#a field that has been burned entirely clean at the beginning of the game

[shivunin]

happy grocery shopping! for the muse asks, and maybe for wen?

how your muse responds to anger.

did your muse grow up too fast?

The happiest part of grocery shopping is finally being done hahaha :) Thanks for the questions, Zen! <3

(Question list here)

how your muse responds to anger.

Her own anger? If she can, by working it off. Anger is sort of a new thing for Wen---she buried the part of herself that was allowed to be angry for a large portion of her life (between her mother's death and the ill-fated wedding) and she really doesn't know how to cope with her own anger initially. Over the course of the events in Origins, she goes from a hair-trigger temper to storming off to...storming off less often. If she's stuck with people she likes, she will sit in a simmering silence. If possible, she'd rather throw knives alone or fight. Sparring is a bad idea, though---she isn't good at gauging her own speed and strength when she's mad and she is very aware of that.

(side note: this is why she seems so unhinged in combat. Anger feels bad and alien still; the exertion---even elation---of battle feels almost like a high to her in comparison)

Other people's anger---I think it depends on who and why. Wen would definitely blow strangers off (or, you know, kill them). But people that she actually cares about? Oof. I think she would really struggle to know how to respond at all. My youngest sib used to ground themselves when they were in trouble, preemptively giving up something they liked because punishment hurt too much coming from someone else. I think Wen is like that in a way---I think she would find a way to punish herself if she didn't just get angry back.

(Obviously...this is not the best conflict resolution lol. Something she has to work on with the people she cares about.)

did your muse grow up too fast?

Hmmm, yes and no. I think Wen was always kind of an odd kid (I joked about her being a "certified wolf girl" in a post earlier but...yeah, basically that) and she didn't necessarily get playing with other kids naturally. She got the "mature for your age" line a lot when she was little...but really I think she was just a very internal kid. When Soris and Shianni became a part of her life, they were thick as thieves, built in friends who were willing to embrace her oddness. Her whole childhood was kind of contained to her time with them, because that was when she could act most like a child. But I think she wanted to know how to fight from a pretty young age, so in a sense learning combat was its own way of growing up fast.

After her mother's death, of course, all that was pretty much over. Along the lines of punishing herself, she sort of independently decided that her father wanted her to give up all that knowledge and fit into a more traditional ideal of what a daughter should be. Whether or not he actually implied that he wanted that, she did her level best to push it all down (and all "negative" feelings as well), and I think that was sort of the death knell for anything resembling a childhood.

Hoo boy, this wound up a bit longer than intended! I hope it was coherent, and thank you as always for asking!! c:

[frankmillerturnonyourlocation]

16 for that last ask game?

JOHANNESSSSSSSSSS MY DAD

okay under the cut: this answer is gonna have some descriptions of violence, gore, mistreatment of corpses. nothing graphic though. hashtag just necromancer things.

My character, Emmerich, isn't human– they're sort of this overactive bundle of necrotic energy in the stolen shape of a dead teenager.

Johannes Cabal's methods would never be so crude, but he hasn't had much luck making good, reliable progress yet, has he? And every little cult of wannabe necromancers giving the field a bad name gets a little more creative than the last in the ways they make fools of themselves and a mockery of the natural order.

So the goopy gunk that ended up becoming Emmerich ended up killing the group that summoned it. Cabal got mixed up in the mess, because open and active hostility towards each other is how research conferences work for necromancers, and he was present to burn the mangled bodies left over and salt the bones. Separately, he took care of the bloated, defiled remains of the poor girl they were hoping to reanimate as well. But the job's not done! He's still gotta clean up the mess that is me.

It's a bit of time before I introduce myself! I want to make sure I look just right, see. I want to make a good impression.

There's a bit of role confusion, here at the beginning– there was noooo way the night was going to end well for this one group of nobodies, but they also had something going with how much oomph their ritual packed. And, wherever they pulled it from: what should have been nothing more than raw energy, the key to wind up the music box, ended up with a little bit more creative potential than they had bargained for. It saw that little girl lying dead on the table, picked up on the theme of the party real quick, and said ah, fuck yes, a mirror just for me.

So after letting Cabal comb through the lodgings for a few hours, post-massacre and clean-up, Emmerich crawls out of a cabinet and thanks the gentleman for handling her body so carefully over there! And might he want to sit down and stay for a bit?

(Emmerich is, of course, entirely naked and half-decayed, just as his model had been. He really did try to make a good impression, though. He almost got the eyes right, even.)

And, frankly, if Johannes weren't a scientist, he would have honestly just shot the abomination and called it a day. But damn I'm glad he didn't. We're chill as fuck now. Best apprentice ever. I think he's still technically studying how I work. That's the excuse, anyway.

[millenialfanfictionaddiction]

Go Go Karauno: An Old Rival (Pt. 3 smut)

THIS FIC IS 18+

Warnings: swearing, light teasing, slight angst (maybe?), car sex, hand jobs, unprotected sex (reader is on birth control and clean), breeding kink without the breeding, me living my dreams 

Word Count: 7,000 +

You get ready for the date.

Was it really a date though? Let's call it a reunion.

You get ready for the reunion with Keishin as you slip on some comfortable jeans, a nice top and flats to match. Keishin asked you to meet him at his families store. An odd choice for a reunion you thought but you weren't going to fault him.

You were going into this with an open mind. You were ready to be friendly but also ready to lay down the law if so happened to come to that point. You walked down the streets as you approached the store. Keishin was outside smoking. He looked nice you thought.

You smile as you approach "those things are going to kill you you know." You say grabbing the cigarette from his mouth and stomping it out with your foot.

More like you're going to kill him babe

Keishin smiles as he looks at you "well if you worked with a bunch of hormonal high school boys you'd do the same" he said smugly "by the way you look really nice"

You smile "thanks so do you."

He’s looking at you. Why is he looking at you like that? It's awkward.

"So... your families store huh" you say breaking the silence.

"Uhm yeah my mother's families. I just help out" he smiles as he opens the door for you.

"I hope you don't mind meeting me here. I had to work late so closing up was way easier" he smiles as he locks the door behind you.

"It's not a problem. Actually kind of nice to see domestic Keishin. Never thought I'd see the day" you chuckle as he laughs rubbing the back of his head

"Yeah a lots happened since high school" he says as he leads you to a secluded table in the corner.

"Coffee, tea, water?" He says with a smile

"Beer?" You question

Keishin smiles "coming right up!"

He brings two beers back to the table as you both sit in silence for a few moments. It's awkward and you can sense some tension.

"Keis-" you begin only to be interrupted

"Y/N, listen I know what your going to say" keishin interjected.

You lean back. "Ok hit me" you say as you await his response

"Y/N I was a fucking jerk back back high school. A smug asshole. I know that now. Hell I knew it back then. I just thought you'd like me more if I acted that way" he says looking down at the table picking at a spot.

Your eyes widen "like me more? You think picking on me and messing up my serves would get me to like you more? Keishin I legit wanted to punch your lights out!"

"And I would have deserved it Y/N. Please just hear me out ok" he says as you recline in your chair with a huff.

"Y/N this is going to sound so weird and out of left field but I was so jealous of you and honestly, I had the biggest crush on you" Keishin manages to squeak out hoping you won't flee the scene.

"Excuse me?" you say sharply as your eyes bulge from your head.

"Y/N-" Keishin starts to speak before you interject this time.

"So you invited me here to confess to me? To tell me that the years of torment and annoyance you caused me were because you were too big of a fucking idiot to tell me how you felt?" You say loudly.

Keishins eyes widen as he can see your anger grow.

"Listen Keishin, I don't know what the goal was here-" you say as you start to stand preparing to leave.

"Y/N please just hear me out ok" Keishin grabs your hand as you look at him.

 His face looking the most sincere you've ever seen "I know I was stupid. I know you don't have to forgive me. You shouldn't. I was a complete jerk. I messed up the only good thing I had going on in my life."

"Wait-" you start to speak only to be cut off yet again.

"Y/N I wanted to confess to you for years. All through high school! You'd date those stupid basketball players or those baseball players and I'd be left watching. So I dated girls just to try and make you angry. I knew it never did but I tried to forget about you" he spoke softly.

"The only time I could spend with you was when we were playing volleyball and by that point I felt like you just saw me as a complete ass. Which I'm not denying I was but I didn't want to be" he sighed "I forced myself to be that so I could try and push you away."

You're shocked to say the least. Mad, shocked and very overwhelmed.

"Keishin I- I don't know what to say right now" you speak softly and kindly.

"If you don't believe me ask Shimada" Keishin sighed "he unfortunately knows way more about the whole thing than he should. He spent years trying to get me to move on from you."

It was honestly overwhelming to hear. You took another sip of your drink and just shook your head.

"Y/N I don't expect you to forgive me or go out on a date with me or anything. I just needed to get this out" he says ducking his head down "it's been bothering me since high school. I think about you often and I really do feel bad for what I did."

Now you're starting to feel bad. Had you really thought so lowly of Keishin? You knew you'd been an ass yourself to him.

"Keishin I'm sorry too" you say with a small smile. He looks up at you.

"I was so driven to beat you I just got so upset. It was stupid. The whole thing was stupid" you laugh.

"Listen Y/N, Kageyama and Hinata could use some extra help with their sets. Since your in town for a while and nationals are coming up, would you mind observing them?" Keishin says.

You smile as you nod.

"Honestly I just need another adult" he laughs "they really are something else on and off the court."

"I seem to remember a certain setter who was very similar" you smile as Keishin smiles back at you.

The night continues as you catch up and laugh. You're still not sure how to feel about Keishin but you have to admit, this is a good starting place.

Keishin smiled as he picked you up the next day for practice. You were excited to work with the boys especially with Kageyama and Hinata.

You entered the gym as you heard the sound of balls hitting the floor.

"Y/N!" you hear your name being screamed loudly as a young bright orange haired boy comes bounding up to you.

"Ginger!" Keishin screams as you laugh.

"Oh Keishin stop! The boy is excited! I see to remember a certain somebody who was the same way" you smile softly as Keishin blushes.

"Hello Y/N, coach" Kageyama bows to you both.

"Well I’m here to observe and help anyway I can" you say as you clap your hands together making a loud smacking noise.

You stand by Keishin as you watch the boys repeatedly hit and then miss the falling toss.

It's not entirely that easy of a ball to hit you think to yourself. 

Kageyama clearly has more technical skills then Hinata but Hinata really seems to be a natural spiker. The pair is odd but they do so well together. Hinata is able to keep up with Kageyama’s quicks.

"Hinata you don't always have to hit the ball with such force you know" you say as you walk up to the young boy.

"Y/N it's fun to hit it hard. The smack of the ball and the whoosh whoosh ka plow" he says as he makes jerking movements with his body.

Kageyama is heating up "you idiot she's talking!" He says kicking Hinata in the back of the legs.

"You're going to have opponents that expect you to hit it hard and if you come into contact with a team who is lightening quick with receives, they will adapt" you say smiling.

You look back at Keishin as his eyes widen

"Nekoma?" he says

"Nekoma" you nod.

"Nekoma has always been amazing at their receives. It's why they are a powerhouse. They use them in all aspects of the game. So why don't you try some faints, maybe shooting the ball straight down as well. Heck you could probably pick up line shots pretty quickly as well. That speed is a weapon but you can't only bring one weapon to a war" you say smiling.

Keishin watches as you interact with the boys. You talk to them and show them moves for what seems like hours. Hinata is improving and doing really well. Kageyama is already spectacular but adapting to Hinata proved to be a bit hard.

"It's nice you have a variety of spikers Keishin" you smile as you watch the duo practice in front of you.

"You remind me a lot of the Kageyama and Hinata combined" you giggle.

He huffs "Y/N I was never that insane"

"I beg to differ Keishin. You always drove me nuts with your wild moves! You were always showing off" you laugh.

Before you know it, the boys clean up the gym and you bid your farewells. You and Keishin head to his car as you both get in.

"Y/N you remember the hill we always use to run up when we did joint practices?" He said

"Of course that hill was the bane of my existence because you'd always want to race" you sneer.

He laughs. "Well what would you say to visiting it now?" He smiles

"Keishin my heart isn't up the race" you giggle.

"Nah I'm driving up it. I smoke too much to run up that hill now" he laughs.

You both buckle up as you Keishin drives to the top of the hill.

It's nightfall and the air is calm. It's almost too quiet. The lights from the city burn below as you and Keishin sit in silence.

"Y/N" he says as he looks over to you "Thank you"

You smile. 

 You don't know what this feeling is but you feel like you need to kiss him. It's just feels so out of place. But why do you want to so badly!

"Y/N-" he begins to speak as you cut him off pulling him in for a heated kiss. He doesn't resist at all to your surprise. You pull away staring at him with wide eyes.

"Fuck Keishin I'm so sorry I should have ask-" you say as he grabs the back of your neck, pulling you in once again in for kiss your lips both part as you tilt your head to get a better angle.

Cars definitely aren't ideal for making out you think in the back of your head.

After a few minutes of kissing and felling yourself getting heated you break the kiss, staring at the man next to you.

"Fuck it" he says as he grabs you pulling you into his lap to straddle him.

You staddle Keishin in the driver's seat as you reach over pulling the level of the seat back moving the driver's seat back.

"W-what are you doing Y/N?" Keishin stutters

"If you don't want this, tell me and I'll stop instantly" you say grabbing his face.

You kiss him slowly as his eyes close. His places his hands on your thighs as he rubs them up and down.

You feel your panties getting wet as you leave his lips to kiss his jaw.

"Fuck Y/N" Keishin says as he tilts his neck back allowing better access to his neck column.

"Does that feel good Keishin?" You smirk as you continue to kiss his neck.

"Soo good babe, fuck so good" he whines.

You return to his lips, hungry for more. You quickly gain access to his wet muscle as you both battle for dominance. He massages your tongue with his as you groan and he's able to establish dominance. He leaves you lips to to start kissing your neck. He gropes at your title through your dress as you slowly begin to work up your dress to your hips.

Keishin is hot. Fuck this is actually happening. He's so lost in the moment he nearly forgets he doesn't have a condom on him.

"Y/N baby we can't do this anymore. I don't have a condom. I'm sorry baby" he says as he pulls alway, upset from the loss of your another skin.

You start kissing him again as you lightly grind on the now visible bulge growing in this pants.

"Keishin it's fine. I'm clean and on birth control.  I haven’t had sex in months" you smile as you pull back grinding harder.

He can feel a wet spot growing on his pants.

"You're OK with that Y/N- Fuck yes I need you" he cries as he starts to probe two fingers down by your clit. You gasp as you frantically loosen his belt. You lower his underwear as he finds you clit.

You stroke his hardened cock as he rubs your clit, moving aside your panties.

He looks at you with half lidded eyes "Baby I've wanted to fuck you for so long you have no idea" he says as he increases his pace

Your pussy is dripping strings of cum at this point.  You throw your head back as the unbearable knot in your stomach becomes too much to handle.

You whisper in his ear as you feel the knot tighten.

"Wanna cum on you cock Keishin" you say sweetly as you moan his name. 

"Fuck OK.. OK baby" he says as he helps you line up on his cock, pushing your panties to the side further and your dress up to your stomach. You both groan as his thick head enters your wet cunt.

"Holy shit baby your pussy is wet and so tight- fuck" Keishin growls as you feel his cock begin to stretch you out further and futher

You lower yourself and begin going slowly glide up and down, taking a little more of him with each movement.

Keishin is in heaven. He's trying so hard not to cum but your pussy is so perfect.

"Oh god Keishin, fuck you feel so good" you start grinding and bouncing on his cock.

“mmhmm baby- fuck I can’s believe I finally get to fuck you.  I’m a lucky bastard” he groans. 

"God I feel like I'm being ripped in half" you scream ad you throw your head back

"Aw fuck baby. Let me pound up into you ya? I need to fuck you good" he says as you raise your hips.

Keishin thrusts into you quickly and deeply. You're both losing it. Your pussy is throbbing as you await your impending orgasm. Suddenly Keishin reaches down and starts to toy with your hardened clit.

"Oh shit baby I'm going to cum" you cry pit as the band in your lower stomach snaps and you throw your head back in utter bliss. You can feel the car shake as Keishin thrusts become faster and harder.

"Baby can I please come inside? I need to fill you" he cries as you know he's close.

"Come inside of me Keishin. Fill my pussy with your cum" you screams as Keishin starts moaning loudly as he cums deep inside of you.

You both pant heavily as you come down from your highs. You smile as you both look at each other.

"Still hate me Y/N?" He says with a smirk

"A little less now" you say as you chuckle, leaning into kiss him.

*3 months later*

"Oh hell yeah Y/N you made it" Shimada screams at you as he frantically waves you to the front of the bleacher seats.

"I wouldn't miss the boys going to nationals for anything" you smile as you watched the boys warm up for their first match.

Keishin spots you as you smile and wave.

You had been taking your relationship slow with Keishin. You told him you hadn't desired to leave Tokyo just yet and he supported you. You did come visit often and worked remotely when you could. Your long distance relationship was working well. Plus the sex was phenomenal.

"Hinata looks strange" you say as you tilt your head to the side, observing the boy running strangely around the stadium floor.

“Yeah he lost is shoes at the bus station but Kiyoko is on her way with them” you laugh as you put your head in your hands.

Kageyama and Hinata both see you as Hinata frantically waves and Kageyama bows.

Keishin watches their interaction with you as he smiles to them and back you.

“I’m so proud of you Keishin” you whisper to yourself as you smile softly. 

[himbodjarin]

LUNAR; CH12

18+ EXPLICIT Content: Unprotective sex, vaginal sex, oral sex (female receiving), cum eating, DO NOT READ IF YOU ARE UNDER 18. MANDO'A TRANSLATIONS AT THE END Chapter Word Count: 14,704 aah im sorry no im not Pairing: Din Djarin/F!Reader - no y/n

The Mandalorian is a driven warrior — traversing the galaxy in search of the ancient Jedi — but everyone has their weaknesses, and he’s no different. The Bounty Hunter possessed three in fact. One he’s discovered—The Child. The remaining two, though, he wasn’t aware of their existence. At least, not until he meets a valorous Sharpshooter underneath a moonless night sky; then he’s plummeting down a dark mission of self-discovery, questioning his morals and his Creed while the moon taunts him, the phases of the satellite corresponding to his personal revelations. However, the Girl has a dark past that may come to inflict hardships on the Mandalorian and the Child; it's up to the Bounty Hunter to decide her fate. Read on AO3 / Series Masterlist

CHAPTER TWELVE: LET ME SHOW YOU

“So about that break…”

One simple sentence is all it took for the two of them to silently agree to their departure of Tatooine and to seek refuge somewhere quiet, secluded and undisturbed by baleful bolts of shimmering reds. It escorts them to the moss-green planet bedecked by marshland and chirpy fauna—its atmosphere crisp and welcoming to that of Tatooine’s sand-choking airspace.

“So you’ve been here before?”

“Yes. There’s a village nearby. They took me in for some time.”

“So you’re thinking they’ll let us crash there for a while?”

There’s a click on the vambrace and the Razor Crest’s hatch closes behind the trio. “If all goes well. Are you sure you have everything? It’s a bit of a walk.”

A tap on a blaster holstered to her thigh, a finger trailing across a wrinkly green forehead, the faint touch on a steel pauldron. “Blaster, kid, Mandalorian. Check, check, and check.”

The Mandalorian chuckles and takes the lead through the woods, heading towards the unnamed village of Sorgan—its inhabitants surely awaiting his emergence the moment the Crest snapped through the atmosphere and swooped low among their needle-point rooftops. It’s selfish, he knows this, returning to the haven he once envisioned himself hunkering down at—having the opportunity of a joyful life, a family, a love—with a different woman matching his stride is destined for failure; for tension. It’s wishful thinking to pretend it’ll produce anything but, to pretend this could be normal.

Sorgan hadn’t changed one bit, except for the lack of invasive Klatoonations, thanks to yours truly. It’s still so green, so wet, so clean and fresh. Its air could regenerate the deflated lungs in his chest from decades-worth of smoke, dust, and discipline, its waters purify his blood, its pacifying ambience replace the void he reserved for quiet nights in space, its company fill

the vacancy between his arms—that last one wasn’t entirely Sorgan’s doing and he gazes at his companion treading alongside him, feet generously lifting over an undisturbed one-eyed aqua frog in her path.

He sighs and places the flat of his leather against the back of her shoulder. “I trust them, they’re good people, but my name can’t be spoken here.”

She twists her neck to look at him and dips her head in a nod. “I know that, Mando.”

Mando. A name that once sounded like shiny credits falling from the clouds now so bleak and rusted. It’s mere corroding steel in comparison to her moaning his name in such a broken voice it heats his abdomen and increases his blood flow. The Girl is like a spice, a strong dose of alluring desires that he’s incapable of acting upon—the inquisitive little alien in his care interfering with his white-knuckled primal impulses.

Idling in hyperspace, confined and carnal, with a toddler and the woman who made his knees weak, heart leap, fingers itch, was dangerous. There he was thinking the atmosphere back on Tatooine was tense; how wrong he was. If that was tense, this had been downright torturous. He could cut the tension with his vibroknife; reduce it to tiny physical pieces he could chew on and grind his enamel down to the gums.

Sorgan is their opportunity to explore their unspoken relationship further—to disassemble the barricade of panels in place and analyse the circuitry underneath. Mando downplays the increased pumping of his organ to himself, masquerading his excitement with faulty breathwork.

“I can take him,” Mando gently tugs on the rucksack strap situated across her shoulder, the child cooing at her hip. “Those slashes haven’t healed.”

“They’ve healed enough.”

He insists, “They reopened, you’re going to strain them with the weight. Let me carry him.”

The Girl grumbles under her breath and picks up her pace, tenacious to prove she’s more than capable to carry the toddler despite the ache the satchel strap is producing; burrowing its residency in the pads of her shoulders. The Mandalorian remains at his tempo, allowing her the distance she incessantly pursues. “Atin,” he breathes.

Their shared moment back in the abandoned cantina seemingly sectors away—so out of reach and untouched it almost never occurred.

All though there had been times, dead in the middle of hyperspace when the kid was napping in his hammock, where the Girl would join him in the cockpit to share a few soft spoken words and purposeful touches he couldn’t begin to dissect. The sensations of her hands running along his shoulders still so crystal in his mind, her knuckles brushing against his cowl as he’d tip the helmet back against the headrest simply to get a little glimpse of her. She knew what she was doing when she’d administer feathery kisses against the surface of his visor—sheer seduction on her part—and it took all of his fizzling restraint not to bend her over the controls and fuck her until her thighs are burning, calves trembling, her skin star-kissed.

Believe him, he’d imagined it. On many occasions in fact. He’s pictured taking her anywhere and everywhere—against the walls, on the floor, in his bunk—but nothing, nothing, was more appealing than the thought of having her in his lap in the pilot’s seat, her back smooshing the buttons of the navigational controls until the Crest whined in agony.

Needless to say, the circumstances didn’t allow the rise for many opportunities; the kid often waking the moment his glove makes contact with her. Mando had to settle for small glances here-and-there, the occasional stroke of her arm as she passed.

But he needs more—needs her.

The Girl is an additive through and through—functioning as a pricey flask of spotchka sedating his muscles and justification and in exchange stimulating his appetite for her; flesh, muscle, tissue, whatever his nails could dig themselves into he wanted.

Mando’s teeth grit together and his eyes scan her back ahead of him, nursing the heavy eyelids on the curve below. The cockpit had been too electric, the recycled air too thick with his desperation; the projection of the Girl naked—because he knew what that looked like now—never far from his mind. But he hadn’t seen her bare from behind; a view he can only imagine - for now.

A throaty grunt slips past his lips as he stumbles on a grounded root in his trance. She doesn’t notice, thankfully, but the Child’s peering eyes stare straight past the visor as though he could sense the disgrace radiating off his guardian, his eyes squinting. He tenses his shoulders in embarrassment and joins the Girl as she slows to a halt on the village’s border outskirts.

“This it?” she asks, shifting the satchel to the opposite hip between herself and Mando, shielding the kid from potential threats.

“It is,” he confirms.

Their heads twist in unison, observing the environment laid out before them; high-spirited and brimming with energy. In the distance children run through riskless fields playing a game of tag, adults conversing and labouring the krill ponds, the croaking of frogs echoing around their feet. Subdued and isolated from all the destruction—preserved from everything they are down to their cores.

The Girl hums and fiddles with the strap slung across her chest. “I don’t want to intrude. They look…”

“Happy.”

She’s concerned for the villager’s safety, as is he—jeopardy seemingly overhanging them like an aura; tethered and indestructible. Returning without a notice felt deplorable to the Mandalorian’s morals as though he was trespassing on their sanctuary and sabotaging their chance at true tranquillity.

Shuffling beside him reminds him why he’s here, why he chose Sorgan rather than any other planet in the Outer Rim with a half-decent field. Mando wags a gloved digit ahead of the Child and anticipates his claws to latch onto the leather, tug and whine until he’s content in his beskar, but not even a grunt of acknowledgement slips through his lips.

Mando huffs a deep exhale and returns his hand to his belt, hooking his thumb in the centre and taking the lead. “Let’s go,” he directs.

The Girl adheres to his side, elbows brushing with each swing of their arm, their footwork synchronised as they cross a narrow mound of land between two krill ponds—the vibrant blue critters easily perceptible with his visor’s enhanced vision. She shrinks her shoulders inwards as the path withers to his wingspan—too binary to admit defeat against Sorgan’s elements and saunter behind—her feet sliding against the bank, but Mando’s reflexes are sharp and he snakes a hand around her waist before she tumbles off the edge.

She straightens herself out, checks on the baby, and exudes an embarrassed smile. “Thank you.”

Mando grins and shrugs his shoulders nonchalantly. “Couldn’t let the kid fall in.”

“Oh, that’s how it is, is it?” Her eyebrow cocks and eyes squint. “What about me, huh?”

“Wouldn’t want him stirring up a disturbance, would we? We need to make a good impression,” he teases. “Besides, you’re a big girl, you’d be fine.”

“Sleemo,” she insults lightheartedly, placing a firm palm against his pauldron and shoves—not so lightheartedly. Mando’s smile falters as his boots lose their traction in the slippery, squelching mud. Descent incoming, he reaches out for the Girl’s arm but stops himself at the reminder of the baby attached to her hip; her own personal lifeboat.

If he wasn’t so cautious for the Child’s current state he’d clasp her wrist and force her to take the brunt of her actions, instead, he accepts his fate and collapses into the krill pond—the water soars higher than the village’s roofings with the added weight of beskar, the sloshing reverberating and drawing the inhabitants attention their way.

Mando finds his footing in the waist-deep waters, hands on his hips as droplets streak down his armour, the over-absorbed fabric of his flight suit clinging to his muscles. There’s dark brown coagulated mud muting his shiny beskar, plastering the warring steel with Sorgan’s serene elements.

“Think you’re so funny, don’t you?” he questions, head tilting.

She bellows just as loud as the initial crash, her gasped amusement echoing among the hushed quiet; the villagers watching from afar. “You’re a big boy, you’ll be fine,” she mocks. “Funny. I don’t hear much commentary coming from you now.”

“I could’ve drowned.”

She jabs an eyebrow upwards and gestures to the water level. “That’d be very embarrassing.”

He grumbles with feigned anger, splashing her lower-half with a mischievous thrust of his hand.

“Oi, watch the kid!”

The Child’s ears perk down at his guardian submerged in the filthy waters, a soft tight-lipped grin donning his face in replacement of the frown he’d been suiting prior—Mando’s muscles lax, his stoic demeanour withering away.

This was good. Right. Both the kid and the Girl deserve to reside in a haven like this, somewhere they don’t need to look over their shoulders—somewhere blasters can retire from holsters.

Miniscule cobalt crustaceans summon up the courage to investigate the intrusive limbs in their occupancy, grasping against the fabric of his flight suit and scrambling underneath the rim of his beskar cuisses. Mando attempts to shake off the meddlesome critters but they’re persistent in driving him away; the Girl steps forwards to aid him out of the waters—after she’d finished laughing so hard tears were brewing in the corners of her eyes—but stammers in her footing as a shadow casts over him from beside her.

She instinctively reaches for her blaster’s hilt and shields the Child, but a delicate hand outstretches for Mando below and she carefully drops her hand, clenches it beside her in doubt. Mando inclines his helmet to follow the hand, travelling up the grey fabric of their tunic and settling on the familiar kind hearted brown eyes welcoming him to the village without needing to speak the words.

He nods as thanks and slips his leather into her hand, hoisting himself to the ground with a boot in the bank for stability. Mando humorously nudges the Girl enough for her to panic and seize his elbow for safety—his vocoders unable to catch the light chuckle in his throat but she feels the tremors in his limb and playfully slaps his bicep.

“It’s good to see you again,” Omera says, a bright smile as she eyes him up and down. “I see you’ve made yourself a friend.”

“Yes.” Mando glances at the Girl beside him, tucked into his side plenty that she looked tiny. “I hope we’re not intruding, we-”

She interrupts him, shaking her head and gesturing behind her to the gathering inhabitants. “The community will forever be grateful for your endeavours. Stay as long as you like—we’ve established additional lodges since you were here. Take your pick.”

“That’s very thoughtful. Thank you.” Mando follows after Omera, irrigating the grass in his wake, and the Girl stealths behind him so she’s unseen from the watching eyes; his beskar performing as her protection. She engrosses herself with the ball of abrupt energy fighting against the confines of his satchel, his claws eagerly tearing at the fabric to rid himself.

The villagers have queued themselves along the banks of the krill ponds, distanced enough for their visitors to pass through without bumping shoulders but close to exchange friendly greetings—welcome back’s and thank you’s—their proximity allowing them the opportunity to examine the Mandalorian’s new partner on the heels of his boots, her eyes cast down in an attempt to stave off unwanted attention though it does very little.

Omera stops short of the newly-installed structures, three identical huts to match with the theme of the others strewn throughout their lands and Mando, not being one to concern himself with impractical decisions, chooses the first one his eyes lay on; his hand vaguely gesturing to the open door of the middle hut.

Omera nods her head and orders a flock of children to prepare their quarters. “We can organise your friend next door.” She flicks her attention past his shoulder and he follows, acknowledging how stiff the Girl looked as though she could be blown over with a docile breeze; her eyes silently pleading to him through his visor.

It’s unusual looking at her this way, as though he’s violating her with just his eyes. She’s typically so snarky and talkative, but her lips are bonded together and her eyes bounce from his visor to the speculative crowd; nervous and uncomfortable.

She assures, “You’ll only be a few metres away from each other.”

Mando has no intentions of letting her occupy a separate hut, not after he’s been so distanced from her all this time. “That’s okay. We don’t want to take up more space than necessary.” The Girl relaxes somewhat, shoulders flaccid, and her hands return to fight against the Child’s tantrum.

He notes how the villagers share some questioning glances towards each other, their prying prompting an unsettling weight on his shoulders—Omera shares a hasty gander between the two of her visitors as if assembling a deconstructed blaster from scratch, gears turning in her head.

It’s too much attention for him—too much visibility for a Mandalorian clad in ancient shiny Beskar steel.

His shoulders tense, his fingers flex into fists; they know, they have to know.

His throat bobs underneath his cowl, mouth dry and cheeks warm, though he’s learnt to conceal it through his mannerisms—the constant tension between him and the Girl training him over time—he remains stoic, statuelike, displaying no visible signs of confirmation to their silent queries.

It’s none of their business; nobody’s other than him and the Girl’s.

“If that’s what you wish,” Omera breaks the silence. “I’ll leave you to situate yourselves.”

Mando inhales sharply and nods his head, walking past her to their new residency. The cluster of children straighten upon his arrival, organising themselves in a single file to allow their guest to investigate their work. It’s a small cabin, less spacious than the barn he occupied last time but more secluded—the windows sturdy and the door possessing a lock—with a bed fit for three in the far-end of the walls; it’s been too long since he’s slept on a mattress, too long since he’s been allowed the privilege of stretching his limbs rather than compact them.

Alongside a comfortable mattress comes the Girl’s warmth as they’ll indeed be sharing a bed. Mando will make certain of that.

There’s hushed whispers behind him, helm capturing some of their words—baby, ask, play—and he redirects his vision to the rucksack resting among the Girl’s hip, the children bursting with excitement at the sight of their playmate. He’s just as psyched as they are, his little claws outstretching for Winta in the middle of the group.

“It’s okay.” Mando nods his head towards the children. “He can play.”

The Girl nods and transfers the kid to the floorboards carefully, stepping out of the stampede of children excitedly taking themselves outside.

Tarrying presences now gone, the Girl joins him in the examination of their cabin. “Good thing the Crest isn’t far,” she jokes.

“It’s not that bad.” Mando twists his body to follow her, pauldrons clashing into her harshly. “I suppose it could be a little bigger.”

“Or you could be a little smaller, tin-man.”

He cocks his head to the side, visor leering. “You’re looking for trouble today.”

“Oh, am I?”

“Yes,” he grumbles in his throat, sweeping his vambraces around her to hug her arms against her sides. “You are.”

She struggles against his grip, well aware of her impending justice, but he’s too sturdy—too determined to seek revenge. “Don’t,” she warns.

Mando simply smiles, a large toothy grin that makes his eyes crinkle.

What little gap remained between them abruptly narrows as Mando compresses his build into her, squeezing out the krill water from his flight suit and into her garments. Beskar wipes itself clean on her shirt, caking the textile with heavy mounds of sludge.

“Mando!” she gasps and rolls her shoulders back in false hope it’ll aid her escape. “I don’t have a change of clothes!”

He chuckles, deep and throaty that makes his shoulders bounce. “Neither do I, but you didn’t think of that when you pushed me in,” he growls, the vocoder filtering the sound as a crackle that reverberates in the structure and through her bones; she shudders, her shoulders and chest twitching against him—his blood pumps hot.

“I was doing you a favour. When was the last time you hit the ‘fresher?”

“Need I remind you I have you trapped, mesh’la?” Mando presses the curvature of his helmet against her cheek and rubs the excess droplets onto any surface area he can manage, her cheeks, forehead, jaw, staining the pretty skin she’d been blessed with.

She tries to disguise her laughter with anger, but it comes out through her voice—light and airy; Mando hums at the delightful sound, like a lullaby to his ears. “Okay, okay. You win!”

Unwilling to wrench his grip from around her, he continues pressing himself against her and inches forwards until her back is flat against a pillar—his vambraces slipping around sandwich her between two sturdy foundations, one of splintered log and the other a living, breathing tower of a man coated head to toe in steel.

He’s breathing hard, filters whistling with each exhale.

“Mando--” she purrs, teeth nibbling at the soft insides of her lips.

Eyes bore into the cushiony flesh, his tongue swiping across his own in the thought of them against him. Soft and warm—he knew that much when they were around him—but that’s as far as his understanding reached; were they gentle and sweet or rough and hungry?

Would they be addicting, like every other part of her, or simply satisfying; something to pluck as a treat here-and-there?

He grunts and squeezes his vambraces against the wood, his chest following suit against her. “We’re alone,” he murmurs, head tilting to the side as if to silently voice his thoughts.

She’s not as convinced, searching the cabin for eyes infused into the walls, the floors.

“Mesh’la, it’s safe.”

Her head twists to the entrance, a rush of heat tagging her cheeks in soft hues of pinks. She quietly squeaks, “The doors open.”

“Nobody is looking.”

He’s pushing boundaries he put in place decades ago; parading around a relationship—or whatever this is—like some big achievement, which, to be frank, was pretty extraordinary for the Mandalorian. Flings and casual partners—sure—they weren’t feats but this...He’s never encountered someone so remarkable, so special, so necessary; she’s squirmed herself into his life and now she won’t ever be able to leave without causing a disturbance in his lifestyle. He needs her.

She composes herself at his odd comment and brashly collects a batch of his cowl between her teeth to tug him closer—arms still inoperable against her—and uses the newfound angle to assault his neck with a tauntingly hot breath.

“Clean yourself up first,” she tempts. “You’re grimy.”

“To be fair,” he grumbles, “I don’t recall you having a chance at the refresher in a while.”

She pulls away, eyes squinting at him. “Tread on your words very carefully here, Mando.”

He chuckles and loosens his grip moderately. “I mean—you could join me.”

Mando’s growing confident—too confident, it’s the first signs he’s setting himself up for disappointment—and he slides his hands from the pillar to the curves of her hips, his leathers slipping underneath the oversized shirt to explore the bare flesh; her torso being the only place he hadn’t been given the pleasure of researching—all the chalky scar tissue, the slopes of her abdomen, the contours of her chest.

Pair that with the suds of soap cloaking her skin, her hair, it’s every man’s dream to be the one to apply it to a woman, to feel and pull on slippery skin in such a personal way—to scrub her spic-and-span only to ruin her until she needs another.

“Join you,” she repeats mulling for a moment but she shakes her head with rejection. “That’s too conspicuous.”

She doesn’t voice her concerns regarding his helmet—how in the hell do you clean yourself with me there?—and he himself is uncertain, he just knows he wants to be the one to wash the grime off her. He’ll fix himself up after he’s tended to her, if need be.

“Everybody already has their suspicions.”

She sighs. “Guess I wasn’t very discreet earlier, huh?”

“No,” he confirms, his digits stroking leisurely lines to-and-fro. “you weren’t. What happened? I’ve never seen you look so uncomfortable.”

“I...don’t do well with crowds.” She casts her eyes between their feet, examining the size difference of their boots. Mando removes himself from her to allow her to breathe, to continue without feeling pressured. “That face mask I wore… It was a layer of me. It helped me deal with spying eyes. When Tika destroyed it, I dunno, I guess a piece of myself died with it. It-it doesn’t make sense.”

You’re talking to the expert of masks, he thinks.

“I understand.” he says. “It mustn’t be easy having to deal with the lack of something so integral.”

Mando has yet to experience that fear—that overwhelming sensation of uneasiness; people’s eyes so effortlessly studying him without the disguise of his armour to protect him—it’s something he’s appreciative of everyday.

She sighs, hot and heavy and laced with exhaustion. “Well, life continues either way and I can’t exactly hide away here forever.” She initiates a stare-down with the ajar door, scanning the wilderness that reached her vision; a couple of women standing among the pond waters scooping for krill, a pair of children on the banks assisting with their catch. “I’m not one for fishing but I guess I should help out a little, as thanks.”

He grunts as a reply, lacking the confidence to trust his voice—stay here, stay with me—and lamely takes a few steps back, assigning his amban rifle to a nearby flat surface, some storage units, and sinks to a rustic chair.

She considers him, eyes bouncing from his helmet to his lap where his cloak is pulled between his hands. Mando rings out the sopped material, murky water seeking refuge in the crevices of floorboards.

“You’re making a mess.”

“I need to dry,” he retorts.

“Take it off,” she says.

Mando’s shoulders stiffen, his back straightens. “I can’t.”

“I won’t look.” The Girl turns on the heels of her feet and shuts the door ahead of her, casting the room into darkness except for the timid rays of sunlight shining through the narrow gaps of the window—not enough for somebody outside to see, but plenty for him to undress himself without a hassle. “Just put in my hand when you’re done. I’ll find somewhere sunny to hang it up - shouldn’t take too long to dry in this heat.”

There’s no movement on either of their sides, their hut as though it was in suspended animation or the Crest on one it’s many malfunctions just idling in the vastness. She shifts on her feet restlessly in wait for the sodden garments to weigh her hand down.

“What, so I just sit here until it’s dry?”

She shrugs her shoulders. “Unless you want to walk around the village naked with a helmet on, yeah.”

Mando grumbles under his breath. It’s not really a choice. It’s not as though he can just remain drenched all day until the air inevitably dries him off. Still, it’s not easy to remove himself from his armour somewhere other than the Crest; it provided security, a reassurance that nobody will see him so exposed.

Both boots are dismissed from their positions and come to lay rest beside the chair while he works on the beskar platings riddling his body—the steel branded to protect him now nothing more than a nuisance as it resists against his efforts and continues to cling to the suit against his wishes. They’re slippery and contain no traction on behalf of the clumpy muck, his leathers sliding out from underneath each time. It’s like a suction seal against his chest, inconceivable of success, but he’s just as stubborn and lures the rim underneath a stitch of his glove and plucks the guard off harshly.

One down, too many more to go.

The other platings put up just as much of a fight as the first but, with a few tugs, they withdraw from his body and reside on the ground alongside his boots. He’s practically naked without his beskar—the air light and crisp as he breathes without the weight—practically naked in front of the Girl. It’s the most he’s been so revealing and, even though she’s not looking at him, his cheeks grow warm, his stomach pulled taut.

He dabbles in intolerable concepts—thoughts he shouldn’t act on for the sake of his Honour, his Creed—the overwhelming suggestion of standing behind her and letting her feel his bare heat radiate off in potent waves; like a strong glass of spotchka, irresistible but ultimately an unhealthy decision.

There’s a deep shudder that runs through the base of his neck down to his coccyx, goosebumps brandishing him and refrigerating him far greater than the krill waters could. Underneath his helmet, he casts his eyes low to devour the curves and slopes of the Girl’s body, his teeth grinding against each other until there’s an ache in his temples.

His Beskar is gone, solely a clump of shiny steel that serves as a warning of what he could be throwing away—everything he’s risked his life for, everything he’s spent decades consuming, altering his physical attributes to suit that of a stoic, emotionless pillar of flesh and bone fortified with not just his armour but his code. His faith.

The Girl precariously shifts between either foot and cocks her hip out, sighing dramatically that pulls his thoughts back into the present.

“Patience,” he instructs.

The air is thick, hot, or maybe it was just him—his filters rendering inoperable when confronted with the foreign bashfulness; it’s not often he encounters such a outlandish emotion, so unknown and disorienting, and it’s quite possibly the worst fucking issue he’s faced with. There’s no shooting or piloting his way out of it and his brain only works in a handful of matters at a time—none of which included addressing the electricity in his chest, the bubbling in his stomach, the clenched muscles throughout his anatomy.

The Mandalorian—if he could still be considered a Mandalorian without his armour, his essence—stands, prompting a squelch from the pool of water he formed underneath, and reaches around his neck to unclasp the heap of his cloak; it’s nothing new, she’s seen him without it before. The shirt is a different story. That’s new. That’s untouched boundaries. His build is infrequently subjected to the perched star in the clouds let alone another lifeform.

Fingers dip underneath the hem of his shirt and bundles the material, his second knuckles sweeping against his abdomen that leaves his jaw tight. That famished growling in his chest is utterly pathetic—his own touches manage to provoke such a humiliating reaction, he could only fathom what the Girl would do to him with those soft hands of hers, her gentleness as she nurses the bruises with her thumbs.

Mando hoists the shirt over his head and slips free from the sleeves and drops it to the floor with a displeasing schlup and neglects the choking in his throat, the rise of his heart rate. Are your eyes closed, he seeks answers to voiceless questions, or are you staring at wood, counting the twigs? Why aren’t you looking at me? There’s another sigh that fills the quiet, whether it’s from her or himself is uncertain; his heart is pleading for a moment’s break.

It doesn’t come.

Next is his trousers—something she had seen before, but under different circumstances, totally contrasting. Perhaps it was all that Tatooine heat that got to them or the severity of the events catching up—Mando nearly dying, nearly stranding her and the kid—that caused them to collide with desperation, their hands working at whatever little article of clothing they could eliminate from the equation to feel each others warmth; the indication they were both alive, safe.

Mando takes pity on her restlessness and forces his reflections to the dark recesses of his mind for later, stripping out of the trousers adhered to his thighs, his calves, noting how the temperate air licks his legs dry. It’s too exposing, too public for his comfort, and he swiftly bundles the cot’s blanket around his shoulders to conceal himself from eyes that weren’t even aimed at him. She wouldn’t go undermining the trust they’ve built, but it’s his Honour, his code—at least that’s what he tells himself.

The Mandalorian tells himself he’s weary because that’s how he was brought up, he was trained to be cautious. To prohibit connections that’d tie him down and crush what little valour remained within him.

He ignores the pestering inkling at the back of his brain telling him that’s not why he’s so high-strung.

There’s scars tainting his flesh, painting the tan skin in slithers of off-whites, bruises on his knees and shins, thick callus paddings on his fingertips. He can’t help but imagine what the Girl might say if she saw him so bruised, so broken. Would she still want to touch him, or is it the shiny beskar that allures her—a mere status symbol.

Securing the blanket around his frame, Mando shimmys a hand out between the folds and grabs the pile of drenched cloth, striding across the room in three steps and gingerly placing it in the Girl’s outstretched palm.

“Is that all?” she asks, her fingers tightening around the stack of black. “I won’t be able to come back for more.”

Mando swallows, his throat bobbing against the air rather than his cowl; it’s such a bizarre situation, being so bare before the woman he struggles to contain himself around, his thoughts jumbled in his head—turn around, please don’t turn around—and he finds the strength to back away from her. “That’s all.”

She won’t—turn, that is—it’s too overbearing, too unlike her. No matter how easy it could be for her to witness him so vulnerable, so human-like, she won’t fiddle with the bindings of their mutual loyalties. Won’t stick her hand in the wet duracrete because she knows it’ll leave a permanent mark, a stamp of her backstabbery.

“All right.” She inches backwards so she can open the door ahead of her. “You out of sight?”

“Yes.”

She nods, her fingers wrapping around the handle and twisting but it stays firmly against the frame. “Get some rest. I know you didn’t sleep on the way here. I’ll get these tended to and then you can hit the ‘fresher.” She opens the door and takes a step outside. “Don’t forget to lock it.”

He watches her leave, observes how the sun swallows her in a breathtaking glow, watches the room be cast into darkness once more—isolating him from the outside; if it’s not beskar or the Crest, there’s always something between him and the natural beauty of the planets he frequents.

The sonic detectors pick up her departing footsteps, light and reluctant, until her boots make contact with the grass, dulling their resonance until he’s left with the laughter of children and hushed gossip concerning himself. He sighs, clicks the lock into place and precariously removes his helmet—cold, dirty with mud and silence leering through him. It’s insides are comforting, a shelter he’s incomplete without, but it’s exterior is the polar opposite; sinister, an insignia for his kind to instill fear into their enemies—the Girl never displaying that trepidation he’s so accustomed to.

Mando is endowed with the sight of the Girl’s beauty, how her eyes crinkle when she smiles or how she chews on her lower lip when in thought, her hands never static for more than a minute at a time, there’s not a detail in his sight he hasn’t engraved into the forefront of his mind.

She’s not as fortunate as him, stranded in the cold surrounded by steel rather than warm skin, unable to pursue the comfort of another without the constant reminder that he can never provide her with anything more than a slab of metal servicing as her shield. And yet, despite those factors, she remains beside him—voluntarily puts herself between him and danger—looking past the visor, all the walls he put in place, and into his eyes.

The helmet expires atop of the chair he’d been seated on, positioned away from him as he sinks his weight onto the mattress—bouncy and cottony, feeding his aching muscles with some much needed attention. For the first time ever, the bed is too large, too empty—she should be here.

Mando’s head stoops against the bundle of organised pillows, cushioning the healing wound underneath the thick of his curls. Curls her fingers nursed. He groans, deep that resonates through his chest, and distorts his head towards the door in wait for her return, his eyelids heavy as they fall shut.

Sleep doesn’t come to him easily in territories he’s been deprived of conquering; the nooks and crannies of each aisle between the huts unaccounted for, the instability of wooden walls establishing minimal security. It’s not optimal in contrast to his Crest but it works enough to achieve a couple hours of sleep. When he wakes, the orange tint leaking through the cabin has evolved into a blend of soft pinks and purples that blush against his tan skin as he paces the room, the blanket wrapped around his build dragging along the flooring with each lengthy stride.

He’d discovered a small refresher deposit in the shack and decided to clean himself up best he could—despite his hormones advocating against the idea, begging for him to wait it out until the Girl returns and he can share the space with her—which now leaves him stranded with his thoughts. A dangerous game he’s not prepared to dabble in presently. Fortuitously enough, he doesn’t need to—a steady knock on the hut’s door pulls him from his thoughts.

“I’ve brought your clothes,” Omera says from the outside, Mando quietly hums to himself and slips his helmet on before speaking.

“Thank you,” the vocoder crackles to life.

“I’ll leave it at the door for you to recollect.”

Mando enables his thermal vision, outlining her body through the door as she bends down to place the garments at the foot of the entrance and turns away for him to steal them. He does so, swiftly and with such minimal sound she doesn’t hear the door open or close behind her.

She’s unmoving, her hands clasped behind her back in patience for him to dress himself.

Assuming she wishes to commune about their sudden arrival, Mando doesn’t leave her waiting long—the flight suit smelling of soap and hugging his muscles with a pleasant residual warmth from the sunshine, his beskar, boots, gloves, and cloak following suit; electing to disregard his bandolier and holsters.

He’s not as hesitant to make noise now that he’s back to donning his layers and widely swings the door open indicating his decency. Omera turns to face him, her eyes casting over his clean clothes and offering a smile. “I was wondering if you’d like to take a walk before nightfall,” she asks, gesturing to the stairs below. “It would be nice to catch up with you. It’s been a while.”

“Where’s-”

“She’s out in the ponds with our finest catchers and your boy is with Winta and the other children.”

Mando doesn’t object against her proposal. Perhaps it’ll do him some good to get some fresh air, to clear his thoughts of the Girl, the wavering uneasiness of his Creed.

They leisurely stroll beside each other following the gravel paths of the village, the sinking sun ricocheting off the front of his helmet as they draw nearer.

“The ponds, huh?” Mando thinks aloud.

She chuckles. “Quite talented at fishing at that. She’s made a name for herself. We can swing by on our way, if you’d like.”

He faintly nods, his helmet inclining to the path as he walks. “Has the village encountered any issues recently?”

“You mean the raiders? They’ve kept their distance and the villagers know how to fight if that changes.”

“And what of you?” Mando asks. “How have you been? Winta?”

“Better, because of you, thank you,” she says, her feet coming to a halt among a cluster of krill ponds. They’re all empty, the inhabitants packing up for the remainder of the night, though his eyes land on the Girl in the distance. She’s switched her tarnished trousers and shirt for a village dress, hitched up to her mid-thigh as she dries the limbs coated in krill water.

The Mandalorian’s stomach contracts, his throat narrowing as he rakes in the image—the fluidity of the material in the wind, her skin lambent from the sunrays, the unclothed legs tormenting his self control. She hasn’t detected his prying, too concentrated on communing with a flock of women thanking her for the assistance.

It’s almost...domestic; Mando can imagine them settling down in a place like this, rough hands that manipulate blasters and spacecraft dedicating themselves to lenient chores like a regular townsman. Gummy blood that sticks to his leathers washing away in a tranquil stream. Their nights spent witnessing the stars emerge from the vastness of the sky above.

The weight on his vambrace suffocates his daydreaming with grungy splotches of soil and he reluctantly returns his attention to Omera, who’s studying his inattentive stance.

“The offer still stands.”

“Offer?” he asks.

“To settle down here with your boy.” The bothersome weight snakes along his beskar and to the thick of his flight suit, her fingers working their way into the strained bicep. She lowers her voice to a dainty murmur, “There must be a reason for your return.”

The weight on his arm is unnatural, forced—so unlike the unfiltered gentleness of the Girl’s—he refrains from shrugging her off, not wanting to appear ungrateful for her hospitality, but it’s like venom seeping into his veins and numbing him from the inside.

Their little game of tooka-and-womp-rat from the last time he was here starting to catch up with him; this is what he was afraid of. She’s a kind woman, she’s great with kids and can handle her own, but she’s not the Girl. She’s not who he wants to see right now.

“You like it here, don’t you?”

“It’s-it’s not an option. We can’t stay still for long.”

“It’s safe here.” Fingers dig in, feet inch closer, eyes dusky.

Mando finally pulls away, unsettled, and shakes his head. “The Child is still being hunted by the Guild. We may only last a few days here before needing to move on. They need a break, is all.” He shies from mentioning he requires a break as much as them; the Girl’s initial idea stimulating the selfish desires that influenced his return. “We’ll be out of your hair before you know it.”

Omera’s eyes stall downwards, her hands clasping together ahead of her. “I understand,” she says. “Since you’re on a break, how about I take in your boy for the night? It’ll allow you some rest and I’m not sure if I can separate Winta from him.”

“I don’t think-”

“We’re only a few huts down from you,” she reassures.

It’s not that he doesn’t trust Omera, she’s demonstrated her loyalties before, but they’ve spent so much time apart since Tatooine. What happens if the kid latches onto someone and Mando can’t stomach meddling with their bonding? What happens if he no longer wishes to journey with him? The Mandalorian is responsible for him—he can’t just abandon him, but who’s he to insert himself in places he doesn’t belong?

Then again, devoting time to other children his age—well, about as close they’ll reach to his age—could be beneficial; it’s one of the reasons why he had chosen Sorgan.

Mando exhales and seats his hands on his hips. “Okay, but if he’s too much to handle let me know.”

“Of course,” she whispers, clasping a hand on his tricep as she passes him, the burden slinking down his elbow until he’s too far from her reach and it falls away. He cranes his head to look behind as she strides back towards the village, his eyebrows crinkling as he studies her.

“You two are real chummy,” the Girl says from ahead of him, brushing her shoulder against his pauldron as she continues towards their shared hut. He releases a grunt as he’s pushed out of her way, the confusion inscribed into his brows only multiplying—what the fuck is happening?

“Hey.” Mando stalks her, towering and threatening that induces the locals to pitiful onlookers, silently wishing the Girl her best as she enters the hut with him not far behind, the door slapping closed. “What’s gotten into you?”

The Girl scoffs and shakes her head with disbelief, her hands working at the fastenings of her dress to loosen it from around her thighs, framing her legs in wrinkled tapestry. “Me? You’re the one changing around all your little rules you put in place. Should’ve seen the two of you out there. What happened to privacy?”

His legs don’t operate with his wishes, the boots cemented in a debating stance with his arms crossed against his chest. “What are you talking about?” the vocoders buzz.

Baring her teeth like a tooka, she hisses, “She likes you.”

She likes you—he mulls it over, sifting through the dust for the underlying meaning—do you like her?

Mando’s muscles sag and his feet bound across the room to near her, needing her warmth; needing her. He can’t believe she’s skeptical of their connection. He can’t believe she’s doubting how he feels. It burns him. Leaves a searing scar where his heart belongs.

He wants to reach out for her, feel her pliable tissue underneath his gloves, but there’s a meek hesitance; a miniscule drops-worth of concern he’ll incur further stings that eat at his flesh.

“I--”

“Turn around.”

He tilts his head. “Why?”

“Need to get out of this stupid dress.”

Does she not realise what it’s doing to him?

How his fingers are clenched into fists against his sides. How his breathing is heavier. How his shoulders are hunched and his head is preoccupied with images of that blasted skirt hitched up to her thighs with him between them. Does she not see that?

“Keep it on.”

It’s almost an order. Almost.

“It’s hers,” she spits.

Oh. That makes sense.

“I get it, all right. I don’t...have you, Mando. I’m not allowed to-to be jealous when another woman touches you, but—” She unzips the top unconcerned of his peeping, furious and desperate to rid herself of the confining garment. “I won’t wear her clothes. I won’t dress up as another one of your flings. That’s - that’s…”

Mando’s features soften, his fists unclenching, shoulders slacking, and—wait. Back up. Is she that clueless?

He carries his feet towards her, heavy and laden with purpose.

“You’re wrong.”

“What?”

“You’re wrong, mesh’la,” he repeats. Another step.

She’s no longer concerned with the dress, the fabric that once felt like acid against her skin now nothing more than the means of coverage. The Mandalorian isn’t radiating any expressions that she’s learnt to pick up on—he’s completely unreadable.

“About what?”

“I don’t have you,” he recites. “That’s what you said.”

The Girl’s quiet, too quiet, as she stares him down. There’s a falter in her movements as she recedes from her own nerves reflecting off beskar. Finally, ever so slowly, she breathes out another, “What?”

His modulator thrums, his boots clink, his flight suit rustles. Their radius is shortened, Mando’s beskar brushing against the material of her dress as he closes her in like he did before. His leathers stroke against her cheek, bulky and unsatisfying; preventing him from the intimacy he seeks. It’s not fair. He can’t remain like this—so quarantined from her, so fucking removed.

There’s no thinking, no self-interrogating, as his hands fumble against the beskar plate strapped to his chest in haste—concerned that if he slows down even a second he’ll lose the confidence building up inside him—his fingers curl underneath the boundary and tears the steel off his build, clanking to the flooring beside them. The impact causes her to jump, her eyes widen as she inspects the vacant space of his torso.

“Your Creed,” she whispers.

Seizing her hand in his, he compresses it against his pectoral and breathes in deep—lungs inflating against the appendage, his heart stammering at the unacquainted sensations of her nails digging into the flesh underneath. Inconsistent palpitating of his organ travels from the surface of his chest, through her fingertips and to her core, tightening and coiling as her own beating soars to unhealthy speeds.

It’s an adrenaline rush in itself, her fingers so temperate and alive abutting his dense suit—he conceptualises them slithering underneath to nurse the ache of his organ.

He’s not afraid of being burned. He told her that back on Tatooine and he fucking meant it.

Mando is durable; he can take a few burns if need be.

“You make me do foolish things, mesh’la.” The beskar slides across the room with a kick of his boot and he takes another step closer, her back forced against the walls of their dinky cabin. A gloved forefinger hooks the thread perched among her neck and lifts, the steel pendant revealing itself from beneath the top of her dress and he rubs a comforting stroke on the face of the skull. “This is the only part of me I never removed.”

Her face is hot, her lungs heavy. She’s listening, though she makes no effort in concealing how her fingers insistently grasp at his shirt to develop an understanding of the unfamiliar territory.There’s a gentle squeeze across the back of her hand and she tears her eyes away to glance at the visor, tilted and lenient. “This-” He absentmindedly fidgets with the necklace. “-means more to me than my beskar. It was a...beacon of light, hope. It was my compass when I lost myself in my commissions—reminded me of why I chose this life, why I chose to isolate myself—I’m not sure if I need it anymore.” He hopes he’s exhibiting the connotation inside his head as successfully as he believes—I don’t need it when I have you and you have me.

“Mando…” she exhales.

He chews on the gums of his cheeks, his lips, until they’re sore and tender.

“Not -- not good with words,” he confesses, his thumb massaging circles into her cheekbones. “Let me show you.”

Her head angles to the side in consideration. “Show me?”

It’s not an exact approval of his request but it’s enough for him to act—enough for him to demonstrate his devotion to the Girl—and he sinks his hands behind her thighs and hoists them around his waist, pressing his chest into her for stability against the wall. Her hands find their place on his pauldrons, quizzing eyes searching his visor for assurance. Baffling, how she’s so precarious for his Honour’s sake despite him being the initiator; his toes absorb his weight as he lifts himself to insert the face of his helmet into the crook of her neck, his modulator eliciting a grunt as his arousal awakens and rubs against the bottom of her thighs.

“Tell me to stop and I will.”

She doesn’t—Thank the Force, as Peli would say—and he transitions them to the cot, her legs tightening around him with each step he takes. He deposits her onto the mattress on her back with his body hunched over hers, though his feet refuse to tear from the floor, either hand on the cushions beside her head.

“Take it off.”

She doesn’t need a stupid dress for him to look at her that way.

The Girl whirs melodically like a comforting warble from his Crest welcoming him home and she carefully slips her limbs from his shoulders down his chest and out from their sleeves, the dress supported by nothing but gravity and her fingers bundle the skirt, impishly stripping the garment inch by slow inch.

Mando rids himself of his gloves, hell-bent on pursuing the pillowy flesh and engraving his fingerprints. Her stripping wavers at her abdomen and he takes the opportunity to slip the rough pads of his hands along the tops of her thighs to beneath the cloth, fingers blindly studying the miniscule scars puncturing the smooth skin. They find the most recent one, still tender but glossed over with rough tissue, and he circles it like a tooka with its prey.

She’s otherworldly, all soft curves and smooth skin in contrast to the dead of steel.

The weight on his chest, or lack of, evokes shameful thoughts.

“Come here,” he whispers, catching her hands and placing them on either of his pauldrons, her fingertips hooking underneath the rim. “Drag it down and then up.”

“I can’t.”

“You can, pretty girl.”

The nickname pulls a shudder out of her bones and her fingers tighten around the steel, heeding his instructions until the layers unclasp from their fastenings—protection he’s bonded with now nothing more than inanimate alloy in her hands. It’s a physical weight off his shoulders but it reaches so much deeper than that, as though he could finally breathe for the first time in years even with the blockade of a helmet.

He repositions her hands to his vambraces. “Curl your finger underneath-” She follows, either forefinger arching beneath the rim and finding a small shrouded dial, the plates slackening around his wrists and she carefully peels either off. “That’s it.”

That ugly trepidation from before isn’t even a consideration—his eyes glowing and fingers stiff as she shucks him from his beskar piece by piece, her own garb partially removed and covering the last portion of her body he’s yet to see bare. He won’t undress her further, not until they’re equal and she’s more comfortable.

Mando slips free of his boots, nudging them to the side, and ascends to the surface of the cot to sit on his knees between her legs. Their hands shift to his tassets resting among his hips and he aids in her attempt to dislodge them from their joints, tossing them to join the growing pile of steel below the bed. She stops with her hands sprawled across his cuisses, the last of his armour; the last physical manifestations of his essence.

“Is this what you want, Mando?” she asks, the tips of her fingers caressing small strokes into his thighs above the steel.

“Say my name,” he pleads. “No one will hear.”

She repeats, “Is this what you want, Din?”

Dank Farrik. He’s no longer The Mandalorian, Mando, but instead reclaiming a long lost name and wearing it with pride, ingraining the sound of it slipping through her lips into his bones. Din. A name he’ll only ever hear come from her. His name.

And the Girl was no longer just the Girl—she’s His Girl; all his and he’ll brand her body to prove it, label her skin with his crescent nails if he has to. They deliberately dig into the meat of her thighs, skin raking underneath his fingernails, and he nods his head in response to her question - this is all he wants. To be suspended in time right here and now; triumphing buried insecurities with her unwavering support.

Her fingers progress independently, hitching underneath the borders and tugging the final two pieces of pesky beskar from his body, sans helmet of course, and languidly drops them to the flooring with a clank.

She stifles her breathing, reducing it to a slow wisp that flees her mouth and circles around them dragging them against each other. “You-you can touch me, mesh’la.” He expresses his covet for her touch by depressing his hips into hers, rocking once and twice rhythmically until she wads a fistful of flight suit to draw him in—her breath fogging the visor as she analyses his build with her hands; trailing along the front of his chest and around his sides, the featherweight touches tickling the body parts scarcely disturbed.

“Smell so good,” she moans and tucks her face into his cowl. “Much better than before.”

Din chortles. “Should’ve joined me.”

“Next time.”

He’ll take her up on that.

There’s a hand on either hip and he observes from the clouds as she aligns their pelvises together, her heat bucking against the emerging bulge.

“Show me,” she alludes to his previous proposal, eyes swallowed with inky lust.

Din fucking growls—the modulator contributing very little to the deep crackle—and his hands return to soft flesh, shoving the galling dress up, up, up and over.

“S’pretty.”

The garment is discarded across the hut, finding its home somewhere among the clutter of beskar trailings. She’s faultless, something he already had an impression on but seeing her so bare, so unguarded and trusting beneath him, is record-breaking.

Trauma lesions encompass her skin, little choppy lines of faded tones splotched across her abdomen, her chest, shoulders, waist—mimicking his own—and he returns to the healing wound on her abdomen to brush a tender stroke along the surface; an injury he was there to witness, the blade tucked into her flesh still so fresh in his mind.

“Din.”

The vermillion slipping through his gloves as she faded out of consciousness. Those dreadful cries of pain each time he touched her. The unyielding environment of Tatooine attacking his muscles and composure as she bled out in the arms of a stranger.

A prodding at his back plucks him from reliving the memory, crumbling it into miniscule debris fragments upon the revelation that she’s here with him, breathing and safe and alive. She’s poking at the wound he garnered all those days ago, when she took the first step to progressing this little thing they have going—all of their intimate milestones triggered by one or the other inflicting a wound of sorts; Din seemingly the culprit in both instances.

But not this time.

This time is different. Spurred on by passion and a necessary need to show each other themselves defenceless.

“Sorry,” he whispers and compensates for lost time with a gentle grind of his bulge into her sex, her feet digging into the matress behind him and holding him stationary against her.

She raises to her elbows, seizing a clump of his cowl in one hand to stabilise herself and uses the newfound leverage to rut against his lap. “Shit, Din,” she moans.

It’s so fucking lewd; she’s just using him to get herself off and fuck if he doesn’t like it—the pressure around his neck with each tug, the warmth against his lap, how light and freeing each movement is compared to last time.

“Supposed-” He’s cut off with a tumbling grunt, fleeing out of his throat and into the silent cabin as she quickens her pace; stroking the underside of his length raw. “I’m-I’m supposed to...fuck.”

“Taking-” she breathes, “-too long. Fucking--taking off your beskar, what’re you thinking? I need you, Din.”

She’s forced back onto her back beneath him with a hand flat against her abdomen, his figure looming over her exuding lust and desire and pure dusky thoughts he’d be ashamed of admitting. “Wasn’t done,” he declares, a hand grasping at the hem of his shirt to eradicate the article from the equation. Din needs to feel his skin against hers, more than just roughened hands, he wants her nails in the muscles lining his back, her teeth retreating to the skin above his collarbone, lips and tongue labouring at his neck.

The weight around his neck and shoulders commands him to cease his stripping—fuck. Why’s he got so many fucking layers for? Din rips the cloak from around his neck, bundling it into a tattered ball and tossing it across the room impatiently.

His hands return to his shirt’s hem, elevating the fabric until a sliver of his abdomen is assaulted by frigid air. The downwards dragging is unexpected, quaint, and he stops to heed her interruption, “Only if you want to, Din. Don’t - don’t force yourself for me.”

“Sweet girl,” he muses and removes his hands so she’s left clutching the fabric alone. “Take it off for me.”

It’s too intimate, too liberating; so much more than just sex and a means to receive relief from each other’s bodies. This is something they’ve both been denied for far too long—the meek touches of another to lull each other, reassure themselves events that have yet to unfold will be okay so long as they’re together.

She discards the shirt beside them and runs her nails along his spine gingerly, recording the bumps of bone buried underneath the flesh and muscles. His front is in her face, on direct display for her eyes to collect the slithers of off-whites; her lips brushing his pectorals.

“Been through so much,” she whispers against his skin, her breath prompting a layer of goosebumps in its radius. “Too much.”

“As have you, mesh’la.” His fingers trail a slash across her shoulder.

The time she contributes to identifying each scar, memorising the feeling and positions, is staggering—as though she’d be content with just studying his body for the next week alone—those impressions of her only wanting him for his armour and protection, not for what else he can bring to the table, are lit in unforgiving flames.

She’s not in it for the reputation he withholds, but simply for him.

There’s a tightness in his chest, an ache, something new and terrifying—a word to an emotion he’s not acquainted with circling his mind, bouncing along his tongue in jest towards his confusion and uncertainty.

He doesn’t entertain the thought; the thought that maybe, possibly Din is having his initial encounter with something bigger and more dangerous than any commission he’s dealt with before. It’s not possible. He’s not that fortunate. He can’t process those emotions—he’s not built for that.

Din needs a distraction, pronto, otherwise his head will be so clouded with the thought that—

She banks a wet stripe across the front of his throat, the groan oscillating through his flesh and onto her tongue and she rewards him with a benign kiss—his throat bobs and he ruts against her pelvis unquestionably eager.

Yeah, that’ll do.

Din’s hands surrender behind her back and blindly unclasp the hooks of her undergarment and yanks the blasted barrier off, his hands working the soft mounts before his eyes gain a chance to rake in their appearance.

“So soft,” he murmurs, palming the tissue vigorously. “How’re you so soft?”

The Girl opens her mouth to utter something snarky—he’s beginning to sense her incoming sass—and he devilishly clips a nipple between two fingers to disrupt her train of thought, her fingernails raking against his shoulder blades in an attempt to stifle the rising noises in her throat. It’s hypnotic, like watching electricity react against metal, her back arching as he flicks a thumb over the hardening peak sparking her nails to bare down into the meat of his slackened deltoids.

A hand trails down to his abdomen, digits soaking through the hairs of his happy trail but she doesn’t stop in her endeavours and sinks lower, past his bulge and buries her hand underneath her undergarments so that he can only see the outline of her hand working away at her crotch.

Din exhales, one of his hands fleeing from her breasts to remove the garment so he can watch her. She plunges three fingers inside of herself, stiffly pumping her hand in and out—preparing herself for him; it’s so fucking vulgar.

“Gods,” he groans. His final piece of clothing retires to his ankles, too overzealous to put in that extra effort to be completely free, and instructs her hand to his cock, using the slick on her fingers to lubricate himself. “Flip over for me, pretty girl. Let me take care of you.”

She enthusiastically obliges and squirms underneath his weight to lay on her stomach, he uses the pillows to prop her ass up to avoid her overstraining herself and reserves a moment to consider the view—far greater than his mind would conjure up. There’s additional scar tissue across her back, lengthy slashes and the remnants of blaster bolts, but those only highlight her features; the dip between her shoulder blades, the arch of her lower back joining the curves of her ass perfectly.

“Beautiful.” He adjusts himself between her folds, rubbing the tip to amass more of her slick, and eases inside her gradually; his hands never leaving her waist, eyes refusing to tear from the scenic sight.

“Shit--”

“So beautiful.”

“--Din, please-”

Din hums and thrusts inside her, pulling moans and gasps from her lips like music to his ears. “Beautiful...mesh’la.” It doesn’t require further explanation, the connotation straightforward with two simple words.

She asks, nonetheless, words muffled with bedspread and moaning, “That’s what you’ve been calling me all this time?”

“Do you like it?”

“Do I like it—you’re… you -- Maker. Shut up and fuck me.”

Fucking her, that he can do. Shutting up, on the other hand, was a little more difficult. It’s worthy of a comedic performance, how contrasting Din is in bed to in his armour; usually so stoic, a Mandalorian-of-few-words, now so whiny and talkative underneath the Girl’s charm.

Even if he wanted to stop murmuring dulcet words—and he really fucking doesn’t want to; the pent-up statements flowing from his throat so smoothly compared to earlier, like a tender creek current—he can’t stop.

Din applies his weight onto her back, uses his knees to continue his thrusts, and dips his helmet to mutter filth into her ear, “Gar jatnese be te jatnese-” He grunts, a hand squirming it’s way underneath her body to snatch a breast - just to have his hands against parts of her reserved for him. “Gar ani ni, vaabir gar suvarir?”

Of course she doesn’t understand—-Mando’a isn’t a well-known language, with few aruetii capable of articulating the speech. It’s no surprise when she doesn’t respond to his comments but the quiver reaching her shoulders and toes is a clear indication she’s savouring the sound of his voice manipulating a foreign language—whispering endearments only he can understand.

He’s touching her everywhere, running along her sides and across her shoulders, fingers dipping to draw lines across her cheeks and forehead where sweat is beginning to accumulate. Din’s inquisitive, it goes against his nature—habitually so cautious and attentive—and he sweeps two fingers across the cushioning of her lips, tapping against the flesh until she parts and immerses the digits within the pocket of her mouth.

There’s no sense of direction, no suggestion for what she should do cause he’s fucking splintered like a log; he’s had her fingers in his mouth before but he’s never felt the warmth of her saliva without a leather barrier. The helmet tucks into the crevice of her neck and shoulder as she bobs her head on the fingers, performing identically to how she had at Tatooine on his cock—sultry and slow, simply exploring the body he’s honoured her with sharing.

It’s an overload of sensations. Being rooted so deeply within her it’d be best to pitch his residence to refrain from laborious movement, their lungs synchronised against each other, his bareness, his withering Honour, so apparent and she’s focused on serving him with anything he desires; fingers in her mouth, weight crushing her, a hand grabbing at her chest, she doesn’t care so long as he’s satisfied and touching her.

Din can’t handle it. He’s a fucking Mandalorian. A warrior. He’s killed thousands of lifeforms in his lifetime. He’s survived wars. None of those even came close to shattering him like she does—a pretty girl is the cause of his skeptical questioning of his Code. A pretty girl is the sole motivation for his fingers to dip underneath the beskar rim, floundering for the feel of a fastener -- click!

There’s a hiss that interrupts her pace, the gears in her head turning, and she pulls away from his fingers to stare off into oblivion. Her body’s tense, the cushiony flesh abruptly hard and taut underneath him. “What’s the matter, Cyar’ika?” he mulls, stopping his movements to console the change of attitude.

“Din—you can’t.”

She doesn’t need to explain herself. Doesn’t need to clarify she understands that sound, having heard it twice before now. She understands the reality of the situation he’s pushing themselves into; quite possibly more than Din himself.

She inhales and inclines her head, sealing off any possibility of catching a glimpse of something unforgivable. She murmurs, “You’ve shown me, I get it -- I understand. The pendant, the beskar, the flight suit... It’s too much—I can’t reciprocate. You can’t give all of this to me, Din.”

The beskar is slack, mobile, as he shifts so he’s directly behind her. “Oh, Cyar’ika, you’ve given me plenty.” he hums, the vocoder continuing to operate. It modulates his vocals into staticy droid-like sounds; it provokes a rise in his chest, a tightness in his abdomen, and he rips the steel from his face—as though he’s submerged in krill water, drowning and in dire need of the Girl—and his mouth latches onto the back of her shoulder in one foul swoop. There’s no time to consider it, his actions overcoming his rationality and faith to his Creed.

It’s all teeth and tongue. Biting and tugging, licking and lapping.

The Girl springs at the sensation, the contact so heavenly she’s uncertain whether it’s real.

“Din, you...fuck, shouldn’t-shouldn’t…” She struggles for a deep inhale with the weight on her back, her face swallowed by blankets for his Honour’s sake.

The enamel works out the knots in her muscles, his warm tongue lulling the skin to relaxation after he’s finished abusing it. It’s fucking surreal. Dreamlike. Who knew something so small could elicit such a primal feeling inside of him. She’s even softer in his mouth than his hands—how is she so fucking soft—all warm and salty from sweat that attacks his tastebuds, leaves him thirsty for more.

He marvels whether the beating in her chest is as fast as his, whether he’s spurring on some deepened arousal like she’s doing to him; his cock hardens like that of his beskar, tight and sturdy to the point of ache and he’s compelled to grind his pelvis against her ass to relieve some of the pressure.

“Pretty girl,” he coos, voice rounded and deep and alive; goosebumps rise to the surface of her skin, which he nurses with delicate pecks. “Should take a look at yourself.”

She bites back, “Should listen to yourself.”

It encourages him, welcomes the husky tone from the depths of his throat as he nears her ear and deliberately exudes a hot sigh to assault the cartlidge, “Kaab jate, Cyar’ika? Is that what you like? My voice?” He pokes his tongue at the base of the side of her neck and slides upwards to the bottom of her ear. “Or—ner uram—my mouth?”

It’s not a question needed to answer; she makes it apparent that yes, his mouth, his voice, his vulnerability, his sacrifice, is what she likes—she likes him.

“Ke-ep talking like that and I’m gonna-”

“We’re not done,” he rumbles. “I wanna-wanna taste.”

“Ta-st-e…” she stumbles. He can’t see her face from this angle but he imagines a tint of pink across her cheeks, her teeth chomping away at the bottom lip.

Din buzzes against her ear in confirmation. “Want you in my mouth. Is that okay?”

“Oh fuck. Yes. Where - how do you want me?”

So fucking eager—he swallows the opportunity to assuage her appetite for his tongue by flattening the organ against her spine unloading a thick stripe of saliva in substitute for the sweat that nestles its way down his throat. “Not yet, sweet thing, let me take care of you first.”

Din lacks experience utilising his mouth to get someone off, isolating yourself in a layer of steel tends to do that to a man, and he’d be unable to reveal himself from his beskar again if he humiliates himself like that—he’ll just exploit what he can and swoop in to lap up the remnants between her thighs.

It’s greedy wanting to experience the flavour not for her pleasure but his own. That aftertaste that’s so highly spoken about so unidentifiable on his taste buds; he can’t continue living not knowing what that’s like.

But first; he’ll make her scream his name and come on his cock until she’s leaking down her thighs.

His helmet idles beside them, lopsided visor leering at him from it’s position—he scowls at the heinous thought jostling around his mind and repositions it ahead of the Girl, the steel weighing down the blankets. He verifies it’s perspective and slithers a hand around her throat to pry her face from the depths of the blankets and mattress.

She’s rigid as she finds herself in the reflection of the visor, sweaty and flushed and practically drooling with thirst for his thrusts. “Fucking——look at yourself,” Din moans.

“Shit, your face-”

“S’okay,” he slurs, “can’t see me from your position.”

The Girl relaxes somewhat, her shoulders still taut but her neck melting into his hand and moulding her flesh around his digits as he continues to incline her head—look how gorgeous you are—and his teeth latches onto the skin of her throat, twisting and pulling to leave a mark for later.

His hair is thick and unkempt, subsequently flat and jungly from the helmet, and his wild curls wash against the bays of her jaw; strands peering into her field of view even though her eyes are almost at the back of her head. She obliges with her eyelids requests, respecting his Creed, and seals themselves together to submerge her vision with black—it’s all sensory, all touches and gentle kisses against her neck to counterbalance the unforgiving thrusts he’s gifting.

Din labels her with his teeth indentations, breaking the blood vessels in splotches across her throat, painting crescents into her shoulders with his nails. He mouths her name but the word refuses to vocalise, latching onto the tonsils and taking residence there; in his mouth, where it belongs.

“Din--”

His response is nothing short of filth; muffled moaning pressed against the back of her ear as his hand captures the swelling nub of her clit to draw eager circles.

“--Din, fuck. Din, Din, Din...”

“That’s it,” Din croons, his lips curling at the over abundance of his name spewing from her gullet. “Let go.”

There’s a quaint delay, her body working overtime to comprehend all the sensations without overloading her brain, then she’s writhing and twitching underneath him; his hand and thrusts never-ending as he pulls every single quake out of her involuntarily. Her walls tighten around his cock, that unmistakable warmth engulfing his length to attract his own undoing like a magnet—he could keep going for hours if not for that fucking warmth.

“Din! Di-”

“Shh,” he advises, setting his palm against her mouth to blunt the ecstasy cascading from her vocals like a waterfall—a downside to being so close-quartered to others; he wants to hear those whines, the unstoppable call of his name at her peak, but he’ll settle for rewarding muffles.

Din works her down from her orgasm, pecking soft kisses against her healing slashes and softening the fingers against her clit until she’s no longer twitching underneath his weight. She lays there for a moment, simply memorising the tingling between her thighs and how his pelvis compresses against her ass with every delicate thrust.

Energy recovering, rather quickly, she meets with his lunges, sloppy and trembling on her knees but he appreciates the effort—not that he needs it. She doesn’t need to do anything special to aid his high; Din could just come if she asked him to.

He’s reaching deep, the tip of his cock nudging against her cervix, and they stagger in unison. “Fuck. Vaii, Cyar’ika. Where-where do you want-”

“In,” she mewls between his fingers. “Don’t stop.”

“In.” Din fights his conscious for a breath, his windpipes narrow and clogged. “Dank Farrik. You’re sure?”

“Definitely.”

In, it is.

Din’s cock anchors in her warmth, his pelvis rocking back-and-forth lightly, and he savours how her walls contract with each flick of her sensitive nub—edging on his orgasm by the inch starting from the tip and sliding down to the base like vine tendrils wrapping around him and encouraging him to just fucking let go.

He heeds his own advice and relaxes, allowing the overwhelming pulsations to pump strings of softening whites inside of her, her name falling out his mouth in broken moans. Their warmths mix together within her walls and stick to his length with vengeance as he numbly extracts himself until only the tip is concealed. Cock still semi-hard, Din irresistibly thrusts into her one final time—pathetic ego reaching new heights when she mutters a final bleat.

Din runs rough fingers up the backs of her thighs and to her shoulders, palming the flesh tenderly until she’s nothing but a pool of lax muscles beneath him. His mouth delivers delicate kisses across the back of her neck to provide a break for her to regain her breathing.

“Can you continue?”

She nods her head, a simple response he holds close to his heart as he carefully readjusts himself behind her.

She’s poetic from this view, a body crafted with wise hands the greatest bards would struggle to write about, but there’s nothing that comes within range of outstanding like her face does.

He needs to see her.

“Think you can hold your eyes shut while I go down on you?” Din groans in desperation while she mulls the question over. “Please, Cyar’ika, I need a taste.”

It’s a big ask and if she can’t ultimately gather up that courage to comply he won’t pressure her, no matter how much his mouth salivates from the thought of finally consuming a piece of her.

It’s the greatest test of trust; she’d easily be able to slip open those pretty eyes and pulverise his Creed to molecules—he wouldn’t trust himself if he was in her position.

It should terrify him; should render him into a solid beam of sturdy beskar.

It doesn’t. Din’s paralleled to that of the Girl, soft and warm, not an inch of him cold and solid.

His Mandalorian helmet contains a blackout setting and, if it comes to it, he can slip it over her head so he can sate his cravings without the paranoia in either of their heads—no.That picturesque face of hers shouldn’t ever be covered up again; that stupid face mask stole too many moments from his vision.

There’s enough concealment behind beskar to provide for both of them. Too much concealment.

The Girl gasps, “Okay. Okay.”

The stretched lips across his face is disgraceful; finding pleasure in something so filthy. Din couldn’t give a fuck. Who wouldn’t be smiling in his position?

They silently reorganise themselves with her on her back, eyes firmly shut, and Din planted between her thighs, quite possibly his favourite place in all of the galaxy.

Din doesn’t rush things; he’s not that kind of man. He works her up with ribbing kisses across her sternum and tooka-licks on either nipple simply to hear her breathing hitch and her hands fist the blankets underneath them. She white-knuckles the fabric when his teeth collect the sensitive skin and brutally sucks his markings into her, red and blemished that’ll welt nicely by morning—the only form of bruisings her body should be subjected to.

The hand assaulting the blankets transfers into the thick lock atop of his head with his guide, the digits snaking through the curls for leverage and tugging as he makes sloppy open-mouthed kisses around the pendant resting between her breasts.

“Cyar’ika.” The newly-adopted nickname floats through the air and into her core. “What’d I do to deserve all this?”

There’s no sarcastic comeback this time, not even an attempt, though he knows what she would say—destroyed my rifle—and he makes route lower and lower and fucking lower.

She’s straining to keep her hand in the mess of hair, his head lowered between her thighs where she can feel his breathing against her heat.

There’s a trail of translucent along the insides of her thighs and he follows the streak with his lips, digits digging into the meat while he collects it onto the cushiony brims. His tongue doesn’t delve out for a taste—not yet—until he’s made a path directly to her sex to place a final kiss against the peak of her clit triggering a miniscule buck that nudges against his nose.

“Tell me to stop,” Din pleads; fucking pleads because he knows if she doesn’t he won’t be able to stop himself.

His scalp burns as she stiffens her grip. “Please.”

There’s an experimental lick at first, nothing short of the tip of his tongue running through her folds, but once he’s obtained a taste of her there’s no end in sight—the finish line sprinting so far away from him he doesn’t even want to make an attempt to reach a conclusion. He’s happy to sit there and lap up everything until she’s dried out.

The Girl was spot-on. They’re a combination of sweet and salty—sweet on the account of her, salty because of him—and its so fucking addictive. His tongue flattens against her to collect as much slick onto the muscle and retracts, swallows, and repeats.

The bump of his nose stimulates her oversensitive clit for a second round, his fingers deviously slipping inside her canals to accumulate what his tongue can’t reach, his eyes spying on her face for every reaction he plucks.

Din can’t prevent the famished growl that slips out of him when his fingers plop into his mouth, shiny whites blending with his salvia to slide down his throat and lay rest in his stomach.

“Sweet girl, you really are sweet.”

For someone so inexperienced, Din sure knows what he’s doing. His tongue is in hyperdrive, working at her clit and suctioning every last drop of her out from within.

“O-o-h,” she moans and writhes on the mattress. “Gods, Din... Right there. Sh-it.”

The mewling words of encouragement boost his ego, as though he’d been replaced with his younger self; overly-enthusiastic and mindless, but possessing far more maturity—nurturing quirks that go against his amour propre youth.

Din heeds her commands, unrelenting licks jerking against her clit while his fingers get to work pumping in and out of her.

He’s not trying to make her come again, he didn’t think he had it in him, but fuck she’s right on the edge—he can feel it. Maybe it’s the over-sensitive nub collapsing into her core prompting her to tremble and twitch, or maybe he’s not giving himself enough credit; regardless, he’s working overtime to quench her needs.

When her thighs pinch the sides of his head, he really loses the plot—a heavy grunt expelling from his throat as he angles his head to the side and quickens his pace, poking and prodding at the spot she likes best.

“Din, Din-fuck.”

Thrumming journeys through his mouth and onto her clit, stimulating it just that extra mile to cross the finishing line. Her thighs stabilise his head in place while she violently bucks into his mouth, her second orgasm much stronger than her first.

There’s a surge of slick coating his fingers and he sinks to hoard it in his mouth, tongue-fucking her up till she’s a whimpering mess beneath him. It’s all her—his saltiness long gone—and he revels in the warmth; focusing on it slipping down his throat and sheeting his taste buds with a sweet syrup that immediately destroys the memory of those pitiful pancakes.

“So fucking delicious, Cyar’ika. You deserve a taste. You want some?”

Her head nods faintly, the exhaustion catching up to her; thighs trembling and fingertips taut in his curls.

Din accumulates a mass of her slick on his fingers and reroutes himself for her mouth, but stops himself. It’s glistening at him, taunting and just begging to slip into his mouth—he fulfills it’s wishes and plunges his digits inside for his tongue to lap up the remnants before hastily ramming his lips against hers.

It’s too authentic, too nerve wracking, as though he’s being initiated into the Creed for a second time; all butterflies in his stomach and outpaced blood flow through his veins. His hands quiver as they find her face, cupping her jaw as he deepens the kiss with a flick of his tongue across her gums.

The Girl’s eyes nearly slip open from the initial shock but she’s mastered her self-control, slinking into the mattress and pulling him with her.

It’s not like the kisses you’d see in holoplays, where it’s all soft and delicate but rather hungry and needy, a lot of teeth clashing against each other as they attempt to find themselves.

They exchange flavours, Din offering up her slick on his tongue in return for her saliva; tasteless in itself but it’s hers—his favourite flavour.

It’s all over him. In his mouth, on his chin, his fingers, his cock. It’s where it belongs.

Breathing is essential to life: they’re reminded as they reluctantly pull from each other's seals. Din’s not done just yet, then again, he’ll never truly be quenched of her. There’s just not enough of her. His lips disturb every speck of visible skin on her face, pecking her chin and across her cheeks all the way up to her eyes and back around the opposite side.

He’s much more gentle now, having gorged himself on her lips and taste, and is mindful of the scratchiness of the scruff along his jaw as he runs the pillows down her throat to come to rest in the cavern between her shoulder and neck.

She’s so bouncy, so padded, Din could rest his head on the bare tissue and sleep for centuries; recuperate for all the decades of blood and sweat he’s put his body through, replenish the colour underneath his eyes, permit his muscles and bones to be reborn.

His eyelashes brush against his cheekbones as he rests his eyes and evens out his breathing.

“Din,” she breathes, hands sketching idle lines across his back. “Hate to ruin the mood but your helm-”

“Don’t worry about it. Just rest,” he mumbles against her flesh, a hand blindly reaching out for the blanket to cover themselves; he doesn’t plan on moving from this position. She’ll have to pry him off herself. The beskar pendant is wedged between their chests, the skull's tusks digging into his muscles but it’s somehow fitting, comforting.

She is worried, though. There’s a crinkle between her eyebrows that he heals with the padding of his thumb. “What if I wake up-”

“I’ll be awake before you.”

“But--”

“I promise.” It’s not a pledge Din should initiate. She’s too comforting and he might never wake if he remains in her arms. His stubble pricks against her collarbone as he finds an abode among her chest, the beat of her heart against his eardrum.

“Please, Cyar’ika, don’t make me put it back on.”

How can she oppose that?

“Oh——okay.”

This is bliss.

This is his Manda, his paradise.

Her, not the location, though Sorgan will always sit somewhere special within his heart.

His Girl is all he needs.

If Din didn’t have a mission, a green mischievous baby, to tend to he would spend the rest of his days nestled into her body, pampering precious skin made of the elements themselves with sentimental kisses and delightful touches.

If she was to ask him to retire his blasters to their weapons unit, he would do it in an instant.

“Din?” He placidly drones in feedback. “Thank you.”

“Hmm? For what?”

A hand lazes on his head, tufts of ungroomed curls separating through the gaps of her fingers considerably slow as to not lug a knot. “Believing in me. I don’t ask much about Mandalorian culture ‘cause I figured you get asked a lot; I only know of that from Legends, but I can see it’s a part of you. Trusting me with your Creed...after everything I’ve done… Thank you.”

She’s still beating herself up about previous events. He could just wedge open her eyelids so she can look into his eyes; maybe then she’ll realise he’s already forgiven her. Instead, Din exhales a low-toned sigh and pecks what skin his lips can reach from his position.

“We agreed to a cin vhetin, remember?”

“Yes, but-”

“Sweet girl,” he shushes her. “In Mandalorian culture we use that term in initiation; it’s to clear all previous debts. Everything that occurred before is erased. Only what will happen in the future will be considered.”

Their cabin falls silent as she mulls the significance over. Din can hear a fire crackling somewhere nearby, children laughing, and adults toasting each other to another successful day; lively and euphoric-sounding but he’s content laying atop of his euphoria, to feel each expansion of her lungs, each tardy investigative stroke on his bare form.

“Does that mean I’m not getting your rifle?” she jests.

Din laughs, a full-on throaty bellow that resonates through her. It’s so humanlike it shocks him, leaves him wiping at the corners of his eyes from the onslaught of tears he’s producing.

The Girl’s hand runs from his head to the back of his neck, her thumb and forefinger massaging out the taut stone into flexible cloth. She quietly murmurs, “Wasn’t that funny.”

Laughing gradually subsiding, he basks in the comfortable silence between them. The Girl was never overbearing, even before all the tension arised, never stepped her foot out of line purely out of respect for his wishes and now she’s breached obstacles that’d make him hang his head in shame in the presence of his elders.

“Didn’t you propose a challenge or have you already forgotten?”

She smirks with cocky confidence. “Gambling with your weapons, huh? That’s so unlike you.”

“As I said; foolish, foolish things, Cyar’ika.”

___________________

"atin" - stubborn "sleemo" - slimeball "mesh'la" - beautiful "gar jatnese be te jatnese" - you're the best of the best "gar ani ni, vaabir gar suvarir?" - you complete me, do you understand? "auretii" - outsider "cyar'ika" - sweetheart/darling "kaab jate?" - sound good? "ner uram" - my mouth "vaii" - where

A/N: Sorry this one took longer than the others, it lowkey beat my ass up. In other news, I am currently planning my next series that'll be a Mandalorian!Reader if any of you are interested in that. If you wish to be added to either the LUNAR taglist or the upcoming series tags, please send an ask or a message!

tags: @ohhersheybars, @greatcircle79, @northernpunk, @tanzthompson, @djarrex

[comradeacerbus]

Miraak Headcannons (for fanfic)

Okay, so, I’ve been planning a Skyrim fic for some time now. I started one, but it fell through due to a lack of proper planning. Now that I know what I’m doing, I’m gonna try again! I’m just posting some notes on everyone’s favorite jackass here because I needed something to post. Obviously, since this is my fic, I’ll be referencing my granola-crunching pacifist Dragonborn, Haldis Ragnardottir.

Bethesda didn’t give us much to work with but that just makes it more interesting. I’m just getting a feel for his personality now so I can keep him consistent.

* Miraak was already getting up there in age by the time his revolt against Alduin fell through, so he’s a bit old and grey now. Maybe in his sixties physically, though he looks more past his use by date because of how Oblivion has affected his outward appearance.

* Stupidly tall because, yknow, Atmorans.

* He’s a dirty old man. He doesn’t come off that way initially, but internally, Miraak is a pervert. While he won’t get physical with women, he won’t hesitate to say something pervy.

* Just because he’s a bit pervy doesn’t mean he’s promiscuous. He certainly has game, I imagine, but he feels he’s too old to go throwing his weight around. It’s mostly for his own entertainment

* He loves to make people uncomfortable, especially our little baby Dwagonbown. Constantly picking on her, saying weird pervy shit, just constantly flustering her for his own amusement.

* A really good talker, can worm his way out of any bad situation with his words. He’s also a natural politician. He can make any insane remark and easily justify it to anyone who’s willing to listen to him.

* He’s no liar though. Not unlike Odahviing, he might not tell the whole truth, but he won’t tell much in the way of lies. He’ll just manipulate the truth. It’s no wonder he was so able to lead a cult, really.

* Literate in multiple languages. Obviously the Imperial language spoke in Tamriel and Dovahzul, but he is also fluent in Daedric and has dabbled in Falmer and Dwemer dialects as well, though he dislikes the cultures themselves as an Atmoran. He probably started looking into them out of sheer boredom in Apocrypha.

* He’s definitely looked into more than just languages in his time in Oblivion. He’s looked into various magics, histories of ancient civilizations, Aedra, Daedra, trades, and everything in between. In other words, Miraak knows his shit about a lot of things.

* In spite of how much he knows about a wide range of subjects, a jack of all trades is a master of none. He’s not talented in all the fields he’s studied, but he’s honed his main skills to a fine point. Namely the art of shouting, various styles of swordplay, and the main schools of magic.

* He frowns very strongly upon thieving and sneaking about. Subtly is one thing, but being sneaky and deceitful is a whole nother ball game to him. He dislikes the idea of assassinations, especially the use of poison. He much prefers the ancient Atmoran-Nordic tradition of openly challenging an authority figure for his seat.

* Under all the arrogance, Miraak actually does have some wisdom to him, and he does learn from his and others’ mistakes. He likes to pretend that he didn’t change after narrowly escaping Apocrypha, simply because he doesn’t want to admit that what he did was wrong, but he certainly has changed some of his views.

* Simply speaking of Oblivion’s Princes makes him uncomfortable because he wants nothing to do with them now, though he’d never admit that he’s afraid. He might be garbage in a lot of ways, but he’s definitely still human.

* Apocrypha has most certainly disfigured him, as well as the night Vahlok and his legion of Dragons burned his temple to the ground. He has some burns scars on his chest and some smaller ones on his face. They no doubt would have been worse, were it not for the metal of his mask. Apocrypha has made his skin pasty and his hair white and nasty looking no matter how much he cleans himself or walks around in the daylight. His sclera are also darkened permanently. He doesn’t wear his mask anymore, and instead prefers his hood when he returns to Tamriel, but he won’t usually show his face to anyone, aside from the Dragonborn, because he’s ashamed of what his choices have done to his body.

* He’s of an ectomorph body type. He’s super tall and towers over Haldis, but he’s not especially muscular. He’s got the broad shoulders of an early Nord, but he’s actually quite skinny. I imagine he tries his best to bulk up with his robes. The other cult leaders most certainly poked fun at him for him.

* After he and Haldis bury the hatchet and accept that they’re stuck together, I imagine he starts to see her as a niece/granddaughter/little sister figure. She doesn’t know much about shouting combatively, and he knows that her overall lack of fighting experience is likely to get her killed, so he begins teaching her from the ground up. It’s initially a thing out of necessity, but he later grows to enjoy it. Not like he’d admit it.

* He may have changed a little since his imprisonment, but he’ll still keep his pride forever. It’s what got him stuck with Herma-Mora, and it’s what got him through so much time in Oblivion.

* The main thing he was worried about for the time of his imprisonment was that he’d turn into a Seeker, but his will as a Dragonborn is likely what kept him from turning, so he’ll cling to his arrogance and his stubbornness till death does him part from Mundus.

* Yeah, he’s old fashioned and very stubborn, but he’s not unreasonable. He’ll listen to one’s argument, but with how well-spoken he is, he usually “wins” the debate, ultimately.

* Even if he is reasonable in the realm of debate, he will stop at nothing to get what he wants, even if it means using or hurting people to do so. This is a result of his inner Dovah. Haldis finds this rather insufferable and it’s one of the main reasons as to why they fight.

* When he gets drunk, he’ll sort of “forget” it’s not the Merithic Era anymore and will start speaking to people in Dovahzul and then get pissy when only Haldis can understand him. He doesn’t normally like to drink in his ripe old age, though, so it’s not something that happens often.

* A similar thing will also happen when he gets angry. He never loses his temper, but when he gets frustrated, he’ll start belting out Dovahzul rapidly.

* He may also speak Dovahzul to Haldis when trying to be subtle. For example, Haldis has to deal a lot in Skyrim’s politics as a diplomat, so if Miraak needs to tell her something or remind her to say something, he’ll tell her in Dovahzul so she doesn’t look dumb.

* The Dovahzul he speaks is a different dialect, though, given their difference in age, so things have been lost in translation from time time, resulting in small, humorous mishaps. He also finds Haldis’s accent when speaking Dovahzul to be very irritating, and mocks her for it quite a bit, usually saying that she sounds like she has a speech impediment.

* As her accent gets better, in his almighty opinion, they’ll have entire conversations together in Dovahzul when they’re alone, like out on the road or something.

I might reblog and take on some more here later. This is just some basic junk that’s not really organized. Also I did not proofread but shhhh

[overlyimmersed]

Nightmares and Daydreams

A Gravity Falls AU.

Hi @verysorrytobother​ Stanticore anon, revealing my true identity to share this with you! I wasn’t sure how a post this long would go over as an ask, so I decided to do it this way. I hope this is ok.

I’ve been working on this for a while and I hope it goes over well enough. The artwork took me the most time.

As a car crash victim is slowly dying, her mental self panics in the mindscape. She's offered a deal to save her life. Let the game begin.

(Content warnings: Blood. Descriptions of serious injuries.)

"What..." she whispered to herself, staring at the other in disbelief.

"Yep!" he confirms, in a high-pitched, grating, inappropriately upbeat tone, "Dead as a doornail, kid!- Well technically you still have a few more seconds till you brain totally ceases to function. Better make up your mind while you still have one!"

She's still staring dumbly at him. How can he be this nonchalant about it?! A half second ago she was sitting in the front seat of the family truck, a totally routine trip to the store- she never liked trucks but her dad's a carpenter so they need the hauling space. At least it's a pretty shade of blue- and the next she's here, laying face down in a black void with this prick this- this...All Seeing Eye? He's like the Illuminati symbol, but with arms and legs and a top hat. Caution sign yellow and talking to her- or at her. Bill. Freaking. Cipher. Every time he 'speaks' he flashes with light- no mouth so does it really count as speaking? More like his voice is being projected right into her mind- ... And he's telling her that she freakin died! Can't he see how messed up this is?! Can't he sympathize at all!? Then again, it's Bill. She ought to know better.

She ought to know better. She's seen this show a hundred times, she knows nothing good comes from dealing with Cipher. But she doesn't have time to be careful, she doesn't have the luxury of weighing options.

"Tick-tock, Car Wreck!" The obnoxious voice insists again, forcing her out of her stupor, his outstretched hand now alight with blue fire.

Her face scrunches up in a loud cringe, eyes screwed shut and teeth bared, and she swings her hand till it lands solidly in his. Crazed cackling resounds as the deal is struck, but it falls to simple soundtrack as her senses try to sort out what's going on.

She'd expected the blue fire to burn, or at least feel like something, but it didn't. Instead her entire being is flung into a...whirl? Free fall? Something that makes her stomach jump into her throat, and gives her vertigo.

The sensation stops suddenly, only to be replaced by a cacophony of new perceptions. She isn't sure which strikes her first, the sounds or the smell. Shrieks of agony and terror make up the next track of this bizarre playlist, punctuated by the reek of burnt hair. When her eyes fly open to try and make sense of it all, they have no luck. The sight that meets her is a sky of surreal, swirling, bastardized ribbons of every hue, like being inside a filthy bubble. Floating strewn about the space are pockmarked asteroids, and little else.

"So what'd ya think?" The grating voice rejoins the discord, drawing her shell-shocked gaze. "Home-sweet-home, huh? Well don't worry, you won't be here for very long. A deal's a deal, Car Wreck." With that que, and a snap of his fingers, she's falling again. This time untethered and unaccompanied. It takes her a moment to realize the scream ripping though the void is coming from her own throat. Once it hits her, so does something else, and the world goes black.

She wakes some time later, maybe moments maybe days. She has no way of knowing. She pushes herself onto her hands and knees, groggy and disoriented. It takes her a moment to notice the texture under her hands and focus her vision on it. It's grass. She sits up and looks around. "oh..." she says to herself, taking in the scenery. It's lovely, a grassy, sun soaked field. The sky made of churning colors like the last place she'd been, but they're pastel and much prettier. A warm breeze brushes past her face and she takes a deep breath of it, it smells sweet and warm, heavy with the scent of growing things, and for the first time since this started she finds some peace. Peace which is quickly shattered by a familiar, grating voice.

She jumps and whirls around so quick she falls onto her butt. There, floating just inches from where her head had been, is Bill. Laughing at her of course.

"Whoops! Didn't mean to scare you there, Car Wreck!" he claims, moving through the air to look around, then turning back around to look at her. "So how do you like the new digs?"

There's a beat of silence where she just stares at him again, but quickly she shakes off the shock and tries to respond. "Uh...It's nice." She lets her eyes roam around for a second, before returning to Bill, "Where are we?"

"This is the Realm of Daydreams! Your new HQ!" he answers, floating around behind her and making a grand gesture with his arms.

She turns her head to follow him, "Daydreams? HQ?"

"Yep! This is where you'll hang out when you're not puppeting your little pawns." He turns around to look at the scenery more himself. "Kinda dull if you ask me. Maybe you can do something about that!"

"What are you talking about?"

"Oh you know, some pillars of anguish, an alter of unholy fire, maybe a blood fountain or a couple of-" he gestures with each suggestion, like a landscaper creating a vision, until she cuts him off.

"No I mean," she finally pushes herself to a stand, teetering a little till she finds her balance. "Pawns?"

He turns back to her, "Oh yeah, which ones do you want anyway?" he waits a beat for an answer, but she just stares back at him, clearly not following. "Ugh, our deal?"

He hadn't really told her what the deal was, just mentioned a game and a second chance. "Uhh, I don't think you-"

"Oh right, you flesh bags need everything explained to you." he groans, rolling his eye, "Alright, here's the deal. We're gonna play a little game," he holds out his hand and a little hologram like projection appears showing an aerial view of a town. "and the people of this hick town are gonna be the pieces." ten little blue stick figures appear in the center of town, each with a little symbol above it's head. "If you win, you rejoin the land of the living!" a little magenta stick figure pops into existence next to the others and they all do a little happy dance. "If I win..." suddenly the whole projection goes up in flames, and she jerks her head back instinctively, "You burn with rest of those worthless mortals!" He bursts into a fit of maniacal laughter, which actually gives her some times to recover.

After a second of shocked staring, she blinks a few times then puts on as neutral an expression as she can. "Ok. So what are the rules?"

"Simple!" he answers, cutting off his laughter "We can't directly manipulate each other's pawns, and we can't interfere with the other's powers."

"That's it?"

"Yep. Everything else is fair game"

"Ok...What are my powers?"

"Same as mine! Except you don't have to wait till someone falls asleep to get in their head."

"I see..." her eyes wander to the ground as she contemplates the information, and her hand reaches for the longest of her three necklaces to idly play with the spiked pendant. "So you can talk to them in dreams, and I can talk to them in daydreams."

"Bingo!"

She scrunches her nose a little, thinking of a few ways that could end up being annoying. "Alright, anything else I need to know?"

"Hmm, nope! That just about covers it. All that's left is to pick our pawns, I'll even let you go first!" And with that ten, glowing, blue symbols appear between them. She looks them over carefully, she knows who each symbol corresponds to- supposing the cartoon from her world is accurate. She considers the six-fingered hand, if she takes him out of Bill's control from the start that derails his whole plan as she knows it. But, then she'll have no clue what's up to at all, at least by letting Bill have the pawns she's familiar with she has a chance at guessing his moves. She reaches forward and touches the shooting star, it turns magenta and floats to hover closer to her.

"Interesting." Bill comments, though his tone doesn't sound very interested, as he makes a simple motion with his eye and the six-fingered hand settles beside him. She chooses the fish looking symbol next, and Bill's second choice in the pine tree. They go back and forth till they have five symbols each, Bill having the the six-fingered hand, the pine tree, the llama, the stitched heart, and the pentagram. While she has the shooting star, the fish, the bag of ice, the spectacles, and the question mark.

"Welp, that settles that. Nice picks you made there, lets hope they work out for ya, Car Wreck"

"Could you not call me that?" though it hardly sounds like a request.

"And what else should I call you?" Bill asks, collecting his symbols into one hand and placing the other on his...hip?

"How about my name? It's Maranwe."

"But Car Wreck fits you so much better! Just take a look!" he quips, snapping a full-length mirror into existence. Maranwe turns to look and gasps in horror. Bill breaks out into more cackling, "Well my work here is done! I'll let you get cleaned up, see ya around Car Wreck!" And with that he fades from existence.

Maranwe just stares, even as Bill disappears from 'her' realm, she can only stare at her destroyed refection. Her hair is messy- and she almost laughs that that's what her brain zeros in on first-, It's also dirty, some of the mess is actual dirt but several spots are matted with half-dry blood. Her face is in a similar condition, smeared with dirt and blood but she can see the wounds there. Scrapes and still oozing cuts, bruises forming on one cheek bone and under her eyes. Her nose isn't quite right...broken probably. Her vision skims over her whole body for a second, making note of similar injuries where tears in her clothes reveal them. It's not as bad as she would expect a car crash victim to look- "except for that" Her mind screams suddenly while all her mouth can do is gasp, as her attention lands dizzyingly on her neck. It's...purple, but also red? There's no spilled blood but it still looks ugly, and the worst part is the...bump. It's not hard to figure out that it's a misaligned bone. Without the pain to tell her she never would have noticed, her neck is broken. Very broken. How is she holding her head up right... Probably because this isn't actually a physical body. She wonders if this is what killed her, or if there's something inside, something she can't see, that did the trick.

Whatever it is, she can't be seen like this. And she really really doesn't want to look like this for her own sake. Bill said she could 'clean herself up'? How exactly... She thinks about how Bill's powers tend to work and tries to concentrate on a cleaner, less beat up mental image of herself. She lifts her hand to her cheek and grazes her finger tips across it, a trail of sparkles follow the touch and the skin underneath returns to normal. She relaxes a little, watching the disaster wipe off her face like cheap make-up. She keeps the image in her mind and closes her eyes, cupping her hands in front of herself and imagining the sparkles pooling in them. Then she splashes the sparkles over he face, like a girl in a face wash commercial, and imagines the glittering dust washing over her entire body, cleaning away the mess and injuries. And when she opens her eyes, that's exactly what's happened. Her reflection shows her whole and unwounded, even her clothes are fixed.

The next thing she does is smooth her hair down, mostly an instinct since it's still messy, and the sparkles trail after her hands, tidying the strands as if she'd just brushed them. She watches her reflection's mouth quirk up a little in a small smirk. So she can just change what she looks like by imagining it? That figures, this is a place of daydreams that's kind of how they work. She knows exactly what to do with this, she's known since she was a kid what she's change if she could. She places the backs of her hands next to her ears and flicks up, sparkles spray up with the motion and her normal human ears, turn to wolf ears the fur the same chocolate brown as her hair. Her smirk blooms into a full blown smile, and she tilts her head to get a better look at them, watching them move as she tests them. It's like they're real! Next is the tail of course, it's mostly brown, with some silver down the top and a black tip. Then she looks down, and taps the toe of each of her shoes against the ground in turn, as she does they become the compressed paws of her own design.

"That's insane..." she laughs to herself. She's actually turning herself into something else, her own made up alien species. And she just can! With the big changes out of the way she works out the details; pupil shape, fang length, and straightens out a few asymmetries and insecurities she's always had about her body- after all why not? When she's done, she can't help admiring herself a little, turning this way and that in front of the mirror, her perfect image of herself. Well- almost perfect. She snaps her fingers and in the same dusting of glitter, her shirt changes. What was before a loose grey t-shirt with the word "nope" written across it in cursive, as been replaced by a cropped sweater, banded in 3 colors; white at the top, then light blue, then dark blue. She lifts it to look at the crop top under neither, it's just plain white. She decides she doesn't like it that way, so it changes to a cropped version of the t-shirt she'd had before. With that taken care of she lifts her arm so the over-sized sleeve falls down and she can see her forearm, which is covered by a light blue arm warmer with white lace around the edges. Perfect. At least for now. She can change later if she decides she doesn't like the arm warmers.

She giggles to herself, invigorated by the makeover and the sense of control she has now. She turns from the mirror and skips a few feet across the grass, the symbols she'd chosen follow her, floating loosely like beads suspended in gel. She laughs a little as she watches them, and idly reaches for her necklace again, but this time her hand just meets the soft knit of her sweater. She'd forgotten to add them into this new look, so she just wills them into place; three different necklaces of three different lengths. Her hand finds the middle length first, the pendant is designed to spin so she plays with it while her mind starts to wander. She starts thinking of plans for winning this game, what she might say to each other 'pawns' and who to use where and how, even letter her thoughts wonder about the new life she'll have. Cipher's hologram suggested she'll stay in Gravity Falls, which would be cool but what about-

The sound of screeching tires and twisting metal cuts her thoughts off clean and she whips around to find the source of the noise, but her fear turns to confusion when she sees...nothing. She stands stock still, her mind running over only vague impressions of thoughts relating to what she just heard, until another loud sound whips her back around. This time she actually sees something, like a huge firework in the pastel oil-slick sky, accompanied by Bill's obnoxious voice echoing through the space.

"Let the game begin!"

[confused-stars]

actually do you think kurogiri's bar has a "It's been [ ] days since Tomura decayed something on accident" sign? this would be a nice fic prompt actually. probably worth a coffee or two. ;) ;)

the blatant bribery of this... and the fact that it’s working... (also this is just way cute and i just got home from being around my nephew so i’m very in the mood for baby Tomura shenanigans)

It comes from one of the parenting books Kurogiri was forced to pick up. He never criticizes All for One out loud, but dumping a child on him and making said child’s wellbeing his sole responsibility when Kurogiri barely knows how to take care of himself and his own needs was... not a choice expected from a man who claims to be the greatest villain mastermind in history.

Tomura’s quirk is an additional problem. He’s not allowed to wear gloves that would keep him from touching things with all five fingers, because All for One says he shouldn’t have to ‘shackle’ his quirk. Kurogiri doesn’t agree, but keeps silent as always. Accidents happen a lot. Tomura gets upset in the beginning, and Kurogiri distracts him with sugary snacks and video games - a stroke of luck, discovering video games as a sure way to capture Tomura’s attention and make him forget about the world for a while. They’re useful in keeping him busy when Kurogiri has to run other errands, and he barely ever has to pause to scratch at his neck and face when he’s playing.

Then, eventually, as he grows older and less terrified and more demanding, he stops getting upset. He knows Kurogiri will just replace what he destroys and clean up the dust every time with no fail. Game controllers, books, playing cards, chess pieces, glasses, utensils, plates, shoes, clothes in general - once, he decays his toothbrush fully on purpose because he hates brushing his teeth before bed.

So Kurogiri comes up with a strategy. 

Tomura blinks up at the board hanging up on the wall beside the bar, right next to the screen All for One uses to speak to them. “What’s this?” Kurogiri doesn’t bother answering that question. Tomura can read. He’s made sure the writing is very easily legible. ‘It has been [ ] days since Tomura decayed something on accident’ is what it says. The blank in the middle leaves more than enough room for what Kurogiri has planned. He reaches into his pocket and calmly places a single, sparkly star sticker into the empty field. “This stands for one day,” he explains. He’s fully aware that not that much of Tomura’s destruction is accidental anymore, otherwise this strategy probably wouldn’t work and only stress him out more, but if a reward system can be used to counter his growing carelessness, then that will only benefit him in the future.

Tomura cocks his head. Attentive. Kurogiri feels something like smug satisfaction, though muted as most of his emotions are. It’s easiest to get through to Tomura with praise. Kurogiri refuses to be just the mindless servant who cleans up after him and feeds him. No, he’ll have a part in raising the boy, too.

“What happens when I break something again?” he asks.

Kurogiri shrugs. “The sticker goes away. And you have to start over.”

Tomura rounds on him, glaring. It would be intimidating if he wasn’t so small. “That’s not fair!”

“If you can make it to ten stars,” Kurogiri continues, undeterred, “There is going to be a surprise for you.”

That makes Tomura reconsider. Children really are all the same, even if they are in unique situations. “... what kind of surprise?”

Kurogiri puts a juice box on the counter. “A good one. Something fun. Perhaps a new game you’ve been wanting. Or a night without a bedtime. Or a trip to someplace fun.” He has a list of ideas already, and Tomura’s eyes light up a little.

He still says: “I could make you do all that anyway.”

Kurogiri turns away, acting nonchalant. “You could, but then it wouldn’t be a surprise anymore, would it?”

Tomura is silent for a long moment. “... fine.”

He makes it fourteen days on the first try.

___

The board comes out again under the worst circumstances, Tomura thinks. Because he’s twenty years old and doesn’t need stickers anymore, thank you very much. Not that he doesn’t still decay things when he doesn’t mean to, sometimes. Mainly in the mornings or too late at night, or when he’s aggravated.

He still balks at the sight of it hanging in its old spot on the wall where it was taken down from when he was twelve or so.

Kurogiri raises his hands in an attempt to signal his innocence, though he seems far too amused.

“Look what we found, Tomura!” Toga grins and bounces on her heels, pointing at the board. “It’s so cute, with the stickers and all! Sparkly!”

“Yeah, it’s adorable,” Dabi drawls, for once present in the back of the bar, a shit-eating grin on his face.

Tomura wants to hide. Or kill all of them. “... why do we even still have that thing?”

Kurogiri makes a noncommittal noise, and Tomura scoffs.

“We’re making more of them!” Toga says, gesturing over to where Twice is sitting on the floor, working on a cardboard sign that says ‘It has been [ ] days since Dabi set someone on fire.’ Next to that one ‘It has been [ ] days since Spinner talked about Stain.’ and ‘It has been [ ] days since Mr. Compress called himself ‘old’.’

Tomura glances at Dabi. He’s entirely sure that particular sign will end up burned to ash within a night.

It doesn’t.

But it also never ends up collecting more than two stickers at most, and when he peels them off, Dabi always flicks them at Tomura over the bar.

It’s long after the bar is lost, and the signs with them that they all manage to reach ten days in their individual categories, and that’s only because Dabi’s been sick for a while and hasn’t left the quarry safehouse for two weeks.

So they get pizza, and they eat it in Dabi’s room, and he pretends to be grumpy about it, and Tomura pretends to be grumpy about having to spend time with them, but when they end up passing out all around the room and Tomura is still awake, he leans his back against the bed and thinks about Kurogiri. He’ll tell him about their progress when they see each other again.

[dreaminae]

We All Need The One Friend

Chapter 8

Hours rolled by as sunlight shifted to moonlight. Friendly competition soon became dangerous as personal tensions rose within the group.

"Rise of Batman!" One person guessed of Jordan's pose.

"Transformers!" A friend playfully argued.

Jordan changes poses in hopes that it might be easier to guess.

With time up, Jordan cracked up as everyone failed to guess his term.

"Okay, what even was that?" Simone giggled.

"Back to the future." Jordan responded in a 'duh' tone as if everyone should've known. "Greatest movie of all time!"

"I've never watched that movie in my life." Simone chuckled, "Plus, the greatest movie of all time is Parasite. Hello!"

"Jordan doesn't do subtitles." J.J laughed. "Like have you met my man?"

Everyone joined in the laughter, but Simone couldn't help but feel like it was strange that she hasn't known a small detail like that.

The game went on as Vanessa took the reigns.

"One word." One person shouted.

"A place. No no, a person." Another one added to list of clues.

"Uh, a painting.... a movie." Layla interjected.

"No, a plane. Wait, what?" One of them fumbled over when Vanessa switched stances.

"You're on a plane."

Giggling, Vanessa changed gestures again.

"Bald. You're bald. A bald eagle." J.J guessed.

"No, not an animal." Vanessa choked up.

"Aye, no cheating." Jordan chuckled as Vanessa spoke.

"C'mon guys." Vanessa encouraged, ignoring Jordan's rules. "You had a poster of him in your room when your ten." She spat out in Asher's direction.

"Samuel L. Jackson!" Asher shouted, jumping up as if he won the lottery.

Liv glanced between the two of them as if they grew two heads. It was stupid how one small detail held a bigger picture.

"Well, you don't get a point for that one." Simone scrutinized, gaining a careless shrug from Vanessa.

The game rolled on, leading to Spencer's turn.

Galloping his feet and twirling his arm, Spencer caused everyone to gather into fits of laughter.

"A cowboy," Jordan shouted first.

"The rodeo." Asher chuckled.

"Wild, wild west." Layla joined in, holding back her laughs.

Adding to his performance, Spencer shook his foot hysterically, while twirling his arm like a madman.

Finally catching on to his charade, Olivia thought back to the night she made Spencer rewatch all her favorite childhood movies. Quoting one of her favorite lines, Spencer had her in hysterics for half an hour. She could still remember him using her belt as a rope, shouting 'There's a snake in my boot'.

"Woody," Olivia muttered with a small smile.

"What?" Her brother asked curiously, not completely hearing her response.

"It's woody!" Olivia laughed, which Spencer replied to with a smirk.

They met each other eyes, before bursting out, "There's a snake in my boot!"

The entire group fell out laughing, excluding Layla.

Spencer returned to his seat grinning like an idiot, but couldn't help but to notice his girlfriend's harsh mood.

"Hey, are you alright?"

Layla nodded lightly. "Guess I am just tired." She muttered, not bothering to look in his direction.

Sensing there was more to it, Spencer left it alone, not wanting to cause a scene in front of his friends.

"Alright, I have the perfect game to play next," Vanessa announced, as she returned from the house with her bottle of booze. "Anyone up for a game of Never Have I Ever. The more you've done the more you drink."

Her announcement soured the mood as Spencer immediately shut down her idea. "Sorry, Ma." Spencer asserted firmly. "Ain't bo drinking happening this weekend."

His eyes flew to Olivia, followed by everyone else's. She rolled her eyes at their dramatics.

"Oh, please. Don't stay sober on my account." Olivia dryly encouraged. After all, this was the first time in weeks she'd been completely sober. With all of her friends within proximity this weekend, drinking wasn't an option for her.

Noting Liv's bitter tone towards her, Vanessa tried to ease the tension. "Sorry, Liv. I forget that you don't drink. That was so insensitive of me." She apologized, placing the booze on the ground.

"It's okay. It's not something I'd expected you to know, so.." Liv shrugged it off, dismissing the subject all together.

"No, liquor. Got it." Vanessa summed up, ignoring Liv's clear implied diss of Vanessa's newness to their group.

Asher rubbed Olivia's thigh, silently asking her to lighten up. Cocking up a brow, she gave him her iconic 'I could careless' glare.

"No drinks doesn't mean no turn-up." J.J cheered. "Introducing the burns of all burns -- jalapeno-infused pickle juice."

"What don't you have in that box man?" Spencer questioned, seriously wondering where J.J randoms items came from.

"Let the burns begin."

---------------------------

"Alright, never have I ever walked in on my parents doing it." Simone started the game off.

First victim up, Asher gulped down his first dose of the throat burning juice.

"Oh, God. Asher. No!" Olivia cringed.

"I don't wanna talk it." Asher chuckled at the memory. "RV trip...'08....super weird."

"Oh, you're gonna talk about it." Spencer and Jordan laughed together.

"Not the one to up to Sanoma. How could you not to me?" Vanessa asked playfully, catching Olivia's attention yet again.

Liv couldn't help but wonder just how much did Vanessa know about Asher, that she didn't.

"Cause I was scarred for life," Asher replied, oblivious to the questionable expression of Liv's face.

"Alright, my turn. Never have I ever bought 300 dollars shoes for my one night in Vegas." Simone teased Olivia's bad spending habits.

Tensing up, Liv looked everywhere besides at Layla.

"No cheating. Drink up, Liv." Simone laugh, unaware of the big secret she just revealed.

Layla's eyes narrowed in Liv's direction, fed up with the secrets.

Spencer gawked at his girlffriend, realizing that he and Liv might have to come clean sooner than expected.

"Alright, never have I ever said I love you just to get someone to hook up with me." Vanessa added to game.

All the boys drank besides Spencer.

"Yikes, that was a test that you all failed." Vanessa taunted, "Besides Spencer."

"My bro is a real one. When he says it, he means it." J.J admired, increasing the growing tension between Spencer and his love interest.

In Liv's case, her heart clenched at the mentally, replayed memory of Spencer professing his love for her. She yearned to have a chance just to tell him how she felt, despite the chance he no longer felt the same.

However, in Layla's case, all the times that Spencer claimed to love her we're burning in a flame of betrayal. Because despite that fact she had no solid evidence, that conveyed her worse thought she knew Spencer wasn't being truthful with her.

"You're a lucky one, Layla."

Layla's sneer went unheard by the majority of the group besides the two people who knew the jig was up.

Unaware of the conflicts brewing, J.J continued the game. His hand already pointing at his aimed victim.

"Never have I ever ran naked through a football field."

Admitting the embarrassing memory, Jordan gulped back his shot of pickle juice.

"Jordan! Tell me you didn't!" Simone teased.

"Okay. Okay. I did it. I run through the field, butt naked." Jordan chuckled. "What was it? Freshmen year?"

He and J.J chuckled laughed over the recollection.

"Varsity team stole all of our clothes, thanks to Ash -- over here --- acting like he owned the place during tryouts" Jordan recalled funnily.

"Cause I did." Asher cockily popped his collar. "It's called confidence."

"Confidence. Okay." Jordan playfully mocked. "Whatever you want to call it. Your dumbass stays getting us in trouble."

Asher nodded with a knowing smile. But Vanessa saw nothing funny about it.

"Wow." She gasped seriously. "Okay. Never have I ever crapped all over folks that we're supposed to be my friends."

The laughter stopped, and the smiles dropped in reaction to Vanessa switch up.

"Uh, Vanessa it's alright." Asher tried to jump in before she took things too far.

"It's just jokes." Jordan defended himself, not seeing the harm in messing around.

Vanessa's scornful expression was enough for Jordan to see that she couldn't disagree more.

Maybe it was her role as a protective sister that came into play. Perhaps, it was the jealously towards Vanessa knowing things about Asher that Liv didn't. Or maybe it was simply that Liv didn't feel Vanessa had any right to make presumed assumptions on any of the dynamics within their group when Vanessa barely knew any of them beyond a first-name basis.

Whatever it was, Vanessa's attempt to trash talk her twin was Olivia's last straw. And with that, she felt it was only right to return the favor.

"Hmm, well, Never have I ever spent the summer getting to somebody else's boyfriend a little too much." Liv snapped at Vanessa.

"Liv! What the hell!" Asher choked up, unable to believe that she publically humiliated Vanessa in that manner.

"Yo, Ash. Relax. Let's just play the game." Jordan instructed, trying to ease the tension he caused.

"You wanna play? Fine." Asher groaned. "Never have I ever cheated a concussion protocol to play in a game." He added spitefully.

"What is he talking about?" Simone inquired seriously, over the entire game. "You cheated your concussion protocol? How could you not tell me something like that?"

"You mean like you told me about Princeton?" Jordan asked, trying to guilt trip her right back.

"Wow!" Simone gasped in awe, tossing her blanket aside before storming off.

"Ah, babe, wait! I didn't mean it like that!" Jordan quibbled, following behind Simone. "Baby, wait. Sweetie!"

With the fun atmosphere ruined, the remainder of the group broke off to deal with their own problems.

-----------------------------

"Can you believe Liv?" Asher groaned, as he and Layla entered the kitchen.

"Not really. Find it hard to believe anyone with all the secrets that's been hidden." Layla replied harshly.

"What do you mean?" Asher asked, clueless.

"Simone's Never Have I Ever!" Layla responded in a duh tone. "When has Olivia ever gone to Vegas."

"Olivia wouldn't lie about going to Vegas. She has no reason to." Asher scoffed.

"You mean like she had no reason to lie about being in Mexico." Layla revealed.

"Liv came to Mexico? When?" Asher asked desperately. "She never told me."

"She went to Mexico to surprise her boyfriend." Layla groaned, annoyed that she had to be the one to tell him. "Only when she got there she saw you and random girl boo'd up." She gestured towards Vanessa as the brunette and J.J entered the room.

"Wait, you and Asher?" J.J asked heartbroken, catching the last part of Layla's statement. "Since when?"

"Where's Olivia now?" Asher requested to know, needing to hear all of this from her.

"I don't think that" Spencer began to suggest against going after Liv, but was interrupted by his girlfriend.

"She's down by bonfire," Layla interjected before her boyfriend could continue to shield his side piece from the mess they made.

Bypassing the other three teens, Asher went to find his girlfriend and demand some answers. Meanwhile, Vanessa and J.J left Spencer and Layla to handle their business in private.

------------------------------

[t-o-m-hollands]

Summery: Tom is not entirely sure of how it happens. But one moment he’s the gardener of Locksley Hall, and the next he’s run off to marry the lords daughter. A girl he despises.

Well, sort of.

Warnings: Smoking.

A/N: this is (loosely) based on the Locksley Hall poem by Tennyson, but the relationship between them is pretty heavily inspired by Atonement by Ian McEwan (the first part of the book) and the story at large also slightly inspired by Downton Abbey.   Also, I’ve changed the law in this. As I understand it (from watching Downton Abbey) girls could never inherit the estate, no matter if she was married or not. Here you will inherit, but only if you are married and it will then go to your husband. Also, I was listening to Old Money – lana del rey the entire time I was writing this. 

-

Locksley Hall, England – 1920.

It’s June, and Tom finds himself praying for rain.  

It’s one of those summer days when the air stands still. Not a whiff of wind, no breeze in the trees, not a cloud in the sky. Just an ever-pressing, inescapable heat that seems to paint the whole world a hazy golden shade.  

He’s knee-deep in the earth, sweat running down his back, shovelling soil under the merciless sun. It’s midday and the warmth is intolerable. He can already feel the blisters he’ll have on his hands tomorrow. To top it all off his head is pounding and he reminds himself to give Harrison a good kick in the chin the next time he sees him; for convincing him that one more drink wouldn’t hurt.  

And god, he desperately wants a cigarette.  

“God, it’s hot today” Madeleine’s bored voice drifts out the open window. “One can hardly think straight”.

Tom lifts his head and observes her through the glass. The owner of the voice is in the conservatory. Wearing a lace dress and her dark curls perfectly pinned into place. She is primly drinking tea alongside her mother; safely hidden away from the beaming sun.    

He swipes the sweat from his forehead before shovelling the spade further down in the dirt. A sudden urge to throw some of the earth through the conservatory window hits him, just enough to dirty up her white gown. But he resists it. Instead he sits down by the flowerbed and leans his pounding head against the wall. His sore muscles scream in relief. Lighting a cigarette, he then closes his eyes and inhales deeply. The whole world goes white as the sun shines through his closed eyelids and a soft sigh escapes him.  

“Have you received any more letters from Sir Hatfield?” He hears lady Locksley inquire from inside.  

“What, James?”  

“Yes, of course James, has he written you again?”  

“Thankfully not”.  

“Oh, don’t be silly child, he’s the owner of Hatfield house! God knows you could do worse than him” Lady Locksley scolds her oldest daughter. Despite himself Tom’s interest is peaked, so he keeps smoking and listening to the conversation, ignoring his gardening duties.  

“But he’s such a bore” Madeleine whines in response. “Honestly mother, all he ever talks about is hunting. And Hatfield house is a terrible building, you know I can’t stand Tudor architecture. Plus, James is ancient.”  

“Don’t be ridiculous, he’s not ancient, he’s ten years younger than your father.”  

“Exactly, and I’m two-and-twenty years old!”  

“Oh, do be quiet, you’re very lucky he’s shown any interest in you at all. I have talked to your father about this. It’s high time for you to get married. Ever since Francis…” she trails off and Tom knows why. Francis had been her oldest child and only son, the one set to inherit the land and the title. Who had died in the war during the battle of the Somme. Tom had known Francis and had not been fond of him. Upon hearing about his death he’d wondered if the heir had been shot by one of his own, though he did not air this suspicion. Tall and handsome Francis may have had been, but he had also been entitled, rude and unkind to animals. He’d beaten his horses, screamed at the servants and taunted his sisters.    

Lady Locksley continues with a new air of authority in her voice. “It’s more important than ever before that we find you a good match. You know what’s at stake if you don’t marry and marry soon”.    

Silence for a second, and unease is setting like lead in Tom’s stomach. Maybe this isn’t a conversation he should listen in to.  

“Yes, I know.” The words sound heavy and reluctant in Madeleine’s mouth.    

He opens his eyes and discretely as he can he pops his head up to sneak a look through the window. The look on the young heir’s face strikes him. It’s not sad, nor angry or dismayed. It’s apathetic. Like she’s somewhere far, far away.  

“Boy, I thought I told you to start digging!” Bertie Higgins voice booms over the grounds as he crosses the corner of the building and walk towards Tom, who quickly puts out his cigarette.  

An elderly man, with bushy beard and eyebrows, a bit too fond of beer and with fingernails so dirty Tom wonders if they’ve ever been cleaned, walks towards him. Mr. Higgins has worked as the head gardener on the grounds of Locksley Hall for longer than anyone could remember.  

“Sorry Mr. Higgins, I just took a breather” he says before putting out his cigarette and picking up his shovel again. Mr. Higgins observes him for a moment, then he leans in closer and whiffs of the beer the older man had for lunch hits Tom’s face. “Listen, boy” he says in a low voice “no good will come from spying on them gentle folks, hear me? No good will come of it”.

“Mr. Higgins I wasn’t -” Tom begins to defend himself but the gardener pats his shoulder and continuous in his stern voice. “Is no use lyin’ to me, boy, I’m too old, I’ve seen too much. You’ve been sniffin’ after that young heir since you came back. ’s no use lad. Them folks are not for the likes of us, above your station she is, well above your station.” Tom wants to protest. For he has most certainly not been sniffing after anyone, least of all Madeleine Locksley, but Mr. Higgins continues. “Now Alice,” he says and pats his shoulder again “she’s some good maid she is, why not ask her out?”  

Alice was indeed a maid at Locksley Hall. Pretty and always ready for a laugh. She’d made it perfectly clear of her interest in him too. There was however a streak of pettiness to the girl that he wasn’t too fond of, and therefor he’d reclined her thus far. But he doesn’t particularly feel like sharing that with Mr. Higgins.  

“Now boy” Mr. Higgins goes on. “You had your breather, go back to diggin’, if I told you once I told’ you a thousand times, you dig when the sun’s out and the dirt is dry an’ you water when the sun’s gone down”.  

Tom goes back to digging, the sun burning his neck, and his joints already protesting.  

He doesn’t notice Madeleine’s brown eyes observing him from within the conservatory.  

***  

The bathwater has gone cold. Still, she stays in the water. The prospect of putting down her book and getting up and ready for yet another family dinner seems dull at best. The rose-scented cold water feels refreshing against her skin. Today really had been unbearably hot. 

Still the heat lingers in the air.

Outside the bathrooms leaded windows the last rays of daylight are lighting up the grounds. Though the light in the gardener’s cottage is already lit.  

Dropping her copy of Pride & Prejudice to the floor she sinks further down into the water. Leaning her head back against the edge of the tub she closes her eyes and sighs.  

She’d just gotten to the part in the book where Elizabeth refuses Mr. Darcy’s proposal and it had annoyed her. How Elizabeth could refuse Mr. Darcy and all his possessions, and it didn’t lead to despair and desolation for her entire family, instead, as if by the waving of a magic wand, everything worked out beautifully in the end. That wasn’t real life.

Everything was annoying her today. Her mother’s persistent nagging, her father’s detachment, granny’s constant complaining. Tom’s strong arms wielding a shovel. The cotton shirt sticking to his sweaty back, the suspenders holding up his muddy trousers.  

She sinks further down into the cold water.  

Tom had looked annoyed today as well. But then again, he’d seemed permanently aggravated ever since he got back from France, at least in her presence. She’d seen him laugh plenty of times with Harrison from the pub when she visited the village, and with Alice too. He’d even crack a smile from time to time with Mr. Higgins. But her presence always seemed to put a frown on his face.

It had not always been this way.

As children they had played. They had explored the woods like travellers discovering a new world. Had run over the poppy fields pretending they could fly. They’d made it down to the sea and Old Sailor Joe had told them stories of Odysseus, and his long journey home. They’d sneaked out and slept under the stars and he had told her all of what Mr. Higgins had taught him about botany. Of how the things we sow in the ground with time will grow. About which flowers could kill you, and which ones could heal.

They had shared secrets and kept them between themselves, solemnly sworn blood-oaths with all the seriousness of a promise between children. They’d sworn that whatever happened between them stayed that way. That his secrets were hers and she’d keep them to her grave, and likewise for him.

Then she’d been sent away to boarding school and he had gone to the village school and that had been the end of that. During the holidays so much time had seemed to have passed between them that it was hard to pick up the threads of childish games where they’d left them. Then, war had broken out and she’d been sent to live with relatives in Canada, and Tom, well, Tom had joined the army.

Once they’d seen each other again years had passed, and they were strangers to one another.

The last evening light shines over the grounds of Locksley Hall, but Madeleine doesn’t move out of her bath, instead she stares out the window, feeling no motivation to move.  

Everything is fleeting, that was what she kept feeling. The hours, the days, the weeks, the months and years. Time passed her by so rapidly and yet all the days looked the same. She felt like a leaf landing in a river, being swept away with the stream with no control of where it was going or were it’d end up. Soon, she would be married, most likely to dreary James Hatfield, and then they would settle in Hatfield house and she would never spend her days roaming the grounds of Locksley Hall again.

Or maybe, she wouldn’t marry, and upon the death of her father and in the lack of a male heir, all their lands and possessions would go to the crown, and they’d all would be left with nothing.

A scream works itself larger in her throat. It had started earlier that day, with her mother in the conservatory. It would only grow larger, and larger until she wouldn’t be able to hold it in any longer. She knew this much from experience.

It felt like this,

In school they’d been taught about diamonds, about how with heat, pressure, and time diamonds are formed to something so unbreakable and everlasting that only another diamond can cut it. She’d imagined how all the screams she’d held inside, pressed between two lungs, over time created so much pressure that they’d turn her insides into diamonds.

As a child she and Tom had snuck into the library one night. In a book of medical terms they’d found the word autopsy with the description:  “An examination of a body after death to determine the cause of death or the character and extent of changes produced by disease — called also necropsy”. Not understanding much of this they had searched the other medical books until they found a more thorough description of what the word meant.

She had been horrified upon finding the truth in all its bloody glory. How, upon one’s death, a pathologist would cut you open to see what they could find. Painted pictures of the procedure followed, and Madeleine is still certain that the image of a cut open human heart is imprinted on her retinas forever.

She imagined it like this,

When they cut her open they won’t find veins, or blood, or intestines. But instead a cloud of smoke as they’ll tear her up, and inside –

dust. 

And a diamond heart; at the living core of which a handful of secrets shared between children years ago were kept. And the pathologists will look at one another and ask themselves, ‘why did she walk around with a diamond heart for all those years?’ Not realising, that her diamond heart was a perfect symbol of her.

Beautiful and valuable.  

And essentially useless.

The door to the bathroom bursts open, and a very aggravated eleven-year-old girl stands on the threshold. Her cheeks are flushed red, not only from a day spent playing in the sun, but from barely held-back rage.  

“That hag!” she bursts out. Her curly, brown hair a mess, wearing a grass-stained dress. A big hole at the sole her left sock.

Madeleine finally steps out of the cold water, pulls on her robe and turns to Beatrix.

“Beanie darling, you know you can’t call people that. Now, what has happened?”

“She told me I’d only be fit to marry a sailor the way I look! And then she had the nerve to say that I was lacking manners! Just because I told her I’d love to marry a sailor, at least he wouldn’t be such a bore!”

The older sister tries to hold back a smile, not wanting to encourage this kind of behaviour. “Would we perhaps be talking about granny?” she inquires.

“Do we know of anyone else that fit the description absolute hag?” her little sister answers, hand on her hip, clearly still annoyed. “Also, she says I have to change for supper in the nursery, god knows why; I’m hardly trying to impress nanny, and that they are waiting for you downstairs.”

And thus, it is time to face the unavoidable and join the lion’s den. Madeleine steps into her adjoining bedroom to get dressed and Beatrix follows closely behind.

“You’ll never guess who she suggested you should marry” Beatrix continues, amusement in her voice, as she sits down at her sisters dressing table, inspecting the bottles of scent and jars of powder with a bemused look on her young face.

“Was it by any chance James Hatfield?” Madeleine answers as she steps into the blue frock Alice had laid out for her earlier.

Beatrix stares at her sister in incredulity and in a heartbroken voice she wails with disbelief in every syllable,” OH, surely not! Leine, you can’t marry him! You simply can’t!”

Benie and Lenie were the affectionate nicknames the sister had for one another. As a child Beatrix had not been able to say Madeleine, but instead only pronounced the latter part of the name and dragged the vocals out into a ‘leeniee’ every time she called out for her.

“Well, he hasn’t proposed yet, so nothing is set” Madeleine answers while avoiding her sister’s questioning eyes, inspecting her hair in the mirror instead.

“So that’s why they’ll have a ball then, I was wondering what called for such an occasion”. 

“A ball?”

“Yes” Beatrix states, inspecting her own freckled, sunburned face in the mirror. “Mommy told granny that they would have one as soon as possible”.

The scream works itself larger in Madeleine’s lungs.

“Oh, well. It can’t be helped” she says and leads her sister out of the bedroom. “Now, you really do need to change, or nanny will be furious with you, and I’ll have to join them downstairs”.

The bedroom door closes behind them as they leave.

***  

The late evening air is loaded with the scent of rhododendrons. In the trees the nightingales sing, and the summer air feel cool against her bare arms as she steps out into the night.

Carefully, as to not be seen from any of the windows, she makes her way across the garden. It is dark, but on her childhood paths her feet still knows where to tread. She walks past the house, the gigantic rhododendron bush, and along the pathway lined with pink geraniums, down the trail past the summerhouse by the lake and further still until she arrives at the fountain by the labyrinth. The deep green hedges are lined with powder pink hydrangeas, blue hyacinths and cardinal red peonies. In the middle of it a square with a fountain. And if you look past that, the entrance to the labyrinth itself. 

If she had walked further still, away from the labyrinth, she’d come to a wide field of poppies. Had she, instead of walking north from the house, walked west she would have ended up by the sea, and the cliffs and Locksley Bay. East of the house laid the road to the village, and then the road to town. South of the manor the forest grew.  

She doesn’t go through the entrance of the labyrinth but sits down by the edge of the fountain. From her pocket she picks up a package of Woodbine cigarettes, but when she goes to light it, the lighter only flickers.

“Need a light?”

She nearly falls into the fountain, taken by surprise by the familiar voice. Tom laughs and walks out of the shadows. Hands in pockets and hair a wild mess.  

“Wanker!” she burst out, heart beating painfully hard in her chest.

“Now, now, where did you learn a word like that?”

He’s so smug, and it’s making her skin crawl with anger. She ignores his question and ask, “did you follow me here?”

He moves closer still, until he’s right in front of her. Then he takes out his lighter. She puts the cigarette in her mouth and he lights it for her.

“No” he answers eventually. “Was just finishing up watering the peonies.”

“You water the peonies in the middle of the night?”

He lights a cigarette for himself and blows out pearl white smoke into the summer night before he answers. “Yeah, as Mr. Higgins keeps telling me. You dig when the soil is dry, otherwise you’ll shovel mud, and you water the plants when the sun’s gone down and the soil is cool, or you’ll just end up boiling the poor things”.

She looks at him, really looks at him; while he’s busy looking up at the moon. His white cotton shirt is filled with stains of earth and his sleeves are rolled up to his elbows, a worn linen jacket thrown over his shoulder. Worn suspender holds up his muddy pants. His brown locks frame his face perfectly and in the moonlight his skin, tanned from working out all day, seems to almost radiate. He looks positively angelical. A sudden urge to pull her fingers through his hair overwhelms her. 

She looks away.

The nightingales sing louder than ever in the silence, as do the buzzing insects. Somewhere in the far distance a fox screech.

“You know” he says, sitting down on the bench opposite the fountain, leaning back he spreads out into a relaxed position. “Whenever I hear a vixen’s cry I think about Gideon’s ghost.”

“Well, you are the inhabitant of Gideon’s cottage”.

When, or indeed why, the gardener’s cottage on Locksley Hall had been baptised Gideon’s cottage no one seemed to know. Not even Old Sailor Joe, and rumour has it he’d been guarding the boats in Locksley Bay since the first wave crashed against its shore.

But the gardener of Locksley Hall had, for as long as anyone could remember, lived in Gideon’s cottage.

As a child her older brother had frightened her with tales of Gideon’s ghost, and how he still roamed the grounds of the manor, still volatile over long forgotten quarrels. When ever she’d hear a fox’s cry at night, as they laid tucked up in their shared nursery, he’d told her it was the ghost of Gideon, seeking out small girls to take out his revenge on. She had been terrified.

When she’d told this to Tom he had lost his temper with her brother, the two had never gotten along, and he’d taken the older boy to the ground, punching him with his small fists until a furious Bertie Higgins, who’d seen the quarrel from across the yard, had pulled him off him. Madeleine knew Tom had gotten a trashing from Mr. Higgins for the attack and a stern telling off from her father.

“I love that old cottage” he says with a found smile on his face, blowing out more smoke into the air between them. “But I’m yet to see his ghost. ’s a shame really, would have asked if the legend was true about gold being buried at the cliffs of Locksley Bay”.

She smiles, and the nightingales keeps on singing. The scent of peonies and hyacinths is heavy in the air, despite the smoke.  

Tom observing her with an intensity that unnerves her, so she turns away from him to look down into the fountain. Slowly she lowers her hand into the cold water and she watches as the goldfish swim around her.

“Why are you out here smoking at night?” he asks, and she turns to back to look at him, pulling her hand out of the water. He’s still observing her, and she feels almost naked under his glance, despite the silk gown she’s still wearing from dinner. It makes her nervous when he looks at her like that, because underneath their easy tones of conversation, she’s not actually sure he likes her all that much. She shivers, goosebumps all over her naked arms.  

“Here” he says and throws her his jacket. She utters a thank you and pulls it on. It smells of earth and smoke, and fresh cut grass. It smells like him and her diamond heart beat harder in her chest.

“Papa doesn’t like me smoking in the house.” She answers in the end.  

In fact, her father was against her smoking at all. It was a habit that had begun at Talbot Heath boarding school. Smoking with the other girls behind the gymnasium. They’d practised smoking without coughing, feeling mighty smug when they succeeded.

But smoking was, as it had been pointed out to her by her father, ‘not a dignified habit for a woman of her class to partake in’. When she’d gotten back from Canada after the war they’d have words about the subject. In the end the general agreement was that she did not smoke in the house, or amongst other people. She didn’t always follow these rules. There were days when all she did was sit in her bathroom, smoke cigarette after cigarette and read books. A part of her wanted to walk around the house and leave a trace of smoke in every room. Like a ghost, reminding them that she is still there. But a deeply rooted respect, verging on fear, of her father has always kept her from doing such a thing.

Tom hums in reply, that smug smile on his face again. “And what’s dear papa to say about this then? Hmm?” He nods at her, sitting just a meter away from him, wearing his jacket. “Princess sneaking out at night to share a smoke with the gardener?”

“Oh, do shut up”.  

“You know you really have improved your vocabulary since we last spoke” he replies dryly, “must be all that reading”.

“How do you know I read so much”.

And maybe it’s a trick of the moonlight, but she swears he blushes, his cheek the colour of peonies. “I can see the light in your window from my cottage at night”.

“Oh, and you’re keeping tabs on me? How sweet!” You reply in a mocking tone, grateful that you get the chance to be smug for once.

“Well, it’s hard not to notice it” the annoyance is clear in his voice. Then he changes the subject. “What are you reading so late at night anyway?”

“At the moment, Tennyson”.

He groans, “of course you like Tennyson” he scoffs, puts out his cigarette and lights a new one, offering her one as well, which she accepts.

“What’s wrong with Tennyson?” She asks, indignant.  

“Nothing I guess” he responds, “unless you’d like to read about things other than knights and fair maidens”  

“He did not only write about knights and fair maidens!” She defends fiercely. “He wrote about love and loss and death and privilege and -”  

“Oh, he wrote about privilege, did he! Well, you know all about that, don’t you? Little miss ivory tower”.

“And what do you read then? What is so good it makes Tennyson look foolish to you?” She tries to keep her annoyance out of her voice, but its difficult, especially when he looks at her like that. Like he finds her laughable.  

“Recently? Mostly Gorky.”

“You always did prefer your literature Russian. You’re politics too if Alice is to be believed.”  

He smiles, a little less condescending this time, “and you always loved your poetry, and no, she isn’t”.

“You must like some of the poets, surely?”  

“I’m rather fond of Shelley, actually”

“And the sunlight clasps the earth, and the moonbeams kiss the sea:  what is all this sweet work worth, if thou kiss not me?” she quotes, not considering the implication of her words until they’ve already left her mouth. It had always been her favourite poem, and the words fell from her lips so effortlessly. But the intensity in his eyes as he observers her seem to change the very air around them. It is as though the whole world stills, if only for a moment. Like the nightingales and the foxes and the crickets all have heard her, and quieted down, in suspense over what’s to happen next.

He stands up and puts out his cigarette. Looking away from her he suggests, “we should head back, it’s late. I’ll walk you”. So, she puts out hers as well and follows him, and in silence they head back to the manor house, each avoiding the others eyes.  

She pulls his jacket closer to her.  

Then, he stops in his tracks. “Look,” he says and points up at the night sky “Andromeda burns bright tonight”.  

Already as a child he’d been good at recognising the constellations. Many a night they had sneaked out and wandered off to the poppy fields where they’d laid down their heads, and he had pointed up to the sky, just as he was doing now, and taught her to read them.  

“Andromeda, who was tied to the rocks, to be eaten by the sea monster Cetus?”

He nods, but doesn’t look away from the sky, “but Perseus rescued her”.

“And you criticised Tennyson for writing about knights and maidens” she teases.

He looks down at her then, a smile tugging the corners of his lips. They start walking again, his hands in his pockets, looking at the road ahead.  

“So, what did your dear Tennyson write about privilege?”  

“That opportunities are only given to those with riches already” she answers, and then she quotes, “every door is barr’d with gold, and opens but to golden keys.”

Tom is silence for a moment. They’re nearing the end of the road; they’re by the rhododendron bush, and they’ve reached the points were they have to walk their separate ways.  

She removes his jacket and hands it to him.  

“Keep it, for now. You can give it back later, you’ll freeze.”

“No” she argues. “No, Alice will see it and wonder”.

He doesn’t argue with her on that point but takes the jacket from her outstretched hand. “Well” he says, awkwardly. “See you around, Lady Madeleine”.  

They part ways.  

***

FEEDBACK IS GREATLY APPRECIATED

(A/N: I’m reposting this because the first time i posted it didn’t show up in the tags and it had like 3 notes)

Taglist: @londonmademedoit  @isthataladybag   @ceexreverse  @daygiowvibe @averyfosterthoughts @applenter @viwihere @youcompletemess @marvelpeters @youngsenpaibaby @duskholland @vanillanestor​ @panicattheeverywherekid​ @starrycigarettes​ @primadonnasdream​

[magos-dominus]

FFVII: REMAKE Exists to Mock Your Pain

This is a post about Aerith Gainsborough.

If you are wondering, this is not a post about shipping.  It is also very long. 

I do talk about the love triangle from a narrative construction and game design standpoint, though. If that interests you, go ahead. If not, scroll on.

+++ Open Spoilers for FFVII (1997) and FFVII: REMAKE +++

So, my reading of FFVII’s infamous Love Triangle has always been that, in the text, there, uh…

Isn't one.

Not really.

The structure of the entire narrative and the trajectory of Cloud's and Tifa's character arcs are built around the two of them baring their vulnerabilities at each other in a rare moment of acceptance, connection, and understanding. You might argue that we never see them physically intimate, here them say those three little words, or even engage in a few PDAs, that the nature of their relationship isn’t clear.

But to be honest?

Who cares that we don’t?

Something we can learn from Good Omens is that, if two characters have to kiss or fuck or say ‘I love you’ to convince you that they’re head over heels for each other, the story is either poorly written or you don’t really understand the meaning of the word.

I have a higher opinion of this game than that, and I want to have a high opinion of you, gentle reader.

The Lifestream Sequence is the emotional climax of the game’s narrative. The rest is simply clean up and denouement. However, that fact does beg the question: "What then, is the narrative purpose of Aerith's attraction to Cloud?"

To start, it's not a connection to Zack Fair, given that in the OG he's more plot device than person. So, what is it then?

I'd argue, that through a combination of incident and design, the Triangle exists at the crux of two competing narrative threads, held in tension by the fact that, as an audience, we share our perspective with the POV character, Cloud in this instance, and the plot works through him to us, most of the time. These two narrative threads are:

Establishing and foreshadowing Cloud's romantic feelings for Tifa as present and important to him and his character.

Getting the audience, not Cloud, to fall in love with Aerith Gainsborough.

If you’ll allow me to put my Doylist hat on for a moment, I have some trivia for you.

As an interesting hiccup of human psychology, the wad of soggy bacon that is your brain is incapable of distinguishing, on an emotional level, between real people and fictional ones. This is why you can start to feel like, after watching the same streamer or listening to the same podcast for long enough, you might start to feel like the hosts are your friends, even if you logically know that isn't true. It is the fundamental psychological reason fiction can resonate with us, despite us knowing it’s, fundamentally, an entertaining lie. Video games, as an interactive medium, can dig into this phenomenon like no other form of storytelling. With Aerith, you might have spent 20 to 30 hours with her by the time you get to the Forgotten Capital. You’ve laughed and fought and maybe cried with her across two continents and a trio of plot arcs. She’s a person the audience has, via Cloud, shared a whirlwind, globe-spanning adventure.

The reason that its her death, out of all the other fictional deaths we’ve experienced, out of all the deaths within FFVII itself, that hurts the most, is because that, by the time she leaves the Temple of the Ancients on her own, she doesn’t just feel like Cloud’s friend.

Its over just when she feels like she’s become yours.

Not content to simply to explore the grieving process of its own characters, FFVII reaches out to take something from you, and have you grieve with them.

A recurring and oft-pointed-out design decision is the empty space left by Aerith after she dies. Holes in group formations, gaps in menus, etc. Places where she used to be. A reminder of the loss, or more optimistically, a commentary on how she’s still with the party in spirit.

I would argue that it might just as easily be you in that space. AVALANCHE is a rag-tag group of misfits bound together by their grief, and when you leave the Forgotten Capital, you’ve been blooded. You’re trauma-bonded to the group now, and you’re all there, shoulder-to-shoulder to do right by your fallen friend.

It’s a gimmick that appears on the ludic level as well. Cloud’s various panic attacks, out-of-body experiences, and struggles for control are experienced by the audience through the mechanics. Sephiroth manipulates Cloud by disrupting, blocking, and limiting your connection to him. he isn’t just denying Cloud agency, he’s reaching out through the fourth wall to deny you your own.

To personally victimize you.

Once you leave the Forgotten Capital, the dialogue choices vanish. You are no longer Cloud’s co-pilot. The trauma and grief has severed that connection you had with him. You can’t do anything to help or guide him anymore. He’s on his own and you, along with Tifa, have to watch him slip out of your grasp and into the hands of an enemy all three of you are powerless to fight.

Final Fantasy VII isn’t a video game.

Final Fantasy VII is an elaborate mouse trap masquerading as a late-90′s JRPG, and Aerith Gainsborough, part-time human, full-time hello kitty monster truck, is an insidiously crafted piece of fine Swiss Gouda. It is designed, from script to visuals to music, to fill your heart to bursting and then run it over with a sixteen-wheeler; then leave you reeling for long enough that you don’t hear the tell-tale crunch of rubber-on-asphalt as it backs up over your pulped torso for good measure.

Which brings us to REMAKE. Namely, why did they cut a lot of scenes from the OG’s script that heavily featured Aerith flirting with Cloud? Or suggested there might be something there, between them, to the audience? It’s for the same reason that Sephiroth no longer has his trademark slow-burn rise to the center of the stage.

Those plot points no longer served their narrative purpose.

REMAKE is, functionally, a pseudo-sequel. A retelling that exists in conversation with a past version of itself, and is constructed with the assumption that the audience is, at least passingly, familiar with its legacy. 

Sephiroth doesn’t get a mysterious build-up because everyone already knows who he is and what he’s about, he and Aerith are familiar with at least a broad-strokes version of the script because the audience already knows it by heart, Cloud gets headache flashbacks of scenes from the OG when we see something we know will be picked up down the line, and Aerith isn’t pushed as hard as a love interest to the audience because we’re already attached to her at the hip.

Aerith seemingly knows about her fate, and while the game leans heavily on suggesting Tifa and Cloud’s shared romantic feelings, even moreso than the original did in this segment, it still holds space for Cloud to pursue Aerith, should you choose. However, she all but talks past him and directly to the audience in her Chapter 14 Resolution scene, warning us away and signposting an oncoming tragedy so that we might brace for it when the time comes and spare us any unnecessary pain.

Her character development gets fast tracked too, through knowledge granted from the Arbiters, she grows quickly towards her late-disk-one identity as the Last Ancient. She gets a piece of the closure with Zack she might get at the Gold Saucer on her date with Cloud, a chance to say goodbye to the last bit of her normal life before she was able to fully embrace the fact that it was gone. She even gets the closing speech this time, last words usually reserved for the protagonist.

But that’s what she is at the end of REMAKE, isn’t it? The only one on the same playing field as Sephiroth and the only one who might be on the same page as the audience. Equal parts the Aerith that just left Midgar and the Aerith that we saw leave for the Forgotten Capital back in 1997, on a mission to protect her friends from the danger that lay on the path she knew she had to walk. 

All of us now get to walk that path on more time.

Maybe this time we’ll get to walk it with her. Maybe this time we’ll get that happy ending. Hell, maybe Zack makes it out fine too and we get that heartfelt reunion our hearts bled for when finished Crisis Core. Maybe yours is still bleeding.

Maybe, maybe, maybe.

The Arbiters subplot exists to taunt us with these possibilities, to roll back our grief from acceptance to bargaining to denial, if we ever reached those stages to begin with. I can almost see our girl getting to go home this time, safe and happy and surrounded by her newfound misfit family, free of the crippling loneliness that’s haunted her entire life.

But to be honest?

All I can see is a better mouse trap.

[aizawaorkuroo]

on the house (chapter 2) - maple soy latte

Ship: Yagi Toshinori x reader

Rated: T+

Word Count: 2.4k

Summary: Toshinori finally introduces himself, and you fumble your way through a conversation. But maybe it's not one-sided?

Warnings: some language and mentions of sex

AN: still trying to vibe with this writing style, but i just wanna write this haha

OTH Masterlist

____________________

Yes, you had fumbled your entire conversation with the man with piercing eyes and sunflower hair. Yes, you had embarrassingly ranted to Suga after. Yes, you had overwatered a tea plant or two the first night because you were thinking about how his hair bloomed behind him so nicely. And you may have gotten an order or two wrong, but it doesn’t matter, you’re fine now. You can now amicably chat with the UA faculty and students who pop in without nervously looking for him, and other customers are just customers. No sense of attachment. You’re back to normal now.

However, the way Aiko’s palm hits her forehead after looking at the tea leaves you’ve brought for her today tells you otherwise.

“Y/N, you promised you were gonna bring the spices I needed. I’ve already got tea leaves here”, she groans, her horns shifting into a bright red out of frustration. You grimace at the thought of the bulk bags that were sitting on your counter at home. You had set them out as a reminder to bring them in today. Why had you brought more leaves instead?

You shut your eyes and pinch the bridge of your nose. You had been thinking about that dumb, tall stranger and left the bags at home. You exhale and open your eyes, giving Aiko a pointed look.

“Alright, alright. It’s fine,” she chirps. “I’ll make do, boss. We shall experiment another day,” she mumbles in a far off tone. You offer her an apologetic grimace before making preparations to open the cafe. Now, you swear you’ll be fine.

____________________

The sky’s a warm, deep orange, rippled with pinks and yellows. You reach your arms above your head and stretch from behind the coffee bar, exhaustion beginning to creep up on you. But on the weekend you stay open late, and today was no exception. Your face screws up in what’s sure to be an unpleasant sight as you glance at the clock. The second Suga gives Hizashi Yamada his fried chicken sandwich, he’s out the door. And Aiko would be right behind him.

As the sun continues to dip down, the bell above your door rings and Aiko is practically buzzing.

“Hello, Sweet Bean!” A loud, clear voice rings out in the cafe. Hizashi Yamada, otherwise known as the Pro Hero Present Mic. He comes in every Friday before his radio show to get a caffeine boost and a hot sandwich made by Suga and only Suga. Why did he want a fried chicken sandwich of all things, you may never know. But Aiko, your excitable friend, had taken a shine to Yamada. They seemed to feed off of each other's energy.

You smile at Yamada as he bounds over to giggle at something with Aiko. When you turn your gaze forward, your mind goes blank. He’s back. The man who had been living in your thoughts the past two weeks was back. Your stomach is practically in your throat, but there’s a light at the end of this tunnel: redemption. The chance at a normal conversation, or maybe something even better. But for now, you turn to Yamada.

“Your usual sweet monstrosity, Yamada?” you ask playfully.

“You know it, baby girl,” he sings at you. “Y’know, I never go anywhere else but here. I swear nothing makes me feel as happy as the coffee you make.” You bark out a laugh as you flush. But this game isn’t over yet.

“Well, I’m sure I could do some other things that would make you happy too,” you purr and bat your eyelids. Aiko doubles over in laughter, and you hear Suga groan from the kitchen. Yamada gives you a nod of approval, and you grin.

You stick your tongue out at him before forcing yourself to look up at the other man. A pretty red color blooms all over his face, and he looks mildly uncomfortable at best. You take a sharp breath and steel yourself before leaning into your customer service voice.

“It’s nice to see you again. I never got your name,” you prompt, in what’s hopefully an innocent voice. His eyes widen slightly, and he sheepishly rubs the back of his head.

“Toshinori. Yagi Toshinori,” he rumbles. Toshinori. You tilt your head as his name bounces around in your head. Finally, a name to go with the face that’s been plaguing you.

“Oh, so you’ve been here before, Toshinori?” A mischievous smirk slips onto Yamada’s face. The blush on the man’s - on Toshinori’s - face deepens. His slouch dips even lower, and he shifts uncomfortably.

“Right, Aizawa brought me a few weeks ago.” Yamada’s eyes open in surprise as if he knows something no one else does. His lips pull into a smirk, and he turns to look you up and down in a new light. Your face burns and you shift your gaze towards the counter in front of you.

“Anyways,” Aiko chimes in to your relief, “Yamada, how are your students?” You let out a small breath as Yamada and Aiko begin to chatter away. A large, calloused hand enters your field of view, and you look up. Toshinori stands a little straighter, and there’s a gleam in his eye.

You stare at his hand dumbly before realizing what he meant. Wiping your palms on your apron, you accept his handshake before offering your name shyly. He grins lazily at you, and something warm bursts from your chest.

“Well, what do you recommend this time?” One of his eyebrows quirks up, as he waits for your response.

“Oh, well our weekend special is a maple soy latte!” Your voice feels too loud, too forced, and you wince. “But if you’re allergic to soy we’ve got plenty of other milk options. Or if you don’t like maple-” His small chuckle cuts you off, and you flush.

“I’ll try the special.” You nod and fidget with a stray coffee stirrer.

“And if you’re hungry,” you rush out, “Suga is a pretty decent cook, and our kitchen has a whole assortment of ingredients. I’m sure he’d be happy to make you anything.”

With perfect timing, Suga comes to the front to give Present Mic his neatly wrapped sandwich. He’s smiling, but he turns to face you, and Aiko snorts at how pained he looks. Ah right, they’re both about to leave. When you turn back to Toshinori, he’s got a knowing look on his face, and he lightly shakes his head.

“Thanks for the offer. I think I’ll be happy with just the drink.” You nod, and you swear Suga’s about to cry from relief.

“Alright, I’m gonna head out. Are you good here?” His offer is just a courtesy, and you roll your eyes.

“Get out of here, kiddo. And Aiko, you’re good too. I’ll clean and close up.” Suga’s face scrunches up unpleasantly at the nickname, but he’s gone almost immediately. Aiko nods, but tilts her up and taps her chin.

“I’m gonna go check on the tea blends, and then I’ll head out,” she says carefully. You nod, as she skips back to the kitchen. When you hand Yamada his double-shot caramel, mocha chip frappuccino, he practically swoons.

“Y/N, you absolute goddess. Truly, I have never had a sweeter drink from a sweeter lady,” he croons. You roll your eyes, but can’t help the warmth that rises to your cheeks.

“You have the palette of a child,” you deadpan, and Aiko lets out a resounding laugh from the kitchen.

“But you make it so well.”

“Only for you baby.” You wink at him before dropping the act. “Now pay up!” Once he’s got his receipt in his hand, you turn to quickly make Toshinori his drink. And it’s only when you set down the in-house mug in front of him that you realize your error.

“Oh wait, did you want this to-go? I can absolutely make you one to-go. I just have only been making these in-house today, and I just blanked. Sorry about that!” you apologize. He shakes his head at your offer.

“That’s fine, don't worry about it. I can drink it here. How much?” He looks at you intensely, and you flush, your stomach twisting into knots.

“Oh! It’s on the house.”

He reddens and looks away, and you can’t help but feel like this was maybe a mistake again. You can practically feel Aiko’s stare from the kitchen. Before you spiral and curl up into a ball, a loud yell snaps you back to reality.

“Hey! How come I never get anything on the house?” Yamada slurps at his drink as he waits for an answer. You turn to look at him and put your hands on your hips.

“First of all, you never bring in your rewards card. Second of all, we play your goddamn radio show every Friday night until we close. Because you asked me to. That’s gotta be worth something.” You raise a brow at him, and he tilts his head as he ponders your words.

“Alright, that’s fair enough for now, but this discussion isn’t over! I’ll see you next week Sweet Bean! And I’ll see you later, Toshinori!” he calls over his shoulder as he runs out the door. Aiko steps back into the storefront, and she’s looking at you funny, but she grants you the small mercy of not bringing anything up.

“Y/N, I’ve gotta head out too.” She says in a calm, far off tone, making your eyebrows crease, but you nod. She looks back at you as she goes to clock out, and you almost miss the small wink she gives you.

The door slams behind her, and you turn back to face Toshinori. Your eyes trace the lines of his face, and your stomach flips when he cocks his head to the side and stares right back at you.

“Enjoy your drink!” you blurt out. “I’ll be in the kitchen starting to clean up if you need anything.” He nods before taking his drink to a free table. There are only a few other regulars in the cafe, so you figure you’d be safe to do the dishes and put some things away.

About thirty minutes later, you step back into the front, expecting everyone to be gone. To your surprise, Toshinori is still there. His cup’s empty, and he’s reading over a few papers that he had with him.

You watch him from behind the counter. He’s deeply focused on whatever he’s reading, and the way his face twists makes you smile. He’s sharp, all angles and hard lines. You barely know this man, but fuck, you were infatuated. You bite the inside of your cheek as you make a spur of the moment decision.

“Mind if I join you?” Toshinori’s head snaps up to see you standing in front of him, and his eyes widen, but he gestures to the seat across from him.

“Not at all.”

You smile graciously and pull the chair out. His eyes try to refocus on his paper, but they continuously flutter up to your face, as if checking to make sure you're still there. You lean forward and rest your head in your palm.

“What are you doing?” you murmur. The tips of his ears heat up, and you know then and there, that you’re going to eat him alive.

“Just some paperwork. Nothing too interesting.” You hum at his words. He sounds honest enough, but something in his eye tells you to not believe him.

“Do you work with Aizawa and Yamada?” He nods and one of his hands moves to scratch the back of his head.

“Yes, though I feel they’re more suited to teaching.” His voice is distant, and worry pulls his face tight. You tap your fingers against your face, as you think of what to say.

“I know I don’t know you all too well,” you murmur, “but don’t be so hard on yourself.” You purse your lips in thought. You had never seen him before. Was he even a Pro? Wasn’t that a requirement to teach at UA? Or maybe it wasn’t? Is that why he’s worried?

“The way I see it, as long as you’re doing your best, watching out for your students, and looking for ways to improve, you shouldn’t stress too much. As long as you choose to do the next right thing, one step at a time, I think you can get through anything. Even teaching the next generation of heroes,” you conclude.

Your eyes drift back down to Toshinori, and you flush at how intently he’s looking at you. He’s mirrored your position, resting his face in one palm, while his other hand is on the table, dangerously close to yours. “But, like, what do I know? I’m not a hero, and I don’t teach,” you backtrack in a panic.

His gaze is too, well, too something. It stirs up a swirl of emotions and thoughts in you, and butterflies fly free in your stomach. You tilt your head down, looking at the proximity between your hands. You swallow past the lump in your throat; you're particularly struck by how large and rough his hands are. His fingers are thick and long, and your blood heats up. He’s lean and gangly, all sharp angles and intense looks, but your thoughts drift to darker places against your will.

You do everything in your power to not squeeze your thighs together. When you look up at him, your eyes are half-lidded, and you can’t help but lick your lips. You don’t miss the way his eyes jump down to watch the action. The cafe is way too warm now; you feel like you're on fire.

“Good evening listeners!” You flinch as a loud, familiar voice blares through the sound system of the cafe. Looking down at your arms, you realize you’re faintly glowing. You slam the metaphorical brakes on your quirk, and the cafe feels bearable again.

“I’m Present Mic, and this is Put Your Hands Up On The Radio!” You roll your eyes before pinching the bridge of your nose.

“Well, Toshinori. I don’t think you’ll be able to get work done here in peace.” He hums in agreement, nose scrunching as Yamada chatters away. “And it’s been a long day, so I may just close early tonight,” you softly say, mostly to yourself. Toshinori nods anyways, and he slowly moves to pack his things up.

You shakily rise and smooth down your apron. You quickly turn around and get to work bussing the tables from previous customers. The entire time, you feel a white-hot gaze on your back, making your hands fumble. After dumping the dishes in the sink and promising to do them tomorrow, you move back to the front to put away the chairs. Toshinori’s still there, but he rises when he sees you working.

“Would you like any help?” You look over at him, eyeing him up and down before nodding.

“Sure, but don’t feel pressured to help. I can get it done.” He chuckles lightly, and your stomach flips.

“I don’t doubt that.”

With his help, you finish quickly. He watches you silently as you run around turning things off and locking doors. Once you have your things, you meet him at the front of the store. He holds the door open for you, and you thank him shyly, trying to not think of the things you want to do to him. As you fumble with the lock, he looks around the street.

“Do you want me to walk you home?” Putting your keys in your pocket, you smile softly before shaking your head.

“Oh, no it's okay. I’ll be fine. I live just a few blocks that way.” You jerk your head behind you in emphasis. He nods but continues to just look at you. Warmth seeps into the pit of your stomach, and the tension is tangible. He runs a hand through his hair, and you admire the way the yellow strands pop right back up again.

“Well, have a good night,” he rumbles. Part of you wants to drag him home with you, and your gaze snaps back to his hands. Arousal pools in the pit of your stomach, but you force your eyes to move up and look him in his eyes.

“You too.” Your voice is soft, and you feel an overwhelming sense of fondness and want growing rapidly in your chest. You turn to start walking, but before you take a step, you pause and turn around.

“Toshinori?” He cocks his head to the side, waiting for you to continue. “You know, you don’t have to come with Aizawa or Yamada? You’re welcome whenever.” The blush that had been adorning his face all night returns, and he nods at your words. You give him a small wave, before turning to walk to your apartment, doing your best to ignore the throbbing in between your legs.

____________________

When Toshinori makes it home, he exhales. That was … different. But it wasn’t bad. He kicks off his shoes and rubs his face. He could maybe do this. Maybe. Aizawa and Yamada, and plenty of his students at that, liked you well enough. When Yamada had mentioned he was going, he had practically jumped at the opportunity. Aizawa shot Yamada a look, one that Toshinori pretended to not see.

So what? You intrigue him, and he finds you attractive. His face heats up at the thought, and he exhales shakily.

But a thousand questions plagued his mind. Would you be okay seeing a Pro Hero? Fuck, is he going to have to tell you he’s All Might? How would you even react? Would you get disappointed? Is there a chance you’re already seeing someone? He pales at the thought. Were you even interested? There’s a chance he’s misreading all the signals.

But he saw how you looked at his hands, the way your eyes trail over his face, he felt the tension that wouldn’t dissipate no matter how much he wanted it to. But it’s hard to believe anyone, let alone you would be interested in him while he looks like this.

He sinks down into his mattress and runs a hand through his hair. It’s impossible to know the answers to anything. And worrying about them isn’t going to accomplish anything. So he lets them slip from his mind. Turning his thoughts to other things. But as sleep overtakes him, there’s only one thing he’s sure of.

He should’ve walked you home.

[chainsawcorazon]

How about (Munna Bhai) for pre-massacred Licht with young Patri, Sephirah's Apostles and the Elf Tribe in general?

Hello Anon, thank you for requesting! I’m a sucker for romance, so this fic also includes some romance, namely Patolli/William and Licht/Tetia. Thank you for requesting, and enjoy!

Additionally, to all readers, Bollywood Prompts are now closed! Thanks to everyone who requested a fic! I have nine more to get through, and hope to finish them all by the end of the year. Happy reading, everyone!

~~

Ronne made a silent note of it, of course. The human royal had only begun to visit regularly some weeks prior, so maybe, just maybe Ronne was making bold assumptions based on too few facts. Maybe there wasn't any correlation between the stolen gazes and Licht's sweaty palms. Maybe they were mere coincidences, and Ronne could accept that.

Except Ronne was never wrong.

Rhya figured it out not too long after, and once Rhya caught on, it was only a matter of time until everyone else did. One by one, Licht's inner circle came to know, and little by little, Licht stopped hiding it.

They announced their pregnancy just months later.

*

“You can't keep avoiding her forever you know,” Ronne remarked one late afternoon. He was husking corn for the evening, and Patolli was supposed to be helping him, but the boy had sat by the river brooding instead of helping Ronne shuck and clean the vegetables.

“I'm not avoiding her,” the boy retorted, biting the inside of his cheek. He was fuming, which disappointed Ronne more than anything.

“You are, and it's hurting Licht's feelings,” Ronne lied smoothly, because Rhya was only half as good as him when it came to the deception game, and because everyone but Patolli knew that Licht was too enamored, too busy with his beautiful lover and their future child to focus on the grievances of one lone teen.

“He's going to marry her, you know,” Ronne added some minutes later. “If you want to be Licht's bodyguard when you get your grimoire, then you have to guard her as well – and all of their children.”

“Why?” He snapped back, his eyes burning with hatred and just a twinge of pain.

Ronne sighed deeply before speaking again. “Because he loves her.”

*

Rhya told Patolli the same, Reve made some vague remarks about the power of moving forward, and Fana just pulled him into the forest, sat him down on the ground, and told him every single detail of Licht and Tetia's impending marriage so that he could get it through his head that the time for dreaming was over.

Vetto understood, however.

“It happens in phases,” he told him one night while the little boy was out crying in the field, accompanied by Vetto's little squirrels. “You live, you love, you move on, and you love again. It's a cycle, Patolli. It doesn't end with one person.”

Snot covered Patolli's upper lip and his eyes ran wet with tears. When he tried to speak, all he managed were wheezes before the sobbing intensified. Vetto reached for a handful of wildflowers and plucked them from the ground. He carefully pulled off the dirt and roots, and handed the bunch to Patolli who sobbed as he cradled them in his arms.

“Look at those, and tell me if any one of them is the same as the other,” Vetto instructed him gently. It took several more minutes before Patolli's sobs petered out into hiccups and his eyes cleared enough to peer at the flowers in his hand.

Patolli was done before Vetto could finish counting the minute.

“No,” Patolli grumbled with a sniff.

Vetto could only smile. “And?”

“... They're pretty,” Patolli said awkwardly.

“And?”

“They're flowers!”

“Aaaand?” Vetto had to bite back the chortle.

“They're pretty flowers and they're all different!” Patolli screeched, the tears replaced with fury, his cheeks flushed with childish exasperation.

Vetto burst out laughing, unable to hold back the mirth bubbling in his throat. Patolli stared, gob-smacked, before grumbling underneath his breath. He chewed his cheek and stroked the flowers in his hands while Vetto tried to stifle the laughs.

“Good!” The older man finally wheezed, wiping tears from the corners of his eyes. “Good,” he repeated when he witnessed a forlorn look settle in Patolli's golden brown eyes. “Good,” he said for a third time. “Every flower in this field is beautiful, and every single one is different from the other. When we pick them for our friends and family, we never pick the same ones. We want to give our loved ones all the colors of the world, because we love them in every which way that we can. These flowers, Patolli, they're wild and they have no masters, and we too are slaves to their beauty and warmth, because we want to give their beauty and their warmth to the ones we love the most.”

“I'm not giving Ratri any flowers,” he retorted.

“But you give your mother flowers all the time,” Vetto teased. “It's because you love her, don't you? I know you love your brother as well, but Ratri doesn't much appreciate the subtleties of gifting, but your mother does. You give your mother flowers because you treasure her, and because she treasures you.”

“Hmph,” Patolli huffed, giving Vetto the side-eye.

“And you know that she treasures every flower you give her, no matter how different they are,” Vetto added gently.

“What's your point?” Patolli grumbled, shoulders defeated and fingers still entangled in flowers.

Vetto could see the tears begin to form in the boy's eyes again, and so he turned away and looked up at the moon. “Imagine the flowers in your hands are people,” he began softly, his squirrels nibbling away at the nuts they'd picked from Vetto's pockets. “Imagine that every time you loved someone new, you picked a flower from this field. Over the years, you accumulate hundreds of flowers, each different from the last, and as the years go by, some wither away, while others persist until they too fade away.”

A sob hitched in Patolli's throat, and the little boy began to cry again.

Vetto kept his eyes on the moon. “Imagine Licht was your first flower, Patolli. Imagine him as the most vibrant flower you've ever picked, and the one you cherish the most right now. Give it the respect it deserves, and accept that your heart has chosen what it's chosen.”

Patolli's sobs echoed through the field as the squirrels continued to nibble at their nuts, while Vetto stared longingly at the bright, full moon. “And when it perishes, bury it with honor. There's no shame in loving, little one, but letting go is a part of that process.”

“No!” Patolli snarled back, his sobs getting worse as the evening persisted and the squirrels nibbled away.

“And when you least expect it,” Vetto continued, gaze fixed on the beautiful moon up above, “another flower will come along, and it will be a flower you least expect to love, and yet you will. You will love so greatly that even the sun and moon won't be able to withstand your love. Trust this if nothing else, Patolli. You will love again.”

*

And he did. A thousand years later, at the gates of the Spade Kingdom, Vetto stood next to his kin in rippling white and black armor as Patolli broke down the gates with a single swipe of his sword. The demons came quickly and so they rode through the swarm with their weapons poised, Fana's great fire breathing Hell down upon anyone who stood in their way.

A thousand years after their deaths, a flower was born. It was a flower few would call pretty, and yet that flower kept Patolli safe in his chest until it was his time.

Vetto hid his smile as they charged through the corridors to where the victims lay chained, like heroes out of fairy tales long dead. They fought every step of the way until they broke down the doors to the roof, cut through the black magic that held down the sacrifices, and finally breathed a sigh of relief as they awoke from their days long sleep.

“William,” Patolli said softly, cradling his beloved in arms much like he cradled those wildflowers one thousand years ago.

“Patolli,” the human croaked in response, “is that you?”

“Yes, my love,” Patolli said hoarsely, voice breaking finally as he pulled the human against his chest and held him tight, kissed along his shoulders and neck before burying his face in his bloodied hair.

And Vetto watched as Patolli cried once more, but this time with relief – this time with love that could defeat even the fists of a thousand demons.

*

Yami Sukehiro snorted from his position on the floor. “We're gonna die if they don't stop making out.”

“I believe your human friends will be here with transport soon,” Vetto said plainly.

“Scarface hasn't brushed his teeth in like... how long have we been here?”

“Three days!” Fana piped up.

“In three days,” Yami continued. “Your buddy's making out with three days worth of bacteria.”

“He's done worse,” Rhya drawled.

“I'm so glad Pato found someone,” Fana sighed with relief. “Thought he would never get over that schoolboy crush!”

“Lady, you thinking stabbing our king and tryna resurrect your entire tribe was over a schoolboy crush?” Yami asked, deadly serious.

Fana waved her hand nonchalantly. “Oh, of course, Pato is just a little emotional, is all!”

“Never mind,” Yami grumbled, laying back down and staring at the sky. He thought he could see the moon peeking out from behind the clouds. “Anybody gotta cigarette?”

Rhya lit a stick and handed it to the large man. They sat still, some smoking, some chatting idly, oddly content while the rest of the heroes gathered to take them all back to their respective homes.

And just a few feet away, Patolli kissed William tenderly underneath the beautiful night sky.

*

[gripefroot]

Courtyard

Clicking her tongue, she dips the cloth back into the herbed water, squeezing it with a fist before shaking it out to lay against the bruised skin of his shoulder. He sucks in a breath at the touch of coolness, and gently she dabs until the entire bruise, dark and molted, is damp from the herbs. 

“I know what you are thinking, wife,” he rumbles in his deep way. 

“I am sure I do not know what you mean,” she says airily. Rinses out the cloth, and places her hand on his good shoulder to twist him slightly on the stone bench - he moves at her faintest touch, as he always has, and when his face meets hers his expression is very nearly rueful. 

Another bruise is curling around one eye - slightly puffy, and likely to worsen. She sighs, and cleans that next. 

“I know what you are thinking,” Heimdall says again, his gaze not moving from her. “I am too old to spar with the young soldiers.”

“I think no such thing,” she replies, a little fierce, and little of her own stubbornness. 

“Then what are your thoughts, my love? You are too silent.” 

In a heap beside the garden bench lie his armor and mail, dented and scuffed just like him, but those repairs will be for an armor. His wounds are for his wife to tend, and tend them she does, carefully skating her fingertips down the side of his face and down his thick, corded neck to explore for further cuts or bruises. On his bare chest a fist of circular cuts and seeping deep red blood. This from the mail, of course, and she sighs to think of a ruined tunic, too - it had been cast aside without thought with the armor. 

In the breeze flutter the blooming trees all around - this late in the spring, they are shedding their blossoms to soon favor fruit, and fallen petals are strewn across the cobblestones beneath their feet. After the tournament most of the guests had left in favor of the banquet hall inside the palace, but seeing her husband wincing in pain upon his exit from the field, she had stopped him. 

“I am thinking,” she says slowly, refreshing the cloth once more. Shifts on the hard bench, and his hand curls over her knee. Warm even through her gown. “I am thinking that perhaps you went too easy on our son.” 

A startled moment, and he begins to laugh. Pursing her lips, she cleans away the blood from his chest as he rides out his own mirth. 

“You are quite right,” Heimdall muses. “Our son has grown into a fierce warrior. I no longer need soften my own skills to build his confidence in winning.” 

“Softening your arrogance might be appropriate,” she tells him in a clipped tone. 

“I am sorry for my state, wife.” 

“You will heal soon enough. Sooner than Njal will recover from his own bloated head, I suppose.” 

“And so tell me,” he asks boldly, catching her hand and pausing it from her cleaning. “Did you wager on your husband or son in combat?” 

She blinks up at him - even sitting together, he towers - and she sniffs haughtily. “I thought you could see all, husband.” 

“Details oft escape me, wife. Tell me.” 

“I shan’t.” 

If it’s a dangerous game to play, she doesn’t care. There’s no real danger with him, anyway - not even when his eyes smolder molten gold does she fear being burned. He could pour that liquid through her veins and she would welcome the heat. 

Still, her lips twitch as she lifts the cloth to clean the remainder of his face. Dried sweat and some filth from the fight, wiped easily away - his hands are on her hips, now, and it reminds her of the deep breath before a jump into a pool of water. He could easily lift her into his lap, but he does not; the palace courtyard is not a place for that. 

“There,” she says at last, and drapes the dirty cloth over the rim of the wash bowl. “You smell a little sweeter now. I have better medicine at home.”

“You are my medicine, wife. Kiss me after battle and all my bones shall knit back together. Kiss me now and I’ll forget that our son bested me by sword!” 

The laugh bubbles out of her like spring water, and careful not to nudge any of his wounds, she wraps her arms fondly around the back of his neck, and is that a growl deep in his throat? She smiles. “I will kiss you later.” 

“Later? Then I was right to think you upset!” 

“No,” she tells him slowly, and with a grunt he hoists her closer on the bench - not quite in his lap, but near enough that she would rather not the king or queen happen upon them. His nose presses against hers, daring her, tempting her with a grin and his lips so close. “No,” she murmurs. “I fear if I kiss you I shan’t wish to stop until you’re shouting my name to the stars.” 

He blinks. Once, then twice - and that is certainly a growl. “If you will not kiss me,” he says, voice lowering at least an octave as his chest presses to hers. “Then I shall thank you for your tender care in another way.” 

“Husband,” she warns, but her voice shakes as she laughs - anticipation and nerves bundling together in the heady afternoon - the sun will set soon, she thinks, and how simple it would be to forego the feast and return home - 

“Let me. Let me worship you, my wife - and let the heavens witness it.” 

When he speaks like a poet, she is no more than soft clay in his hands. His head lowers, his breath hot against her throat as she stifles a moan in response - how quickly her skin comes alive at the mere suggestion of an act of love. Heart hammering, she stammers as she whispers, “Darling - I do not wish to refuse, but someone could see - ”

“They are occupied at the feast. I will see them before they see me.” 

“Really - ” A gasp as he slides off the bench, not even a strain or a wince as he kneels in front of her, his eyes locked on her face. Trembling, she cups his chin in her palm, huffing a laugh. “I could not have chosen a more convenient magick for my husband to embody.” 

“And what of your magick, then?” A wry question - for he knows as well as she that she has no magick - but his warm palm is curling around her bare ankle, above her slipper. As he waits for her answer his hand slides to her knee, and further. 

“I have naught but the ordinary skills of any woman,” she reminds him. A shiver as the breeze rustles more petals past, and against the bare skin of her legs as he pushes her skirts up. Up and over, to rest on her trembling thighs. 

“Ordinary?” Heimdall pauses then, and suddenly short of balance she clutches the carved rim of the bench behind her. “Are you to tell me the endless love we share is ordinary? Or the full-hearted adoration you have for our children? The love with which you raised them? Or how you made a stone house into a home for these centuries?”

“That is not magick,” she protests. Against the skin of her thigh he presses his full lips, gaze still upon her. Another kiss. Her breath is thick in her throat, making it difficult to breathe, let alone speak. 

“It is magick. A good heart is magick.” 

“Many have good hearts.” 

“No. Many have ordinary hearts that are both good and bad. Yours is beyond all I have seen in the cosmos, my love.” 

His breath is hotter than ever, though she is certain she is burning from the inside - when at last his lips are upon her, a gasp comes ragged from her mouth, and her head falls back. Knees lifting slightly to rest on his broad, sturdy shoulders - he simply hums his desire back at her, and so she knows she is not hurting him. 

Her fingers clench on the stone. 

“Heimdall,” she sighs, and her voice is carried away on the breeze - through the emptying branches of the gardens, and across the courtyard to disappear somewhere in the gold-bathed city. He does not respond, for his tongue is busy elsewhere, and lest she cry louder into the dusk she clamps a hand over her own mouth, very nearly laughing through it. 

“If you insist on singing my name, then no doubt others will come to investigate,” he chides her gently, pulling away slightly to smile up at her. “They will think you lost me like a common pup!”

“Then they would learn very quickly that nothing could be further from the truth!” she whispers breathlessly. “Oh, do go on, husband, before our children miss us at the feast!”

“This would be difficult to explain to them, I am sure.” 

She bites down on her bottom lip, and with an impatient hiss drags her skirts up higher so that he may reach her more easily - Heimdall simply laughs, which makes her flush more as if with fever. But he’s an obedient one, and certainly one that can see what it is she wants so badly - and so he returns to kissing her sweet and soft and firm all at once, but not on her mouth. 

With centuries of skill he sends her quickly to the end - his neck muscles flex and strain with effort as she clings to him one-handed, heart racing and raspy-breathed - until the match is struck and she thinks she might have burst into flames - accidentally crying aloud until his large fingers quickly cover her mouth as he laughs against her. 

“Dear wife,” he says fondly, and resumes kissing her thighs with his lips sticky. “Always insistent on sharing with everyone what a talented husband I am.” 

“I,” she gasps. “I would have been content to simply return home for this - ”

“We are expected at the feast.”

“We could have returned - ”

“Not quickly enough. I admit I am skilled, but perhaps not skilled enough.” 

Peeking open an eye, she stares down at him - as his wet mouth and his beaming smile. She cannot help him - she joins him in laughter as he tugs her skirts back down to cover her modestly, and to hide any evidence of behavior that might be less than appropriate for the palace courtyard during a feast…

And she laughs harder at the next thought. 

“My love?” he asks, as he pulls his ruined tunic back over his head. 

“Why would we need to attend the feast?” she rejoinders flippantly, pushing back damp strands of hair from around her ears. “For it appears that you have already had yours.” 

Heimdall pauses - and when his booming laugh echoes through the courtyard, guards rush to investigate the noise. Their armor clanks noisily in the evening, quite disturbing the peace, but he waves them away, still chortling as he helps her to her feet. 

“Any earlier appearance would have spelled disaster,” she mutters to him under her breath, and fondly he winds her arm through his. 

“So it might have. But alas - the only disaster now is that I cannot share your wit with anyone else.”

“And they will thank you for that, husband.” 

They enter the feasting hall with its golden light and high laughter with practiced decorum - her face would burn if she merely considered that anyone there discovered the reason for their delay - but it is thankfully with happy smiles and open arms that they find their grown children feasting at a long table, with seats saved just for them. 

“None for me, thank you,” Heimdall directs a servant who appears with a mead jug. Then, with a flickering glance towards his wife, his lips curl upwards. “I have already feasted. Though perhaps,” with a lowered voice as the servant moves on, and their children return to a hearty debate regarding Flin the Orator. “I will be hungry again later.” 

She beams, and leans close, too, letting the music fall around them like a shroud - for she sees only his eyes. “One can only hope.” 

[ace-oreos]

For prompts, I would like to think that after ventress took off in the ship that had alpha on it, she just kind of left, leaving him on some planet far from the rest of the galaxy. So hes alone, probably injured, and not anywhere close to the GAR or even the separatists. Does he try to get home? Does he just live wherever he is? Whats he thinking now that he's absolutely on his own? Anything with stranded Alpha is 100%

I finally got some inspiration for this one and ran with it, to put it lightly. I’m fairly pleased with how this came out, but I might revisit at some point and rewrite some parts of it.

I’d call this vaguely AU-ish but technically canon compliant.

Please be aware that I have virtually no medical knowledge and more or less came up with it as I went along. But I tried to make it reasonable, so there’s that.

It’s been two years since Alpha-17 has had contact with anyone from the Republic, eighteen months since he took his first steps after the fight with General Grievous, and fifteen since Asajj Ventress dropped him in a backwater town on a planet light-years that’s closer to Wild Space than the Outer Rim.

It’s the sort of town where nobody is anybody and everyone knows someone, about as far from the Republic and the Core as any standard starship can handle. The planet doesn’t even have a name as far as Alpha knows, which suits him fine. 

In fact, it’s so isolated from the rest of the galaxy there is no talk of the war. Folks seem more concerned with getting by than invasion from hostile forces. The town - if it even qualifies as such - has been falling apart since the day it was built, or so its quaint citizens like to claim. People keep to themselves here and don't ask questions, which is just as well. 

All in all, it’s a far cry from the life he’d known. But it’s for the best; the life he’d known and the person he’d been seem stranded behind an impenetrable veil. Most days it doesn’t take much to convince himself there is no way to reclaim what he’s lost. 

(What happened to you? Alpha thinks when restlessness and uncertainty set in despite himself and sleep eludes him.) 

(Uncertainty where there was once conviction, hesitation in place of tenacity, desolation rather than something like hope.)

The sparring matches are hardly anything to brag about - a collection of untrained, undisciplined freighter pilots and merchants who don’t have much else to occupy their time after selling hours - but even now he finds himself unable to stay in one place for long. 

(Stay in motion, keep looking forward, and maybe it will bring him back.) 

It doesn’t take much negotiating to get himself in the ring. His performance would appall even the youngest cadets in Tipoca, but here - a town that doesn’t exist - it’s enough to get him in on the action he sorely missed. 

They don’t know his name. It doesn’t matter, really. For the first time he’s beginning to see who he might be outside of the war. 

(It’s not what Alpha wants for himself, but what choice does he have?)

__________________

His opponent isn’t much older than him, brash and eager to prove himself. He moves in an over exaggerated way that plainly suggests he doesn’t consider Alpha to be much competition.

But Alpha has ample experience in cutting opponents down to size, and as they circle each other, he feels a rush of confidence. It may not come close to taking on a platoon of battle droids or going toe-to-toe with a Gen’Dai bounty hunter, but it’s enough to spark the energy he’s been lacking. 

He lets the kid make the first move. True to his intuition, the first pass is a poorly planned head-on charge that only requires a neat sidestep to avoid. His opponent stumbles past, leaving himself completely open to an attack from behind, but Alpha isn’t in the mood to end this quickly. Now that he’s begun to recover his old spirit, he wants to see how far he can go. 

The kid seems baffled when Alpha doesn’t make a move. It’s clear he’s accustomed to the usual uncoordinated exchange of blows from hotheaded opponents. Alpha doubts he’s ever gone up against a rival with any semblance of proper training, let alone an ARC trooper. 

His opponent makes another valiant attempt to knock him off balance. Alpha shifts his weight without moving his feet and sends the kid to the floor. There’s jeers and calls for him to finish it then and there, but Alpha doesn’t waver. He knows exactly what he’s doing, and no nat-born freighter pilot from the shebs end of the galaxy is going to get in his head. 

The kid has grit if nothing else; he’s pushed himself to his feet again and assumed what passes as a defensive stance. It’s enough of an invitation for Alpha to take the offensive. He doesn’t miss the flash of fear in the kid’s eyes, and it’s with a sense of satisfaction that he plants one foot to lunge towards his adversary - 

But his leg collapses with the motion. Alpha is sent sprawling, palms scuffing the floor in his effort to redirect before he loses his balance entirely. His body refuses to cooperate, and for one terrifying moment he’s unable to push himself to his feet. 

This wasn’t supposed to happen! 

It can’t be much more than a handful of seconds, but a range of emotions sear through him so fast he can hardly distinguish between them. Fear and humiliation overpower the rest, but it’s the overwhelming sense of vulnerability that drives him to his feet. 

Alpha prepares to launch another attack - this will end on his terms one way or another. But the kid knows where he’s weak now and gets behind him, aims for his legs. Alpha whirls, but between that and the jarring kick delivered to his knee, he’s soon on the ground once again. 

Caught between fury - at himself more than his opponent, who had simply recognized his chance and taken it - and disbelief, Alpha doesn’t bother trying for one last strike. 

Wouldn’t Fett be proud, he thinks savagely a while later, gritting his teeth as he cleans the dirt and blood from his arms. One of his own, getting his shebs handed to him light-years away from the Outer Rim. An ARC trooper at his best. 

He’s torn from his thoughts by a man dressed in a ragged flight suit clapping him on the shoulder. “No shame in it,” he says bracingly. “Happens to all of us at some point.” 

Alpha shrugs him off. “To you, maybe.”

They don’t know who he is, and he can’t help thinking it’s a relief after tonight’s disgrace. 

“You’re not half bad,” the man assures. “Just off your game, I’d say.”

“Thanks for the assessment,” Alpha grumbles. 

 The man peers at him. “Skills like that, you must’ve been someone before you wound up here.”

Alpha hesitates before admitting, “I was a soldier for a while.”

“That so? We heard about a war from time to time, but nothing ever reached us here,” the man says thoughtfully. 

Alpha still finds it hard to wrap his mind around that: people going about their lives without any indication that the rest of the galaxy was being torn to shreds. 

“I wouldn’t know,” he mutters. 

He pushes through the door and into the night. The air is heavy with rain here, clinging to his skin and lodging in his throat when he breathes in. Even the lights from ships passing overhead are dimmed by the thick fog that hangs over the town. 

His legs burn the further he walks, but Alpha continues on anyways. He’s not ready for everything to catch up with him just yet. 

Is that what you’re doing, then? Running away? 

He grimaces at the thought. Two years ago the very suggestion would be enough to provoke him; it’s not any less piercing now, but there’s too much truth in it for him to be angry. 

Why are you so afraid? he wants to know. You get hurt once and you’re done? 

(It’s more than that, but Alpha doesn’t have the energy to delve deeper.)

Just let go of the fear. It’s not doing you any favors. 

(If only it was that easy.) ___________________________

It’s an arduous process, but Alpha thinks he might learn to adjust to this new life. 

The medics can only do so much for an injury inflicted by a lightsaber; he’s come to accept that. It’s a blow to his pride, but he’s resolved to make something of the situation. Feeling sorry for himself won’t get him anywhere. 

So he learns to live with the wound, with the loss of independence that comes with it. It’s unlikely he’ll ever see field service again, but a soldier is more than his skills. 

Stranger than his new way of life is the presence of Asajj Ventress.

He doesn’t trust her - can never trust her, not after Rattatak - but she seemed sincere in her renouncement of the Dark Side of the Force. She leaves him to his devices for the most part; whether it’s an effort to put him at ease or unconscious avoidance, he can’t say for sure. 

But it’s a small ship. When they do cross paths, there’s little conversation between them. Alpha hasn’t discounted her as a threat, and she knows it. So he’s taken aback when she approaches him one day. 

He meets her gaze squarely, not bothering to conceal the knife on his belt. He may not be fully recovered from his ill-fated fight with General Grievous, but he can still take down an enemy in a number of ways.

“You’re looking better,” she says, watching him carefully. 

He won’t let her go that easily. “Time was you’d have slit my throat if it served your purposes.”

“That was a different time.” She looks away, and an expression he can’t quite decipher crosses her face. “I was a different person.”

“No, you weren’t. But the circumstances were different,” Alpha allows. 

She lapses into silence. Then she takes a deep breath. “You know I can heal you.”

It’s Alpha’s turn to look away. “I don’t need your help.”

She moves as if to put a hand on his arm but pulls back before she brushes his skin. “Let me try.” _____________________

Alpha jolts awake in a cold sweat. The image of Grievous towering over him, lightsabers poised to strike, fades as he tries to steady his breath. 

He pushes himself up with a sigh. He’s woken from such dreams too often lately to be optimistic about falling asleep again. 

Alpha straps a knife to his hip and makes his way outside to resume his earlier wanderings. It can’t be much later than 0300; the streets are empty, and even the incoming freight traffic has slowed.

He chooses a route out of the town. The area is surrounded by a range of low-rising mountains, so he sets his sight on the nearest peak. It won’t be easy on a half-healed body, but maybe that will be enough to distract him from his thoughts for a while.

The sun has risen by the time he reaches the summit. The town looks impossibly small from here - it would be swallowed by the likes of Coruscant or Tipoca City. He suspects even the smallest outposts on Mandalore are livelier. 

I can’t stay.

It’s no good letting himself drift further and further away from the Republic. He serves no purpose here; even if the Republic is rotting from the inside out, he belongs with his brothers. 

I’ll find a way back.

Alpha gazes out at the town, and for the first time he feels a glimmer of hope. Getting out of here won’t be an easy task, but he has a goal now. And although he can’t say for sure what awaits him, he's determined to meet it. 

Adapt and overcome.

Cin vhetin.

[cagestark]

@starknakedsluts asked for female!tony with stucky, Toni’s sharp tongue at the post-mission press conference turning them on. Part 2 next weekend bb to fulfill the rest of your desires ;)

-

Toni handles the press conferences. The justification was that she has years of experience handling the press, which is years more than any of the others have. Watching her rip into ignorant reporters and generally make a game of the entire conference was justification to have...anyone else handle the press conferences. Experience regardless. But Bucky could hardly deny that with his blood already up after missions, watching her slit the room’s throats with her silver tongue made him harder than he should be. 

“—the next question. You—yes. Were there any casualties? Take a look at the team, WCBS, they are covered from head to toe in pearlescent blood and viscera. This isn’t a fashion statement. Yes, there were many casualties of the violent-alien variety, and if you mean were any innocent parties caught in the crossfire, full disclosure, I did destroy a balcony flower box containing some unsightly impatiens. I don’t intend to pay for it either, not when snapdragons are in season. Yes you may quote me. Next? Jesus Chr—who let 93.9 in here?”

It goes on and on, the other teammates’ shoulders sagging with fatigue at having to stand on parade while the public seeks their dues. But this is just another part of the amended Accords, helping the Avengers cultivate transparency and accountability. The only person who isn’t showing any sign of slowing is Toni herself. This is just another field of battle for her, the podium another suit she wields with efficacy. When Bucky glances over, he sees that Steve’s eyes are just as dark as his own. Exhaustion, maybe. 

Except Bucky knows better. 

After the press conference ends, Bucky follows Steve’s brisk pace back to their room where they shed their clothes and shower the last of the viscera off of themselves. They’re both hard, cocks eyeing each other accusingly. Steve groans in his throat when Bucky lets a warm, soapy hand fall to curl around his shaft and begin stroking the other man leisurely. 

“She loves it up there, letting those reporters have it,” Bucky rasps. “It’s like flying to her, y’ can see it in her eyes. Not flying—foreplay. I bet if we’d unzipped her undersuit and put our palms between her legs, she’d ‘a been soaked.” 

Steve’s eyes glitter. “Do you think?”

“Only one way to find out, isn’t there?” 

They have dried and dressed and gone up to the penthouse floor before Toni steps foot from her shower. Wet, her dark hair is long enough to brush her shoulders. Her skin is tanned against the white of her robe, and she brings with her the fresh, clean scent of berries. Why they’re there must register on their faces, in the hungry set of their shoulders because her mouth widens into a slow smirk and she lets the robe part in a natural motion, revealing a glimpse of her modest chest. 

“Can I help you, gentlemen?” she asks. “I didn’t know you were making house calls. I would have dressed up for you.” 

“Don’t bother,” Steve suggests. 

“It’s your home,” says Bucky. “Undress more, if you like.” 

Toni grins. They’ve played like this before, and she must know that the likelihood of them visiting her rises exponentially after battles. Bucky wouldn’t put it past her to have entire files on their statistics and probabilities. She’s an overthinker. A preparer. It’s even more obvious when she turns from them and lets the robe drop, wet hair left to drip down her naked back and be caught by the upper edge of her underwear—the only fucking scrap of fabric she’s wearing. 

They move together, as much a team here as they are in the field. Matching each other step for silent step, Bucky takes both of Toni’s tiny wrists and draws them back and together, holds them in a single unyielding grip while Steve circles around her to give her a long look up and down. Placing his metal palm just below her shoulder blades, her burning skin flinches away from the cold, thrusting her bare chest out for Steve’s perusal. 

He hums, thoughtful. 

Toni stands, silent, chest heaving. 

“What?” Steve asks. “Nothing to say? You had a lot to say earlier this evening. You have to know what it does to us, watching you rip those reporters to shreds. We were so hard in the shower because of you that we debated rubbing one out before we even came up here.” 

“Did you?” Toni breathes. 

Steve lets his head cock in a universal expression of condescension: what do you think?

Taking one of her bound wrists, Bucky brings it down and uses it to cup his erection. Her fingers tighten around the shaft as best as they can through the barrier of his jeans, and the friction feels so fucking good that Bucky lets out a groan that has her shaking. He pulls her hand away even as she whines in protest. Good things come to those who wait. 

“I think you should put that mouth to use tonight,” Steve says to her. He has a way about him, a quiet authority that can border on the sweetest cruelty. When Toni nods, Steve smiles in an indulgent way that has the petite woman between them absolutely trembling. He puts his first two fingers against her lush, dangerous mouth. “That’s sweet, but it wasn’t a question. Open up.” 

From behind them, Bucky can’t see Steve’s fingers disappear into her mouth, but he hears it well enough: the wet gags as he presses deep, the whining breaths she gives. Her whole body jerks, so he tightens his grip on her wrists and pulls her back flush to him, reaching around to take a pebbled nipple between his fingers. After a few moments of her struggle, Steve removes his fingers and wipes the wetness down her sternum, right between the valley of her breasts. 

“It was Bucky’s idea to come here tonight, so I think he should have you first. Buck?” 

Toni’s expression is dazed as they arrange her on the king bed, spread out lengthwise with her head off of the edge, straightening the passage between her mouth and her throat. She is the perfect doll for them, soft and malleable and suggestible and everything she does is with the gentlest joy: joy to serve them. Her face is faintly flushed from resting upside down, wet hair pulled down by gravity, but she opens her mouth without question at the sight of Bucky’s cock. The sight has his own hand trembling where it reaches down to rest on her throat. 

“Hand up, sweet thing,” he murmurs to her. “And keep it up where I can see it.” 

The bed depresses as Steve crawls on between her legs, coaxing her hips to lift so he can slide the last scrap of clothing off of her. She’s incredible, spread out before them: tanned and naked with breasts that barely fill his palms and stretch marks like lightning on her hips and a patch of trimmed, dark hair just above her cunt. Steve slides a thumb up her slit (the both of them delighting in the way her legs jerk, the hand not held in the air scrabbling against the bedsheets) and holds it up for Bucky to see the way it shines. 

“That from us or from the press conference?” Bucky teases. 

The sound Toni makes in response isn’t sensical. She’s down too far to converse, to play into their teasing. Now she can only be afflicted with it, stroked higher by it. Bucky rubs a soothing thumb along her throat, where the head of his cock will soon be buried. The other hand reaches out to draw her raised palm closer where he can brush his lips against it. “Don’t worry Toni, you just focus on being good for us, ‘n that means keeping your hand up unless you want me to stop. Understand?” 

Her fingertips wiggle, tickling at his nose, an affirmative. 

Taking his leaking cock into his hand, he guides it towards the open heat of her mouth. “Well then,” he says. “Let’s see who else this mouth can take apart tonight.”

[katsidhe]

Fic: vladimir and estragon are dead [15.19 coda]

AO3

Summary: what plea, what surrender, will a bored God possibly accept at this late hour?

The world is empty.

They drive across a landscape that is only a little more desolate than it always has been. This is their end and their beginning, this is where their roads always lead: to highways with no cars for miles, empty backwaters and ghost towns. This time it’s only slightly more literal. The fulcrum of the universe shifts and tilts with them; the center of mass of the earth moves devastatingly, tenderly.

Sam waits for the gutting claustrophobia to kick in, and finds that he can’t make the feeling truly latch on. Maybe it’s because it’s always been here, curled up in his heart like a parasite. It’s not that Sam isn’t used to the idea of a prison larger than a planet, creation as a dark and empty pit, company laughably limited. He finds his mind instead attempting to flit over more practical concerns. When will the electrical grid fail? How many fires have already started, set by unattended stoves, how many cities are burning? How long until every light winks out, until darkness and silence returns to swallow the trappings of civilization?

Cas is dead, and he has died so many times, they’re all dead, they’ve all died so many times, but the pain still squeezes his heart, catches him under the collarbone like a knife. It hurts moving, breathing. But the losses Sam carries mean nothing compared to the weight of what he has personally managed to erase. His stubborn spite, his fetid desire to carve out a life for himself and his tiny family, his rebelliousness managed to get the fucking multiverse killed. Sam has never been to Asia, but now four billion people who lived there are gone. It is absurd to mourn. It is absurd to exist.

Sam won’t allow himself to feel the grief but he will permit the guilt to cripple him. What does it matter if he’s crippled? What does any of it matter? His defiance led to this: a blank page. An empty canvas.

When they reach the Bunker, the stars are bright above. It is the impossible, cold glory of a vast aquarium, viewed from the inside.

They drink together in the quiet. More accurately, they attempt to. Dean gamely downs pull after pull of whiskey. Sam tries. The first shot has him retching, spitting like it’s battery acid. He vomits on the library floor.

Dean laughs meanly, says, “I can drink for both of us.”

Sam looks up and meets his eyes and feels his face twist into a rictus laugh too. He finishes being sick and he doesn’t clean up, doesn’t bother. Cleaning, like many things, is not a concept.

It doesn’t feel like the world has ended down here, even though Sam knows it has. Could be any other day, miles and miles from civilization, insulated underground behind wards that keep out anything short of a god (or anything without the keys). This hole in the ground doesn’t feel vaster or emptier than it normally does. The wider world has never existed in this space; this is the center of the entire universe, just the two of them.

Dean passes out at some point, and Sam lays his head down too. He strips down to one layer, tosses his overshirts at a chair, kicks off his shoes, then his socks. He runs his fingers over the smooth grain of the table, over and over and over. He feels the worst kind of drunk, dizzy and lightheaded with a pounding headache. He should drink some water. He should eat some food. He won’t, though. Who’s depending on him now? For what purpose should his body be fueled? What power, fair or foul, mundane or magical, ought to keep his bones from collapsing in on themselves, into bloody withered dust?

“How do you summon God?” Dean asks muzzily, when he blinks awake again under the golden fluorescent light.

”Maybe the amulet,“ Sam offers. He’s been picturing it mutely all night, turning it over and over in his head, with the weight of heavy responsibility.

It’s dragged out of hiding. The brass is not just warm to the touch, it’s searingly hot. It burns Sam’s fingers when he tries to take it out of the box: even the barest brush of the cord makes him flinch away. Dean wraps his shirt around his hands and tries, and swears. The heat is not diminished one degree. Eventually Sam just takes the entire memory box, upends it messily on the library counter, uses a broken pencil to fish out the amulet and dump it in the metal bowl, among the herbs and the roots and the bones of a small furred creature.

By silent agreement they take everything outside, blinking in the bright dawn chill, leaving Jack to his miserable sleep. Sam is still barefoot. The sharp gravel opens tiny wounds. Shoes seem a pointless inconvenience, some petty barrier between himself and the world, and for what? What can reach him now?

It’s the strongest summoning spell Sam knows. Enochian and Sumerian, to call like to like, to invoke heavenly power. A sigil Rowena taught him, that inscribes itself in purple flame.

He chants quietly in the stillness. The amulet flares in blinding white light, but as the brilliance dampens Sam can make it out when it melts, when it dwindles into pointless black sludge. Dean touches the bowl briefly. Sam feels nothing.

Not that it matters. He knows Chuck can hear them. He prays, too, with belief and desperation he hasn’t felt in years. He gets on his knees, and after a moment, Dean joins him. It makes Sam’s heart twist.

They pray to a God who is not absent. The spot in his shoulder where Sam shot God and himself aches sharply. God wants him to suffer, he knows. He understands where they live now, in a wasteland with something that hates them. This is familiar territory. They are Chuck’s entertainment, his bulwark against a devastating darkness.

Nothing and nobody shows. Sam shifts from his knees into a full-body prostration, doesn’t look to see if Dean does the same. Instead, he buries his face in the dirt. Tears still won’t come. It’s not  that he’s numb. He’s just had too much practice, that’s all. Please, he prays, please, he is so sorry, he will bear any humiliation, any torment, he will bear any trial, please, for mercy—

A thought, a message, or a memory. Will you, Sam? Will you? What will you do for me? Will you cut out your heart for me, hold it in your hand, will you eat it?

And Sam knows this isn’t enough. Of course not, their mere surrender is never what Chuck wanted. Sam knows what Chuck wants, right? He’s lived it long enough. Chuck wants to watch.

“Dean,” Sam says. He sits up and brushes dirt from his face. Dean is already standing. Staring up at the risen sun. He’s holding his knife. He’s figured it out too.

“I know,” Dean says.

Still on his knees, Sam looks at the knife. “We have to make it good,” he says. “Not too fast, right?”

Dean stares down at him in horrific fury. There are tears in his eyes. “This is fucked.”

Sam smiles like a flinch, just at the corners of his mouth. “Not like we haven’t been here before,” he says. “It’s okay.”

Dean comes a step closer. Close enough. Hit me, Dean, Sam thinks, Sam urges. He wants it with his whole being, invites it. The whole universe sings with the cosmic rightness of it. The new sun wants this to happen, the sky the Kansas fields the deep blue sea God in his Heaven and the Devil in his Hell, every molecule, every uncounted star and every grain of sand wants this. Sam wants this, with sublime intensity.

Sam wants to say the words to summon Dean’s wrath, but in this moment he can’t remember them. Maybe just being is enough. It should be. Maybe just kneeling here in the dew-damp grass will be enough, to fan the sense-memories. It is for Sam. He can feel the tears coming, for the first time since the world ended.

Dean’s face forces itself into something like a snarl. It’s ugly. “I’m not torturing you, asshole,” he says.

Sam shrugs, with one shoulder. His other hurts with an abominable, shooting pain. “Gut wound?” he suggests. This time he does smile.

Dean scoffs. “You do me first,” he says. He takes Sam’s arm and drags him upright. He paws at his belt, brings out his gun, and presses it into Sam’s hands.

Sam doesn’t fumble on the slide, on the grip. His fingers check the weapon and click off the safely with automatic efficiency. He nods loosely. He understands. This too is the sacrifice demanded, and neither of them may shirk their parts.

“At the same time, then,” Sam says.

Dean scrubs his hand over his face. He nods.

“Chuck!” Dean screams. “Chuck, this is for you! You’d better fucking FIX THIS! Bring them back, bring them all back. Here’s your goddamn ending.”

He looks at Sam, and Sam looks at him. Sam puts his hand on Dean’s shoulder, to keep them both upright. Dean grips his arm with painful intensity. When the knife slides into Sam’s abdomen, and twists in a burst of breathless star-bright agony, some puzzle piece of the universe slots into alignment. When Sam’s fingers bury the muzzle between their bodies and pull the trigger, crimson relief overtakes him in a flood.

Their breath releases in a gasp. For long, impossible moments they remain upright, swaying, foreheads pressed together. Sam wants to clutch instinctively at the fatal wound, but that would mean releasing the gun or releasing his grip on Dean’s shoulder, both absurd impossibilities. Dean’s hand is cold on his arm but so warm in the mess of his stomach.

An eternity later they stagger apart. Sam watches fascinated as his breath mists in the dawn air.  He gasps again as the knife slides out and drops, as the gun drops next to it. Now finally his fingers are permitted to explore the bloody gape of his torso. His searching eyes meet Dean’s, similarly poleaxed. Now his brother’s face has relaxed into half a grin, high on gory oblivion.

“Together,” Dean breathes, on a trickle of blood. “Hah.”

Sam nods. They’re both sinking inwards, gravity dragging them down. Where will they go, he wonders, with Death’s death, God’s spite, the world’s emptiness. Somewhere either better or worse than here, he decides, and it doesn’t matter which.

“Picturesque enough?” Dean spits at the sky. His smile is broadening. His eyes are red. He’s hungover, or actually, still drunk, Sam thinks. Blurry with misery. Sam is only drunk on guilt.

The sun climbs higher. Sam breathes in bloody panting gasps and watches red mud form around them. He and Dean aren’t touching anymore, and somehow that too feels right. He can listen and watch Dean curled into himself and dying out of the corner of his half-slitted eye. The heat of the new day builds, skimming over them like the brush of a giant hand. The pain in his shoulder splits him through, worse than the pain in his gut. When he coughs, the world itself shudders.

The blood pools in grass and dirt, forming little eddies and ponds. Like an ecosystem, Sam thinks. He tries to imagine a new world springing up from where he and Dean are soaking into the soil—fresh life, a microcosm of new biota. It’s all he wants. But the only image he can picture is the slick of black oil sheen at dusty gas stations, the unnatural rainbow opalescence of toxic reflections, a poison where nothing at all can grow. He doesn’t pray for meaning, but he wishes he were allowed to. Like in the Cage, it carries the sick certainty that the only God that can hear him is one that certainly means him ill.

Between one blink and the next, Chuck is standing on the grass, loafers brushing the pooled blood. “Hey, guys,” he says. He’s smiling, only very faintly.

“Bring them back,” rasps Dean. He’s nearly gone. They’re both nearly gone. “We did what you wanted.”

Chuck doesn’t respond. Doesn’t do anything like pull up a lawn chair, either, like Sam might have expected—just stands and stares with perfect inhuman attention.

Sam doesn’t feel it when Dean dies, but he knows it happened. When Sam dies, God is still watching over him.

Chuck is smiling when Sam gasps back to life, when he hears Dean gagging a few feet away. Sam recognizes the expression, because he’s seen it before, in a dim and bloody tunnel, in a different universe.