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elfven-blog · 4 months ago

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Complacent Final

Summary: The light at the end of the storm (He's free babies!!)

Orca!Merman!Connor Kenway x Reader A mini series (The final)

CW: Drowning.

Dedication: A final thank you to @ramshackledtrickster for the inspiration, for their art and all the advice/information for the au. Thank you, truly! And in spirit of that, the art that inspired me from the start in our final header. Word count:3.7K

At first you heard nothing, saw nothing, smelt

nothing. You could barely feel anything but cold. Like your entire body had frozen.

You weren’t even sure you were alive. Just floating, almost, in nothingness. A dark empty void that not even the images in your mind seemed to be conjured in. Perhaps this is just what existence was, what it had always been.

Maybe you hadn’t drowned, maybe this entire time everything you’d seen was a dream or some kind of sick delusion. Merfolk. What a weird dream, you thought as you woke up.

Your eyes blinked at the bright light, a yawn slipping from your mouth as your brow furrowed. A headache formed at the back of your skull causing you to groan as your hand reached to massage your temple.

Getting ready for your shift felt like it took forever as you finally managed to finish getting ready and once you were out the door, your chest felt heavy like you couldn’t breathe. You must be coming down with something, hopefully you could get through this shift and then you’d go to the doctor.

With a heavy sigh your hand pushed open the doors of the aquarium, the action making you pause. Hadn’t you just left your home? Maybe the headache and breathlessness was affecting you more than you thought.

It was weird as you put your bag and coat away in the lockers, it seemed so quiet. No one responded to your words or your smiles like normal. Even the visitors seemed to ignore you as you presented your usual rock pool creature demonstration.

They’d stand there, listening, watching but then you’d turn to look at them and suddenly they’d be facing away. Your hand massaged at your temples again. The pounding in your head was getting worse and your chest felt like a heavy weight settled on it.

It was unnerving, maybe you needed to go to the doctors after your shift today. A little boy lifted his hand up to ask a question but you heard nothing when you called on him. You couldn’t even see his face, no matter how much you concentrated on him there was no details. No flecks in his eyes, no light across his hair and his mouth didn’t move.

The saliva built up in your mouth as you tried to stutter out what you hoped was the right answer to an unheard question, the people around him only shaking their heads. You put the starfish and its rock back into the pool but when you turned back around, everyone was gone. Then there was that pounding again.

As you finished the demonstration your watch pinged to let you know that it was time to clean the rock pool sides. You began making your way to the staff only area to get the equipment, that same little boy from the demonstration took your wrist and tugged you back with surprising strength. Grounding you to the spot as he tilted his head at you, he still seemed so wrong.

“Don’t you miss him?” His voice was clear this time, your brow furrowed at his question and the pain in your head returned accompanied by a shrill sound that made your hands fly up to your head while you dropped to the floor. The little boy turned to walk away, ignoring as your hand reached out for him, for someone, for anyone.

“-ey!” your head shot up and looked around “-ak- up!” a heavier weight on your chest made you cough before it was gone, and with a sigh you moved to the cleaning cupboard to get your equipment. Seemingly forgetting about the shooting pain and the boy.

The cleaning cupboard smelt of chemicals and it made your nose scrunch up. After getting out what you needed, you went to lock the door but stopped at the sight of a sign on the door. It’s a sign you’ve read over and over during your time in the aquarium. ‘All equipment for rock pools’ but on the bottom there was a bit of paper taped up that you had never seen before ‘please use for the orca too!’.

The orca? There were no Orca’s here, there never had been. You had to take a sharp breath as that same pain shot through your head, and your hand rubbed at your forehead to try and ease it. The bright lights probably weren’t helping. You shook your head before moving back to your rock pools but your head moved to the door on the other side, the boys words repeating “Don’t you miss him?” Him.

As your hand dipped into the water to wipe at the algae growing on the glass your brow furrowed when the water didn’t feel like anything, maybe you needed to change the temperature if it wasn’t cold enough. You let go of the sponge and you watched as it dropped to the bottom before pressing your hand against one of the rocks. Nothing. Normally it felt rough and coarse but nothing.

“-ose” rang through your ear like a high pitched squeal “Ple-“

Who was that screaming? Your hand rubbed at your temple and your head looked up to see who was making so much noise. The corners of your lips turning down when it seemed like no one else noticed.

“I ca-“ that heavy weight settled on your chest again until it was heavy enough that you were falling backwards, hands trying to hold onto something…anything.

And as you hit the ground a high pitched “Wake up! Please!” screeched through your mind. Everything hurt, it hurt so badly. Your eyes rolled back, the pain behind your eyes and in your temples bursting.

Your mouth opened to scream but nothing came out, the weight too much for you to produce any sound.

Then your body rolled and you coughed up what felt like tons of seawater and bile. The taste is still on your tongue even after you'd stopped throwing up. Your eyes shooting open to see you were no longer in the aquarium.

Wet sand beneath your hands, water lapping at your feet and the feel of something, no. Someone rubbing at your back. A gentle shush whispered in your ear, comforting you until the coughing subsided and you were no longer vomiting seawater.

Your mind whirred and your vision was blurred as you tried to think but all you could remember was the sound of thunder and how wet everything felt. Then all at once your mind felt like it was bursting as months of memories seemed to flood your mind at once making you wince and curl up.

“It’s okay, you’re okay” that voice said again as hands wrapped around you and pulled you into their lap, your face instinctually burying into their neck which helped keep the light from your eyes. A hand rested on your back while another gently stroked your head, nails scratching so gently at your scalp and the pain in your head seemed to disappear at the feeling.

The body beneath you started vibrating as you relaxed, a purr filling the silence around you and when you could your head moved away from it’s sanctuary. You watched as the corner’s of his lips turned up, those brown eyes you knew seemed to soften and his entire body relaxes at the sight of you being okay “I thought I lost you there” he whispers as if worried that being too loud would shatter everything and this would be a dream.

How ironic you thought, your hand moving to rest against his jaw and your thumb stroked his cheek. That feeling of skin that transformed into the rubber of his whale skin against your thumb made you smile at him “Not yet” you answered him. And he tightened his hold on you, both of his arms wrapped around your body as he pulled you as close as possible and his face buried into your hair as he huffed against you.

It was strange, you thought, not the touching. You were used to that by now. No, it was the feeling of sun on your skin and sand beneath your legs. The wind breezed past you as it caused goosebumps on your skin. The sound of waves, and birds. The smell of the sea…of Ratonhnahke:ton surrounding you.

You had never noticed he had a scent before, the smell of the aquarium must have drowned it out. But he did, Connor smelt of sea salt and sage. The perfect combination for the large merman you decided. Eventually you pulled away with a renewed worry in your veins.

“What happened to everyone else? Where are they? Are they-” He quickly cut you off by pressing his lips to your own, your eyes widened for a moment before they slipped shut and your hands rested against his chest. The muscles twitching under your palms as one of his hands pressed to the back of your head and the other squeezed at your thigh.

Kissing Connor was like home. Slow and gentle and it wasn’t as wet as you thought it would be. Considering he was a marine animal but he was still cold, his tongue traced the seam of your lips and you let your mouth fall open so he could tease through your lips. His tongue tracing over your teeth before pushing in to massage your own tongue, coaxing yours to do the same.

He kissed like it would be the first and last, until your lungs burned of oxygen and your hands clawed at his skin. The hand on the back of your head tangled in your hair to keep you in place while he took your breath away, when he noticed your lack of breathing he moved away from your mouth to kiss at the corner of your lip “They are fine, we got them to safety” You nodded, quite distracted from his words as both his hands moved to your hips while his mouth moved down to ghost across your jaw and neck.

And then he pulled away, grinning at how dilated your eyes were “I have been waiting to do that” he muttered before pulling you in for another kiss. This one was much like the last but it didn’t last as long and you frowned when he pulled away this time. Eyes blinking slowly as you tried to catch your breath, chest heaving from the slow deep breaths you were having to take.

“Maybe warn me next time?” The deep rumbling laughter rolled from his chest at your response, before he picked you up to settle you back on the sand. His tail splashing the water to cover himself in it again so he wouldn’t dry out “Wait wait!” you suddenly said, confusion in your eyes as you looked at him “Who’s ‘we’?”

And Connor grinned again before pushing himself down the beach “Come on, there’s some people I’d like you to meet” You followed him in your confusion, stumbling after the large Orca as he submerged himself into the water. Surely it was a bad idea to follow him into water after you’d just woken up from drowning.

But you followed anyway, gasping when he appeared again from the dark water to take your hand. Swimming close to the surface so that you could stay above water and you could follow him. It didn’t take long for you to reach where he was taking you, and your mouth dropped at the sight of the ship still floating in the water.

She was a little worse for wear with loss of paint and some bits looked broken but she was still floating. You could see Faulkner standing on the bow nodding down at someone in the water as he spoke to them, and your eyes widened a little more at the sight of multiple merfolk swimming around the ship. Some of them brought wood and things to the crew while others seemed to have what looked like food in their hands.

Ratonhnhake:ton led you to the woman who was talking to Faulkner, the captain lighting up as he saw you both approach “You’re alive!” he shouts and the others on the ship clamber to the side, grinning and shouting all at once to you. The noise was loud and overwhelming but none of it was too much for you as you grinned up at them all. Connor’s arm wrapping around your waist to help keep you stable.

Once everyone had finally settled down, the Orca diverted your attention to the merfolk that had been talking with Faulkner. You noticed as his hand tightened its grip, his thumb rubbing up and down your skin and his tail seemed to flick a little more under the water as the woman’s eyes set themselves onto you.

Oh how beautiful she looked in the light of the sun rays, almost a halo formed around her as she swam a little closer. She was smaller than Ratohnhake:ton,she was different shades of grey and her tail was less structured than his too. But those eyes and that nose were the same, and the hair braided on her head was slightly darker shade of brown than his. His mother you realised, and suddenly you understood his nervousness as it flooded your own system.

“This is my mother” Connor introduced you both, his hand loosening against your hip as he smiled “Ziio” and he frowned for a split second, clearly uncomfortable at using his own mother’s name.

She said nothing as she watched you for a moment, and you couldn’t help but think of how similar the look in her eyes felt to that of her marine counterpart but all that melted away when she smiled and wrapped her arms around you “Thank you” she whispered in your ear, her voice felt like a gentle wave washing over you “Thank you for bringing riien:’a home to me”

Connor seemed to grumble next to you as his mother pulled you away from him, his arm slipping from your waist while your own wrapped around the Sea Leopard. She was significantly smaller than her son, but she had fur and it felt rather smooth beneath your fingers. She pulled away after a while, her hands staying on your shoulder as she smiled “I promise I am not as scary as my marine counterpart” Then she winked at you before pulling away “I am just as fluffy on land though”

She was like a summer breeze you decided, the cooling component needed during a stifling heat. Once she was away from you she swam a little closer to her son, pushing him down into the water with a click of her tongue as her hands began to fuss over his hair. You laughed as Connor avoided your gaze, suddenly interested in the bracelet on his wrist as the skin on his neck and face burned from the blush.

“You’re embarrassing the poor boy” came another voice before an oar poked at Connor’s mother. A large sea turtle appeared behind them, the older man tilting his head as regarded you for a moment before turning back to Ziio. Distracting her with something and taking her away to speak with some more seafolk.

“Don’t mind the old turtle, Achilles is more of a solitary creature these days” Ratonhnhake:ton says as his hand reaches for your wrist again so he could pull you back into his embrace. He takes his time to lead you around the gathering of merfolk, introducing you to each and everyone. You’re more than happy to do it.

By the end of the meet and greet, the sun is starting to set and the warm air is becoming cold. Connor leads you back to the boat, and the crew help you climb aboard. You’re finally able to change your clothes and eat once you’re inside.

And Faulkner sits down with you to discuss what’s next, it eats at your heart as you talk. You know you can’t stay here in the middle of nowhere, and you can’t go with Connor. You aren’t a merfolk, you can’t breathe underwater. You don’t belong in his world just as much as he didn’t belong in yours.

Faulkner decides that you’re all leaving tomorrow. The decision makes your veins freeze and you dismiss yourself as you go to the cabin you’d had for the journey. While laying on it your mind whirls with ideas, plans and just anything that could mean you could stay with him. But you know it’s not feasible, there isn’t a way to stay here forever in the sea with him.

A knock on the glass of your cabin startles you but any nerves are wiped away when you turn your head to see your Orca smiling at you through the window. You immediately walk over to the small window, your hand pressing to the glass and his own does the same before he points upwards which makes you tilt your head and furrow your brow.

He gives you an frustrated look, his mouth straightened into a line and his eyes rolling with a shake of his head. His hand pointing behind you and you follow it to the door before looking back at him where he now points upwards. He pretends to celebrate when you get up and walk to the door and you stick your tongue at him in response.

Once you're back on deck you notice that most of the crew has either gone to bed or are talking with some of the merfolk over the railings. It makes your heart lighter to see everyone interacting with each other in such a warm way. Your own hands make contact with the railing, your thumb rubbing at the cold metal as memories swarm to the front.

Cold splashes of water, distant thunder and the feeling of sinking into the dark abyss fill your mind before they’re swept away by his hand on yours. And you’re back with him again as you smile down at him, his own lips twitching upwards “I wasn’t gone for very long” you whisper to him in the dark of night.

His large shoulders shrug as his hands move to pull himself up onto the deck before he rolls over onto his back so he can balance on his hands in a sitting position rather than laying on his front. You sit next to him, your back pressing to his side as his arm slings around you. Resting his hand on your stomach as you both sit there a look up at the sky.

“I missed the stars” He finally says to you, his eyes bright as he smiles with his head tilted up. His hair flowing down his shoulders, the braid sitting on his chest and then his eyes slipped closed as he takes a deep breath “Thank you”.

You spend hours with him on the deck, with him telling you the stories his mother had told him of the stars, and of the stories his grandfather had told him from his travels around the world’s oceans. He makes you laugh as he recalls, what you doubt to be real, a story his grandfather had told him about fighting off a pirate trying to get his fins. In turn you tell him as many stories as you can remember of the stars from your people, the constellations and their tales seeming to bond you both all the same.

By the time you ran out of stories for each other, the first rays of daylight had started to appear and suddenly your heart felt heavy. Connor noticed your change in behaviour, hwo you went quiet and seemed to sit there playing with his fingers.

“What is it, treasure?” he mumbled as his hand took your jaw so he could direct your gaze to him, his lips pressing to your forehead and purring gently to try and soothe you “Tell me”

“We’re leaving today” He froze at your words, pulling away for a moment with a bewildered look in his eyes. His thumb rubbing at your jaw “Faulkner thinks it’s time to go before another storm hits”

Ratonhnake:ton takes a deep breath at this, the look in his eyes sharpening to sadness as he nods “That is wise'' he lets go of you but not before pressing his lips to your own “You must remain safe”. Once his lips part from yours, he pulls himself off the boat with the railings and splashes back into the water beneath.

“I’ll come back, I will” You shout as you lean over the edge, but it’s too late. Connor’s already gone and your eyes can’t find any sign of his black and white tail in the dark waters “I don’t know how but I will”.

As you opened the door of your home, you took a deep breath and your head tilted as your entire body seemed to feel light all of a sudden. You shut the door behind you and dropped your bag on the floor, before ridding yourself of your coat and shoes. Once all of that was done you slid open the door that led to your back garden.

A smile on your face as you took the towel that you kept near the door before practically bolting down to the shore. The corners of your lips pulled down when there was no sight of who you were after yet you spread the towel out anyway and shimmed out of your clothes until just your swimming costume was left.

As you lay on the towel, your eyes drifted shut for a moment but they flew open at the feeling of something large wrapping around your ankle and pulling you down the beach a little more until the waves lapped at your body “You are late” rumbled a deep voice in your ear as arms wrapped around your body.

“Sorry! Sorry! We had an octopus to help, his poor tentacles got trapped” The Orca hummed as he listened to you ramble on about the mimic octopus you had spent the past few hours helping. His head burying into your hair as he lay there with you, his body covering your own as your hands moved to run through his hair. He would happily listen to your rumble for the rest of his days.

#assassins creed #assassin's creed 3 #assassin's creed 3 x reader #assassin's creed x reader #ac3 #ac3 x reader #connor ac3 #connor kenway x reader #connor kenway fic #ratonhnhaké:ton x reader #ratonhnhaké:ton #merman!connor kenway #merfolk!assassins creed #merfolk au

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sixx-writes · 2 years ago

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adrenaline

Jack Krauser x Reader

Word Count: 3,497

cw: noncon, light bondage, blood play, knife play, degrading names, rough sex

AO3 Version | Masterlist | Header Image

Summary: You're kidnapped from your own driveway by a mysterious group of mercenaries with no idea as to who they are or what they could want with you.

18+ ONLY NSFW BELOW THE CUT

You didn't remember being taken.

It was a night like any other, after driving home from your friend's house the last thing you could recall was seeing your front door and standing in your driveway fumbling with your keys. After that everything was completely blank. Foggy images were all you could conjure up if you concentrated hard enough. You remembered drifting in and out from the influence of whatever you'd been shot up with - the pinch of a needle going into your neck. The cloying scent of the bag covering your head during the drive. At least two men were speaking to each other but you couldn't understand them through the cotton filling your head.

It had been around thirty minutes since you were dumped into a tent and the bag removed giving you no clues as to where you were being held. Your surroundings were mostly barren with a few unmarked crates and containers near the entrance while the tent itself was unremarkable in it's design. The only light source was one of those battery powered lanterns you would take camping. One you could find at most hardware stores or supermarkets.

You weren't going to cry you decided. You needed to stay calm and think clearly.

Suddenly, you heard a man's voice coming from directly outside and you instantly cowered back as far as you could while the zipper came down.

In stepped the most ripped intimidating man you'd ever seen wearing a getup the likes of which you'd only witnessed in movies or on tv. He's decked out in a form fitted black shirt that leaves not a single bulge of muscle to the imagination, a pair of military pants, and a bright red beret. Yet none of this holds your attention for long because all you can focus on is the knife he's twirling skillfully through his fingers.

His icy blue eyes appraised you with a chilling detachment completely devoid of emotion made more unsettling by the scar that marked one side of his once perfectly handsome features. You had hoped that whoever had kidnapped you was just some mook and you would find an opportunity to escape. Now, the weight of reality had set in and you felt cold and helpless - this was clearly a professional. Most likely a mercenary. This man didn't give a shit if you saw his face or not which meant he was confident that he wouldn't be caught or..

Well, you didn't want to think about the 'or' in that scenario.

"Listen up," he spoke before you got the chance to, "As long as you're a good little bitch nothing bad will happen. Understood?"

You nodded, mutely.

"Very good," his tone was condescending. The same one might use with a slow pet after it had learned a new trick. It made indignant anger rear it's head deep beneath the fear that locked all of your limbs in place.

"What do you want with me?" you said as the man stepped back out through the small opening just as quickly as he'd came. Not enough to see outside but enough to be able to tell that it was nighttime. It would make an escape much easier. He ignored you zipping you back inside, alone, without another word. You listened carefully for the sound of his footsteps to get far enough away before you sprang into action.

Carefully as you could you dragged the zipper open the tiniest crack to peek out. As you had guessed it was a campsite with around six more tents a little larger than yours scattered in a loose semi circle. There were also several other mercenaries dressed similarly to the one that had visited you situated at various tasks around the area. A chill went down your spine when you discovered all of them were armed with automatic weapons.

Luckily, there were no guards outside your tent which worked in your favor along with how none of them happened to be looking in your direction. You slipped outside zipping the flap back up to hide your escape for as long as possible before making a run for it.

That was how you ended up in the woods with no idea where you were going feeling only a little regret that you hadn't grabbed the lantern. The only light was the moon overhead and the sparse places where it pierced the thick canopy.

You couldn't have made it more than a few dozen yards before something whizzed past your face and embedded itself into a tree. You barely slowed to see what what it was but your heart nearly stopped upon seeing the unmistakable shimmer of a knife embedded in the trunk right next to you. It had only just missed. Somehow, you didn't think it was an accident. It was a warning for just how fucked you were.

A knife in your spine would be too quick of a death. He would draw it out. Make it hurt.

You continued to run unable to stop the tears from flowing while your imagination went out of control at all the possible torture scenarios. You wondered if you would even find out why he had taken you before you were killed. You didn't have long to think before a knee landed in your spine driving you into the ground and ending your escape as soon as it had began. How had he known? You hadn't seen him anywhere in the camp before leaving.

No matter how much you sobbed and screamed, kicked and thrashed around, he was an immovable force on top of you. You recited every insult you knew until the inside of your mouth tasted like a mixture of salt and copper so intense you wanted to gag if only to throw up on the fucker's boots. The man had soon had enough and his knee disappeared relieving you from the painful pressure at your spine as he flipped you around, easily catching the zip ties around your wrists amidst your shameless meltdown.

He had the look of someone that had stepped in something particularly disgusting glaring down at your pinned form - as if you were the one in the wrong.

"Seems I underestimated how stupid you are. And weak. This is really the best you could do? Running for your life mean so little to you?" he said, not hiding his disgust.

You didn't know why his words got to you so easily and because you're already in for it you spat out, "Fuck you."

"There it is. Finally showing me some spirit. Shame it's already too late. Hope this half assed escape attempt was worth it."

You took a deep calming breath to suppress the adrenaline that flooded your body making you irrational before you whispered, "Don't kill me."

Your pride wasn't worth your life after all.

"Why not? Huh?" his grip on the zip ties tightened making the plastic dig in deeper, "Answer me, bitch."

"Because.. because I'll do anything. I'm sorry. Just.. I don't know what I was thinking. I'll do anything! I swear!"

In an even more degrading display you tried to bite your lower lip in an act of looking alluring for the mercenary wincing at the taste and sting of fresh blood. His expression remained cold and unmoved so you took it a step further managing to raise yourself up enough to nuzzle against his crotch like some deranged horny cat. It was awful and you would regret it later but if it meant he wouldn't torture you in other ways or kill you, you could live with it.

"What the fuck are you doing?" he demanded. His voice had taken on a rougher edge than before. You were afraid to meet his eyes for what you might find there. The answer is against your face anyway. Beneath the strong scent of male musk and sweat is hardening flesh. He's very into the idea of what you're offering, apparently.

"Just let me make you feel good," you muttered, hoping it would be enough to earn his forgiveness. There was also the possibility of another attempt at getting away while he was distracted. Your shoulders feel like they're going to rip out of the sockets at this angle with the unrelenting grip he has over the zip ties behind your back but you don't dare stop.

That is until he forcibly flings you away from him and against a tree where the back of your head connects with it alarmingly hard. The action leaves your ears ringing and you stare at the ground in a daze.

"What..?"

The mercenary had lowered himself into a crouched position not far from you. His knife pressed against the underside of your chin angling your face up and when he spoke you could only see flashes of his teeth in the suffocating darkness. It made him seem more like a predator by the second - just a dark shape with sharp teeth ready to rip out your throat. No longer human in your mind but a monster that threatened to devour you.

"Run, little bitch. If I catch you, you won't like what comes next. Run!"

His words echoed strangely inside your head as if you were two people trapped in a nightmare and not just a mercenary chasing a terrified girl in what had became your horrible reality in a matter of hours. You had no idea why he was giving you a second chance when beneath your strangled sobs and gasps of air you could hear him effortlessly keeping pace with you. This was a game to him. He was enjoying every second of your misery knowing that you would never get away.

The branches and twigs tore at your skin and clothes as if the forest itself was coming alive to tear you apart. The prelude of what was to come when the mercenary decided he's had enough.

It doesn't take long for you to slow and exhaustion to truly set in while your pursuer barely seemed tired at all. He isn't even out of breath when his fist tangled in your hair catching you with no effort at all. You fought him of course, but it does nothing, he might as well be made of stone as he dragged you along and hung you up by your bonds from a broken branch. Your feet were barely touching the ground and the pain at your raw wrists is absolutely horrid.

His face gave nothing away when the knife is pressed back against your throat, it's wicked blade following a trail downwards between your heaving breasts, until it met the top of your shirt. The fabric of your tee parts with no effort leaving only your bra intact but that was all it took for you to notice the change that came over him. Those empty eyes lit up with something dangerous stirred to life by the sight of your sweat soaked skin.

Cold steel is pressed against your lips and you gasped in shock at how fast the movement was.

"Lick it," he ordered.

Your eyes went round at his request and because you're more concerned with what might happen if you disobey you tentatively press a quick kitten lick to the tip.

"Are you trying to piss me off? Lick. It."

Fresh tears overflowed from your eyes as you pressed the entire flat of your tongue against the blade and ran it along the entire length as you might have done with a cock. In a single flick he cuts the tip of your tongue in another of those inconceivable movements and before you have time to react his mouth crashes over yours. It's rough, more like his tongue is violating your mouth than an actual kiss, in the act of tasting the coppery twang of your blood and saliva groaning softly through it all.

By the time he's done there's a mixture of fluids leaking from the corner of your lips and painted across his own like some kind of morbid war paint. You were completely disoriented by the intensity of it having no time to recover before your bra is the next victim of his assault, split cleanly down the middle like your shirt. He isn't as careful this time and you hissed when it grazed your skin leaving a scratch behind along the inner curve of your breast.

When had he removed his beret? You hadn't noticed until his mouth was pressed over the wound at your breast licking over it drawing out fresh waves of burning pain.

"Stop," you pleaded, "hurts-! Ah!"

He'd already moved on to your nipple bringing out a confusing mix of pleasure mingling with the throbbing soreness of the fresh wound. The mercenary bit at the hardening tissue mercilessly making you squirm and gasp. It was unlike anything you'd ever experienced. A disturbing wetness was already soaking the crotch of your panties and 'shame' probably wasn't a strong enough word for what you were going through in that moment.

"You like this," he said, matter-of-factly, pulling back just enough to look up at you while his cool breaths raised goosebumps along your wet skin. The tip of his knife threateningly toyed with your other nipple until it was erect to match the other he'd been abusing with his mouth, "Tell me how badly you want it, bitch."

"N-No! I don't! Please, I can't take this anymore. What do you want from me?"

Your sobbing plea for respite was ended when another cut was opened just underneath your right areola and you cried out. This time he sucked a good portion of your entire breast into his mouth so you were overwhelmed with both pain and pleasure at the same time. You continued to cry and babble nonsense until he pulled off with a lewd pop leaving your nipple smeared with blood in the aftermath.

"I tell you what. I'll try to make this easier for you. If I check and this cunt of yours isn't wet then I'll take you back to camp," he moved in closer to your ear speaking in a sensuous whisper and you could smell the strong scent of copper on his breath, "But if it is I think you know what happens next, right?"

No matter how you thrashed and tried to free yourself it was no use because in the next few seconds your pants were yanked down your hips with the button and zipper still closed. You were down to the last barrier of your dignity between you and he - the plain black thong you were wearing. His fingers were unceremoniously shoved between your tightly closed thighs sealing your fate in an instant. The crotch of your panties were ruined even more when he pressed in soaking up more of your wetness to confirm his suspicion.

"That's what I thought. Who knew you'd end up being a kinky slut. This makes it even better."

"What do you mea--" you didn't get to finish the sentence before the same fingers that were dirty from your juices were forced into your mouth. The taste of your own pussy invaded your taste buds just as you felt his knife brush along your hip. Your thong met the same fate as the rest of your clothes and your glistening netherlips were exposed to the mercenary's hungry glare.

The blunt edge of the knife traced along your navel moving lower until the coldness of it made you jump as it brushed up against your clit.

"Pleashuh don'uh," you try to speak but his fingers are still filling your mouth and all that comes out is nonsense. You're getting more frantic by the second at the threat of being cut at your most sensitive place, too afraid to move even an inch. Cruelly, his thick digits are suddenly forced deeper into your throat, as if he can tell how hard you're fighting not to struggle. You gagged and jerked in response unable to help yourself and he gives a single dry chuckle of amusement.

It doesn't stop there as he continuously pumps them in and out holding the knife at your slit and teasing at your swollen bud until you're panting from more than just fear.

Saliva is leaking down your chin and throat while the wetness of your slick leaks down between your thighs. You're dizzy, in pain, and probably more aroused than you've ever been in your entire life.

"Ready to talk, bitch?" he sneered, finally, finally taking his fingers out.

"Please," you said only able to manage more of a pathetic croak than actual speech. Your head was pounding from the lack of oxygen as you struggled to form the words that would make your suffering end. Not fast enough for the mercenary as it turned out because you felt the tip of his blade denting your mound just lightly enough not to hurt you.

"Please, fuck me. I want it. I'm sorry I tried to run. Please. Please," you quickly babbled out and silently prayed to whatever god was listening that it would be enough.

In a blur you were thrown to the ground, your ass getting more scratched up from the detritus that made up the forest floor. The mercenary dropped to his knees between your spread legs, cock already in hand, and a leer on his face. It was pathetic how your soaked pussy twitched and clenched at nothing when he gave himself a few pumps and god this was actually happening wasn't it?

You were just as relieved as you were ashamed by your own arousal at the situation because the idea of something that size getting forced into your body made you nauseated.

Like everything else that had occurred that night there was hardly any buildup to his hands on your hips dragging you upwards and impaling your desperate muscles in one go. Your back arched as you released a scream. Your abused throat ached from the effort and the breath is knocked out of you entirely when he pulled out all the way to the tip and slammed back in all the way to your cervix. Your eyelids fluttered over unseeing eyes and you orgasmed in only a few thrusts - too shocked for it to register for a few mind numbing seconds. It's more degrading than anything that's happened to you so far and you heard the mercenary hiss out a curse and go still from how tight you were.

Your eyes drifted closed as you lay there unable to cry left entirely numb from it all.

"Did you see that, Leon? Look at how much of a whore she is for me. Aren't you proud."

That gets your attention.

You didn't think you could possibly be surprised anymore until you looked up and saw the mercenary holding a camera. The kind with the little screen that folds out that you haven't seen anyone use in fucking years.

"How do you know my brother?" you demanded.

"Don't worry about it. Just lay there and be good. Fucking. Bait," he snarled, bottoming out inside you on every slam, making your eyes roll back. You whined and squirmed when he didn't stop, continuing to fuck through tight orgasm constricted muscles. Your hole made an embarrassingly loud wet noise as your come continued to leak out leaving a creamy ring at the base of his cock and dripping down his balls.

You chanted, "Please, please, please," not even sure what you wanted anymore. This man knew your brother somehow, clearly considered him an enemy from the way he spoke, so why was it you were already so close to coming for the second time?

"Say 'Please make me come, Jack,'" he said, coming to a complete stop inside you. When you don't comply right away the familiar sting of his knife was at your throat and you couldn't stop how your pussy tightened in response, betraying you.

"P.. lease, Jack, I need to come so bad. Let me come," you said. You were already so far gone you would have said anything at that point.

"Good girl," he praised. You should have felt humiliated, angry like before, yet you only tightened around him again. "Such an obedient little bitch. She knows her place well, already. Show Leon what a good whore you are and come for me. That's. It."

His pace turned brutal, inhuman, and when you came it's in an explosion of fluid that soaked both of you. His knife cut into your skin where he still held it against your throat. You're barely aware of Jack on his knees over your body as he finishes himself off over your tits with a grunt. His come burning where it lands on your cut skin but you no longer care. You're exhausted to the point of passing out.

The last thing you remember is Jack saying, "I'll be waiting," before blissfully slipping into nothingness.

#krauser x reader #jack krauser #re4 remake

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cuppalevi · 7 months ago

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𝐓𝐨𝐝𝐚𝐲'𝐬 𝐂𝐮𝐩𝐩𝐚 #𝟑 | 𝐋𝐞𝐯𝐢

Today's Cuppa is cuppalevi's feature fanfic recommendations. See Cuppa Collections for list of fanfic recommendations.

april 25 2024

this fic omg. i personally love detective and mysteries so i was determined to see this thru— naturally, i binge-read this.

this felt like a sherlock holmes in attack on titan. there were parts of the story where the reader was tasked in deciphering codes, to which you can solve along as well. i certainly did. i sat up from bed, grabbed a pen and paper and tried to decipher before continuing the chapter.

the plot was sososo great. the case that they were trying to solve makes u really think who could be the suspects and what other type of evidences could have been shed to light. it did not disappoint!! delving into the life of a detective being pressured to resolve these crimes being committed in order to prevent more crimes happening.

in terms of the relationship with levi, it was gradually developed. its got the type of slowburn that was so satisfying at the end and was not way too drawn out. the lingering and the yearning was SO WORTH IT. the cast as well *chef's kiss* never a dull moment with the aot characters. their contributions to the story was substantial. as well as the other original side characters, keep an eye on them.

silesy was incredible at conjuring the red string of fate in this where different people were intertwined and all had particular roles to play in the story. the connections between details in the story will make u go "ayo?!" or "i knew it!" to which makes the experience greater cos you get mindblown.

Kind: Series

Content: alternate universe, detectives, murder, action, solving, slow burn, angst, etc. more tags on ao3

Status: completed

𝘼 𝘽𝙖𝙡𝙡𝙖𝙙 𝙊𝙛 𝘽𝙧𝙤𝙠𝙚𝙣 𝙒𝙞𝙣𝙜𝙨 by silesy

A killer is on the loose. After solving an elusive cipher that proved your aptitude for the case, you were added to the elite detective force under the commandment of Chief Erwin Smith. Your only hope at catching him is joining forces with your new partner: a stoic, icy-eyed man with a short temper that slowly but surely makes his way into your heart.

©cuppalevi on tumblr / icon by yomu do not steal / header by me

#levi ackerman #levi ackerman x reader #todayscuppa #attack on titan x reader #aot fanfic #snk #shingeki no kyojin #levi #levi x you #ao3 #ao3 fanfic #brewingcuppa

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alieinthemorning · 1 year ago

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Nightmares [Ace Trappola | Maeda Yuuna]

Content: Nightmares, Character Death, Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort

Pairing: Ace Trappola/Maeda Yuuna

Header: @/n_twst on Twitter

Reblogs: Let me know that you enjoy my work and want to see more, so don’t forget to like and reblog (and comment in the tags. I love seeing people’s rambles in the tags)!

This work's concepts, plot and original characters are my own which means I do not allow any sort of creative theft nor do I allow my work to be entered into any sort of A.I. bots. Thank you for respecting my space and boundaries.

And yet, he still found his way to her. Sitting on the porch steps, watching the stars be stars. Then her head turned, and she smiled, patting the porch steps like she had done before.

He didn't hesitate this time, and took up the spot beside her.

All was quiet, and then she asked, "Nightmares, huh?"

Ace didn't often have nightmares. The dreams he usually had were odd and disjointed, never something to take seriously.

These dreams

These nightmares

Were something different.

They weren't just something his mind conjured from staying up laying and watching a scary movie.

This was derived from real life.

It was from the first night of school when he, Deuce, Grim and Yuuna were sent to the Dwarf Mines to recover a magestone for that stupid chandelier that Deuce had broken (by using his body).

But it didn't start from the very beginning. No, it always started after that monster appeared.

That inky demon with the giant pickaxe that scrapped along the cave floor as it chased after them.

They had barely made it out alive.

And unfortunately for him, it seemed like his mind wanted to torture him with the what-if.

What if it had gotten its claws on them?

First went Deuce, who protected Yuuna and Grim. At least he wasn't facing the pickaxe as it slammed down. It didn't kill him instantly, but he didn't scream (maybe because Ace didn't know what Deuce sounded like when he was dying). They were forced to watch him struggle and struggle until he finally succumbed to death.

Next was Grim. He scurried along the floor and walls, ducking and dodging the pickaxe. However agile he was didn't matter though because the beast was still a beast and ensnared easily him in its grasp. Grim yelped and squirmed, looking back at them, Ace and Yuuna, for help. But not for long, because in the next moment his flames were snuffed out. Engulfing the cave into a silent darkness.

And then finally there was tonight. He knew he would have the nightmare again. So he tried his absolute best to avoid sleeping, but sleep always catches the unsuspecting.

The cave was just as it was in the previous dream, quiet and dark. Perfect for the ink demon. Ace summoned his courage to cast a spell that essentially turned his magestone into a flashlight.

He should have never done that.

He called for her, he ran for her

he found her

Yunna had already befallen the monster's wrath, and it was the worst one yet. The pickaxe's chisel end was set firmly into the hard ground, its owner nowhere to be found. In place of the owner was Yunna, who was impaled atop the pick end. Her deep brown eyes were wide, while her mouth was a small 'o'.

It was weird. It was like she was surprised, like she didn't struggle. Like she had died instantly.

But why?

Out of all of them, why had she—

But he didn't have the chance to linger on the thought.

Because in the next instant he was dead.

And then he was awake.

He felt...numb. While the nightmare still appeared on his eyelids every time he blinked, he felt nothing.

Nothing at all.

He brushed a hand through his damp hair, deciding that getting up and going for a light night stroll was better than falling back into the hands of death. He didn't go anywhere particular, just wandered about until he had to return to his dorm.

And yet, he still found his way to her. Sitting on the porch steps, watching the stars be stars. Then her head turned, and she smiled, patting the porch steps like she had done before.

He didn't hesitate this time, and took up the spot beside her.

All was quiet, and then she asked, "Nightmares, huh?"

He turned to her, frowning at the trails of wetness that stained her brown cheeks.

"Why are you crying?"

She didn't bother wiping them away as she gave him (what he now realized was) another watery smile.

"Maybe instead of asking me, you could ask yourself that."

And then he realized his own cheeks' dampness. The tightness in his chest. The tremors in his hands.

Numbness was replaced with sudden feeling

and it terrified him.

Yunna grabbed his hand and pulled him up. "Let's go somewhere else. I don't wanna worry, Grim."

And then she led him to some open area behind the woods of Ramshackle.

"Okay, you're safe to let it out." He just stared at her, not even realizing that he slightly shook his head.

She tried to give him another smile, but she couldn't. It wobbled and fell into a frown as her own feelings caught up with her. "We don't have to be strong here. We can be as small as we want to."

Then she pulled him into her arms, clutching onto him tight.

She was just as afraid of losing him again as he was her. Like, if she didn't hold on tight enough, that he would slip from her grasp.

Is that how her nightmare took them away from her? Did they just disappear?

He held her just as tight, hopefully giving her some form of reassurance.

She sighed, her shoulders shagging just a bit.

"I'll stay with you.

"I promise."

If y'all wanna blame anyone, blame my friend, Rogue. They had a minor role in this (he started it, but I sure as hell finished it).

Ko-Fi | Commission | Masterlist

#alie ficlets #alie series: hatsukoi #ace x yuu #ace x yuusona #oc insert #yuusona insert #ace trappola x maeda yunna #deuce spade #twst grim #tw: character death

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pennedbylisse · 1 year ago

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NEVERLAND IN AUGUST

I often tell myself I will no longer partake in writing tae fics bc they always turn out excessively angsty and melodramatic, and yet, I find myself here, time and time again.

short version: kth and poor decisions. salty air. beach shore. never meant to be. exchanges that slipped away into moments in time. a secret well kept, and then fallen into oblivion. seashells. skinny dipping. august, except it's not. you, except you are not mine. us, except there is no such thing. you were never mine to keep, or to lose.

tae's got a neverland complex. doesn't wanna grow up, bc it means leaving behind his freedom, but worst of all, you. or something like that.

proceed, if you are interested in the long version.

wc: 3.7 k

tracklist: 'August' by Taylor Swift

tense and POV: 2nd person and past

You are so easy to fall back into, as though we are molded to fit one another, a lock to its key, and it shouldn't be this easy to self-destruct.

Taehyung slipped away into the night when the crowd had settled and turned its eyes blind; when the topics of conversation had shuffled from his career and marital prospects to rather pettier, popular culture developments.

He averted curious gazes amidst the crowded streets as he meandered aimlessly. Like a compass with a damaged needle, he spun indefinitely, pressed tight between bodies. No sense of direction.

With a flighty gaze, he scoured the surrounding, illuminated buildings for an anchor, a sort of lighthouse, some sort of sign to pierce his attention, slap him hard across the cheek as the ground would if he would only stop falling. If the ground were to catch him and hold him, rather than cave beneath his feet.

Gloomy, dim eyes searched past the silhouettes of the skyscrapers, past the nomadic clouds, which veiled the moon's luminous halo, attempting to make out faint stars freckling the sky.

Not just any stars.

Polaris - a stable point, axis, around which the rest of the world's body falls and rises.

The star he'd chased with his siblings through the playgrounds long ago.

The clouds were too vast and dense, as were the crowds pressing in around him. Suddenly, he felt painfully sympathetic of Polaris's condition; the world seemed to start spinning around him, too; the ground at his feet warping with each unsteady step.

He didn't want to be central, polar. He wanted to be a fuzzy margin, ambiguous, never quite a start, never quite an end. The horizon.

He wanted to be too many things in life, and nothing at all, at once. It was dizzying, to say the least, to be tugged in every direction. To have so many quarreling voices beckoning your attention.

Sometimes he wished he could split himself into a million little versions. Split the burden between them.

He just wanted it to stop. The spinning. The encompassing chatter. The omnipresent stares. All of it.

He dipped into a gas station with a neon sign for a header and pulled the cheapest bottle of red wine from its rack. Rolled it over the counter towards the register clerk along with his upturned ID, only his thumbpad mostly covered his picture and name.

It was a quick swivel, quick enough for the clerk to nod in recognition he was of age; not long enough for them to register the reputation behind the name, the face;

not long enough for a light to flicker in their distant gaze and their mouths to fall slack in awe.

With a lazy grip on the bottle's neck, he swayed and weaved through the saturated streets, often slamming shoulders, until he sank into a dim alley, save for an overhead flickering neon sign, similar to that of the gas station, only just one flicker short of giving out.

He padded his way out to a quieter, sleeping street, and found himself a vacant bench to collapse onto.

It was finally dark, and quiet, and the margins of the world had seemed to settle about him.

There, he conjured up an affair with the shadows until he grew to question whether he'd become one. Whether the star-freckled clouds had encompassed and carried him away, to some distant Neverland. A place that could offer him an eternity to figure out the calls and wants of his heart.

His parents had omitted a truth from him. They'd omitted many through his development, opting for sugar-coating existence, but of all the ones, this one was unforgivable.

They had never mentioned how it is like the air in your lungs dissipates with each passing year. A blind habit forms: you start holding your breath just to get through a couple of gruesome hours, a shift, the day.

You wait for the afternoon to catch it again, but then the afternoons start growing burdensome in a way uniquely their own. It grows, the weight on your chest, drowns you and kills you slowly.

In his brief recollection tonight, he supposes they'd been unconvincing in their pretensions. They'd never blatantly admitted this truth but had often insinuated it.

He should have looked closer, not forsaken the fine details.

He would have noticed the drawn bags lining their eyes, the burst capillaries on the ivory margins.

He would have felt the exasperated sigh leaving their lips while bracing their weight against the counter, just trying to stand another day.

He could feel that helpless sigh, now. Infact, it had grown to become his.

A sigh which seeped into the quiet night.

Quiet, safe for the whir of cars on the highway, a couple of miles back; safe for the chirp of crickets nestled amidst bushes, shrubs.

Quiet, safe for the sudden exclaim of a nearby branch, snapped under unannounced weight.

Taehyung stiffened and used the bottle that had been resting on his thigh as leverage, in case he'd need to spring upward and dash -though, it would likely be less of a dash, more of a stumble and awkward trot away given his inebriation.

"Boo!"

He didn't startle, much too inhibited to have reacted within the acceptable timeframe.

Or simply, too unbothered.

Instead, he turned his head with a lazy, drunken gaze and there you were -- his Neverland on Earth, stardust lining your eyes, a shard of magic and dream and impossible possibilities amidst a limiting world.

The stars surely envied you.

You kicked the air, standing, waiting awkwardly, as if for an invitation from him to sit. You weren't sure if he'd appreciate you intruding on his hideout, even if it was a vacant restaurant patio, with rusted chairs and overgrown ivy.

"They are losing their minds looking for you, you know?"

"They are?" A smug smile tugged on the corner of his glistening lips. "Let them." He proceeded to lick the gloss away, tasting the bitterness of residual liquor with subtle tones of sweet vanilla and tart cherry. "Are you gonna tattle on me?"

He swung down the leg he'd had outstretched on the bench, opening a space for you. Welcomed your presence.

Your original reluctance dissipated, formerly pinched shoulders relaxing.

"I already did," you flaunted, lied, made your way across the patio, crunching over shattered stone.

As you lowered yourself onto the seat, he gestured the opaque bottle at you, whirling the contents around.

"If I'm going down..." he started, holding back a hiccup behind puckered lips. For an instant, his face twisted, as if bile had crept up the column of his throat.

He swallowed hard, and quarreled with the nausea wringing his stomach. "I might as well not remember any of it."

You'd feel nauseated, too, leading his life.

Sure, it was glimmery and luxurious, alluring and comfortable by every physical means, with everything imaginable so carefully crafted and tailored. The perfect life.

It was all pretend, shallow. A gilded cage is only ever still a cage, a prison, confinement.

It wasn't him - not the him that you knew. He was a free bird, meant to take flight.

The him that you knew would be up for spontaneous drives to the shore. He'd get lost out of an insistence to avoid using navigation systems. He'd blast every genre of music through the speakers, and somehow recall every lyric, even the ones that were in a foreign tongue.

The him you knew, would leave his shoes at every corner, flinging them off with irritability, complaining about how sore they made him, managing to turn it into a debacle on how suffocating it is to be trapped.

He'd walk on coarse gravel, all through the city. Come home with the filthiest soles, nothing short of charcoal. He'd defy every norm with the lightest of smiles, come spewing to you about the sights he saw on his adventures, the people he'd met, how he'd played soccer with a couple of kids from the neighborhood, how their mother had served him some jiggae and how it reminded him so much of home.

Then he'd guffaw, shake his head and tell you that it was weird how he could recognize the familiarity of home when he'd never really met it.

But you were, of course, biased in your belief that the only version of him that existed was the one he showed you. You didn't really - or simply didn't want to - accept that this version could be the manifestation of a persona, a theatrical mask meant to distract something deeper, more fragile, genuine, and lost.

Your accepting company allowed him to be a different version of himself, but it wasn't entirely the truest one.

"Get up." You slapped his thigh and turned the bottle he'd handed over, letting its maroon content pour onto the cement, stain it beyond repair. "I want you to remember tonight."

He groaned, collapsing his head onto his hands and ruffling his hair into a nest. "I had been enjoying that!"

"That..." You shifted your gaze to the ground and then back up at him, brows pinched in question. You couldn't possibly be referring to the same thing. "No one could possibly enjoy that. Abominable." You shuddered.

"It was cheap," he justified.

"You act as if you have no money."

"I don't! It's their money." He thrust both arms into the open air, gesturing to his puppet masters, to the strings sewn into his elbows and wrists.

At all times, he was being watched fall apart at the seams, and was scrutinized. The same life which had been breathed into his infantile lungs, never felt his. Instead, it reminded him of a plotted strategy on a chess board game drawn out for added torture. It wasn't a single, one-time commitment; it was a lifetime of sustaining choices that would remove him further from himself.

"Enough self-pity for one night. Come on." You rose, knees creaking a little. "Let's go."

"Where to?" He beckoned, still planted on the bench.

"Somewhere. Anywhere. Nowhere." The offer hung in the air, open to endless possibilities. Potential twinkled in your starry eyes; a million wishes and dreams birthed in a second.

You smiled, and stardust gathered on your tear line, rained down and dusted his sullen limbs until he was floating, made weightless, trailing after you.

"Neverland."

"What?"

"Let's go to Neverland."

You snickered and it was as if bells chimed, rang, jingled.

"What are you - Have you gone mad?" Taehyung hissed, dancing his weary gaze across his immediate surroundings. He'd rapidly grown weary, careful of an audience bearing witness to the spectacle you were putting on, in your lacy underwear. Locks of hair danced around your figure in response to a cool oceanic breeze gathering to greet you.

"I am pretty sure this is illegal. Illegal, T."

T, as in Tinker Bell, his personal version of a rose-tinged fairy, with a volatile temper, particularly when things don't follow your script.

Incredulously, Taehyung continued to mumble beneath his breath. The cyclical breath of the sea drowned his protests.

Your bra collapsed onto a mound of sand, forcing his lips mute. Like a fish hauled out of the water, his lips smacked open, shut, then open again, failing to close around the ghost of words he'd thought to say but suddenly drew blank on.

Cheeks burning flushed in that so fae way, you dipped your chin behind the curtain of your hair.

You shut your eyes for what you were about to do. Mustered the courage to follow through, to not feel vulnerable under his gaze.

Taehyung's unwavering gaze followed your hands down, before trailing up so fast he saw stars spinning around his field of vision. He felt he'd been thrown into Van Gogh's Starry Night.

Slowly, apprehensively, he let his eyes cascade over your silhouette, which grew smaller in the distance as you raced to the sea, desperate to hide in its embrace.

Growing envious of it, Taehyung ripped his top off his torso, and stumbled the length of the shore, quarreling with his trousers.

In his boxers, he stopped close enough for the edge of the tide to graze the tip of his toes. Retracted at the sudden bite of cold. "You are mad, woman." It's no longer a question.

"Look who's talking?" You twirled around, the water caressing your sides, sculpting you with as much love and delicate intent as a historic artist did his marble block. "Isn't this illegal?"

And something in you fizzled, like the air bubbles frothing against your lips on the crystalline surface. It filled you with confusing pleasure to leave a mark on him. To corrupt him.

You hoped your touch on him - your influence - was permanent enough to outlive all that would proceed. Permanent and deep like etchings on tree barks, or indentations on freshly cemented sidewalks.

The panic in his gaze had long dissipated. It blended into a palette of emotions. All unnamable, indistinguishable, but utterly mesmerizing, nonetheless, much like the colorful horizon behind you.

Delight. Amusement. Fascination. A twinge of flippant anger.

You drive me mad, woman.

Orange sherbet. Strawberry pink. Lavender lilacs.

Mad enough to rouge his own cheeks.

You'd like to stare long enough to acquaint yourself with each and every one of them. To name them all, and find where one starts, and the other ones trails off.

But the thought of staring, steadily into his gaze makes you restless, short of breath. As if there isn't enough air in the entire atmosphere to satiate your lungs.

You can't name the way he looks at you; it's foreign, but not frightening in its oddity. Still, you can recognize its danger, in that it's not a known way to look at friends.

You reclined your head onto the surface of the water, much as you would against your pillow after a long day. "Oh, it's heavenly, Tae." With your arms outstretched like the limbs of starfishes on the ocean floor, you floated. The salty medium carried the voice of the sea directly into your ears. The sound of your breathing and the beating of your heart amplified.

A bizarre reminder that you were indeed alive.

Splashing and thrashing echoed across the sea, and you instinctively curled in on yourself to find Taehyung visibly grimacing at the cold state of the water.

"Why did I ever think following you was a good idea?"

You beamed, droplets of the salty sea clinging to your lashes, where they refracted the setting sun, and it's like stardust in broad daylight all over again.

"You have to do it all at once. Don't think. Just do," you encouraged, watching as the delicate, thinly defined muscles of his torso flexed and twitched over the surface of the water.

His gaze was devoid, save for deeply creased brows caught in contemplation. A war with the limits of sensation. He held his arms linked over his chest to preserve heat, or perhaps hide his vulnerability.

Water pooled in the cup of your hand, which you splashed in his direction, aimed right at his handsome frown.

Victory ignited like an ember amidst your eyes.

He grew to shudder a few arms' length from you. Broad and strong shoulders quivered helplessly.

"You!" Then, those burnt-honey eyes pierced yours. Glaring. Fixed.

The cupid-bow lining his upper lip momentously twitched as he repeated himself "You-" His words stumbled over unstable, shallow breaths.

You withdrew into the water's embrace and watched attentively, as the waterline climbed up his finely detailed torso. Outstretched arms grew nearer. Burnt-honey eyes widened in a vengeful craze. Ivory teeth became bared underneath strawberry-red lips.

A frightened giggle of yours bubbled the water's surface rimming your chin.

Finally, with an inhale of courage, Taehyung lunged forward, took the blow of the cold front on, and wrapped you in his arms. His weight sunk you beneath the surface. You were a pair of tangled anchors.

Not having stored a breath in your lungs, you squirmed and kicked in his old. His groans were muted by the harrowing echoes of the abyss beneath the sea.

Strong arms tightened around you and hauled you out. You broke the surface with a desperate gasp, choking for breath between giggles.

Laughter echoed in his chest, and reverberated through you. It reminded you of the waves and siren songs you grew up believing resided within conch shells as a pig-tailed kid.

Since having shed your milk teeth and tolerated the gnaw of growing pains that accompanied such loss, you'd given up on childish fables of that kind.

On trips to the shore, there weren't hidden siren songs in the colorful conch shells you held up to your ear. There was only your younger sister cackling beside you, calling you a fool - but only after having tried it for herself first.

But much as you had convinced yourself siren songs didn't exist inside the shells, you'd also convinced yourself you'd never hear that laugh again. Somber. Baritone. A tad boyish, in the way it would crack unpredictably. So wholly yours. It was a tune you'd looped in your memory from the very first instance you'd heard it.

In that split-second, with his hands fanned over your hip bones, and half-moon eyes tenderly fixed on yours, the fables did not seem so farfetched. New possibilities were solidifying at the tip of your fingers. Your fingers grazed the apples of his cheek.

The possibilities were whispers in the crest of your ear.

You'd only needed to get far enough from the bustling commotion of the city to hear them, to realize they'd always been there.

An abstract somethingness would always exist between you two, just barely palpable.

The champagne had a mildly scorched aroma undermining its light fizz. You grimaced as it burned its way down your throat.

On any given night, you would much prefer a cup of tea to pair with the sacred act of slipping into bed; green, chamomile, on occasion, even aromatic Tulsi.

But tonight, you weren't trying to sleep, to ease a mild case of insomnia. Sleep would rob you of time both of you knew you didn't have.

After a couple of swigs from the dark bottle, your skin began to buzz. A denseness subtly amounted over you, as though honey were dripped over your body, every move lubricated, viscous.

Your legs were warm, draped over his in a languid, but intimate manner - almost grounding in nature, as if you were his anchor. You tethered him to the present pleasures, kept his mind off the anxious tomorrows.

His lips were sweet on yours and at times a hint bitter, like something you shouldn't have taken pleasure in tasting. A poison, that grows tolerable the more you ingest, but not any less deadly.

The tolerance being an illusion, an influence of the poison over you, foreshadowing its impending triumph, as you relinquish your willpower.

That's it. You were dwindling under its influence. Your mind grew heavy, like your limbs, with intoxication.

It was no longer bitter.

Rather, it became cloying, and you were innately and undeniably insatiable.

Taehyung hoisted your hips to reposition them over his, desiring your proximity. Possibly as equally intoxicated. The question hung over your heads in the shape of a watchful moon.

Who was the poison?

The hold on you was rough, but harmless. It was the gentlest rough-grip you have ever been subjected to. You allowed it.

"I shouldn't do this." Your shallow breath ghosted his swollen lips in torment.

He nuzzled the distance in desperation, and you obliged, tasting him apprehensively.

Just one peck.

Then, another.

And, what if, perhaps you held his lips in place with adoration and reverence. Held them in a warm hug, as if to shield them from the cool breeze blowing in from the sea.

Would that have been such a crime?

The set of trespassers that tore through your blouse certainly were (criminal). They robbed you of any and every modicum of self-restraint.

You were no longer holding his lips. You had long since graduated to a sculptor, molding them to your will with each measured graze. Simultaneously, you started to circle your hips over his, back and forth, round around.

"We should stop." Taehyung breathed raggedly into your neck. "Tell me to stop," and it came across as half-plea, half-demand.

You defied him, pulled him close, your breasts flushed against his sturdy chest.

You were definitely the poison.

You were a corrupt, filthy little thing. Loved it when he called you out on it.

Tonight, he held you like you were something, someone sacred, like you were ceramic at risk of shattering in his hands.

You wrestled his gentle touch, wanting him to defile as he'd done enough times before for it to not be mistaken with error, overwhelming tempation.

You were temptation embodied, but he never once feigned sanctity.

Equally so, if not more, you deeply desired to defile him, to permeate every inch of him until the crime became undeniable.

Fast, is how it unfolded.

But is there any better way to go?

Live fast, die young, right? Shine so bright you burn out. A phenomenal supernova. Watchers gathered to experience a historic event.

There certainly wasn't an absolute right or wrong way to go. But, if there had been, Taehyung was certain that way was fast. To burn like the dozens of stars in the sky, framing the quaint balcony. One moment there, the next gone.

He knew that his departure approached just as quickly as dawn brightened the horizon. He knew you weren't oblivious to this fact.

Something in him winced at the thought of putting you through it again.

"Tell me to stop."

"Don't stop."

"Tell me to go," he almost begged, groaning as you kissed down the column of his neck.

"Stay."

He wished he could.

A ringtone blared across the room, funneling out through the creak between the balcony door and the frame. It said what neither could bring themselves to utter.

Taehyung marched out of the room, half-dressed, delirious but with a direction in mind.

And just like that, the bitter taste returned to overpower your senses.

The whispers in your ears, grew deceiving.

Deceitful little lies. Impossible possibilities.

The possibilities that had grazed your fingertips crumbled into mounds of sand.

Sand, after all, is only ever withered shells.

2 notes · View notes

agentmarcuspike · 1 year ago

Text

i am eternally grateful that the universe made you a writer and made sure we met over this shared interest because the way this story, these characters, have fully taken root in my cerebrum, core, and cock…

it’s like, i know it’s Joel from The Last of Us, and i can feel that, but he’s also so real as a characters of his own, and i see him and his conflicting emotions and his hopelessness and pain and love so very very clearly

and it really is the most satisfying feeling, when reading a story, to be able to let your eyes just glide across the words and not have to conjure up any images at all because it’s so perfectly descriptive it just happens automatically. my eyes never skip ahead, they never pause or stumble, because the way you write is so poetic and rhythmic and comfortable to read.

anyway, onto my favorite moments:

first of all

“Now how many times do I have to tell you there’s no good Mexican food in New York?”

is this…. just true or have you also seen the interview in which señor pascal says this?

Knew that sometimes her childhood felt like a knife stuck in her throat, and on those days, she had to decide whether to leave it in and stem the blood flow, or pluck out the blade and watch everything turn red.

i love a knife analogy, in general, but, especially for ellie…. joel should read this (re plucking the blade out)

His knuckles feel tight – he wants to pull his hand back and crack them. Wants to feel the joints pop beneath his skin, let the tension slip away like a sigh.

some might say “it’s just cracking ur knuckles”. i show them this. feeling seen and understood. it’s also such a good picture of how he’s so aware of his body. A+

AND THEN—

“That I loved you.”

jessie i literally SCREECHED. out loud. i felt it coming but the slap still stung (alliteration alarm) like a… knife i guess. been thinking about people’s theories about this part of the story, about Joel and Rachel, and you just went THERE. insane behavior, i hate it (lovingly)

and this too, so painful

like, yeah, rejection hurts but also rejecting hurts

and finally,

A hunger that can only ever be sated like the taking of a sacrament – on his knees, devotion in his eyes.

religion and sex, name a more iconic duo. you know i love to see it

ilysm jessie, i’m your biggest fan, i swear to GOD

ps the fucking right side painting in your header is fucking pain, and ALSO read these lyrics from Taylor’s “right where you left me” and weep:

Friends break up, friends get married / Strangers get born, strangers get buried / Trends change, rumors fly through new skies / But I'm right where you left me

Help, I'm still at the restaurant / Still sitting in a corner I haunt / Cross-legged in the dim light / They say, "What a sad sight," / I swear you could hear a hair pin drop / Right when I felt the moment stop / Glass shattered on the white cloth / Everybody moved on, I, I stayed there / Dust collected on my pinned-up hair / They expected me to find somewhere / Some perspective, but I sat and stared right where you left me

ok bye :)

a lover's pinch | six

joel miller x f!reader

pairing: professor!joel miller x f!reader rating: explicit, 18+ minors dni summary: joel and rachel have dinner. a confession is made. warnings/tags: au, university professor joel, age gap [20 something years diff], ethically dubious relationship due to inherent power imbalance, JOEL POV, sexting/nudes, joel has bad restaurant etiquette lmao, descriptions of arousal, references to past smut, the guilt and shame that sometimes go so neatly hand in hand with wanting, miller daughter cameo, mild angst, discussion of a car accident. word count: 4.8k series masterlist | main masterlist a lover's pinch playlist a/n: just a reminder that this is set within ALP5, when joel goes to have dinner w rachel. just a short little peek into my beloved professor’s mind, and some context between j & r. hope you like it x follow @hier--soirupdates if you'd like to be notified when i share my writing this is part six of ALP. you can read the previous parts here: one, two, three, four, five.

Sunday.

“Nina thinks it’ll rain tomorrow. Overcast too, probably.”

There’s a faint hum through the phone as she speaks. A vague buzz that crackles and pops in almost every beat of silence. Not for the first time, Joel wishes she would let him buy her a new phone.

A gust of wind whips against his face and he cringes, turning his back against the draft.

“Okay,” he replies. “That’s okay, right?”

“It’s fine,” she grumbles. “Wanted to take you to this bar, though. They do these tacos we love. Nina says it’s the best Mexican place in New York.”

“Now how many times do I have to tell you there’s no good Mexican food in New York?”

“Yeah, yeah.”

Joel can practically hear her rolling her eyes. He chuckles.

“What time are you coming ‘round?” Ellie asks. “I’ll be in the studio for most of the day, but we normally get home around five. Could do dinner around eight?”

Joel hesitates, and then raises his voice to be heard over the rushing wind. “I was actually thinkin’ I’d come see your studio.”

A moment of humming, crackling silence.

“I’d love to see some of your work,” he continues, peering in through the window of the restaurant. He thinks he can see Rachel through the frosted glass – her mess of dark curls vaguely visible, tucked away somewhere in the corner of the space. He hears Ellie breathing through the phone as he looks. “And s’been too long since you showed your old man any of your paintings.”

“Joel,” she huffs, and it’s that smartass, pained tone that has him grinning wider than anything she’s said up until this point.

It’s few and far between lately – hearing that name coming from her mouth. Joel. Something that’s been intermittent for almost a decade, and has been steadily decreasing since she moved to New York five years ago.

Joel, Dad, Joel, Dad, Joel, Dad.

Joel for years, and then one day—Dad.

It was Summer; Ellie was eighteen and he was thirty-nine, and this word that he’d grown so accustomed to hearing suddenly felt like a fist squeezing around his heart. It became something new, something different. Because Joel knew that, for her, family had always meant mistrust. Had always meant loneliness. Knew that sometimes her childhood felt like a knife stuck in her throat, and on those days, she had to decide whether to leave it in and stem the blood flow, or pluck out the blade and watch everything turn red.

And then one day, years on, it seemed that she’d drawn that dagger enough times. The blood stopped, the mistrust fell away, and—Dad.

Dad to Sarah and now, finally, Dad to Ellie.

“Ellie,” he imitates her tone, well-versed in mirroring her attitude after so many years of practice.

A voice rears up directly behind him and Joel stiffens, glancing over his shoulder to watch a couple exit the restaurant. Coat collars dragged up to protect their necks, arms linked as they smile and start down the street. He imagines Rachel sitting inside, alone, and his smile falters. He knows he should go back in soon, but can’t quite bring himself to cut this short.

“Yeah, okay,” Ellie answers finally, and he can feel the weight that rests in those words.

The admission, but also everything that goes unsaid alongside it. A silent acknowledgement of years spent reading between the lines, trying to know each other; years of her locking her bedroom door, hiding her journals, her artbooks, her pencils. Anything to keep someone else from seeing the way she expresses herself – from understanding that she feels anything. And this yeah, okay – well, it’s as close to I love you as the two of them ever get.

Joel says, “I’ve been missin’ you, kiddo.”

And she says, “I know.”

More silence. More contemplation of how to respond, how to keep emotions level when he is not Joel in this moment, but Dad.

Plucking out the blade.

“Ten tomorrow morning. I’ll send you the address,” Ellie says after a while. “Don’t be late or I’m not showing you shit, old man.”

Heat blasts his face when he steps back inside the restaurant. He tugs his jacket off as he wanders his way toward their little corner table inside San Vecchio—old saint. A small Italian place that Rachel likes to visit whenever she’s the city, and has slowly but surely grown on him.

When he gets close enough to see the table his stomach drops, face twisting into something apologetic as he lowers himself into his chair.

“Shit,” Joel mutters, staring at their food. Brought out while he was on the phone, sitting untouched; she didn’t even pick up her fork in his absence. A shameful heat rises in his face. “I’m sorry, Rach.”

“Hon,” she just laughs him off. “It’s okay, it only just came out.”

He nods, grateful, and lets her pour him a generous glass of wine. Red. A bottle of the Carignan, please, he remembers her telling the waiter. Although, when he takes a sip, he can’t tell the difference between this and the twenty-dollar cabernet he buys once a fortnight from the grocer.

They press the lips of their glasses together and murmur soft calls of cheers and another conference done, the words all but swallowed up by the raucous sounds around them.

“How is she then?” she prompts, never able to tame her curiosity.

“Ellie?” Joel’s eyebrows jut up, and he sets his wine glass down. “Good, yeah, good. It was nice to hear her voice, I, uh, I’ve missed too many of that kid’s calls over the past few months.”

Rachel nods, and when she smiles his chest feels a little lighter, because it’s the type of smile that says it’s okay, everything is okay, you’re a good dad, you took the call. And she has always had that kind of soothing effect on him, since the day he met her all those years ago. There’s this compassion to her character; a warmth akin to that of a sister. Smarter than hell and kinder than she’s ever been given credit for.

“Are you seeing her while you’re in town?”

“Mhm, tomorrow.”

“Well, that will be lovely,” she beams and takes a sip of her wine. Carignan stains her mouth. “Is she still with Nina?”

“She is.”

“God, that must be, what, four years they’ve been together now? That’s great, Joel.”

“I’m happy for her,” he smiles, gripping his fork. “They’re renting out this art studio together at the moment – Nina’s an artist too, did I—?”

“Yeah, you told me.”

“Yeah, they’ve been using the space to work on some new stuff. Ellie was tellin’ me ‘bout this gallery downtown, how they’ve offered her some exhibit space. Gonna have a show down there in March.”

“Wow, that sounds amazing,” Rachel’s eyebrows raise, top lip quirking into a soft smirk as she twirls her fork through a mess of red pasta. “Do you think they’ll get married? Follow in Sarah and Tim’s footsteps?”

Joel can’t help but laugh at the idea. He tries to imagine Ellie and Nina in a chapel, or on a beach, or anywhere, professing their love for one another with friends and family watching on. Tries to imagine Ellie, all tattoos, messy hair, and gangly arms, tucked into a suit or a dress. The image doesn’t come easily.

“I don’t really think they’re the type,” he admits, and Rachel laughs too then.

“No,” she agrees. “I guess not.”

She asks more questions about the girls, the way she always does. Asks about Sarah’s job at the primary school, if teaching is all she thought it would be.

And something like halfway through their meal, around a mouthful of food, Rachel says, “You know I’m glad we’re here, because I need to ask you something.”

Joel’s hands still, face going slack as he meets her eye. There’s something conniving in them. Something sly in the way she smiles, baring her teeth at him. It makes his stomach twist into a tight, burning knot. What does she know?

“Okay,” he says slowly, lowering his knife.

“So,” she hums. “At the conference yesterday…”

“Yeah?” he rasps, blunt nails digging into his thigh beneath the table.

“I couldn’t ask you about it because I didn’t want anyone to overhear us, but… did you see what Professor Neilson was wearing? That blazer?”

“Jesus,” he deflates.

“Oh, come on,” she sputters, and there’s lipstick stained on her front teeth and he finds himself smiling too, relaxing.

“You’re a filthy gossip, you know that?” he raises an eyebrow.

She grins back at him. Winks and says, “Don’t act like you don’t love it, Miller.”

So, for an hour they eat, and talk, and drink. Don’t stop until their cheeks are sore from smiling and their ribs are tight and aching from laughter.

With full bellies and rosy cheeks, they scrape their plates clean. Lips purse and pucker around final sips of wine, and then… and then Rachel reaches across the table and places her hand atop his.

And Joel has never noticed that she has sunspots across her knuckles. Never noticed that she wears a ring on her pinkie finger, one with a dark emerald stone in the middle. Never noticed the thin white scar beside the nail on her index. She squeezes his hand, the pad of a finger skimming his wrist, and he remembers how he held someone else’s wrist only hours before this. Felt her skin beneath his fingers – the frailty of the tendons and veins beneath it, swimming with life as his thumb pressed down.

Joel feels his eye twitch. Works to keep his face relaxed, calm. And when she leaves her hand there, he laughs a little. A choked, wary sound. Turns his hand over so his knuckles are against the table and his palm is against her palm and squeezes once in return. Rachel isn’t smiling anymore.

“You okay, Rach?”

“Do you…” she pauses, mouth twisting into a shy smile as she clears her throat. Joel feels something heavy settle in his stomach. A type of dread that curdles and burns like red sky at morning. “Do you remember when Sarah was in that car accident a few years back?”

Joel swallows. Her hand feels too warm against his, her palm tacky with sweat.

“We were… we were at work, and… and Tim called you and told you she was in the hospital—”

He almost cringes at the memory. Her husband’s name flashing across his phone screen during a lecture. Stomach churning and why is Tim calling me, heart racingand Tim never calls. Remembers hearing those panicky breaths down the line and thinking Texas and Maine had never felt further apart than in that moment.

“You drove me to the airport,” he nods. His knuckles feel tight – he wants to pull his hand back and crack them. Wants to feel the joints pop beneath his skin, let the tension slip away like a sigh.

“You were so distraught,” Rachel sighs. “I’d never seen you like that. So uncomposed, so… chaotic.”

Joel huffs out an awkward laugh and tries to pull his hand back, but she squeezes harder. Keeps it in place beneath her own.

“What’s this all about?” his eyebrows furrow, face pinching into a sort of scowl. He can feel it, he can always feel it when his face does this. So unpleasant, so unwelcoming, and he knows it. Just never figured out how to stop it from happening.

“We were in the car,” she continues, and her eyes are so earnest now. So wide, the whites shining, her lashes darkened and fanned out around them in a way he’s never seen before. She’s wearing makeup. “And you didn’t even have a bag packed, you just wanted to get to your girl. Needed to see her with your own eyes, make sure she was okay.”

His jaw feels tight inside his head; teeth clenched painfully, digging into the gums around his molars as the memory plays in his mind.

Tim’s voice wavering, crying, she was unconscious when they pulled her out.

His hand is numb beneath Rachel’s. She’s fine, he reminds himself. Sarah’s fine, that was years ago.

“I think I knew then,” she says quietly.

“Knew what?” Joel tries to keep his voice level. Ignoring the odd feeling that twists in his chest and has his heart racing faster, so much faster than normal, faster than it has ever raced for Rachel.

“That I loved you.”

It’s almost dreamlike, the way everything seems to blur and fade around them after she says it. Or perhaps nightmarish is the right word. A sharp pain sparks between his ribs and he feels his body stiffen and then loosen all at once. Face, shoulders, hand beneath hers – everything softens. Fuck. His mouth tastes like sandpaper, tongue resting fat and gravelly against the roof of it as she stares at him.

When he doesn’t say a word, she says, “I’d always known you were so kind, so generous to the people around you. But to see the way you love? It’s… shit, Joel, I just knew.”

He’s convinced his throat is tightening.

“And I held it in all of these years, and I’m sorry for that. I was just never sure of how you felt, and you never tried anything with me, never hinted at any feelings. But after the conference yesterday...”

“The conference?” he whispers. He pictures that bench outside NYU. Remembers the nasty wind, an empty champagne flute on the ground, the side of his body going hot where it pressed against hers.

“Walking around that hall together,” Rachel smiles. “You kept holding your arm out for me to hold, and I thought, god, maybe this is it. Maybe you actually feel the same.”

Joel imagines that this must be what people describe as critical velocity. Everything that once was smooth turns turbulent. Every second, every minute, that he’s allowed himself to careen forward, wanton and reckless, on the deliciously destructive course he’s set for himself – all of it just for someone close to him to step directly into his line of fire.

And his silence is so painfully telling. He knows immediately when it’s been too long, too much quiet, too many seconds of nothing said, of no reassurances offered. The muscle in her jaw ticks, and a vertical line appears between pinched eyebrows. Confusion, surprise, hurt. Her hand pulls back, and he tucks his in his lap quickly.

“Oh,” she whispers. “Oh, shit.”

Joel is suddenly certain that he’s going to be sick. His hands shake beneath the table, a violent tap tap tap where they’re clasped against the inside of his thigh.

“Rachel—”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t—”

“Please, don’t apol—”

“I shouldn’t have said—”

“Rachel,” Joel’s voice raises, just a little, just enough to make her pause, enough for conversation at the table beside them to halt for a second. “If anythin’, I should be the one apologisin’.”

She laughs; a sad, quiet thing. Shakes her head at him.

“I guess I… somewhere in my head, I thought you knew,” Rachel says quietly. “Thought you….” The unspoken words hang in the air between them. Thought you felt the same.

And it hurts. His skin prickles at the sound of her voice; laced with pain, with rejection. Your fault, he thinks. That pain is your fault.

“Is there someone else?” she asks then, and her voice is so feeble. So small, so un-Rachel that it makes his chest feel tight. Your fault.

Joel sighs, cringes, fumbles for the right words. The words to explain something that he himself doesn’t even fully understand. Words that will make her feel better, that will put her at ease. Put him at ease.

“It’s not….” he trails off, half-prepared to lie. But then he meets her gaze. Sees the tears that have settled on her waterline and knows he can’t. Wants to hate her for asking, wants to beg her to take back the question. But in the end he just admits quietly, “I suppose there is.”

She sniffles, and when she speaks again, it almost sounds like a question.

“You never mentioned anyone.”

“I know,” Joel nods. “I’m sorry, I think I just… it’s complicated, and it… it’s new.”

“New,” she repeats softly. “And you never… you never thought of me that way.” This time it isn’t posed like a question. There is nothing open ended about it. Instead it’s resigned; final.

The corners of her mouth are downturned, and her lower lip wobbles, a movement so miniscule that he could have missed it if his eyes weren’t trained on her face. Trying painfully to understand this situation that feels as if it has crept up on him in his sleep.

“I’m sorry,” Joel finds himself saying again, and he thinks his eyes must be wide, unblinking, because they’re dry, and he feels panicked.

In his mind all he can think of is every cup of coffee in her office, every borrowed book, every sly joke in the corridor at work. Comforting smiles offered at conferences, snarky notes passed back and forth during faculty meetings. His friend. One of the truest, longest, most persevering ones in his life. One so dear to his heart. The idea of all of that being no more seems almost too painful to contemplate in the middle of a restaurant, with your fault thundering in his chest.

Rachel waves a hand. Feigns nonchalance and offers a watery smile.

“I’m happy for you, Joel,” she says. He doesn’t miss the waver in her voice, nor the harsh splash of crimson humiliation that stains the skin of her face. “I am. Really.”

Except he doesn’t know how to respond to that, doesn’t know what there is to be happy for. Can only watch her face. Can only sit, and stare like a fool at the way the skin beneath her eyes tightens as she draws back tears.

“I’m—” Rachel swallows. Sucks in a huge breath and flattens her palms against the table. Her napkin, stained with soft blots of red and brown, is pressed beneath the fingers of her left hand. The one with the sunspots and the ring and the scar. “Sorry, if you’ll excuse me for a minute, I’m going to use the restroom—”

“Rach,” he tries, hand reaching across the table for—for what? Joel isn’t sure. What is there to do? To say? “What can I do?”

“It’s okay,” she stands, holds a hand out to silence him. Steps out from the behind table and squeezes past him. Her fingers brush against his arm as she goes. “It’s fine, I’m fine, I just need a second to freshen up.”

Joel watches her weave through the restaurant, shifting around tables, until her back disappears through a door at the far end of the room.

There’s a minute of painful quiet. A sort of buzzing in his ears that won’t go away. For a moment all he’s aware of is the look of disdain coming from the woman on the table to his left, and the sharp pain in his chest, and then the sounds of the restaurant come rushing back in. Cutlery scraping against plates, conversation, laughter, the sound of a bell ringing. And something buzzing, really truly buzzing this time. Something against his leg.

Joel pulls his phone out of his pocket and tries not to wince when he sees her name on the screen.

Are you enjoying your dinner?

The glance he spares over his shoulder is short, searching, looking to see if she’s coming back yet. Don’t make this worse than it already is.

Yeah, the restaurant is nice.

What are you doing?

Well my bags are packed, and I just tucked myself into bed

Something tightens in his stomach, and he knows what she’s doing, knows this game so well. The way she always manages to creep beneath his skin. Knows exactly what to say, to do, to have him hanging on her every word.

His fingers hover over the screen, contemplating a response.

Is that right? he types out, and then grimaces, backspacing quickly.

Want some company? he types next.

“Christ,” Joel mutters under his breath, erasing that too.

Embarrassment itches across his body. And then guilt, like a tidal wave chaser rushing to cool his inflamed skin, as he notices Rachel walking back toward him. You fucking asshole.

He straightens in his seat, tucking his phone out of sight as she hovers beside the table, eyes darting between him and her empty chair. She doesn’t sit down again.

“I think,” she takes a deep breath. “I think I should probably go. Early flight to catch, you know? I need to get some rest.”

“Yeah,” he says quietly.

He can feel his mouth hanging open, dumbfounded, ridiculous, as his brain scavenges for something to say. Never the right words, never when he needs them. Not for her, and not for Rachel.

Rachel reaches for her purse, and he holds out a hand. “Hey, let me… I’ll cover this.”

She pauses, nods. “Thanks.”

“Course,” he says gruffly. She pulls her coat from the back of her chair, wraps it around herself and does the buttons up slowly. Her mascara is smudged. “Hey, Rach, can we… should we talk about this some more? I don’t want to—”

“Not tonight,” she interrupts sharply. “Please, Joel, I’m sorry, just…. not tonight.”

—lose you.

“Sure, okay.” His throat is tight, your fault lodged heavy against his Adam’s apple. “You need help to get a taxi?”

“I’m fine,” she places a hand lightly on his shoulder, and presses her thumb against the skin beneath his collarbone. “Get home safe, okay? We can talk in Maine.”

“In Maine,” he repeats, and the words split and sour inside his mouth. “Okay.”

He doesn’t watch her leave. Doesn’t want to have to see her retreating from him. Doesn’t want to think about if this will be the last time they get to do this.

The waiter returns and he pays the bill, hastily jotting down a generous tip, and offers the women at the table on his left a tight-lipped smile before standing up.

When he finally makes his way outside, he finds a tax idling by the curb, lights on. The driver notices Joel staring; rolls down the window and raises his eyebrows. Where to?

Joel only shakes his head a little, leans his back against the dank, cold brick wall behind him. He takes a deep, shuddering breath before opening his phone, and sends two words.

Show me.

And then, when she doesn’t respond for a moment, he sends another message. Insistent now. Desperate, and even more desperate not to let it show.

I know you want to show me, sweetheart.

And when she does show him, it takes all of his might not to let this guilt consume him. Takes everything not to ruminate on how quickly he can shift from I’m sorry to Show me.

Because her skin.

So much skin.

Soft, smooth; shrouded in a robe that covers more than he’d like, and he knows how it tastes. Knows how it feels. Could press his fingers, his lips, his nose, to every part of it that he’s touched, in the exact same places, from memory alone.

It’s cold outside – windy, the beginnings of tomorrow’s storm twisting through the air. He feels it snake across his neck, curl beneath the lip of his collar, as he takes in the curve of her breast, the stiff point of her nipple, peeking out from behind white fabric. His cock stiffens in his pants.

He gazes at the softest part of her stomach, the thatch of curls that cover her mound, and wants to press his palms against the plush of her thighs. Wants to lay himself atop her, feel that skin against his again, hear her whimper and moan beneath the broad weight of him as he slips inside her. Wants to snatch her finger from her mouth and glide it inside his own. With her slick and her skin against his tongue, he’d sink his teeth in and inhale that warmth, that beating, pulsating force that he’s found himself so intoxicated by.

And to think, only hours ago, he was doing just that. Lowering himself to the ground in a public bathroom and drinking her down. Feeling the muscles in her thighs pull tight and then loose against the sides of his head. Anything to satisfy the craving that only she seems to inspire in him.

Resolute, persistent – a probing, prodding thing that nips at his heels and thrusts him forward at a double time pace.

A hunger that follows him down the nights and down the days.

A hunger that can only ever be sated like the taking of a sacrament – on his knees, devotion in his eyes.

Jesus.

Are you wet?

You know I am.

Are you touching yourself?

Joel’s jaw tightens. He holds his breath and waits. Can’t quite tell what would be worse; knowing that she’s touching herself, alone, thinking about him, or that she isn’t, that she’s waiting for him. He can feel his cock leaking against his thigh.

No.

He exhales heavily, and the faintest hint of a groan slips out with it. Fuck, pull yourself together.

Joel’s fingers float over the keyboard, and for a moment he thinks of Rachel.

Thinks that if he could only bring himself to look up, to look away from her, he might be able to see Rachel still. The back of her coat, the dark scrawl of her hair, disappearing into the night. Joel thinks of the tears in her eyes, taunting him, threatening to spill spill spill, to streak down rosy cheeks and wet the hollow of her throat. Feels something throb and crack in his chest – a painful, resounding ache that hurts so much like fear, like loss.

Your fault, your fault, your fault.

And wouldn’t that be so much easier? If he were to look away, to chase his friend down the street and tell her that he was wrong, that he wants her, that it makes sense for them to be together. Wouldn’t it be easier if that were true?

But he doesn’t stop looking at her. He thinks of Pothos, of Himeros, and stares at the soft curve of her stomach, the indent of her belly button. Looks at the way her lower lip rests below her finger and pictures it swollen, slick with a medley of her spit and his. Even notices a small mark, nestled in the crevice between her hip and the top of her thigh. A fading remnant of where his teeth had once pinched – like a tangible little footprint, whispering that he was there.

Longing and desire flame between the cracks of his ribs; a bright white heat that curls itself around your fault until he manages to shake the thought.

What was it that Kaminsky said? There was no mythology: Odysseus hanged himself. Homer drank to death and stank of mud.

And perhaps he was right; for there is no witness to this. No being over his shoulder, God or mortal, to lay their eyes upon this moment and understand that all he has ever known of love is deprivation. That fondest, blindest, weakest part of his being that has always yearned for, or perhaps grieved over, this love that once seemed so intangible and now, at last, maybe he has been deemed worthy of.

Alone so long, living in a body grown accustomed to such quiet. Familiar with no touch other than that of his own rough palms. And now… the intensity of it shakes within him. The urge to sink his teeth in like a bad dog and hold, hold, hold, to consume and be consumed, and never yield to anyone who wants to take this away from him.

No, there is no looking away from that, from her. Joel feels the noose tighten around his neck the longer he stares – a dog on the leash of its own longing, that need only sharpening with every second that dares to pass.

And Joel knows that nothing has ever been easy. Considers the idea that maybe that’s how it was supposed to be for him. And perhaps he doesn’t want easy, doesn’t want simple. No – Joel was always drawn to the flame.

Good.

Dinner finished early. Where are you?

And that flame welcomes him now in kind. The arms of a lover spread open for embrace; the address of her hotel sent directly to his phone.

Joel looks up and makes eye contact with the taxi driver again. Light still on.

Where to?

**the Kaminsky mentioned in this is Ilya Kaminsky, and the quote is from Dancing in Odessa.

thank you for reading! x

#i have MORE to say but later #ficrec #alp #going straight to my hall of fame #joel miller fanfiction #professor Joel #joel miller phd

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fiphillipsauthor · 2 years ago

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The header to my Tumblr is a piece of artwork that my daughter designed for my author website. My novels are futuristic fantasy, with plenty of magic but also robots and advanced technology, so I wanted a design that reflected that. Hence the robots arms reaching for the magical orbs. In my novels, all magicals - even the youngest - can conjure up light orbs.

This was long before I knew what the cover designs would look like for my novels.

What do you think?

#fantasybooks #fantasyart #magicandrobots

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sanaavay · 2 years ago

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ASUS ROG Strix B550-F Gaming WIFI II Motherboard Features: AMD B550 Ryzen AM4 Gaming ATX motherboard with PCIe 4.0, 12+2 teamed power stages, Intel 2.5 Gb Ethernet, WiFi 6E, Two-Way AI Noise Cancelation, dual M.2 slots with heatsinks, SATA 6 Gbps, USB 3.2 Gen 2 and Aura Sync RGB lighting AM4 socket: Ready for AMD Ryzen 3000 and 5000 series, plus 5000 and 4000 G-series desktop processors Best gaming connectivity: PCIe 4.0-ready, dual M.2 slots, USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C , plus HDMI 2.1 and DisplayPort 1.2 output Smooth networking: On-board WiFi 6E (802.11ax) and Intel 2.5 Gb Ethernet with ASUS LANGuard Robust power solution: 12+2 teamed power stages with ProCool power connector, high-quality alloy chokes and durable capacitors Renowned software: Intuitive dashboards for UEFI BIOS and ASUS AI Networking for easy configuration DIY-friendly design: Includes pre-mounted I/O shield, BIOS FlashBack , Q-LEDs and SafeSlot Unmatched personalization: ASUS-exclusive Aura Sync RGB lighting, including Aura RGB and addressable Gen 2 RGB headers Industry-leading gaming audio: Two-Way AI Noise Cancelation, SupremeFX S1220A codec, DTS Sound Unbound and Sonic Studio III for immersive sound ASUS ROG Strix B550-F Gaming WIFI II Motherboard ROG Strix B550 Gaming series motherboards offer a feature-set usually found in the higher-end ROG Strix X570 Gaming series, including the latest PCIe 4.0. With robust power delivery and effective cooling, ROG Strix B550 Gaming is well-equipped to handle Zen 3 architecture AMD Ryzen CPUs. Boasting futuristic aesthetics and intuitive ROG software, ROG Strix B550-F Gaming WiFi II gives you a head start on your dream build. PCIe 4.0-Ready ROG Strix B550-F Gaming WiFi II features two M.2 slots, one of which supports the PCIe 4.0 standard to provide maximum storage flexibility and the lightning-fast data speeds. Both M.2 slots support up to the type 22110 socket and NVM Express RAID for a performance boost. WiFi 6E Onboard WiFi 6E technology takes advantage of the newly available radio spectrum in the 6 GHz band. It delivers ultrafast wireless networking speeds and improved capacity as well as better performance in dense wireless environments. Intel 2.5 Gb Ethernet Onboard 2.5 Gb Ethernet gives your wired connection a boost, with speeds that are 2.5 times faster than standard Ethernet connections for speedy file transfers, lag-free gaming, and high-res video streaming. SupremeFX Built-in ROG SupremeFX audio technology ensures pristine audio for ROG Strix B550-F Gaming WiFi II. Along with ensuring a flat frequency response for a neutral, detailed sound signature, it offers two front-panel outputs driven by op amps that deliver high-quality audio to gaming headsets. Two-way AI Noise Cancelation This powerful ASUS-exclusive utility leverages a massive deep-learning database to reduce background noise from the microphone* and incoming audio while preserving voices. Distracting keyboard clatter, mouse clicks and other ambient noises are removed so you can hear and be heard with perfect clarity while gaming or during calls. DTS: Sound Unbound dts ROG Strix B550 series motherboards are pre-loaded with the DTS Sound Unbound app that envelops you in audio as never before, conjuring whole new levels of immersion for extraordinary gaming and entertainment experiences. By leveraging Windows Sonic spatial technology, DTS Sound Unbound delivers audio in a virtual 3D space putting you right in the middle of the soundscape, where you can sense the location and direction of every gunshot, footstep or other sound in your virtual environment. Undeniably ROG Strix ROG Strix B550-F Gaming WiFi II embodies the ROG spirit with eye-catching aesthetics, including the next-generation distorted ROG eye logo and recessed cybertext patterning etched on the I/O shroud. These new designs move ROG Strix boldly into the future, while clearly reflecting the series’ gaming roots.

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blackscreentech · 2 years ago

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People use the white screens for:

The white screen has psychological effects

In addition to being the opposite of black, which stands for the absence of color, white also has more similarities than you may imagine.

A white screen is also seen as an unalterable, ultimate hue that conjures up all or nothing.

The white screen is the primary hue and stands for liberation, peace, cleansing, or a fresh start. Since white is a color associated with light, it also connotes purity, order, mental clarity, and clarity.

White conveys a sense of refinement and purity. Uplifting implications:

- Pure, Clear, and Clean

Simplicity, excellence, and freshness

In an environment with lots of white, I feel at peace.

Copy the image using the white screen.

Put the image or photo you wish to duplicate first onto the blank screen. Afterward, place a fresh piece of paper on top.

When you turn somewhat on a bright white screen, the complete picture's outline will be visible. To outline the complete image you wish to replicate, all you need is a pen.

As a diffuser, use a white screen.

You want to snap a photo of yourself or an item, but there isn't enough light for the thing to have highlights or shadows.

Furthermore, the white screen for light is a superb option for you right now at present if the advertisement photo needs to be balanced. Place white screen lighting where they belong and leave them to do their job.

White screen portrait photography with a bright balance

Ample lighting is considered necessary for portrait photography. Let's position the white screen in the middle of the model's face. You'll see that the lighting is now perfectly balanced, and the model's face is also brighter and more distinct.

Find the screen's dead spot.

The white screen allows you to readily determine the screen's dead point. With the touch interface, it will be easier.

Utilize the white screen as a light source for travel

The white screen lighting is the greatest option if you want to read a book or just find some light without turning on the light switch.

The white screen can be utilized as a makeup light.

If you need to move quickly, you can illuminate a mirror and set it in the middle of the screen. You can rapidly apply cosmetics since the light gets focused in the appropriate area.

Use a white screen to clean the surface.

With the screen lit up white, you can see stains on the exterior or, if the glass is unintentionally broken, some foreign items on the inside. As a result, the machine's upkeep and cleaning may be completed fast.

Animated artwork with a white screen background

You wish to create your animated picture model and lack specific artwork. You only need a blank white screen, a little white paper, and a pen to complete this task. Put two or three sheets of paper on the monitor. Remember to draw the header picture on the sheet adjacent to the screen before proceeding to the following pages. You can create a nice animation by turning it upside down

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srtmoony · 4 years ago

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shades of magic headers

reblog or fav if you save it

credits @regsblack on twitter

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anoshedits · 4 years ago

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adsom headers

like or reblog if u save, c: dantegalaxy on tt

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atlasedit · 4 years ago

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a darker shade of magic headers.

reblog or fav if you save it.

@zoyalanstov on twitter.

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ifwewerevillain · 5 years ago

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shades of magic headers

/ if you save, like/reblog. credits to @alescslater on twitter

#headers #headers tumblr #headers twitter #headers w psd #headers with psd #headers aesthetic #headers collage #headers books #headers quotes #headers a gathering of shadows #headers a conjuring of light #adsom #victoria schwab #ve schwab

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ihopeyoubothstaysafefromharm · 3 years ago

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what draco does on thursday nights

this was written as a preface to my work for the @magicaltrans trans comfest. i came out this year on a thursday in may. the header is the sky over the place i figured it out. over the next three days, i will be posting fan-art inspired by my favorite trans representation in fics. Read on a03

Harry didn't know what Draco did on Thursday nights. He never wanted to make it a sore point in their relationship - in the years since the war, Harry had decided to go out of his way to be an easy person. It was a practical and safe use for his heightened attentiveness, honed from years in a cupboard and months on the run. To feel what someone wanted, what a situation was, and to actively choose to go along with it, for the sake of someone's comfort. Because it made him feel tuned, made the world right to offer a degree of care no one would have thought to ever give him. So, Harry didn't ask Draco what he did on Thursday nights. They just met up on Fridays instead. Until now.

He forgot, is what it was. He forgot what day it was, and it was such a shit day anyway, and it was raining- and besides, Thursdays were cursed. Draco told him as much so many times - head tilted, eyes knowing, posh drawl turned up to eleven, "If the world was ever to end, Potter, I wager with absolute certainty it would happen on a Thursday afternoon. Probably right after 4." And so, befitting this curse, Harry was thinking only of Draco's plush sofa and his always-on lights when he barged into his flat on Thursday at 6 - and walked right into what looked like a party. A very quiet party.

About a dozen strangers were sat around Draco's little sitting room - all varying ages, all looking quite comfortable on the floor and dining chairs and pillows pilfered from the sofa. Harry stopped in the doorway, like someone caught in a net. Draco was standing in front of the mantle, warm and lovely in the light. Draco was holding something tight. Draco was reading.

His dear pink lips were open around a soundless word when Harry had walked in. Everyone had turned to look at the door. A woman with purple hair smiled at him, lightly. Harry's eyebrows knit, eyes squinted in a wordless I fucked up. He saw Draco swallow, fingers twitching around his little notebook. He cleared his throat, and continued.

"And Blaise is quite poetic and tortured, once you peel back the whole LVMH sex fiend thing-"

The room tittered with sparkling laughter. Draco eyes never left the page, but the little dimple on his left cheek flashed into existence. Did these people know who Blaise was?

"So to hear him say that the biggest burden in his life wasn't that his mother couldn't keep a lover, but that he was the thing that stayed throughout - that the pressure of being part of an intentional and unbreakable unit was the burden of her love, it was a relief."

Draco turned a page. Harry realised he had seen this notebook before, halfway between sleep and waking, on the bedside table in the light of Draco's pink lumos. Stupidly, Harry's mind conjured the image of the curves of Draco's calligraphy.

"It was a relief to know that being loved, even before times of trouble, could still be heavy on the heart. It made apparent the fact that while my mother and father and I were this mighty huddle, against the world and for ourselves, this demarcation made for an unparalleled safety and an inescapable vice. We belonged to each other in a way other people around us didn't. And so when I knew my body wasn't what I wanted, it felt like a crime against that union."

There was a soft murmur of assent from the couch. Harry noticed that one of the people seated on it, an older man, had a little pink and blue flag on his flatcap. His hands looked soft and pale against Draco's china cup.

"But this is folly." Draco's voice took on the sibilant exactness Harry always associated with Lucius Malfoy. His shoulders tightened a fraction. A low buzz shot by Harry's ear.

"It’s just that - we all think we're the most broken person in our families. That there’s no one as strange, no one so dirty or deranged, or maybe yes, there is, or was - but they didn't know it, did they? And the knowing makes it worse. Because it doesn't matter to know that the ones that broke us were terrible. Surely, you think, expiring under your gene pool, this litany of transgressions has me as its end."

The underground rumbled under the floorboards. Draco's eyes were fierce, unblinking.

“It’s like this," he said,

“Until I came out to Pansy, I don't think I’d ever felt like I was honest about a thing in my life.”

Harry shifted the bag of takeout in his hands, where it had started to cut into his heart line. It crinkled.

“Nothing I’d ever said before had carried any relief - no confession, no secret, no thing revealed, from the smallest scrapes and bruises to feelings that seemed uncontainable at the time. It all felt like awning over some great, other thing, retracting with the seasons only to spring open again.”

"And my love for my parents felt so oppressive because it belonged in a separate category, a honesty that I couldn't afford to myself in any other part of my life. When you have access to something that feels sacred in a life in which everything else is dim and mirrored, you want to hold onto it more. Surely it is worth it, above all earthly comfort. Surely, if the love you're born into is so boundless, your luck ran out at birth. And best not to test it. So you don't feel like a person, you feel like an intrusive thought. Why bother with transitioning? It would be greedy to want more than what you already won."

Draco's eyes were so bright, so vivid in the glowing yellow room. Harry was convinced when the weather is bad the usual blue of the sky gets pooled into his eyes. It must be a heavy burden.

"But you need to show gratitude to the gifts in your life in ways tailored to them. You can't respond to love by closing your heart. It's a deep misunderstanding of the flow of life. Love is not a finite resource, the way mercy is when it comes from cruel people." His left forearm rubbed against his chest. "Your responsibility isn't to fit into the love you've been assigned to. It is to thrive from it, to carry it into the world and use it like a language, like a resource for so many heretofore untapped."

Harry thought of Draco smiling at him mid-conversation at pub nights, like he was including him in the chatter. He thought of Draco's little we's: all what are we doing about that and we'll get through it and we know this already. He thought of how Draco sometimes hugged him with his whole body, arms and legs and blankets wrapping around Harry sat up in their bed, whispering "You're like my little present."

"Father would take us to the seaside each midsummer. In my adolescence the beach was torture, until my clothes came back on. But after, we would walk along the pier, and each time without fail father would take my right hand, mother my left, and we would walk trough the crowd like diagrams overlapping. We must have looked a sight, white as candles. And I would never be the first to let go. It would have felt like a rejection, like a thing set onto a shelf without its pair. But the love isn't broken when you let go. When you take back your own body. It's woven into you with each breath - with a string that can't run out. I know my parents' love is tied to me like my own shadow, but unlike my shadow, it will never change shape."

Draco looked up. His eyes met Harry's, and he smiled, small, a candle flame turned brighter by degrees.

"I haven't done anything against the cosmos by wanting to be fully myself. I haven't broken the terms of my special gift by wanting the world to see me as I am. My body isn't a condition of the love I was assigned."

Harry gently bent his knees to set the takeout down.

"We know the deepest magic is passed on through the soul. I am someone's good son. My body can't change that. The world can never change that. So when people ask me how I found the courage to transition, I always say: It's simple."

It feels like something shimmering across the room, like the end of a book when you feel the last words stretching from your heart like rubber bands. Draco looks up from his paper, smiling at the room like the sun came out.

"I close my eyes and I feel hands holding me on either side."

A moment hangs silent, like something tripping on itself - and then the room breaks out in cheers. Draco looks so pleased, pink-cheeked and sweet under the praise and the hands patting his back, the excited chatter of the group. And Harry wonders, just for a moment, if perhaps they should be kinder to Thursdays, from now on - and then he steps forward and walks into the room.

#drarry #harry x draco #drarry microfic #joy makes drarry things #joyful fic

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