/violent. Tried to keep them all pretty short, which was hard.

[Mod Cosmos]

MC accidentally catching the Demon Brothers being Demonic/Violent

content warning: blood/gore, body horror (especially in Beel’s), and general violence

Note: This is through the perspective of an MC that knows that the demons do their thing, but perhaps doesn't want to see it happening in front of them.

LUCIFER

You were supposed to go shopping together after meetings for the day were finished, and he had told you to just wait an additional thirty minutes so that he could finish up some business. Thirty minutes passed, but there was still no word from him, so you decide you’ll go and see what was holding that workaholic up. You soon realize that was a mistake.

You hear muffled cries, and a familiar deep voice. Cautiously, you approach the source of these sounds -- a room located off a dark corridor. You didn’t think there were any classrooms here, and your curiosity got the better of you -- so you approach the door, peeking through the crack. You recognize the intimidating silhouette and --- there’s blood. There was another figure in the room, their body limp on the ground in a puddle of red, the mighty first-born’s claws tearing through flesh. A loss of balance in your surprise results in you tumbling into the room, earning a sharp turn from Lucifer, whose crimson eyes were wide in surprise. His wings spread out to try and shield the unsavory scene from you.

“MC, you were supposed to wait for me.” His voice is stern, but there’s a gentleness to it. He sees the queasy look on your face, and decides he can put this torment to an end. With a swift motion, he fully blocks your line of sight before slitting the lesser demon’s throat. He then turns back to you, lightly embracing your body with black feathers. His voice is soft as he did not want to frighten you. “I’m sorry, you weren’t supposed to see that. Let’s get you home, shall we? I’ll make you some tea.”

MAMMON

It had just been a scratch. A low-level demon had taken a swipe at you in passing, but hadn’t been able to cut too deep. Mammon insisted he was just running off to get a bandaid after you insisted he didn’t need to go after the other demon. He said that he’d be right back--”I’m just gettin’ a bandage, I swear!”-- and told you not to move an inch. But this bandage quest was taking longer than it should have, so you go after him, pressing a loose cloth against your wound. And there he was, having cornered the offending demon. He seems to be staking the demon in the arm with a sharp metal object, speaking in a tongue you couldn’t understand.

You hadn’t even realized you had dropped the Majolish bag from your hand, not until it hit the ground with a thud and Mammon whipped around to see you there. A flash of guilt appears on his features, his eyes going between you and the lowly demon. He drops them, though he can’t resist one more swift kick to their chest before running back to you.

“I told ya I’d be right back!” He’s about to cup your face in his hands, but retracts them as he realizes they’re covered in blood. “Uh, okay, let’s go get that,” he motions to your injury, “...taken care of, yeah?” He mumbles a sorry as he picks up the bag you dropped before ushering you away from the scene, promising he’d do whatever he needed to do to make up for having to witness it.

LEVIATHAN

You’re browsing games at a shop, having tagged along with Leviathan who had been raving about a new release. At one point, however, Leviathan had vanished from your side. You now realize it’s been … quite some time, actually. You wander about the store, unable to find him anywhere. Did he step outside? You decide to check, missing the anxious glance from the clerk behind the counter.

You hear some sounds from the alley by the shop. Is that … someone choking? Worried, you round the corner to make sure whoever it was is okay -- only to see the one doing the strangling was Leviathan himself. He had his tail tightly wrapped around the other demon’s throat, and … what, what was that inky substance leaking from their eyes? Leviathan caught your shadow against the alley wall, turning to you with a slightly panicked look.

“M-MC!” His tail quickly slithered off and away from the demon’s throat, leaving them to collapse to the ground. He’s suddenly at your side, hands on your shoulders as he turns you around and makes you walk out of the alley with him, murmuring something about how the venom will take care of the rest. “S-sorry about that, MC. You look a little sick … let’s get that game and go home and play, okay?”

SATAN

You had been ambling through an aisle in the grand Royal Library, wondering what random book you should pick up next to flip through idly. Satan had wanted to spend a quiet day reading and studying together, to which you readily obliged. But it was easy to forget just how large the Royal Library was -- what floor were you on again? -- and you wonder if you should head back to where the two of you had set up. Then you suddenly hear a distant crash. It seemed to be coming from one of the meeting rooms at the back, and you couldn’t help but want to take a peek to see what had happened.

“Fuck you!” You knew that voice, and you knew that anger. There was a muffled yell, and what sounded like shattering glass. Then there’s a chilling, mocking laughter, and you can feel the goosebumps starting to cover your skin. You nervously approach the slightly ajar door, and there he is, his tail impaling another demon with its sharp ridges. Oh, there is fury burning in those eyes -- ones that shift to land on you, and that glowing fury is replaced with exasperation.

“MC!” Your name comes out as a hiss, but he quickly tosses the other demon, slamming them into the wall. “You…” He’s unsure what to say, his wrath calming at the sight of you, especially with that look on your face. “I … I’m sorry, I just had to take care of something. Please, let’s go. We can talk about this later.”

ASMODEUS

The music is loud, the drinks are pouring, and you’re having an absolutely wonderful night out clubbing with Asmodeus. You were returning from the bar with two drinks in hand for the both of you, thanking one of the security guards on your way for managing the crowd of fans that had now dispersed, only to find that Asmodeus was not to be found at your table. He had left a note-- “BRB! ♡”--with lipstick on a napkin. You waited, sipping your drink as you demon watched from your seat. Some time passes, and you realize you’ve finished your drink a bit more quickly than intended. There’s still no sign of him, so you might as well go get another.

On the way to the bar, however, you pass by what you assumed was the hall to the restrooms, and you hear a desperate “I’m sorry!” cutting through the heavy bass. Should you be concerned? Well, you decide to at least be nosy, so you slip into the hall to see what was going on -- and are met with the sight of Asmodeus holding a heart he had carved out of some poor demon’s chest. In your shock, your empty glass slips through your fingers and crashes to the floor, earning your demon’s attention.

“Oh, MC!” Despite his surprise to see you, he gives you a smile -- one that gives you chills as you see blood spattered on his face. “Ah, what a mess…” He lets the lesser demon slide to the floor, debating on what to do with the organ in hand, but hides it behind his back for now, coming over to place a quick kiss on your cheek. “Sorry about that, darling. I’m just going to go clean up, so wait for me at the table, ‘kay?”

BEELZEBUB

You had agreed to go with him to Madame Scream’s after finishing up classes for the day, but he was running late. He’s not picking up any calls, either, so you decide to go to where his last class would have been -- maybe they were just running way over, and he hadn’t realized the time? The hall is quiet, and you end up reaching an empty classroom. Walking back out, you decide to try calling him again. Ring, ring. After a moment, you realize you can hear Beelzebub’s ringtone in the distance, and you follow your ears to where his D.D.D. and ultimately he himself must be.

You weren’t prepared for what you saw next. A head of bright orange hair buried in a lesser demon’s abdomen, the sound of squelching and slurping from his feasting sounding so much more insidious than usual.

“Beel!” You can’t help but cry out his name in shock, which causes him to jolt upright -- with intestines still hanging from his mouth. Oh, you were going to be sick …

“MC … sorry, Lucifer always says I need to work on my table manners … “ He gulps down what was left hanging, but his eyes widen when it registers just who caught him in the act. “Oh, uh, guess that’s not the point, huh … “ He sheepishly wipes at his mouth with some torn cloth that you can only assume came from his victim, standing up and walking around to block your view of the mangled body. “I’ll clean this up, and then … well, we can do whatever you want to do. Sorry, MC …”

BELPHEGOR

You’re looking around for where Belphegor could possibly be napping. Beelzebub had to go to Fangol practice and asked that you make sure his twin got home, as he had seemed even more tired today than usual. He’s not in the Western Courtyard, so you head to the Southern Courtyard next. You think you remember him saying that was one of his favorite spots…

You perk up as you spot the ever-familiar cow patterned pillow, but you fail to see the demon that was usually attached to it. Peering around the area, worry starts to set in -- and then you hear a scream. It certainly didn’t belong to Belphegor, but the gears in your mind start turning and you run to where the scream came from. Of course, no one else was around here -- it wasn’t the busiest area on campus in the first place. Turning a corner, you see just what you feared -- Belphegor had his claws at another demon’s throat, his barbed tail wrapped around their body and squeezing them tight. You feel weak, the scenario a bit too close for comfort as you recall what he had done to you in the past.

“MC?” Belphegor turned to see you, his eyes wide. He must have sensed your presence at some point, or maybe your heart was pounding much louder than you realized. He drops the other demon, growling something you can’t make out to them, and then slowly approaches you. He sees you tense up, causing him to stop in his tracks. He averts his gaze, not wanting to meet your eyes as he tries to figure out what to say. “I just … had to deal with something. You … you can head on home first, if you want. I understand.”