#also i have not felt this kind of happiness in a long time

[grudgecollector]

hii queen! i saw that your requests are open, could you write something with daryl and a reader in the earlier seasons who are dating in secret? (they dont want no one to know because daryl is new to relationships and i believe he would be more reserved a little in the beggining), however the group ended up noticing how soft he is to her and how he always keep an eye on her😩 and also i just wanted to say that i read some of yours writtings and they are amazing💕💕

Gimme Shelter | Daryl Dixon x Fem!Reader

Tags: Swearing, twd typical violence, kind of slow burn, fluff, lightish angst, half proof-read

Words: 4.4k

A/N: Fank you so much nonny 💖😭 I've been really enjoying writing for Daryl, he was one of my biggest obsessions as a teenager, and that obsession will continue to prevail.

And this is such a cute request, I love secret relationship tropes so much. I decided to do Prison era!Daryl if that's okay, I assume you probably meant for like season 1 or 2, but I felt like it would be cute in the prison.

I know that a slow burn wasn't requested BUT the thoughts just kept coming the more I wrote. Also sorry this took so long to post.

Growing up people would always say you will find the one when you least expect it. Whether it’s in a grocery store, at the park, in a museum. That one person you’re bound to spend the rest of your life with will be there. As if they were waiting for you, and you for them. It was a fairytale dream, one that you lost faith in long ago. 

There were moments you had thought that maybe you finally found that person. Until disappointment would strike time and time again. Your experience with relationships had been less than ideal, never lasting longer than a year. Cheaters, liars, and worst of all abusers. Those types of men had always been the most drawn to you. Making you feel as if you were cursed somehow, unlucky. 

After a while and a slew of pity attempts, you gave up on dating for your own benefit. Deciding it would be best to focus more on yourself. Not allowing yourself to succumb to the societal pressure of getting married by twenty and popping kids out by twenty one. 

That was the dream of a delusional small town teenager, too young to think for themselves let alone plan a future family, and that had been your dream once upon a time. Maybe you read too many stories about young girls finding their prince charming and living happily ever after.

You started to value your alone time. Enjoying the feeling of not having to walk on eggshells in order to keep the other party happy. Things were smooth sailing for about two years. You changed your life around, got a new job, a new car, and a new apartment all within a few months. 

A newfound happiness was settling inside of you, you were beginning to find yourself again. You became more confident in who you were as a person, allowing yourself to actually live your life instead of just simply being alive. 

But life had a twisted sense of humor. 

Things started with frantic breaking news segments on the news. Reporters talking about the horrifying developments coming out of France. In the beginning you had hoped that things wouldn’t escalate past that, hoped that this would be an isolated incident. But things just got worse the more you watched. An unknown virus wreaking havoc across the entirety of Europe, spreading like wildfire across each country. 

After the first case of the virus was reported in Ohio, you started to worry. Things were getting too close for your liking, and with the details they were releasing it wasn’t going to get any better. With each new segment that aired your mother would call, urgently telling you to come back to live with them until this sickness blows over. You knew that it would be your best bet. 

Once the local grocery stores started getting raided, you found yourself being thankful that your family was full of survivalist nuts. Growing up hearing them praise people like Jim Baker, and other televangelist hackjobs like him that weaponized fear mongering for profit. 

Your parents home was stocked full of all the essentials thanks to your aunt Jess. First aid kits, canned food, water to last just a little over a month. It was everything you needed and more. 

“Y’always gotta be prepared, honey.” Your wine-drunk aunt had told you after a week, the both of you lounging on the sofa as you watched the news. “You don’t know how long this crap’s gonna last.” 

It all went by so quickly. The news stations eventually stopped airing not long after the first report hit Georgia, they were urging everyone to evacuate to Atlanta, leaving the streets a mess of honking and dead-stop traffic right outside of your parent’s home. 

And for a short while you had settled into this false hope that you were safe there with them. 

That was until you came back from a short trip to a ransacked Dollar General just down the street. 

The house was oddly quiet when you walked inside. The TV was muted on a flickering static screen, your dad’s recliner was empty, a blanket on the floor. The backdoor that led to the porch was ajar, the sun shining through the crack onto the wood flooring. You remembered that feeling in your stomach as you walked closer, fingers slowly curling around the doorknob. 

When you walked outside it felt as if a bucket of ice water was dumped over your head. The horrifying sight of your mother’s body being gutted by your own father and uncle, fresh blood dripped down the side of the RV next to your aunt’s already mangled corpse. Your hands were trembling fiercely, a nauseating coppery smell filling your nose. 

All you could remember was running. Packing whatever you could get your hands on before taking your mother’s minivan.  

Not long after the death of your family, you were taken in by a small group of five. They were unstable, barely hanging on by a thread, with almost nightly arguments tilting them further over the edge. 

It made things harder for you. The tension starting to make you too nervous to sleep without a knife tucked securely under your pillow. 

The self appointed leader demanded too much, wanting more than half of the rations to himself. He was a cruel hearted individual, mind diluted by the atrocities you were all forced to witness. A dangerous man who was quick tempered, and ruthless to anything or anybody you came across. 

After a month of running with them you made a mistake. You hid a portion of your findings from him. Food that he would have taken the majority of. But you were starving, at the point of hardly caring about your survival if it meant you could eat just a little bit more.

Other members had found out though, outing you quickly. As a punishment he tied you up, stole everything from you. Photo albums, your weapons, your food, bandages, it didn’t matter what it was. After beating you he left you in the supply closet of a convenient store you were temporarily camping out in. 

Part of you half expected them to come back, but you knew better than to think positively now, that could get you killed nowadays. 

The minutes blended into hours into what felt like days. The zip ties around your wrists and ankles dug harshly into your skin, biting into the raw bleeding flesh as you struggled to free yourself. Eventually it got to the point where you started slipping in and out of consciousness, your body exhausted and dehydrated. You were sure you would die there. 

But, much to your surprise, your luck hadn’t run dry just yet. 

In your haze you could hear the sound of once shuffling corpses hit against the door with a heavy thud. Hushed voices barely graced your ears through the door, two men talking to each other. 

Your voice was hoarse as you pathetically attempted to call out. Your throat was dry from the lack of water, forcing your words to come out as a croaking squeak.  

The door had been opened cautiously, the beam of a flashlight assaulting your eyes. You attempted to focus on the man crouching down above you, his blurred features obscured by the baseball hat he wore. 

“Rick!” The man called over his shoulder, another figure coming into view. He was wearing what seemed to be a police officer’s uniform. Whether it was stolen or actually his, you didn’t care, you just wanted out of this damn closet. 

Both men were quick to cut your binds and hauled you to your feet. The quick motion was all it took for you to finally pass out. A thick blanket of exhaustion pressed into you, forcing your eyes to flutter closed and your body to go completely limp. Unable to cling onto consciousness any longer

In those last moments you almost thought that they would just leave you there. Not wanting to bother helping a now passed out stranger, and you wouldn’t have blamed them if they did abandon you. 

Instead when you woke up you were laying on a couch, an older man with short white hair standing over you. 

At first you had almost believed you dreamed it all, the outbreak, the group. That you were in some sort of comatose state and the world was not overrun by flesh eating monsters. But the stinging pain deep within your wrists proved otherwise, the gashes covered by white gauze and medical tape. 

The white haired man, Hershel, ran you through your current state. Malnourishment, dehydration, feverish temperatures. It was evidently clear that you had been through the wringer, and if Glenn and Rick had not found you when they did, you would have died within the day. In fact he had said it was a miracle that Hershel himself could have saved you. 

You figured you had always been stubborn, though, you never gave up easily. 

Hershel had been kind enough to allow you to stay in his house until you got better. Providing you with enough water and food to get you back on your feet. 

The family allowed you to use their shower. When you looked at yourself in the mirror you understood why they were so insistent. A thick layer of grime and blood coated your skin, your hair was matted, your clothes ripped beyond repair. 

You couldn’t help but cry, realizing just how quickly you lost yourself out there. Your humanity has faded so much in such a short amount of time, leaving you a hollow shell of your former self. You looked like a stranger to yourself.

Over the next week Rick’s group urged you to stay. They knew you had nowhere else to go, no family to run back to. 

You were hesitant, though. You didn’t want to continue to be a burden, you were a stranger infiltrating an already close knit group. The closeness they had made you feel even more lonely than you did in your previous group, because at least when it came to them, you didn’t crave that companionship. 

Gone were the days of blind trust, knowing that everything always came with a price these days. So your knife stayed tucked beneath your pillow, fingers clutching onto the handle as you kept an eye on the zipped up entrance of the tent. 

On many sleepless nights, which were frequent, you would sit yourself in front of the dwindling fire outside of your tent. Mind wandering to everything that’s happened to you in the past three months, the things you’ve done to stay alive, the permanent scars you would carry with you for life. 

You stewed in your bitterness. Chewing ruthlessly on the skin around your fingernails. 

Your tent was further away from the rest of the group’s, tucked away in your own area. You found yourself watching the rest of them at first. Thoughts of running away while everyone slept crossed your mind more times than you could count. 

Until one night you heard a twig snap behind you, your knife quickly unsheathed and pointing towards what you thought to be a threat, 

“Geez. You’re almost as bad as Daryl.” One of the older men from Rick’s group, Dale, chuckled as he walked closer to your secluded camp, his hands up in surrender. “But I can go if you want.” He smiled softly. 

“Sorry… Bad habit.” You said quietly, setting your knife back down next to your thigh. 

He shook his head, taking a seat in front of the fire, “No need to be sorry. I can’t blame you for still being a little paranoid.” 

Dale quickly became a source of comfort for you, sporting an almost fatherly personality when talking to you. He was kind, and realistic which was exactly what you needed after everything you’ve been through. Over the course of a few nightly visits he was able to get you to open up a little, telling him about your former group, he was sympathetic and understanding. 

“The world has truly gone to hell.” He grimaced, taking his bucket hat off of his head. “But, we have good people here. Believe it or not.” His smile was reassuring. 

After a few days you started to come around more. Helping the women with laundry, listening to the stories they told about their lives before, anecdotes to keep themselves sane. 

It wasn’t hard to understand why they were so close. The tragedy of their former camp just outside of Atlanta, the C.D.C, Lori’s son getting shot, the people they’ve lost along the way. 

Slowly you felt more like yourself again.

Every so often they would mention that same name Dale did, Daryl. The only member of the group you had yet to meet personally. 

You had seen him walking around the camp, or tucked away in his own tent, further away from the group much like yours was. He was gruff looking, intimidating to the eye, and his occasional temper didn’t help much. But with how insistent he was on finding Carol’s missing daughter, you could tell there was warmth beneath his rigid exterior. 

The first time you talked to him was less than ideal. You were attempting to set up a snare trap in the woods, wanting to try and contribute a little bit more. The frustration quickly turned to embarrassment when he snuck up on you. Your feet got caught in your own trap and caused you to trip and fall. 

“Looks like y’caught somethin’.” Daryl attempted to joke, walking past you and deeper into the woods with his crossbow pointed towards the trees. 

You cut yourself free of the poorly made snare and ran to catch up with him. Choosing your words carefully. 

“Daryl, right?” All you got was a grumble in response, “Listen I know you don’t know me or anythin’... But could you teach me how to hunt?” 

“Teach yourself. I ain’t got time for babysittin’.” His response stung a little, harsher than you had hoped it would be. 

You figured you should have expected that, though, the conversation him and Shane had this morning was heated. An argument almost leading to a full on fight. The tension was growing higher and higher as the days dragged on with no signs of Sophia. 

Then the group found out about what was inside the barn.

One day when Rick was out helping Hershel, Shane took it upon himself to break the chains on the barn door. Walker after walker spilled out, being shot down ruthlessly by some members of Rick’s group, while the Greene family cried out for them to stop. Their worst nightmare coming true, as well as Carol’s. 

A little girl limped out, skin grey and beginning to rot. Her hair was matted with leaves, eyes a milky grey color, and a rasping snarl emitting from her. There was a large gash on her shoulder, a bite. It was devastating to see a child fall victim to such a death. But even more so for Carol, coming to realize that each day they restlessly searched, she had already been dead.. 

The safety that the farm provided didn’t last long after that. 

Shane was quickly losing his grip, Dale was killed by a lone walker, and eventually the fields were overrun by walkers. A massive hoard stumbling onto the property, drawn in by the frequent gunfire. 

You had lost quite a few on that night, good people that had helped you come out of your shell, people that didn’t deserve what they got. In all honesty you didn’t think you would have made it out either if it wasn’t for Andrea and Daryl. 

After the fall of the farm, you were all lost. Hershel and his family had lost their home, and the entire group was left to search. 

But you had to bury your sadness for the time being, winter was quickly approaching. The leaves were changing into a crisp orange color, and the wind had a bite to it in the mornings, leaving you shivering as you huddled closer to the fire. Daryl had been kind enough to let you borrow his poncho some nights, insisting you probably needed it more than him. 

Daryl seemed to warm up to you after a while too. He would subtly make sure you ate by leaving a half eaten can of vegetables next to you, or would occasionally sharpen your knife for you after doing his own. It was a kind gesture, letting you know that he was starting to trust you. 

Eventually it got to the point where your group finally ran out of canned food. There were no stores around, and everyone was too cold or tired to go anywhere. So Daryl decided to take you out to the woods, finally going out of his way to teach you how to hunt. 

“Y’know what you’re trackin’?” He asked one day, slowly walking beside you, following a small winding trail in the woods. 

You were quiet for a second, thinking as you analyzed the tracks next to your feet, “Could be a deer, whatever it is, it’s got hooves.” 

“Obviously.” He huffed, resisting the urge to smile when you glared at him. 

“Shut the hell up, man.” A small sigh came from you, “Could be a hog.” You crouched down and moved the leaves out of the way to get a better look, “The prints are close together, if it were a deer they’d be further apart, right?” 

Daryl just shrugged, “You tell me.” 

That’s how your hunts would usually go, Daryl providing frustrating nonanswers as you attempted to close in on your prey. He wasn’t going to babysit you, as he had originally said when you first asked, you had to figure it out yourself. You knew that was the only way you’d be able to learn, even if it was mildly annoying. 

The winter finally started to melt into spring, temperatures rising and falling occasionally until settling into an in between. And soon enough your restless searching came to an end, the high chain link fences surrounding a prison with walkers meandering the expansive field calling your names. A soon to be shelter for your group and many others. 

The fight against Woodbury had been a painful ordeal, with Maggie and Glenn getting taken hostage, and Daryl leaving with his brother. The group was briefly left in shambles, hanging on by a thread as Rick slowly faded away, losing his way after Lori’s untimely death and the birth of her daughter. 

When Daryl left it broke your heart a little. The two of you had bonded over the course of the harsh winter, often seeking each other out as a heat source. Whispering stories of your families filling the silence as the biting wind wrapped itself around you. But you could never blame him for leaving, knowing you would do the same thing if you could. 

The first attack from the Governor was when Daryl finally returned, his mouthy brother in tow. They had rescued Rick on the outskirts of the fence, luckily finding him just in time before he was overpowered. 

It made you happy to see your friend again, a hand squeezing his shoulder before pulling him into a hug. It had been a lot less awkward than you expected, his arms wrapping around your middle and squeezing softly, reassuring you that he was okay. 

“Well, ain’t that just cute.” Merle had teased, pinching his little brother on the cheek. 

But the tragedies were never ending, your group seemed to constantly be one step away from death’s doorstep. 

The Governor decided to make his way back to the prison, armed gunmen following behind him. 

They wanted to execute every last one of you no matter what it took. Your group had laid out traps, pretending to have left as requested, lulling them in with a false hope that you were gone. Until the shrill sound of the prison sirens started, smoke grenades being thrown down at their feet in the darkened hallways. 

The armed militia of men, mothers, and teenagers the Governor recruited had run away in fear, knowing that their fates would be sealed if they stayed any longer. 

As the weeks continued after the attack, things started to look up. That once forgotten positivity slowly makes its way back into your heart, along with a smile as you allow yourself to get to know the former residence of Woodbury. Your community was slowly forming, a home being made out of the prison. 

It was easy to become comfortable. 

And as your fondness grew for Daryl, you remembered what your mother used to tell you. 

“You will find the one when you least expect it.” 

Who knew that the world had to end in order for you to find him. With every soft touch, lingering whisper, and a quick stolen kiss in the shadows of your cell, it grew increasingly more obvious that your mother may have been right. 

Daryl was the only person you felt safe enough to be vulnerable around. His gentleness towards you breaking down the walls around your heart, settling himself deep within it. And you gladly let him. You both decided to keep your relationship a secret. Enjoying the thrill of sneaking around, while also avoiding any teasing remarks that would come from your group. 

You knew that this was Daryl’s first serious relationship, so you wanted to allow him the grace of warming up to the idea. You wanted him to become more comfortable with himself, taking his time with you, soothing any anxious wandering thought he may have. 

But you knew that the group would notice eventually. Hell, they already were. The small teasing remarks being thrown your way would make Daryl stiffen. He would pick at the strings on his denim jacket as he huffed and grumbled something in response. 

“You want me to slip her a note or somethin’?” Carol teased him, nudging her elbow into his side, “Do you like me? Check yes or no.” She laughed quietly when he rolled his eyes, “Come on Daryl-” 

She was cut off by someone running up to him, Glenn’s frantic eyes meeting Daryl and Carol’s before quickly sputtering out your name, “I don’t know what happened but-” 

The poor boy could barely get the words out before Daryl ran off towards the cell block. 

You were laying in your cell, blood covering your shirt as your side bled profusely. Hershel was quick to try and stop the bleeding, urging everyone to give him room to work. 

“If you want her to live, get out, now!” 

The blood drained from Daryl’s face as he looked at you. Bruises were beginning to bloom on your face and arms, your nose was bleeding and there was a slash on your cheek. Your boyfriend directed his anger towards one of the new members you had taken on a run, pinning him roughly against the concrete wall with his forearm. 

“The hell happened out there?! Huh?!” Daryl shouted in the scared man’s face, shrinking in on himself as Rick and Maggie tried to pull Daryl off. “Talk!” 

“We-” The man gulped, “We got attacked by a small group…” There were tears in his eyes as he tried to explain, his swollen lip trembling. He didn’t look much better than you did honestly, his eye was almost swollen shut, and there was blood coating his hairline, “She said- said she knew them, some group she was with. I thought they were gonna k-kill us.” He swallowed harshly, “They shot her…”

Daryl swore he could see red. His shoulders heaving as he started to pace, fingers running through his hair as he tried to process what the man had said. His face was hot, body pulsing with anger as he glanced back into your cell to see you lying there motionless. 

He stalked back up towards the man, his gaze hard and threatening as he spoke in a gruff voice, “If she dies, her blood is on your hands.” He pressed his finger hard into the man’s chest, pushing him harshly back into the concrete wall before stalking towards the exit of the prison. 

It took the entire council to talk Daryl out of hunting this group down himself. Carol telling him it was a suicide mission, and he would die if he left like this. Going into a situation blinded by rage was never good for anyone, especially now, with you lying unconscious in your cell. 

Luckily for you the bullet went straight through, and all they had to do was wait for you to wake up. 

Daryl didn’t dare leave your side, a rag gently dabbing across your forehead as he whispered softly to you. Unspoken words that he had wished he had told you sooner, words that only you were allowed to hear him say, something he had never dared utter to another person. Not even his own family. 

“I love you.” 

The time seemed to drag on slowly as he waited, his watchful not leaving you for more than a few seconds. His gentle fingers traced patterns on your skin, ignoring the occasional staring that would come from someone passing by your cell. He couldn’t bring himself to care about the secrecy, not now. 

“That fuckin’ tickles.” He suddenly heard you rasp, your eyes fluttering open and glancing down at his fingers on your forearm. 

Relief washed over Daryl like cool rain on a hot summer's day. His shoulders sagged and he couldn’t help but lean his head down to rest on your arm, a long sigh being released from his lungs. 

“Daryl…” You whispered, making him look at you, “It was my old group.” 

The look on your face was similar to the one you sported when they first found you, terrified, lost, confused. You didn’t know what to do with yourself knowing that not only were they still alive, but a lot closer than you would have liked. 

“I know.” He replied, his hand holding onto yours, “You don’t have t’worry about that right now.” 

Even though you were able to find happiness in the apocalypse, tragedy never ceased to sneak up from behind every corner. And you guessed that it had become easy to forget that life had a cruel sense of humor. 

It always would.

[magicalqueennightmare]

Changes

Bucky Barnes x Reader (nicknamed Belle)

You invited Bucky to start staying with you when he’s in Louisiana but a change in your relationship settles the fact that it’s time to get rid of that apartment he hasn’t seen in months

Warnings: descriptions of scars, sex

You weren’t pushing Bucky to share your room with you mainly because you respected the fact that he wanted to take things slow. You weren’t stupid, you knew very damn well he could hurt you if things got too intense. You also trusted that he wouldn’t. You set up the guest bedroom closest to yours for him.  You made the bed with a set of your extra sheets and even set up the extra bathroom with towels and washcloths and such. You wanted him to feel at home in your home.

“You know he’s planning to get rid of his apartment don’t you?” Sarah asked you one day as you and her walked down the dock and you froze, “He hadn’t told me that. I assumed he’d keep it as a backup plan” she stopped and eyed you for a moment “Do you want him to keep it as a backup plan?” you slowly shook your head “No” she grinned “Didn’t think so. Belle I think he’s falling for you just as much as you’re falling for him”

You felt your face warm “Jesus, am I that transparent?” she laughed “I’ve known you your entire life sweetie” you ducked your head “I can’t exactly tell him that. Hell this is new territory for me Sarah. I’m not some blushing virgin. You know that but with him it’s different. He’s different. He’s this man who has gone through so much hell for so long and for some reason he looks at me and finds some semblance of peace in me. My craziness becomes his calm. He makes me feel safe and wanted. On my worse he wouldn’t judge me. I feel more with a kiss from him then I did with sex from any of my exes” 

She laughed “That sounds like love to me” you scrubbed your hand down your face “I’m not putting a label on anything at the moment because I’m not any pressure on him” she nodded “I’m not saying you have to but just know it’s good to see you happy and even if Sam acts like he’s annoyed, he’s happy to see Bucky getting his footing back too”

“So, you’re getting rid of your apartment. You met Nic. It’s serious between you and Belle huh?” Sam asked Bucky and he glanced up “I care about her a lot Sam” Sam nodded slowly “I can see that Buck. Not what I asked though. Your entire world is kind of starting to shift to include her. You carry that damn keychain she got you on missions with you like Steve used to carry that damn compass”

Bucky ran his fingers along the keychain in question “I like having it close. It’s a part of her” Sam smiled slightly “She’s helping to bring back a part of you, you thought you’d never see again” Bucky glared at him “Do you have any other setting beside the therapy voice or the asshole voice?” Sam barked out a laugh “Nope”

They got quiet then Sam spoke “She already knows about the nightmares” Bucky nodded “She hasn’t seen the scars yet” Sam cut his eyes up “You two haven’t…” “SAM” Bucky warned and he held up his hands “Sorry man! Didn’t mean to assume. You know Belle isn’t an asshole like that. She isn’t gonna care” Bucky nodded, he was still hesitant for you to see them or the entirety of his arm. “Don’t hold back from her man. She cares so much about you…for some reason” Sam teased and Bucky shook his head “Asshole”

Bucky was due home at any time. You had gotten off later than you were supposed to but you weren’t exactly about to chase Mr Franklins out of the store. You pulled up to your place and saw the porch light was on. That meant Bucky was already home. Home. That made a smile slip onto your face. Your place was now Bucky’s home.

___________________

You hopped out of your jeep, slamming the door behind yourself and headed for the front door. You slid your key in and called Bucky’s name. When there was no answer you figured he was in the shower. You continued into the house and froze when he was in the hallway wearing nothing but a pair of jeans, hair still wet from the shower.

The two of you stood there for several breaths just staring at each other. Fuck he was downright beautiful. Why the hell was he with you again? The man looked like he was sculpted out by the greek gods as a personal fucking favor. There were scars where his vibranium arm was connected to his shoulder but you expected that. The metal of his dogtags were a sharp contrast to the rapid rising and falling of his chest. “Bucky?” you whispered and realized how wide his eyes were.

“Sorry Doll, I’ll um put a shirt on” he headed for his room and you were stunned for a moment. What the hell just happened. He seemed embarrassed for you to see him? You shook yourself out of the hormone induced stupor and dropped your stuff onto the couch before following him down the hall. You stopped right outside his door and knocked.

__________________

The moment you knocked Bucky took a deep breath. He didn’t want to see that look in your eyes. The disgust or pity at the scars he carried because honestly he wasn’t sure which reaction he feared worse out of you.

He opened the door and your face fell when you looked up at him “You ran from me” “I didn’t want the scars to scare you” he didn’t have a better excuse. You nodded slowly “Can I come in?” he shrugged and stepped back “Your home sweetheart” you smiled and stepped in.

He watched you as you stepped closer to him. One hand tentatively came out to rest on his chest “Nothing of you could ever scare me Bucky” he swallowed hard “Belle, you don’t have to say that” you met his eyes and held them as you stepped closer, just the tips of your fingers brushing over the beginnings of the scars “Nothing of you scares me Bucky” 

______________________

You could see the way his eyes tracked your movements, how his shoulders were starting to relax just slightly. You gently traced the raised scars with your fingertips. It was clear Hydra hadn’t even attempted to take care of him after the surgery. How many infections had ravaged his body and would’ve killed him had it not been for the serum? Just how much had this man survived despite it all? 

When he didn’t move, didn’t shy away, you moved close to kiss the beginnings of the scars. His eyes closed the moment he felt your lips. “Sweetheart” you smiled “It’s ok to let someone show you gentleness. I’m not going to run from you. I know your past, I know you weren’t in control of the things they made you do” you kissed further along the scars and he swallowed hard “Belle, baby” you smiled against his skin “What is it?” 

He opened his eyes and your heart flipped when you saw they were darker than normal. “Darlin, you keep touching me like that and talking like that. I don’t know how strong my willpower is”  you nodded “I’m sorry, I just want you to know that you’re welcome to be yourself here. Don’t hold parts of yourself back from me. I want you. All of you” he watched you for a moment then pulled you into his arms, “You’re amazing sweetheart”

Your palms rested against his bare chest and god help you tried not to let them wander but damn he was gorgeous. He watched you trail your hands across his body and a slow smirk slipped onto his face “What ya doing doll?” you grinned “Sorry, I’ve just never had a man that looks like you want me. Never had a man anything like you want me, never dreamt of a man anything like you” he shook his head “I am not as good of a man as you think I am” you raised your eyes to his “Yes you are”

He smiled “That fire Belle. I love that fire, that’s the same fire you had the day you met me and was willing to fight me over your nephews” you grinned “In my defense there was a random man in Sarah’s house” he laughed and leaned down to brush a kiss against your lips Your hands slid up his chest to hook behind his neck, fingers teasing against his dogtag chain to bring him closer. He rolled his tongue into your mouth and you whimpered lightly against his lips. He grinned against your mouth before you had to pull away to catch your breath. “You ok Belle?”

You nodded “I think I need to let you get a shirt on if we’re not planning to do anything right now because all I want to do is beg you at the moment” and you were rewarded with a light blush gracing his cheeks. “I want to. God I want to but I want to make sure I won't hurt you” you nodded, laying your head over on his chest “I know. I trust that you won’t but you have to trust you won’t” you raised your head and smiled at him “For now” and pressed a kiss to his lips “Know that I love the sight of you shirtless” he smirked “I’ll remember that darlin” you shook your head and untangled yourself from his arms “I’m gonna go put my stuff away and let you get a shirt on” he nodded “Ok”

You looked over your shoulder one more time to get another glimpse of his bare chest and he grinned when he saw he had your attention. “Go on beautiful” you laughed “Ok” and walked out of the room.

You and Bucky ended up at Sarah’s for dinner which really wasn’t a surprise. You normally ended up there. You mainly had breakfast food at your house and some snacks for the boys. All other grocery shopping the food ended up at Sarah’s because that was where you always ended up.

___________________

You laughed, watching the boys chase each other around the yard. It was such a normal evening. Or almost if you didn’t think about the fact that Bucky and Sam had gotten back from a deadly mission a couple hours before in a classified place doing some rescue mission.

“I was thinking we could do Mardi Gras this year if the fellas end up being home” Sarah spoke from next to you and you cut your eyes at her with a grin “Mardi Gras? We haven’t done that in years but do we really wanna take Captain America and the Bucky Barnes along?” she grinned “We should get top treatment” 

You laughed “Good point. Hell I’m up for it if Sam’s home” she laughed “I figured you would be. Think Bucky would be up for the crowd?” you shrugged, looking up where he was talking to Sam “I’ll ask him later” she nodded and sat down next to you. “You two are adorable” you shook your head “Gina has told me the same thing and Kayla has apparently mailed Bucky magnets for his arm that should be here in the next day or two” 

She cracked up laughing “Oh I’m sure he’ll love that” you nodded “There’s flower ones too” she shook her head “I can’t wait to see that”  Bucky looked over at you and smiled. Fuck you were head over heels weren’t you? How were you supposed to keep it in check? 

“Might see if Nic and Gina wanna do Mardi Gras. Depending on his schedule” she grinned “That would be fun” you nodded and the two of you went into planning while the boys played.

“What were you and Sarah laughing so much about?” Bucky asked as he followed you into the door of your place. You looked over your shoulder at him “We were actually planning Mardi Gras” he raised both eyebrows “That huge party New Orleans has” you grinned “He knows what Mardi Gras is! I’m proud”

He shook his head “I’m old, not dead darlin” you laughed “If you two are in town or well if Sam’s in town we’re thinking about going then if you think you’d be good with the crowds” he nodded slowly “I think I’d be ok” you smiled “Ok, I’m gonna check with Gina and Nic too” “Sounds good” he reached out for your waist and pulled you into a kiss. Your hands went to his chest, fingers playing with his dogtags. When he pulled away from your lips you smiled “Night Bucky” he kissed the tip of your nose “Night Belle”

You started towards your room but stopped halfway “You could sleep in here with me if you wanted. You didn’t hurt me when we shared the couch” he nodded slowly so you added “I’m not gonna be upset if you don’t. Just offering” and continued into your room.

You were just getting out of the shower when you heard Bucky knock at your bedroom door. “Hold on a second!” you called and slipped the oversize shirt and panties you normally slept in on.

You walked out of the bathroom and to the door. When you opened it he was standing there and looked so damn nervous it made your heart flip. He had on a pair of grey sweatpants and nothing else. “Damn” you whispered, forgetting that his hearing was better. He smirked slightly, “That offer still stand?”

You stepped back and waved him in “Of course” he walked into the room and you closed the door behind him. “Do you have a side of the bed you prefer?” you asked and he shook his head “Not really” you nodded “Good, I like the right” he was still kind of just standing in the middle of the floor so you slipped your hand into his vibranium one, the metal cool under your touch  “It’s just sleeping in the bed with me Bucky. Nothing more honey” he lightly traced the back of your hand with his thumb and a small smile slipped onto his face when you didn’t flinch. It hurt when you realized that was what he expected. God he’d gone too long without kindness, without the gentleness he deserved. 

You pulled him towards the bed and he let you so you only let his hand go to walk around to your side of the bed. You stopped and cut your eyes down “Is this ok? Should I put some shorts or something on?” his eyes trailed down your body and you felt your face warm at the look in them “No doll, that’s perfect” you grinned “Ok then” and slid under the comforter. He walked around and climbed into the bed next to you, turning on his side to face you. 

_______________________

You smiled, bringing up one hand but stopped right before putting it on his chest “Is this ok?” he nodded “You can touch me Belle” you spread your hand out across his chest, smoothing it over the muscle. He swallowed hard, eyes staying on yours. “You’re so damn beautiful darlin” you felt your face warm “Barnes you have got to be the most gorgeous man I have ever laid my eyes on. I am mediocre at best next to you”

He was laying on his right side and you could tell even after this long he was still afraid to touch you intimately with his left arm. He raised it to brush your hair back from your face and you leaned into his touch. He smiled “You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen Belle and I’ve been alive a very long time” you laughed “Don’t remind me I’m a grave robber” he scrunched his nose up “A what?” you shook your head “That’s what Nic keeps teasing me with since you’re over one hundred” he grinned “Grave robber huh? Cute little grave robber aren’t ya?”

Your fingers hooked into his dogtag chain, not pulling it just holding onto it. “Can I kiss you?” you asked quietly and he smiled “Yeah sweetheart” you moved closer to brush your lips against his in a gentle kiss. You pulled away and rolled your lip between your teeth as he stared at you, throat moving with the force of how hard he was swallowing “Can I kiss you?” he asked and you grinned “Of course”

_____________________

He moved his left hand down to your thigh, gently gripping it before tugging you closer. That caused a little gasp of surprise to escape you and he laughed lightly. When his lips met yours you whimpered into his mouth, at the feeling of his metal fingers digging in just slightly to the soft flesh of your thigh. He rolled his tongue into your mouth, flicking it against yours and deepening the kiss. Your hands hooked around his neck, tugging him over on top of you. He let you direct his movements, shifting to put his weight on his left hand as he pinned your body down to the mattress with his.

When you had to pull away from the kiss to catch your breath he moved to kiss down your neck, kissing the soft flesh there. Your fingers were pressing into his shoulders and when he hit a certain spot your hips bucked up off the bed into his and you moaned when you felt the fact that he was already half hard. He broke away from your skin and closed his eyes, taking a deep breath “We should stop” 

You nodded, “If you want to we can stop honey. It’s ok” he opened his eyes and when they met yours you were the one to swallow hard from the look in them “I don’t want to stop Belle. I want you, god I want you but it’s been so long..I don’t want to hurt you..we don’t have protection..”  “I have an iud if it’s pregnancy you’re worried about” you offered and he raised an eyebrow and for a moment you thought you may have to explain what an iud was but he nodded “What about me hurting you?” “You won’t” you argued and he smiled “Tell me if I do, please and we stop” you nodded “Of course” your heart was in your throat by that point.

_______________________

He crashed his lips against yours, flesh hand slipping under your shirt. You gasped when his fingers just barely brushed against the nipple of one of your breasts. He pulled back from your lips with a smirk “Sensitive sweetheart?” you nodded “It’s been a few years for me” the smile he got on his face was so soft “Can I take this shirt off of you?” you knew this was a big step in your relationship. You smiled “Please” 

He helped you lean up far enough to slip the shirt off and the moment you were bare under him both of you froze. You were nervous, not because of Bucky but some of your exes and their less than loving comments were flashing through your mind. Bucky stared at your body for a moment “I knew you were beautiful Belle but this? Are you sure you want me?” you laughed lightly, feeling your face warm “Hush Bucky” he grinned and crashed his lips against yours.

His flesh hand teased across your breast and you whimpered into his mouth. He moved from your lips to kiss across your jaw then down your neck. You gasped when he got to the sensitive skin at the bend of your neck “That feels so good” you moaned and felt him grin against your skin. He kept moving down your body, teasing your skin with his lips and tongue. “Christ” you gasped when he got to your chest and rolled one of your nipples into his mouth.

“Bucky” you moaned when his left hand came up, metal fingers teasing your other nipple and the cool was such a contrast to the warmth of his body. He pulled off of your skin and cut his eyes up at you. Your chest was already heaving. He grinned “You still with me beautiful?” you nodded “I’m good, you haven’t exactly lost your touch if you were wondering”

He smiled and pressed a kiss to your stomach “Let me know if I do anything you don’t like” you nodded “I will” he smiled and turned his attention back to your body. When he got to the band of your panties, you swallowed hard and he looked up at you, a look of confusion on his gorgeous face “Is this ok Belle?” you nodded “Yeah just..nevermind” he raised an eyebrow so you covered your face with your hands “My exes complained if I ever even asked”

“Uncover your face” That was the first time he’d ever used that much authority in his voice with you so you reacted almost immediately. You lowered your hands and he was staring at you “I’m not them, my girl comes first” he smirked then added “In more ways than one” you shook your head with a smile. He reached for the waistband of your panties “So, can I?” you nodded so he pulled them off your hips then down your legs.

He moved down the bed further, settling his shoulders between your legs. You hadn’t realized until that moment quite how broad his shoulders actually were until he pulled your legs up onto them. He held your eyes as he flicked his tongue across your clit. Your head fell back against the pillows, a moan of his name falling from your lips. He rolled his tongue into you, kissing you, tasting like he had your mouth, exploring. Your hips were bucking off the bed, chasing the pleasure from his tongue. He slipped his metal arm around your waist to hold you to the bed. 

He pushed one finger into you and you whined low in your throat then he added a second curling them up until he hit that spot that had your legs shaking around him. You were practically humping his damn face at that point but you were beyond caring. That man was doing magic with his fingers and tongue. He sucked your clit into his mouth and your orgasm caught you off guard when it washed over you. You were practically sobbing his name as your legs shook around his head. He continued to work you through the aftershocks of the orgasm until you tapped his shoulder weakly “Too much”

He moved back, lowering your legs and smiled up at you almost shyly considering you were fairly certain he’d just made you see god. “How are you feeling?” he asked and you took a deep breath “Feelin like you better get rid of that apartment. You aint leavin now Barnes” you teased and he grinned “Wouldn’t dream of it”

“Come here” he crawled up your body and lord have mercy the sight of him, slowly moving up your bare body, kissing every inch of skin with his dogtags dangling loose? You nearly came again. When he got to your lips he rolled his tongue against yours, letting you taste yourself. 

You were practically panting against his mouth “I want you Bucky, please” he nodded, hands moving to shove his sweatpants off. He kicked them off the bed and you looked down between the two of you and whimpered lightly “Having second thoughts?” he teased and you shook your head “I trust you won’t hurt me” he smiled and pressed a kiss to your lips as he lined himself up with your opening “Are you sure?” you nodded “Please”

He pushed into you slowly and you whimpered, pulling him back into a kiss. He stilled to let you get adjusted to his size. You pulled back from his lips just to look up at him, one hand teasing into his hair the other playing with the chain of his dogtags “See? Not hurting me” you breathed and he smiled “You’re amazing” and crashed his lips against yours. 

He gave a tentative movement of his hips and you moaned into his mouth. He broke away from your lips and watched your face as he pulled back then thrust into you. You gasped “Feels so good” he held his weight up on his left hand, right hand gripping your thigh to hook it around his waist as he found a pace that worked for you both. You knew he needed a little deeper and a little rougher and he was afraid of hurting you. He found a rhythm that was somewhere between. 

Your hands were braced against his chest, breasts bouncing with the force of his thrusts and he watched them with an almost entranced look. You were so damn close. He shifted his hips just right and your orgasm slapped into you. Your vision went soft around the edges as you clenched down around him and he grunted, burying himself into you with a final thrust before you felt him cum, filling you up. You whimpered as he lowered his head to your collarbone, pressing a kiss there. “Are you ok?” he asked, looking up at you and you smiled “I’m ok, I’m gonna need you to carry me to the shower in a few minutes though” 

He laughed “I can do that sweetheart” then gently pulled out of you, kissing you when you whined from the loss of contact then he moved to lay down next to you and pull you over onto his chest. “Was that good?” he asked and you laughed “Oh Bucky, that was the best sex I’ve ever had” you cut your eyes up at him and he had a smirk on his face “The best seriously?”

You raised an eyebrow “Seriously. I’m keeping you Sergeant. This is your home now. Forget that apartment. You sir are now a citizen of Louisiana” he grinned “I’ve been a lot worse than that” and pulled you into another kiss.  

@desimarie12

[delicatelymorbid]

Oblivious Feelings

Synopsis - your hidden feelings for ellie had been an untamable headache, so when your friend kat asked for you to hook her up with ellie, hiding those feelings became difficult

Includes - switch!ellie x switch!reader, !!!!yearning!!!!, jealous reader and ellie likes it a little too much, clingy ellie, strap usage r!receiving, SMUT WITH PLOT

Notes - not really proofread, sorry gals but i give you all kisses and hope you enjoy

You and Ellie were close friends, but lately you’d been utterly confused with your feelings. Your glances towards her were turning to longing and yearning stares that would haunt your dreams. Her stupid green eyes and infuriating, pretty freckles would linger in your mind—uninvited. Her stupid and mesmerizing tone would roll off your back in ways nothing else could. The slight rasp that would fall from her pretty lips would send your heart hammering.

It was torture.

But right now, none of it mattered. Because right now, you were watching her from afar at this stupid winter gathering and everything around you blended into her. The gathering actually wasn’t stupid; you were happy and excited to see all your friends and loved ones. But, it was unbearably stupid because of your stupid feelings for a stupid, nerdy girl that made you feel stupid. It was all just fucking stupid.

On the opposite side of the room, Ellie spotted you the second you got there. She hadn’t seen you all day since she had been busy with Joel, so her chest couldn’t help but tighten at the sight of you. She awkwardly ran her finger over the rim of her drink, clearing her throat and fidgeting in her space as she sighed, thinking.

Ellie was conflicted. She couldn’t help but notice the effect you had on her entire being. Your mere presence made her skin light on fire and her brain melt into mush. Your pretty smile and pretty laugh would turn up the corners of her mouth without her permission. Your gorgeous eyes would captivate her in ways like nothing else. It was no doubt that Ellie welcomed her feelings for you. However, Ellie was petrified at the possibility of you never liking her, or rather you not being capable of liking girls.

Ellie never brought it up. Ever. She thinks she’s had this lingering crush on you since you met, but I mean who could blame her. You were wonderful, intoxicatingly kind. You made her boast with love, so there’s no reason why she wouldn’t attract towards you. But, topic of sexuality brought a bad taste to Ellie’s mouth. Not only because of bigoted idiots, but also for rejection. She knew she could trust you, she just didn’t know if she could love you.

You were chatting with your friend, Kat, at the dance. You two weren’t that close but knew each other well enough. As she spoke to you, you every once in a while glanced at Ellie. When you two finally saw each other the same time, you exchanged a warming smile that made you both blush.

Kat began to ramble on, but then looked a little nervous as she was rummaging up the courage to ask you something.

“Hey, I have an odd question,” she asked as she pursed her lips and furrowed her brows at you gently.

“Yeah?” you replied softly, no idea as to what she was going to ask.

“You… You’re, uh, friends with Ellie—that’s her name right? The girl with the short brown hair?” she asked.

Auburn.

“Uh, yeah how come? The one over there right?” you reply tightly, nudging your head to the direction of the bar where Ellie sat, chatting with some random.

Kat’s face lit up and she nodded at you, “Yeah… I’ve been meaning to ask if you know if she’s single. Or, could you… I dunno, try to talk me up to her,” she laughed awkwardly, a small gleam in her eyes.

You couldn’t help but feel your heart ache. Maybe it was the jealousy, or maybe it was the sadness you felt while looking at Kat’s evident romantic interest. The pit in your stomach couldn’t help but feed off your doubt on Ellie; what if she didn’t like you? What if she would like Kat, and not you? It ate at your chest but you smiled at her warmly and nodded. It wasn’t Kat’s fault after all.

“No, yeah, of course!” you softly say with a weak smile. “I’ll go talk to her now,” you nod.

Kat’s smile beams at you and you have to hold back from throwing up. Not literally, but you did feel sick.

You then walked away from her and made your way to Ellie, each step feeling like you were going towards your impending doom.

But all of it sort of washed away with the currents as she turned from her seat and locked eyes with you, smiling softly and looking down at her drink. Your brain felt a little fuzzy as you got closer to her, and eventually you leaned up on the bar, standing next to her as she sat.

“Hi, Ells,” you murmur as you look crookedly at her.

“Hi,” Ellie replied as she leaned on the bar, mirroring you. “Me and Joel missed you today,” she mumbled shyly.

“Yeah? Missed you too,” you say softly as you nudge your elbow gently into her.

You sighed and studied her, watching how her lashes kissed her cheeks and how her hair loosely fell from her messy bun that struggled to stay put.

“My friend thinks you’re cute. She, uh, she asked me to see if you were interested,” you mutter, standing up straight to lean your side against the bar, picking at your nails.

This caught Ellie off guard and she sat up straight, too. Those pretty eyes giving you a confused glance as her brows furrowed, “Who?”

“Kat. That blonde over there,” you say while nudging your head in the direction of Kat, making Ellie’s eyes fall onto a girl with a shy smile, causing Ellie to nod with a tight one in return.

Ellie looked back to you, almost cautiously. “You, uh, you told her I’d be interested?” she asked, seemingly nervous.

Your eyes snapped to hers and you pursed your lips, “I mean, no. I said I’d tell you about her. That’s all really. Why?” you ask ask as your eyes get a little soft, “Would you be interested?”

Ellie noticed your tone and aspect slightly shift, but she couldn’t understand why. Did you not like Kat? Did you think Ellie wasn’t good enough for Kat?

“Well—” Ellie scoffed, “I mean, shit, I dunno. I don’t really know her,” she murmured. “Nah, I don’t… Yeah I don’t think I’m interested. Tell her I’m sorry,” she said after thinking.

This piqued your interest.

“How come?” you asked with a raised brow.

Ellie furrowed her brows at you and turned to look at you, “What do you mean ‘how come’? Do you want me to go over there?” she asked, her tone getting a little snippy.

“Well…” you scoff, looking back at Kat who was now lost in conversation with someone. “No,” you mumble after thinking about how Ellie would look standing next to her, the thought making your head hurt.

This piqued Ellie’s curiosity.

“Why not?” she asked, turning in her bar chair to rest a hand on her knee, looking for your eyes.

You shrug and glance between her eyes, not knowing what to say. “I dunno. She’s… annoying I guess.”

“You guess?” Ellie asked deadpanned, dropping her head slightly to look at you. “Why don’t you want me over there?” she asked softly.

You narrowed your eyes, getting slightly flustered at the direct questions, especially as they got closer to the truth of it all: your feelings for Ellie.

“Well if you wanna be over there with her so badly then you can. I’m not stopping you,” you say as you straighten up, no longer leaning on the bar as you slightly glare at her.

Ellie scoffed and nodded, “Right, right. Forget about it,” she muttered before turning away from you and focusing back on her drink, leaving you alone right beside her.

You sigh and flex your fist, walking away from the bar towards the other end of the place, wanting to go back to your friends. You eventually found Dina and Jesse, spending the rest of the evening with them, sharing laughs and drinks as the music and love from everyone surrounded the air. It was serene, it was everything you needed.

That was until your eyes found their way to the bar, seeing that familiar blonde standing a little too close to Ellie. You squinted, making out Kat’s slightly arched back as she leaned against the bar, leaning against her hand as she spoke to Ellie. Ellie’s drink was empty and she looked interested in the conversation and it made you sick. You knew you shouldn’t have fucking said anything. You cursed under your breath and downed your drink, setting it down on the table before looking back at the bar and this time, Ellie’s green eyes were boring into you as Kat rambled on. Your expression faltered as everyone except the two of you drowned out of the room, and Ellie’s curious expression made you scold. She furrowed her brows at you, as if trying to figure out what the hell was the matter with you.

It angered you. It drove you mad that Ellie knew you completely inside and out. She knew how to comfort you, she knew how to read you. She was so goddamn perfect and it made you feel insane. You loved her so much and she had no fucking clue. You hated it.

You shook your head slightly and darted your eyes away from her, snapping back into reality and grabbing your jacket before saying bye to Jesse and Dina, sneaking your way out the doors before anyone—Ellie—could question it.

Luckily for you, your house isn’t that far of a walk and soon enough you were in the comforting warmth of your home. Your cat, Mochi, greeted you sweetly as you walked through the door. You set your things down and stood in the middle of your kitchen, hands on your hips as you thought long and hard. You thought of Ellie laughing at Kat’s jokes. You thought how sweet Ellie would taste with her lingering alcohol on her pretty lips. You thought how only your mind would be the place those things could occur. You scoffed and opened your fridge, grabbing a water before nearly slamming the door shut and going to your couch, pinching the bridge of your nose as you leaned your head back, cursing yourself for your feelings.

Then, three quick knocks were made on your door and you sighed, knowing damn well who it was. You set your water down and got up, slowly making your way over before turning the knob and seeing Ellie on your porch, hands stuffed in her pockets as she looked at you worriedly.

“Are you mad at me?” she asked, her tone slightly sad but mostly confused.

“What? No, why would I be mad at you?” you reply instantly, opening the door wider as you looked at her with an expression that made her melt.

You were so good with her, she melted every time you reassured her, especially when you looked at her as if she were stupid for thinking whatever crazy thoughts she had.

“I dunno… You seemed mad. I was just messing with you, y’know? I… I didn’t wanna make you mad,” she murmured, referring to her questions regarding Kat earlier at the bar.

You sighed and rubbed your face, nodding, “I know, Ells. Come in,” you softly say, grabbing the sleeve of her jacket and barely pulling her inside.

Ellie didn’t walk in far, she stopped right in front of you leaving little space as you closed your door and looked at her.

“I’m not mad at you. I’m sorry for being mean,” you mumbled, slightly pink cheeks showing your embarrassment and it made Ellie shake her head.

“What’s going on? Did something happen?” Ellie asked gently, looking for your eyes as she wanted to fix whatever was wrong.

“No! You’re good, we’re good! I’m sorry! Things are just, a lot for me right now. I shouldn’t have acted like that and… yeah,” you sigh as you struggle to keep your eyes on her.

“Hey, there’s nothing to apologize for, ‘kay? What’s going on? Talk to me,” she murmured, stepping slightly closer to you as her voice got low and gentle.

Her eyes and soft tone coaxed you in ways nothing else could and you were convinced this was why you fell for her. Ellie was so patient with you, taking every action in deep thought before acting with you. She took care of you like no one else, and it made you feel so fucking loved. You adored her for it.

You blinked and shook your head slightly, whispering, “Nothing’s going on,” trying to not burden her with your feelings.

Ellie shook her head immediately as she wasn’t feeding onto your bullshit and she mumbled, “No, don’t do that. Cmon, talk to me. Tell me what’s wrong. I don’t want you upset.”

You sighed and shrugged, not knowing how to say it. Not knowing how to tell the girl that you’re in love with that you’re in love with her. She was so beautiful and perfect and smart and funny and kind and soft and calming. You hoped with every fiber in your being that she felt even the slightest same as you did. You might die if she didn’t.

“I’m not upset, I’m sorry. It’s just… I dunno. I guess I got… irked by Kat.” you said, embarrassment flushing your cheeks as you looked away from Ellie, too flustered and in your head to make eye contact.

“Irked?” Ellie repeated with a raised brow. “What exactly does that mean, sweetheart?” she asked softly, making your head spin but your expression was deadpanned.

“Fuck, Ellie, I dunno, what do you think it means?” you said sarcastically, your frustration rising as you felt cornered with all these damn questions and that fucking sweet nickname.

Her jaw twitched and she studied you, trying to decipher the little information you gave to piece it together.

“So, you don’t… like Kat is what I’ve gathered. And you don’t want me with her?” she asked, taking it slow with you and truly trying to figure it out.

You gnawed on your lip and nodded slightly, “Yeah. I guess,” you mumbled.

She tilted her head and you nearly fainted.

“Can I ask why?” she asked gently, the words coming out like soft kisses as she didn’t wanna ruin whatever was happening. She wanted you to open up.

“She just… you know,” you say strained, crossing your arms as you shrug.

“No, sweetheart, I don’t know that’s why I’m asking. Is it just Kat in general?”

You shook your head and pursed your lips, “No, not exactly. I just, y’know, I guess there’s better for you. I guess.” you say, an awkward expression on your aspect causing Ellie to furrow her brows.

Ellie rose a brow and silently absorbed your words and expression, trying to not overthink this. Were you the ‘better’? She wanted you to be, but you’ve never insinuated that you liked her, nevertheless liked girls in general. But, she couldn’t help but read into your frustrated sighs. How close she got and how you didn’t back away. The way your hands flexed when she spoke to you lowly and intimately. How your cheeks stained red when she said she missed you. Ellie wanted this so badly, but she didn’t want to mess it up.

“I need you to be more specific with me, baby,” she said soft and raspy, almost as if she were begging for it.

You nearly grunted at the petname, instead sighing sharply and looking down at the ground, “Ellie I can’t,” you huff.

She tilted her head, as if she understood. Finally.

“I don’t… Sweetheart, I don’t wanna mess anything up. I don’t wanna interpret this for something that it’s not,” she said gently, keeping the small distance there between the two of you.

You slowly look up at her and she nearly gave out, those damn eyes making her melt and her breathing slightly staggered.

“I just… got jealous. I don’t want you with anyone else, not just Kat. I don’t want you with anyone,” you say softly.

“Why not?” she asked, lifting her chin and narrowing her eyes with a slight tilt to her head, making you feel hot under her gaze.

“Because,” you say stubbornly, “Why are you making me do this?” you grit through your teeth.

She knew you hated to verbalize your feelings and this felt like complete torture. However, it was also torture for Ellie. She had no fucking clue what you were thinking, and she hoped with every bone in her body that you were trying to say that you liked her.

“Because I’m not a fucking mind reader and I need you to tell me what’s going on so I can understand,” she huffed as she took a step forward.

You couldn’t argue but you rolled your eyes and put your hands on your hips, looking away from her. “For fuck’s sake,” you grumble, “I don’t want you with anyone because I want you with me,” you ramble out as quickly as possible, avoiding her gaze as your cheeks reddened. You hated that she got you to speak your mind so easily. She had you wrapped around her finger.

She froze, staring at you and staying silent as you kept your eyes away from her. “Look at me,” and you sure as hell did. “You want me to be with you? You want us?” she asked, her voice strained as if she were hurt while asking.

You nod and straighten, dropping your hands to your side as you look at her, “I’m sorry,” you whispered. “I… I didn’t wanna tell you, I don’t wanna mess anything up. I’m sorry, I just hate seeing you with other people because I can’t stand the fact that you’re not with me,” the words slightly died in your throat, though after looking at Ellie.

As you spoke, Ellie’s eyes said enough for her and you felt timid. You felt like you did the wrong thing. She looked at you as if you spoke Latin and you shrank in your spot. You definitely fucked up.

Silence fell between the two of you and the embarrassment nearly consumed you, causing you to frown slightly. “Can you please say something?” you asked gently, the words coming out sad and regretful.

Ellie nodded, stepping forward before grabbing your head in her hands and brushing your hair out of your face, walking into you until your back gently met the wall.

“Don’t ever be sorry for wanting to be with me,” she breathed out before leaning forward and connecting her lips to yours, as if your two bodies had been apart for millions of years, waiting to be reunited. “Don’t be sorry for being jealous,” she mumbled against your mouth before kissing the corner of your mouth, one hand snaking down to your jaw to maneuver your head as she pleased. She kissed your cheek and mumbled, “The only thing you need to be sorry for is keeping this from me,” she almost sounded a little angry, pressing into you more and kissing your lips, this time with a little more force to express her feelings. 

You shivered, whimpering slightly into her mouth as she pressed you into the wall, your brain melting in her hold.

“How could you keep this from me?” Ellie hissed, kissing all over your jaw as her mind was on fire. Years of waiting and watching you, all leading up to now. She couldn’t take it. “Do you know how long I’ve waited to fucking do this? How many times I’ve dreamed of you?”

You gasped, shaking your head and furrowing your brows like a puppy at her and she nearly devoured you at the sight. “‘M sorry, Ells,” you mumbled.

She released a staggered sigh, “And that fucking nickname,” she hissed, leaning back into you to kiss your mouth, a moan leaving her mouth and leaking into yours.

You mewled, everything happening too quickly for your brain to keep up but your lips had a mind of their own as they moved with Ellie, earning you soft moans from her.

You broke away, shaking your head and she followed you with her mouth, her gaze low and focused solely on your lips now that she finally had a taste.

She leaned into you again, but you stopped her and she grunted, “Let me kiss you,” she murmured.

“Wait, wait, wait, wait,” you rambled out, flattening your hand on her chest, making her look down at your hand with an incredulous look.

“Are you serious?” she muttered.

You scoffed and nearly laughed, “Yes! Just wait a damn second,” you spoke through a giggle.

You sighed, looking all over her face, feeling flustered under her gaze as her eyes were low.

“You look pretty,” you said breathless, making Ellie drop her head and sigh.

“Baby, I’ve wanted to kiss you since I was fucking thirteen. Can you let me get what I want?” she muttered, slightly strained as she leaned in to smell your neck. She gently stuck out her tongue and glided it, kissing your pulse, causing your brows to knit in pleasure.

“Yeah,” you whispered, leaning your head back against the all as your hand found its way to her hair, undoing her bun to tug on her roots.

“Were you jealous of Kat?” Ellie rasped out, sort of out of the blue and it caused you to snap your eyes to her in confusion.

“What?” you ask in a haze.

“Were you jealous?” she repeated, this time leaning down to kiss over your collarbone as she found her thigh between your legs.

“I… I dunno, I guess so,” you mumble, not wanting to admit it as the embarrassment was evident on your face.

“Tell me,” she rasped, her tone getting more strained by the second as she pressed into you. Her moves were getting fervent and you felt hot.

You looked at Ellie and thought for a second, noticing her demeanor shift. “Are you getting fucking turned on by that? Do you like the fact that I was jealous and I didn’t want Kat near you?” you slightly grit through your teeth, your breathing sharp as you looked at Ellie with hazy eyes.

She looked up at you through her lashes, her lip dragging on your throat as she let up.

“Maybe,” she said softly, tilting her head and pouting at you, “It’s cute.”

“It’s slutty,” you countered, making her blush way more than it should’ve. “You want me to be jealous over you?” you ask, tone dropping in a way that made Ellie nervous.

“No… not necessarily, I just… think it’s hot that you were possessive ‘n shit,” she spoke gently, hands going to your waist to try and seem smaller than she was.

Your eyes slightly sparkled and your lashes fluttered, digesting her words. Ellie watched you, wanting to connect your lips again but waiting for your initiative, not knowing if she turned you off.

“Is that weird?” she asked softly, her fingers snaking under your shirt to touch your warm skin, her hands fitting perfectly on your hips.

You shook your head in response, swallowing dryly before wrapping your arms around her neck, pulling her in, “No, I really like that, even though I shouldn’t,” you murmured as you pulled her in to kiss her, going slow and attentive, making Ellie whimper into your mouth.

You deepened the kiss, dipping your tongue into her mouth and you felt her grip on you tighten in response. Her pretty sounds made your stomach turn and you could feel yourself get wet, and she herself. You got more handsy, pulling her hair harder than you intended, earning you a pretty moan from Ellie. You turned and pressed her against the wall, shoving your thigh between her legs and bringing your hands down to her hips, squeezing the flesh and guiding her to a rhythm on your leg. She gasped, breaking the kiss to look at you like a pretty puppy. You could tell something had shifted, almost as if no one had controlled her like that, or at least no one had done it correctly. Her eyes lit up and her lips parted, a pathetic whimper leaving her mouth as her hands went to your arms, holding onto you.

“What’re you doing?” she mumbled, her hips moving against your thigh in a slow pace.

“You don’t like it?” you tease, tilting your head at her, asking for a response.

She whined, not liking your condescending tone but she still nodded, “I do,” she muttered shyly.

You nodded, watching her pretty face change for every movement made her feel something different. Not to mention, your mocking tone made her head dizzy.

“You’re so fucking pretty,” you say breathlessly before leaning down to catch her mouth in a rough kiss.

You broke away, grabbing Ellie’s hand and taking her back to your room, shutting the door and immediately pressing her against it, your movements fast and rushed as you kissed her. Your hands were angsty, running all over her body as you grabbed handfuls of her shirt, pulling her into you. She then backed off the door, walking you backwards until the back of your legs hit your bed and she gently pushed you down, laying on top of you now.

“Slow down,” she murmured before going to your neck, immediately finding your sweet spot with her tongue, causing your face to twist in pleasure.

“Shut up,” you sighed, grabbing her and turning her onto her back on your bed, straddling her hips as you slowly began to grind on her, throwing your head back as you pressed your hands onto her chest, stopping her from sitting up.

“Let me kiss you,” she begged, taking one of your hands to her mouth, kissing your palm gently.

“Let me use you,” you breathed out, looking down at her and seeing how her face fell, taking the opportunity to gently insert your fingers into her mouth, making her suck on them. You smiled, watching her composure slip as her eyes slightly rolled back with your fingers in her mouth, “There she is,” you softly praise.

Ellie’s eyes darkened and she furrowed her brows at your words, feeling like a slut underneath you with your fingers in her mouth. You were toying with her and she liked it. Fuck. Ellie blushed at the sight of a pretty girl on top of her, grinding on her and bossing her around. It was a total wet dream come true.

You lean down, kissing the corner of her mouth as she continued to suck on your fingers, it almost being a mocking gesture since she couldn’t kiss you back. She whined, you cooed, and the both of you blushed.

“You look pretty like this, letting me do whatever I want,” you breathed out, rolling your hips against her torso and rubbing against your clit through your pants, making you arch your back. “Ellie,” you moan out breathily.

“Fuck… yeah?” she responded, her voice strained as your fingers lazily left her mouth, your hand finding its way to her throat.

“Need to fuck you,” you mumble, slowing your movements as you lean over to your drawer and stumble in it, eventually getting out a… strap?

Ellie’s brows furrowed and she looked at what you had, “What is that?” she said asked softly before sitting up and holding you in her lap. “You want me to wear that?” she asked with a raised brow as she looked between you and the toy.

You were horny. Needy. “Well, yes. But, I wanna… fuck myself on you. Ride you, is what I mean,” you mutter, kissing her cheek as she was close to you.

She grunted and nodded, “Okay, fuck, baby,” she breathed out as she gripped your hips and buried herself in your neck, kissing all over you.

“Take these off,” you murmured, tugging at her belt loops and slowly crawling off of her to sit on your haunches on your mattress, watching her with soft eyes.

Ellie moved frantically, almost making you laugh as she nearly tumbled as she yanked off her jeans. She stood up before you, looking down at you and tucking your hair behind your ear as you started to help her put the strap on. She finished the job, leaning down to kiss you softly, pushing you back onto the mattress so she could lay down beside you. You scooted out of the way, kissing her gently before taking off your top, causing Ellie’s breaths to go sharp.

She reached out, laying out her fingers on your tummy under your ribs before leaning forward to kiss your stomach, “Can I?” she muttered, her fingers toying with the hem of your bra and you nodded. You turned around and felt her hands ghost over your back until she lifted your bra, sitting up to kiss in between your shoulder blades.

Her movements were soft, attentive. Fire laid in her fingers’ wake as she raked down your skin, touching you and mesmerizing how you shivered under her hand. Her mouth kissed your spine but was felt across your entire being, your heart nearly breaking through your chest.

“So pretty,” she murmured, causing you to turn and look back at her, meeting her green eyes in a moment of intimacy that made you melt.

You turned around, cupping her head in your hands and kissing her softly, moving your body to straddle over her. Her hands went to your waist to help you settle, wanting you to be comfortable.

“Tell me if you’re uncomfortable, okay, Baby?” she muttered, breaking the kiss to bring one hand to your face, moving your hair out of the way to lock on your eyes.

You nod, “You too, pretty girl,” you spoke, leaning down to kiss her and she leaned up to meet you.

“Are you sure?” she mumbled, kissing your jaw and holding your waist with her arm.

You smiled, your heart gushing at how she wanted you to feel good and it turning you on even though it was innocent.

“Yes, I’m sure. Are you?” you mutter, leaning up to get a good look at your girl, watching her nod immediately as she licked her lips.

“Yeah, no, yeah. I’m… Fuck, yeah. I’m—yeah,” she rambled out, causing you to softly laugh as you leaned down to kiss her again.

“Okay, pretty girl, I’m gonna start, okay? Just relax for me, sweetheart,” you say, your words coaxing Ellie and causing her brows to knit slightly due to the petnames.

You then sat up, reaching between your legs to center yourself before looking at Ellie, almost in disbelief at the sight.

Ellie was in awe at the sight of you, nearly itching to thrust her hips up to get in the first move but she knew better, and she knew you’d know how to feel good on her. Her hands went to touch you, one on your waist, gentle fingers soothing you and the other hand went to grope your tit, your nipple pinched between her fingers.

You then sank down, just the tip causing you to gasp and Ellie’s breath mirrored yours, watching you swallow the toy slowly caused her to groan.

You watched her, how her brows knitted and how her eyes got low and dark for every inch that disappeared.

“Atta girl,” she breathed out, making you curse under your breath. “Feels good?” she asks, making you shake your head as you sank all the way down.

“Shut up,” you breathed out, settling yourself to accommodate to the stretch.

“What was that?” she asked, her hips bucking up slightly in a teasing manner.

You leaned forward, digging your nails into her torso to whimper, “Fuck, that’s not fair,” you mumble before moving your hips, making Ellie moan at the sight.

“There you go, Baby, fuck yourself just like that,” she whispered, making your mouth form an ‘o’ shape as she spoke to you. “My cock feel good, Love?” she drawled out, her hips meeting yours in an agonizingly slow pace.

Every movement was felt inside you and you struggled to respond, it being too much but you nodded and moaned out, “Yes, fuck, yeah,” it almost sounding like a cry.

“Yeah, Baby, it’s okay. No one ever fucked my girl this good, huh? There you go, Sweetheart, just like that,” she gritted out, her hands going to your ass to grope as she helped you go up and down, watching your face twist in pleasure. “Let it out, feel good for me.”

You nodded, going faster and letting moans leave your mouth. As you picked up your pace, the harness began to rub against Ellie’s clit and she moaned, making you turn red. Hearing her made you nearly faint and your eyes sparkled, wanting to hear more of it. Making it your goal, actually.

“You like watching me fuck myself on your cock, Baby?” you breathed out, watching Ellie throw her head back at your words. Her fingers dug into your skin and one hand going between your legs to rub your clit. The pressure caused your spine to arch and your hand went to her throat, squeezing.

“F— Fuck, fuck, Fuck,” she moaned out, her brain melting as she watched you, it being too much for her. Her clit ached and she wanted more, her hips bucking faster out of her control.

Your eyes rolled back and Ellie grunted, going faster on your clit as seeing you turned on made her ten times hornier.

“Fucking me so nice, Ells,” you whined, it feeling good as you both moved to make the other feel good. “Can… can you cum with me?” you breathed out, struggling to form words.

She scoffed, biting down on her lip, “Tryin’, Sweet girl,” she grunted, “Tryin’ to not cum before you,” she admitted, looking up at you as you moaned from hearing her words.

“‘M close,” you cried out, her fingers circling you clit and her words dragging you close, almost too close to ecstasy.

“Cmon, Baby, give it to me. Cum on my cock. Please? Please, Baby, I want it so bad please give it to me,” she began to whine, causing your jaw to drop at her change in tone and change in aspect.

Her begging you to cum? Fuck.

“Ellie,” you grunted, your hips’ movements going sloppy but she didn’t let up; she made up for what you lacked and she fucked up into you, wanting to make you cum so badly.

“Please, please, give it to me. Just for me, I’ve been so good for you, Love, just cum for me? Please?” she whimpered, the pleasure reaching her too and you leaned down to her without thinking, kissing her messily as the hand around her throat squeezed again, making her moan roughly into your mouth.

“Fuck!” you cried out, “Right there, fuck, Ellie, christ!” and your thighs closed around her waist, signaling Ellie that you were cumming.

She let herself go too, allowing herself to cum at the same time as you and the both of you cried out a harmony of whines and moans. She caught your lips in a kiss and swallowed your sounds, her hips staggering as you began to whimper from overstimulation.

You pinned her wrists, digging yourself into her to stop her movements so you could slowly ride it out for the both of you.

She shook her head, her clit sore and she begged you to stop under her breath and you obliged, slowing to a stop as you buried yourself in her neck, kissing her skin. You throbbed against the toy inside you and you kissed under her jaw.

“You… So good,” you whispered, making her smile and nod, bringing your hand to interlock your fingers as she kissed your wrist.

“You were good too, Baby. Did you feel good?” she asked softly, gently brushing your hair out of your face as she smiled at your fucked out state.

You hum, “Mhm,” as you rise and gasp at the loss of the feeling of her inside you.

You help her take off the harness, putting it on your dresser before going back to her. You brought your blanket over the both of you and you lay your head beside her. You both watched each other, her hand rising to your face, her fingers gently tracing the characteristics of your face, trying to memorize every dip and edge of you.

“You’re so beautiful,” she whispered.

You turned your hand to kiss her palm and you scooted closer, wrapping your arm around her stomach before kissing her mouth, the act being soft and loving.

“Stay with me,” you whispered, looking at her with eyes she could drown in endlessly, never caring how many times she died for it would be worth it.

She nodded, leaning in to kiss you before murmuring, “Always.”

[spideyjimin]

Adieu mon amour | jjk

⤷ adieu mon amour, french for goodbye my love

—  pairing: jungkook x female reader 

—  genre: angst 

—  summary: jungkook released two days ago a song about saying goodbye to a loved one.

—  words: 894

—  warnings: crying, mention of dead, heartbreak, and grief

—  author’s note: sooo this extremely sad drabble was written a while ago, but i never felt confident to post it. but a french artist released a song called “adieu mon amour”, and somehow, i felt like i could post this. i lost two dear people not a long time ago and writing this helped me putting into words my grief. this is not perfect and might contain mistakes, but i don’t want this to be perfect because pain isn’t.

MASTERLIST

The crowd fills the concert hall with the soft glow of their phone lights. Jungkook sits at the piano, his fingers resting on the keys as he performs the song he just released. It’s a heartbreaking ballad. A ballad that tells the story of two people that never got their happy ending. A ballad that tells his story with you.

A week ago, he found out that you passed away. The pain he felt that moment was something he never felt before. It’s the kind of pain that eats you alive. His heart aches so much and sometimes he feels like he’d be able to rip it out from his chest. This pain is simply overwhelming.

Three days ago, he assisted to your funeral with an aching heart, shaky legs, swollen eyes, and tears streaming down his face. He never imagined saying goodbye to his first love. He never imagined you’d no longer be a part of his life at 27. He never imagined a life without you.

His sweet voice sings the first notes of the song, his mind brought back to the many memories he cherishes. He closes his eyes and let your smile irritate his world one more time. A smile he’ll never see again. Without realizing it, tears run down his face, but he doesn’t hold them back.

After your funeral, he received a letter. A letter you wrote right before dying. A letter he never imagined receiving. It’s a love letter you wrote months ago, one where you told him just how much you love him. In the entire page, you kept telling him how lucky you felt to have him by your side all these years. And you also kept mentioning how proud you were of him.

He never leaves without the letter. He carries it with him everywhere. It’s all he has left of you. Your final words, the love you left behind, something to hold onto in a world without you. It’s a symbolic way to carry you with him as you are no longer here. The mere thought that you won’t be home when he finishes his show breaks his heart in ways he can even express.

His voice breaks. Then he hears you. ‘I love you.’ The words cut through him. His heart bleeds, and he doesn’t know if he can finish the song. His manager told him earlier that he didn’t need to sing the song if it was too hard for him, but Jungkook wanted it. Jungkook wanted to do it for you. For the only woman he ever loved.

Even though there’s a knot in his throat, he keeps singing. He wants to finish the song for you. For the love of his life. For the only person that ever made his heart truly beat. It seems like it’s the only thing he can do right now. For you, he can find the strength to finish this song.

He never imagined himself writing and singing this type of song. He never imagined writing a song about losing someone, and that’s the most heartbreaking thing. But music is the one of the few things that keeps him going. If he stops for a second, he just falls apart. He could have taken a break, put this world tour on hold, but for his own sanity, he can’t. And he knows that the second the show ends, he’ll just cry his heart out.

‘How is he supposed to live without you?’ is the question that constantly echoes in his mind. Time seems to move so slow without you by his side, and he doesn’t know if he can bear all of this any longer. There’s only been a week, and he still has a lifetime to live.

But there’s the little Arya. Your daughter. She’s the reason why Jungkook keeps going. She’s the reason why he bears this pain. She’s only four and doesn’t deserve to lose her mother. She doesn’t deserve any of this, just like Jungkook.

Jungkook opens his eyes and finally looks at the crowd. The view is breathtaking. This is so beautiful. On top of it, he’s surprised to notice that some fans already know the lyrics to the song he released two days ago.

The other heartbreaking thing is the fact that nobody knows what and who this song refers to. Nobody knows it’s about losing a loved one. Nobody will ever know Jungkook just lost you and how much he loved you. People don’t even know about Arya because he always protected you and will forever do it.

“I hear your laughter everywhere,” he sings. “In my souvenirs of you.”

From wherever you are, he hopes you can hear his words and see this crowd, his fans. If you were still here, you would most probably shed a tear. Whenever there was a sad song, the beauty of the moment would made you cry. It was something he loved about you.

The last harmonies of the song echo in the room. Jungkook is already sad to finish this song. He doesn’t want it. He wants this song to last forever, but he knows he can’t. He engraves in his soul this painfully beautiful moment, and he knows he’ll hold it dearly in his heart.

And he finally says the last words of the song.

“Goodbye my love.”

[ichore]

thinking about you, a young mother in an unhappy marriage, is oliver aiku's dream girl.

MDNI - tw: cheating | wc. 640

He knew he shouldn’t have done this. Shouldn’t have let his eyes linger too long when he saw you at the field during your kid's football practice, the way your fingers twitched like you wanted to rub the redness away from your eyes but knew it would only make it worse. Shouldn’t have noticed how your wet lashes framed the kind of sadness that doesn’t just pass - it settles, gnawing a hole into your heart. Shouldn’t have fixated on the way you swallowed it all down, lifted your chin, and forced a smile so soft, so careful, that it felt like watching something break in slow motion.

And yet, here he was. Thinking about you at dinner, swirling cheap, lukewarm beer in the bottle while his teammates talked about nothing. Thinking about you in the shower, forehead pressed against the tile, warm water hitting the back of his neck as he tried, and failed, not to picture the way the gold of your wedding ring caught the sunlight, a cruel little reminder that you belonged to someone else. Thinking about you when he lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, knowing full well that this wasn’t just a passing curiosity.

It was something else.

Something that curled around his ribs and squeezed whenever he imagined what your husband must be like - how he must have let you slip so far into misery that a stranger could see it in just one glance.

He turned onto his side, pressing his fist against his mouth like that might somehow stop the thought from forming fully. But it did anyway.

I bet I could make her happy, he thought.

And he did, for a time.

Meanwhile your husband continued to work overtime and go to places where you weren't even considered to be invited, Oliver charmed you into his arms. The brush of his stubble against the crook of your neck, the pillow softness of his lips against your collarbones, his calloused palms smoothing across the curve of your hips - he tasted so sweet, so forbidden. Even as your legs were wrapped around his waist, he knew you'd have never left your husband and you knew better than to catch feelings for your lover - and in a strange way, it thrilled him and made him adore you even more. The odor of sex and musk still lingered heavily in your bedroom while you were washing the dishes, your gaze peering out the kitchen window onto the garden where Oliver was teaching a new trick to your kid.

After the affair began, you smiled more and your child was also happy to have a man, an idol to look up to. You were glowing, which left a bad taste in your husband's mouth. A slow, creeping rot of realization - maybe you would’ve been better off without him. Maybe someone else had already figured that out.

And when Oliver asked why, why your marriage was suddenly thriving, why you were so insistent on keeping him at arm’s length, you gave him a pretty little answer, all wrapped up with a bow: Sometimes it takes someone else wanting what you have to see its true value.

Bullshit.

He knew it. You knew it.

But he only smiled, wished you well.

Because he knew the truth, knew the cycle. Knew it was only a matter of time before your husband slipped back into old patterns, before the glow wore off, before you found yourself aching for something warm, something real, something that made you feel wanted.

And when that happened, Oliver Aiku would be there. Again and again. Because no matter how many times you pushed him away, no matter how many times you tried to convince yourself you didn’t need him—he’d always come back.

Because he was yours.

But you were never his.

And that’s exactly why he loved you.

[lemotmo]

Plenty of room folks, let's go!

Q. Hello! This is my first ask to you, I have followed this blog for a long time, but I was here for the Sherlock of it all, and just never unfollowed as it slowly became a full-on 911/Buddie blog. Anyway I do watch 911 but as more of a casual viewer. I enjoy the show, but I've always been more passive with my viewing. Long time Peter fan, I love him! Sorry, the Buddie stuff always felt like bantering besties, I really hope that's not an insult on a Buddie blog?!? to me until the last 2 episodes. It was a noticeable shift in those episodes, especially from Buck in that final scene. That was romantic and even my husband yelled "holy shit Buckley's in love Diaz". It was pretty blatant from Buck but the Eddie stuff was more interesting because the close up on his face strongly implied that he was also having a very hard time with this and that he's definitely struggling with his emotions as well. I never thought of them as a couple but now that I have I kind of really need see it, haha. How long has this been going on?? Have I missed a lot of stuff between them? Because I can't believe I never noticed it until now! Love the blog btw!

A. Hello, anon! This ask made my day, thank you. There is something so genuinely endearing about this ask and I'm so happy you reached out! First of all I cannot even remember when I last made a Sherlock post so you have been here a while, lol. And no worries, calling them bantering besties is not at all an insult. They are best friends and they do banter so you didn't say anything wrong. They're also best friends who are about to become lovers though, and you picked up on things exactly when you were supposed to so don't worry about missing anything. You're the exact type of viewer these last 2 episodes were written for. As for how long it's been going on well that answer will vary depending on what Buddie fan you ask. They've been 'shipped' together since season 2 and we can all give you a very long list of things that have 'happened' between them that did not feel or look strictly platonic. But you, and your husband, noticed it exactly as you were supposed to. Buddie shippers are already there. We're already waiting, we've been waiting, lol. They didn't need to explicitly show us the shift, but they did need to show the GA, viewers like you and your husband, the shift so that's what these last two episodes, especially episode 10, were written as blatantly as they were.

Your husband is correct, Buckley is in love with Diaz. Buck just isn't aware of that himself yet, but that realization is coming for Buck really soon. Well done on picking up the Eddie stuff, although it was played perfectly by Ryan, there are some people who, incorrectly and ignorantly, believe he didn't portray his part strongly enough. If the GA picked up on Eddie then clearly Ryan did what he was supposed to do and he did it well. Eddie's behind Buck just a bit in terms of realizations. We don't yet know Eddie's sexuality situation, something we will likely get a clearer picture of in the coming episodes. The GA needs the blanks filled in on Eddie and it sounds like that information is coming sooner rather than later. Long story short, lol, you noticed things exactly as you were supposed to, anon. The show needed viewers like you, and your husband, to notice the difference between the two in order for their relationship to not feel 'out of nowhere' to the general audience. You don't have to go back and rewatch their scenes, BUT if you do rewatch things, with your new found perspective, I would love for you to drop me your thoughts on those scenes now! Welcome to the ride, glad to have you. Enjoy the things to come. 🩷

Thank you Nonny!

AAAAH! I love this so much. I've seen so many people of the GA 'waking up' to the Buddie epicness over the course of the two last episodes. It's wonderful.

I'm so looking forward to seeing more of these people jumping out of the woodwork, wondering how long this buddie thing has been going on.

What a great time to be in this fandom. So grateful right now!

🤗🤗🤗

Heads up! For anyone who is giving me the shifty eyes for reposting Ali's updates instead of reblogging. Read this.

Remember, no hate in comments, reblogs or inboxes. Let's keep it civil and respectful. Thank you.

If you are interested in more of Ali’s posts, you can find all of her posts so far under the tag: anonymous blog I love.

[dissolvedprincess]

Birthday Girl

✷ cw : 18+, nsfw, female reader, vaginal penetration, oral sex, unsafe sex, threesome, exhibitionism, voyeurism, porn with a bit of plot ✷

(Not proofread)

���︶꒷꒥꒷‧₊˚꒷︶꒷꒥꒷‧₊˚ ꒷︶꒷꒥꒷‧₊˚꒷︶꒷꒥꒷‧₊˚ ꒷︶꒷꒥꒷꒷︶꒷

It’s finally here! My longest and nastiest fic yet! I know i promised to only write about Josh in this blog, but i cannot resist adding Chris into the mix with this one. I only have my ovulation phase to thank for this idea and i really poured my w(hole) into this, so i sincerely hope you enjoy your read. Have fun!

-Z

꒷︶꒷꒥꒷‧₊˚꒷︶꒷꒥꒷‧₊˚ ꒷︶꒷꒥꒷‧₊˚꒷︶꒷꒥꒷‧₊˚ ꒷︶꒷꒥꒷꒷︶꒷

“Make a wish!” you heard Ashley say.

After a few seconds pass, you blew the pink candles in front of you. You wished for a number of things that mostly involved Josh, along with a secret that you mentioned to him in passing; as a joke.

“Happy birthday baby.” Josh spoke as he pulled you close and kissed your cheek. “Happy birthday!” the rest of your friends said in unison, while Mike and Matt cheered.

“I love you.” you said with a peck on his lips. You then diverted your attention to the rest of the group, “And to you guys, thank you for being here. Can’t even explain how happy i am right now.” Your cheeks hurt with how big you’re smilling.

Your stare lingers a bit too long on Chris, but you quickly catch yourself. Unbeknownst to you, Josh was following your every move; smirking as he caught you in the act.

“We all love you, so much” Sam said, she quickly came to your side and pulled you into a hug; causing your heart to lurch in your throat.

“I love you guys too.” you said into her shoulder, voice a bit shaky and muffled. The twins also came over to hug you in between them.

It felt nice to have the group together again after being apart for a decent amount of time. Josh was the one who suggested a small birthday party at the lodge and the proposition took you a bit off guard. Only because of the simple fact that ever since you got together, it has always been just the two of you.

“Oh? I thought you’d prefer it if it was just the two of us, like every birthday before this.” you teased with a light push to his arm.

He shook his head, smilling. “Let’s just say i got a surprise for you, a special kind of surprise.”

“Hmm i wonder what it’ll be?” you hummed, amused and curious.

“You’ll love it, i promise.” he whispered with a glint in his eyes and a kiss to your lips.

That was a week ago, you could only wonder what kind of elaborate surprise he’s set up for you.

“Alright bitches, let’s fucking party.” Emily announced while quickly dragging Matt away with her.

“I call dibs on music!” Jessica said as she swiftly made her way to the living room speakers.

Everyone then dispersed into smaller groups. But you were already content with being by Josh’s side while having his arm wrapped around your shoulder.

After tapping away on her phone, Jessica suddenly approached you and grabbed your hand, “Come on babe! Get up and dance with us!”

“No no no Jess i’m good, i swear!” you replied with a laugh.

Ashley came over to grab your other hand and pulled you up in tandem with Jessica. “Come on don’t be such a grandma!” You suddenly felt a light touch on your waist, “Go on baby.” Josh’s voice cut through the chaos. You looked back at him with a blush. But you let yourself be pulled away from the comfort of his touch.

You moved in ways that felt natural to you, the beat of the music thrumming through your veins. Unconcerned about the fact that the short white sundress you are wearing, occasionally rode up your thighs.

You laughed at the sight of Matt and Mike being tugged by their girlfriends and started to dance as well, horribly. Warmth spread through your chest the moment you decide to reach your hands towards Josh, “Come onnn Joshy boy.” you teased while wiggling your shoulders playfully.

He shook his head with a smile and let himself be dragged to dance “You’re so fucking beautiful.” Josh being Josh, he’s already starting to grope you in the middle of the make shift dance floor.

“Ah ah ah, keep your hands to yourself.” You tugged the hair at the base of his neck.

“How can i when you look this good?” he shot back with a squeeze to your ass.

You turned and settled on having his chest to your back, eyes closed and hips still moving to the beat of the music. You knew you were stepping into dangerous teritory when you started to feel his lips on your neck. But it felt too good to resist, even when his hand started to creep under your dress, thumb pushing its way between your panties and your hip.

“Get a room!” you heard Mike yell, the joke pulled a laugh from the group. You open your eyes, prepared to shoot back a snarky remark when a shiver ran through your spine.

How long has he been watching you?

Chris sat on the couch with his arm around the back of it, casually nursing a bottle of beer. He swiftly looked away the moment your eyes met his glazed ones and you didn’t miss the way his cheeks turned pink, pretty, in the glow of the fireplace.

“Fuck.” you let out quietly. Mind already scrambling with inappropriate thoughts.

You quickly turned your body in Josh’s hold, “Babe i’m actually soooo thirsty right now. Come get a drink with me?” The abrupt change in your demeanor pulled Josh from his erotic daze, “Oh. Sure(?)” he furrowed his brows at you, a bit confused.

You took his hand and walked towards the kitchen, “Come on then.”

—

Naturally, the party winded down and everyone parted with drunken goodbyes. Used cups and bottles strewn around the house to be tomorrow’s problem.

Josh still had his arm around you while the both you stumbled towards his room, a few giggles escape you as he whispered dirty things into your ear. As Josh fumbled with the door, you look back and waved to Chris, his room only a couple doors over.

“Niiiight Chriiiiisss.” You blew him a kiss, with an over exaggerated Muah.

Before you could voice anything else to him, Josh pulled you into his room and proceeded to kiss you deeply once the door closed, not bothering to lock it. His hands grab your ass from under your dress in this newfound freedom.

“Mmhph fuck.” he parted from you with a moan. You whined and licked his lips, begging to be let in. He chuckled and lightly pushed your chest, “Slow down baby, let me talk.”

You protested and started to nibble on his neck, “Don’t wanna hear it, i wanna fuck.now.”

He held back a moan “Aren’t you ah- curious about the surprise?”

You paused and stared back at him, back leaning against the door. Frankly, the surprise had completely slipped off your mind. Lost in the sea of erotic distractions, consisting of Josh, Josh, Josh and…..someone else. A mere fantasy.

You roll your eyes, “Then spill babe.”

“Trust me on this yeah? I want you to stand in the middle of the room and cover your eyes with your hands. No peeking.”

Your eyes are fixed on him, frustration in your stare. But you relent, scoffing like a small child that’s been told to take a time out on the corner.

“Fine. This better be worth it, or else this is gonna be the worst birthday ever.” The sooner you entertain his ideas, the sooner you get to fuck.

“Oh it’s gonna be worth it alright.” he sounded cocky. Confident in whatever he has under his sleeves.

A few moments pass when you heard footsteps behind you. No not one, but two pairs of footsteps?

“This better not be a prank Josh.” you warned. Your heart rate started to pick up, in excitement or fear? You can’t really tell.

“Um, Josh? Where are you?” you asked. The simple question garnered no response, but you feel a presence behind you.

Josh then spoke up from somewhere in the room, “Now. I want you to turn around and open your eyes.” he paused. “And i want you to promise me, don’t.scream.” he added for dramatic effect.

You turned and pulled your hands down, eyes squinting to adjust itself. A blurry, image of a person appeared, slowly becoming clearer and clearer; and your eyes went wide at the sight of him.

“What are you doing here?!” you whisper-shout.

“Ta daaa.” Chris said pathetically. You see him do a silly, ‘reveal’ gesture with his hands.

Once again, you feel Josh’s hands snake around your waist, settling on wrapping them around your stomach. He then nuzzled his face to your neck, cheekily voicing out, “Surprise…”

“What. are you doing here Chris? Shouldn’t you be in your room?” you felt flustered. Being in the same room as him when all you’ve been thinking about was fucking him and Josh, at the same time; was not a pleasant experience. How should one even feel in a situation like this?

Chris awkwardly laughed and rubbed the back of his head. “Yeah…i don’t..really know how to say this.”

“Well, i took the liberty of telling him about what you wanted.” Josh chimed in.

“You what?!”

“Josh told me, yeah. But it’s okay! He’s y’know, not forcing me to be here. I came here voluntarily and honestly…i’m pretty freaking flattered” anxiety seeped into his voice. You could tell that the confession was difficult to admit, he struggled to look you in the eyes after that.

“So let me get this straight. You agreed…to do a threesome with the both of us??”

Josh held back a laugh, trying to hold it together.

“Um…yes?” Chris replied weakly. His face wincing in fear of you being upset.

All you could do was stare in shock and disbelief. What was more shocking, is the fact that you are absolutely soaking through your panties right now.

“Lighten up babe, I know you want this more than anything. Go on, start by telling Chris what to do.” Josh said, his breath tickled your ear. “We’re all yours to command for the night, be fucking selfish.” he added with a lick to your ear.

“Fuck.” you moaned, when Josh started to grope your breasts, squeezing and kneading them in front of Chris who was already salivating at the sight.

Josh then tilted your head with a gentle hand on your jaw to kiss you from behind, wet, smacking noises then started to fill the room. Your fire, snuffed out in an instant.

“Wh-what should i do?” Chris asks either of you.

Josh paused and smirked at him,”Free reign cochise. Just start touching her, she’d like anything as long as you have your hands on ‘er.” He then proceded to kiss you again, deep and open mouthed.

You let out a small moan when you felt one of Chris’ hands grope your breast. It was a good decision to go braless tonight, causing each squeeze and pinch to feel ten times better. His thumb draw circles on your nipple “Is this okay?”

“Yes.” You feel yourself pulse in your panties, dizzy with want.

“Start undressing me.” you command the both of them.

Josh pulled your sundress up while Chris went to his knees and slowly pulled down your sticky, cum soaked panties. A string of cum snapped when he fully pulled it down. The sight of it further aroused him, “Oh man…you’re so wet, we didn’t even touch you that much yet. Your heart further raced at the sight of his hard on, he looks big.

“Little slut’s the happiest when she’s the wettest.” Josh joked prudely and you smack him on the arm.

“Rude.” you scoffed.

When you look down, is the moment where everything actually starts to feel real. Chris looked up at you and licked his lips. No longer hesitant to openly stare at you, but still hesitant to compliment you, “Pretty girl.” he said, voice small.

“Chris…” you gently thread your fingers through his hair and start to direct his face towards your wet center. Josh looked down at him as well and understood immediately, “Y’know what to do man.”

“Josh, keep her steady, yeah?” It felt strange to hear him sound so calm.

“I got her, go to town.”

It feels so fucking filthy to be stuck between these two. The fact that you are the only one that is fully unclothed, did something to you. You felt like such a slut, free to ask them to do the dirtiest things to you.

Chris gently pulled your leg up and rested it on his shoulder, his face perfectly lined up with your pussy at this angle. You let out a sharp inhale as he teased his tongue inside you, causing you to bite your lip in anticipation.

“Mmm…shit.” you whined as he latched his mouth to your pussy. He groans at the taste of you; your wetness and arousal. Full on eating, jaw working to please you.

“Oh…Chris..”

You shamelessly start to grind your pussy against his face. Eyes rolling back the moment his nose bumped your clit. He looked so hyper focused and greedy, like he was trying to solve a really difficult problem.

“Fuck man, you’re doing so good. She’s a mess.”Josh praised as he stared at your blissful face.

“Joshy….kiss me.” you whined and stuck out your tongue.

He looked at you with a shit eating grin, “Slut.” You could only moan in delight when he sucked your tongue into his mouth again. The combination of his open mouthed kisses and Chris’ sloppy ones on your pussy, made you feel lightheaded.

Chris started to eat you out faster, he could tell that you were getting close. It’s unbelieveable how it didn’t seem like was even breathing properly, face so deeply burried against your core.

”Oh god, Chris! Feels so fucking good.” you cried. He then moaned into your pussy at your approval, only to intensify the zap of electricity that you felt in the pit of you stomach.

“Ride his face. Come on, i got you. Make yourself cum.” Josh sneakily whispered into your ear. You could feel how hard he is, grinding against your ass in search of a momentary release. This was turning him on so much.

Both of your hands went to the back of his head and grinded harder, your hips swerving and losing its rythym. “Ohhhh….shit..please Chris….” He can feel his dick pulsing, begging for friction at the sound of your pleas.

Your movements turn wilder when you felt yourself cumming, “Oh fuck ohhh fuck..im cumming im cumming im cuh-“ You reach your peak with a shaky gasp. Eyes downcast to meet his icy blue ones, staring so intently. His mouth working to lick and suck every drop of cum.

You don’t let him go until you’re completely spent. Selfish.

He kneaded the outside of your thigh as he placed kisses on your cunt, then to the inside of your thigh, sweet and affectionate. In response to him, you stroke the back of his ear and pulled him up for a kiss; tasting your own cum. “Such a good boy.” you whispered into his mouth.

A rare moment of calm, washed over the three of you as you and Chris steadied your breathing. Josh kissed you on the cheek and asked, “You ready to continue?”

You look at Chris’ disheveled and horny state and decided. “Sit on the chair in the corner over there Chris.” Puppy eyed and desperate, he obeyed. “Oh and take your clothes off please.”

You then turned to Josh and start to undress him. His hand comes up to stroke your cheek, flattered at the action. He hummed, curious, “What are you up to?”

You’re smilling, so beautiful he thought and you reach for his designer belt. “Trust me on this yeah?” you echoed his previous statement.

He seems to find it funny and chuckled “Hah. Okay.”

With his last piece of clothing off, you sat on the edge of the bed and patted the spot next to you. “Get on and lie on your back please.” He laid down with his head against the foot of the bed. You are quick to straddle him, providing Chris with a clear view of your front.

The feeling of desperation bleeds through his action as he pulled your hips to grind your bare pussy against his dick. A small gasp leave your lips as the head nudged your clit.

“Shit..you’re driving me crazy.” he voiced. Hands sliding up your body to paw at your breasts. They feel so pleasantly warm and rough, and you moan at the feeling.

“Ah fuck.” Your ears perk up at the sound of Chris pleasuring himself. It took everything in you not to act too excited at the sight of his hard length.

“Chris.” you call out.

“Huh?”

“You can watch, you can touch yourself, but you can’t cum. Got it? Not until i tell you to.” You heard Josh let out a small laugh. “Freaky thing.” Your eyebrows shot up at the nickname and smacked him on the chest, “Shut up.”

Chris slowed the movements of his hand, “Ye-yeah. I got it.”

“Good boy.”

Without warning, you wrapped a hand around Josh’s dick, collecting the slick at the tip, coating his length, causing Josh to groan in bliss. Chris adjusted his glasses the moment you sink down, not wanting to miss the sight of you swallowing his best friend’s dick whole.

Despite having done this many times before, you still struggle with the stretch. Everytime you get on top, it always feels like he’s deep in your guts. You shut your eyes and took deep breaths, hips flushed with his. But it gets easier as your juices further coats his cock.

You start slow, grinding your hips back and forth with your hands on his stomach for leverage. His abs are taunt and hard underneath your palms. It’s romantic, how focused you are on each other, Chris presence temporarily forgotten.

“So fucking tight.” Hands at your hips, he began to pump slowly. You whimper weakly at the feeling, too slow.

“Harder Josh, fuck me harder.” you begged. Your fingers tweak at your nipples to further entice the two. He complied and increased his pace.

“Ohhh shit…” you hear Chris moan. You sneak a glance at him and your cunt clenched around Josh at the sight of Chris’ soaked dick, he’s a fucking mess too.

“You like this shit so bad huh?” Josh teased. “I can feel you clenching on me.”

“Fuck i- ohh right there, fuck i- i do baby i do.” you admitted, unable to peel your eyes away from Chris. The heat of your gaze further egging him on, his hand moves faster, only to slow again.

“Then ride my dick properly. Show him how bad you want him to fuck you.” You found it hot how low and gruff he sounded.

You rise up on your knees, letting his cock slide almost entirely out of you. Only to slam your hips back down. His veins dragging against your walls as his tip bumped the fleshy spot inside you that made your eyes roll. You whine out his name as he called you sweetly, “Atta girl.”

You set a steady pace, as fast as you could. But not fast enough to his liking, it seems. You cry out as Josh held your hips in place to jack up into you, expertly driving against the spot that made your toes curl. Impatient to make you cum. His eyes are shut tight, you could tell he’s enjoying this to the fullest.

He’s fucking you mercilessly now, balls slapping against you. “Perfect.fucking.cunt baby.” You smile at the praise. With newfound determination, you fuck yourself back on him. The sound of wet skin on skin is overwhelming.

Chris bore his eyes to where the both of you are connected, sloopy and wet. He’s losing his mind too as he holds another orgasm, groaning at the feeling. His large hand squeeze tight to prevent himself from cumming, you could see how much pre cum is beading at the tip.

“Josh i think i’m gonna- cum.” Your free hand rub your clit at a rapid pace. The incoming orgasm causing your stomach to flip. The thought of Chris ramming his dick into you, drove you to the edge.

“Then do it, soak my cock.”

Your orgasm hit you hard, shaking as relief floods through your system, while crying out his name, delirious. You clench around him as he pumped his hips, once, twice. His groans and moans of pleasure like music to your ears as he shot his cum inside you. His hands still hold your hips still, eager to get it in as deep as possible, marking you first as his.

You feel ringing in your ears, struggling to come back to earth as you just had the hardest orgasm of your life. You can feel your heart throb as Josh leaned up and nuzzled his face to your neck. You wrap your arms around his neck and held him for a moment, breaths steadying and syncing.

Chris’ shaky voice pulled you from your daze, “Fuck can i ah- can i cum now?”

Your eyes looked into his and you beckoned him to come closer.

Like a dog on a leash, he came over and stood at the edge of the bed. He blushed sweetly from his cheeks to his chest, still too shy to demand anything from you. Prefering to be told what to do instead while his hand wraps around his dick, still constricting.

You whispered something to Josh and exchanged quiet ‘i love you’s. He kissed your cheek again and helped you off his dick. You both let out a whine when he popped out, your cheeks warm at the feeling of his cum leaking out.

He laid you down gently with a soft pillow under your head and lower back as your hips hang off the foot of the bed, dangerously close to Chris’ arrousal.

Josh stood up and clapped Chris on the shoulder as he passed him to walk to the bathroom, “You better treat her good, cochise.”

“Yeah, i promise man.” tone reassuring. He then smiled at Chris, like it was just a casual exhange between friends.

Your heart raced as he finally looked at you, drinking you in. A shiver went through your whole body as he spread your legs further, with gentle hands on the back of your thighs; effectively folding you in half. You blush as he looked down at your pussy, pausing for a moment. Only to drip his spit on it, further and further soaking your cunt.

You moaned at the feeling of his spit on your heated skin, it felt strangely intimate.

Before you can react further, he grazed his tip on your entrance and plunges in. He’s.so.big. It was embarassing to admit that he’s bigger than Josh, not by much, but still, bigger. Josh’s cum inside you easing Chris to bottom out fully, while some of it leaks out.

“Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck. You feel so good.” he cried out. It’s easy to imagine the mess in his head right now. How his head goes into overdrive at the feeling you around his dick.

You look down to see him thrust in and out of you, dick already shiny with cum.

“You’re so fucking big, holy shit i-“ Your words made him fully pull out of you, only to plunge roughly inside of you again. A moan escapes you as you clutch him tighter. He held onto your waist to keep you in place, pace brutal. You bounce against the bed as he went on. Screaming as his tip grazed your cervix.

Your eyes start to water as he fucked you at a different angle, now consistently pushing against your g-spot. You close your eyes at the sensation and openly cried. It felt so fucking good.

“Shit, are you okay?” His voice laced with genuine concern. The force of his thrusts, unfortunately slows down.

Before your thoughts could even form, Josh answered for you instead. “She’s never been better man, keep going.”

You open your eyes as you felt his fingers stroke your head, tucking your hair out of the way. He’s kneeling at the edge of the bed, looking at you so sweetly.

“Josh….this feels so good.” you whispered.

“I know baby, you deserve it.” he smiled.

You felt different, so loved, as he said it. Once again, it felt like it was just the two of you here.

You wrap your legs around Chris, tighter. Sucking him in, not letting him get far. Everything sounded so sloppy and disgustingly wet. It was all too much. Chris fucking into you combined with Josh’s intense stare on you.

Your back involuntarily arched as Chris pushed himself impossibly deeper and your toes curl at the sensation. He groaned as he felt you tighten around him, thrusts getting more desperate as he felt himself getting close.

“Fuck, i’m close.” he said, though it was left unanswered. An ugly feeling bloomed in his chest as you start to make out passionately with Josh. He starts to press kisses to your neck and chest, desperate for your attention.

When that still didn’t garner any responce, he licked and sucked one of your nipples into his mouth. Internally smiling as you finally separated from Josh to let out a sultry moan.

He unlatched with a pop and jackhammered his hips into you. Greedy with the desire to make you feel good. You felt close to cumming as well.

“Chris! Faster!” Nails scratching his arm. “I’m gonna cum!” you cried out.

“Me too, fuck- can i cum inside you?” he asked, dizzy with want. Uncaring about what Josh thought. Tonight is all about you, and what you wanted. He’s rutting into you now.

You eagerly nod and screamed, “Yes! Please! Cum inside me!”

He threw his head back as he came inside you, balls still roughly slapping against your pussy. Filling you up with cum and you came at the sensation of being full, his cum mixing with Josh’s. Tears dropped from your eyes as you blink them to focus. Mind still feeling numb. Sighing in relief when Josh left sweet kisses all over your face and settled beside you. Head resting on your shoulder.

Chris pulled out with a groan and dropped down on your empty side. After a pause, he took off his glasses and rolled to his side. You felt his hand on your stomach, drawing gentle circles with his thumb. “Are you okay?” he asked. His brows furrow and he looks…guilty.

You slowly turn your head and look him in the eyes. “Never been better.” you joked. And it pulled a laugh out of Josh, “Told ya man.” You giggled as his shoulders relaxed. “You did so good Chris. Thank you.” He smiled shyly as you pulled his hand from your stomach and kissed it.

Josh cleared his throat, “Can you go ahead and warm up the shower for us, man? Really need some time alone with my girl right now.”

“Oh, yeah yeah of course you do. Sorry, i’ll go…do that right now. Yeah.” He reluctantly got out the bed and walked towards the bathroom, still in a daze.

Josh pulled you on top of him the moment Chris left the room. You sighed and relaxed on his chest for a moment, smiling at the sound of his beating heart. “Mmm…i love you. Thank you for this baby.” you said weakly.

He rubbed soothing circles on your shoulder. “I love you so much. Rest baby, i’ll help clean you up.”

You let your eyes drift close, surrounded by his warmth and the smell his cologne. You’ll dream of him tonight and only him, just like always.

꒷︶꒷꒥꒷‧₊˚꒷︶꒷꒥꒷‧₊˚ ꒷︶꒷꒥꒷‧₊˚꒷︶꒷꒥꒷‧₊˚ ꒷︶꒷꒥꒷꒷︶꒷

Love you all so bad, hope it wasn’t too much of a mess. Thank you for reading till the end, it means so much to me. Let me know what you think. ❤️❤️

[dismalflo]

how did it begin again?

Remus lupin x fem!reader who have their first date after their reconciliation ✩ 1.3k words

this is technically a part two to this story but can be read as a stand-alone.

cw: exes to lovers, fluff, reader is overwhelmed, Remus is a sweetheart

an: wrote this purely because I love a happy ending.

The past few weeks have been the warmest you’ve felt in a long time. You’ve got your friends back, an effervescent group of the loveliest people you’ve ever known, and the world no longer feels as lonely as it did just a month ago.

And, of course, there’s Remus. Slowly, both of you have been chipping away at the lingering frost that still clung to your relationship, even after agreeing to give things another shot. You’re at a point now where being together in a group feels completely natural again—where the two of you no longer feel like a delicate subject that everyone else has to tiptoe around.

It’s strange, getting to know someone all over again, especially someone you used to know like the back of your hand. But it also feels like coming home—like the valleys and pathways are familiar, even though they’ve shifted slightly in your time apart. He’s still the Remus you remember—kind, caring, fiercely loyal—but now there’s something new about him. Fresh mannerisms, unexpected interests that intrigue you in ways you didn’t expect. And as you notice these changes, a quiet thought lingers in your mind, a hope that he’s just as captivated by the new version of you as you are by him.

You’re brought out of your thoughts with a knock on the door. You’ve no doubt that it's Remus, punctual as ever for your date. The first since your reconciliation. You give yourself a once over in the mirror, to check everything is in its place, before giving a nod to your own reflection. 

The walk to the door of your small flat feels immeasurably long, and your nerves seem to peak just as your hand touches the door hand. A deep breath, and you pull the door open. 

There he is. Remus, standing there with one arm folded behind his back, dressed in a green shirt with the sleeves rolled up to reveal his forearms, paired with a simple pair of slacks. You can’t help but admire him. His smile widens when he sees you, eyes lighting up as if you're the only person in the world.

"Hello, gorgeous," he says, stepping forward and leaning down to place a soft, respectful kiss on your cheek. "You look stunning, dove."

You flush, a smile tugging at your lips as you respond, "Thank you, and you look very lovely yourself."

His arm shifts from behind his back, and with a subtle flourish, he presents a bouquet of flowers. You don’t even look at them right away, too absorbed in the warmth of his gaze. Instead, you simply meet his eyes, your face breaking into a wide smile full of affection as you take the flowers from him.

"Would you like to come in while I put these in water?" you ask, moving to avoid his gaze, already turning toward the kitchen, pulling a vase from under the sink.

Remus doesn’t answer right away. He simply follows you, leaning casually against the counter, a soft smile still dancing on his lips as he watches you. His eyes never leave you, and that smile never fades.

It’s then that you finally allow yourself to look at the flowers properly—not just a blur of color in your peripheral vision, but the delicate petals in full view. They stop you in your tracks. They’re your favorite. He remembered. After all this time.

A sudden, embarrassing pressure rises in your sinuses, a sting behind your eyes, and you feel his gaze searing into the side of your face.

“You remembered?” you ask, your voice barely above a whisper, trembling just a bit as you fight to keep the tears from spilling over.

“Of course I did,” he replies, his voice steady and simple, like it’s the most natural thing in the world. Like knowing you, learning about you, and holding onto those little details is the easiest and most treasured privilege he’s ever known.

A sob tears through you then, and you flush with shame. It’s not sadness that overwhelms you, but the enormity of Remus—the weight of him, of how much he means, of how much you’ve truly missed him, beyond all the hurt.

Remus looks visibly panicked now, moving toward you, his hand hovering in the air as if unsure whether to reach out to you. Unsure whether he’s allowed to touch you now, as the foundations of your relationship are being slowly rebuilt.

“Oh god, I’m sorry,” he rushes, his words tumbling out so fast it’s as though he can’t apologize quickly enough. “I never would’ve gotten them if I knew they’d make you cry.”

You shake your head, quickly wiping your face with the back of your hand, trying to steady your breath. "No, Remus, it’s not... I’m not upset, it’s just... it's just that you remembered. It’s—" You swallow hard, trying to find the words. “It's a lot, y’know.”

You step closer to him then, taking the initiative to wrap your arms around his waist, pulling him into a warm embrace. He follows suit immediately, arms wrapping around you. 

The softness of his touch grounds you, and the scent of him—something familiar, comforting, like the gentle blend of books and rain—soothes the overwhelming rush of emotions. You hold him tighter, allowing the tension in your body to melt into the safety of his presence. He lets you take the lead, his hands resting gently on your back, his thumb stroking soothing circles.

“Thank you, for the flowers, Rem.” you murmur.

“Anytime, lovely girl.” 

You pull back just slightly, looking up at him. For a moment, you both stand there, silent in the quiet of the kitchen, until Remus can’t stand it any longer.

“Please... can I kiss you?” His voice is thick with need, desperate, like a man starving, asking for the one thing he craves more than anything.

You swallow, the question hanging in the air between you, thick and heavy. It feels like both an invitation and a promise.

Your breath hitches as you meet his gaze, the warmth in his eyes both comforting and thrilling. You want this—want him. You don’t have to think twice about it.

“Yes,” you whisper, your voice barely above a breath.

And then his lips are on yours. It’s slow at first, tentative, as if he’s giving you the space to decide whether you really want this, whether you want him again. His hand rests on your cheek, thumb brushing over the skin there, like he’s trying to memorize the feel of you. The kiss deepens, though, slowly, as both of you realize the other isn’t pulling away, that this isn’t a mistake. It’s exactly what you both need.

The kiss is everything you’ve missed and more—familiar and new, soft yet demanding, as though he’s kissing away the distance between you, erasing the gaps of time that once felt so painful.

When he pulls back, just a fraction, his forehead rests against yours, his breathing a little uneven, a contented smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. His hand lingers on your cheek, brushing the stray hairs away.

"You okay?" he asks, his voice barely a whisper, as though he’s afraid to disturb the delicate moment between you.

You nod, unable to speak just yet, still caught in the softness of the kiss, the warmth of his presence. The world outside seems to fade into nothing, and for the first time in what feels like forever, you feel truly, completely at home.

“I’ve missed this,” you finally murmur, your hand resting against his chest, feeling the steady beat of his heart beneath your palm.

“Me too,” Remus replies, his voice thick with emotion. “More than you know.”

₊✩‧₊˚౨ৎ˚₊✩‧₊

let me know what you think of this! <3 i appreciate all feedback

[joansiesbeloved]

how did joan help jfk when baby patrick died? i heard somewhere she really was there for him. also love ur blog, it is very nice❤

Ooh, I love this question! And thank you for your kind words :) Here comes a verrrry long post. In short, Joan helped Jack immensely after baby Patrick's death. The story actually warms my heart so much. It really is a testament to how emotionally-capable she was and being in a family where everyone just seemed to be so emotionally closed-off and incapable with the exception of a few, (examples in question, Bobby & Eunice), it must have been so refreshing for him to have Joan there during it.

She played the role of a shoulder for Jack to lean on and I think in the moment it felt very comforting to be able to have Joan there for him and have someone not give him the usual "He's in a better place now." narrative and just be very genuine with him. It was a difficult time.

JFK dancing with Joan on her Wedding Day. Circa, November 29th, 1958.

Here is the very sweet anecdote that you were probably referring to or heard about. It's quite a long read, but it's just so incredibly heartwarming. And it shows some good insight into their overall dynamic and relationship. <3 Give it a read below:

After Patrick’s funeral, it was Joan who provided the most comfort to Jack during the time he secluded himself at home. “She was a rock through this for him,” said Joan Braden. “It was surprising to some. Joan was usually the one you needed to rally around in times of crisis. But for this one, she was there for Jack. I think she wanted to do it for Jackie, too. She felt terrible for what the two of them were going through. In so many ways, Joan was—is—probably the most sensitive person in the family. It’s easy to say someone would do anything for another person, but with Joan Kennedy, it was always the truth.”  Former Kennedy aide Dave Powers who stayed with Jack at Squaw Island recalled, “The first night [after the funeral], she just sat with him for a long, long time and just talked. There was none of the orthodoxy you might expect from Ethel. No talk about how Patrick was in heaven and happy, but rather just warm, human, simple talk.” Jack and Jackie’s Squaw Island home was sparsely and simply furnished with comfortable, upholstered chairs and thick, woven rugs. It was large and airy, and spotlessly clean. On the walls were watercolored seascapes that had been painted by Jackie. As Joan and Jack stood before one of the paintings, Powers heard Joan say, “There’s no explaining what happened. I’m not like Ethel. I don’t know that all things happen for a reason. I just know that things happen.” “That they do,” Jack said, his blue eyes tearing up.   “And when they happen,” Joan continued, “we just have to go on, somehow, and know that we have the strength to carry on. It’s in every one of us, Jack. That strength. It’s our birthright.” “Do you have that strength, Joansie?” Jack asked, using Ted’s nickname for her. “Can you get through this life God has given us?”   Rather than answer the question, Joan embraced the President. “I know one thing, Jack. You do,” she said as she held him. “Of all people, you do.” “The President listened and was deeply moved,” said Dave Powers. “She left at eleven that night and the President walked with her out to the driveway. ‘You know,’ he told me when he returned to the house, ‘she’s a great girl.’ She was there the next night and the next, and the President was grateful. She did a great deal for him.” It would seem, based on the remembrances of others close to the President, that Jack developed a new respect for his sister-in-law and for her unique brand of simple, common, and good sense. She wasn’t afraid to address difficult subjects, which was unusual in the emotionally closed-off Kennedy family and was behavior worthy of admiration, and she was even insightful in her clear-eyed assessment of emotional occurrences. After Patrick’s funeral, it was Joan who provided the most comfort to Jack during the time he secluded himself at home. “She was a rock through this for him,” said Joan Braden. “It was surprising to some. Joan was usually the one you needed to rally around in times of crisis. But for this one, she was there for Jack. I think she wanted to do it for Jackie, too. She felt terrible for what the two of them were going through. In so many ways, Joan was—is—probably the most sensitive person in the family. It’s easy to say someone would do anything for another person, but with Joan Kennedy, it was always the truth.”

The End.

So yes, Joan was very much there for JFK after baby Patrick's death and it really did make him realize what a great sister-in-law he had. It also makes me wonder what the future would have been like for the both of them had Jack not been assassinated just a few months later. I know he had a deep admiration and respect for her, I mean who else got to be nicknamed 'The Dish' by Jack Kennedy. And just how he would frequently compliment her for her campaigning and how wonderful she was on the stump for him, "We couldn't have won without you.", he wrote to her shortly after winning the election. There's so much more to this too, but I'll leave it at that.

Also, here is a link to Jackie, Ethel, Joan: The Women of Camelot Part One. If you fast-forward to the time-stamp 1:08:13, this brief scene from the film is modeled after what's said in the anecdote, so just thought I'd share if you're interested. I love how they really did capture the essence of the moment.

If I'm not mistaken, this was just after baby Patrick's death? So here's some sweet Jack & Jackie love to end this post off with. 💔

[petriwriting]

It's always been you - JJ Maybank X Reader

Prompt: Always telling each other everything, sharing secrets and dreams late into the night, but suddenly their secrets become about each other and their feelings

The marsh was quiet. The air was warm and moist, blowing a gentle breeze through your hair. The water was buzzing with life, and the marsh creatures were all going about their habitual routines. You sighed you JJ finished his joint. He sat next to you with his feet hanging off the dock, yours were crossed with your hands in your lap as you turned to JJ, your long time best friend.

"How's that girl doing- what was her name again?" you asked. "Maya? or Melanie- No Melody!" you corrected yourself. JJ chuckled, fiddling with the roach in his fingers after he had blunted the embers away, the smoke trail ceasing. "Mel," he corrected you. "And she turned out to be a huge kook, not really my style." he shrugged half-heartedly. You knew each other so well that he could tell when you were scared, uncomfortable, or tired just with a glance, and you returned the favor by looking out for him. You could tell when he was anxious or too angry.

"A kook? working at the seafood shack?" you stated, rather than questioned. He shrugged again. "Said her parents wouldn't give her allowance money anymore." He explained. "I can't imagine having an allowance," you said honestly. You were Pogues, money wasn't in excessive abundance for the two of you the way it was for some.

"It seemed like she just wanted to piss off her parents by being seen with my anyway," he said somewhat sadly. "I'm not exactly boyfriend material," he joked. "I don't know what you mean," you said

JJ bit his lip and nodded slightly. "I dunno. doesn't matter," he dismissed. You looked out into the dark, murky water that was illuminated by the moonlight, watching the side slowly wax and wane. "Can I ask you something?" you said, not wanting to sound foolish.

"Shoot." he said, gently swinging his feet. you began slowly, hesitantly. "I kind of like this guy," you admitted, thankful the evening masked the flush on your cheeks. "It's so dumb. like major cheesy..." JJ smirked and looked at you. "Yeah?" he nodded, watching attentively as you spoke. "Yeah, so I'm wondering, from your perspective, is it weird if I ask him out?" you asked.

"No, I mean, sometimes guys like that stuff." JJ said cocking his head slightly.

"Do you?" the words slipped out. "I mean would you like it if a girl asked you out first." you tried to clarify, to deflect suspicion.

"If it was the right girl, then yeah," he said, very matter of fact.

You nodded. "Who are ya tryin' to ask out?" he followed up. You shook your head in dismissal. "No one, it was just a thought. You don't know him. we've been friends since like- kindergarten or something." you said, JJ seemed unconvinced. "well he'd be a lucky son of a bitch. No one can say no to you," he said.

You smiled slightly. "you really think so?" you asked softly.

"I know it." JJ insisted. He smiled slightly to himself, and for a brief moment, you guys matched, locking eyes, though you weren't sure if he meant it platonically, or if he thought you'd make a good girlfriend. You pushed the disheartened feeling away.

The two of you were always incredibly honest with each other. He had come to you on his worst days, and in return, he had seen you in pretty rough shape over the years. You just wanted him to be happy, and you were scared that falling in love with him would ruin that. You had no idea how he felt.

"Aaannnnd," he said in a somewhat goofy, exaggerated tone in an attempt to diffuse the slight tension. "Since we're giving each other advice, I also kind of need help with somethin' like this." You nodded, ready to hear about whatever attractive surfer girl he was probably pining over. "Well, I'm glad you came to me instead of John B this time," you snickered.

"Yeah, so um." JJ reached his hand up, running his fingers through his golden hair.

"There's this girl. . ." He began, gazing out at the water as he spoke. She is just amazing. She's really cute, and funny and sweet. She really understands me, like, I don't feel alone around her." he said, clutching his chest for a short moment. Your heart sank. you weren't quite following.

"I'm scared she only sees me as a friend, and that really hurts," he said, his tone shifting. "But I really like this girl. it's not the same as the other girls on the island. I want to see her laugh, smile, and cry. Thing is though," he says. "I think she deserves so much better than me, or anything I could ever give her."

The words hung in the air; you wanted to choke out a sob and go listen to songs about unrequited love, but you stayed. " . . . I think you should tell her all of that. Be honest." you said finally after a thoughtful pause. JJ nodded, maybe its the lingering high or something in the air. Suddenly, it hits you. It was always you. you are the girl. He was talking about you.

there you were, dancing across the line that needed to be crossed to venture from friends to lovers. "Jay," you said softly, leaning closer to him. "Can I kiss you?" he asked. you were shocked but smiled and nodded. "Yeah," you said.

Your lips collided, and you melted into the embrace, a moment you'd been dreaming of for so long, his soft lips grazing yours while your fingers found themselves combing through his soft hair. You pulled away after what felt like an eternity.

You pulled away, and JJ's body language relaxed again. "So is this Kindergarten guy of yours going to give me any problems?" he said, poking fun at your confession, somewhat seriousness in his tone.

You laughed and smacked his arm. "JJ, I was talking about you," you exclaimed with a light hearted laugh. "Oh yeah, okay, good." he nodded. "Had to be sure," he said in a sly tone. For another hour or two, you sat there and talked about things, the same way you had before, this time a special loving connection blossoming from the pre-existing friendship. You found yourself sleepy, resting your head on his shoulder, with his arm snaked around you.

Eventually, you found yourselves back to the house, where a comfy hammock overlooking the water awaited, not wanting to wake the rest of the house but still wanting some privacy. JJ offered you his hoodie, which swallowed you up as the two of you cuddled on the hommock, limbs entangled.

When the sun rose finally, It was early, and the house was quiet. Pope had wandered outside the house with some fishing gear. Having left the front door open while moving things, he saw the two figured in the hammock fast asleep and he froze. He quickly sat the fishing gear down, in rush searching for John B.

John B followed Pope back outside, and he chuckled. "you owe me $50." Pope said with a smirk. John B rolled his eyes. "fine." he said reaching for his wallet.

[subbyboysgalore]

Today is Torao's birthday, so um... May I request birthday s** ?? 👀👀

birthday boy ♡

♥️after a long day of celebrating torao's birthday, you come home with him to have one last present for the both of you. (spoiler alert, it's torao tied up with a bow on his head)♥️

a/n: I HAVE SO MANY IDEAS READY TO BE RELEASED (triple down TRG) but this. I had to answer this quick. I WILL RELEASE TRG SOON DW. and yes, it's the same prompt as my yamato bday one.

cw: bondage, degradation, orgasm denial, tora's gagged, he's being a spoilt brat but guess what. you fix that! also he cries a tiny bit at the end :3

type: minific, 672 words

🔞🔞

˖⁺‧₊˚ ♡ ˚₊‧⁺˖˖⁺‧₊˚ ♡ ˚₊‧⁺˖˖⁺‧₊˚ ♡ ˚₊‧⁺˖˖⁺‧₊˚ ♡ ˚₊‧⁺˖˖⁺‧₊˚ ♡

"Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to youu..”

Clapping your hands together, you stood overlooking Torao, cheerfully singing to him. Well, mostly to yourself, since the birthday boy of the day was tied up and gagged on the floor below you. His flaming red eyes stared up at you, lit up bright in annoyance.

“Ah come on, don't look at me like that! I know it's your birthday, but you were acting like such a spoiled brat earlier, I just had to shut you up. Don't try to rush me into fucking you.”

At your crude words, he flushed. Whether it was because of humiliation or arousal, you wouldn't know. Maybe both. After all this time of dating you, poor Torao still isn't used to your harsh ways at times.

That side of you really did come out at times like this, as he fruitlessly tugged against the cherry red bindings that held his arms in place. It matched his eyes, and he silently admired how good they looked on him. Apparently he was being an “impatient little brat that can't keep his hands to himself when he's supposed to go slow”. What kind of ridiculous sentence is that?!

For most of his life, if he asked for something, it would be given to him on a silver platter. It was only quite recently, when he met you and ZOOL, that he learned that he had to work for things. Work for things like skill, awards, cheers, and right now, your touch he yearned for so much.

“I told you, this kind of punishment is what you'll get if you keep trying to complain to me to get what you want. Where's that bratty Tora now, you were so mouthy earlier.”

He tried to reply, to sarcastically attack you back, but the only thing that came out of his mouth was a struggling, muffled whine. Right. He'd somehow almost forgot the fact he couldn't speak, the small ball gag in his mouth stopping him. If he wasn't in this situation right now, he would have found the little contraption interesting. It restrained his speech, as well as slightly depriving him of oxygen, making his brain feel cloudy and foggy.

With shaky, shuddering breaths, he tried to calm himself down, to be more in control like he usually is in his life. The steadily rising heat between his legs couldn't be ignored though, but Tora really, really, tried his best to. No, he did not enjoy this, and no, he did not feel so absurdly turned on by the way you threw insult after insult at him with such little care in the world.

His face burned as he looked up at you, glazed over eyes taking in your irritated face. The realisation that you were smaller than him, yet making him feel like this, hit him hard, a tiny groan coming out of him at the mere thought. Right now, he's the one that feels small, and you the one towering over him.

Fuck..

With the best puppy dog eyes he could muster, he looked up at you again, silently pleading this time. Torao hoped you could see how desperate he was for you, and how sorry he was for being a brat earlier. It's been an hour ever since, and it felt like he was going insane from the anticipation. Every muscle in his body had grown tense like a pulled rubber band, and it's not like he could even thrust his hips up into empty air, he was tied up too tight for that.

“Hmm.. maybe a couple more minutes. You can take that right? After all, this view really is amazing..”

You sat down on a chair in front of him, crossing your legs and placing a finger on your chin in fake thoughtfulness.

Fuck- fuck, I can't take this anymore!

If he could speak right now, curses would be falling from his mouth like crazy. Tears threaten to fall out of his eyes, and you simply raise an eyebrow at that.

Cute.

[jasminetwil]

STICKERS ARE HERE (<- link)

✨️Scrunkly baby✨️

I think Dogpool (AKA Mary Puppins, AKA Peggy!) stole everyone's hearts in the cinema. She definitely ran away with mine so I had to draw her! 🐶

Deadpool and Wolverine was such a fun movie. Genuinely have not had such a serotonin boost like that in a very long time. 💖

[ruvviks]

PLEASE DO NOT TAG AS YOUR OWN OC.

Vincent spends all his life searching for himself, searching for his spot in the world. He lives in the past and what will never be, longing for everything he has missed out on and everything he will never have. It is not until he learns he is dying that he comes to realize he has to live in the present, to enjoy life as it comes.; and despite his confusion, fear, and his regrets, he tries to live the rest of his life to the fullest, knowing very well he is living on borrowed time. OC WEB WEAVE SERIES: VINCENT "V" MAYER.

charles bukowski, pulp // by wiissa0 // loneliness for love; lovelytheband // louise glück, from 'unpainted door' // by biryuza // summer farah, i could die today and live again // tobia photographed by su yang // wake up; run river north // ruhlare // by julykings // lemonade; twin xl // ryan walker photographed by ryan pfluger // mary oliver, from 'marengo' // still not dead; dreamers // by lovelyopalite // by geloy concepcion // lemon drop; raynes // chris abani, ritual is journey // 'die milchstrasse', cover detail // louise glück, averno // i like cars; caroline kole // by cruellesummer // frances molina, o’death

[galacticlamps]

in the club bathroom straightup pondering it. and by "it" haha well let's just say, 'whether or not i should attempt to finish & share a fic i've been working on for nearly a year now'

[autumnalwalker]

Empty Names - 24 - Nostalgia

Author's Note: In which Ashan tests out some new types of magic, remembers childhood trauma, revisits his hometown, and learns a bit more about Carnette Bridgewood from Road and Sullivan. See the tags for additional commentary. Word Count: 17,474 Content Warnings: "Genre-typical violence" in the form of a fight between a wizard and a monster. Dead animals (died offscreen). Anxiety over past trauma.

<-Previous Chapter Masterpost “Get away from him!”

“Teacher, what is going on?”

“Did you really think you could hide what you did?  What he is?”

“Ashan, just look at me.  Everything’s going to be alright.”

“What is he talking about?”

“Put down your staff Glassgaze.  Even you can’t stop all of us at once.”

“Watch me.”

*******

Ashan lies in bed on the hazy verge between sleep and waking, trying to sort newly unblocked memories from dreams.  He realizes his eyes are wet and he sits up, breath hitching and body shuddering as he clasps silken bedsheets to his bare chest.  The forgotten experience from a decade ago is now as fresh in his mind as if it had just happened yesterday, and it is difficult not to fall back into the mindset of the frightened child who went  through it.

He attempts to still himself the way he always does but his mind jumps to the one who taught him that technique and the image of her lying bloody and burnt from a failed attempt to protect him.  The child he was back then had not yet mastered that stillness to keep his spells precise.  He had not yet had to perfect that stillness to keep himself sane while unable to comprehend the language of his own thoughts.

A more external grounding then.  Something anchored in the here and now.  The smoothness of the sheets between his fingers.  The gentle weight of the blankets on his legs.  The barest blue glow of morning light leaking through the window blinds to lend a suggestion of shape to the patterns embroidered on the gauzy bed curtains.

He had not expected to get so used to sleeping in a bed.  Not after so many years simply suspending himself in midair with magic overnight in order to conveniently sleep anywhere.  It is the blankets, he thinks.  There is something strangely comforting about their layered weight.

He waves a hand and the curtains around the bed and over the window slide open to let in the sun.  There is the desk beneath the window with its pile of tomes borrowed from the Manor’s library.  There is his neatly folded robe within easy reach atop the bedside table.  There is the white laptop gifted to him by Eris where he left it on the vanity across the room from him.  Despite having so little, he has still marked this decadent guest room room as his own.

It is a strange thought, having a room to call his own.  It feels presumptuous and nostalgic all at once.  He and Aliana had always been on the road.  The longest the two of them ever stayed in one place was a single season, and even that had a deadline from the start after which he knew they would move on again.  This current arrangement, as far as he has been able to tell from talking to Road, appears to be indefinite as long as he wants it.

The last time he had his own room to live in rather than to stay in was when his parents still thought he was alive.

He catches sight of himself in the vanity’s mirror and stares down his reflection until its expression is as calm as it should be.  He squeezes the bedsheets to himself one last time before letting them fall, getting up, and dressing himself.

Properly attired he is no longer Ashan, the scared child who just watched his mentor fall and had his potential sealed away.  He is the wizard Glassheart, traveling adventurer and protector of those in need.

Yet still the preserved memory throbs like a reopened wound seeking acknowledgement.

He looks from the stack of tomes with their arcane lore of a dozen worlds’ spells to the sleeping laptop with its queued videos of this world’s contemporary makeup styles and techniques.  On any other day he could easily lose himself in either for hours, but right now he needs something more solid to distract himself with.

Climbing out the window and testing his reflexes with a spell to slow his fall makes for a decent start.

Making a morning ritual of exercise helps, and by now he has almost memorized the winding trails of the Bridgewood Estate’s extensive gardens.  Focusing on one footstep after another during a brisk jog is its own form of meditation, and should that not prove enough to occupy his mind, identifying the rare flowers and herbs as he passes by is an engaging challenge.

A maintenance golem pauses its gardening to wave a spindly leg at him and Ashan nods back to it in acknowledgement.  It is always the same one that waves to him on these morning jogs.  While they all might look like identical shiny black orbs on spidery legs, he has learned to pick out variations in their animating auras in his time here.  He wonders if the sorceress Bridgewood explicitly designed her creations with distinct personalities from the start or constructed a malleable template that would naturally produce emergent behavior over time.  Either one would be an impressive feat in its own right, especially considering the sheer quantity of the constructs keeping the manor and estate grounds clean and orderly in their maker’s absence.

The minutes pass by in a pleasant strain of muscles and lungs.  The paving stones beneath his feet.  The floral scents upon the breeze.  The sunlight on his face.  Anchors to the here and now.  The dark, sound-proofed tent and the enchanted shackles around a child’s wrists were years ago, not last night.

He rounds the bend in the path to the gazebo where he has made his habit of performing his more stationary morning exercises and finds Road already there.  They are holding a cloth-wrapped bundle in one hand and staring up at the star-painted inner dome of the gazebo’s ceiling.

“It used to shift in real time to reflect the sky on the opposite side of the earth,” Road says when Ashan joins them in admiring the mural.  “I wonder if it froze the moment Carnette was gone or slowly wound down.  I bet Sullivan would know.”  They blink and turn their head to greet Ashan with a warm smile.  “But it’s too beautiful a morning for thoughts like that.  Join me for breakfast?”  

They punctuate the offer with a raise of their carried bundle.

“I appreciate the offer,” Ashan replies.  His mind leaps back to the images that plagued him during the night and he cuts off the second half of that sentence.

“Wonderful,” Road laughs.  “Well, come one, I was just on my way to a perfect spot.”

“I take it you have recovered,” Ashan observes as he follows Road deeper into the gardens.  “Bridgewood said you were feeling unwell.”

“Oh, nothing that a good night’s sleep or two couldn’t fix.  As Sullivan so likes to remind me, even heroes need to sleep.  The worrywort.”

They round another bend in the garden trail and arrive at a patinated copper gate beneath an arch of ivy.  It creaks as Road pushes it open without slowing their gait.  Only when they realize Ashan has stopped to stare do they pause to turn around.

“This is the entrance to the hedge maze,” Ashan says.  Thus far he has limited his exploration of the interior of Bridgewood Manor out of respect as a guest.  He has avoided exploring the maze out of wariness.  While he has explicitly been granted free reign to explore the Estate’s grounds, labyrinths are potentially dangerous conceptual archetypes at the best of times, and all the moreso when created by mages.  To attempt to navigate one crafted by the sorceress Bridgewood herself…

“It would be quite the adventure to explore, wouldn’t it?” Road invites.  “Even the maintenance golems barely come in here anymore and Sullivan’s focused all his attention on the Manor, so there’s probably things in here Carnette never got around to showing anyone.”

A thrill of exploration trickles down Ashan’s spine, the likes of which he has not felt since the last time Aliana took him into an ancient, monster-infested ruin years ago.

“Not that we’ll be going very far in for now,” Road amends.  “But even a little taste of adventure makes wonderful spice for a meal.”

Ashan follows them past the gate and down the overgrown marble staircase beyond.  Vines and fallen leaves from the overhead trellises crunch underfoot as they make their descent.  The only view of the maze below is through stained glass windows more interested in displaying their images than allowing a view from above by which to plan a route.  Dryads dancing in a ring.  A carnivorous plant surrounded by bones.  An arachnoid flower whose web drips with nectar.  A waterfall spilling into a pool full of treasure.  The scenes go on.

“Are these all vistas to be found within the maze?” Ashan asks.

“Hard to say,” Road replies, “but knowing Carnette, she probably at least planned to include them all at some point.  Who knows which ones she ever got around to and which ones she changed her mind about or got bored with.  The one time she threw me in here and told me to try to solve the maze, it was still in the early design phase and I know she expanded it after that and took at least some of my feedback into account.”

They reach the bottom of the stairs and the stone walls give way to towering unkempt hedges.  Road pushes on through the leafy branches stretching out into the path and Ashan conjures a marker beacon to follow back, just in case.

“I am not sure where to begin unpacking that,” Ashan says.

Road laughs and turns a corner, their voice making it easy for Ashan to follow them even when out of sight.  “It was my first time meeting her.  Sullivan claimed that the two of them were past the ‘trying to kill each other’ stage of their courtship and wanted to introduce us.  Turns out he’d been talking up my skills as an adventurer and she thought it’d be entertaining to test those claims so she rearranged the layout of the Estate to make us traverse the hedge maze in order to reach the Manor.  Between you and me, I think she was a little bit jealous and wanted to see how Sullivan and I held up under pressure together.”

“And the offering of feedback?”  Ashan asks, choosing not to pursue the questions raised by the jealousy part.

“I don’t know that she ever went through with it, but she’d been toying with the idea of plucking adventurers from worlds like Orthon and Dorbreith - and maybe even people from other worlds like this that don’t acknowledge ‘adventurer’ as a profession - and offering them boons if they could successfully make their way through.  I told her that if that’s what she wanted then she needed to make the traps and puzzles less deadly and put in more safe areas where challengers could stop to catch their breath.”

“But… why?”

“Well, not to brag too much, but if Sullivan and I were making it through by the skin of our teeth then most anyone else she was likely to chuck in here at random was going to wind up dead and I wanted to prevent that if I could.  Even we had  to cheat towards the end by baiting the invincible minotaur golem she had stalking us into mowing down the walls for us so we could skip straight to the exit.”

“While that raises a number of other questions, what I meant was why would she go through the trouble?  What did she hope to get out of such a convoluted and colossal undertaking?”

Road shrugs.  “Entertainment?  Another way to spread her reputation?  Subjects to test experimental hypotheses on?  An audience to show off the fruits of her hobby to?  Carnette was never someone who did anything for just one reason and she enjoyed keeping those reasons obscured.  She and Sullivan had that in common.”  Road pushes down an overgrown hedge patch, stops, and gestures for Ashan to squeeze past them.  “We’re here.”

The maze opens up into a hexagonal courtyard.  Flagstone pathways meander from the corridors at the corners to converge on a shaded bower next to a fountain that spills into a pond.  Beneath the bower’s flowering canopy sit a mosaic-topped table surrounded by wicker chairs and a marble pedestal.  Atop the pedestal is an orb the color and texture of tanned flesh, half as wide as Ashan is tall.  Ruddy tendrils flow down from the base of the orb and into the grass.  Roots, Ashan takes them for at first.

Ashan approaches the bower and the orb within with less caution than he normally might.  Surely Road would not plan to share a meal next to something dangerous.  Pondering the orb, he can tell that it is both alive and magical, although he cannot identify the type or origin of either aspect.  He steps into the bower’s shade and the orb’s surface begins to ripple in an undulating, swirling pattern.  Its top half contracts, becoming pear-shaped, and then curves to one side, evocative of an animal cocking its head in curiosity.

Ashan flicks his wand into his hand by reflex at the unexpected movement.  The no-longer-orb rears back, stretching and flattening into a fan reminiscent of a cobra’s hood.  What are probably bones become apparent beneath what is now obviously taut skin.

A hand alights on Ashan’s shoulder.  It feels just like Aliana’s whenever she was about to either calm, encourage, or praise him.

“It’s a psychically reactive art piece,” Road says.  “Most Culescun flesh sculptures are shaped to resonate with and emanate an emotion, but this one copies and syncretizes the feelings of the viewers.  I’d been wondering where it ended up ever since Jero visited a while back.”

Ashan’s wand slides back into his sleeve.  The sculpture becomes a swirling orb of ponderous curiosity once more.  The hand lifts from his shoulder.

“So this was xyr gift to the sorceress Bridgewood for assisting xem in xyr exile?”

“The very same,” Road confirms while unwrapping their bundle on top of the mosaic table.  It is a simple spread.  A loaf of bread, a block of cheese, and an apple.  “It seemed like a shame for it to be stuck down here alone for so long without stimulation.  Given that this maze doesn’t rearrange itself anymore, I imagine you could bring the others down here sometime if you felt like it.  I’m sure Lacuna at least would get a kick out of it.”

Bones press against the sculpture’s skin from the inside in alarm.

“Stimulation?” Ashan asks.  “It is not sapient, is it?”

“Of course not.  Jero’s got too many ethical standards for that, even if Carnette didn’t always.”  Road plucks a pair of crystal goblets dangling from vines that let go with a tug and walks over to the fountain.  

“What do you mean by that?”  Ashan follows Road.  

In the nearby pool, several of the sculpture’s red tendrils have grown feathery fronds that wave in the current created by the fountain’s overflow.  Ashan recognizes them to be gills, of a sort.  A gill-less red tendril snatches a water-striding insect from the pool’s surface, dragging it under and enveloping it.

“Carnette and I often didn’t see eye to eye on matters,” Road says while rinsing the goblets in the fountain.  “I’d hesitate to call her outright malicious - most of the time anyway - but she had a tendency to overlook the fact that whatever she was doing might affect real people.  And when she did go out of her way to do something good, well, like I said, she never did anything for just one reason.”

“I see,” Ashan says.  “I had always heard conflicting stories about her, but on Orthon at least the tales singing her praise always outweighed any warnings of wickedness.”

“She always could be talked down from her worst impulses so long as there was someone willing to try, I’ll give her that.  And she’d usually answer an earnest plea for help, even if she did dress it up in a speech to justify how she was just using the opportunity to further her own unfathomable agenda.   She and Sullivan are alike in that way too.”

Road passes Ashan a crystal goblet filled with cool, clear fountain water.  The stem is still wet from the rinsing.

“Cheers,” Road says and clinks their vessel to Ashan’s.

Ashan touches the glass to his lips and catches the faintest whiff of sweetness over rotten eggs.  Road has already drained theirs in one long drink and is moving to refill it, so he takes a sip.  It tastes of sugar and sulfur.

Road takes a seat at the table and the sleeve of their purple jacket trimmed with green extends into a clawed gauntlet that they use to divide the cheese and cut the apple in half.

“For all that those two fed on each other’s chaos at times,” Road continues, “they actually mellowed one another out in the grand scheme of things.”  The gauntlet retracts and Road breaks the bread by hand.  They hand half the loaf across the table to where Ashan has seated himself.  “He misses her, you know.  He hides it, but I’ve known him longer than I can remember and this is the first time I’ve ever known him to grieve.”

Ashan’s gaze snaps up from the fruits and nuts filling the bread.  “Why are you telling me this?”

“A couple of reasons.”

“Much like the sorceress Bridgewod herself?”

Road laughs.  “I walked right into that one, didn’t I?  But really, I’m just looking out for my friends.  I’ve found that people function best when they have more than one confidant they can talk to, and while he’ll never admit it, something’s been eating at Sullivan lately and he could use another friend.”  A smile, more mischievous than Road’s usual, but no less warm.  “And besides, I think he’s taken a rare liking to you, not that he’ll admit that either.”

“I have no interest in courtship,” Ashan says flatly.

“Not at all what I meant,” Road chuckles.  “And don’t worry, neither does he.  Those days are well behind him.  As I said, friendship.  Merely something to consider at any rate.  The abrasiveness is mostly a mask, I promise.”

“I shall keep that in mind,” Ashan concedes.  “And your other reason?”

“I figured you could use a diverting conversation and it seemed like a potentially engaging topic.”

The sculpture twists itself into a knot.

“You did not encounter me by chance this morning.”  It is a statement, not a question.

“Not exactly,” Road admits, “but not exactly not either.  I guess you could say I’ve got a knack for showing up where and when I’m needed, even if I don’t fully understand the why of it.  The info gathering that Sullivan - and now Lacuna - do simply speeds up the process and makes it more efficient.  I can tell when it’s happening though, and when you showed up I made some educated guesses.”

“Such as?”

“No offense, but speaking from experience, you strike me as the kind of person who holds things in until they get to be too much and spill over, and given that there was mention of you and Lacuna possibly attempting to remove your seal yesterday it seemed likely enough that something from that might be bothering you.  So, if you want to talk about it, we’re in a safe place and you have my word no one else will hear about it, and if you’d rather have a distraction, we’re in a place built by the most famous mage of the last few centuries and I’ve got stories to tell.  Or I can shut up and we can enjoy a beautiful morning in silence.”

Ashan nods and chews his bread in silence, pondering the orb, the one it was gifted to, the one so willing to talk about her, and the offer they made.

The silence of a peaceful morning where decisions can be put off for at least a little while.

Ashan takes a sip of the strange water and conjures a set of razor thin barriers to further slice his half of the apple and cheese.

The sorceress Bridgewood…

Unlike wizard, witch, or enchanter, the term sorcerer is not so much a description of how one’s magic works, but an accusation.  Broader than titles such as pyromancer, warder, or cleric that refer to the types of magic one specializes in, “sorcerer” is a term reserved for mages who practice magic that is considered taboo, whether because it is morally abhorrent or just too dangerous for anyone to safely or responsibly control.  Stealing or binding souls.  Communion with the eldritch.  Mind control.  True resurrection of the dead.  City-leveling evocations.  Not always a mark of evil, but always one of danger.  Someone might delve into forbidden sorcerous arts with the best of intentions meaning to use them for good; or simply be overconfident enough that they really think they can control what generations of mages before them have failed.

And then there were the so-called “true sorcerers.” Every couple centuries or so someone usually shows up with the talent and skill to actually command that kind of power without destroying themselves and everyone around them.  Maybe once a millennium there would be such an individual who refrains from abusing their power to the point that they become threats to entire countries, if not entire worlds.  

Or so Aliana had taught Ashan long ago.  According to her, the only “true sorcerer” like that alive right now in this world cluster is - or now rather was - the sorceress Bridgewood.  It was a name he had latched onto ever since he first heard it.  In his early teens he had occasionally fancied himself as aspiring to the title himself one day.  The day he mentioned that to Aliana was one of the few times she ever snapped at him.  That conversation makes more sense now.

“The counterseal ritual worked,” Ashan says, breaking the silence, “but the blocked memories of the seal’s application have come back unexpectedly vividly.”

“As if no time has passed at all since the memories were locked away, perfectly preserved and ready to throw you right back into who you were at the time,”  Road whispers.

The sculpture grows spines in surprise.

“How did you know?” Ashan asks.

“Personal experience.  There’s a reason I’ve come to prefer amnestics and wipes over blocks.  They’re not as precise or complete, but even if the memories do come back for whatever reason, they tend to be blurred and as dulled by time as memories normally would be.  Less risk of dropping you into the deep end of unprocessed trauma out of the blue that way.”

“I see.  You do have a great deal of experience with aiding those who inadvertently fell through the Masquerade.”

Amnesticization for the sake of Masquerade preservation is the one exception to the proscription on mind-altering magic.  Of course even non-mages that work with potential Masquerade breaches would be well-versed in the different methods of allowing people to return to their mundane lives.

“Sure, let’s go with that,” Road says.  “But as for your current situation, you’ve got options.  Amnestics to dull the pain are technically an option, albeit not one that I would recommend for a variety of reasons.  Then there’s the old standby of ‘cope, drown it out, and live your life until it fades like any other bad memory,’ which has its ups and downs.  Or there’s the hard but effective route of trying to work through and process it, but that’s not going to happen in a single morning and from the look of that sculpture over there, you’re not up to doing much more talking about it right now anyway.”

“Not so much, I fear.”

“Nothing wrong with that.  And if you like, remind me later and I can get you in touch with some therapists I usually recommend to first timers Backstage.  But for now, any requests for a story?  Sullivan’s the real teller between the two of us, but I’ve been told I can be distracting when I want to be.”

“Thank you, truly,” Ashan says.  “Although one thing I feel I must share lest I leave her reputation unnecessarily tarnished is that I know for sure now that my ment- that Aliana was against the application of the seal on me and only conceded to play her role in binding my magic after she had exhausted her other options for protecting me at great cost to herself.”

“I’m glad to hear you weren’t betrayed in that way too.”

“It does not change the fact that she ultimately kidnapped me without any intent of bringing me back home.  It is a solace that I am still deciding what to make of.”

“I know the feeling.”

“But as for story requests, perhaps a tale involving the sorceress Bridgewood?  We are in her home afterall, and, after her consort, I imagine you knew her best.”

Road grins and leans in close over the table.  “Oh, I’ve got a few I could tell.  Remember our fair lady of the green?  The minor goddess who helped us out with the Logos quest?  So, a while back some produce corporation was imprisoning and exploiting her to increase crop yields and was blatant enough to feature her as a mascot in their advertising…”

*******

“Please, just don’t hurt him!”

“You’re in no position to make demands Glassgaze.  Count yourself lucky that none of the elder mages you felled before we put a stop to your outburst died.”

“He’s just a child.  He hasn’t hurt anyone.”

“He just cut maestro Silverthorn’s arm off to protect you.  He’s an anchor world mage whose magic is unbound by logic or rules and with more potential for power than I’ve ever seen.”

“I’ve taught him control.  Restraint.  Honor.  Do you really think it’s luck that no one died today?”

“Honor?  That’s a joke coming from you.  You’ve taught him enough to be dangerous by giving him a taste of combining magic systems from outside his homeworld.  Or did you really think you had the next sorceress Bridgewood on your hands?”

“That’s still no reason to kill him.  You’re talking about executing a child for being a potential threat.  Bind him if you have to, but please, don’t hurt him.”

*******

Ashan raises his arm that isn’t temporarily paralyzed and accepts Road’s offer to lift him off the floor of the gym’s sparring ring.

“Good match,” Road says.  “If you’d had more room to maneuver you might have had me.”

Eris and Lacuna had already been at the office when Ashan and Road arrived after breakfast.  They got to talking about the nullification of the seal on his magic and one thing led to another and soon enough Eris proposed a sparring match to see what he could do.  To Ashan’s surprise, Lacuna demurred from watching a display of the magic she had helped unlock in favor of staying in her lab to catch up on work.  Ashan won fairly handily against Eris and then Road asked if he was up for another round.  

It ended much as any match against Road does, save for the fact that he got them to draw that energy sword of theirs against him for the first time. 

“A good match indeed,” Ashan says while Road pulls him to his feet.  He sways, off balance from one arm limply dangling as dead weight, and Road waits until he steadies before letting go and handing him back his wand that he had dropped when their blade of orange light disrupted his motor control.

Yes, a good match, or at least an educational one.  A reminder that theoretical study of varied forms of magic and the sudden ability to access them does not automatically equate to mastery.  And loss does ever carry its own opportunities.

Ashan touches his wand to his numb hand and focuses on a spell he has been wanting to try for some time now, ever since encountering that first tome borrowed from Bridgewood’s library.  That tome, Whispers of the Sun, had an entire chapter dedicated to spells of healing flame as a prime example both of how pyromancy can be more than the pure destruction commonly associated with it and of how varied the approaches of traditions originating from different worlds can be when arriving at the same end state for a spell.  Some of those spells were crude acts of cauterization.  Others grew out of the concept of fire as a cleansing agent burning out impurities, sometimes symbolically and sometimes literally.

This spell is rooted in the conceptualization of the sun as the ultimate source of all life and fire as an extension of the sun.  

Some spells require incantations, be they poetic verse to manifest a concept or nonsense syllables meant to resonate on esoteric frequencies with the universe’s vibrating threads.  Other spells require gestures, be they precise hand signs and dances drawn from a deep canon of tradition or simple focusing motions bridging the gap between visualized will and manifested physicality.

This spell requires a prayer.

It is a wordless prayer, as all the deepest prayers are.  It is a praise of the sun.  It is a cry for the comfort of warmth.  It is a recognition of connection and promise of care.  It is more witchcraft than wizardry.  It is not a technique of precise formulae and methodology.  It is a gift that asks only for a reverent heart.

Reverence has never come easily to Ashan, but he hopes that wonder will make an adequate substitute to the recipe as he casts his mind back.

The warmth of a roadside campfire and the end of a day’s travel and the countless stars overhead.  His first time seeing a farm in person and the rows and rows of green leaves turned to face the sun.  The sight of the sky after weeks of exploring underground ruins and the tears the light brought to his eyes.  The hearthfire at a bustling inn and the realization that he was living a scene out of a fantasy.  A dragon’s blazing breath and the eggs it incubated while he and Aliana watched from hiding.  The smell of his parents’ cooking wafting across the yard and the knowledge that it was time to come inside from his play.  A towering white tree whose bark glitters more like crystal than wood while its mother-of-pearl leaves make a shifting rainbow above. 

Three times Ashan sat beneath that tree and each time was the closest he has ever felt to reverence.  The first was as a child, roughly a year after his abduction, and it was a surprise gift from Aliana in an attempt to share someplace special to her.  The second was at the end of his training, waiting for seven days for a branch to fall so he could carve it into a wand as his mentor had done with her staff, and afterwards Aliana bestowed upon him the epithet of Glassheart to anoint him as a peer rather than a student.  The third was on his last day on Orthon, after he learned there had never been an intent to bring him home, and it had been at Aliana’s request for one last detour before taking him home so that she might say goodbye.

He understands that goodbye better now.

White flames spread from the tip of his wand to envelop his hand and crawl up his arm, illuminating the sleeve of his robe from within.  His fingers twitch involuntarily as sensation returns, first as warmth, then as a pins-and-needles tingling.  The sensation and the twitching moves up to his elbow; to his shoulder.  He feels the air grow cold around him.  He feels himself start to sweat.  He feels a pang of hunger.  The flames grow brighter and spread to his neck.

Ashan Glassheart clears his mind and the flames flicker and go out.

His arm feels feverishly hot and the tingling sensation persists, but there is no pain and he has full motor function once again.

The full process took seven seconds, but it feels like much longer.

He is holding up his hand and flexing his fingers, about to comment on the spell working better than anticipated for a first try when an unexpected voice interrupts him.

“I see we’re doing self-immolations today,” Bridgewood - the current Bridgewood - lilts.  “Someone should have told me, I would have brought marshmallows.”

“Ashan has healing magic now,” Road says.  “He just cured the paralysis from my sword.”

“No offense,” Eris says, “but if that’s healing I think I’ll take my chances with my own regen.  I’ve had my fill of mages lighting me on fire.”

“Is that surliness I hear?” Bridgewood croons.  “Sounds like someone lost her match.”

“Gonna have to try harder than that to bait me,” Eris says nonchalantly.  “Yeah, I lost this round, but that just means our score is tied again.  Besides I’ve figured out his tells with glow color and magic type so I’m feeling pretty good about next time.”

His tells?  What is she talking about?

“Okay, why’s everyone staring?” Eris asks.

“There is no color-coded glowing to my utilizing different magic systems,” Ashan says.  “Not to the mundane eye anyway.”

Eris closes her eyes and massages her temples with one hand.  “Oh goddammit…” she mutters.

Bridgewood’s smirk beams wide.  “Well now, as positively delicious as those implications might be to unpack, we do have work to be doing.”  He turns to Road.  “My friend, I’ve finished the sorting of which of those cursed trinkets to hold back as bait, so you and muscles over there are free to finish your wrapup deliveries from that job.  Excuse me, that ‘mission’.  Wizard boy, you’re with me.  There’s a crossover point I want to assess as a staging ground for our ersatz smuggling route and a monster that’s wandered out of it to harass the locals so we’ll be making with the proverbial bird stoning.”

Eris stares Bridgewood down, swallows whatever words has in mind, and turns to Road to say “I’ll get the vans ready.”

It occurs to Ashan to wonder just what she and Bridgewood spoke of in private before and on their long way back from assisting the changeling siblings yesterday.  He would have expected more pushback from her against Bridgewood’s apparent giving of orders, especially given the friction between them up until now.  

He considers questioning the directives himself (is not Road the one who should be issuing such commands?) but decides against it for now.  If there is good work to be done then what does the organizational structure matter?  Better instead to focus on the most relevant information.

“So, where is this crossover point?”

*******

“There, there.  None of this is your fault.  You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“But… but… hi-his arm! And your head!  And everyone is… and they are saying-”

“Shhh…  You did nothing wrong.  All that can be healed.  I’m going to make everything alright and in the morning this will all just be a bad dream.”

“Glassgaze, the elders are ready for you.  And your… charge.  They said to remind you this is your last chance to back out and let them do a full sealing.  Otherwise any future transgressions of his are on your head.”

“Tell them they can wait another few godsdamn minutes!”

“They also said to remind you that if he ever leaves this world then you can consider yourself exiled along with him.”

“Fine.  It’s not like I ever planned to take him back home.  Now let us have a moment.”

*******

Ashan looks out the window of the armored van at the greens and browns of the rocky hill country as the vehicle bounces and jolts its way down an offroad trail.  That boulder.  That gulley.  That stand of mesquite and mountain cedar trees.  The more he sees the more the suspicion that has been growing since passing through one of the Bridgewood Estate’s tree portals becomes a certainty.

“I know this place,” Ashan observes.

“Good,” Bridgewood replies from the driver’s seat, “that means I was on the money about which crossover point you absconded through as a kid.”

“Why are we here?”

“My friend and I believe the unknown group that caused that nasty business with the dead dragon getting a ship stuck in its skull back on our first outing has been targeting smuggling operations passing through crossover points in order to acquire various illicit magics and technologies while leaving no witnesses.  Our backup plan if other avenues of inquiry fail us is to leak a rumor through certain channels which I know are being monitored that a certain sorceress’s private collection has been burgled and moved off world in order to lure this group into a confrontation.  We’re here to assess the nearby crossover point to make sure it’s a suitable staging ground.”

“That is not what I meant.  Why this crossover point specifically?”

One last bounce and a swerve to keep the armored van from barreling into an arroyo and the suggestion of a trail turns into an unpaved road through the hilly backwoods.  The trees here are short and srcubby, but they are thick enough to block any good view of the surroundings.

“A few days ago the techie flagged a series of cryptid sightings in the area as a potential job to follow up on,” Bridgewood offers.  “No direct human contact yet, but a mild correlation to a suspected drop in local wildlife populations.  Not too unusual with the nearby crossover point.  It seemed minor enough that I normally would have set it as something for my friend to occupy themself with in between bigger jobs with the rest of you lot, but I figured we may as well make this outing the stone to kill both of these birds with.”

“Are you being evasive or simply obtuse?  I doubt my personal connection with the area is a coincidence.”

“You’ve got that right,” Bridgewood chimes.  “Say, you never learned to drive, did you?”

“What?” Ashan blinks at the sudden non sequitur.  “No.  Why?”

“Would you like to?  This is a pretty easy stretch of road and there’s no one around to try to pull you over, as hilarious as that would be.”

“I shall pass.”

Bridgewood shrugs, taking both hands off the wheel in the process.  “Suit yourself.  According to television, it’s supposed to be an effective bonding and trust building activity.”

“That may well be,” Ashan begins slowly, “the most blatant attempt to change the subject I have ever witnessed.”

“Oh if that had only been a conversational redirection you never would have noticed,” Bridgewood chortles.  “How about this then?  Answer a question of mine and I’ll answer the question you seem to think I’m avoiding.”

Through a break in the trees, Ashan sports a familiar creek out the window.  They are moving away from the crossover point and towards town.  Searching for the cryptid first then.  That would make sense if the goal is to do a catch and release back through the crossover point to whatever world it slipped in from.  He thinks back to how long it took him and Aliana to make this trek.  Far slower having been on foot but the route was more direct.

“Go ahead and ask your question,” Ashan says.  “We have plenty of time and I have few secrets.”

“Excellent,” Bridgewood purrs.  “Now tell me, what do you think of my wife?”

“Excuse me?” Ashan stutters.

“Carnette.  The sorceress Bridgewood.  My dearly departed wife.  Don’t think I haven’t noticed you going all wide-eyed fanboy every time you encounter one of her creations.  I’d like to know why.  Around these parts her name gets spoken in frightful whispers more than open adulation.”

“On Orthon,” Ashan says after a moment of consideration, “she is considered a living legend.  Some would even go so far as to call her a heroic figure, although there are some popular stories that would dispute that.”

“It’d hardly be the first time someone made that mistake,” Sullivan laughs, “but do go on.”

“To begin with, it is said that almost two centuries ago, as a mere teenager, she arrived on Orthon out of the blue and within the span of three years mastered seven different Orthonian magic styles - four of them considered forbidden arts - and averted a calamity brought on by a megalomaniacal cabal.  Even without those feats, her very presence revolutionized what we knew about interworld travel and branching anchor theories of cosmology.  The sporadicness of her presence over the next century arguably taught us about that field as much as she did herself.”

“But who was she to you?”

“By the time I arrived on Orthon she had not been to that world in over half a century so by then she was more like a historic folk hero that few other than elder mages had ever met in person.  They say that the continental Convocation of Mages that sets the regulations on magic in the region my mentor and I spent most our time in was originally formed by her old adventuring party and that on her final visit she contributed directly to laying the foundations for the modern academy system of teaching wizardry that my mentor learned from.”  

Ashan feels his cheeks grow warm with the realization that he is stalling.  

“On the most personal level,” he continues, “she was someone to aspire to.  The bards all had at least one story of the sorceress Bridgewood in their repertoire, the mysterious mage from another world who mastered the forbidden arts without being corrupted by them, saved the world, and went on to invent whole new fields of theory.  Even if more than half of the stories were nonsense, that still left enough truth to make the very concept of a ‘true sorcerer’ synonymous with her name.  For a time, I thought that if I could be great like her I could prove that I was also an exception to the trend of anchor world mages being dangerously unpredictable, power hungry, and literally fueled by their own ego.  I dreamed that if I could do that I would not have to hide what I was anymore.”

“You thought that even with the darker stories floating around about her?” Sullivan asks.  “I don’t have nearly as many ears on Orthon as I would like, but I know at least a few of those made it over there.  Void Without, I’m sure a few even originated from there.”

Ashan’s gaze drifts back out to the dirt road in front of them.

“I was a child at the time, projecting onto an icon.  Even the best stories about her portrayed her as a hard-to-work-with eccentric, so I rationalized that between that and her more sorcerous arts she was bound to have a few enemies that spread lies over the years.  That rationalization stopped after I told Aliana about my dream and she grew truly angry with me for the first and only time.  Or so I thought.  Knowing now what I had been made to forget, I wonder if it was fear that she was feeling.  Fear of losing me or fear that she was wrong about me, I know not.  All the same, I took that as a sign that those darker tales must be somehow true and began focusing on being good, possibly great, in my own way instead.  Or at least in Aliana’s way.”

The van’s interior falls into the near silence of bumpy roads and long-restrained confessions floating unexpectedly free to breathe.

Ashan turns back to face this Bridgewood.  At last the desire to know gets the better of him.

“What was she like?” he asks of the other Bridgewood.

Sullivan’s ever-present smirk softens into a genuine smile.  It is as disconcerting as a cat suddenly sparing its prey.

“Carnette is… the most absurd woman I have ever met.  She’s a brilliant scholar with a wicked sense of humor capable of vacillating between childish whimsy and ruthless practicality on a moment’s notice.  Any so-called heroic act she ever took was motivated by amusement, utility, or spite.  She has more power than most could ever dream of and her favorite thing to use it for is interior decorating.  At least one secret door in the Bridgewood Manor is opened by the theme song of a children’s cartoon.  She delighted in making a show of academically eviscerating anyone espousing theories of magic she thought were hogwash and then literally eviscerating the fools that fell back on insults and challenges to duels in lieu of sound defenses.  I know of at least four different instances where she all but abducted random people off the street, ran experiments on them, called it a gift or blessing, set them loose, and then spent years observing them in secret to gather datapoints for whatever hypothesis she was testing.”  Bridgewood takes his eyes off the road and locks them with Ashan’s.  “Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“No,” Ashan says.  He wishes it were otherwise.  It almost is.

Bridgewood softly shakes his head and returns to watching the road in time to steer around a pothole trying to become a sinkhole.  “Of course you don’t,” he says.  “You never met her.  Stick around long enough and one day you will.”

“You speak as if she is still around.”

“And you use ‘we’ when referring to the people of Orthon.”

The silence of a linguistic habit considered and questioned.

“If I may,” Ashan asks, “how did you meet her?”

Bridgewood cackles and turns out of the brush onto a paved road.  

“I take it that is an off limits question then,” Ashan says.

“Oh, no, I’m a veritable open book when it comes to that tale,” Sullivan lilts.  “I tried to kill her several times and she found it endearing.  Eventually we landed ourselves in a business arrangement of a marriage contract where I would get the money and status that goes with the Bridgewood name, and she would get a conversation partner who wasn’t terrified of her and a willing test subject for her more outlandish experiments.  I’m laughing because now you know what it looks like when I redirect a conversation.”

“Oh.”

“Got so excited to learn more about the great sorceress Bridgewood that you forgot why you were even answering that question, didn’t you?”

“It was rare knowledge from a rare source with a rare opportunity.  The other answer could wait,” Ashan says.  It is as true a statement as saying yes would have been, if marginally more dignified.

“Ha!  You really are a wizard through and through.  I even got you monologing earlier.”

“I did no such thing.”

“Oh, then I suppose that was the normal sort of gushing at length about your childhood idol and spilling all your complicated personal feelings with barely any prompting because you’ve been alone so long you don’t know how to regulate sharing to any rate between all or nothing.”

“I do not gush,” Ashan says after a moment of recovery.  “Now, you have a question to stop avoiding and an answer to give.”

“Struck a nerve there did I?  You’ll have to forgive me, it’s like a reflex when I see them exposed.”

Ashan stares Bridewood down coolly.  The smile has regressed back to a smirk.  Outside, the forest has thinned out into unkempt fields separated from the road by fencing wire strung between wooden posts.  There were horses in those empty fields when he was a child.

“Fine, fine,” Bridgewood relents.  “I chose this specific locale and your company in particular because I wanted to see how you would react.  Yesterday with muscles was wonderfully informative and productive, both in observing how she handled seeing off that changeling pair and in the little chat we had on the way back.  I hoped to do the same with you.”

“But why?”

The smirk grows wider.  They pass by a once-whitewashed house with a corrugated metal roof.  More are coming up.

“Let me answer that question with a question,” Bridgewood trills.  “And it will be part of the answer, even if it doesn’t sound like it at first.”

“Very well, but this had better be the last such evasion.”

The van slows as it comes into town.  Single-story houses and trailer homes line either side of the road.  Most have modest sized yards surrounding and separating them.  Some of those yards are strewn with cheap plastic lawn furniture and children’s toys.  Some sport kitschy ornaments.  Some (usually but not always the fenced-in ones) have animals; goats, dogs, pigs, a few chickens.  Some have all of the above at once or nothing but overgrown weeds.

Bridgewood leaves Ashan hanging in silence to take in the familiar milieu before finally asking his question.

“If you could go back to your family, pain free, with everyone’s memories modified as if you never left, erasing even the pain your leaving had caused, would you?”

The van slows to a stop at an achingly familiar intersection without traffic light or stop sign.  Ashan’s breath hitches.  Mercifully, Bridgewood continues on through instead of turning left.

“That is not a hypothetical worth engaging in.”

“Whoever said it was hypothetical?  All manner of people owe me favors and Carnette left me with many a useful trinket.  I could make it happen.  Say the word and you could live a peaceful life with your family as Adr-”

“That name is not for you to say!” Ashan snaps before Bridgewood can finish the utterance.  More calmly, he continues, “The Count of Curses and Dust made me a similar offer.  They would have bought that Name and bequeathed it to a changeling to return in my place and live that life so that I might live this one without guilt.  What you propose would be the opposite but the same.  I would no longer be Ashan Glassheart.  Either deal would mean losing a part of myself.”

The van turn takes the next right turn to continue meandering through the tiny town’s only real neighborhood.  A white pickup truck without tires lays rusting in front of a mobile home with a collapsed roof.  Once, there was an old woman who paid a young boy in cookies to weed her garden and showed carrying a pot of soup up at the door of anyone with a sick child.

“Then why not bring your family Backstage?  The Bridgewood name is useful for getting people to turn a blind eye toward such a minor Masquerade breach.”

“Even if they forgave me and accepted me back, the work I do is dangerous.  I do not know that I could bear to put them through the new pain of worrying about me every time I go out.”

“Why not settle down with them then?  There’s no shortage of jobs in Crossherd for a mage willing to work on utilities.  There’s not a direct bridge to the pocket dimension around here, but the conditions are ripe for someone of your talent to make one.  You could be a wizard and have your family without worrying their pretty little heads.”

“I have the ability to do good in a way that others cannot.  It would be wrong for me not to.”

“How selfless of you,” Bridgewood condescends.

They pass by a house recognizable by its plastic lawn flamingos.  The house on either side is boarded up.  Back when the sun had not yet bleached the flamingos white or rendered them brittle and full of holes, two children that went to elementary school together fought with sticks they said were swords until they put aside their differences and turned their attention to the terrible pink dragons threatening the kingdom.  Today, those no-longer-children glance at one another through tinted glass without recognition.

“Only mostly,” Ashan admits.  “I cannot deny that I enjoy what I do.  Felling monsters.  Bringing villains to justice.  Protecting those who cannot protect themselves.  There is a… joy… to playing the role of hero.  No, more than that.  It is a part of me as much as either Name.”

“Congratulations,” Bridgewood chirps.  “That is exactly the set of answers I hoped you’d give.”

“So this was a test.”

“Think of it as,” Bridgewood drawls, “an assessment of compatibility.”

“For how you and I will work together?”

“Quiet Void, perish the thought.  Compatibility with my friend.”

“You mean Road.”

“I’ve never had another.”

“They mentioned something about that this morning.”

The smirk flickers to a grimace.

The van turns back onto the closest thing the town has to a main street.  There’s a church on the corner for a god the boy who would be Ashan never understood.  Nor did he (nor does he) understand why there were three churches in town all to the same god.  Nor why he always had to wear his most uncomfortable clothes and wake up early just to hear an old man drone on in a voice that put him to sleep whenever it was not a story about lion dens or fighting giants with slingshots.  The sign for the country barbeque across the street is gone.  There are more churches than restaurants in town now.

“Look wizard boy, I’ll tell you what I told muscles yesterday.  My friend is about as close to perfect as humanly possible, but at the end of the day they are still human, which means one day they will slip up, and when they do it will be bad.  You need to watch out for that.”

“That seems like perfectly obvious advice about anyone working on a team doing what we do.”

“You still haven’t noticed, have you?  The way they make everything feel like it’s going to be alright just by being there?  How easy it is to trust them and go along with whatever course of action they suggest?  That voice saying that even when a job goes badly surely they’ll find a way to get you out?  Not that they can help it.  It’s just the way they are now.”

“It almost sounds like you are telling me to be wary of Road.”  The very notion feels wrong.

“I’m telling you to be wary of yourself for my friend’s sake.  The worst they’ve ever been hurt was always because the people around them put them on a pedestal.  I’m hoping that you and muscles have enough in common with them that you won’t be so blind.  The techie’s a lost cause, but as long as she’s content to stay in her lab playing with her toys she shouldn’t be too much of a liability.”

“I see.”

“No you don’t.  Not yet, and if there’s a drop of Fortune’s heart that doesn’t hate me yet you never will.”

The silence of uncomprehended warnings, outgrown smallness, and withered remembrance.  Ashan looked up his hometown once after Eris gifted him his laptop.  It confirmed the impression he got when he first returned to this place alongside Aliana.  He was not the only one that left this place for good.  The population today truly is but a fraction of what he remembered.

“What if I had not given the answers you hoped for?” Ashan asks.

“Ah, classic wizard,” Sullivan chuckles.  “Asking questions you’re better off not knowing.”

“A question I am better off knowing then: What manner of creature are we searching for?  ‘Cryptid’ is a designation vague as it is broad.”

“I don’t rightly know.  The reported sightings were all contradictory when they described it as anything more than a shadow moving in the night.  It could just as well be multiple creatures or a shapeshifter.  If I hadn’t had access to first hand confirmation that this place has a history of monsters crossing over –” Bridgewood glances pointedly at Ashan  “–  then I might well have written the whole business off.”

“You sound far too amused by your own ignorance,” Ashan says.

“Mystery is one of life’s greatest spices.”

“Let us get on with the solving then.  I assume you have already gathered the names and addresses of those who witnessed this alleged cryptid.”

“Obviously, but as long as I have convenient bait and a local expert on hand I see no reason to involve middlemen when I can skip straight to luring our quarry out.”

Ashan silently chides himself for not having seen this coming.  Magic is spread thin and weakened on anchor worlds by their nature and monsters whose very biology relies on magic instinctively find themselves drawn towards those whose presence warps reality’s rules to their will so that they might sustain themselves.  That was the very reason he needed rescuing by Aliana all those years ago.  For similar reasons, wild and predatory monsters on other worlds will often target young and inexperienced mages as their favored prey.  More powerful mages however, are treated as greater predators that all but the mightiest monsters will give a wide berth.

“Suppressing my presence to avoid attracting monsters was one of the first things I was taught,” Ashan says, “and even if doing so were not a subconscious reflex for me by now I suspect that my aura would function more as repellent than as bait.”

“What, your mentor never taught you aura flaring?”

“I am aware of the technique, but it is a pointless one.  It takes little practice to control how much one passively warps the ambient flow of magic, so it is useless as a tool for gauging a mage’s power when they may just as easily be hiding their potential as bluffing about their strength.  Moreover, it is crass.”

“Crass?  That’s the first time I’ve heard that.”

“Vulgar as a contest of urination.”

“Huh, must be an Orthonian thing.  Anywhy, I’m going to kindly request that you do that to make yourself look as appetizing as possible.”

“What part of it being a crass and useless technique did you not understand?”

“In that case I’ll just need to find some other poor unwitting schmuck.  If there’s a monster hanging around for as long as this one apparently has been, then odds are decent that there’s a potential mage in town.”

Ashan follows the nod of Bridgewood’s head out the window and realizes that their van has slowed its cruising around town to a crawl in front of the high school he never got to attend.  Ashan waits for the pang of loss for a part of growing up he missed out on, but it never comes.  That realization brings a loss of its own.  How disconnected from one’s own culture must one be to not even feel a desire for the milestones that were denied?  He tries and fails to imagine what it would have been like, sitting in classes and studying all day, making friends his own age, joining a club or band or sports team.  All he has for context to build the fantasy off of is a handful of blurry memories of elementary school and television shows.  It all feels so alien to him now.  

What would he even have been doing at that age?  High school spans four years, does it not?  So the year spent sailing the western archipelago up through the infiltration of the gala at the oasis palace a year before his falling out with Aliana, with the catastrophic failure of his old translation charm roughly halfway in between.  No wonder he cannot relate.

“If you’re looking for your baby brother,” Bridgewood says to the staring Ashan, “classes don’t start for another two weeks and he won’t be attending here for another couple years yet anyway.”

The question of why he would be looking for his brother dies on Ashan’s lips and his stomach drops alongside the crumbling barrier between compartmentalized knowledge.  He is in the town where he grew up and his family lives.  He is in a town that is being stalked by an unknown monster.  His family is in a town with a monster.  He was attacked by monsters and saved by mages seven times as a child although he was only allowed to remember the last time.  He has a brother who has never met him and is only slightly older than he was when he was taken.  

“We are not using my brother as monster bait,” Ashan says coldly.

“Of course not,” Bridgewood replies, unperturbed by the condensation gathering on the van’s windows from the sudden drop in temperature.  “You know as well as I do that magic has nothing to do with bloodlines.  Your parents might have let you run wild in the woods to live in whimsy and believe in impossible things, but him they shower with so much protective affection that the possibility of playing in the backyard unsupervised or visiting friends without a chaperone could never even occur to him.  No fairy tales in that household anymore to inspire another child to go wandering off.  If he ever develops any potential for magic, it won’t be until he’s out on his own, burned out from the med school path your parents already decided for him and wondering what else he could have been.”

“What.”

Bridgewood grins wide, showing too many teeth for a proper smile.

“Why, my dear fellow, it’s my job to know these things.  I dare say that I know more about you and your compatriots than you do yourselves.  I know why muscles never got to meet her grandparents or even learn their names and why her parents were so dead set on assimilation.  I know that the techie’s great grandparents were a pair of witches and why they kept their kids in the dark about it.”  He leans across the van’s center console as close to Ashan’s face as his seatbelt will let him and tilts his head sideways.  “And I know that Aliana Glassgaze is currently on this iteration of Earth.”

There is hunger in those dark eyes, and for the first time in years Ashan’s instinct is for flight rather than fight as he reflexively shrinks back into his seat.

Bridgewood snaps back upright and the seatbelt whirs to catch up with him.

“But that’s beside the point,” Bridgewood chirps.  He stares at the seemingly empty school and blinks several times in rapid succession.  “Pity.  Nothing appetizing amongst the summer school kids taking makeup classes.  Always a tossup whether groups like that are going to be against the grain enough to be prime candidates or too beaten down in their self-worth to have any chance at all.”

The van lurches back into motion once more and Ashan recovers enough to say “We are not kidnapping children to use as monster bait.”

Legs burning from strain long after losing the strength for another step.  Each breath like knives in his lungs long after he’s covered his mouth to muffle the sound.  Crying in the dark long after tears have run dry.  The sight of eyes shining in the dark.  The smell of rancid breath.  The sound of heavy footsteps drawing closer.

“There is a cave in the woods on the far side of town from whence we arrived,” Ashan says.  “I played there often as a child and if there is a monster, cryptid, or other fiend in the area, it will likely be making its lair there, and even if not it is a secluded enough spot that when I make myself into a lure there should be no risk of a Masquerade breach.”

“Excellent,” Bridgewood replies.  “Let’s be off then, shall we?”

For all Bridgewood’s earlier chattiness on the way in, the drive out of town is mercifully quiet with no words exchanged beyond the occasional instruction from Ashan to take a turn.  This lasts until they pass the small cemetery at the edge of town.

“Do you want to stop and pay your respects?” Bridgewood asks in the softest voice Ashan has ever heard from him.  “I find it helps.”

“I would rather you not joke about that.”

“I’ve left four different graves with four different names on three different worlds.  Saying goodbye always helped me move on.”

“I have already seen it once and that was more than enough for a tombstone with a name that is not dead.”

“I see.”

The only other words spoken for the next quarter hour are a single “Turn off here” from Ashan, followed by a “We shall walk the rest of the way” five minutes of unproductive off-road driving later.

These woods and hills are more familiar than the town.  Less changed.  Less diminished.  Maybe the trees feel shorter now that he has grown and maybe their distance from his old home no longer feels so great now that his world is bigger, but they are still dense enough that it does not take Ashan long to lose sight of the van.  As he comes to the rocky ledge he once scrambled to climb up and over, he finds himself, for a moment, back in those long summer days of trekking out from the house at dawn and exploring uncharted lands full of creatures he still is unsure if they were imagined or not.  And then he casually waves a hand and ascends a ramp of glass to the top of the ledge within a forest that was charted long before he was born.  He hesitates to focus his senses on the mystical just yet.  He has not made up his mind how he might feel if he were not to find his childhood playmates. 

The sight of the cave freezes Ashan in his tracks once he locates the opening at the end of an unassuming shallow gulch.

Darkness.  Wedged back into a crevice to hide.  Curled up on top of a thin mattress and chained to a tentpole.  Waiting for the not-a-dog to either give up or find and gobble him up.  Waiting for the frightful old men to decide his fate.  A light in the dark, a screech, silence, and a voice telling him he is safe now.  The light of a tent flap opening, silence, a hug, and a voice telling him that she has a plan to keep him safe.

Faded memories from long ago swirl with the preserved fears of a child who had not yet processed and overcome his fear of the close dark spaces he gained two years prior.

Focus on the here and now.  The late summer breeze on his skin.  The buzzing of insects in his ears.  The sight of a metal grate over the mouth of the cave.

That last one had not been here before.  Ashan goes to investigate, concerns of lurking cryptids forgotten for the moment.  The metal is rusted where the black paint has worn away and a grimy padlock holds the hinged segment closed.  An orange and white sign bolted to the bars warns of danger and a second plaque affixed atop that one says a child died here.

On that fateful day, all those years ago, Aliana told the child she would later name Ashan not to look while she cast the glamor to disguise the remains of the strange hound that tried to eat him.  To further distract him, she had assigned him the task of setting up a trail for others to find the cave.  In that energized state of having just gone from terror of impending death to the promise of being a real wizard doing real magic, it had seemed like a game.  Did she cast something on him to stifle his fear at the time?  All the same, he still snuck a peak at what his soon-to-be-mentor was doing.

The sight of her dragging his own dead body into the darkness of the cave became a recurring feature in his nightmares over the following weeks.  They continued until the night that he confessed what he saw to Aliana.  That was the first time she hugged him.  It was also the first time he caught her quietly crying when she thought he was not looking.  The former became frequent and regular.  The latter would not occur again for several years.

“Now that’s curious,” Bridgewood’s voice brings Ashan’s voice back to the present as he kneels down next to the young wizard.  “It looks like water’s flowed through here lately but there’s no branches or other debris stuck on the grate, and everything else around here is dry as a bone.  Hmmm… Terrible idiom, that.  Bones are wet and full of marrow when you first pull them out.”

As he says that last part, Bridgewood runs a finger along the condensation gathered at the bottom bars of the grate, revealing it to be more viscous than water.  To Ashan’s disgust, he licks his finger clean afterward.

“Was that truly necessary?” Ashan asks.

“No, but it was informative,” Bridgewood answers as he stands back up.  “I do believe we have an ooze on our hands.  Or maybe a slime.  I never could remember the difference.”

“An ooze is an undifferentiated mass whereas a slime has a central core,” Ashan says.

“I’ll take your wizard’s word on that.”  Bridgewood taps the grate with a knife Ashan did not see him draw.  “Anywhat, shall I open this up for a spot of spelunking?”

Just another summer day of adventure.  Just another afternoon with friends he was not ready to call imaginary just yet.  Just another fun game.  A new creature he had never seen before and a hungry growl that set him on edge.  A brave stride forward and a sandwich offered in friendship.  A bitten hand and a flight to a favorite secret place that was not as safe as he thought.

“No need,” Ashan says.  “Better to draw it out into the open than to potentially fight in tight quarters.”

“In that case I’ll make myself scarce while you make yourself bait,” Bridgewood proposes as he follows Ashan out of the gulch and onto the hill above the cave entrance. “I’ll be watching for the moment to make my move.”

“Shall we agree upon a signal for when to make that move?”

“No need.  Now if you’ll excuse me, it’s time for me to make myself unpresentable.”

With that, Bridgewood unbuttons his yellow vest and slides it off.  With a flick of his wrists he inverts the garment and Ashan catches a glimpse of the inner lining as it flips around to become the outer pattern.  There is an impression of a color almost but not quite violet; an extra-spectral blend between stygian blue and self-luminous red.  And then Bridgewood is gone with a record skip hitch in the sounds of the woods.

Curiosity regarding how Bridgewood disappeared right before his eyes loses the battle with Ashan’s relief at not having eyes on him for this next part.  Even if a part of him knows that Bridgewood is technically watching from hiding, the lack of a visible witness eases the embarrassment of what he is about to do.

It is said that each mage perceives the way magic flows through and intertwines with the background of reality differently.  To Ashan, it has always appeared as something like floating threads, colored shapes, and heat haze refractions in the air; nearly imperceptible whenever he is not actively focusing on them but always there and ever moving on arcane currents.  Anything living or possessing a mind causes an interruption in this flow, whether as a slow spot to gather in and concentrate like most people, an obstacle to divert the current around like Eris, or as a bubbling spring adding its own chaos of colors and threads to the stream like the average mage.

Most mages learn early on to suppress their own aura of distortion to just-noticeable levels.  Too quiet and it is as if one has something to hide.  Too loud and it is a terrible rudeness to every other magically-sensitive individual around that has to put up with such noise.  To flare one’s aura to make more noise than necessary is the domain of untrained children and hot-blooded youths thinking with organs other than their brain as they try to show off.  And even without considerations of etiquette, there are the practical concerns of overactive auras attracting monsters or spontaneously manifesting unintended effects on one’s surroundings.

Thus are the ingrained best practices that Ashan shoves to the side in order to mimic the telltale signature of a mage accidentally coming into their powers for the first time.  At first he attempts to relax to loosen up that self-restraint, but the exercise is self-defeating.  Restraint is his resting default and too much of his training has inextricably intertwined the concepts of calmness and control.  

Agitation then.  Ashan opens the mental compartment he has tried to sequester his younger self’s regained memories in all day, reaches in, and grabs ahold of those feelings.  The excitement over arriving at the Convocation of Mages after a week of thinking they would not make it in time, which led to his running off on his own.  The confusion at the strange things one of the elder mages he recognized from the previous year started saying to him.  The fear when he heard his mentor shout at the elder to get away from him and the things the elder said in return as six more elders filed in to surround her.  The desperation that caused him to lash out at the mage that finally managed to land a hit on his mentor.  The guilt over his conjured barrier slicing the elder’s arm clean off.  The despair at the sight of Aliana falling beaten, bloodied, and restrained when she had been so close to saving him

The anger.

At her for being reduced to begging.

At her for proposing that they seal away his potential.

At her for taking those memories away from him.

At her for taking him away.

At her for making it all seem like a game.

At her for failing him.

At himself for being angry when he knows she only ever did the best she could for him.

Ashan wraps his arms around himself.  He closes his eyes.  He curls in on himself.  He falls to his knees.  He shudders.  He throws his head back.  He opens his mouth wide to scream.

No sound escapes his lips.  No tear escapes his eyes.  No catharsis finds him.

The air ripples and shimmers around him.  Glassy conjurations flicker in and out of existence.  Frost coats the ground.

It all stops even more abruptly than it began.  With an abashed effort, Ashan reins himself and his aura back in, cheeks flushed with embarrassment at the unseemly display.  Even apparently alone in the woods, he cannot help but feel much as he would as if he had just caused a scene by screaming at the top of his lungs for no reason in the middle of a crowded street.  

He distracts himself with the more delicate task of keeping his mage’s aura of reality distortion just slightly more noticeable than normal while also intermittently flickering it in and out.  If that initial flare had been a piercing cry of pain, this is the weakened flailing that follows it.  The tired wiggling of the worm on the hook.  Not something that would fool anyone intelligent and trained, but enough for a beast or the insatiably curious.

Enough time passes in the eerie silence of woods gone quiet that Ashan begins to worry he overdid the initial flare and scared off his quarry instead of luring it in.  Then he catches sight of something moving between the trees, obscured by the tangle of low-hanging branches that nearly touch the ground.  The silhouette is that of a deer, but the gait is all wrong.  Once it finally emerges from the tree line into the clearing of the hill Ashan stands atop of the reason for the wrongness becomes apparent.

It has the shape of a deer, yes.  It even has the skeleton of a deer arranged in mostly the correct configuration.  Yet it lacks the flesh of a deer, save perhaps for a few mostly-digested scraps hanging suspended alongside dirt, leaves, and twigs within the translucent cyan goo that has wrapped itself around those bones.  It half shambles, half undulates closer in a loose imitation of quadrupedal locomotion.

A slime then, not an ooze if it is capable of this level of mimicry.  But then why is there no central nucleus in sight for him to extract and incapacitate it?

Ashan’s contemplation of the apparent contradiction in esoteric biology is cut off by the sound of movement behind him.  He turns his head, keeping the slime deer in his peripheral vision, and spies a dog.  Then a coyote.  A second deer.  All reduced to skeletons lending shape to cyan slime and still not a core in sight.  A smaller bone-filled blob drops out of the second deer’s abdomen and assembles itself into a rat, or maybe a squirrel.

Ashan stays still, allowing the slime animals to get closer, surrounding him.  The first deer stops just outside of arm’s reach, then collapses into a blob, contracts, and launches itself at him.  A quick rotation on his heel and Ashan propels himself into the air atop a conjured spiral.  He lets the spiral fade, cups his hands as he falls, thrusts his arms downward, and slides down the side of a glass dome as it appears between him and the now trapped slime animals.

Ashan steps back from his conjuration and draws his wand.  The creatures begin pressing themselves against the inside of the dome and he can feel the barrier grow thinner as they absorb its magic.  No matter, a few quick lashing motions with the wand is all it takes to reinforce the conjuration.  So long as the slime animals trapped inside do not concentrate their efforts all in one spot he can easily keep up such a simple spell for more than long enough to convert the dome to a sphere to transport to the van and from there to the crossover point.

He raises his wand and the dome stretches to raise with it.  He makes a scooping motion with his free hand and the dome reshapes to reach under as well as around.  He makes a fist and the great floating glass egg full of slime and bones and dirt contracts, merging the slime animals into one another.  Or ooze animals.  Still no sign of a core, strange as that strikes him.

A tingling sensation around Ashan’s ankle draws his attention downward to see a tendril coming up from the soil.  The buried gelatinous mass shoots out of the ground, climbs up his leg, and keeps ascending until it bursts out from the high collar of Ashan’s robes.  He has barely enough presence of mind to take a deep breath and close his eyes before it envelops his face.  It tries and fails to push between his tightly shut lips and eyelids while he tries to slide his hands between it and his cheeks.  

He forces himself to stay calm.  Focus on what he needs to do, not on what will happen if he fails.  A precise-yet-simple forcefield that moves outward with his hands is all it should take.  He does not even need to get all of the ooze off in one go, only the majority so that it lacks the force to keep pushing.  An easy feat.

The ooze works its way up his nostrils and into his ears.  His sinuses ache from the pressure.  The tingling intensifies into a burning.  Serenity is lost.  The conjuration flickers out.  Ashan’s hands start frantically tearing at the thing trying to digest his face.  His eyes shoot open from shock and pain.

On the other side of the blurry cyan haze there is a flicker of chimerical violet.

The ooze, slime, or whatever it was is gone and Ashan is gasping for air.  His vision is clear save for the tears of irritated eyes.  The burning is now a rapidly-fading tingling and the pain inside his head has reduced to a dull throbbing.

“You’re welcome,” Bridgewood whispers from behind him, close enough for Ashan to feel his breath on his ear.  “Now look sharp, your new friends have gotten out of their playpen and want to say hello.”

Ashan wipes his vision clear and looks up to see that the slime animals are indeed upon him now that he dropped his conjuration in his moment of fear.  He attempts to say something and falls into a coughing fit.

“Still need a moment?” Bridgewood purrs.  “Then allow me.”

Ashan feels a hand on his shoulder as Bridgewood pushes past him.   The back of his head and his shoulder come into view.  And then the not-purple of his inverted vest.

Bridgewood is gone again.  Ashan is breathing easier and his eyes have stopped watering.  The slime animals have all been beheaded.

Being headless only stops them for a moment before the blobs around their skulls extrude pseudopods to reconnect to their bodies and lift them back into place.

“I do so detest oozes,” Bridgewood’s voice echoes from somewhere amongst the trees.  “Utterly unsatisfying and unproductive to stab.  I’ll leave the rest of this in your capable hands.”

“You would abandon me?” Ashan calls out while tossing up a quick barrier between himself and the slime animals.

“No, but this is one of the rare problems that can’t be solved well with knives, so there’s not much else for me to do here unless you want me to try eating the rest of them and that doesn’t work well with live capture.”

“Surely there must be something you can do.”

“How about moral support?  I have full faith that you won’t make the same mistake twice and can handle the rest on your own.  Go team.”

Irritating though his delivery may be, Ashan has long held enough faith in his own skill to agree with Bridgewood’s assessment.  Now to prove them both correct.

A conjured ramp that retracts behind him as he ascends suffices for getting Ashan off the ground to forestall any additional subterranean surprises arising from momentary overconfidence.  Curling the edges of this new platform into a bowl around him prevents the bone-wearing mimic slimes from reaching him by launching themselves up or combining their masses to extend a single long pseudopod.  Adding lotus-like layers to the protective bowl gives him time to analyze the situation uninterrupted when the creatures try to eat through the conjuration.

Standing nearly level with the treetops (not that they are much more than twice Ashan’s height and he has never been called a tall man) Ashan gazes down at the slime animals below as they mill about and start to haphazardly merge with one another in an attempt to reach him.  He still maintains that the prey mimicry is too complex for an ooze, so where are the cores necessary for processing that behavior?  Within the animal skulls, taking the place of the digested brains like a hermit crab repurposing a mollusc shell perhaps?  Partial merging or absorption of those brains – whether physically or psychically – would aid with the mimicry as well.

An interesting theory, but how to keep the ooze still enough to safely perform the delicate operation of opening the skull to confirm without damaging the potential core within?  Freezing has proven effective in the past when facing such monsters alongside Aliana, but that has never been Ashan’s speciality and he is far enough out from the crossover point right now that he is still relying on thermodynamic redirection to power his spells so too much lowering of the ambient temperature could cause complications down the line.

Ashan cocks his head in consideration of the conundrum for a moment and then lets out a hum of realization.  His ability to access other magic systems is no longer sealed, and he is passing familiar with a foreign style lauded for its efficiency in energy draw.

Ashan focuses on the gelatinous mimics below and intones the words that caused him no small amount of grief a month ago.

Winter's lash falls harsh. Wind bites, snow cuts, frostbite gnaws, Scouring flesh and soul.

The storm drowns voices Blinds the eye, and steals all warmth Nothing left but white.

BLIZZARD!

The Dorbreithan Long Chant spell completes and a bitter chill wind swirls about the slimes below.  Their movements slow as frost forms on the surface of their cyan bodies.  Once that ice spreads inwards in crystaline formations toward the suspended skeletons within, the mimics have come to nearly a complete stop.  That is enough to work with, although it takes Ashan several seconds to mentally wrestle with the unfamiliar spell to get it to cease its effects lest it do permanent damage to the slime cores he hopes to extract for relocation.

Once the blizzard wind stops, it is a simple matter to conjure a barrier thin enough to act as a guillotine above the neck of the devoured coyote and let it fall.  Then it is a mere flick of his wand to draw a wire into existence and reel the falling goo-covered skull up to him.  

Fishing with only conjurations as tools had doubled as both training and a means of keeping himself and Aliaina fed on the road since the early days of his time on Orthon.  She started him off with nets before moving on to hooks and lines conjured directly into the fishes’ open mouths once he learned finer control.  Later still came the creation and manipulation of razor-thin barriers in the place of knives for preparing and fileting the catch.  Or at least on the days when Aliana was not feeling lazy enough to simply drop the catch and a portion of river water into her own complex conjuration combining autoclave, centrifuge, and blender.  In retrospect, getting used to the alleged stew of superheated fish slurry might explain Ashan’s general ambivalence towards the taste of food.

At any rate, it is the experience in dissection and bone removal that is relevant now as Ashan peels back the wriggling semisolid layers of slime from the coyote skull hovering in front of him.  The glass scalpel that appears at the tip of his wand is sharp enough to glide through the minimally digested bone like bread crust and he does so with a steady hand.  He cuts out a square from the top of the skull and pulls it out to reveal… nothing.  Only more undifferentiated teal jelly fills the skull’s inner cavities.

Ashan takes a step back as the slime surrounding and permeating the skull begins to flail pseudopods once more with full motive ability despite still harboring an unabated outer layer of frost.  Ashan flings it outside of his observation perch, back to the ground with the rest of its mass, and takes another look at the scene below him, trying to figure out what he is missing.

More of the slime animals have arrived and more amorphous tendrils like the one that grabbed him earlier are beginning to extrude from the ground.  Strangely, the new arrivals that were not present to be hit by the Blizzard spell also carry a layer of frost cold enough to cause the ambient humidity to condense into a thin mist around them.  None of the creatures seem to be hindered by the cold any longer.  Stranger still, now that Ashan thinks about it, the soil layer here should not be thick enough for a slime or ooze to hide within.  But if there are cracks in the limestone beneath the soil leading to the cave below…

Ashan’s eyes skip over one particular point between the trees, and his train of thought is disrupted as everything shifts slightly, from the movements of the slimes below to the positions of the clouds above.  He tries to find and focus on that spot again, and once more there’s a skip as if a fraction of a second was lost.

Concerning, but he can confirm what that is once he tests the other hypothesis he was building up to.  Ashan picks out the straggler furthest from the growing mass of prey mimics and begins another chant that was once used against him.

Storm's wrath gathering, Glistening blades fall and scourge Earth lies bare, burnt clean.

LIGHTNING!

With the final word Ashan points his wand at his chosen target.  The air takes on the scent of ozone.  His hair rises from the static.  A bolt streaks from the tip of his wand and splatters the slime furthest from the main group, scattering the bones of the hopefully wild pig it had consumed.  

As expected, over the course of the next minute, the slime pig pulls itself back together, albeit sans half its bones.  More importantly, sparks between arcing between other slimes that he knows he did not hit with that spell.  That supports one hypothesis, but best not to rely solely on sight.

Ashan closes his eyes and opens his less physical senses as much as he can.  It is no substitute for vision when navigating, but much like smell or touch, that is not its primary purpose, even if it can augment.  “Looking” down he confirms that the slimes, while barely disturbing the flow of magic otherwise, have become reservoirs and conduits for the energy comprising the spells he threw at them.  Though that reservoir thins in the empty space between the slime animals, “seen” like this it is all one continuous manifestation.  A continuous manifestation that, though dulled and made hazy by the intervening stone, extends underground into the cave below where it flows down into a distinct central nexus.  

Ashan returns his focus above ground to the point his eyes refused to see and finds what he can only conceptualize as a gaping hole in the fabric of everything.  In all his time as a wizard, Bridgewood is the only individual he has ever encountered with such an overdone metaphysical cloak.  Watching and waiting from the sidelines, just like he said he would be.

Ashan is about to open his eyes and act on his confirmed suspicions when another set of presences further out in the woods catches his attention.  They feel familiarly green to him, with hints of orange, and purple, and gray.  Fae, he now knows to classify it as, albeit vastly different in power and temperament from the Count of Curses and Dust.  He thinks once upon a time he simply called them friends.

For just a moment, Ashan allows his expression to twitch into a smile.  Resolve redoubled, he opens his eyes but continues to stare at nothing.  Eyes fixed forward, single-minded and unfocused he holds his wand upright in front of him.  His glass gaze stares through the candle flame that ignites above the wand’s tip and pours his will into it, fuel for the fire.  The glass lotus descends to the ground, unfurls, and fades, leaving him exposed.

The slime animals… no, the singular slime with multiple remote segments mimicking devoured prey does not approach him.  It is too enraptured by that.  Through the flame Ashan can feel its simple mind relaxing just as well as he can see the skeletons surrounding him go limp as the slime nodes containing them begin melting down into shapeless blobs.

It is surprisingly hard not to let himself mirror that feeling and sink with it.

But a motionless, enraptured slime with its core hidden away is hardly progress towards capture and relocation, so Ashan calls to mind the more advanced applications of this spell he studied in Whispers of the Sun, and puts them into practice.  “The Flame of Yearning” that tome from the sorceress Bridgewood’s very own library called this spell, and it is now that emotion which Ashan feeds to the flame.  Yearning for two different homes he cannot return to, one just down the road and the other hardly further yet literally a world away.  Yearning for three different parents he did not choose, two he ran from and one he drove away.  Yearning for four friendships that have already been extended to him, all of which feel varying degrees of confusing and unearned.  Yearning poured into one candle flame that becomes a torch, a beacon.

There is more fuel for this flame than he realized he had.  Once they have been dredged up, it is a relief to feel the flame consume them.  Not that they are truly gone.  The flame is a part of him and it does not extinguish when the spell ends, it returns.  The healing flame came from without as a praise to the sun for providing the warmth of life.  The flame of yearning hails from another world that saw pyromancy as life’s warmth originating from within, and how can one not yearn to connect in the face of a soul bared?

From without or from within, so long as an anchor world mage can hold both as being true both can be called upon.

The yearning becomes the flame that draws the moth and Ashan shapes the feeling into a desire.  A desire to approach, to reveal oneself, source to source and heart to heart.  

Frankly, such an application treads dangerously close to the sorcerous taboo of mind alteration for Ashan’s comfort.  He tells himself that it is just a nearly-mindless slime that he is influencing.  What is more, one might even say that he learned this spell, however indirectly, from the true sorceress Bridgewood herself and now he is casting it with her chosen consort and keeper of her legacy for an audience.  The old childhood dream rekindles and then becomes further kindling itself.

It is hard to worry about much with such a pretty fire.

The flame fills his vision and his mind.  

He has spent nearly half his life with trained serenity.

Calmness and control intertwined.

It is how he keeps his spellcasting precise and powerful.

It was how he kept from going mad when his own mind became incomprehensible.

Falling into the flame feels like such a natural extension of that.

A polite cough from right behind Ashan snaps him back to full awareness.  Awareness of the flame sputtering out.  Awareness of a quivering cyan blob towering over him.  Awareness of a sphere of bones hovering in the center of the slime that is pulling itself closed over a nucleus that had exposed itself to the now-extinguished flame’s light.

Ashan’s stomach drops at the realization that the ball of bones contains at least one skeleton that is human shaped but far too small even for an infant.  While no sign of such remains, Ashan is certain it once sported a pair of gossamer wings.  He refuses to wonder if it ever played with children in these woods.

The slime shudders, contacts, and stretches to fall on top of the tantalizing young wizard overflowing with magic before it.

Springing backwards out of the way is hardly a challenge for Ashan.  Nor is slamming a hollow cylinder through the center of the slime to extract the core like a post hole digger.  Nor is stripping away the shell of bones giving a wall to the nucleus.

Wrapping the slime’s core in a floating sphere and then having that sphere grow a series of inward-facing needles to just barely pierce the core’s outer membrane and send it into a paralyzed state is a somewhat more delicate procedure.  But it is a procedure he has carried out before, albeit not on so large, dispersed, or magic-absorbing a specimen.  Nonetheless, the rest of the slime’s body loses cohesion, dropping the skeletons that had not yet been absorbed into the central mass unceremoniously to the ground.

Ashan lets himself breathe and shiver in the chill that his magic has brought to the late summer afternoon.

“Well done I say.  An expectedly excellent performance.”

Ashan turns around to find Bridgewood approaching him, buttoning his vest back into place, yellow side out once more.

“Thank you,” Ashan says with a nod, “and all due credit to you for the role you deigned to play.”

Bridgewood takes an exaggerated bow.  “But of course.  What is the star without the stagehand?  Or the hero without unseen Fortune plucking the strings?  As I said when we first met, the spotlight is not for me.”

“I imagine whatever enchantment you have on that vest makes that easier for you.”

“Not an enchantment, but a color,” Bridgewood tuts.  “I can never seem to recall the name, but Carnette called it the color of forgetting.”  He pouts.  “She never would tell me where she found a tailor capable of working with xenochromatic threads.”

Ashan’s stomach drops with the realization of why the world seemed to lurch every time he caught a glimpse of Bridgewood.

“In the future, please provide warning before exposing your allies to amnestic elements,” he states.  “Or better yet, refrain altogether.  I have had more than enough of my memory being stolen, even if it is only for a second at a time.”

Had Ashan not been staring him down with a glare, he might have missed the split second of Bridgewood’s mask slipping; of the man in yellow going wide-eyed and stiff as if physically struck.  When the lazily elegant posture returns, the smirk maintains its absence.

“I’ll see that it doesn’t happen again,” Bridgewood says.  The lack of over-acted affect in his voice is as off-putting as his genuine affection when speaking of his dearly departed wife.

“Good,” Ashan replies, wondering what old wound he just touched upon, but still bothered enough to be curt.

The moment passes, the smirk returns.

“Anywhom,” Bridgewood croons, “you go on ahead and get that thing loaded up for transport –” he gestures at the paralyzed slime core floating next to Ashan “– and I’ll be right along after I clean up the leftovers.”  He sweeps an arm to indicate the now-inert piles of goo and bones covering the clearing.

Ashan nods in assent and turns to leave.  A scooping motion of his hand brings along a portion of the slime’s cyan body mass in a separate bubble.  It should be enough to healthily sustain the core for a time, but not enough for it to cause trouble with in the short term.

The walk back to the armored van feels shorter than the trek from it to the cave, even with maintaining a pair of mobile containment conjurations.  Is it that the weight of memory is lighter after having faced the place he left his life behind?  Or is it the ease of navigating from a recollection whose age is measured in minutes rather than years?  Maybe it is simply the benefit of traveling downhill.

Ashan finds the van unlocked.  He opens the rear doors, floats the slime in its two parts into the back, speaks the activation syllables to light up the warding glyphs painted on the inner surfaces of the vehicle, closes the doors, and lets his glass bubbles holding the slime vanish.  If the captured creature is making any futile attempts to escape its new confines, the wards are keeping it muted and preventing the van from rocking.

A soft rustle of tree branches draws Ashan’s attention and he turns around, expecting Bridgewood or another threat that they missed.  His posture relaxes and his wand slips back up his sleeve at the sight of three tiny figures hiding within the boughs of the nearest tree.  A brown-and-white-furred bullfrog with nubbly horns.  A twelve-legged weasel draped across the branch like tinsel.  A humanoid figure barely taller than his hand bearing a moth’s bark camouflage wings.  Beings that Ashan now knows to be Nameless fairies without a court or master.  In hindsight, it is a wonder none of them ever took his old Name for their own.  Or maybe they tried and failed (or were thwarted) and that was one of the six times his memory of the world Backstage was erased before even Aliana found him.

All the same, Ashan smiles and waves to his onetime playmates.  They low and chitter and giggle and disappear back into the woods, safe in the knowledge that the latest monster to threaten this place has been locked away.

He wonders if they remember him.  Probably not truly.  A sense of familiarity may remain, but with how closely Names, memory, and identity are intertwined it is difficult for the Nameless to hold onto experiences which they are not regularly reminded of.

Ashan tears his gaze away from the direction the fairies fled just in time to catch Bridgewood returning.

“Everything’s secure and ready to go I see.  Delightful.”  Bridgewood leans a hand on the side of the van and blinks at it several times in rapid succession before turning back to Ashan.  “As for my end, thanks to one of Carnette’s gifts, I can assure you there’s no longer a trace of our new delicious friend here to be found.”  He pats the side of the van and then pushes himself off with a twirl that set him walking towards the driver seat door.  “Let’s be off shall we?  We still have a crossover point to examine.”

“Indeed,” Ashan says while returning to the passenger seat.  “I presume you have some inkling of which world we will need to attune the crossover to in order to return this slime.  It is not from Orthon – not unless something has changed drastically on that side of the crossover – but beyond that I am less certain.”

Two doors open and close.

“Right on both counts,” Bridgewood answers.  “Yes I do, and no it isn’t.  But…”

Two seatbelts whir, stretch, and click into place.

“We don’t technically have to return it to its homeworld.”

A diminished slime silently surges against the wards, unable to reach the front seats.

“What are you implying?” Ashan asks.

A key slides into an ignition lock and waits to be turned.

“There’s a room in the Manor positively packed with stasis chambers for the sort of delectable specimens Carnette liked to collect for study and preservation.  We could let our passenger hang out in the back a little bit longer while we survey the crossover point, skip the trip offworld, bring it home, and toss it into storage.  Maybe I’d even give you a tour of some parts of the house you haven’t seen yet.”

“That hardly sounds like what we set out to do.”

“Doesn’t it?  What are you implying?”  Bridgewood’s tone hovers between bemused and mocking.

“First you stride into the room and begin handing out assignments for the day without consultation and now you propose keeping a creature you said was meant to be relocated.  Is this organization truly Road’s or do you pull the strings?”

“I assure you, this is my friend’s venture, through and through and everything I do is to support them.  This morning was merely me reporting back with the status of tasks that had been delegated to me.  We’ve been together long enough that we’ve long since reached an understanding about leeway and how I do things so long as certain lines aren’t crossed, and the important thing in this case is that we keep the creature from hurting anyone without killing it.  Storing it in stasis accomplishes that while saving us the headache of interworld transit and ensuring that it won’t ever wander back across the crossover and cause a mess all over again.”

“And Road is okay with this?”

“My friend trusts me enough to not ask questions.  But I’ll leave this one up to you.”

“Why?”

“I’m curious.  What will you do with the options on the table and what will you tell my friend afterward?”

The key turns.  The engine rumbles to life.

“No need to answer now,” Bridgewood continues.  “We’ve got a whole drive back ahead of us for you to take your time contemplating.”

The drive passes back through Ashan’s hometown in silence.  For all that Bridgewood must surely know why Ashan pointedly looks away from the window when they reach an intersection that they pass straight through, the expected remark never comes.  The exposed nerve remains untouched.  In that moment, there is no smirk.

Ashan tells himself he managed not to glimpse the couple taking a walk down their neighborhood street with their young son watching the strange, unmarked black van pass through their tired little town.

He suspects that Sullivan Bridgewood saw them clearly.

*******

“Ashan… If you ever remember this, please know that I’m sorry.  For everything.”

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[blueish-bird]

sorry if I don’t remember your name or conversations/experiences or basic things about myself, every few weeks my brain gets factory reset and I have to relearn how to be alive