#all of these will be historically inaccurate at one point or another

[hopelessromantic5]

Alright.

This is a Masters of the Air snippet of mine. Just a small one. I’ll probably post most of the longer ones on ao3.

This is Buck and Bucky, post-war, in Wyoming.

Gale spends a month in Wyoming after the war, with no word from Bucky.

Marge visits, though they called off the wedding long before he left the Stalag. She stops to make sure he’s…well, alive. Brings casserole dishes that Gale can’t find it in himself to eat until he’s dizzy with hunger.

It’s a quiet, early summer morning when Buck hears the rumbling sound of an engine, and tires on the gravel road.

He freezes, an instinct any time someone ventures down his road.

He’s the only one still living on this particular dirt road, rest of the houses long abandoned and dilapidated.

Marge was supposed to be in Mills with her parents all week.

Who else knows-

Oh.

There’s only one other person on Earth who knows or cares where Buck is.

The realization almost sent him running down the road to greet him. Instead, as his breathing picked up in adrenaline and excitement that always accompanied John, he smoothed his hair back and ran a hand down the front of his button up shirt, hoping he didn’t look horrible.

Of course, John had seen him at his absolute worst, but logic really wasn’t in the cards just then.

The sounds got closer just as the single cab blue truck came into view.

With some kinda trailer on the back?

Buck would ask after seeing Bucky’s face on American soil for the first time since they left Texas years ago.

Then he was there, like he never left.

“Hell, Cleven, you never told me you lived in the middle of nowhere.”

Bucky grinned, slamming the truck in park and climbing out of the drivers seat before he had the chance turned the engine off.

Buck caught him when John launched himself into his arms. They were both gasping, like neither had breathed real air in a month.

“What took you so long?” Buck whispered into his shoulder, eyes closed, absorbing Bucky wherever he could. The smell of his aftershave mixed with lucky strikes, the span of his broad back under Gale’s hands.

“Had to get something first.” Bucky leaned back just enough to smirk at him, hands not leaving Buck’s waist.

“Go have a look.”

Buck furrowed his eyebrows in confusion,

“What-“

Then Bucky moved out of his line of sight, and he finally caught the movement of something in his peripheral.

He zeroed in on the trailer attached to Bucky’s truck, and found that something was alive in there.

Was that a-

“Bucky! Is that-“

“Yes, it is.” There was soft grin on John’s face, but it was still shit-eating and proud of himself.

Gale almost kissed him on the spot, but he would never ruin a moment like this with his impulsiveness.

“How in the hell did you manage that?” Gale’s feet were already bringing him closer to the animal hovering by the slats.

“Saved up for a while, and the extra check they sent certainly didn’t hurt.”

“Why? Why buy a horse?” Gale asked, looking back at him.

John furrowed his own brows, looking at Buck like he was crazy.

“Why did I- Buck, she’s yours. I bought her for you.”

“You did what?” Gale must’ve misheard, surely.

John chuckled, shaking his head. He stepped closer to both Gale and the horse.

“Let’s start over.” He said. After clearing his throat and effectively avoiding his eyes by focusing on the filly.

“Buck, considering that you’re letting me freeload in your ginormous house and bother you frequently, and as a partial thank you for getting me through the worst time in both of our lives, I bought you a horse. This is Blue. Named because, while she has a grey coat, in certain lights, it looks blue, like a stormy sky.”

Gale didn’t know what to say. He couldn’t speak.

So John, added a post script.

“Not that this will ever come close to evening our score. But I thought it might help. I remember what you told me, about your first horse. And how nothing was ever the same. I wanted to at least give you the chance at something like that again.”

A tear fell from Buck’s eye before he reeled Bucky into an almost bruising hug. Holding him so tight, Bucky thought it might leave a mark. He wanted it to leave a mark. He wanted to remember this moment for the rest of his life.

“Thank you.” Buck whispered. “No one’s ever done anything like this for me before.”

“Get used to it.” John quipped back, softly, causing Gale to laugh into his neck.

[caffeinewitchcraft]

WIBTA for going to my high school reunion even though the two witches I stripped of magic are going?

(Read for free on Patreon (X))

I (28 witch) was in a coven during high school. Not really even a coven. We weren’t recognized and there wasn’t a clear division of responsibilities. We did have a high priestess but she hadn’t Declared or been Initiated or whatever she believed. Looking back, her learning was all over the place (and a little problematic, honestly. I remember her calling a poppet a Voodoo doll before being called out by another member). Let’s call her Sarah.

Sarah was a year older than the rest of us (still the same grade though) and her mom was a witch so that made her the high priestess. She was the one who would organize all of our rituals and held the power of veto over any proposed spells. While you think that’d mean she’d provide the ingredients, she never did. She did tell us what to buy and, let me tell you, some of those things were expensive for a high schooler. We met in the park behind her house, and she demanded that at least one of us be in every one of her classes. If we weren’t, we’d be “cycled” out of the coven until our parents convinced the school to transfer us in.

Any alt kid knows what I’m talking about because they had a Sarah in their life. If she was angry, we had to be angry (and a little afraid of her). If she was sad, we were expected to ask why. If she was happy, we had to be even more happy. You get the picture.

The problem came when Sarah added Jess (fake name) to the Coven during the start of our junior year. It was the first time Sarah allowed someone else from a witch family to join. Jess was a transfer student from England. She told us all that that made her magic deeper and more powerful because she was a “daughter of the witches you could not burn.” When I pointed out that that statement is historically inaccurate, Jess called me a “pilgrim.” She tried to convince Sarah to blind me (take away my decision-making power in the coven), but I was the only one with reliable access to dried herbs (my mom’s a botanist and didn’t count her stores like Sarah’s mom did), so Sarah said no.

Jess’ dislike of me got worse when I actually did dress like a pilgrim for Halloween that year. And, if I’m honest, I did take it a little far. I was a hot-headed kid. I followed her around the entire day and had kids sign one of two petitions – “Burn” or “Not Burn.” When the Burn Petition won, I could tell I went too far (there were a LOT of signatures).  I tried to make it a joke and told her that now she really was a witch we couldn’t burn.

Jess and I got in our first physical fight. Sarah eventually broke it up, but not before Jess ripped out a good chunk of my hair, and I broke the tiger’s eye bracelet she wore.

 I later heard from another coven member that Jess tried to lay a curse on me that night. Unfortunately for her, I was pretty interested in defensive work and had a fresh witch’s jar buried under my window. Her curse got caught in it and rebounded. Apparently, that’s how Jess got pink eye, not from her younger sister.

We fought like cats and dogs. Any time Jess would talk about England, I’d make fun of her accent. When I brought up what spell I’d like to do, Jess would call me a juvenile pilgrim. Eventually, Jess got smart. She’d text me insults rather than say them to my face so that she’d have a chance to tattle to Sarah before I got the chance to hit back.

Sarah pulled me aside at least three times to “address” the fights. She basically said that I needed to respect Jess more because she came from a witch family, like her. She told me I could learn a lot from Jess if I stopped acting like a human. When I pointed out that we are humans, just humans who have elected to use magic, she got really mad.

And when Sarah got mad, she could make life really difficult.

My spell for luck on midterms got passed over for Jess’ jinx on our English teacher. The jinx worked and Ms. Edel tripped, but guess who still came to class with a broken leg? MS. EDEL. Guess who failed their midterm?

ALL SEVEN OF US.

Damn, I can’t believe I’m still upset by this petty high school drama. Therapy did not work.

So safe to say that Jess and I never became friends. I love magic now and loved it then, but she took it so seriously. I’ve always believed magic should be fun. All the spells she brought to the coven required a spirit element—blood, hair, sacrifice. One of the members was a strict green witch and had to drop out because of it. We missed two full moons until Sarah approved Eileen to rejoin after she woke up from her coma.

(And before anyone freaks out about the coma – we all ended up in comas here and there. We were a bunch of uneducated and untrained baby witches who all had different belief systems. The fact that there wasn’t anything worse than a coma is a miracle. She wasn’t traumatized by it any more than I was by mine.)

Jess and I mostly avoided each other for the rest of the year. We always voted against the other’s spell and I’m fairly certain she tried to trip jinx me in the hall as often as I tried to trip jinx her. Sarah never tried to diffuse the tension between us. She confided in Eileen that she was grateful we kept each other in check.

Things could have continued on that way until we all moved away for college (or repeated the year after failing all those midterms) if it weren’t for the vernal equinox. Or, as we inaccurately called it, the Spring Solstice.

The way it worked was that we all got to propose a ritual during equinoxes. They’re powerful magical events on their own and when you bring intent to the party? They were always our biggest, most successful workings.

Sarah always chose what we did on those days. She pretended like we got to vote, but we all knew she would never choose one of our rituals. My freshman year, she made us all do one for beauty. Because it was a “make real what is in the eye of the beholder” type, some of our transformations were a little…traumatizing. I’m only telling you this so you understand the power an equinox has, okay? I do not think this way anymore. Other members were just as extreme. Eileen went from a Wendy from Wendy’s to a Jessica Rabbit. And I…

Well.

I grew rabbit ears and teeth. That doesn’t make me a furry! Who Framed Roger Rabbit? was super influential on BOTH Eileen and me. I was a kid and didn’t understand my own concept of beauty. It took almost three months before I got the ears to go away entirely.

Suffice it to say, we were all excited and nervous for what ritual Sarah would pick, which is why it was a blow to find out that she had picked a ritual - Jess’ ritual.

A ritual for power.

I didn’t want to do it from day one, okay? My belief is that whatever magic comes to you naturally is what’s okay to take. I think if you rip magic up from the earth or the abyss, it’ll change you. Maybe even corrupt you or change your personality.

But I was a kid and didn’t know how to explain that. Jess and Sarah were both from witch families and they seemed to think it was okay. Even though I didn’t like Jess, I did see her as a more “authentic” witch because of that. I know better now, but as a kid seeing all of her grimoires, I gave her false authority.

Jess explained the ritual to us over the next month. She talked about how we were going to be “tested.” The ritual would pull our spiritual selves from our bodies, and depending on how long we chanted, we’d return to them with more or less magic than when we started. She said that everyone in her family did it when they turned 18.

It wasn’t until three days before the equinox that she told us what would happen if one of us were to be judged unworthy.

“Mostly nothing,” she said. I remember her exact words, how her black hair spun as she soared through the air on the swings. We stood in a half circle before her and Sarah as they swung higher and higher. An audience to their aerial court. She said, “Sometimes people lose some of their magic. When the ritual decides they don’t deserve it.”

Eileen asked, “When the ritual decides? It’s sentient?”

“There’s an overseer we’ll call on,” Sarah said. She’d been the only one allowed to read Jess’ grimoire. Her lip curled and she leaned forward so she could look down over Eileen like an avenging angel as she swung overhead. “An impartial entity.”

“I am not a deity witch,” I said. I had long ago committed that I would never call on a higher being in any ritual. Most of our spells had to be modified for me so that I could swear to the cardinal directions rather than to the Morrigan or Hecate. “You know that.”

“You’re not swearing to anyone,” Sarah said and rolled her eyes.

“Which means no one is swearing to us,” Eileen muttered under her breath. But I could tell she had given up by the slump of her shoulders.

“It’s only the unworthy who lose their magic,” Jess reassured. Her eyes flashed at me. “Scared you’re unworthy?”

Yes. I was scared. I know better now than to think lineage has any place in witchcraft. It’s about the magic, always just the magic. But months of hearing their rhetoric had worn at my self-esteem. It really felt like if I didn’t do the ritual, I was as good as admitting I wasn’t a witch. If I did do the ritual…

Well. Obviously, I did the ritual.

I was a hot-headed teen, okay? I felt challenged. I decided that I would wear extra protections. Tiger’s eye and quartz charged with intention. I picked out a silver locket my mother gave me, filled with belladonna. She told me it symbolized beauty and choice.

Now, here’s where I may be the asshole.

I can’t give you a play-by-play of the ritual. It was ten years ago, and calling on that much magic has a funny way of warping memory. But what I do remember is this:

We gathered in the park before sunrise. Seven of us in new colors – spring green, white, soft yellow and pink. Jess made us get rid of anything with a working on it – crystals, cards, and ladders. She collected them all in a linen bag and threw them into the woods. I couldn’t get away with my tiger’s eye or quartz, but she missed the pendant my mother gave me. It was a warm comfort against my chest as we began.

We lit the fire together, each of us frantically thumbing our lighter to make sure the sparks caught at the same time.

Jess brought the chalice. We all cut our palms and let seven drops fall into it. (No, we didn’t use a clean blade. My cut got infected as hell and it itches like a witch. I know better now!) She bade us drink, and we did.

“Now the magic will see us as equal,” Sarah said while Jess prepared the next step. She licked her lips as if savoring the blood. “It will only be our wills determining the outcome.”

Jess doused us with oil and herbs. It smelled sharp and uneasy. I had provided the herbs and knew all of them were either fresh or dried to perfection. But it was rancid. There was rot in the air, but I couldn’t place it then. I wrinkled my nose and took up the chanting with the others to distract myself from the smell.

If you’ve ever chanted before, you know the stages. First, you’re just talking. You say the words and they mean something, but you don’t feel them. Then your mouth gets tired. You start messing up the timing of the words. You stutter. You stumble. The words lose meaning. Most people stop there. They fall silent and sink into a shallow meditation with heads full of fog.

You’re only a witch if you can reach the next step. You keep saying the words. They become comfortable. You wear the words like clothes and feel your cadence curl through you like a companion. Your body goes on autopilot and your mind relaxes. The chant turns smooth as silk. Depending on the chant, you lose yourself to the sweetness of your coven singing. Sometimes, you sink into the earth with them. Other times, you ride the flow of the magic like waves.

This time, the words pulled us away from our bodies. Jess slowly introduced new words to our chant. Words of summoning.

We called upon the Overseer.

Pressure fell around me like a vice. I couldn’t breathe even as the ritual fell from my lips without breaking. Magic had, at that point, always given me control. This? This was a complete loss of it.

I felt myself compressing. Smaller and smaller in the face of the being that was rising in the middle of the flames. It was not an observer. The moment I “saw” it, its endless form writhing in the space between the smoke, I knew that. It was a judge and jury.

It was a spider.

We chanted. It grew. It pulled us from our bodies like spiderweb and spooled our essences onto its forelimbs. It was not what Jess described and, simultaneously, it was. We were being tested. Our psyches were being tested.

So long as we chanted, the being would be contained. However, the longer it was contained, the more of us it could take. If we let it go, what would it do? Would it return any part of our magic to us? Any part of who we were?

Or would it eat?

This wasn’t a test of magic. It was a test of faith. Faith in each other and faith in the ritual.

For those practitioners out there, you can see the problem. I didn’t enter the ritual with faith. My intent was flawed from the beginning. We’d had spells fail because of lack of belief. I had never been the person who didn’t believe.

Until then

My words wavered. The Overseer turned its eyes to me. I could see my magic like thread before it, shimmering against the backdrop of its maw.

Then another tremor. Eileen dropped a word. The Overseer split and looked at both of us. Someone else faltered. One of the coven – I couldn’t see them – fell and went silent.

The sky yawned overhead, empty and cold. The embers from the fire spun up into it and were lost. The Overseer rippled and I felt our coven shrink in the face of it.

I gasped around the chant and looked across the fire. The light licked Jess’ gleeful face. Her eyes hungered for my failure. I could see it. Through the connection of the Overseer, I could feel it.

Jess and Sarah changed the chant. To this day, I don’t remember if they taught it to the rest of us. There are so many parts of the ritual that I’ve left out or forgotten. But I remember them chanting different words. The circle grew discordant.

“I offer my magic so I may be unspun and woven anew,” they said. The words have imprinted themselves like bitters under my tongue. “I offer my magic so I may—”

Some of the other members tried to pick up the new chant. Their voices grew weaker and the Overseer’s limbs began to extend out towards each one of us.

I wouldn’t offer my magic to that thing. I wouldn’t be unspun.  Eileen was stuttering. I saw her fall to her knees. I was close behind.

I threw my necklace into the flames.

Belladonna. Beautiful and deadly. It has meant choice to many women and many of them have been from my own family. It's extreme and it’s final. An end that doesn’t always make room for a new beginning.

Pretty words that cover up what I meant when I threw it into the Overseer.

My intent was Death.

Entities never die. I’m sure the Overseer didn’t. It howled. The wind kicked up and brought the flames into a spiral ten feet tall. Its forelimbs shattered, and I reeled myself back together greedily.

Not all of us were safe from the Overseer’s desperate struggle against my death curse.

Sarah and Jess were alone in the third phase of the ritual. They had changed the chant. They had offered their magic and asked the entity to do with it what it will. They believed.

And because they believed, the Overseer took their magic with it.

I think it was the first coma Jess ever fell into. Her family certainly acted like it. They whisked her back to the East Coast before the end of the year. I heard from Eileen that she woke up shortly after I left for college.

Magicless.

Sarah too.

I fully own that I was responsible for the ritual failing. I panicked. I’ve gone through every excuse over the years. I didn’t know what the ritual really was. I was just a kid. I took magic too lightly. It was their fault for not letting us read the grimoire for ourselves. But, at the end of the day, the real reason the ritual failed was because I panicked and I let that panic break my belief.

I moved on to college and it felt like running away. I’ve never returned to my hometown. I’m happy with the life I’ve built. My magic summer camp gives me time to travel during the winter months, and I feel like I’m making a real difference in young witches’ lives.

Nowadays I teach young witches to never do a working without full intent. If they have doubts, they don’t do it. It’s a lesson I learned the hard way ten years ago. I tell them it can cost them more than their magic. It can cost them their lives.

Eileen is still back home and she says Sarah rarely comes out of her house. Sometimes she sees our former high priestess wandering the school grounds on nights of the full moon. I hear from other members of the coven that Jess’ family put out a bounty on me a few years ago. However, I never saw an assassin so I think that was just a rumor.

So, knowing that they’re still not over it, would I be the asshole for attending my high school reunion next month? I’ve been craving reconnection with my roots, but I’d be subjecting Sarah and Jess (though Jess marked Maybe on the RSVP) to my presence.

I know they must hold a grudge. If they were still witches, that would be a problem. I don’t think I’d be able to defend myself from one of their workings since I blame myself for what happened. But since they’re not, it’s not really a danger. That’s pretty asshole-ish, right? Ignoring their feelings because they don’t have the magic to back it up?

So WIBTA for attending my high school reunion even though the two girls I stripped of magic will be attending?

-----

Thanks for reading! It looks like I'll have quite a few updates for the anthology! I am still obsessed with this format and can't wait to share some of the updates over the next few weeks.

If you'd like to support me before the anthology, please consider supporting me on Patreon (X)! I post new stories every week and many of my patrons saw the above story a week early.

The current AITA story takes place in the same universe as our former Cryptid (X). About a poor, poor boy who is just proud to be a regional Nightmare. Why is everyone so mad at him?

See y'all next week!

[actualhumantrashcan]

I can understand a silly workplace comedy about pirates not being everyone’s jam but I really can’t understand the amount of queer people I see hating on ofmd.

like for one thing most of the debates turn into gatekeeping queerness (which I think has a lot more to do with the ages of the main couples than actual concerns about authentic representation but that’s another post) and the rest are just hateful because it doesn’t directly name or label it’s queer characters but like why do we need that at this point?? listen I love heartstopper with all my heart but it is exhausting to watch them explain queer identities sometimes (even though I do think it’s super useful for younger audiences I’m just not the target demographic!) and ofmd is an explicit, violent, adult show that doesn’t NEED to explain it’s character’s identities.

queer people past their 30’s are usually very well aware of their queerness and have had (hopefully) plenty of time to go through the arc of discovering that. so why would we need to see Stede or Lucius or Ed going through turmoil because they’re attracted to men when they have already come to terms with that at this point in their lives?? i for one find it so fucking refreshing to watch a show where the characters being queer is not their main arc, they just ARE queer and life is still happening to and around them. maybe that’s just the millennial gay in me talking, but it gets emotionally exhaustive to watch show after show where the queer character’s arc is overcoming homophobia. yes obviously homophobia still exists and yes obviously if ofmd was trying to be historically accurate these characters would be living in a very dangerous time to be queer but it isn’t trying to be accurate!! it’s trying to be fun and diverse and kind!!

and also, they aren’t pretending homophobia doesn’t exist!! it’s just addressed in a different way. Stede was emotionally abused by his father for his entire life for being “soft” and then was chased down by his homophobic childhood bullies, one of which explicitly told him that he “defiled” the great pirate Blackbeard by simply falling in love with the man behind that name. Meanwhile Ed was forced into the world of piracy at a young age and developed the entire persona of Blackbeard (who fits the toxic, violent masculine stereotype of the time) to hide the fact that he’s actually an incredibly sensitive and deeply queer man! and is told multiple times by male figures in his life that sex with other men is fine but it is absolutely unacceptable to be in love with a man. both of their arcs contain homophobic rhetoric that is still present in society today, but its never presented as a problem that they have to wrestle with. they don’t have to come to terms with what it means to love each other, they just have to overcome some trials that go along with the complicated lives they both lead as a pirate and former aristocrat. the homophobia in ofmd is woven into the backstory of each and every character, it shapes them into the people they are at the beginning of the show when all of their walls are up and they are performing the “pirate” roles they are supposed to play. and then we get to see them grow and realize that they are in a safe space, part of a community not just on the ship itself but in the life of piracy (which in the show is pretty much explicitly an allegory for queer lifestyles.)

anyway, I could rant about this all day but just truly why do we have to tear people down for enjoying something? why do we have to find reasons to hate something so obviously created with sensitivity to it’s queer audience and with so much queer joy? if historically inaccurate gay pirates going on silly adventures and falling in love are not your thing, fine! but perhaps just let people enjoy things and find your own things to enjoy.

[ghostyeyestohide]

Between Us

Pairing: Macrinus (Gladiator II) x Cassia (Plus Size Black Fem OC)

Warnings: SMUT, 18+ (MINORS, SCROLL AWAY), buildup (if you got the attention span of a squirrel, DONT READ), oral sex (f receiving, m receiving), titty sucking/fondling, worshipping, some bisexuality (kissing and handjob from m), choking, some masdom, some edging, dirty talk, praise kink, creampie, age gap, slight voyeurism, cussing, aftercare, drinking, some angst, pregnancy, mentions of violence, slavery, and death, and Non-Canon/Canon (Spoilers if you haven’t seen it).

Summary: After watching the intense fight between Hanno and General Acacius, Cassia is assigned as a reward to Macrinus, in which he takes her away to spend some private time with her.

A/N: Wanted to write because I saw this and Denzel was not only evil as hell, but fine doing it. That’s a generational talent right there. Also, I do apologize if some of this is historically inaccurate or the language is nowhere close to it. I love social studies, but I know my knowledge of Roman History is quite rusty.

🜲 🜲 🜲 🜲 🜲 🜲 🜲 🜲 🜲 🜲 🜲 🜲 🜲 🜲 🜲 🜲 🜲 🜲 🜲 🜲 🜲 🜲 🜲 🜲

do not copy or repost my work. I do not authorize it.

🜲 🜲 🜲 🜲 🜲 🜲 🜲 🜲 🜲 🜲 🜲 🜲 🜲 🜲 🜲 🜲 🜲 🜲 🜲 🜲 🜲 🜲 🜲 🜲

Citizens in the Colosseum are going crazy, watching Hanno and General Acacius fight after the latter and his wife, Lucilla, attempted to overthrow emperors Greta and Caracalla to restore an oligarchy republic.

The crowd gets rowdy as the guards, arms with bow and arrows, are making sure they don’t riot during this.

Watching the fight from crowd is Cassia, an arm scarred, tall, voluptuous woman, sitting with her fellow sisters as their owner, Dominus, stands behind them with a stoneface expression.

“Kill him!” said Aelia, one of the girls, with the audience joining in on the cheering.

“All that yelling, yet you can’t seem to bring me more clients.” mumbled Dominus, making her look at him.

“Tell them to be gentle then. Especially to the newbie because they seem to like attempting murder on her.” she said, pointing at Cassia.

“She’s just disobedient. She’ll get there one day.” he said, gently touching her shoulder, making her shudder.

“That will be a cold day in hell.” said Cassia.

“I didn’t waste all that money on you just so you can refuse to do what you got paid to do.”

“It’s not like I had a choice.”

“And guess what? You’re my biggest attraction since I bought you, so you need to give in!”

“Nobody wants to please a bunch of rough, two minute silencers every night!” she replied, going back to watching the fight.

Suddenly, she feels her hair being yanked back, forcing her to look at Dominus’ face, a dark glare expressed over his face.

“You’re lucky we’re in public, but after we leave, you’re on punishment for the night. You get no dinner, just straight to be—“

Suddenly, a metal object strikes him across the face, making him let her hair go. As he looks to see who threw that, two guards stand next to him, holding their spears at him, close enough to stab him.

“What the hell..”

“He said to quit messing with his reward or else.” said the tall one.

“Or what?” he replied, preparing to strike.

“Wanna find out right now?”

Dominus doesn’t say nothing, just puffs out really hard. The guards puts their spears down and walks away, not saying another word to him.

“What do they mean reward?” she asks, looking at him.

“If Hanno wins, you’re someone’s reward for the night. If not…..you’re on punishment.” he replied, getting in her ear.

He goes back to his position, watching the fight with Cassia doing the same, with a bit of fear in her eyes. Who’s the stranger? I’m now a reward? I hope he isn’t like the clients I’ve dealt were racing in her mind as Hanno slices Acacius, making everyone gasp.

“COME ON, ACACIUS! FIGHT BACK!” yelled Aelia, stopping her feet to give him adrenaline.

Cassia giggled, impressed that Aelia finds this very entertaining as she doesn’t get it herself. Sure, the idea of being free sounds understandable, but you have to kill other gladiators? That’s the questionable part.

“Seen that gentleman looking at you over there?” asked Diana, another girl, as she pointed at him.

Following her direction, she looks into the boxes and sees an older, bearded black gentleman covered in gold jewelry, a white dress, and a gold tunic looking at her, intrigued by her beauty. He sends a wink at her, making her blush and look away as the sounds of swords clanging gets louder.

“You know him?”

“Kind of. I know he’s close with Hanno since he trains him and the other gladiators.”

“Ahh. So he’s their owner.”

“Yeah. Very brutal too.”

“Not surprising. They make him money, they better give the crowd a good show.”

“Mmhm. But really…..”

She pulls her close, making sure no one else is listening to their conversation before leaning towards her ear.

“They’re saying he wants to be the next emperor of Rome. He wants Geta and Caracalla out and will do anything to make it happen.” she whispered, surprising Cassia.

“Him? To run Rome? That sounds like a dream anyone wants.”

“And he’s determine to make it happen. And if he succeeds by being selected for the senate, he wants a wife that can grant him a heir so the tradition can live on.”

“How did you find all of this out?”

“Two clients me and Meena were pleasuring at once were discussing it openly. I guess they weren’t expecting whores to understand what they were talking about, but I would be cautious if I was them. He’ll get mad if someone leaks his plans.”

Cassia nodded, turning to resume watching the fight. After a few more swings, Hanno wins, making everyone cheer and boo. However, he tosses his sword and kneels in from of him, refusing to kill him.

“He’s not gonna kill him?” asked Cassia, looking at both men on the ground.

“I guess he’s standing in solidarity with the people.” said Diana, shrugging her shoulders.

Greta and Carcalla, irritated with what Hanno did, orders the guards to execute Acacius by shooting him with their arrows, which they complied, instantly killing him.

Members of the crowd begins to attack some of the guards, staring a deadly riot. To avoid being harmed, the women and Dominus depart from their seats, heading downstairs quickly as the emperors do the same, with Macrinus looking at Cassia one more time before she walks outs.

As they reach the bottom of the Colosseum, Dominus turns towards the women, irritation plastered across his face at the chaos going on in the streets.

“I want all of you to head home safely. Diana and Aelia are in charge of you. Don’t try nothing funny because I won’t hesitate to find you if you’re out here, protesting and rioting.” he uttered, giving each one a stern look.

The woman began to line up as a group, but he stops Cassia from joining them.

“Except you, Cassia. Your winner is waiting for us over here.” he said before walking towards where the gladiators were stationed at.

Cassia bids farewell to her sisters before following him, getting right in front as he directs which way to go.

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Dominus walks behind her as they past a lot of gladiators eating in the dining room.

Each are taken aback by her beauty and figure, with some whistling, some flirting, and some attempts of touching were made, but Dominus’ hollow stare scares them away.

“….do you just love to wait to inform us when you put us as rewards or this is just business for you?”

“Business.” he replied, making her roll her eyes.

As they got to where Hanno was, Macrinus, whose talking to him, turns around, dismissing him. Seeing the both of them, he greets them with a gleeful smile, walking up to them.

“Dominus! Good to see you, my boy! I see you got my reward already intact.” he says, shaking Dominus’ hand.

“Yeah. When she’s behaving right.” he replied, looking at her.

“Fuck you.” she mumbled.

“Excuse you?”

“You heard me. You got those big ass ears for a reason.”

“And who is this beauty?”

“Macrinus, this is Cassia. She’s your reward from today’s victory.” he said, shoving her to the ground.

Macrinus looks at her, very shocked that Dominus tossed her like she wasn’t valuable before sending him a menacing look.

“She’ll accompany you to the celebration and will do anything you request. Just you might have to push her.” he continued.

“And why is that?”

“She’s a disobedient girl. Scaring off clients, cheating me out of money.”

“That’s not true!” she said, irritation in her voice.

Dominus gets in her space, giving her a stern look, which makes her bow her head down.

“Who are you talking to?” he asks, grabbing her face to force her to look at him. “Hm? Who are you raising your voice at?”

“That’s enough, Dominus.” said Macrinus, getting between them. “I don’t need you showing your ass in front of guests now.”

“She was being disrespectful. Someone needs to put her in her place—“

“I don’t give a damn what she did. I won the bet, she’s my reward, and she’ll be with me all night while they’re destroying shit. So, what else can I help you with?” he asks, helping her up.

“I’m just putting her—“

“WHAT else can I help you with? I’m not gonna ask you again and you know how I get if I don’t get an answer.”

Dominus looks at her one more time, before clearing his throat and handing him his bag of jewelry. Macrinus takes it, still keeping his eyes on him.

“I’ll be back at prima noctis hora for her. Make sure she doesn’t harm you, my lord. Ave.” he replied, nodding his head and leaving.

Macrinus watches him leave before turning to Cassia, hopefulness blooming in her eyes. He looks her up and down, taking in a better view of a goddess.

“Cassia, huh?” he asked, taking her hand.

“Yes, sir. I mean, my lord.” she nodded, anxiety growing within her.

“Oh, call me Macrinus. You don’t have to say the title shit while you’re with me.” he says, placing a kiss on her hands.

She blushes, feeling the heat building inside her as she feels the coolness of his rings rub against her hand.

“You sure you don’t mind another name?”

“Only if I want you to call me that.” he smiles, hooking his arm around hers as they began walking.

They headed towards the cells to see Hanno before they depart. As they walk through, he notices the attraction she’s getting, which makes him pulls her closer to him.

“You have a beautiful name, you know?” he asks.

“Now what’s beautiful about having a name meaning metal helmet?”

He chuckles, gently rubbing her arm as they turn into a tunnel.

“While it does mean that here, its means cinnamon in other places. It’s a spice, but also symbolizes warmth, harmony, and abundance. You were meant to be here.”

“So eventually, I could become the wife of a future general or Emperor.” she says happily.

“……I think the last one would suit you really well.” he says, giving her a smirk.

She smiles back as they arrive to Hanno’s cell, where Macrinus tells her to wait here as he talks to him. He enters, with the gate closing behind him.

As she waits, she overhears his plans of taking over Rome, saying their dynasty is no longer needed to run it, revealing that Hanno is the missing son of Lucilla, Lucius.

“And does your new whore agree with what you’re planning to do?” Hanno asks him, making her look through the gate.

“….she probably won’t mind because not only will she be better than Lucilla, she’s bare a heir that will run this place better than your people did.” Macrinus replied, getting up to leave.

“You won’t make it far.”

“Oh trust me. I will prevail with ending your dynasty.” he said confidently, walking out of the cell.

Macrinus looks at Cassia, who stands in front of him very bothered by what Lucius said about her. He brushes her hair out of her face before making out with her passionately, gripping her ass. She moans at the touch, kissing him back. He breaks the kiss, smiling as they both look at Lucius.

“Come on, Cassia. We have a celebration to attend.” he said, walking away and pull her with him.

She looks at Lucius one more time, who meets her eyes from his cell, before turning forward.

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As they walk through the crowd of people, Macrinus and Cassia converse closely, looking at the celebration of Hanno’s win around them and the rioting of General Acacius’s death, clashing with the guards.

Drinking, eating, dancing, loud conversations, music, sales of imported goods, clothes, gold, fire pits, fighting, yelling, and more are seen in the busy streets of Rome.

“Besides being the trainer of the gladiators and dressing well, what else do you do?” asked Cassia, looking at him.

“I provide them food and oil to them and the arm. Something the emperors should be doing instead of replicating everything wrong Commodus did.” he replied, smiling at her.

“Sounds like you want them out as soon as possible.”

“….depends on who you’re asking.”

“Whether it’s true or not….I’m behind it.” she said, whispering the last part in his ear.

“Hm.” he replied, looking at her eyes as he rubbed her hand.

The two continued walking into a secluded area, where they come across a table filled with many varieties of food. from fruits to cheese to meats and different types of bread.

Macrinus sends a nod at a guard before grabbing two plates and pilling his with grapes, meats, some cheese, and bread before looking at Cassio, who waiting patiently.

“You’re not hungry?” he asked.

“Oh no.” she shakes her head. “I don’t really eat or drink. Well, I don’t get fed.”

“Why not?” he asked, grabbing a white wine bottle and pouring it into two glasses.

“Um…” she swallows. “It’s punishment for not satisfying a customer. While Dominus and the girls who completed their tasks get full meals, the girls who didn’t get either the crumbs or nothing. Which is usually me.” she replied, slightly embarrassed with revealing that.

Macrinus laughs, shaking his head as he plates her food with everything, even adding extras.

“Well, around here, you’re not gonna starve. And I’ll make sure to remind him of that since you’re doing all the work that fills his pockets. Got it?”

She nods, smiling a bit as he grabbed the plates, gesturing her to grabs the drinks & bottle as he walked towards a table, with her obliging. Just as she was about to sit, he helps her by pulling out her seat, gently pushing her in before sitting across from her.

“Anything on your plate you wanna try first?” he asked her, watching her scan the plate.

“….what’s your recommendation?”

He smiled, picking up a piece of bread and putting prosciutto and smearing some brie on it. He adds a bit of cranberry on it before handing it to her.

“Tastes pretty good together.” he replied, watching her retrieve it.

She examines the bread before taking a bite, chewing for a few seconds. She takes a few more bites before eating the whole thing, earning a chuckle from Macrinus.

“Was I lying?” he asked playfully.

“No, sir.” she shakes her head. “The sweetness from the cranberry, the flakiness of the bread, and the creamy, nutty flavor of the Brie combines very well together. How does one acquire that taste?” she asks, beginning to eat a little more of the bread.

“That’s my side job when I’m not pushing these men to be the best version of themselves. You give me what I want, I’ll give you what you want, but better.” he replied, sipping some of his wine.

“Were you selected to take the job? Or did you have to fight like one of them to get that and freedom?”

“The first one. I worked very hard to get where I am at today than where I was in my slave days. And it’s not an easy journey.”

“You were a slave?”

“Yeah. When Aurelius was ruling, but this was way before Lucilla, Maximus, and Commodus were born. I can remember the harsh treatments…..the way him and guards demean us…..his greed before his change of heart shit took over him. Almost like he was repenting.” he said harshly, growing angry thinking of it.

“And that’s why you wanna kill Greta and Caracalla.” she said quietly, taking a sip of her wine.

He leans forward, looking at her for a few more moments before pulling him robe back, revealing a branded scar that represents the symbol Aurelius has on his statute.

“Those two are just in the way. And the senate knows it. Hell, so did the general and Lucilla. But my vision of Rome is not similar to theirs. Mines is vengeance for what they did to me and my people.” he replied through gritted teeth.

Cassia traces the scar, softening Macrinus’ demeanor a bit. She looks at him, getting closer to place a kiss on his cheek, making him smile a bit.

“Do what you have to do. They’re making us suffer anyway if they continue to rule.” she said before resuming eating her plate.

He looks at her, scanning all over her body while she eats. The way her mouth moves, her looking around the area they’re in, taking a few sips of wine, and moving onto the next thing.

His eyes fixates on two long-straight scars that starts from the top of her shoulder and ends before it gets to her hands.

“What happened to your arms?” he asks, gently tracing over them.

Her smile drops slightly as she moves them around, the painful memories swirling in her head.

“This is from when I was fighting off a client the first night I was sold to Dominus.” she replied in a hesitant tone.

“Tried to force himself on you?”

“Yeah. Got mad that I wouldn’t give it up easily, so he took a small knife and tried to cut my dress off. Fought back hard and got sliced in the process.”

“And what did he do?”

“Gave him a warning.” she said, shrugging. “The client never came back.”

“So…he got away with harming you….” he said in an irritated tone.

She nodded, looking down. Macrinus’ jaw twitches, hiding his growing flame that is begging to come out and tell him to hunt Dominus down for letting that slide. He relaxes, not wanting to waste their time together.

“Are you pure?” he asks, breaking the silence.

“Oh, no sir.” she looked, laughing a bit. “My husband was my first. And only.”

“…….where’s he’s at?”

“Probably rotting on the battlefield. He died while fighting in it.”

“And they just took you?” he asked with a puzzled look.

“Well. Greta and Caracalla ordered our family to be killed. Accusing them of attempted a coup against them when that wasn’t even true. We didn’t even know he died a few months back until that day…”

“Oh wow.” Macrinus replied, surprised about that information.

“They sent standby to kill everyone, including me. Our parents, his siblings, and his nephew. I managed to escape and hid for a few days until I was caught trying to sneak into a ship to Numidia.” she said as she sipped more of her wine.

“I was chained to a pole with other women in some town and sold to Dominus the next day. Been here ever since and….I guess this is how I’m gonna spend the rest of my life.” she said in a somber tone.

“….how old are you, if you don’t mind me asking?” he asked.

“28. I may be the recent one he acquired, but I’m also the oldest of the girls he has.”

Macrinus nodded, rubbing his hands against hers. He pulls them to his lips, placing kisses all over them while keeping eye contact with her.

“Cassia….it would be a pleasure to heal your pain with taking both of them out and Dominus. And then, I want you as my wife.”

“Damn, I got you whipped already?” she asked, chuckling a bit.

“A woman like you should be living established and relaxed. Especially a woman who can provide me something I want.” he said, kissing over her scar, making her wince a little.

“And what is that?” she asked, her breathing growing a bit loud as he goes a bit higher.

“A heir. A boy or a girl that can continue my beliefs when my time comes to an end.” he whispered, tugging her to come in his lap.

She obliged, carefully sitting where she is across him, wrapping her arm around him neck, gently pushing her breasts into his face. He grins, gently kissing them.

“I can see it.” Peck. “You sitting on the throne.” Peck. “Ass getting thicker.” Peck. “Glowing and our baby growing.” Peck.

He smells her chest, letting out a moan before gently taking one out and massaging it, making her whimper and grip his chest a bit. The coolness of his rings rubbing against her skin arouses her even more.

“These here? Growing bigger, spilling out your top, perfect pillows to lay on? Oh, you’re perfect for me.” he whispered, tracing her nipple with his tongue before sucking on the breast, making her moan.

Cassia begins grinding in his lap, feeling his length growing a bit as he kept sucking, looking at her with hunger in his eyes. He pulls her closer, burying the rest of his in her chest as she throws her head back, mumbling Fuck at the sensation.

A loud thud is heard, making the both of them snap to where it was making the noise. Behind the gates, a group of rioters and guards are clashing, with the guards getting the upper hand.

“Goddamn those rioters!” he mumbled before resuming making out with Cassia’s beats.

Two black men, a young adult and middle aged, walk into the room, heading towards them. Macrinus gently pulls her top up and ushers her off his lap as he gets up, fixing himself.

“Well, well, well. Isn’t it my two favorite boys?” he said enthusiastically, opening his arms up.

The men each hug him, with the young one giving him a passionate kiss. Cassia quietly sits in her seat, continuing to eat and not engage with what she witnessed.

“Alright, alright. Not in front of my future spouse now.” Macrinus said, gently grabbing his ass before pushing him back.

“Oh, we didn’t know we were interrupting something.” the middle aged one said, looking at Cassia.

“She is a beauty, not going to lie.” said the young one, walking over to look at her a little close.

“Don’t scare her, Felix.” said Macrinus, sitting back down in his seat.

“I’m not! I’m just…..taken aback that you pulled her in comparison to you.” he said, with Cassia looking at him.

Macrinus slaps his ass, making him yelp and the middle age one laugh as he sat next to him and Cassia smile a bit.

“Oh, where are my manners? Cassia, this is Felix. And Zeno.” he said, pointing at each one.

“Your boytoys?” she asked, eyeing the both of them.

“On some occasions. Zeno helps me with moving the gladiators from arena to arena as Felix….well, relieves my tension if need to.” he replied, rubbing Zeno’s chest.

“He’s a little stiff.” said Felix, sitting next to her.

“And you making stiffer with your arches.” said Zeno, earning a scoff from him.

“It helps me build myself up. A lot of us have an itch that needs some more attention. You would know, right, Cassia?” he asked, looking her up and down.

“What I’m getting is you get tossed between them a lot.” she replied, earning a smile from all three of them.

“I wanted that arrangement. Thought it would work best to feed both of their needs instead of me and Zeno trading.”

“Would that mess it up with me in the equation now?” she asked slyly.

“Depends on how long you make him last.” said Zeno.

“That won’t be hard. I last a good time!” said Macrinus.

“I don’t know…” said Felix, getting up to walk behind her. “She might be tough to last against.”

He traces her arms before wrapping his hand around the back of her neck, pushing her forward, making her lay across the table. She tries to get up, but he keeps his hold on her.

“Watch it, Felix.” Macrinus said with a stone face glare.

“Don’t worry, baby. I’m just looking.” he replied, rubbing his hands over her curves.

He pulls her back up, examining her features before sitting back down in his seat. He picks up a grape from her plate and brings it to her mouth, waiting for her to eat it. She looks at Macrinus, who’s watching with a vex in his eyes as Zeno’s hand is moving perpendicularly in his lap.

Is he getting hard from watching this?, she said in her mind as she goes back to Felix, who is still waiting for her.

She engulfs the grape into her mouth, slightly sucking his fingers while keeping her eyes on him, making him grunt a bit. She makes a Pop! sound before locking eyes with Macrinus again, who gently removes Zeno’s hand.

“What do you two want? You’re taking up too much of my time with her.” he said, adjusting himself in his seat.

“Lucilla wants to speak to you before her execution goes forward.” said Zeno.

“And the senate wants to know how are the traitors being sentenced as soon as possible.” said Felix.

“They’ll have their answer, and my presence, by nighttime tomorrow. I’ll figure out what I’m gonna do with Lucius later on. Might keep him alive until my heir arrives.” said Macrinus, eying Cassia.

“And Rome will prevail from there.” said Felix, kissing her hand before getting up to leave.

Zeno nods at both before getting and leaving, with Felix following behind. Macrinus gets up, exposing his twitching semi-hard length at her, which makes her gasp.

“What’s wrong….” he asked before looking down and seeing it. “Oh. We’re not there yet.” he chuckled before tucking it away.

“There’s more?” she asked, sending him a smirk.

“Yeah. I tend to work with it a lot.” he replied.

“We’ll see about that.”

“….don’t tempt me.”

A group of moans are heard, making the both of them look around to see where it’s coming from. In the corner of the area, two citizens, a man and a woman, are having sex.

The woman, with her breast exposed and skirt pushed up, is pressed against the gate as the man plunges behind her, constantly slamming into her as their moans and body smacking fills the room in mixture of the chaos outside the gates.

“Guess they wanted an audience in midst of the fighting.” she said, watching the pleasure grow between them.

Macrinus replied with ‘mhm’ before moving closer, kissing her neck before kissing her, rubbing her sides. She kisses back, fighting for more while gently stroking him through his dress, hearing his breathing become erratic.

He breaks the kiss, catching his breath as he rubbed his head against her, who is patiently waiting for his next order.

“Let’s go somewhere private, shall we?” he said, standing back and holding his hand out.

She nods as she takes his hand and getting up. Grabbing the wine bottle as well, he pulls her into a secret hallway and up the stairs.

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He opens the door, letting her walk in. He orders the guards to stand in front of the door, telling them to knock if Dominus or someone else comes looking for him before walking in, closing the door.

Cassia looks around the room, taking in the gorgeous marble floor, black pillars, chairs, and windows with gold accent accessories accompany it.

Walking towards the center, where the pit of fire stands, she looks at the two throne of chairs front and center, admiring its details.

“Wanna sit up there?” he asked, pouring wine into their glasses.

“How often you ask that?” she replied, looking at him.

He chuckles, walking towards her and handing her the glass, in which she takes.

“You’re a very funny woman, you know. But you are the first one to be in here after hours.” he said, wrapping his hand around hers and pulling her towards the chairs.

“Felix and Zeno won’t be jealous?”

“They’ll be fine.”

Cassia and Macrinus get to the ledge before he places her in the center. He backs up, taking in her beauty as she poses, making him smile before taking a sip of his wine.

“You fit perfectly on the throne, my love. The moonlight enhances your diamond essence into this city. Which is why I chose you to be mine.” he said, placing the wine bottle near the chair.

“And do I get anything in return? Besides bringing in a future and marriage?” she asked, drinking some of her wine.

“Your girls can come live here instead of suffering in the streets when I take my position as emperor. Finest access to jewelry they wouldn’t let you touch, fresh food, water, new items, your own housekeepers, and of course….”

He walks up, with her eyes following him, standing in front as he traces her chin, licking his lips.

“Me. Only me.” he added, tracing over her neck.

He feels her breathing stagger a bit as he goes down further and further until he feels a necklace, pulling it up to examine.

“What’s this?” he asked, looking at the garnet pendant.

“It’s a way for him to spot which girls belong to him whenever we go out in public. We each have different stones that represents us.” she replied.

He nodded, tracing his thumb over the pendant. Suddenly, he rips the necklace off, making her gasp. He throws it in the pit, watching it burn quickly.

“Cheap metal and a fake stone. Guess that’s how he sees you girls.” he said, sitting in one of the chairs.

“He’s not gonna like that.” she mumbled.

“I don’t give a fuck what he likes or doesn’t like. You’re not his property anymore. You belong here now. To me.” he said authoritatively.

“What if he refuses to allow that?”

“He’ll back off. Or else, I’ll make him. Permanently.”

“…..you swear?” she asks, looking at him.

“…..on my soul. I’ll take care of him. But right now.” he said, leaning forward.

He grabs her top and pulls it down, exposing her breasts before pulling her into his lap to straddle him, both locking eyes with each other.

“We were in the middle of something.” he mumbled before kissing her passionately, caressing her back.

Cassia moaned at the coldness and scratchiness of his beard rubbing against her face and chest while kissing as her mound gently rubs against his clothed length, feeling him move her hips to apply more friction.

Macrinus breaks the kiss, tracing his tongue over each breast before engulfing one into his mouth like earlier and sucking whine squeezing the other one and rubbing the nipple between his ring wearing fingers, making her wince loudly.

“Fuck, that feels good.” she whispers in an intoxicated tone, earning a grunt from him.

He released her breast from his mouth, rubbing his face against it before trading places: other one is now being sucked on as he rubs the previous one.

“You’re so good at that, you know?” she whispered, feeling him grab her ass before letting go.

He lets out a Pop! sound as he lets go, rubbing his face between both saliva coated jugglers as he looks up in awe, in a daze with her face..

“I can feel you getting wet and I’m only just making out with these beautiful jewels. They never made this far, huh?” he asked, gently rubbing her hips.

“Never. They don’t like building it up, just immediately going after the gold.” she replied, which he nods.

“You have a lot to experience then. Go sit in that chair and remove the rest of your dress for me.” he said, removing her from his lap.

Cassia pulls the rest of her dress down, leaving her in a gold waist chain that is connected to her underwear. She sits in the chair, waiting for his next move as he watches, taking in her curves and plumpness from her thighs, hips, and shoulders.

He gets up, removing his dress and tunic, leaving him with nothing but his jewelry gleaming against his skin as his now full grown and girthy length moves up and down.

He was lying about his size at all, she said in her mind as he got closer and kneeled down, rubbing her face before kissing her, tracing her thighs in process.

She smiled before kissing him back, wrapping her arms around his neck and tracing over his back. She breaks it, catching her breath as he watches her, lust fully consuming him.

“What do you want to do first?” he asked.

“Shouldn’t you be calling the shots?” she replied, tracing over his chin.

“Usually I do. Since I’m the second man crossing over this beauty of land….” as he traces his fingers over her waist chain.

“I think I want to make you comfortable on our first night. What do you say?” he replied.

She nods, earning a peck on her nose as she leans back and opens her legs. He smirked, beginning to place a trail of kisses on her inner thighs, moving closer and closer to her heat before pausing.

“You might have to help me remove these cause I don’t know how, what the hell…” he mumbled, tugging at the underwear, which makes her giggle.

“Here.” she said, bring his hand to one of the clasps and pressing it together, unclamping the underwear.

He nodded, continuing to remove the rest before pulling her underwear off, revealing her glistening essence to him. He stares with hunger, gently placing one leg on his shoulder as he quickly removes his rings.

“Wait.” she said, making him stop in process.

“Something wrong, Cassia?” he asked, a worrying expression on his face.

“No, no, everything is fine. Can you just….leave your pointer & thumb rings on? I like the coolness they give when you touching all over me.” she said, licking her lips at him.

He smirks, removing everything but those four. He leans forward, taking in her luscious core before tracing her slit with his pointer, making her moan a bit.

“All this for me? Oh, you were dying for me to touch you.” he whispers, placing a few kisses around it.

Pulling her a little more to the edge, he pushes her other leg towards her as he licks her slit, making her flinch. He smirks before repeating the motion in a form of making out, making her whimper.

“God, you got a perfect sets of lips.” he mumbled, circling her lips as the mixture of her wetness and his salvia coat his finger.

“Haven’t tasted you for a few moments and you’re getting wetter. You want me to continue, huh?” he asks, looking up at her, who eyes are closed and head is thrown back.

“Please….I miss the feeling of someone making me feel good.” she replied, rubbing her lips on his finger gently.

He didn’t reply, just went back to eating her out, but this time, slurping on her opening as his thumb rubs her clit, making her moan loud. She places her hands on his head, pushing his face further in, feeling his grip on her other leg tightening.

“Sorry. I tend to get a little carried away.” she said, feeling him laugh before a gasp from her comes out.

Macrinus, feeling even more driven, inserts a finger inside, feeling her tightness engulfing him. He curves it, watching her move erratically and whimper loudly.

“Oh, you’re just collapsing under my control.” he said, licking her clit.

“Yes…yes.” is all she could get out as he enters a second finger and begins to plunge them in and out, making her moan even louder.

“That’s right….open a little more for me so he can fit…” he whispers, watching his fingers go in and out as her essence spills down his arm and the chair.

“Fuck….please put your mouth back on her. I feel myself getting close!” she exclaims, tightening around his fingers.

“Whatever you want, baby.” he replied before placing his mouth on her clit, flicking it back and forth as he sped up the pace.

Sounds of her pussy being slapped, her grunts, and his flicking fills the room as the riots continue down below them.

He removes his mouth, looking at her opening as he finger fucks very harshly until her release washes over her. Her moans turning into screams, her body twitching all over, and her essence making a huge mess by squirting all over, making him stare in amazement at his work.

“Fuck, you look good like this.” he mumbled, kissing all over her stomach to her chest to her lips, as she laughs weakly.

“My turn now.” she replied, sitting up straight as Macrinus stands up, stroking himself.

“You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to, you know?” he said, looking at her.

“You think I wanna jump into our session without tasting this first?” she said, wrapping her hand around his length and stroking it.

He holds his hands up in defeat, giving her a wink as she looks at it, mesmerized by its size and girth. All that shit commanding shit he does matches him well.

She traces the tip with her tongue before engulfing all of it into her mouth, hearing him let out an exhale as his fingers run through her hair. She removes herself, catching her breath while stroking the length, giggling to herself.

“You were not lying about you being a lot.” she said, locking eyes with him.

“You handling it like a god..” he replied before reinserting it back into her mouth.

She continues sucking, gently massaging his balls, hearing him wince. He starts picking up his pace, gently hitting the back of her throat. Looking up at him, she bops her head faster, feeling his tip hitting it much rougher.

“Them assholes missed out on this skillful work of yours.” he says, letting out moans.

Then, he grabs her head and begins going at a brisk place, constantly burying her face into his groin as he lets out a few expletives that she couldn’t make out with the fuzzy noise in her ears.

“You like that shit? Old man like me using your throat like you owe me something?!” he asks in a gritty tone, not letting up.

She moans around his length, feeling her chin and chest being coated in the excessive salvia that’s spilling out from his movement, her eyes stinging a bit.

Suddenly, he pulls out of her mouth, making her lean back against the chair. She breathes harshly, recovering from that euphoric moment that happened. He smiles at her dazed posture, looking from her face to her pussy, which is now even more wet.

“Come here..” he whispers, helping her up before sitting in his chair, pulling her along.

He taps her to get on top, in which she obliges. She rub her opening on his tip before lowering herself carefully, wincing as she feels herself being stretched more and more with each inch.

“Macrinus, I don’t think I can take more of you….” she whines.

“Relax. You just have to let the pain pass before I start moving. You’ll feel good real soon.” he replied, moving her hips with his hands.

She moans quietly, wrapping her arms around him tightly as the sensation passes through. He kisses her breasts, sucking on one as he begins bouncing her up and down, plunging into her with each stroke.

“Oh my god….” she whispers in a pathetic tone, feeling his tip poke at a sweet spot.

He smiles, releasing himself from her breast as he speeds up his pace, making her moans come out very pitchy.

“That’s it…..take all of me like that.” he mumbled, slapping her ass few times as she begins riding him, removing his hands and letting her do the rest of the work.

Cassia lets out a few sexual sounds, feeling herself becoming attached to him every time she grinds against the friction and poking he’s giving her. He picks up the bottle of white wine and pours all over her breasts, licking and sucking up the liquid as she moves harder and faster, making him let out a few grunts.

“You’re gonna make me cum again!” she yelps, tightening around him.

Just as she was close to release, he lifts her up, feeling his length thumping very hard as she catches her breath, looking down at her walls clenching. He laughs hoarsely before giving her some sloppy kisses over all, sitting her back in his lap.

“You almost brought me with you and I don’t want that to happen because our night will end super fast.” he mumbled, wiping her sweaty face.

She smiles weakly, nodding her head as she grinds his aching length, earning a few more slaps on her ass.

“I’m not playing, girl.” he said in a dark tone, wrapping his hand around her neck and squeezing it, making her slightly gasp.

“Sorry, sir.” she replied in a pitchy tone, seeing him smile in an evil way.

“It’s okay. Just don’t do that again.” as he pecks on her nose.

“Now go bend that ass over in that chair.” he said, letting her go.

Cassia hurriedly crawls over to the chair, putting her chest on the seat and arching her back so her ass in air, patiently waiting for him to re-enter.

Macrinus examines her body, all sweaty from her movement

“When Rome falls and rises, you’ll be the one standing while everyone is kneeling….” he mumbled, tracing over her cheeks.

“That would be nice, huh? You, me, and our heir being worshipped by these people? Hm?“ he asked, slapping her ass, hearing her whine desperately.

“Yes.” she mumbled, but that earns her another slap.

“I can’t hear you!” he said, smoothing out the stinging.

“Yes, Macrinus!” she yells, slightly moving her hips around.

He gives her a few more slaps, hearing her let out a few cries. He leans forward, pushing her hair out of her face as he gets closer to her ear.

“Please…..” she begged, about to touch herself before he stopped her, locking her arms behind her back.

“Call me by the correct title and I’ll give you what you want.” he whispers into her ear before backing away.

“….yes, Emperor. Please pleasure me again…” she said, breathing harshly.

She waits for his next move, anticipating another slap. Then, he re-inserts himself from behind and begins pounding her, making her moan loudly. His low grunts as he slams aggressively into her fills the room, with him pulling her hair while holding her arms.

“Look at you….” he chuckles seductively. “Taking old man dick from me and enjoying it. That dead husband of yours wasn’t doing you like this, was he?”

“No….no, he wasn’t.” she confessed, feeling him let go of her hair and pull out, just to slam back in her.

Macrinus watches her twitch and make sounds that are so incoherent, it made him pushed deeper into her. He lays on her back, adding his weight on top as he wraps his hand around the front of her neck and pulls her up to his chest a bit, kissing her ear.

“Alright. That’s what I wanted to hear. But now? I want you to cum. Releasing everything all over me and don’t hold back. Got it?” he mumbled, rolling his hips.

“Yes…..yes….yes!” she responded as her release washes over, making her yell and squirt all over him as he continued to fuck her through it, pulling out and watching her collapse to the side, convulsing.

He sits nearby, gently turning her onto her back. He leans over, kissing her chest as she moans quietly, rubbing his face. He gets between her legs and rubs his length between her folds, watching her grab her legs and hold them back, making him chuckle.

“Already know what to do without me telling you. I like that.” he said before inserting inside, hearing her curse.

He wraps his hands around her neck and begins fucking her, going a pace where he is continuously hitting that sweet spot inside her. It doesn’t help that his pressure from squeezing adds onto the copulating tension in the air.

“You ready to be my bride and raise my heir?” he asked, speeding up a bit.

“Me breeding you like this and pushing my babies out? Having them running around Rome and shit?” he continued, not letting up.

“Yes, Emperor…..I’m yours and this body is yours.” she replied, feeling another release building up.

He kisses her sloppily, locking his arms around her as he continue his brutal pace, making her whine and scream as her essence splashes all around. He looks down, watching her grip around him.

“I’m cumming…ugh….fuck!” he yells as he finally releases inside, his load pumping out hasty.

Cassia’s release follows behind, wrapping her legs around him as she twitches underneath, feeling her body release every tense motion in this position.

After a few minutes of recovering, Macrinus gently pulls out, watching her suck the remaining seed in before he got and knocked on the door, asking one of the guard to bring him a bowl of water and some towels.

A quick opening and closing of the door and he’s next to her, squeezing the excessive water out before he rubbing the cooling towel all over her body, cleaning up anything fluids that were there.

“…..do I have to go back?” she asked, breaking the silence.

“When I said I’m silencing him permanently, I meant that.” he replied, helping her sit up.

“Well…..he should be here to pick me up soon.” she said, getting up to put on her dress.

Macrinus nodded, not replying as he put his dress and tunic back on, waiting for a knock from the guards. A few minutes later, loud knocking comes, signaling Dominus has arrived.

“Dominus! Nice to see you again.” said Macrinus as he opens the door and sees the stoneface figure standing.

“Did she comply?” asked Dominus, looking over at Cassia, who’s fixing her hair.

“Yeah. Worn my old ass out if anything!” he chuckles. “But I wanted to renegotiate our deal.”

“Renegotiate?”

“Yes! You see, I asked for her hand in marriage and she is possibly carrying my child, so I don’t think it’s necessary for her to return to you. So, she’s staying with me now and you can go on home..” said Macrinus as he gently pushes Dominus back, but the latter shoves him.

“I’m afraid that’s not possible. We agreed that she was your reward and you was going to break into her. She’s my property and I’m here to take her home so the next clients can get a turn.” he replied coldly, making Cassia stand up.

Macrinus looks at him with an ominous glare, stepping back into his spot while keeping eye contact. Then, he takes out his knife and stabs him quickly, making Dominus gasp and look down.

“And that’s the problem. You sees them as property, not women you should be taking care of if you want business to continue.” he said, pushing the blade deeper which makes Dominus wince.

“She told me how she got those scars on her arm and how your lack of discipline towards the client is why she wasn’t giving in. And giving them cheap necklaces with fake pendants to easily find them? Oh, your niggard ass won’t be missed.” he replied, pulling it out and watching him topple over.

Blood spilling out of Dominus’ mouth as he gasps for air, making Cassia turn away, not wanting to see the rest. Macrinus kneels down and slices his neck open, killing him. He tosses the knife next to him and back ups, turning to the doors.

“Chop him up and send it back to his neighborhood. That’ll send a message that she’s not going back, the women are free, and Rome is going to fall.” he told the guards, walking over to Cassia.

The guards rush in and take Dominus’ body as Macrinus wraps his arms around her and they begin walking, leaving the room.

“You okay?” he asks, making sure she is perfectly fine.

Cassia nods, smiling tiredly as she lays her head on his shoulder.

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Its been three months since Cassia slept with Macrinus, but the promised life of being a wife to the Emperor and raising his children never succeeded.

Following the Senate & Caracalla swearing him in and ordering the execution of Lucilla and some senators to be done by Lucius and the gladiators, which turn into chaos that ended with the citizens, Lucius, and the gladiators turning against them, he successfully executed Caracalla and Lucilla before escaping to stop the army Lucius order to invade and wipe out his own.

She doesn’t know the remaining details of what happened, but all she knows is after Lucius sliced Macrinus’ hand off, he killed him and reunited everyone, swearing on his grandfather’s dream of making Rome united and peaceful to other countries they captured.

The news of his death spread fast and she fell out, crying in the streets, with her sisters consoling her. She stayed in the house, missing meals, and not waiting to talk until she began feeling nauseous, crying a little more, and eating more than usual.

That’s when she knew that she was pregnant with their child. She tried to hide it, but gave up around 8 weeks when her belly started to show and it didn’t help that she was already a plus size girl.

Cassia was sitting in a chair inside her room, planning the nursery when she hears a knock on the door.

“Come in.” she said, looking up.

The door opens and Aelia pops her head in, sending her a smile.

“Hey. I hope I’m not interrupting anything.” she said, creeping in.

“No, just figuring out things for my child. What’s going on?” Cassia asks.

“I know this is sudden….but the emperor is here. And he wants to speak with you.” she said quickly.

Rage instantly lights up inside Cassia, who tries to get up but Aelia stops her, trying to calm her down.

“I know this is not what you want to hear..”

“You let my husband’s murderer into this house without asking me?!” yelled Cassia as she pushed Aelia, who is not giving up.

“It was unexpected! He just…showed up and walked in, asking for you!”

“Well you tell him to get the hell out and never return or else!” Cassia said, shoving Aelia back hard that she bumps into the cabinet.

“Or else what?” a familiar male voice said.

Turning to the voice, Lucius stands in the doorway, watching everything she did. Cassia stares back at him with a glare, wanting to harm him but knows she can’t do much since anything that can be used as a weapon is far from her.

“Aelia, you can leave us.” he said, walking closer.

“She’s not going anywhere and you don’t bark orders around here.” said Cassia.

“Cassia….just talk to him.” said Aelia.

Aelia bows in front of him before leaving, closing the door behind her.

Tension fills the silence as Lucius walks around, taking in her room before looking towards the curtained window, which has sunlight peeping through.

“….What do you want?” asked Cassia.

“I remember you, you know.” he replied, looking at her.

“So? I have a familiar face around here.”

He laughed quietly, walking towards her.

“I meant I remember you from the day General Acacius was executed. After that. You were accompanying Macrinus and sat outside the cell when we were talking.”

“Oh right. The day you couldn’t bring yourself to killing your stepfather who got your wife killed during the capturing of your land.” she said coldly.

“He apologized.” as he sits in front of her, with her covering her baby bump.

“He didn’t know I was my mother’s missing son. I spared his life for her.”

“And look what it got you? A dead mother.” she scoffed.

“Nothing you say hurts me, Cassia.”

“Who said it’s about hurting you?”

“Well, I know you’re only reacting like this is because of Macrinus.” he said, staring at her.

She laughed evilly, moving a bit in her seat as she leans forward.

“You clearly know nothing about me. You lost your mother and wife? I lost everything because of you and your dynasty. So whatever you’re here looking for, you’re not gonna find it. So, emperor, please leave.” she said, leaning back into her seat.

“I know. Kidnapped after your husband died fighting for Rome, your family accused of trying to steal the throne and being executed, being forced in selling your body so the man who bought can eat, and losing a man who promises a new Rome after you two made a baby out of love…” he said, trying to touch her stomach.

Cassia slaps him very hard, anger inflicted all over her face. Lucius smiles, feeling the stinging grow as he looks at her, slightly turned on by her deviance.

“I can never get my wife back. Nor my parents. But what I can do is help someone out. And someone who is perfect to sit next to me as I lead Rome into a new era. That someone is you, Cassia.”

“Oh, go to hell, Lucius. This city is not gonna take kind to you not only having a big black curvy woman for a wife, but the widow of the man you killed and their son? Not gonna happen.” she replied.

“You think I care? This city made up lies that I was a product of incest between my mother and her brother. You weren’t his wife yet and this is a child out of wedlock. Which is a very common thing around here.”

“I’m not taking your offer. So please go.”

Lucius nods, getting up to walk out. However, he picks her up to her feet, making her step back in fear of what he’ll do. Instead, he drops to his knees and rubs her belly before placing his ear to it.

“If you’re expecting some motion, I’m not that far along.” she said.

“They’re planning to charge you.” he confessed.

“……what?” she said, a puzzled expression on her face.

“I’m aware that Dominus wasn’t very kind to you because most clients couldn’t make it past kissing. But I don’t know what happened to him the night he gave you to Macrinus as his body was….in pieces when they found him.” he replied before getting back up.

“I didn’t kill him! He did. And he told the guards to chop him up! I swear I didn’t touch him.”

“Do you have proof?”

Cassia stares at him, wanting to say no but she knows she didn’t do it. She begins hyperventilating, making Lucius help her sit down and coach her through breathing exercises until she was back to normal.

“…..I didn’t do it!” she exclaims, busting out in tears.

Lucius confronts her, letting her cry it out against his chest. She sniffles, feeling her become numb from her constant crying.

“They can’t take my baby away from me for something I didn’t even do!” she said, looking at him.

“That’s why I’m asking you to join me. I can protect you from execution and being charged, you just have to go along with it. Your girls can come and this will all be forgotten.” he said, leaning forward.

“At least do something that he promised he would give you.” he whispers, rubbing her face.

Lucius kisses her face before walking out, closing the door behind him. She looks around the room as the option lingers in her mind.

Stay here and go to prison with possible execution or go live in the house with your love’s killer and raise your child keep playing as she rubbed her belly. Every fear, tear, anger, and thought riled inside her up until the last moment of her final decision.

Cassia opens the door and walks to the living room where Lucius and her sisters were chattering and eating. She stands in the doorway as his eyes looked at her, silencing the room.

“Everything okay?” asked Diana.

Cassia walks to Lucius, who turns to her in his seat. She stands in front of him and kneels, hearing everyone gasp around the table.

“Emperor Lucius……I take your offering to be your wife and build Rome back up. Like your grandfather wanted.” she said, tears streaming down her face.

Her sisters cheered as Lucius watched, a smile creeping along his face.

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A/N II: I am unfortunately no longer doing the Exotic Travelers series as I’m going into smut retirement again. But I had fun coming back for a bit.

Taglist: @delusioniste @onehalfshrimp

[upat4amwiththemoon]

As free as an avis | 7

Summary: A princess and a commoner falling in love was a scandal on itself, but them both being women just adds fuel to the fire.

Pairing: Wanda Maximoff x fem!reader

Warnings: this story will deal with homophobia and sexism, this story is mostly historically inaccurate

Word count: 2359

a/n: lets pretend that it hasn’t been ages since I wrote the last chapter (this series is still my baby)

Tags: @xxxtwilightaxelxxx @themagnificentmx @raven-reyes-wife @spongebobtentacles @friskyfisher @thought-of-you-and-me @rafecameronswhore @sayah13 @wandsmxmff @emsmultiverse @natashamaximoff69 @scarsw1fe

masterlists | guidelines

All parts: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6, part 7, part 8

Ever since Y/N and Wanda said they loved each other, they have gotten braver and braver to show that love to one another, though it still happens behind closed doors, the people of the castle have started noticing their attachment to each other. At this point, it seems like a pair of two overly attached friends. It is inappropriate in many of the castle servant’s eyes, after all, a princess and the lady’s maid should not be so close, but none of them speak of it, as they know the Princess’s stubborn nature.

As the servants don’t speak of their relationship, they have also given up on stopping the Princess from leaving the castle without permission.

Which is exactly what she is doing right now, with Wanda.

“Would you say this is a good area?” Y/N lowers her hood as she glances at Wanda, who is studying their surroundings.

They are a bit away from the bustling city, near nature. The area is wide and open, full of unused fields and a couple of abandoned wooden sheds.

“I know it’s a walk away from the city, but I would make sure carriages would drive here, and there is a future possibility of building a shop near by.”

“Y/N.” Wanda turns to look at Y/N with a gentle smile. “It’s amazing. The walk isn’t too long, building so many homes will create a lot of jobs, this…” she gestures at the nature, “this is a beautiful place.”

Y/N nods and lets out a relieved sigh. She smiles as she takes hold of Wanda’s hand squeezing it softly. Her approval means everything to her. “Yeah?”

“Yes.” Wanda giggles, glancing around before planting a kiss on her cheek.

The two of them are alone—besides the carriage driver waiting where he can’t see them—but they know to be careful wherever they may be, there’s always a chance of someone watching them.

“When will you start building?”

Y/N looks around with a proud smile. “Once I find trustworthy builders, so my involvement won’t go back to my parents.”

“You know all the townspeople would field loyalty to you in a heartbeat, no one has love for the King and Queen like they do to you.”

“You know every single townsperson?”

Rolling her eyes, Wanda links their arms together as they start making their way back to the carriage. “Obviously not.” A small grin adorns her face. “But people talk, and my brother is such a gossip.”

“And you aren’t?” Y/N laughs, pulling Wanda closer. “I’ve heard you speaking with Yelena, you leave no detail behind.”

“That is totally different.” She raises her brows, but can’t hide the small smile growing on her face. “Yelena is brutal with her words, I’m slightly afraid she’ll yell at me if I do not tell her everything I know.”

The skin around Y/N’s eyes wrinkle as she laughs. “She’s merely fun scary.”

“What does that even mean?”

Y/N shrugs, “she’s more fun than scary. She wouldn’t hurt you.”

“But she could hurt me.”

“Oh, without a doubt.”

Wanda lets out a quiet huff, gently pushing Y/N’s side as they untangle their arms, having come near enough of the carriage to see it.

The driver opens the carriage door, bowing his head as Y/N climbs in with Wanda right behind her. The door closes and the carriage starts moving soon after.

The woman sit opposite of each other, smiling and talking silently so the driver wouldn’t accidentally overhear them. Their feet bump against one another’s, giggles fill the carriage every once in a while.

“There’s a quiet corner in the garden where no one else goes to, we could go there after we get back?” One of Y/N’s feet move under the hem of Wanda’s dress, gently tapping against her ankle.

Wanda smiles, “I still need to do my duties, you know, cleaning up and such?”

She rolls her eyes and sighs. Of course she had her own duties to attend to as well, but she’d much rather bail on them and spend all her time with Wanda. “After those duties then?”

“Yes, after we both are done with our duties.”

The Princess’ duties are a bore, at least in her eyes. Besides reading books about being a good wife and baby making, it involves meeting potential suitors. Men, who are supposed to be the next King if they marry. Men, who will take over ruling, because the woman cannot be the one making the decisions, even if she is the rightful heir—to her parents’ dismay.

Y/N sits around a table, one parent on each side and Lord Scott Lang opposite of her, a man over twice her age, which seemed to surprise Scott himself. A nice man over all, but not one she would like to marry.

Most of the discussion has gone through Y/N’s ears, though it doesn’t necessarily affect anything, as her parents will are the one doing the ‘interviewing’ and choosing, it’s only her future after all.

“Darling,” the Queen pinches Y/N’s thigh under the table, causing her to bring her attention back to the conversation, “do you have anything to say to Lord Lang?”

“It was a pleasure to meet you, Lord Lang.” Y/N gives him a polite smile, clearly wanting to get out of the room and back into Wanda’s warm embrace.

Scott nods with a smile, slightly put off by the Princess. “The pleasure was all mine.”

One of the servant guide him out of the room. The Queen lets out a sigh, rubbing the spot between her brows. “She will not be marrying, Lord Lang, he was too…aloof. Maybe we will have her meet Lord Barnes next.”

“I agree.”

Y/N rolls her eyes, leaning back on her chair as her parents talk about her inevitable marriage over her.

“And having a daughter out of wedlock,” the King scoffs, “unacceptable for a king to be.”

“At least he seems to genuinely love her.” Y/N mumbles, mostly speaking to herself, but not really caring anymore if her parents hear her.

Her mother’s cold glare turns to her. “What was that?”

“I said,” she turns to look at her, “that he seems to genuinely care about her, at least judging by the way he spoke so highly of her.”

“What is your problem?”

“I thought I’ve made my problems very clear.” Y/N states, narrowing her eyes. She might as well start a fight. She lifts a finger, “number one is you two,” she lifts another, “number two is becoming queen. Number three-“

“Oh, you need to grow up.” The Queen interrupts, her voice raising in pitch. “You have known what your job in this castle is ever since you were born. You have had all these years to deal with the fact you will be the new queen, but you still haven’t. You know why? Because you’re childish and refuse to make best of your situation. This is a problem you have created and if you don’t get over it, we will be forced to do something drastic.”

Y/N stares at her mother, a frown on her face. She never liked losing arguments. “Whatever.”

The King lets out a sigh and stands up, causing the Queen to follow along. “Listen to your mother, Y/N. It’s time to start acting like the future queen.” The two walk out of the room, leaving Y/N to sit alone, wallowing in her feelings.

“Are you sure no one will see us here?” Wanda looks around the garden as she gets dragged through it by Y/N. She is holding a picnic basket and a blanket in her free hand.

“I’m sure, Wanda.” She slows down her pace as they arrive to a more hidden corner of the garden.

The spot is shaded by an old oak tree and surrounded by tall flower bushes, giving it a private feel. The wind rustles the oak leaves, some falling down as a stronger gush pushes them. Though it’s already evening, the bees and butterflies still fly around the flowers, at times stopping on top of them, and birds communicate to each other, their words coming out as a delightful song.

Y/N and Wanda set the blanket under the oak tree’s branches, small slivers of the lowering sun hitting their face as they sit down. “Well?” The Princess turns to look at Wanda with a smile.

“It’s lovely, very peaceful.” Wanda sets the basket in front of them. It’s filled with different berries and pastries.

“It’s the perfect place for us.”

They set the snacks and drinks onto the blanket in front of them, enjoying them while they speak of everything and nothing in particular.

“You seemed upset.” Wanda mumbles, glancing at Y/N as she bites into a strawberry. “Earlier today, I mean. Before we came here.”

Y/N lets out a sigh, “it’s nothing, just my parents being themselves again.”

“Another suitor?”

She hums and nods, picking up a cupcake. “They’re really starting to push the idea of marriage on me, I think they’re getting desperate.”

“I’m sorry.” Wanda mumbles. She feels bad for not knowing how to comfort Y/N better in these situations.

“It’s fine.” Y/N smiles gently, gently bumping her shoulder against Wanda’s. “I don’t want to think about marriages when I’m with you.”

Wanda bumps her shoulder back, grabbing a handful of blueberries as she drops the subject.

Soon the sun fully sets down, the evening darkness slowly starting to engulf the garden. Wanda and Y/N move the blanket away from the oak tree, so they could lay on it and watch the stars.

“Which one do you want to go to?” Y/N asks softly after a moment of silence.

“What do you mean?”

“When we met, you said you’d like to travel to a stars.” She states, her gaze on the sky. It’s not fully dark yet, but the brightest stars are already visible. “Which one would you like to go to?”

Wanda hums. “I don’t know the names of the stars.”

“We have some astronomy books in the library, I’ll get them for you.” Y/N mumbles, turning her head to the side to look at Wanda.

Her side profile is ethereal. Y/N doesn’t know if she’s ever seen something so effortlessly beautiful. A small smile adorns her face, she swears she can see the twinkle of the stars in Wanda’s eyes, she’s sure Wanda’s eyes are the stars.

“Really?” Wanda turning her head to look at her makes her come out of her thoughts.

“Yeah,” she whispers, “I’d do anything for you.” Y/N raises up to lean on her elbows, the upper half of her body over Wanda’s. They stare at each other for a moment, before she slowly lowers her face closer, pressing their lips together in a soft and slow kiss.

One of Wanda’s hands moves around Y/N’s waist, rubbing the dress covered skin gently.

They pull away, though their faces are still close enough to feel the other’s warm breath on their faces. Y/N feels like her heart is beating out of her chest. “Do you want to run away with me?” The question comes out so quietly Wanda almost doesn’t understand it.

Her eyes widen and she sits up properly, bringing Y/N up with her. “What?”

“I…I want to run away with you. Go someplace where no one knows me, where we don’t have to be careful or hide.” The heartbeat is almost deafening in her ears.

“Do you mean that?”

“Of course I do.”

A silence falls. Wanda stares at Y/N with slightly furrowed brows, her hands shaking at the prospect of running away with her, leaving her family and friends behind. They would understand, but could she really do it.

“I’m sorry.” Y/N clears her throat, her gaze falling after the silence continues. “It was a stupid idea. Our whole lives are here and w-“

“Yes.”

“What?”

Wanda sets her hands on Y/N’s cheeks, pulling their faces closer together. A smile grows on her face, one of those that hurt her cheeks but she can’t stop. “I’ll run away with you.”

Letting out a laugh, whether of shock or relief Y/N doesn’t know, she sets her hands on top of Wanda’s. “You’re perfect.”

The laughter is contagious. Giddiness and a sense of freedom fill their bodies as Wanda drops back down on her back, pulling Y/N down with her. Her other hand goes to the back of the Princess’ neck, bringing their lips together, their teeth almost clashing together.

They stay like that for a moment, hands wondering and occasional giggles interrupting their kisses. When they finally pull apart, they’re panting, huge smiles on their faces.

“When are we leaving?” Wanda whispers, moving a strand of Y/N’s hair behind her ear.

“Soon. We just need to get ready, say our goodbyes, and make sure my parents won’t do anything.” She lets out a shaky breath, the weight of their decision settling in her chest. “But it’ll be good, I’m certain Natasha and Yelena will help us.”

“My family too.” Wanda smiles, her thumb rubbing Y/N’s cheek. She can sense the nerves in her. “I can’t think of anything better than spending my whole life with you.”

Y/N’s leans her head against Wanda’s shoulder as they lay on the blanket. “Me neither.”

Another silence falls over them, a comforting one. They stay close to each other, Wanda looking at the sky and Y/N listening to the beat of her heart.

A small rustle breaks the atmosphere.

They practically fly away from each other, both of their eyes moving to the direction of the sound. There’s just a flower bush there, no insects, no other movement. Just in case, they stay quiet for a moment, waiting for any kind of disturbance.

“Probably just a bird.” Y/N whispers, fearful of raising her voice.

“Yeah…”

Nonetheless, they gather up the blanket and basket, making their way back to the castle.

[p0rk-guts]

He's finally done I think. WOAW! Radio demon time!!!

Okay time for comparison + breakdown rant ^ - ^ another SUPER long one I had a lot to say about this silly guy

ALRIGHT. So. Atp all that can be said has been said about Alastor but I'll gloss over it anyhow. Grossly historically inaccurate hair and clothing. Invisible deer theming. One of the main reasons he's got one of the most clowned on designs in the show is bc he's a pretty good representation of the worst it has to offer. He's absurdly red and has the waspiest waist in town. Also gotta zero in on the coat for a second bc I find it incredibly stupid that he went to that tailor bc of his coat being ripped and then left the shop with the exact same torn coat on oh goddd that felt like a complete joke who wrote this

Also his "redesign" was pointless. He stayed pretty much entirely the same except his colors got pinker and grosser and now he has this?? White trim on his lapels??? Even less 1930's accurate and it only serves to hurt the pallate in my eyes. It's the only spot of white on his entire design, it doesn't appear anywhere else so it throws it all off. And it's so bright. Is it supposed to be a focal point?? His tits????

Anyways onto my guy who I love so very deeply. I'm pretty sure sepia film was outdated by the 1930s but I gave him a palette inspired by it to emphasize how dated and stuck in old ways he is. Added blood red accents bc. Well. Cannibal murderer. Also bc I redid the sin colors so red is wrath and it seems like a fitting sin to pair him with.

After looking into 1930's men's fashion a tiny bit (thanks anon, this video was helpful!) and gave him a double breasted coat but wider and pointier so he looks a little less like just some normal guy and really emphasize how prideful and egotistical he is. "Ooo look at me I'm super big and imposing and powerfulll". I think it's a fun character trait of his. Definitely keeping it.

I liked him wearing gloves bc I feel like he wouldn't like getting his hands directly dirty and would always be covered when committing his murders. Maybe he's a germaphobe even. "I can excuse murder but I draw the line at dried blood on my skin". Also the gloves being white would contrast really well with blood so. Love that

I gave him a long tie to free him from the Vivziepop bow tie uniform and a fedora to add to the 1930's vibe and serve as something that can occasionally obscure his face in shadow. His glasses are also opaque and I imagine his eyes would rarely be shown if ever to make him seem more inhuman and off-putting, disconnecting him from personhood a bit. Wanted to add to that with his smiling mouth never opening and just being a static grin that can only occasionally widen or lessen, his voice cracking out of his "speaker" with fuzzy radio static. Seen multiple ppl use that idea and it always eats

I love Alastor's silly theatric nature (primarily in the pilot) and I'd probably keep it, but I'd add a layer of uncanny-ness to him where when he's not putting on his silly jovial facade, he gives off an unnerving vibe. Trying to appear approachable and charming and pleasant to lure people in before he's revealed to be less than human. Loveee thattt

I love Alastor being a deer. Predator becoming prey (animal) + "prey animal" lulling people into a false sense of security before striking. Love it. We should be CAPITALIZING ON IT❗So I gave him deer like legs, visible deer hooves, and more readable deer ears + the ham radio tower antenna antlers (sorry 4 calling them horns 💀)

Tried to make it a little more obvious that he's a mixed man of color by giving him dark wavy hair and the faintest hint of lip definition Viv uses in her style. I think it works. He's still not dark skinned tho

LASTLY the mic. Also not an original idea as I've seen tons of others turn it into a carbon mic but turned into a pentagram shape and I love the idea a lotttt so I joined the crew.

AND THAT DOES IT!!!! hope u like him as much as I do hehe. Just 1 supplemental doodle this time sorry :/ showing off how his face is probably obscured most of the time. He's. So hard to draw. I'm just bad at men but I'm tryinggggg guys

Alsoooo I've already finished the drawings for Niffty, Angel, and Husk! Once I've finished their breakdowns I'll add em right to the queue, and then I'll make a post with all of the main 6 together :3

[fayes-fics]

Doctor’s Orders

Pairing: Benedict Bridgerton x fem!reader, modern AU

Summary: Someone decides to play doctor to ameliorate your bad day…

Warnings: 18+ smut, minors DNI, doctor/patient roleplay, dom/sub tones, ‘medical examination’ with use of stethoscope and latex gloves, voluntary breathplay, cardiophilia, vaginal fingering, edging.

Word Count: 4.5 k

Authors Note: this is a long-awaited (9 months!) request fill for the lovely @eleanor-bradstreet. My dear, I hope this is somewhat worth the wait. To anyone medically trained, yes, I know what he does is wrong/inaccurate, but that’s the whole point: he’s a somewhat clueless but enthusiastic roleplaying boy, not a real doctor. Thank you to @colettebronte for the read-through and suggestions. Enjoy! <3

It’s been one of those spectacularly shit days at work. When you get to your boyfriend’s flat, all you want to do is shower, crash out and watch brainless TV together.

“Bad day?” Benedict intuits, wandering over from the kitchen, casual in shorts and a t-shirt, as you drop your bag like a tonne of bricks near his front door and pout.

“Hate my job,” you whine, burying your head into his shoulder as he chuckles affectionately, pulling you into his arms and busses a kiss onto your temple.

“No, you don’t; you love your job. You just didn’t love it today,” he smiles into your hair.

“Urgh, fine, yes, Mr EQ, yes, that's true,” you huff his neck, enjoying his clean scent.

“Come with me, my stressed-out noodle,” he offers good-naturedly, withdrawing from the embrace and lacing your fingers with his. He backs up, pulling you along with him further into the flat.

“Where are we going?” you pout again.

“To eat, I made us dinner,” he smiles, something melting in your chest at the sweet gesture. 

“Do I have time to shower first?” you ask, wanting to remove all physical traces of this workday from your skin.

“Of course, be my guest,” he nods towards his room, with the en suite bathroom beyond, and you drop a kiss on his cheek as you go.

—

Fifteen minutes later, you emerge freshly showered and wearing some of his clothes- a t-shirt that swamps you and jogging bottoms you have to roll up at the waist. You take a seat at the kitchen island and tuck into the amazing-smelling food he has laid out, even giving you a comedic bow as you reenter the room.

The food tastes like heaven, and you can't stop the appreciative moans at the flavour explosion on your tongue.

“Fuck Ben, this is delicious,” you assert as you swallow the mouthful.

His face lights up with that beguiling smile that hooked you in the first place all those months ago, and you can't help but lean in and give him a quick peck.

“So do you want to talk about the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day? Or is this more of a big glass of wine and stfu sort of deal?“ he hedges amiably, assessing your needs.

You sigh as you finish your next bite. “Honestly? I don't know. I’m so stressed about it all I sort of don’t want to talk about it. I feel like I need to be one of those Regency ladies who is prescribed a trip to the seaside for my nerves, you know?” you jest, circling your empty fork in the air to highlight your point.

He barks a laugh. “Funny you should say that; I was just reading a book about hilarious historical cures.”

“Yeah…?” your interest piqued.

“Dorset left it out,” he explains, referring to his roommate, a junior doctor at Guys Hospital. “It's hilarious. But I don't think they would diagnose you with a trip to the seaside, at least not based on what I’ve read.”

You swivel on your stool to face him. “Oh no? Then what would I have been prescribed, Dr Bridgerton?” you jest, leaning your chin on your hand and arching a challenging brow. But you don't miss how his pupils dilate a fraction as you address him such.

He turns towards you with a laconic smile. “You likely would have been prescribed a course of pelvic stimulations.”

You are glad you hadn't taken another bite of dinner, as you would have sprayed him with food with that spit take.

“What?!? No!” you laugh incredulously.

“Don't believe me? Go look,” he challenges, gesturing to the book on the coffee table.

“So… Is that what I think it is? Women would literally be told, medically, to masturbate?” you giggle, disbelieving.

“Oh no,” he corrects. “You wouldn't do it; the doctor would.”

“What the…??”

“Yup… ‘to alleviate the female hysterics’,” he chimes, affecting an old-timely announcer voice.

“With what?” you ponder aloud, still utterly perplexed.

“Hands, I would assume,” he breezes. “Why? Would you like a helping hand?” he winks, wiggling his eyebrows comically.

“I mean….” you trail off, still laughing but feeling a tiny buzz between your legs at the idea. “I'm not going to say no… Doctor Bridgerton,” you banter back.

Benedict puts down his fork, his Adam's apple bobbing as he swallows his bite of food and turns slowly towards you, an enigmatic glint in his eye.

“Well, now, you will need a thorough medical examination before I can determine if such a prescription is even the correct one,” he throws out, still with a jovial air, but the dropped octave is decidedly suggestive.

“How long until I can get an appointment?” you shoot back, feeling the atmosphere in the room shift, the dynamic between you playful but with a definite undercurrent of heat now.

“The doctor is always in… for you,” he answers, a hand landing heavily on your knee. “If you are ready, please go wait in the exam room,” Benedict responds, signalling to the sofa, that hand squeezing slightly. “The doctor can be right with you.”

You giggle and shoot him a ‘Are we really doing this?’ look. When he nods, you wiggle off the stool and drift over to the sectional as he disappears down the hallway, your half-eaten dinners now very much abandoned. Little butterflies in your stomach as you perch, eagerly awaiting his return.

When he re-enters the room, you almost forget how to breathe. He has obviously raided his flatmate's room and come out wearing a white doctor’s overcoat, his shapely calves bare beneath the hem, a stethoscope slung casually around his shoulders. He has also dug out his reading glasses to complete the look. He is so utterly convincing you don't know what to think, except…. Oh fuck yes.

“Good afternoon, Miss y/l/n,” he greets, stepping effortlessly into the roleplay. “I'm Dr Bridgerton. Tell me, what ails you today?” 

He sits on the coffee table right in front of you, looking at you expectantly for your response.

“Hello, doctor,” you begin, stilted, still a little discombobulated by his appearance and how utterly aroused you are by it. “I… I am overworked in my job and don't know the best way to relieve the stress I feel….” 

“Well, I am sorry to hear that. Let us do a basic examination so I can rule out any possible physical ailments and go from there.” Before you can respond, he produces disposable gloves from his overcoat pocket and snaps them on, your tummy fluttering at the sight of them pulling taunt around his long fingers. 

Oh, he means it.

He leans in, his hands cupping your jaw, warm even through the latex. You whimper quietly, realising he is pretending to feel the lymph nodes beneath your ear for swelling. But he doesn't let go; he just stares you down, his eyes glittering in the lamp glow. 

“Say ahhh,” he prompts.

You open your mouth instinctively, just like at the doctor’s. He pivots a hand so his thumb gently presses down on your tongue as he peers into your mouth.

“Hmm, I see no evidence of an oral infection. But I should check via other means too, to be thorough,” he murmurs, pupils dilating as you cheekily close your lips around his thumb and suck on it suggestively. The powdery flavour on the glove somehow just heightens the heat you feel spreading inside.

“Behave please, Miss,” he rebukes, but his actions say otherwise - extracting his thumb and trailing your saliva in a line down over your chin, your neck, resting it in your suprasternal notch as his fingers curl around your neck and tug you towards him.

His kiss is deep and breathtaking. His tongue unfurls into your mouth and probes yours as if this, too, is a thorough examination. You follow his lead, letting him dictate the terms, wanting to follow wherever he is going with this.

“I think we can rule out anything in your mouth being the problem,” he opines drolly over your lips. 

“Thank you, doctor,” you respond coquettish.

“Let me listen to your lungs to ensure there are no respiratory problems. Remove your clothing, please,” he orders brusquely, sitting back.

“All of it?” you inhale sharply.

“I suppose just your top for now,” he revises, looking a tad impatient.

When you whip off the top to reveal you are without a bra, his eyes flash, and the tip of his tongue pokes out as your nipples pebble in the cool air of the room. A wave of something behind your ribs as he unfurls the stethoscope from around his neck and places it in his ears.

“Please keep your hands at your sides at all times. And beware, this may be cold,” he warns.

You squeak as the cool metal is placed onto the flesh above your left breast, your hands curling around the sofa edge by your thighs so you keep them as told.

“Breath in deeply for me,” he instructs, and you do, taking a deep inhale, feeling your body bloom with his proximity as his face squints in concentration. When he doesn't say exhale, you hold, unsure what else to do, your lungs feeling tight. It seems much longer than necessary. “And out”

He drags the bell over your sternum to the same spot on the right side. 

“Again” he orders. You follow the instructions, taking a deep breath. “Hold it,” he alerts, as you start to feel the struggle for air. You do his bidding, feeling that trademark ache under your ribs under the exertion. “And release,” he instructs just as you want to disobey.

“Good,” he rumbles, “just one more.”

You pant lightly as he drags the scope down between your breasts, then jump as he presses it low into the sensitive spot where your ribs meet on your diaphragm. 

“In and hold.”

As you do, he tilts forward and suddenly seizes a nipple between his teeth. You make a strangled noise in your closed mouth, a zipping thrill right down to your clit. The surprise makes air escape out your nose, fingers grasping the cushion.

“No,” he gruffs into your breast, not looking up at you. “I told you to hold. You hold your breath until I say you can release,” he lectures. “Now breath in and hold it,” his voice taking on a steely edge that makes your pussy constrict.

Wordlessly, you do as told, and this time, he swaps to your other nipple, biting down, then lathing with his hot tongue as you struggle—tight lungs, intense pressure behind your cheeks. The thronging pleasure around where he teases you makes it an almost impossible task; starting to struggle a little, your body twitching, fingers and toes flexing.

“Let it out,” he permits, and you open your mouth, the air escaping in a loud ‘pahhhh’ sound.

“Well, I think your lungs sound very healthy,” he breezes nonchalantly as if this is just how a doctor does an exam.

“That’s good,” you defer to his faux expertise even as you feel his saliva drying on your areola. 

“Now, let's test your heart,” he proceeds, pulling the stethoscope from his ears so it rests around his neck. “Remove the rest of your clothing now, please, Miss.”

“Is that strictly necessary, doctor? Just to listen to my heart?” you waver, even as your hands go to the ties at your waistband.

“I am the doctor here, am I not?” he counters, raising a brow.

“Yes,” you demure, a pulse around your clit at how thoroughly he inhabits this role.

“You may find it easier to stand,” he chuckles as he watches you shuffling, struggling to remove your bottoms while seated. 

So you do as he suggests, his breath ghosting over the sensitive skin around your belly button as you push the loose jersey material over the swell of your hips. He growls at the other surprise lurking—you wear no underwear, your bare slit inches from his face as the clothing pools around your feet, now utterly naked.

“Is this okay, doctor?” you simper, looking down at him sitting on the coffee table as he finally tilts his head to look at your face.

“Lay down on the exam table,” he commands, his pointer finger jabbing towards the chaise.

“Make me…”

Your tongue rebels before your brain can engage, wanting to see how much he will take control if you act out. He springs to his feet, towering over you, inches from you, and grasps the nape of your neck, forcing you to look up at him.

“Are you questioning my methods?” he interrogates, his hold strong but not hurting.

Oh, yes, Benedict, well done.

“No, Doctor,” you simper, attempting to look innocent but knowing your eyes must be fully dilated by now, distracted by the pulse you see in his throat.

“I need to be very thorough before I can diagnose you accurately, Miss,” he cautions. “Do you hear me?”

“Yes, doctor.” 

“Good. Now lay down,” he instructs brusquely, releasing his grip.

You drop to the sofa and lay out for him, a thrill zipping over your skin. He places a large cushion beneath your neck and head so you are tilted up and can see down the plain of your naked body.

“Now be very still and be very quiet. Keep your hands at your sides. Whatever I do to you is to ensure your heart is healthy. Do you understand me?” he tutors, his eyes roaming your body covetously.

“Yes, doctor,” you confirm, knowing your chest is rising and falling rapidly, the anticipation burning in your being.

He places the stethoscope directly over your heart and loops it back into his ears, the cool metal now a balm against your flushed skin.

“You have a good strong heartbeat,” he states casually, “But it is a little slow for my liking….”

His gloved hand loops around the leg closest to him and hauls it wide into his lap, your knee brushing a prominent bulge under the overcoat that makes your insides clench at the very thought of his cock.

“Stay still.” 

His clipped reminder is delivered as he trails his fingertips along your inner thigh, his other hand still holding the stethoscope against your chest. Your breath stutters as his latex-covered fingers nudge your folds, already weeping.

“Well, I see there is certainly no problem with your ability to get aroused,” he intones smokily with a tantalising brush over your clit. 

His moves are unrushed, his touch maddeningly light, not nearly enough, barely a glance over your soaked flesh, making you ache for more. After a few moments, you whine and defiantly attempt to push into his touch.

“Did I not tell you to be still and quiet?” he arches an eyebrow, and you pout but still yourself and fold your lips inwards under your teeth. “That’s better. Now let's see what happens when I….”

He expertly plunges two long fingers into your pussy, your arousal leaking over his gloves as he does so. He hisses his approval at your heated cling, pushing deep as you swallow your gasp, biting your lip to prevent any more sound from escaping. His fingers hook, and his wrist twists in slow corkscrew turns, dragging thoroughly over your walls as if giving you an internal exam. You crave more: more fingers, movement, friction, more of anything, your fingernails scratching against the fibres of the sofa, keeping them at your sides as told, even as you itch to grab his wrist and direct his motions.

“Interesting,” he mutters, his fingers swirling slowly, probing inside as he drags the scope fractionally on your sternum.

You utter a silent curse, your body already quivering. The room filled only with the sound of your ragged breathing and the sodden noise from between your legs as he leisurely rocks his gloved fingers into and out of your pussy, you suctioning around his knuckles, the stretch with each stroke making you want to beg for him to make you come.

“Your heart is definitely strong,” he declares, “but I think we need to put it to the test properly.”

His thumb presses onto your clit, and it's like a lightning bolt through your being. Something about the fact it's not his skin on yours lends an extra frisson. You can feel the warmth of his pad behind the latex barrier as he flicks against your swollen nub.

“More, please, Doctor Bridgerton, please,” you entreat desperately, attempting to tilt your pelvis to ride his hand.

He groans at your use of his name, not chastising you for vocalising. His rigid cock brushes your knee held in his lap as he surges his hips fractionally, your legs spread obscenely wide as he finger fucks you, his stethoscope leaving a circular imprint on your chest, almost bearing his weight into your skin. God help you both if his flatmate cuts his night shift short.

“Your bpm is rising,” he reports as his fingers move faster, wringing filthy noises from your body now, pushing harder with every stroke, his thumb circling your clit with unerring pressure. You just moan a litany of ‘Dr Ben’, and ‘yes’ and ‘please don’t stop’ as you spiral higher.

“That's it, yes, that's what I like to hear,” he encourages, “it's like music.” 

Even you can tell your heart is thumping now, hearing it loud in your own ears as the blood rushes to your head. Just as you are about to crest, he suddenly stops his ministrations and withdraws his fingers. You cry out as he rests the soaked glove on your lower belly, pressing down softly from the outside on that spot that aches for more, your own juices dripping down between your bum cheeks.

“Shhh shh,” he pacifies, the scope he still holds with his other hand feeling heavy on your flesh as his prideful gaze travels up your panting body, gleeful at his ability to do this to you. 

You plead with your eyes as his eyes finally reach your face, silently asking him to finish.

“Wonderful, your heartbeat is so strong in my ears,” he sounds almost wistful, dreamy. 

Your breathing slows, even as you feel the burn of an orgasm so denied, your pelvis throning, your clit painfully engorged.

“Hmm, let’s go again, shall we?” he smirks.

That’s all the warning you get before he plunges his fingers back inside, this time using three, the latex glove squeaking slightly around his palm. You scream and cant your body up off the sofa to the point he briefly lets go of the scope; his glove presses down on your diaphragm, forcing you back flat so you cannot ride his fingers like you want to.

“Please, doctor…” you beseech, voice reedy and wanton, uncaring about anything but being hurled over that divine edge.

“The more you ask, the less I am inclined to deliver,” he menaces. “I will just edge you all night and listen to your heart thumping so hard for me it sounds like it wants to break out from under your ribs.” he jerks the scope pointedly over your breastbone. 

You close your eyes and bite your lip, resigning yourself to obey. That he might keep you on edge for so long, you cannot bear—you need to come like you need air.

His handsome face is smug as he once again probes your body from inside, almost experimenting based on the tiny whimpers you make. He jabs a spot that makes your entire body spasm, and a crooked, dangerous smile spreads over his features.

“Oh, look what we have found,” his chest resonant with pitch, the tone dark and sweet.

Once again, you beg silently, but he indulges in the tease. Tapping gently on the spot rather than rocking into it, a slow, gentle touch that makes every nerve jangle, like an itch you cannot scratch hard enough.

“I love to see you like this,” he admits breathily as he keeps us at that vexing pace. “So strung out and desperate to come. You would do anything I told you to right now, wouldn't you? If I just promised to let you over the edge.”

You are nodding vigorously before he even finishes his sentence, his triumphant expression almost galling if not for the desire writ large on his face.

“Good,” he snarls and starts to jab on that same spot. Desire roars fire in your veins, and you scream, your body trembling. He leans over and captures one of your nipples in his wet, warm mouth, and you scream again, uncaring what any of his neighbours may think.

You are dangling on the edge, reality bleeding into pleasure when once again he stops, and the noise that escapes your lungs is feral—a wretched groaning wail as an inferno licks around every edge of your being.

“Listen,” he growls, roughly yanking the tubes from his ear and placing them over yours. The noise is almost deafening, a thumping rhythm so fast it is virtually interpolating and looping upon itself. It's fascinating and life-affirming even as your body cries out, your clit pulsing in tempo with the thrumming beat. Greedily, he grabs them back and places them over his ears again, moving the bell to the right, his breath gusting hard.

“Touch yourself,” he orders gruffly.

It doesn't take moments for your hand to slide between your legs and catch your clit, a hardened, searing nub so wet you can hardly find grip and so distended it doesn't even feel like your body.

He leans possessively over you, a vein in his neck pulsing as he listens intently, his eyes pinging between your face, the scope on your naked chest and your hand between your legs, rubbing vigorously.

When his fingers sink back inside you, your knuckles cradled in his palm as you strum your clit, it hurtles you instantly over. You grasp his bicep as you crest the wave, your whole body held taught then snapping, shuddering and pulsing forcefully around his fingers as you tumble down that abyss, his stethoscope almost bruising your breastbone as you writhe, him singing your praises. You don't recall the next few moments, floating far away as everything is fuzzy, as if behind a gauzy filter. 

“Oh, that was perfect,” he attests sotto voce as you return to yourself, shaking with tony aftershocks. “You should hear how alive your body sounds when you come like that. Fuck that was amazing…” he seems almost dazed, his fingers dormant inside you.

As he withdraws from you, you emit a mewl, overwrought and shaking from the intensity. 

“Well, Miss,” he begins, slipping back into his roleplay. “I can say without a doubt you are very healthy, so no concern there. I can also tell your stress level is much lower now. Thus, I shall be prescribing you a minimum of two orgasms a day. Purely for your health, you understand,” he adds with a knowing smirk.

“Yes, doctor,” you nod drowsily, slurring slightly. “Should I administer them mysel…?”

“No,” he cuts in. “I'm afraid it requires a medical professional such as myself to ensure correct dosage,” his tone gravelly, snapping off the gloves from his hands, balling them up and tossing them aside. “You will need to see me morning and night for at least a month until I can properly assess whether the treatment plan is effective.”

“Yes, Doctor Bridgerton,” you purr sibilant, too strung out to do anything but languidly agree to everything he says.

As you go to close your legs, he grabs your kneecap, preventing you.

“Oh no, we are not done here,” he intones with a tinge of menace.

“No?” you stutter.

“No, I need to be very thorough,” he counters, his voice rich like velvet. His bare fingers trail ticklish patterns over the crease of your knee as he smiles perilously, enjoying keeping you on tenterhooks. “I am nowhere near done with your treatment for the day. You have only had one climax, and I do believe I said you need a minimum of two per day," he reminds you, his stare blistering. 

You watch, almost stupified, as he removes the stethoscope and swivels to kneel between your legs, grabbing them and pushing them high and wide apart, the burning stretch along your inner thighs making you gasp.

“Now, are you going to do exactly what your doctor tells you to do this time?” he grills, his fingers digging into your flesh, his gaze intense.

“Yes, Doctor.”

“Good,” the word resonates through his being as his hungry stare slips over your body, down between your legs. “Now I think you need something more substantial than fingers, don't you?” he smirks playfully.

“Please, yes, please, Doctor Bridgerton,” you implore, canting your breasts up towards him, your eyes covetously sliding down his body as he hovers over you. Your breath quickens when you see the clear outline of his cock bulging against the overcoat. Oh god, is he naked under there? The thought makes you clench again.

You raise your hands and tug at the collar of his overcoat until the first popper opens, revealing his constellation of freckles. When he doesn't stop you, emboldened, you pull again, each popper relenting, a larger slice of his naked torso revealed with each ping. By the time you are down to the last two, you see the trail of hair from beneath his belly button and moan.

“You have been naked this whole time, doctor?!” your voice hitching almost scratchy.

He grabs your hand away, pressing it into the cushion above your head as he bears you into the sofa with his weight, one of that last fastened poppers snagging cold metal against your swollen clit.

“I cannot ask my patients to be naked if I am not as well, surely?” he rumbles, hot in your ear, his warm chest covering yours. He grabs your other wrist and guides it to the same place. “Now, hold onto the cushion under your head and don't move your hands until I say so,” he orders, his smoulder turning lethal as you do as told. 

He pulls up slightly and yanks the rest of the coat open, throwing it aside, giving you only a fleeting glance before surging his leaking, heated cock right over your slit.

“God, Ben, fuck me,” your errant internal monologue slips from your tongue before you can stop it.

“Who is Ben?” he quips duskily, rocking in a distracting manner, his tip glancing into your folds. “There is only Doctor Bridgerton here tonight.”

“Doctor Bridgerton,” you amend, fingers curling into the seam of the throw cushion, fighting the urge to grab him, “please fuck me.” 

He smiles triumphantly and lowers himself over you so you are swamped by him. 

“Well, as you asked so nicely…” 

Benedict taglist: @makaylan @foreverlonginguniverse @iboopedyournose @aintnuthinbutahounddog @severewobblerlightdragon @margofiore @writergirl-2001 @heeyyyou @enichole445 @enchantedbytomandhenry @ambitionspassionscoffee @chaoticcalzoneranchsports @nikaprincessofkattegat @baebee35 @crowleysqueenofhell @fiction-is-life @lilacbeesworld @angels17324 @broooookiecrisp @queen-of-the-misfit-toys @divaanya @musicismyoxygen84 @benedictspaintbrush @miindfucked @sorryallonsy @cayt0123 @hottytoddyhistory @truly-dionysus @fictionalmenloversblog @zinzysstuff @malpalgalz @panhoeofmanyfandoms @kinokomoonshine @causeimissu @delehosies @m-rae23 @last-sheep @kmc1989 @desert-fern @starkeylover @corpseoftrees-queen @magical-spit @bunnyweasley23 @how-many-stars-in-the-sky @amygdtjhddzvb @sya-skies

Dividers credit: @/firefly-graphics

[acti-veg]

is it actually wrong to be Islamophobic? and by this i mean "disliking Islam". NOT saying "all Muslims are terrorists" or we should treat Muslims badly in any way. but to dislike the religion - not the people? are there not lots of verses encouraging violence in the Quran? (this is a genuine question - i don't know the answer)

It is perfectly fine to challenge or dislike any belief system, religious beliefs are not unique in any way in that respect. However, when you ‘hate’ an entire religion you’re not really just challenging a specific belief; because religions are extremely diverse, representing a fairly wide group of belief systems that may only share some key common features. One person’s Islam can be very different to another’s. Those who hate Islam as an entire religion tend not to know very much about it, in my experience.

There are certainly passages that can be interpreted as violent in the Quran, as there are in the Bible, but the Quran and modern Islam are not the same thing. Religious believers negotiate with scripture for meaning, and apply it to their lives. You can interpret ‘violent’ passages as reflective of the specific struggle that was happening at the time that the Quran was written, you could view it as a spiritual battle, or as encouraging violence against non-believers more generally.

If you are violent, your Islam will be violent. If you are a pacifist, your Islam will be peaceful. If you took a moderate Muslim from an affluent area in East Sussex and asked them to speak to a militant Islamist from an impoverished community in Kabul, they’d barely even recognise each other’s religion as being the same as their own. They may both claim that the other is not a ‘real Muslim,’ yet you’d hate all Islam on the basis of the behaviour of one of them? Or based on the text they both hold as sacred?

To view a religion as essentially just words on a page, or Muslims as a homogenous, unchanging group is a very narrow and inaccurate view. All religions are organic belief systems that change depending on the historical period, the cultural context, by mosque and even by individual. When people say they ‘hate’ Islam, when asked why, they usually break into criticism of Muslims as an entire people, which is Islamophobia. Or, they just point to specific lines in the Quran, which is fine, but very reductive and simplistic. At that point you’re just criticising a book.

People who ‘hate Islam’ generally don’t have a good grasp of what it is they even hate, and that goes for a lot of the more forceful critics of religion more generally. They haven’t studied the Quran, they haven’t engaged in Muslim culture, they haven’t really even talked to Muslims about what their beliefs even are. They read some out of context Quran quotes on the internet, or a few lines from someone like Ibn Kathir, and they think they understand the entire religion well enough to declare that Islam is violent. Religion is complex, they’re not just dead texts, they’re lived beliefs that are coloured by perception, culture and history as much as any other belief is.

What Islam is for most people is just what they have heard about it, and that is usually negative coverage from media sources. Even for you, I’d question why you are specifically focusing on the religion that the media has told you to hate, rather than any other religious or political ideology. That isn’t a criticism of your character, none of us are immune to propaganda. I’d just encourage you to reflect for yourself just how much of this thinking comes from your study of Islam, and how much comes from negative representations in the media.

[lailoken]

What are your favorite pieces of media that you think accurately represent magic and spirit work? Movies, books, even music..

This is an interesting question, but one that requires a lot of thought, as I have read and watched an inordinate amount of books and movies. Plus, even really good fiction with pagan themes that I've read/watched is generally inaccurate in most ways, with some realistic aspects of magic woven in here and there. Some of my very favorite media relating to the subject can't really be included, simply because of how inaccurate it is overall, but there are a few that have caught my notice.

I'm sure I'll end up missing ones, which bugs me, but I'll do my best to recount some examples that I can think of:

The Love Witch (2016) is a movie that I think presents a strikingly realistic portrayal of what magic can look like. It manages to show some of the ways one might use magic to great effect, without actually skewing into fantasy at all. Clearly, the magic shown isn't going to line up with every paradigm, and its not exactly a heady or spirit-based story, but I think it's a very real look at how ritual and magic is/can be approached by many folks in the modern day.

The Witch (2015) is, above all else, a great slow-burn horror film and an excellent period-piece. However, it also portrays quite an accurate conception of folkloric beliefs about Witchcraft in the 17th century, which inexorably inform the realities of modern Witchcraft traditions. It does just barely skew into fantasy horror, but the actual folkloric information being presented is quite sound.

A Dark Song (2016) is a film that portrays ceremonial magic realistically in many ways. Ultimately, it is still a supernatural horror film, but the bulk of the magic in the movie is based directly on the Abramelin Operation, which was interesting to see. A lot of the ways that the magic "takes shape" in the film feels real enough to me, too (though it certainly takes it to extremes at points, as horror movies are wont to do).

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson is a horror novel I much enjoyed when I read it a coulple years ago, but I also remember that it happens to contain small, but meaningful, instances of sympathetic magic within the story that I appreciated as a practitioner looking in. This one has been made into a movie as well.

Cunning Folk by Adam Nevill is one of the more realistic looks at magic—including the uncanny side of it—that I've come across. It's still definitely a horror story, first and foremost, but there's an oomph to the ritual and magic described therein that a lot of other similar fiction lacks—even when the ritual act being described isn't necessarily accurate in terms of historicality or my personal experience of the Craft.

The White People by Arthur Machen is a Welsh short horror story from the turn of the century, which I think is worth including here. There are elements and aspects of the story that feel surprisingly real in terms of Gloaming initiation and the Gloaming Spirits—though, of course, it takes creative liberties informed by the paranormal beliefs and trends of the time (1890s).

The Craft (1996) is a movie that I'm sure a lot of pagans have of nostalgia for in one way or another, myself included. I struggled with whether this movie should be here or in the Honorable Mention section, but I included it here in the end because a lot of the ways magic and ritual are presented in the film are accurate enough. I also think it did a fairly good job of capturing how it can feel to discover, revel in, and then become overwhelmed by magic. However, since it is a supernatural horror film, a lot of magic shown is portrayed more fantastically than the real thing, and there are aspects of the magic (rituals, entities, etc.) made up entirely for the sake of the story.

As implied above, there are also some pieces that, while largely inaccurate or too far into the realm of fantasy, still manage to succesfully capture some essence of realistic feeling magic in them. I will list those here as Honorable Mentions:

Practical Magic (1998) is another movie that I'm sure a lot of Pagans have nostalgia for in some way or another. I won't claim that it's a genuinely "accurate" representation of magic—and it certainly strays into outright fantasy at times—but there are little things throughout the movie that managed to ring a bell for me, as someone who grew up with magic in my family. I know this was originally a book, but I actually haven't read that as of yet, so I can't speak to it.

Pan's Labyrinth (2006) is a movie is squarely in the fantasy-horror genre to me, but even still, I include it here as an honorable mention because a lot of the lore depicted is drawn from real lore, and the overall ambience it manged to evoke strongly reminds me of some of my own experiences with chthonic journeying.

The Good Witch franchise isn't one I have ever actually watched any part of before, but I include it here because, oddly enough, multiple practitioners have mentioned to me that they think the magic is surprisingly realistic for a Hallmark series. As I understand it, the main character is a sort of local Wise Woman who helps the folk in her little town using things like folk-knowledge, remarkable intuition, and an uncanny ability to seemingly sway people and circumstances. Since I haven't seen it myself, my take on it may be somewhat lacking, (which is why I listed it as an honorable mention), but based on the description, it actually sounds like it may be one of the more realistic interpretations of magic on this list.

I know this is a strange addition, as it's not exactly magic, per se, but much of how Stephen King writes about psychic abilities like clairvoyance and healing throughout his works manages to touch on something all too familiar for me. I think, sometimes, that he may have known someone with the Sight and/or the Touch in his real life, as it comes up a lot in one shape or another in his writing.

As I said, I'm sure there's stuff I'm missing, but this at least a serviceable overview. I encourage others to share any other media that they think deserves a mention, too!

[ssinnerplazahotel]

╭──────────.★..─╮

*Chapter Fifteen*

╰─..★.──────────╯

WC: 5k

Warning: 18+, age gap, smut, fluff, toxic elvis, manipulation, drug use, it’s the 50s/60s, painful-difficult-devastating-life-changing-extraordinary love

Pairing: elvis x black reader

Disclaimer: full of inaccuracies, inaccurate timeline, inaccurate depictions of Graceland, historically inaccurate themes and items

Masterlist: Prologue, Ch. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14

finale pt. 2

“They want you for the cover of Harper’s Bazaar.”

“Me?”

“Yeah, you.”

“Why?”

“Because they think you’re ‘extraordinarily beautiful,’” He said, quoting the request directly. “‘Otherworldly.’

“Is that supposed to be a compliment?”

“Well, I happen to agree that you’re out of this world.”

He smiled as you sat down in his lap, hugging his neck as you glanced over the letter. You thought about the offer for a moment.

“You don’t have to think about it too much,” Elvis said when he noticed your contemplation. “I’ll tell them you don’t want to do it.”

“Will you do it with me?”

“They didn’t ask me, dirty bird, they asked you.”

You laughed. “I know but…we do everything together.”

You knew if Elvis was on the cover they’d hardly spare you a glance. Doing it alone opened up the floor for criticism—criticism you no longer had the tolerance for. Though the hit pieces you saw were few and far between (Elvis made sure of that) you knew there was another level of hate out there.

“It should be all about you,” He said. “You have a few months to make up your mind.”

“They may not want me in a few months.”

“Why’s that?”

You shrugged dismissively. “I might be pregnant.”

You felt him tense beneath you. “You think?”

“I don’t know,” You said. “I’m late but…I’ve been late before.”

“They said there was a chance~”

“I don’t want to get excited. I don’t even want to think about it.”

“That mindset won’t get you far.”

“And being optimistic will?”

You stood up before he could respond, taking the lighter from the corner of his desk. He watched you wordlessly as you took a cigarette from its case and lit it.

“How late?”

“Don’t start with the questions, E.”

He stood with a sigh, dropping the pen that he had been fidgeting with. “Well, let me know when you start giving a fuck.”

You faced him. “You’re upset?”

“No.” You stopped him from leaving. “Birdie, I don’t care if you don’t.”

“I care,” You said. “I’m just scared.”

“If it works, it works. If it doesn’t, then that’s just it.”

“You don’t understand.”

“I do understand.”

“Do you know what a miscarriage feels like?”

He retracted, but he was still upset. “I don’t see the point in trying if we’re gonna ignore it when it happens.”

“I’m not ignoring it,” You said. “I don’t want to get my hopes up.”

“Well.” He walked past you. “I guess we’ll see.”

The months slipped by agonizingly slow. It was a miserable day every day you woke up still pregnant. It wasn’t that you hoped for another miscarriage, you just hated the anticipation of it all. It was hard to even acknowledge the fact.

You were measuring small, even towards the end of term. The doctors told you it was due to stress. It wasn’t the baby that was stressing you out however.

“I can’t believe I’m the one telling you that we need to get some things in order around here,” Elvis said, forcing you out of bed. “That sucker’s gonna pop out any day now, honey. They told us that weeks ago.”

“It’s fine,” You complained. “I’m sure someone will have the room ready overnight if you ask them.”

“This ain’t the inn, birdie,” He said. “You don’t just put it together in one day. Shouldn’t you have some kind of maternal instinct by now?”

You weren’t prepared to have a baby, let alone be a mother. You feared that you’d mess it up, like you mess up everything else.

“Come help me put this thing together,” Elvis said, returning to his passion project for that afternoon—the baby’s bassinet.

“Put it together in the nursery,” You said, sitting down on the edge of the bed. “It doesn’t make sense to do it here.”

“She’s not sleeping alone in a nursery,” He said. “You gotta keep her close the first few months at least. Unless you want a psychopath on our hands.”

“You read too much.”

“You don’t read enough.”

“Down the hall isn’t close enough?”

“Don’t be cruel.”

You watched him as he intently read the instructions word for word—ordering you around as he did so.

“A should snap into D,” He said, pointing the pieces out to you. “And B into C.”

“What?”

“A and D, B and C.”

“That’s so stupid.”

“Let me do it.”

It felt like everything was happening to you. You were nothing more than a variable in this equation and life was insistent on working you out.

~

“Just breathe for a second~”

“Is it happening?”

“Calm down~”

“Is it really happening?”

“Birdie, relax.”

You couldn’t, how could you? You were in labor, actual labor. Elvis had kept his wits about him when you told him but that didn’t stop you from succumbing to the feeling of impending doom that you had been trying to outrun for the past eight and a half months.

“Get off the phone, E,” You said, rushing him along. “We need to get there before they really start. I can’t handle it.”

“I’m coming,” He said, trying to keep his frustration at bay. “Go get dressed, you can’t go out like that.”

“I’m going to have a baby.”

“Go change,” He insisted. “You could use the distraction while I get this together.”

“Please hurry,” You said, going to find something decent to wear. “I don’t want to feel anything. I can’t take it, I already told you~”

“I know, darlin,” He said halfheartedly. “We’re practically already there.”

You were fully in labor when you arrived at the hospital and barely in time for the epidural. But, after twelve and a half hours, you were welcoming your first daughter into the world.

It was a moment that already felt surreal in your head but even more so as you watched it all play out in front of you. It was painless—as painless as it could be—and you were happy. At least that’s what you kept telling yourself. In reality, you had no idea what you were feeling.

“Birdie?”

“Hm?”

“Her name.”

Your eyes met Elvis’s as you held your daughter. He looked down at the both of you with such admiration.

“Are you asking me what it should be?”

“No, I’m telling you.”

“Birdie’s no name for a baby, E.”

“It could be.”

You looked down at the child in your arms, her eyes squeezed shut and her hands balled into tiny fists. “How about…Lark?”

“…I like it.” Elvis kissed your temple before leaning his head against yours and looking down at his daughter. “Y’know…we’re gonna have to tell the press soon.”

“Yeah, I know,” You responded. “I’m sure they’ll be thrilled.”

“It’s no rush.”

“Of course it is. They’re probably camped outside waiting.”

You turned your head when he didn’t respond, finding a telling expression on his face. “E…they are not camped outside waiting.”

“I don’t know how they found out~”

“Why would you say anything about telling them if they already know?” Your shift in tone startled the sleeping newborn in your arms, causing her to fuss. “Oh god, take her please~”

“Hey, it’s okay.” You weren’t sure if he was consoling you or the baby as he took her and stood from the bed. “It’s okay, hunna.”

You stared in the direction of the window, unable to see out but still picturing the press crowded around the building.

“What are they saying?” You asked, looking at him. “I know you’ve heard something so don’t lie to me.”

“It doesn’t matter,” He said in a hushed tone, walking the baby over to the crib that the hospital provided. “It’s just a shock, really. Most of the reactions are good.”

You didn’t believe him but you didn’t argue. You were too tired to go back and forth any longer.

After a restless night, you were awoken by Elvis saying that you were being discharged.

“Liz is here.”

“Why?”

“We have to go through the press to get out of here.”

“Is there really no other way?”

“They want to see us.”

You went through hair and makeup, nursing Lark along the way. You handed her off quickly after she was fed.

“Doesn’t hurt to hold her sometimes, bert,” Elvis said.

“Please don’t start calling me that,” You complained tensely as Liz zipped the back of your dress. You could hardly breathe in the stiff fabric.

“You don’t like it?” He laughed.

“No,” You exclaimed. “How do you get ‘bert’ from ‘birdie?’”

“D’You hear it, Lizzie?” He asked.

Liz shrugged and muttered something about hearing where he’d gotten it from.

“I can’t hear it,” You said. “I also can’t breathe.”

“You definitely don’t look like you had a baby twenty-four hours ago,” Liz said, adding the final touches. “They’ll love it.”

You enjoyed your brief interactions with Liz. She wasn’t talkative—by nature or per Elvis’s request you didn’t know. She finished up and left.

“What’s wrong?” Elvis asked when she was gone, laying the baby down.

“I don’t want them to see me,” You confessed. “I don’t want anyone to see me.”

“Why?” He wondered. “You’re beautiful.”

Your eyes threatened to roll at the compliment. You didn’t feel beautiful. You felt sore and tired—all but beautiful.

“It’ll be quick,” Elvis said. “Like tearin off a bandaid.”

The nurses insisted that you be wheeled to the car but you politely declined. You could make it walking.

Lark was carried out in her car seat first, heavily protected on all sides before you and Elvis casually strolled out of the building. It was pure chaos outside but you tuned everything out. When you finally made it to the car Elvis let you in before following suit. It was quick, like he promised.

*

“Andrea?”

You were shocked to see her waiting for you in the foyer when you arrived back at Graceland. She stopped you before you grew excited.

“I came back for the baby.”

You smiled despite her cold demeanor. “I’m so happy you’re here.”

Her expression softened when Elvis entered with the car seat in tow. He sighed as he shut the front door.

“You came,” He stated.

“For the baby,” Andrea clarified again, kneeling down to peek at her in the carrier. “What’s her name?”

“Lark,” You responded. “Like the bird.”

“You named her after a bird?” Andrea asked, raising an eyebrow.

“It’s sentimental.” You shrugged. “You don’t like it?”

“I think it’s a beautiful name.”

Your head snapped instantly in the direction of Dawn’s voice. She stood off to the side watching the interaction unfold.

“Aunt Dawn,” You said delightfully. “You made it.”

“I promised I would,” She said, opening her arms and wrapping you in her familiar embrace. “I had to see this to believe it.”

You felt small in her arms, like the child you once were. “I’m glad you’re here.”

She rubbed your back as she held you. “I’m here.”

“Let’s get you to bed, little bit,” Elvis said, cutting your embrace short. “Doctor’s orders.”

Things were different around the house with the baby and Andrea. Dawn stayed for a few days but ultimately returned to her house a few minutes up the road.

You promised to bring Lark over as often as you could, and you meant it. You aimed to go over every other weekend, but that changed into whenever Elvis could make the trip. He hated for you to visit Dawn on your own. You hadn’t paid it any mind until she brought it up one evening.

“It’s like he’s afraid to leave you alone with me,” She complained. “I’m your aunt. I practically raised you.”

“It’s not like that, Aunt Dawn,” You said as you buckled Lark into her seat. “He hates for me to travel alone. That’s all. There are crazy people out there.”

“He hates for you to do anything alone. It’s concerning.”

“No, it’s sweet. And he really enjoys our visits.”

“I’m worried about you.”

“Don’t do this.”

“I hardly recognize you. You look exhausted.”

“That’s because I am exhausted.”

“Andrea and Joel seem to think~”

“Are you really going to let Joel and Andrea ruin our day? They’re the reason he hardly lets me come over anyway. Have they turned you against him too?”

“My worry for you has nothing to do with my feelings about him.”

“Don’t believe anything they say, it’s all made up.”

“Why would they make these things up?”

“Because they don’t want to see us together.”

Elvis appeared from the house then, carrying Lark’s missing pacifier.

“Where was it, baby?” You asked, ignoring the disconcerted expression on Dawn’s face.

“Under the couch,” He said. “The drive back would’ve been hell without it.”

“You two be careful,” Dawn said. “It’s getting dark soon.”

“We will be,” You said, stepping forward and hugging her. “Don’t worry about me. Please, I’m okay.”

“See you, Dawny,” Elvis said, hugging her briefly as well. “I’ll bring them by again soon.”

“I look forward to it.” She watched the two of you climb into the car and waved as you left.

“What’s got her so worried about you?”

“Hm?”

“Dawn. You told her not to worry?”

You shrugged dismissively. “She’s always like that.”

He hummed, unsatisfied with your response. “Did you say something in particular to get her like that?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“I don’t know…she said I looked tired.”

Andrea was there to scoop up Lark the minute you got back. She claimed to not trust the two of you alone with her. She meant it as a joke but a part of you couldn’t help but think she was serious.

“I was about to take her upstairs,” You said. “She needs to get changed and fed.”

“I can do it,” Andrea offered as she bounced Lark in her arms. “I don’t mind.”

“That’s alright~”

“Let her do it,” Elvis said. “We’re gonna be down here anyway.”

“I was going to,” You said as he took the diaper bag from your shoulder and handed it off to Andrea. “It’ll only take a second.”

“I don’t mind,” Andrea insisted. “Go relax. I’m on baby duty.”

“Come on, bert,” Elvis said, laughing at the nickname as he guided you away.

You watched Andrea carefully climb the stairs until she was out of your view.

The scene downstairs was too chaotic and you would’ve preferred to be anywhere else. Elvis kept a heavy arm around your shoulders as you sat silently by his side amongst the group.

Despite your presence, there were still numerous women who had taken the same mundane interest in him as the hundreds (thousands, or even millions) who came before them. You couldn’t blame them, or the way they stared shamelessly—he was too beautiful to only steal a glance.

What they wanted from him was surface level, they craved his body, but his mind and soul were yours—some crude part of you wanted them to know that. You felt invisible next to him as their eyes locked on his every move.

“What?” Elvis asked when he noticed you shifting closer.

“I want to go upstairs,” You said, giving him a look and hoping he’d understand. You placed a suggestive hand on his thigh to further express your point. “Please.”

“Don’t, birdie, come on,” He scolded, moving your hand from his thigh.

“I need you,” You said. “Don’t you want me?”

His jaw twitched. “Why are you being like that in front of all these people?”

“They like watching so much, I figured we’d put on a show.”

“What?”

“A show, y’know…”

His eyes narrowed as he processed what you were saying.

“I want them to know that you’re mine,” You confessed.

“And the only way to prove that is to…?”

“Show them.”

“How?” He laughed.

“Kiss me,” You insisted. “Touch me.”

“You’re crazy,” He muttered under his breath. “I don’t know how I put up with you.”

His words hurt but in some sort of satisfying way.

He kissed your cheek and his deep voice vibrated in your ear when he whispered, “Go upstairs.”

You stood, trying not to pout as you left the room. You stopped by Lark’s nursery on your way by and you saw Andrea but you didn't make your presence known as you watched them. She was so good with her.

Elvis came up the stairs as you stood there and you immediately went to the bedroom without a word. You shut the door behind yourself, making him open it moments later.

“What? You have a problem with me?” He asked, slamming the door.

You faced him—crossing your arms.

“How can I help that they were looking at us?”

“They were looking at you, not me.”

“D’you know who I was looking at? You.”

“Do they know that?”

“Who cares what they know?”

“I do.”

“So, what, you want me to fuck you in a room full of people?”

You pushed him away when he stepped closer but even with all your strength he didn’t budge. You struggled against him when he grabbed your wrists, trying to pull away. His grip tightened and he forced you into a rough kiss. As much as you wanted to deny him you gave in quickly.

He made you straddle him when he sat on the edge of the bed, assisting your movements with a tight grip on your waist and making you grind your core against the bulge forming in his pants.

“You’re gonna finish what you were trying to start out there,” He said. “Do you understand?”

You aren’t sure what came over you in that moment, but you brought your right hand up and struck his cheek in one swift motion. He seemed as shocked by the action as you were, his head cocked to the side—frozen for a moment before acting suddenly.

He stood and shoved you onto your back, wrapping a hand around your neck.

You nodded in encouragement. “Hit me back.”

He kissed you, there was a gentleness lingering behind his touch that you wanted him to let go of. “Don’t be brutal.”

“I want it.”

“You want me to hit you?”

“Yes.”

He examined your expression for a moment before pulling away. You waited as he sat back on his heels and silently removed his shirt.

“Take off your dress,” He finally said, waiting expectantly.

You smiled and shook your head ‘no.’ He was on you immediately, forcing you onto your front before unzipping the back of your dress. He stripped you, leaving you in only your heels and panties.

“On your back,” He demanded.

You turned over but immediately lifted your foot, using the pointed end of your heel to keep him from coming closer. He grabbed your ankle and ripped the shoe from your foot before wrestling the other off.

He forced himself between your legs. You tried to push him away but he pinned your hands beside your head—he wasn’t letting up but you could feel his frustration building.

You forced a heavy moan and arched your back, playing up your pleasure and becoming pliant. He released your wrists and you put your arms around his shoulders—you let him kiss you fully before grabbing a fistful of his hair and pulling. You tugged harshly and he groaned.

“Don’t do that,” He said through clenched teeth. “Fucking let go.”

“Make me,” You challenged. “Hit me.”

“What’s that do for you?”

“It makes me feel like yours.”

You closed your eyes as he kissed you, releasing your grip on his hair.

“You are mine,” He muttered against your lips. “I don’t have to hit you to prove that, do I?”

“No,” You agreed, trying not to let your excitement show as he grabbed your jaw and made you look at him.

“You’re my girl?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know what that means?”

Your eyes widened when his ring and middle fingers suddenly pushed past your lips, forcing your tongue down. You gagged and tried to pull away but he wouldn’t let you. The rings on his fingers clanked uncomfortably against your teeth but you couldn’t avoid them.

“It means—” His face was close to yours. “—that you hold yourself together when other girls make you jealous, you don’t fall apart and turn into a desperate nag.” He only pulled away after you choked, his fingers covered in your saliva. “You should know that by now, birdie. You’re actin like an amateur.”

You hardly had a second to breathe before he was forcing you onto your back.

“You’re always asking why I never use your mouth and you can’t even handle two fingers. It’s fucking adorable.” His words must’ve had the effect he wanted them to, because he laughed when you started struggling again. “You’re just a little girl. You don’t know the first thing about what you’re getting into when you ask me to do shit like this to you.”

“You’d rather fuck one of them?”

“I probably would’ve if it weren’t for your bad attitude.”

You fought harder but he held you down under half his body weight.

“You don’t like that?” He asked knowingly, grunting as he thrusted his touch-starved erection against your core.

“No, I don’t fucking like that,” You spat. “You’re an asshole.”

“Your mouth.” He tutted, disapprovingly.

“Fuck you.”

“Say it again.”

“Fuck y~”

You were stunned by the slap that crossed your face. It didn’t hurt but it stung in an addicting way and made you throb with desperation.

“That’s what you want?” He asked, you could hear the panic reserved in his tone. He was checking in.

“Yes,” You reassured him.

“When did you get like this?” He muttered, sitting up and instructing you to remove his belt. “Come on. It’s the least you can do after being such a mean little thing.”

You sat up with him to unbuckle the belt. He took your face in his hands and kissed you, still unable to resist your lips.

“Say you love me,” He demanded, breaking the kiss. “Fucking say it.”

“I love you,” You said. “I love you, I love you, I love you~”

“Alright, shut up,” He interrupted. “You’re gonna get yourself off, d’you think you can do that?”

You followed him as he sat back against the headboard, letting him force you to straddle him. You brought your hand up in an attempt to land your revenge, but he caught your wrist before you could connect.

“Don’t try it again.” He tore your underwear from around your waist, ruining them. “Take my rings off.”

You reached for his hand and he pulled it out of your reach.

“Uh, uh,” He hummed. “Use your mouth.”

You hesitate but parted your lips anyway. He swore as you used your mouth to remove each ring, leaving his fingers glistening with your saliva.

“Last one,” He said as you spit another ring into his right palm and took his left ring finger in your mouth. He hissed as the wedding band slipped from his finger and into your mouth. He stopped you from spitting it out. “Keep it in your mouth. Don’t swallow it.”

You wanted to protest but focused your attention instead on not letting the ring slip down your throat. He kissed your chest as his wet fingers glided through your slick folds.

With his left hand occupied and his right arm wrapped around your back, you had a clear opportunity to land another sharp slap across his cheek.

He released an involuntary gasp upon contact, clenching his jaw and sighing through his nose.

“Spit,” He demanded, holding his left hand out for the ring. You let fall out of your mouth along with the pool of saliva that had collected.

He tossed the ring aside and leaned forward until you laid flat against the bed. He forced his fingers into you, curling them deep.

“It’s not enough that I married you, and gave you my child,” He said through labored breathing. “You want me to use you in a room full of people to prove a point.”

“People you would’ve had the luxury of screwing if I were nicer.”

“You know I say that kind of shit to piss you off.”

You released an accented moan as he slammed his fingers harshly into you, cutting your rebuttal short.

His hand found your throat again and applied more pressure. Your eyes widened in shock when your breathing was interrupted and you struggled to push him off.

“What?” He stopped moving. “Too soft? Harder?”

He waited another second and let go.

“Harder,” You gasped.

“Really?” His thrusts became longer and deeper—making your legs tremble as he reached that spot that made your toes curl. “But you’re crying, mama.”

He knew as well as you did that the tears in your eyes had nothing to do with you crying and everything to do with him choking you moments before. But he’d use the tears as a testimony to your pain if it made you appear frail.

“Do you want me to stop?” He asked, knowing the answer.

You wanted to tell him to keep going, but it was too much. The last thing you wanted to do was prove him right by affirming your sensitivity. Rather than appear weak, you opted for silence.

“Okay,” He whispered, kissing your lips gently. “I’ll take care of you, darlin, don’t worry.”

He sat up and silently motioned ‘come here’ with both hands—his lids heavy and his pupils blown with lust. You forced yourself to sit up, figuring it best to agree. He wrapped his arms around your torso, expecting you to wrap your legs around his waist.

“Stay,” He whispered. “What’re you gonna do?”

“…Stay.” You shivered when he entered you, relaxing into his hold and completely relinquishing your senses.

“Good girl…see? You can be a sweet girl.”

You couldn’t feel anything outside of him. You couldn’t see, hear, smell, or taste anything…only him.

“You walk around like you have so much to prove,” He said, his voice low in your ear. “I don’t know why.”

You couldn’t respond, you couldn’t form any words as that familiar knot started to form in the pit of your stomach.

“It’s like you’re jealous of a couple of strangers,” He continued, rocking his hips upward to thrust inside of you. “Do you want me to treat you like them? Like I don’t know you—like I don’t love you?”

The world fell away and for a moment you were just a body made up of electricity and burning pleasure. Your eyes rolled and you trembled. He kept going.

“Do you want me fuck you like a stranger?” He muttered, you couldn’t tell if he was talking to you anymore.

“Please,” You whispered, encouraging him. “…fuck me like a stranger.”

His hips stuttered and he came instantly, bursting inside of you like a teenager. You felt the warmth of his release pooling inside of you and seeping between your thighs.

You climbed out of his lap, leaving no time for either of you to come down or catch your breath. You tried to turn away—too woozy to get up—but he grabbed you by the arm and made you face him. You wouldn’t look at him, so he gripped your jaw.

“I love you,” He panted. “I…love you. That’s the difference. That makes all the difference.”

You met his eyes. “That makes everything okay?”

“No,” He admitted. “It doesn’t.”

You couldn’t read his expression—his lids were heavy with post-orgasmic bliss. He was still coming down from his high, not speaking for himself but from his pleasure.

“I’m sorry,” He muttered, nuzzling the crook of your neck.

You hugged him back, closing your eyes and allowing yourself to revel in his apology while he was sorry—because you knew he wouldn’t be for long.

He pulled away from the embrace after a few minutes. “Say it back.”

You smiled, you almost thought he hadn’t noticed. “I love you too.”

He smiled, content.

“You should get back out there,” You said. “Seemed like the night was just getting started.”

“I’m not finished with you just yet,” He said, smirking suggestively. “You’ve awoken something inside of me.”

“Oh no,” You said sarcastically, laughing as his hands shamefully roamed your body. “What have I done?”

“Where’s Lark?”

“With Andrea still.”

“Perfect.”

You squeaked in surprise when he rolled onto his back and pulled you onto his lap.

“Tell me what to do."

You paused. "What do you mean?"

His fingernails grazed your bare thighs as he smiled timidly. "I want you to order me around. Make me do things I wouldn’t usually do.”

You would grow to accept that there would be no final retribution or day of reckoning. No fight, no agreement, no threat, no reconciliation.

Those things didn’t matter when it came to the two of you. At the end of it all—good, bad, ugly and indifferent—you two would remain. It was an undisputed truth…wherever you went, you went together.

You could be opposites, or just alike, it’d make no difference. He could be like the sea. Open, free, abundant in what he could give. Charitable, but indulgent. Hazardous, but certain. You could be like the desert. Brutal, unforthcoming, full of life in some areas but destitute in others. Fertile, but not nurturing. Guarded, but unprotected. You could have been all those things and one simple fact would remain.

Wherever there was Elvis Presley, so too was his baby birdie.

—fin.

[olderthannetfic]

People going on about how they're representing this whole Greek thing are missing that that one anon had a pretty good point about how "cultural appropriation" rhetoric gets misused. People do really need to be more specific about what the issue is, or it very easily turns into basically just arguing for cultural segregation. I've seen that happen numerous times on this website over the years. I've seen people argue that it's appropriative to do something like *learn about* another culture or learn its language. I think it's really important for people to keep an eye on what are the actual issues with cultural appropriation (mostly about exploitation and colonialism) and not just the idea that cultural mixing is bad, or that being interested in a culture that isn't your own is bad. Because the truth is, whether you intend this or not, if you're just arguing that everyone should only keep to the culture of their ethnicity or their place of origin or both, then you're basically in agreement with white supremacists. It's not that cultures mixing is bad; most culture is a result of some mixture. It's when it's done in a way that's exploitative and/or disrespectful: like reducing sacred symbols like indigenous war bonnets to a fashion accessory, or incorporating the art of another culture into your own art without giving credit and without paying anyone from that culture who taught you or added to your work.

FTR, I don't think you can "appropriate" ancient mythologies. I think people are getting twisted around though because there is a genuine history of colonial exploitation of Greek artifacts by colonial powers to fill their museums, as with the Elgin marbles. I do think it's still a good idea to be properly informed about them, regardless, at the very least because those make for the more interesting retellings. For all that people (who IME, largely haven't read it, I'd love to hear if people who have read it disagree though) rag on Song of Achilles, I actually thought it was a pretty good example of a retelling because the author, who has an educational background in mythology, takes great pains to try to recreate the society and cultural norms of Greece at that time rather than sugarcoat it. Achilles may be even more of a jerk than he was in the original Iliad, tbh. It's telling to me that the author's other books that are less "shippy" don't have as negative of a reputation on here in that regard as Song of Achilles, despite being fairly similar, and it makes me wonder how much of that is because it's popular among "fujoshi fandom" so people just assume it MUST be shallow and fandomified, and I was super shocked at how much it really wasn't that at all. As well as I saw that a lot of people expecting something more like that were disappointed by all the period-accurate misogyny and so on.

Which brings me to another point: another reason I'm skeptical of a lot of this discourse is that it seems like often it's more of a high-culture, low-culture thing. A thing that is popular with M/M fanfic writers can't POSSIBLY be doing it right. A thing that is a popular video game or Tony-winning Broadway musical that is popular with the fandoms for those things, can't possibly be accurate. And I get that a lot of that is because a lot of populist things that took from Greek mythology have been inaccurate (Disney's Hercules, for instance) but if you're going to criticize the accuracy of something, I think it is worth engaging with the original work and what it actually does rather than just assuming It's Popular It Must Suck. It feels like a lot of this turns into lording that you were into it before X over others. And being aware that Tumblr Recommendations often do a poor job of actually giving you a good idea of what the work is really like.

As well as, of course, asking yourself - as we should with any sort of historical inaccuracy etc. - if the inaccuracy was deliberate or not. Sometimes people are not really telling that story in order to tell the most accurate version of something but to make a different kind of point, and so the changes might be deliberate. I would argue this is true with something like Hadestown.

That doesn't mean you can't still dislike it for that reason, of course. I know a lot of classical musicians who dislike the movie Amadeus for being so inaccurate about Mozart's and Salieri's lives. I like it despite that because I think the point it is trying to make is stronger for not sticking to the historical fact. I just wish more people did know the historical fact, though.

--

One would think the "Is it bad if I learn to cook Thai food?" thing was a strawman... but I've seen it in the wild far too many times.

[dresshistorynerd]

kinda random question but how do you go about researching? I’ve wanted to get deeper into fashion history than just watching youtube videos, but I don’t really know where to start.

ps. thanks for making such detailed posts. they’re really interesting to read.

Thank you! I'm really glad you've found my posts interesting!

This is great since I've kinda answered this in replies couple of times, but not properly. I very much understand the struggle. Dress history is a relatively new academic field and there's not that much reliable sources available and so so much unreliable sources everywhere. Internet of course has this problem but so does a lot of books too.

I thought this would be a short one and yet, here we are again.

Disclaimer: I'm writing this from a western fashion history perspective, since that's what I know best, but especially reading up on academic research and doing primary source research applies to non-western cultures too, though often it's harder to find sources for non-western fashion.

Getting started

Imo the best place to getting started is to read a book that gives a general timeline of fashion through history. I'm not sure if that's just how my brain works, but it helped me a lot of when going deeper into one period or another to understand the broader context and what roughly came before and what after. However these books are inherently difficult to make well, because there's so much nuance and variation in every period of dress history and if you're writing about the whole timeline through thousands of years and keeping it book length, there will need to be a lot of simplification to the point of inaccuracy. There's many popular fashion history timeline books with illustrations made for the book, but I would avoid those since non-contemporary illustrations often give a distorted image of the fashion, especially when it's about earlier periods in history. I've seen some really inaccurate illustrations depicting Middle Ages and Renaissance especially.

Costume and fashion: a concise history by James Laver - I'd recommend this as the starting point. James Laver was a art historian, an important pioneer of fashion history and curator of Victoria and Albert Museum, which has one of the most extensive costume collections now. The book is therefore based on serious academic study, but being a pioneer means you'll be outdated, when the field is more established, which is partly the case with this book. There's some outdated parts, but the images are primary sources and it does give good historical background. It should be taken as a starting point, not as the end point.

A History of Fashion by J. Anderson Black and Madge Garland - This is another similar book. It's more recent, but it also suffers from some outdated parts. The writers are not academics, but it has more primary source pictures which does help (at least me) understand visually what's being said.

Books

In a given subject I'm researching I usually start with seeing if I can find a reliable book on it or related to it, if I haven't already read much on it. Often what I want to research goes deeper into details than what a book usually does, so it will work as a starting point. As said it can be hard to find these books that are actually reliable, but here's couple of reading lists to help with it.

Here's a reading list by a retired professor of dress history from Helsinki University. It's very extensive and has a wide variety of books and papers listed. There's a bit of leaning towards Finnish sources, but most are in English and about more international western fashion.

Here's a reading list by @clove-pinks, who is excellent and writes a lot about the Romantic period, especially men's fashion here on Tumblr. These are all books that can be read free on Internet Archive, which makes the list even better.

Internet sources

There's a lot of bad sources floating around in the internet, but also some excellent gems. As dress history is such a new field, there's a lot of unexplored spots and lacking research still, but some troopers in the internet have done some great legwork in going through primary sources and gathering them together. These can be excellent especially when trying to research a specific garment, since often these blog posts are by historical costumers, who are detailing their background research in reconstructing a specific garment. It's not always easy to find them, since they might not come up in the first page of the google search, but I often find them through pinterest, where the blogs are linked into the primary source images and images of the reconstructed garments. Though be sure to look with blogs like that with critical eye. The best sign that it's reliable is when each image is given a source.

There's some more general sources too that need to be taken with a grain of salt.

Fashion History Timeline - This is a page with entries to the whole timeline of fashion as well as entries of specific garments. It's very well sourced and has usually pretty good image sources too. I will say though that it often gives a pretty limited description of the period focusing on some specifics, without giving a good overall picture, especially in the Medieval sections. The medieval sections are honestly pretty useless. It's at it's best in 19th century imo (I haven't checked out the entries to 20th century since I rarely research vintage styles, but I'd assume they are pretty good too). But since it has great sourcing it is usually informative. It just shouldn't be relied upon to give full picture of a period.

Wikipedia, History of Western fashion - In some ways this is the opposite of Fashion History Timeline. Wikipedia has articles on each period. The sourcing on these articles is often quite lacking and the information shouldn't be taken at face value. Especially the terms for the garments are often used in these articles in very questionable ways. However what these articles have is pretty good primary source image collections, and what is nice is that in Medieval, Renaissance and Early Modern periods they are often divided into regions, and they often have images of working class clothing, which are for some periods really hard to find. These articles often don't either give a full picture of the period, but in someways the basic picture of the period is easier to grasp from these than from Fashion History Timeline. I use these mostly for the primary source images, and the texts of them should be taken with a bucket of salt.

Academic papers

Going deeper into something will inevitably require reading up on some academic papers. I'm lucky since I get access to a lot of academic publications through my uni, but JSTOR (my beloved) gives free access to 100 papers per month (you'll just have to make an account). Through google scholar you can search for papers on a given subject, or if you don't have access to other publications, you can just use JSTOR's search engine.

Primary sources

If some MVP hasn't already combed through primary sources to gather them on a give subject, you can do that too. It's not necessarily an easy task though. There's thankfully a perfect guide for that.

A Handbook of Costume by Janet Arnold - Janet Arnold was a legendary dress historian, who really defined the modern field. This book details the process of researching dress history and how to analyze primary sources. And it's free on Internet Archives.

I'll give some basics here though.

Extant garment

Most of us who are not academic historians don't have physical access to extant garment, but many museums have nowadays excellent digital archives of their costume collections. Here's a list of the most well known ones. MET and V&A has sometimes great descriptions of the clothing and their history, but not for every item.

MET Costume Institute

Kyoto Costume Institute

LACMA

V&A Costume Collection

Palais Galliera

Extant garments are of course the ideal sources to study, since they are the actual garments and not just representations or descriptions of them. Sometimes the collections even have pictures of the insides of the garments, giving invaluable information about their construction. However, extant garments have limitations for research, since there's a strong survivorship bias. Firstly, they heavily lean on later periods as textiles deteriorate relatively quickly. You won't find extant garments from Middle Ages, at most fragments of them. Secondly, they are mostly clothing of the upper classes. Lower classes used their clothing till they broke down, and even then often salvaged any fabric that could be salvaged for new clothing and other textiles. Upper classes didn't necessarily have to do that, so what survives is usually very expensive formal clothing that people would wear rarely and rather preserve than salvage the fabric from it.

Photography

Since camera was popularized in early Victorian era, you don't get photos before that. Photography is a great source from the times it was available, since yes it's still only representation of the clothing, but there's less artistic interpretation than in paintings and illustrations, though importantly, there still is artistic interpretation. As long as there has been photography, there has been photoediting. They of course used it for creepypasta purposes by editing them holding their own heads and editing ghosts into backgrounds, but also editing their waists smaller. Basically the exact same way photos are still edited. So no, this is not really how small the waist got in Edwardian era, since this is edited.

Another obvious limitation for early photography is that it didn't have colors, so popular colors of a given time period and given styles have to be found through other means. A great thing about photography though was that compared to painting, it was relatively cheap, and therefore a lot of lower class people were able to photograph themselves. We even get people outside in everyday situations not posing.

Photography can be found with search engines like google and pinterest, though they should be always sourced then. You sometimes come across very Victorian looking photos that are actually just modern photos that are well edited. And also it's important to date the photos, which might not be easily with photos just randomly floating in the internet. Libraries and museums sometimes have good digital collections of old photos. For example:

Digital collections of New York Public Library (NYPL) - It has a wide variety of collections including photography, fashion plates and other illustrations. I haven't found a great way to search through the collections, but the best way I've come up with is to search images within the Clothing & Dress topic, put some limiting filters, then click some right looking image and then go to the collection it was from. I bet there's an easier way but I haven't figured it out.

Paintings

A great thing about paintings and statues is that they date basically through whole history of organized civilizations. Paintings are more delicate so even with murals in antiquity, you'll get more surviving status from that time period. But because of the strong artistic interpretation inherent to these art forms, there's some tricky parts to them as sources for historical fashions.

You'll find a lot of paintings by just searching for fashion or paintings of a given period in google and pinterest, but it's sometimes tricky to source them to figure out where and when they were painted. Therefore I often check from Wikipedia a list of artists from a given time and place, and search their paintings from digital archives of museums. It also helps when you choose artists who were specialised in specific type of paintings. What kind of paintings depends on what you're researching and the time period.

Portraits are of course great sources. They depict the actual clothing an actual person wore and if the person was historically important enough you can find out who they were and gain a lot of context for the clothing. However, they are usually all rich people, though not always. Another thing to keep in mind is that sometimes portraits portray the subject in a costume. This became a pretty big trend among nobles in 18th century. They had costume parties and would have their portrait painted with their costume, but also there were trends of costume that were not even worn for parties, but only for having a portrait. Sometimes the painting would be painted like a scene and not like traditional portrait. Van Dyke costume (first picture below) in first half of 18th century paintings is one such example. It referred to mid 17th century fashion that was seen as timeless at the time. Peasant costume (second picture below) is another example of a popular costume for nobles to wear in portraits. Costume balls continued to 19th century, but after the popularization of camera they were mainly photographed. People would continue to dress up in costumes for portraits, but it wasn't as big of a trend as in 18th century.

Genre paintings were a genre of paintings that became popular first in 16th century Low Countries and then In Netherlands/Belgium area during the Dutch Golden Age (from late 16th century and thorough Baroque) and during Baroque's popularity all over Europe. Genre paintings depict normal everyday life of peasants, working class people and the bourgeois. During Baroque they often had elements of idealization, symbolism and even sexualization of the subjects, so they should be taken with a grain of salt, but they do usually depict accurately the clothes the people wore. Rococo era had a lot of these types of everyday scenes about the upper class. During the Romantic era peasants were heavily romanticized in genre paintings, but there was also a lot of genre paintings of bourgeois thorough 19th century that was wasn't as strongly romanticized. These scenes were sometimes also depicted in portrait form. Realism brought another interest into the genre and Realistic genre paintings often focused on the working class. They did the opposite of romanticism though and often exaggerated their subjects to look more wretched.

History paintings depict events and scenes that were for the time historical too. They became very popular in 19th century, when Historism was the dominant in arts, but they have existed long before. There's even some from late Medieval period, and in those earlier history paintings, the historical figures are usually depicted in contemporary clothing and there's no attempt at recreating historical styles. In later periods, especially during 19th century Historism they very much tried to recreate historical styles. This is why it's important to always source paintings. I've too often seen Victorian paintings used as images for Medieval fashions.

Religious paintings have sometimes a bit of the same issue. They were very popular during Medieval and Renaissance eras, and usually the biblical figures would be depicted in contemporary fashions, though not always, sometimes in vaguely "biblical garbs". Religious paintings also have the issue of often being highly symbolic, so sometimes the characters in them are not dressed for the situation, or a character that in the biblical canon very poor is depicted in upper class contemporary fashions.

Illuminated manuscripts

Medieval manuscripts with illustrations are invaluable sources for Medieval fashions. They are usually commissioned by royalty and detail historical narratives, so they mostly depict royalty and nobility, but some illustrated scenes depict commoners too. You often find images of the illustrations floating around in pinterest but they can be hard to source when the source is not linked (which is quite often). The illustrations can be spotted by the quite consistent style (though sometimes they are not from illuminated manuscripts but some other rarer illustrations like playing cards).

A lot of illuminated manuscripts have been digitized and British and French libraries have quite extensive online collections of them which are linked below. The manuscrips in those are mostly English and French of course but there's manuscrips from other places in Europe too, I've seen quite a lot of the German speaking area especially.

The Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF) The British Library

Fashion plates

Fashion plates became a thing in 1780s, so they are not useful for periods before that. They are basically illustrations that show the latest trends and they were published in fashion magazines. They don't reflect the way everyone dressed, since as they did show the latest high fashion and the people who would be wearing that were mostly young rich fashionable people. However, fashion at the time had a little different meaning than today as it was linked to dress code, and to be respectable you needed to follow fashion. So everyone, even working class people, would follow the new trends to an extent. This is especially true when we get to Victorian era, when mass industrial mass production and the emerging middle class made clothing cheaper and more available to more people. They wouldn't maybe follow every new trend or with every detail and with as much extravaganza or with the most expensive fashionable materials.

While the fashion plates didn't necessarily depict specific existing clothing, they were based on existing clothing and they were often used as guides for dressmakers. Kinda like you might go to a hairdresser with a picture of a famous person's hair or hairdressers sometimes use pictures of famous person's hair to show what they might do. And the people who might not afford something as extravagant as shown in a fashion plate, might still show it as a guide and get a simpler version of it made for them. People of the middle and lower classes especially would also use them as guides to sew themselves fashionable clothing.

Fashion plates are quite easily found on the internet, but as with other things, if you don't go straight to some organized archive, it might be really hard to date them accurately. Many bigger museums and libraries have fashion plates in their online archives, for example NYPL which I mentioned earlier.

MET Fashion Plate Collection - This is a pretty extensive collection.

Regional costume illustrations

When genre paintings became popular, artists didn't necessarily have the change to go and see what peasants wore in the places they were setting their genre paintings in, but because the whole point of them was to depict authentic real life, there was a need for illustrations of regional dress around Europe. And some artists would travel and create costume collections for resource to other artists. These are really invaluable to us today, though they should always be taken with a grain of salt, because sometimes the artists who created these drew dresses for places they never had even been in. For example some of these collections include non-European dress and they should all be probably disregarded as fantasy costumes basically. You can usually assume that the closer the region which dress they depict is to their own place of origin, the more accurate and based on reality it is. It's also good to try and google the artist and see if you can find information of where they actually traveled, because sometimes we know that pretty well.

These collections can also be found in the digitized archives of big museums and libraries, again there's some in NYPL collections.

British Museum's collections by Hippolyte Lacomte from 19th century

A collection from late 16th century on BnF archives

Honorable mentions

There's many other primary sources in different periods that can be helpful, but the ones I've mentioned are the major ones and easiest to access, when you're not doing academic research with institutional resources. I thought I might mention couple of other sources that have become handy to me as examples.

Magazine and news paper ads became wide spread in the Victorian era and from that onward is a great source. They advertise specifically ready-made clothing, so clothing that was much more available to a regular person and therefore can be really helpful to understand what a regular person might wear. I don't know a great source for them though. Many libraries have digitized old papers and magazines so going through fashion magazines is perhaps the best bet, but it's definitely a lot of combing though. Some people have though gathered ads in blogs.

Satiric comics can be surprisingly helpful for researching sort of alternative styles and seeing what trends garnered backlash. For example I've long been obsessed with Aestheticism and the other counter-cultural movements related to it, and there's quite a lot of women's Aesthetic extant garments, photos and paintings available, but very little of men's Aesthetic fashion. But then I found that Punch Magazine (conservative satire magazine) loved mocking the Aesthetes and therefore drew a lot of comics with men in Aesthetic fashion. Caution should be taken though since satiric illustrations do often exaggerate for comedic effect. For example the idea that 1770s ladies made ships out of their massive hair comes from a satiric illustration mocking the large and elaborate hair of the time.

Runaway ads of slaves and indentured servants are bleak, but can be helpful source for the clothing of poor people during 18th century. This is specific to US, but because of the colonialism poor people there would often wear at least similar clothing as those in Europe, especially Britain and France, which had the most colonial presence in that region. The clothes were described in great detail in these ads for identification purposes. These runaway ads can be also found in news papers of the era, many of which are digitized in archives of bigger US libraries, but it's definitely even more combing through. Though again some people have done some of that work already and documented it in blogs.

[momo-t-daye]

Momo's Snapedom AU Ask Game!

I do love how the Snapedom has folks who write extensive meta with citations and how the Snapedom has oodles of people making a delightful diversity of AUs that gnaw on the bones of the canon narrative skeleton to cook up a more satisfying story-soup! So I thought it might be fun to put together a few questions for an ask game (after all, the fun part of fandom is interacting with other fans):

Do you have a name and/or a tag and/or a master post for your AU (so I can peruse your blog and admire your creativity)?

What is the premise of your AU (one sentence summary, tropes, your big “What-if” question, etc.!)?

Can you describe your AU badly?  (Because I do love hilariously misleading but not actually inaccurate descriptions of stories)

What your favorite thing about your AU? (Does it make you cackle with glee or do you break your own heart?)

What are the major divergence points in your AU?

Is there any part of the canon narrative you really like to build off of or interrogate with your AU?

Are there themes or motifs or specific concepts in your AU that you hope people will notice?  (Do you want to give hints about your masterful foreshadowing or chat about your extensive world building?  Should we all grab a floriography dictionary when flowers are mentioned?)

What are some key life moments in your AU!Snape’s life that differ from canon!Snape’s life?

How and why does your AU!Snape differ from the canon!Snape?

Would your AU!Snape want to trade places with canon!Snape (and vice versa!)? Why?

Do you know if Severus going to escape the gravitational pull of the canon narrative/fate in your AU?

Do you think any other characters are going to escape the gravitational pull of their canon narrative/fate in your AU?  If so, can any of that extra AU!velocity be attributed to Severus’ actions?

What era does your AU primarily take place in (is it focused on part of the canon timeline? Is the canon timeline adjusted a few years one way or another? Or are you playing with a futuristic sci-fi AU or a historical AU or something else entirely?  Maybe you have a 1998!Snape dealing with life in 1942 or some other combination?)

What is his childhood and/or family life like in your AU?  Is it better than his canon life starting out in Cokeworth?

Does Lily exist in your AU?  Are Severus and Lily friends in your AU?

Do any of the Marauders exist in your AU?  What role do they play in your AU Severus’ life?

Do the Malfoys exist in your AU?  How do they interact with your version of Severus?

Does Voldemort exist in your AU?  Does Severus join his cause at any point in your AU?

Does Dumbledore exist in your AU?  What role does he play in Severus’ life in your AU?

Does Harry Potter exist in your AU?  How does he interact with Severus in your AU?

Is there another canon character that plays a major role in your AU!Snape’s life?  What role do they play and how does it differ from their canon relationship with Snape?

Is an Original Character a major feature and player in your AU?  Who are they? What role do they play AU!Severus’ life?  How do they interact with any other canon characters in your story?

Does Severus have a significant other (or others) in your AU?

Does Severus have children in your AU?

Is Severus Snape the Hogwarts Potions Master in your AU?  If not, what is he doing instead?

Does Severus have any major interests (mycology, astronomy, sci-fi, baking elaborate puff pastries, art forgery, etc.) in your AU that we never got to see canon!Snape indulge in?  Do these interests play a major narrative role?

Do you have a snippet of prose (or an art piece or a list of headcanons) from your AU that you particularly enjoy and want to share?

Free space!  Any other questions folks want to ask?

[girlcaelius]

Hey, what was inaccurate about Domina? I want to watch it but I’m unsure on the characterizations

(oh this got quite long, sorry in advance-)

it's not that it's *super* inaccurate, it's just that (in my opinion) some of the choices made were a little, well. they could have been more interesting. guy who only ever thinks about agrippa all the time voice i am going to talk about agrippa first. i do love how they did agrippa but i also feel like his character was sort of flattened? like we see him for the most part as either a violent warmonger or then flip it entirely to this (i'm going to be mean here, but i don't care) pretty pathetic man who just kind of rolls over and does whatever gaius and livia want, and there's not really much nuance - no mention of the whole quote unquote 'exile' situation in 23, or negotiations with herod or parthia or anything like that.

(this is very much a personal thing, but the [spoilers] sort-of-but-not-really romance plot with him and livia definitely irked me. i think they did it well for what it was, but - they did come close, but when are they going to make a show where him and octavian are as insane about one another as they were historically? the emphasis on his relationship with livia over octavian lessens the effect of his death - and the whole death thing really did piss me off. they show his death, they show his funeral, they focus on how sad LIVIA is in that funeral shot (and not his, you know, childhood best friend other half of my soul etc etc) and then immediately cut to a sex scene with livia and gaius. yay. i haven't seen beyond this episode, so correct me if im wrong, but it kind of feels like people just... forget about him immediately? even gaius. there's not really a mourning or grief sort of thing. it's weird.)

the show also often skips out on events that, in my opinion, could have been more interesting than inserting some kind of weird little random subplot in instead. like - without too many spoilers, they give livia this ex best friend who's now a vestal virgin who was also in love with her as a kid which could have been really interesting! and done really well! but it's. not. it glossed over characters who's stories i think are really intriguing - like octavia adopting and raising antony's children (cleopatra selene isn't in the show at all, which i think is pretty sad) could have been interesting to focus on, but instead after a point in season 1 they just kind of reduce her to her grief over marcellus.

i think the show has a little bit of a problem with girlbossifying livia, but to the point where it sort of comes full circle and goes right back to portraying her how people like tacitus might have portrayed her. despite all the reasoning and motivation the show gives her, it still comes across like she's picking off and poisoning octavian's possible heirs one by one (because, well, she literally is) to protect her and her family's power. i think the whole 'restoring the republic' thing COULD have been really interesting! but they don't really explore *how* they'd do that or anything, they just kind of... bring it up every time there needs to be some kind of dramatic secret scene and never expand on it. i understand the show is the livia show but i think the focus on her sometimes makes the other characters (eg gaius) seem stupid or idiotic when we KNOW they weren't historically.

i am not very knowledgeable about the historical julio-claudian 'kids' (for want of a better word), so i can't really speak on a lot of their portrayals, but the whole 'bad tiberius' thing irritated me. unsure of how grounded in history this is but they give him some slightly odd butchered form of doctor-jekyll-esque did where he has an evil fucked up version who comes out and kills people sometimes. i really really love the portrayal of tiberius for the most part in the show, but this bit... eh. he also wants to kill his mum and have sex with his mum, so that's a thing.

side note but it does feel a little weird that two of the main slave characters (antigone and tycho) are both Black, especially in a setting where slavery wasn't influenced by race.

not sure if this is coherent or what you were asking at all, but here are some slightly disconnected thoughts! but despite all of this i do genuinely enjoy the show, if nothing else i think it's very fun. thanks for the ask :]

[iamsosmaug]

Miraculous Fic Recs

Recently I've been complaining a lot on the internet how sucky the recent seasons of ML have been, and how much better the old fanfics are; I'm going to prove my point by sharing my tried-and-true rec list. Here we go.

Back To Us - Written in 2017, so some things are inaccurate. Basically Marinette, as Ladybug, kills Gabriel Agreste on accident by pushing him off the Eiffel Tower and Adrien moves to Milan. Seven years later Marinette is a rising fashion designer, her long-lost partner comes back seven years later but hot, and a new Hawkmoth shows up on the very day Adrien comes back. Suspicious. INCLUDES: Antihero!Chat. Alternate superhero names for Alya, Nino + there are only seven miraculouses which honestly I like a lot better than Ladybug just busting another one out whenever she feels like it. At one point, it was the longest fic in the fandom but now it's not even close. 446k. Requires an Ao3 account to read.

Second Chances- Again, written fairly early in the fandom. Adrien is a single dad and Alya volunteers Marinette to be his daughter's nanny - the premise sounds like it could turn out really weird but I promise it's not. Adorable adorable. INCLUDES: Past ChloexAdrien and MarinettexNathanael, and Adrien never went to school. Reverse best friends (Alya + Adrien, Mari + Nino). 105k.

Whose Woods These Are (I Think I Know) - Ladrien Cinderella AU. Super well-written in a kind of fairytale style. I honestly love this fic. 105k.

Spotty Connections - Adrienette texting fic (no miraculous AU, but does incorporate LadyNoir). Tikki & Plagg are M&A's cats. One of my favorites ever. 66k.

Film It - Adrien is a youtuber! Soon all of Twitter ships #adrienette. INCLUDES: Gabriel Agreste's A+ Parenting. Endgame Adrienette. Superheroes exist, but LB & CN aren't a huge part of this. Also worthy of note: #thatfoursome and a decent amount of Twitter formatting. This has pretty much everything I want in an Adrienette fic. 56k.

Chasing The C/h/atwalk - Project Runway AU. Marinette is a designer and Adrien... is her model. Shenanigans ensue. INCLUDES: Some LadyNoir, mostly after the identity reveal. #MarinetteInDenial. 100k. I love this fic.

Lucky Us - No Miraculous email AU. See Spotty Connections: LadyNoir incorporated without the actual superheroes. Fluff with a tiny bit of angst but still happy ending. 136k.

Secret Santa - fluff. Pure fluff; classic in the fandom. A bit cheesy and very outdated but very nice. Time for a reread. It has a sequel called New Year's Ball. 52k.

Être Majeur - horror, AU, fairly short, creepy and strange but really well-written. 24k. M for horror elements.

La Pucelle Et La Coccinelle - Absolute favorite. Explores Joan of Arc (Jeanne d'Arc in this story) with the Ladybug Miraculous. INCLUDES: Actual historical references, lore for the miraculouses, and a flashforward to the future at the end with Marinette. 38k. I have it printed out, I love it so much.

Pray For the Children You Lost Along the Way - Silent Hill AU (Emilie Anderson from the arcade game is Adrien's mom). It has been on hiatus since 2019, but is still worth a read because so many things tie together in a satisfying way. 86k. Rated M b/c of Silent Hill-type things.

Under Lock and Key - Huge classic also published on Wattpad. Author/artist collab with Maerynn & EdenDaphne - Maerynn passed away while the fic was being written and ED finished it. Very nice art by ED. I view this fic as the quintessential 2017 era Adrienette fic. Very sweet and fluffy. 34k.

Tripped at Fencing - Gabriel hits Adrien. INCLUDES: Gabriel Agreste's A+ Parenting. Accidental identity reveal (Marinette finds out first). Only 5k but a classic.

The Butterfly and Her Brother series (Generations Past and Future) - written c. 2016. Gabriel is NOT Hawkmoth; Gabriel is not a villian in the least so technically OOC. First couple are set in the 1990s, then a couple in ~2016 and the latest in like 2044. I haven't read the last one in the series but WHATHGAWAATG (Europe gets taken over), featuring the next gen of Agrestes, is really good as well. Many things are outdated/false as this was written based off of s1, but I honestly like this interpretation of the Miraculous much better than how the show does it. Mama Agreste's name is Adele (again, s1) and I quite like her character. I freaking LOVE this series. I have it downloaded to my phone and I reread it when I'm feeling sad. 340k in total, but the longest work in the series is about 166k. SO many kudos.

a fight that you were born to lose - "Adrien finds out that Gabriel is Hawkmoth, and Gabriel gets to bring his long-waited plan into action." TW abuse, emotional manipulation, forced dieting. Gabriel Agreste's A+ Parenting. Fairly short for how well-rounded it is - 17k.

An Impromptu Proposal - what it says on the tin. Reverse love square kinda: Ladynoir requited love bc Adrien never went to school. Includes identity reveal and Hawkmoth!Lila takedown. 33k.

On The Prowl - Criminal CN. Also on ffn.net. Good story and TOTALLY a classic, but also uses 'ravenette' and 'sapphire orbs' unironically. The writing is okay if a little melodramatic. 53k.

Chat Noir's White French Man Hit List For Feminist Purposes - pretty much what it says on the tin. Sentimonster!Adrien. 7.8k.

i think it's time i told you (i'm a fan of your universe) - ladynoir proposal. v v nice. Just 5k. Smidge of angst.

The Ladyblog Comment Section - what it says on the tin. 27k. Hilarity and crack.

spark - Tinder AU. Lots of Marichat. Angst with a happy ending. 49k. Slow burn w/ eventual identity reveal.

all dressed up and nowhere to go - No Miraculouses modern royalty AU - human Tikki and Plagg. Mostly DJWifi but a mild amount of adrienette and a smidge of chlogami. Includes arranged marriage Adrien x Alya but they don't end up together. "Twenty-five-year-old Marinette is a wedding dress designer, business blooming in her trusty shop, Ladybug Bridal. When the engagement of Prince Adrien Agreste and Ancient Princess Alya Césaire is announced, all she expects is an influx of work. What she gets instead is... a bit different." 35k.

tangled ribbons - Ao3. ballet/dance AU (no miraculous). Adrienette with some DJWifi and human Tikki & Plagg. "Marinette is a small studio dancer who wins a scholarship to a summer long ballet intensive. Adrien is a famous ballet dancer who would rather be at home than at said intensive. The end of the summer will bring about a showcase that could make Marinette's career, if she can ignore Chloé and focus on something other than Adrien." 82k. The slowest of burns.

Where timing is kind to us - Ao3. marichat discusses quantum physics. 4.3k. This is a beautiful one-shot with a one-sided reveal.

[lennnypooh]

Roundtable Presentation: Painting With All the Colors: Pocahontas

Disney's "Pocahontas," the film's score plays a crucial role in situating the story within its narrative context by utilizing various musical elements that evoke the setting and themes of the film. Alan Menken's score blends orchestral arrangements with Native American-inspired motifs, such as flute melodies and tribal drumming, to create a sense of place and time. For example, the use of Native American chanting and percussion during scenes in the Powhatan village or the incorporation of traditional folk instruments like the Native American flute helps to immerse viewers in the film's historical and cultural context.

Moreover, the songs in "Pocahontas" serve to push cultural authenticity within the film's diegesis by employing character performances that reflect the diversity and traditions of the Native American characters. For instance, "Colors of the Wind," sung by Pocahontas, not only showcases her character's connection to nature but also incorporates elements of Native American musical styles, such as vocal ornamentation and rhythmic patterns inspired by traditional Native American music. Similarly, the song "Just Around the Riverbend" features Pocahontas singing about her desire for adventure while incorporating Native American musical elements to underscore her cultural identity and connection to her surroundings.

Additionally, the film uses musical "framing" techniques to structure the score within familiarized styles, thus enhancing the audience's emotional connection to the story. For example, the recurring motif of the "Colors of the Wind" melody throughout the film serves as a thematic anchor, reinforcing the central message of environmental harmony and cultural understanding. By weaving this motif throughout the score in various musical arrangements, the film creates a cohesive musical narrative that resonates with audiences and reinforces the film's overarching themes. Similarly, the use of leitmotifs for characters like Pocahontas and John Smith helps to establish their identities and emotional arcs within the story, providing a musical framework for their development and interactions. Overall, the film's score effectively utilizes musical framing techniques to enhance the narrative structure and emotional impact of "Pocahontas" however although it has been praised for its stunning animation and memorable music, it has also faced criticism for its inaccurate portrayal of history, particularly regarding the depiction of the character Pocahontas herself.

One of the primary criticisms of the film is its romanticized portrayal of Pocahontas and John Smith's relationship. In reality, Pocahontas and John Smith likely did not have a romantic relationship as depicted in the film. Pocahontas was around 10 or 11 years old when John Smith arrived in Virginia, and their interactions were likely more diplomatic than romantic. By presenting a romanticized version of their relationship, the film perpetuates a misleading and culturally insensitive narrative.

Furthermore, "Pocahontas" has been criticized for perpetuating stereotypes and inaccuracies about Native American culture. The film portrays the Native American characters in a monolithic manner, failing to accurately represent the diversity of Indigenous peoples and their cultures. Additionally, some critics argue that the film appropriates and simplifies Native American spirituality and traditions for the sake of storytelling, without fully understanding or respecting their significance.

Another point of contention is the historical inaccuracies in the film's depiction of the Jamestown settlement and the interactions between the settlers and the Native Americans. The film simplifies complex historical events and glosses over the violence and exploitation that occurred during this period of colonialism.

Overall, while "Pocahontas" is a beloved animated film, it is important to acknowledge and critique its inaccuracies and problematic portrayals of history and culture. By perpetuating romanticized narratives and stereotypes, the film may inadvertently contribute to the misrepresentation and marginalization of Indigenous peoples and their histories.