#also watch me who has said to finally finishing Black star yet drawing a whole new Sheet on the whim instead-

[chalkanthit]

The main girl!!

[achillieus]

let you down. (sebastian stan x reader)

summary: it's a universal truth but it's worth repeating; feelings eat us raw. or just an actor and a girl falling in and out of love over the course of three months.

(this was inspired by sebastian's visit to greece for his movie, monday, and is based on that, so that means in the story we’re in 2018. also i have this posted on ao3 too but while i’m writing the last parts i thought of posting it here too)

pairing: sebastian stan x reader

warnings: alcohol, sexual references, implied depression, don’t kill me because of the ending, sebastian and reader are the definition of right person wrong time, it's kinda slowburn because i love the yearning, also this part has some funny moments but overall it’s a big SOB

part: 6/6 (there will also be an epilogue)

(other parts)   (masterlist)

This is how it ends: broken hearts from crashed dreams.

Sebastian holds you until his muscles ache and your lungs burn from the feeling of too little oxygen. It is cold and dark, almost midnight, too dark, a starless night.

No more stars for you and I.

“Here,” Voice hoarse, eyes heavy-lid and itching from almost crying. He gives you one of the rings he wore in the movie. “I want you to keep this.”

Keep it close to your heart. Forget me not.

He takes a breath and a step back, tries to regain all the strength he still has, steady feet and shoulders fixed. He digs his nails into his palms, red marks in his skin, air catching in his throat, he’s on the verge of falling but he stays standing.

He remembers tears glistening down his cheeks, maybe they were yours not his, and the cold autumn wind hitting his face and he remembers feeling like he’s dying.

And then he closes the door of Argyris’ car and looks at you.

And his heart stretches and stretches and stretches and then somehow splits in half.

/

It goes like this:

There’s a ghost that lives in your apartment from now on. In the living room. Sitting on the couch. And it has steel blue eyes and a familiar heart. And it whispers a love story, half-finished, and you cannot make it stop.

The ghost touches your collarbone and he’s gone but there’s a ring in a golden chain around your neck and a white shirt forgotten in your laundry. And it smells like him. The clinging scent of his aftershave sticking to your pores. Eucalyptus. And no matter how hard you try to wash it off, it still lingers.

How could I ever forget someone like you?

The ghost lives here, but the place is empty, so empty. And it’s hard not to cry.

/

Sebastian calls and texts a lot.

He tells you he’s tired but excited because he started filming a new movie. It’s very indie and experimental, I can’t wait for you to see it. He tells you he’s missing his days in Greece like hell and that one night he dreamt of you. Didn’t want to wake up. What he doesn’t tell you is that he’s coming back in a month, Argyris needs him for some extra scenes. It’s nearly killing him but he doesn’t tell you. He wants to surprise you, see the pure light in your eyes when they’ll meet his.

/

You try sexting. It doesn’t go very well.

23:50, sebastian: if you were here in my bed right now what would you be doing

06:51, you: probably falling asleep hahaha

06:51, you: oh fuck was i supposed to sext back

06:51, you: sorry seb i just woke up and i have a class in an hour, love you <3

23:52, sebastian: fuck timezones

/

(three weeks and 10 seconds later)

“I can’t believe she doesn’t know you’re here,” Argyris shakes his head as he’s driving home from the airport, “If I were her, I’d kill you.”

“Good thing I didn’t fall in love with you.”

Sebastian laughs and looks out of the car window. The stars. There are so many stars tonight. He holds his breath; he’s finally feeling whole again. His heart isn’t split in two anymore.

/

You don’t know how long you stand there at your door, staring at him, but it feels like a century before he grins, almost laughs, takes your hands in his and you start considering that perhaps this isn’t a hallucination. Perhaps it’s real.

“Surprise?”

Something inside of you bursts, your organs twitch. You can’t think, you can’t speak, but you can move. You don’t lose any more time, you take a step forward, attach your bodies, your face buried in his neck, your fingers clutching into the rough fabric of his jacket. You breathe him in like an antidote.

“How?”

“Does it matter?”

“No.”

You kiss him and it’s like poetry, like art, like honey and you can’t separate yourself from him, not even hours later.

/

(looking back, these were the golden days)

You pretending to be mad at him for not telling you he was coming back and him pressing his lips on your skin, drawing patterns on your naked shoulder. A feathery touch.

Sebastian always touches you like you’re something made of gold and porcelain, something cherished that constantly needs to be treasured. And nobody has done that before. And you love him for it.

You try to decorate your Christmas tree together. He messes with the lights for a while, eventually gives up and goes on to eat too many reindeer shaped cookies.

He massages your muscles when you write a boring essay for college.

You go with him when he has to shoot a “driving a motorcycle naked in the centre of Athens” scene and you bite the inside of your cheeks to stop smiling like an idiot.

He gives you a dress he bought for you in New York.  

“You didn’t have to.”

“I know, but I wanted to.”

He calls you sweetheart in the mornings, still half asleep and later joins you in the shower.

“Why are you so hot?”

“Climate change”

“Oh, shut up”

It’s tender and it’s soft and it’s human.

And that’s the saddest part.

/

Soon you realize that him leaving two months ago was merely a rehearsal and you still haven’t said your actual goodbyes. Your chest starts to feel as if it’s full of crushed glass.

And it’s ridiculous because you fell in love with Sebastian sometime between the first ten days you spent together.

Who falls in love in ten days?  

Ridiculous or not, you know you are in love with him just as you know that sooner or later, whatever he is feeling will fade and wither. Maybe it’ll be in a week, maybe it’ll be in a month, maybe in a year if you’re lucky. But there will definitely come a day when he will step out of a gala or a party or a fancy gym in New York with a beautiful model in his arms and two paparazzi’s following him around.

What will you be then?

A past small cameo in his life. A side character. Will he remember your name?

He is your whole world.

(a bottle of cheap prosecco helps you decide that)

He is your whole world.

And yet, there will come a day when he won’t even remember your name.

/

It was difficult. No, it was the most difficult thing you’ve ever done. Telling him how you think it’d be better if you didn’t talk after he leaves.

“I don’t agree with this.”

“Seb, it’s for the best.”

Your body doesn’t feel strong enough to carry your heart. And you’re certain it will only get worse once he’s away. The world around you will melt. You’ll obsess over a phone screen and his messages. You’ll start chasing ghosts again. You can’t handle that.

“Why?” He says urgently and his fingers dance over the flesh of your palms.

“Because this”, you motion your hand between the two of you, “is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever had in my life and I don’t want it to become ugly.”

He nods, he understands.

“I love you, you know,” he says smiling and tugs you closer to him, “And I may not be here to show you but I think I’ll love you for a long time.”

Your hand grips his waist right to the bones and something flares in your eyes, something wild that wrenches you around.

“I know, I’ll love you the same.”

“Maybe we’ll meet again.”

“Only if I’m the luckiest girl on the planet.”

He laughs and you look at him, fully aware he’ll be ripped out of your life like a page from a cheap leather notebook. And when you kiss for the last time, there’s a hole forming in your soul.

And just because endings don’t leave visible scars to one’s body and soul, that doesn’t mean the scars don’t exist. You know they do, because you feel the aching pain of every single one of them.

/

(every night when you close your eyes you see him)

(every night you look at the stars and think of him)

/

A month passes and Argyris asks you if you miss him.

“I don’t think I’ll ever stop.”

“He said the exact same thing.”

You tell him not to mention Sebastian again.

Two months pass and you need to stop stalking his instagram profile.

Three months pass and you almost text him.

Four months pass and you go to watch Endgame with some friends and you cry. You cry when Black Widow sacrifices herself and when Iron Man smiles at his wife while dying, and when Bucky Barnes appears on screen.

The others don’t understand and you don’t blame them.

Five months pass and Argyris’ girlfriend wants you to meet someone. A charming boy your age with blonde hair and a lip piercing.

And he's cute but you compare him to Sebastian even before he has the chance to say his name. His eyes are not the right shade of blue and he doesn’t look at you like you’re made of the world’s finest jewel.

And he doesn’t know any constellation names.

And then more than a year passes in a second and you learn to not look for him. Not anymore.

/

It’s early March 2020 and despite the rising fear of the upcoming pandemic, you’re doing well. Scars are starting to fade. And after spending two weeks in Prague, your best friend being there with an exchange program, Sebastian Stan is the farthest thing from your mind.

Until he literally comes crashing into you. At the airport.

No, it can’t be him.

You have your suitcase on one hand and a bottle of antiseptic gel on the other. He has two bodyguards on his sides and a black hoodie on.  And while half of his face is hidden behind a mask, you can see his eyes perfectly. A frozen lake in December. You would know those eyes in your deathbed, at the end of the world.

Your vision gets blurry and suddenly you feel cold.

He won’t recognize me, he can’t.

But then he looks at you and every memory you had buried inside of you resurfaces.

He motions to his guards to wait for him and he starts walking towards you. You breathe slowly, one breath at a time. He takes his mask off and you hesitate to take yours, not sure if you truly want him to see you.

You exchange the typical and very awkward hi, how are you, i’m glad you’re doing okay and then he smiles and it feels comfortable. Familiar.

It’s the whiff of another time that you always kept around. A reminder that you were once loved by a god.

“What are you doing here?”

“Filming Falcon and the Winter Soldier”

If you hadn’t unfollowed him on instagram, you’d known.

“Ah yes I heard about that, congrats.”

He nods a thank you.

“And you? In Prague?”

“I was at a friend.”

He looks conflicted, hurt, turns his gaze to his shoes on the grey cement. You want to say something, but you feel like throwing up.

And then he laughs.

“I was right.”

You’re confused, he notices.

“Back in Greece,” he swallows, “I told you this would happen.”

“It would have been an airport, different gates for each of us, but same waiting hall. Or a Greek island, where we’d both be for the summer.”

“I would have found you.”

You remember and you cannot help but smile. He was right. He found you.

“I didn’t believe you then.”

I barely believe you now.

He touches your hair. And his touch is like a knife. And you want to cry. Magnolias under your tongue. A love long lost is whispering in your ears until it hurts to listen. He’s like a magnetic field and you feel yourself drowning in him.

“I bet they’ll ask me a hundred questions about you later.” He says and looks at the two men waiting for him.

“And what will you tell them?”

“That you’re most probably the love of my life.”

Don’t cry, don’t cry.

“There’s no way we’d meet here if you’re not.”

“Sebastian,” His name sounds like a prayer coming out of your lips and you're ready to tell him you love him and you can swear he looks like he’s ready to faint, “I-”

The guards yell his name. And it's the same feeling people have just before a car crash.

“I’m sorry, I have to go.”

One last look.

Don’t cry, don’t cry.

You repeat it over and over again. But you fail.

“No, don't cry” He smiles, one last smile, “Just look at the stars and wait for us to meet again, because we will.”

He caresses the back of your palm for a second and you think your ribcage is shattering but it’s only your heart drumming frantically. Pushing your fragile bones to break. 

You want to stop him, wrap your arms around his torso, never let him go. Not again. But you don’t.

You just watch him leave, one more time, your knees weak, your head heavy and dizzy. For the split of a moment he turns and glances at you but then he’s nowhere to be seen.

Perhaps it was all in your imagination. Perhaps it was nothing but a wonder.

You get into your plane and you silently sob.

/

And then it’s summer.

And you overhear he was seen with a girl, the day before your vacation starts and you find a picture of them together a week later, a pretty blonde girl clinging to his side with a colorful bikini somewhere in Spain. And he’s smiling. And you feel so ashamed. And so stupid.

They say time heals all wounds but they must be wrong because you can’t forget how he used to smile at you or how he used to call you the love of his life.

Was he joking when he said you'll meet again? You bet if you asked him now, he wouldn't even remember saying it.

I’ll love you for a long time.

So long for nothing.

/

i really appreciate feedback, it motivates me tons and also tell me if you’d like to be tagged :) also i’m really sorry if you asked me to tag you and i didn’t  but i lost a lot of asks and the urls of the people that sent them :( 

tagging: @lharrietg @awkward117 @dannaloureen @broccoligf @cutestfangirlvevo @caitdaniels @arymb @buckybarnesishot310 @roguesthetic @itsaliceheree @sara-1705 @dorothea-hwldr @freshfreakoaftrash @drinkfantasy @christinamcdonnell ​@partypoison00 ​ @90ssantiago

[winter-fox-queen]

Small Gambles

Ezra (Prospect) X I pronoun character

I wanted to get this done before tomorrow, my unread – oh Lord – attempt at my second Writer Wednesday.

I might come back and edit it tomorrow.  It’s supposed to be stupid busy for me tomorrow so I might not have the brain for it, and I am so sorry.

Summary:  Ezra gets his new arm from a black market fixer.  I THINK it is a gender neutral reader…my writing tends to be from the female viewpoint so it is possible I messed up.  But I tried to keep it neutral.

Warnings:  Some violence.  Some pain? Blood assumed.  Ezra talking should come with a warning.  

“It’ll hurt,”  I say to him.  “You should get this done by one if the top siders.”

Ezra, his name was, gave me a wry smile.  “While I am aware that the pain will be exquisite, I am most certainly assured that getting back the use of my arm, be it a mechanical one, will be worth these moments of misery.”  He paused, and said, oddly and without any embroidery, “Besides, it can’t hurt worse than when I had it cut off.”

“Kevva.”  I whisper.

“Indeed.”

I’m on the third floor of a tenement in the Downsides.  We’re on my balcony, looking out at the rain soaked streets.  He asked to come out here “So I can day dream of petrichor and the soft lights of the stars while you work your magic” and after several moments of negotiations – where I let his words flow over me like a beautiful, over complicated waterfall, we struck a deal, and I pulled out the best black market arm his money could buy.

Actually, that’s a lie. The arm on my work table was actually a little better than his money could buy.  But I liked his smile.  I liked how he embroidered the air with his words and made the silence gentler.  A person could sit and listen to that voice forever.  

“First, the cap.  That’s the part that will hurt.”  I examined it carefully under the light.  I suspected that this was not the first man this cap had been attached to, but you ask questions in the Downsides, and you die. “This will cover the stump…I mean…”

“You are a being of most direct and forthright language, which, despite my loquacious nature I do appreciate.  It is kind of you to try to make a bad situation sound less dire, but it is not needed, I assure you.”

“Tell me how you lost your arm.”  I start preparing the cap.  The cap was (almost) the best I had, and the part I encouraged him to splurge on, because the arm attachment could be switched up.

There were two jars on my worktable.  One of them was conduction gel which would basically melt the skin to the cap.  The other had nanites who would much more gently and finely unite man and metal.

One had been paid for. One had not.  Which one do you think I grabbed?  I shoved the cap on, gave him a couple of shots to numb the pain and make the nanites work.  He gasped softly, interrupting his story about someone named Cee.

“So, you know, you can get attachments to switch out that will make prospecting easier…”

“I am afraid that you have quite emptied my pockets, dear sparrow.”  His voice sounded strained.  I sat in front of him, put my hands on his knees.  

“Look at me Ezra. So.  You killed this girl’s father…”

“He was stealing my…”

“Oh, no, I get it.  I’d have shot him, too.”  

He gave me a look.  “I have not always been a good man.”

I looked back at my workshop, crowded with junk parts, a bed in one corner.  Rent overdue.  “I’ve not always been good, either.  I think you can’t be good and desperate at the same time.”

“Perhaps.”  He managed to give me a smile, “Is that why there has been a – I do think it is a man – sitting on a motorcycle type conveyance, watching your domicile all this time?  I thought at first he was here for me, but to be honest, I am not that well known around these parts and have not been here long enough to cause offense.”

My eyes flicked up, met his.  I didn’t want to look.  “Is his helmet silver, with a blue star?  Doe he have a jacket with a star, too?”

“Indeed he does.  May I take it that you are familiar with our watcher?”

“He thinks I cheated him. He used to bring me salvage.  He brought me some bad parts and I refused to pay what he expected.  And I told others,”  I leaned forward, took his arm in my hands gently.  The cap was almost set.  “They refused to buy the parts.  Some of them were…well.  I recognized the logo.  They came off soldiers.  Upside guards.  People who put tracking chips in everything.  People you don’t want to catch the eye of.  SO…he wants to hurt me.  So far all he does is watch, but.”

“This is not the most secure of locales.”

“I can take care of myself.”

“Please rest assured, I did not mean to apply otherwise.  However.  Everyone must fall into the sweet embrace of slumber sometime.”

I picked up the arm. It was a good model – strong. Made of metal that was light, but durable.  “I wish I had a sleeve for it.  Something that would make it look like…robotic.”  

“I am not a man given to vanity, my pet.”  He was staring out at the road, watchful but not looking directly at the man on the motorcycle.

I started attaching the fine connections.  I did it with the arm on so I could do some of the work by feel…I could feel the thrum as each bit of the arm started to come online, the metal tendons and gears coming to life.

“Why does it feel so cold, up my shoulder and into my head?”  He asked.

“Is your head starting to hurt yet?”

He shook it.

“It will.  The nanites are making pathways, reconnecting your mind to your arm.”

“I did not pay for that.”

“No,”  I say.  “You didn’t.” Three more connections to go.

“And what am I to do, in exchange for your generosity?”  There was a slight edge to his voice.  The voice of the man who had shot a girl’s father, who had fought and gotten plenty of blood on his hands.  It didn’t frighten me, though I suppose it should.

When you go,  I want to say, Two things will happen. Either I will run, and manage to flee and find safe harbor.  Or I will flee, and I will die, either by the hand of the man below, or by some other desperate Downsider who wants to sell my bits and pieces.  I might as well give you the best I feel I can.  Because I’m probably not going to live to serve another customer.

“You have not told me the whole tale, I believe.”

“No,”  I say, and give into the temptation to rub his back gently, to trace the blonde gash of hair at his temple as I stand up.  “I have not.  But.  I’m done. Let your arm rest best you can over night…that’s why I gave you the sling.  If you can let it rest two days, you’d be even better off.”  I grab some pills off a shelf.  “Blue bottle.  That’s more nanites.  Your system is killing those little builders as we speak.  There should be five pills…”  I check, nod, “Take one a day.  And practice using your arm in a few days.  The more you practice, the better the connections will be.  Take it slow and build up.  The last three days of the pills are the most important.”

He took it without a word, strangely quiet.  His eyes flickered to the now empty road.  

“Red, for pain.  Take when you must.  And now…”  I smiled a little.  “How would you say it?  I bid you a fond farewell, and safe travels as you leave my place and rejoin the great mortal coil?”

He smiled at me softly, and with great, great effort and probably greater pain, made his new arm take my fingers in his, and lift them to his lips.  His good hand clenched into a fist as he shook with the effort.  His new fingers were very, very cold…and his lips were soft and very warm.  A coil of longing like a snake twined around my heart and squeezed painfully, fangs singing deep.

“Take care of yourself, Ezra.”

“And you.”

As the door closed, I grabbed my go bag.  It was already mostly packed with things I would need, and I finished packing.  I slipped my most expensive arm out from under my bed – it was state of the art and came with attachments.  I also had some eyes and other smaller parts I threw into the bag with the last of my tools and nanite cream and pills.  I didn’t intend on fitting the arm on anyone, but I could sell it.  Maybe I can get off world.  Maybe find my way to where the prospectors hang out when they look for jobs.  Listen for a deep voice like brocaded velvet spin tales with seven words when one would do.

I ran down the stairs, out the back.

My watcher was waiting for me.  I should have gone out the front.  Now I was alone, in an alley, with someone who would enjoy hurting me.

“Trying to run out on us?”  

“I owe your boss a lot of money…I was hoping to sell this…”  I raised the case “And with the money I made tonight maybe make a payment.  You know.  Show my good intentions.”

He sneered at me, but I never knew what he meant to say because a silver arm wrapped around, silver fingers gripping his throat, crushing him.  Ezra held him tight as he struggled, the new arm making little whining sounds of displeasure as he lowered the man to the ground.  

“I told you not to use your arm!”

“I am afraid…”  Ezra panted, “That it is not allowing me to let go of this unfortunate fool’s throat.”  He gave me a slightly panicked look.  Not because he (probably) killed someone, but because he lost control.  

“I’ve got it.”  I approached gingerly, pressing the arm in a few places to make it relax.  “The cap’s messed up.  I’m going to have to reset it…Ezra.  Why did you come back?”

“I thought I could repay your generosity by making certain that you had at least one night of relative safety. If I had known you were about to flee…”

We rolled to body against the wall.  I frisked it for useful items before covering it with trash.  

“Your hands are shaking, dear doctor…I am afraid you will not be able to assist me in fixing the problems I so egregiously caused by using my new arm.  May I propose that you take safe harbor with me?  I have a small ship…she is not much but she will get us somewhere else. Anywhere is better than here, I do think you will agree, and there are many who would value your talents greatly.”

I finally ask one of the many, many questions I had been wanting to ask him, since he showed up at my door.  “Ezra, do you always talk so much.”

He draws himself up a little.  “I assure you, I can be silent when the need arises.”

“No.  No.”  I stand in front of him.  “I want you to promise you’ll never stop.”

I struck him silent, again, I think, for just a moment and he just gives me that slight, curious smile.  “I think I can promise that.”  I liked that.  I liked the idea of his words wrapping me in soft comfort.  

“Then I gratefully accept your generous proposal.”  

“Right this way,” he bowed.

I didn’t look back, as I followed Ezra down the alley and away from everything I’d known, and feared.

There was too much to look forward to.

[oloreaa]

Vencuyanir Ch.4 - The Jawas

vencuyanir [ven-COO-yah-neer]: sustain, keep alive, preserve

Summary: Negotiating with Jawas turns out to be easier than negotiating with a Mandalorian

Words: 5.2k

Notes: Thank you all for reading this and giving it a chance! I may or may not have made up stuff about Jawas and made them cute, Elana is being petty and Mando has had a very long day and is sick of it.

Warnings:  canon-typical violence (gun violence), separation from children

▪ Previous ▪ Masterlist ▪ Vencuyanir ▪ Next ▪

……………

The four of them rode through the whole night, the storm thankfully letting up after a few hours and the rest of the night was spent under clear skies.

It was unbearably cold; the wet clothes stuck to Elana’s skin; her limbs were completely chilled through, she was constantly shivering, and goosebumps covered every inch of her body. Her fingers were almost blue, nails digging painfully into her palms but she could not bring herself to loosen them. Elana knew that if the Mandalorian had not given her his cape, the cold night of Arvala-7 would have finished her hours ago, the cold amplified by the damp clothes and the icy breeze.

She did everything to muffle the way her teeth were chattering, burying her face in her propped up knees, trying to preserve what little body warmth she still possessed. From what she could feel, Bean was soundly asleep even after the nasty shock he had received with the violent storm, and she tried to draw some of the fuzzy warm feelings over the bond, wrapping herself in a bubble of warmth. It was like a blanket placed around her, weighing her down and keeping the cold at bay. It felt like a warm rush through her entire body the more she drew on the bond, grasping it with shaky and unpractised fingers, trying not to grasp it too tightly so it would not slip between her fingers like sand. Maybe it was a placebo effect, maybe it truly helped, but Elana had a niggling feeling that without the bond she probably would not have survived the night.

When the sun finally rose after long hours of darkness, she could have cried in joy. The first rays of light were like a tender kiss, chasing the lingering cold away, and with every inch of the star in the Arvala system rising over the jagged mountain range on the horizon, Elana started to properly warm up, able to lessen her grip on the bond. It was not long, maybe a quarter of an hour before Kuiil cleared his throat, and spoke up.

"The Sandcrawler should not be far now, Mandalorian."

"Good," was the only thing he said, voice raspy from the night. Elana stared at what was in front of her, observing the reddish brown rocks bypassing them while chewing nervously at her lower lip. Was it childish of her to hope that the Jawas would not trade his parts back? To hope that they would deny the Mandalorian his request?

It probably would not help at all but she started praying to the Maker, unable to help her own pettiness. Please don't let him get his parts back, please don't let him get his parts back, please let the Jawas be little annoying hellions that refuse him, please, please, please.

Elana opened the pram with still frozen fingers, checking on the baby, who was still snoring, his blanket lying haphazardly across his body. She tucked them into his side to keep him warm, and he just let out a loud snore in response. Bean woke up some time later, cooing loudly as he opened his eyes and frowned at the daylight. Sitting up and peering over the edge, he made another displeased squeak and laid down. He tumbled around in his pod until he finally settled down, burying his face in his pillow. Elana watched in amusement as his ears twitched and his claws kneaded his blankets until he turned around again, sat up, and put on the face of the grumpiest baby in the parsec.

He evidently did not want to be awake and was making that very clear by whining loudly, stretching his arms out to her. Elana was over by his side in a second, and placed him in her lap as best as she could with the cuffs, and she maneuvered her arms so he would be engulfed by them, pulling him close to her. He leaned his head back against her chest, and after a short fussy period, started to watch the sunrise.

The whole sky appeared as if it was aflame, orange melting into gold, the few stray clouds reflecting the light beautifully, and she could understand why Bean was enraptured with the sight. He looked up at her, and pointed towards the sky with a excited coo, and a faint Pretty! was conveyed across the bond. She smiled at his reaction, and rested her cheek on top of his head, turning her face towards the Mandalorian. 

Judging by the tilt of his helmet, he had been watching them, and she just looked back, face blank, studying his helmet. 

It was so simple, she thought. Just plain, unadorned silver beskar with a black T-visor, and the characteristic Mandalorian curve of the helmet at where the cheeks would be. And yet it was terrifying in its simplicity, a warning of its own. It seemed to scream stay away, radiating an uncanny sense of danger that could be due to the beskar, maybe even due to the wearer underneath. Regardless of what it actually was, the fact remained that the bounty hunter was straight up terrifying.

How Bean was not scared of him, she would never know, because even she was scared of the Mandalorian.

 Elana was ripped out of her musings as Kuiil spoke up. "The Sandcrawler is there," he said, pointing towards a tiny visible bit of the Sandcrawler that peeked out from behind some rock formations. 

The Mandalorian sat up straight, and readjusted the rifle resting on his thighs, hand twisting around a piece, making a quiet click.

"The rifle is not something the Jawas will like to see," Kuiil warned, turning around with a frown. 

The Mandalorian scoffed. "I don't care," was the only thing he said, and his hands tightened on the rifle.

It took about an hour more until they rounded the last corner, and the Sandcrawler came into sight once again. Elana had to swallow as she stared up at the huge structure, having been too far away to truly appreciate the absolute size of it. How did creatures as tiny as Jawas manage to build something like that? There had to have been a whole Jawa village hidden inside the structure, every nook and cranny filled with the creatures.

Kuiil started to wave, and spoke something in a language she assumed to be Jawa, but hearing it from a species with a lower register than theirs was jarring. The Jawas started to stir while yells filled the air, and they propped up their blasters directly at them, the hostility in the air weighing down the interaction. "They really don't like you for some reason," Kuiil said while he turned around on his blurrg, raising an eyebrow at the Mandalorian, who sighed. 

"Well, I did disintegrate a few of them," the Mandalorian said wryly, and Elana huffed at the deadpan answer. That was the understatement of the century.

"You need to drop your rifle," the Ugnaught instructed.

"I'm a Mandalorian," he said, "Weapons are part of my religion."

Elana could not help but stare at him. Was having absolutely no sense in diplomacy also a part of his religion?, she snarked in her mind, rolling her eyes subtly. How did he expect to be able to get any of his parts back if he immediately went on the offensive? It was not that she actually wanted him to get his parts back. Elana couldn’t care less about the Mandalorian. It would actually benefit her and Bean if the negotiations failed, and she was glad for anything that would set him back a bit. And if he wanted to be aggressive towards the Jawas, fine.

The Mandalorian was not only severely outnumbered, but outgunned as well. And if they got involved in a shootout, the only one that could be of help was Kuiil, as she was cuffed and her first priority would have been to get Bean to safety.

"Then you're not getting your parts back," Kuiil said, tone dry as bones, agreeing with her thoughts.

The Mandalorian sighed deeply. "Fine," he said, and in that singular word he managed to perfectly convey the level of his annoyance.

The clamouring of the Jawas became louder, and they yelled at each other, crowing voices filling the air. Bean shrank back in her arms, overwhelmed with the sudden increase in noises. The Mandalorian put the rifle down as Kuiil dismounted the blurrg, and dropped down from the sledge, trailing after the Ugnaught. The Jawas raised their guns at them, and Kuiil sighed heavily.

"And the blaster," he spelled out, and with an annoyed grunt, the Mandalorian chucked the gun right in front of her on the sledge, making her flinch from the sudden motion. And it was probably on purpose too, that asshole. Glaring up at him, he had already turned around, the sunlight reflecting off the back of his beskar helmet. She watched as both of them sat down with the Jawas, Kuiil with grace, the Mandalorian begrudgingly.

The negotiations started. 

Elana kept a careful eye on her companions, holding Bean close as some of the other Jawas started to advance, probably curious about the unlikely pair Bean and her made. She was aware that Jawas only stole parts and not creatures, thus she was not overly worried, but she still shielded Bean subtly, just in case one wanted to make a grab for her baby.

"They will trade all the parts for the beskar," she heard Kuiil say.

"I'm not gonna trade anything," the Mandalorian scoffed, venom dropping from his words, "These are my parts. They stole them from me." Then he started to stutter a phrase in Jawa, pointing accusingly at the little robed creatures.

They replied something back in a mocking tone, the only word she was able to catch was "Wookie". Elana inwardly winced, recognising an insult when it was spoken, and with how tense the Mandalorian suddenly became, she prepared herself for an incoming confrontation. But still, she did not expect for him to snarl: "You understand this?" and the blast of fire bursting from his vambrace right at the Jawas.

Even from the distance, she flinched back, suddenly glad that she had not talked back too much if that was the reaction he could have given. Mentally noting that she should shut her mouth in the future, Elana shifted Bean on her lap, who gave a concerned coo at her.

"No!" Kuiil yelled, and grabbed the Mandalorian's arm, "Whoa, easy, easy."

He started to talk in Jawa again, presumably apologising for the Mandalorian trying to roast them alive. The Jawas near her started to creep closer as the negotiations went on, the Mandalorian and Jawas having settled down, and she shrank back from the edge of the sled, slowly beginning to feel worried by the hungry gazes in the Jawa's shadowed faces.

"Get away from them!" The Mandalorian suddenly roared, and she gave a full body jerk at the rage in his voice, heart skipping a beat, the colour draining from her face. The Jawas scatter at the command, slinking away to mutter amongst them.

"There must be something else," she heard Kuiil say, voice relaxed, but she was too busy in calming her thundering heart after the scare the Mandalorian gave her. The Jawa turned around, starting to discuss amongst themselves, then turned back around. Had a solution been found?

The only word she could make out over the distance was "Suga". Elana frowned. What was that?

Kuiil groaned and let his face fall into his hand. 

"The Egg? What Egg?" The Mandalorian asked, head whipping around, confusion in his voice.

The Jawas started to chant gleefully: "Suga! Suga, suga, suga!"

They were quick in ushering all of them up into the Sandcrawler, shouting and crowing as they went, the excitement in every Jawa palpable. The inside of the Sandcrawler was surprisingly clean, Elana thought, the parts that they had scavenged actually stacked carefully and sorted after size and use. Bean was sitting safe in his pram again and Elana kept a sharp eye on the floating pod while the Jawas were moving, parting like water around them.

The sled and the blurrg were also moved into the hull of the Sandcrawler, and as the ramp was lifted, dim orange lights inside flickered on, casting them all in soft, warm light. Shadows lingered in the corners of the structure, and every now and then glowing eyes stared back from the dark, making a shiver run down her back.

"Suga," a Jawa told her, whooping in joy as she hesitantly nodded, and waved his arms around, "Suga!"

Elana leaned over to the Mandalorian, seeing Bean wriggle in his pram. "What does suga mean?" Elana asked, looking up at the beskar helmet.< /> The bounty hunter sighed deeply. "An egg," he explained, "They say it's a Mudhorn egg."

"A Mudhorn?" Elana stared at him, before letting out an incredulous laugh, "Are you serious?"

He said nothing, just tilted his head at her, and she realised that yes, he was serious.

"You do know what a Mudhorn is, right?" 

No response.

Ehe gawked at him, wide eyed, trying to understand what was happening behind that beskar, inside his head. "You know, huge, aggressive, territorial, and not to mention terrifying beasts?"

"What of it?" The Mandalorian asked, tone infuriatingly calm.

"Are you perhaps short of a marble?" Elana barely managed to get her voice under control so she would not outright screech at him, "You want to go steal a Mudhorn egg for them?"

"I want my parts back," he said, voice tense.

"You won't get them back if you're dead!" Elana hissed, her cuffed hands clenched into fists, and she did not know why she was even bothering with the senseless bounty hunter. If he had a death wish, so be it.

"I can handle it." He moved, and was suddenly towering above her, the air around him becoming dangerous.

Purposely ignoring the way he was fuming, she shouldered on, barely resisting the urge to poke him in the chestplate.

"You can handle it?" Elana asked, barely able to keep the mocking tone out of her voice, "Like you handled the Sandcrawler?"

"I lived, didn't I."

She scoffed incredulously, "You fell from a height like that and you want to take on a Mudhorn next? The horn alone is as tall as you are!"

"Cut it out, caretaker," the Mandalorian suddenly snarled, and she flinched away when he stepped into her personal space, oh, maybe she had gone too far, what was it about that flamethrower again?, his anger filled the air, "Don't you have better things to do, like look after the baby?"

Elana gaped at him, fury rising in her chest at his patronising tone. Her trepidation for the Mandalorian vaporized into thin air. "At least the baby has more common sense than you," she said, lifting her chin at him in a challenging manner.

He gave an angry grunt, and his body twitched towards her, which made her flinch back, the white hot anger in her being replaced by ice cold fear once again.

Bean gave a loud, worried coo, and it broke the tension between them. Quickly turning around to the baby in the pram, Elana used the opportunity to put some distance between them, backing away from the bounty hunter as far as she could, adrenaline pumping through her veins. For a moment she truly expected that he would smack her or silence her in some manner, her heart beating fast in her chest at the thought. 

If I had not been this confrontational--

But it was too late, anyways, and the best thing she could do was to stay the hell out of his path. Stomping past her, the Mandalorian barked a sharp question at some Jawas, and they pointed him to another part of the ship.

Watching him go, Elana let out a sigh of relief, and it was not long before Kuiil approached her and asked her to sit with him, clearly having witnessed the fight. But the old farmer did not reference it in any way, for which she was glad. Calming her racing heart down, she tried her best to forget about the interaction, figuring that what was done, was done. Sitting down on a crate, Bean in his pram next to them, she sighed deeply, and looked around when silence fell between the two of them.

Fiddling with the sleeves of her shirt, Elana figured that there would be a lot of waiting around with little to occupy her mind. Kuiil seemed to be content, standing up with a few Jawas after a while and conversing with them, his nodding animated as he told some tale.

One Jawa started to approach her, and Elana kept them in her sight. Sitting up even straighter, she folded her hands in her lap, trying to appear non-threatening, and smiled as best as she could.

The little creature was unnerving, the glowing eyes not revealing what they were thinking about. They kept coming closer, and then started to ask something, voice surprisingly hesitant.

Elana looked at them in surprise, eyes wide, and said: "I'm terribly sorry, I don't understand you."

Kuiil appeared next to her, huffing in amusement. The Jawa started to talk to him, and he replied in the universal Wait sign, one forefinger held up high. "She is asking what kind of baby the child is," Kuiil explained, and Elana startled, completely bewildered. 

"To be entirely honest, I don't know either," she told Kuiil, and waited for the Ugnaught to translate.

The Jawa exclaimed, and then asked something different, head tilted almost shyly, hands shuffling together. Elana could not help her slightly nervous giggle at that, the sight adorable if still unnerving.

"She asks if she can play with him a bit," Kuiil said, nodding slightly, "She's very fond of little ones." Getting Bean out of the pram as best as she could and putting him on her lap, Elana gave the Jawa a smile, and the creature inched closer, holding out a pitch black hand towards Bean.

Bean cooed and tilted his head in a questioning manner before he reached out his own hand to the Jawa's. The Jawa giggled in response and it was honestly one of the cutest things Elana had ever witnessed, and she stared at the Jawa, completely delighted.

"I didn't know they would sound so sweet," she whispered to Kuiil, who gave her a smile in response.

"The Jawas are a fiercely protective species," Kuiil explained as the Jawa started to make encouraging sounds at Bean, "an insult to one of them means the fury of the entire tribe. They are closely knitted together and they dearly love each other."

Elana looked down at Bean and the Jawa and watched their interaction. The creature was playing peekaboo with the green child and Bean was laughing so hard he started to hiccup, making grabby hands at the Jawa.

"They raise their children in communities, and everyone cares for them in equal measures, even if they're not the parents."

"That sounds lovely, that they're all sticking together."

Kuiil nodded, patting her on the shoulder slightly, but before he could continue, the blurrg started to roar, something bothering it. As the old Ugnaught walked over to it, Elana had to think about what he just told her. The Jawa tickled Bean’s feet, and the child laughed brightly, his voice echoing loud and clear through the Sandcrawler, attracting the attention of the other inhabitants in there. With absolute delight Elana saw a few small Jawas peeking out behind their taller companions, looking at Bean in curiosity.

With some nudging from their parents, the small creatures in tiny brown robes made their way to Bean, and started squeaking up at him. Elana set Bean down on the floor, and he started to waddle towards the Jawa children, cooing loudly at them. They seemed to have come to some kind of agreement because they started to chase each other, stumbling over their short legs and clumsy limbs, screeching in delight.

The initial worry about them being too rough with her baby was quickly replaced with fondness as Elana watched them play. It was the first time that she had seen Bean with others his age, and the visible change from him timidly holding back at first to pure unrestrained joy warmed her heart. As she looked over her shoulder, opening her mouth to talk to Kuiil, she spotted the Mandalorian standing near the closed ramp of the Sandcrawler, helmet turned towards them. He was evidently watching Bean having fun. His hands were resting on his belt, and he actually looked relaxed for once. But as soon as his helmet tilted towards her and their gazes met, he tensed up and straightened again, striding over to her. The Jawa children saw him arriving, and scattered quickly, hiding behind their parents backs as they backed away from the Mandalorian.

"Caretaker," he said, not even looking at the retreating Jawas around them, "The kid will come with me when we arrive."

She squinted up at him, anger starting to rise in her again at the tone in his voice. "What the hell makes you think that?" Elana asked flatly, silently fuming.

"I won't leave the quarry on the Sandcrawler with the Jawas."

"Oh, but a Mudhorn is better?" Standing up quickly, she squared her shoulders, puffing herself up the best she could.

"You're not coming," he said, "I don't have time nor patience for your complaints."

Elana scoffed. "Well, too bad," she said sarcastically, "I would hate to miss out on the Mudhorn egg. I wonder how the Jawas figured out that it is a delicacy."

"You're staying here. He comes with me," the Mandalorian repeated, sounding annoyed.

"What do you mean, I'm staying while you take him?" Elana asked, all anger draining out of her as she realised his intent, and she stared at the Mandalorian in disbelief. The reality of what he was asking sank in, and she felt her heart drop at the prospect.

"Exactly what I said," the bounty hunter said, voice dry.

"You can't do that!" Elana exclaimed and shook her head violently, eyes wide, panic bubbling up in her. "He's too small!"

"He's quarry," was all the Mandalorian said, before he strapped the rifle onto his back, and pressed the button on the vambrace for the pram. 

"Put him in," he ordered, pointing at Bean on the floor, who was staring up at them, his ears flattening as he picked up on the tension between them.

Elana picked him up to the best of her abilities and cradled him protectively, turning slightly away from him. "No, he is not going anywhere without me." She started to shake in fear as she realized that he was dead serious, and Elana knew that the Mandalorian could see it. 

"You don't get a say in this, caretaker," the bounty hunter said, making an aborted motion to take Bean out from her arms.

Elana flinched back, stumbling over her feet as she backed away. "Don't touch him," she snapped at him, fear in her voice.

He squared his shoulders, tilting his head in annoyance.

"Don't make this difficult," he sighed, and reached out again. Elana blindly batted out, slapping his hands away.

"Touch my child and--"

"And what?" The Mandalorian snapped back, irritated now, "You're gonna fight me?"

Elana stared up at him, brows pulled together, bottom lip trembling. She knew the level of skill the Mandalorian had, had seen him fighting against the other bounty hunters, had seen his excellent marksmanship, and he had killed all of the Nikto guards. She clenched her jaw, knowing that it was futile to even try to fight against him.

"If that’s what it takes," she croaked out, clutching Bean so tightly it must hurt the little one, but he did not make a noise, looking between them in worry, ears hanging low.

"Don't be stupid. Give him to me," the Mandalorian sighed, and moved the pram right in front of her.

"No," she stood her ground, trying desperately to hold back her tears.

Kuiil appeared, frowning at the both of them. "If you want your bounty to cooperate, you need to adopt another technique," the Ugnaught said dryly, shaking his head at the Mandalorian.

"I don't need cooperation, I need to get that karkin' egg to get my parts back," the Mandalorian growled, "She's staying here, and it comes with me."

He turned to her again, and pointed at the pram, snarling, his entire body language threatening. "Put. Him. In."

"No."

Something in him seemed to snap, and before she could blink, he had a blaster drawn on her, clicking ominously. Elana's heart skipped a beat, and she clenched her jaw so tightly it hurt.

"Mandalorian," Kuiil started to say, but the bounty hunter just stepped closer, the blaster pointing right at her chest.

"I've had a shit few days, and I don't need you to add to it," the bounty hunter said, voice terrifyingly calm, "Put the quarry into the pram or I'll shoot you."

"Promise me he will be safe first," Elana said, jutting her jaw out, ignoring the way her heart was hammering against her chest and how faint from fear she felt.

He just tilted his helmet menacingly.

"Promise me," she pressed, trying to suppress her shaking.

"I'll swear on my Creed if I have to, put the damn baby into the pram," the Mandalorian commanded through gritted teeth.

Bean cooed, and patted her arm as if to say It's okay. She brought the little one up, and pressed his forehead against hers. "Listen to what he says, okay? Behave for him, and if the Mudhorn appears, play the hiding game," Elana told Bean quietly, staring into those huge dark eyes, her own watering and blurring the view, and Bean, that beautiful, smart baby, gave a nod and a reassuring coo. Then, she sat him down onto his blankets, blinking away furious tears, glaring at the ground, fists clenched tightly.

The Mandalorian put his blaster away, and she felt a shiver running down her back as he pressed the button on his vambrace so the pran floated to him. Inside, she was seething, cursing him in every language she knew and then some more. Outside she was pale, eyes fixed onto the little baby who smiled at her, ears raised high in his pram. "If you come back without him, I'll kill you," Elana said, voice tense.

"I'd like to see you try," was his only response as he turned around, facing the ramp of the Sandcrawler.

"You're a cruel man," she whispered, blinking furiously, feeling hot tears threatening to spill over.

The Mandalorian scoffed, half turning his head back to her. "Does that bother you?" It was the only thing he said before the ramp lowered, the sunlight from Arvala-7 streaming in. The Mandalorian left as soon as the ramp touched the ground, stalking across the rocky terrain of the desert, cutting an impressive figure with his rifle slung across the back and the glinting beskar helmet, the pram floating next to him.

Elana stared behind them until they disappeared behind a ledge, cut off from her view. Something did not sit right within her, and she did not know if it was a bad feeling only because of the Mandalorian, the Mudhorn, or everything together. Kuiil put a hand on her shoulder, and she flinched from the contact.

"Do not think that your rage is unjustified," he told her, a deep frown on his face. "He might be my guest, but that was below what I thought him capable of."

She just stared at him, eyes hard.  "He threatened me while I was holding Bean," she spelled out, shoulders starting to shake in her fury, "He took my baby away for some fool's errand, to fetch a Mudhorn egg for Jawas!" 

Elana straightened, fists clenched together, and she had to restrain herself from yelling at Kuiil. 

The Ugnaught farmer had done nothing to deserve her ire, but it was hard, it was so hard to not just simply start screeching, to  let out every frustration she had built up in the last few days. Elana was tired of being constantly scared, constantly dragged around, not even being sure that the Mandalorian would not hurt Bean. The only thing she knew for sure was that Bean was away from her, and probably in danger. There was no way that it would end well.

And she could do nothing against it. There was nothing she could do to help him if something happened. And something would happen, her gut told her. Every instinct in her was screaming that something was wrongwrongwrong, something bad would happen.

In the end, Elana did not know how much time had passed while she paced, bit her nails, fiddled with her hair, doing whatever kept her slightly busy until something flickered across the bond.

Fear.

She gave a start, and her head whipped around to where she suddenly knew Bean was. Some deep part in her reached across the bond, and felt him, sitting in his pram, whimpering to himself. There was an impression of the Mandalorian being hurt. Badly. Heart pounding, she debated over what to do, panic swelling up in her. She was too far away to help, and if it was the Mudhorn, something that could hurt a Mandalorian, she had no chance against it anyways.

Elana was close to ripping her own hair out when another impression from Bean appeared in front of her eyes. Her stomach dropped.

The Mudhorn.

"Bean," it escaped her, wide eyes staring at where Bean would be, miles away from her.  Elana started to walk, her feet taking one step in front of another, slowly and stumbling at first, until she was running.

"Bean!" Elana yelled out, and in her mind she could see Bean turning his head, meeting her gaze. He shrunk into himself, very scared of what was happening. She tried to run, get to her baby, but she was too far away, and Elana would never reach him in time, no matter how hard she tried.

"Bean!"

He stared at something she could not see, lifted his hand, and started to hold.

It was like running into a wall, the breath knocked out of her. She dropped to her knees without realising it, gasping for air that would not fill her lungs.

Elana could hear her name being called, but her ears were ringing too loudly for her to identify who was currently rattling at her frame.

It felt as if every fibre inside her had started to swell with some power, blood rushing in her veins, an instant connection to, well, everything. It surrounded everything around her, everything that was was inside her, an energy field, and it came directly from Bean.

The power flooded each one of her senses, and she could feel Bean straining, shaking as he was holding something back, held an entire Mudhorn back, all by himself and his little mind expanding rapidly around his environment, forcing the Mudhorn to hover above the ground, stay in place for long enough so the Mandalorian could stab it.

Elana did not remember passing out.

……………

Thank you for reading! I hope you liked it!

@mndalorians you're. You're just the literal best. I really don't know what I would do without you. You're is the magic that tells me if I have been writing in the wrong tense once again, if stuff sounds good, and you're constantly enabling me in my shenanigans. Ily❤

Tags: @binggrae-banana-milk @b0n-chann @pisss-offf-ghostt @chibi-liz05 @din-damn-djarin @soldade @yourexcellentboiiii @chaotic-noceur @ezrasarm @hdlynn @mndalorians @over300books @agirllovespasta @crookedmoonsaultpunk @teaofpeach @shadylightbearherring @mitchi-c @concussed-to-pieces @adikaofmandalore @buckythewhitewolfx

[janeykath318]

Darcy and the Prince (Shieldshock)

“I’m going to be so happy when this is over and we can all get on with our lives,” grumbled Darcy, as she helped her friend into her very beautiful white wedding dress, fit for the princess Jane was about to become. Jane had met the Asgardian Prince Thor while visiting the country on a science quest (as Darcy referred to her research trips) and the two had, against all odds, fallen head over heels in love and became engaged a year later. Despite the meddlings, of Thor’s troublemaking brother Loki, they’d made it to the wedding day and Darcy was playing bridesmaid and generally trying to keep Jane from going full bridezilla. 

“Hmm, maybe you’ll be singing a different tune once you’ve met some of Thor’s friends,” Jane suggested, as she was buttoned up. “He knows a lot of attractive, single, people.”

Darcy rolled her eyes and grimaced as she worked on the last few buttons. 

“Ugh. NO, JANE. I do not need that drama in my life right now. I’m gonna finish my masters, then go globe-trotting and enjoy being single and free. Men are more trouble than they’re worth.”

“Sometimes I want to wring Ian’s neck for what he did to you,” Jane said vehemently. Darcy’s last boyfriend had turned out to be an utter cheating scum and she’d ended up with a broken heart, hence her general annoyance with men. 

“Thor and I got our revenge,” Darcy said, smiling at the memory. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to trust again. Don’t be sad, Janie. I’m super happy to have you and Thor and Eric as buddies. Now, let’s get finished so we can get you down that aisle!”

Before she knew it, Darcy was preceding Jane down the aisle and trying not to start bawling. She was a shameless wedding weeper and knew it would be even worse this time since it was her best friend getting married. 

As she blinked rapidly, she took a glance up front where a beaming Thor was standing, along with several other very striking, very well dressed men. She caught the eye of a gorgeous blonde decked out in full prince uniform and he smiled at her, which did funny things to her insides and it took all her self control to not stare at him through the whole ceremony. 

Of course, by the time the happy couple kissed and was announced as husband and wife, Darcy could barely see through her tears and just hoped she’d grabbed the right man’s arm to walk her back down the aisle. 

“I’m sorry,” she sniffled to her unknown escort. “I always weep an embarrassing amount at weddings and these dresses NEVER have pockets to stash tissues in.” 

“Nothing to be sorry for,” a very pleasant voice answered. “I admit, I shed some tears as well. Luckily, I always carry a back up handkerchief. Here.”

A soft cloth was pressed into her hand, and Darcy gratefully accepted it, finally managing to wipe the tears away. Vision cleared, she was able to see her helpful person and let out a gasp as she saw it was the gorgeous blonde princey dude. Up close, it was clear she’d grabbed the arm of Prince Steven, one of the most swooned over royalties to ever grace the papers. 

“Wow, thanks, your highness,” she said breathlessly. “I’m afraid this thing is ruined. It looks like my waterproof mascara is not actually waterproof.”

She held up the handkerchief, which was now smeared with black streaks. 

“Don’t worry about it,” Prince Steven said, pretty blue eyes crinkling in a smile. “Like I said, I’ve got extra.”

“You’re the best,” Darcy blurted, then turned red. “Ohmm….. I’m gonna go repair the damages before they start the pictures. Will you let Jane and Thor know where I’ve gone? It should only take a few minutes.”

“Sure,” the Prince said kindly. “And please, call me Steve.”

Darcy ventured to look back at him, and saw nothing but genuine friendliness in his kind eyes. She fell a bit in love right there.

“Nice to meet you…...Steve,” she managed, a tad shyly. “I’m Darcy, by the way.”

“Lewis?” he asked, recognition appearing in his expression.

“The very same,” she confirmed. “I take it Thor’s mentioned me?” 

“He sure has,” Steve answered. “He calls you his lightning sister and is frequently expounding on your wit, brains, and beauty. I’d have to agree with him. You are stunning.”

Darcy felt herself blush like a tomato. 

“You’re one to talk, Prince GQ,” she sassed, to cover up her internal freak out over his compliment. “Be right back!” 

With that she picked up her skirts and swished off to the restroom, leaving Steve looking after her with great amusement and interest. Darcy Lewis was a very strikingly lovely woman and the blue dress she was wearing greatly flattered her figure and emphasized her bright blue eyes. Thor had tried to set him up with her before, but Steve had stubbornly refused. Now that he’d met her, He thought he’d been an idiot. 

“Are you well, Darcy?” Thor inquired, when she had rejoined the others.

“Yeah. My mascara betrayed me and made me start looking like one of those goth rock stars,” she told him. “That’s the Last time I use THAT brand. Congratulations, by the way.”

She offered up hugs to the happy couple, before they were whisked away for pictures with the official royal photographer. 

Spotting Steve, she casually strolled over and watched a bit as he talked to a group of individuals, who must have been his friends, because he looked so much more relaxed and was laughing and smiling in a very jovial manner. He kept his public persona very buttoned up and stiff, so seeing him like this was utterly fascinating and Darcy was becoming more and more attracted every minute. She chatted with Bruce Banner for a little bit, then helped Jane manage her train in between shots. 

They were so cute together, it was almost sickening. Thor looked at Jane like she was his whole universe and Jane looked at Thor like he was the only man in existence. 

“I want to look at someone the way she looks at him,” Darcy murmured, half to herself, half to the blue and gold clad figure who had joined her. 

“Me too,” Steve agreed, sounding very wistful. 

“Shouldn’t be that hard for you, dude,” she pointed out. 

He chuckled ruefully, blushing a bit.

“I’ve discovered there’s a big difference between starstruck lust, and real love and I haven’t seemed to find the latter yet. Most of them aren’t interested in getting to know the real me at all.”

“That’s sad,” Darcy told him. “You seem like you’d be very interesting, once you get past the whole princely trappings and regal persona. Tell me, Steve, what makes you tick?”

Steve turned to look at her, and she felt like the blue eyes were piercing through her, searching for something. Whatever he saw, it must have eased his mind, because he took a deep breath and started talking.

“For one thing, I’m very passionate about using my position to do as much good as I can, not be just some stuffed shirt figurehead,” he told her. “I’m also very fond of the arts and am in the process of starting an art school for underprivileged kids. I’m hoping they’ll let me teach, because I love to draw and paint.”

“That’s awesome,” Darcy said warmly, giving him an approving nod.

“I also love dogs and help out at the shelters whenever I can.” He continued. “They’re so much more pleasant than dealing with parliament.” 

Darcy laughed at the distaste in his voice, but never got a chance to say anything else, because duty called. They shared a few looks across the room, and Steve shamelessly winked at her once when she pretended to strike a diva pose. 

They didn’t get close enough to actually talk again until the reception, when he sauntered up to Darcy as she was giggling at a ridiculous archery joke Clint had made. 

“Excuse me. Darcy, would you care for a dance?” He asked, holding out a white-gloved hand.

“Y-you’re asking me?” Darcy squeaked. 

“I don’t see any other Darcys around here, unless one of you has something to tell me,” Steve said dryly, squinting at Clint, Natasha, and Bruce, all of whom knew him. 

“Nope, not it,” Clint said, shaking his head.

“She’d love to,” Nastasha answered, giving Darcy a nudge forward.

“Yeah, I would, “ Darcy managed, taking the offered hand nervously.  Steve’s hand closed around hers and she felt a tingle up her spine.

She was in a dreamy daze as the prince expertly guided her around the floor. It was clear his princely education had included good dance technique and he was absolutely courtly about it. 

“Now, Darcy, it’s your turn to tell me what makes YOU tick,” he said after a few minutes of silently gazing at her. 

“Well, I live fueled by coffee and sarcasm, I majored in political science, and I’m not afraid to use my taser on creeps and jerks,” she told him proudly. “Also, I may have a thing for tall blonde princes.”

“Is that so?” He asked, a dangerously flirty tone in his voice.

“Yup,” she admitted. “Which is a little inconvenient seeing as how I’ve sworn off men.”

“That is too bad,” Steve agreed. “Any chance of possibly changing your mind?” 

“I’ll certainly let you try,” she told him, struggling to keep her mind from its fantasies about his magnificent broad shoulders and muscular arms. 

“Good,” Steve said, with another one of his stunning smiles. (If he kept doing that, there was no way she would be able to hold out long.)

“You look like you’re already planning your persuasive tactics,” she told him.

“Well, they don’t call me The Prince With A Plan for nothing,” Steve said, twirling Darcy around dramatically. Yeah, she was in SO much trouble. 

[allreaders]

Ateez finding out their S/O has a tattoo or piercing

Pairing: AteezxMaleReader

Genre: Flush/Smut

Mingi

You just finished showering and realized that you forgot to grab a towel before going in "babe!" You called out for Mingi. You can hear his feet hit the floor. "What's up?" He looks at your body and notice the small tattoo on your inner thigh. "I need a towel, please" you point to the cabinet, Mingi looked back up at you. "When did you get that?" You looked down at your thigh. "My tattoo? A long time ago, Mingi. Can I have a towel please, I'm getting cold." He goes to grab you a towel from the cabinet across the room. "I've never noticed it before? Why now?" He throws you the towel and you dry yourself off. You shrugged while drying your hair "I don't know" you wrap the towel around your waist and step out of the shower. "Do you have any others?" He walked around you looking for anymore drawings. "Um. Yea, i have one behind my ear and on my wrist." You show him the small tattoos you have. "What! How come I've never seen these!" He pushed your hair out of the way to see the tattoo better. You smiled "I'm planning on getting another one." His eyes widen "really! Of what?" You walked into your closet to change into some clothes. "I don't know yet but maybe something involving you, like your name or something. I don’t know yet, it still in process" He hands you his shirt from his side. "Can I choose it?" You put on his shirt and kiss his cheek "sure babe. Let's go!" His eyes widen again "right now?" You laughed "No! To eat silly!"

Yunho

You both went to see Yunho’s family in his hometown because it’s been awhile since he seen his parents and his little brother. Once you both arrived, the first thing you did was lay down on his bed. You shirt pulled up a bit showing your stomach with a small tattoo three fingers away from your bellybutton. He took off his jacket and placed it on the table by the window. He turned around to see you past out. He smiled and decided to join you. He took off his shirt and walked over to you. He looked at you, taking in the moment of his sleeping boyfriend then he noticed the small detail on your stomach. "What the?" He pulls up your shirt, rubbed it with his finger. "Babe?" He called but You were to lazy to open your eyes "mhmm" Yunho laid next to you, placing his hand in your chest. "When did you get a tattoo?" He said in this whisper voice. You turned your body towards him. You slowly opened your eyes. "When I was younger, why?" He looked down at it and rubbed it with his thumb. "Did it hurt?" You moved some hair away from his face. "Nope." He looked back up at you. "I've seen you... You know, naked... Why haven't I seen this before?" You shrugged your shoulders "babe, it's really small and faded, you can barely see it even with good lighting. So don't be mad at yourself for not noticing" he just gave you a pouting face. "Look I'll make you a deal, once you finish with this whole idol thing or when you're allowed to get tattoos we'll get matching tattoos okay." His eyes widen "I want a sleeve!" You just laughed and kissed him "goodnight babe" Yunho sat up "goodnight? It's 1:30! Get your ass up!"

Yeosang

He decided to take you out to eat because it was almost your one year anniversary and he wanted to do something special. "Baby you gotta dress fancy, like black suit and good shoes. Not that streetwear shit you always wear!" You just rolled your eyes "okay Yeosang I got it! I have a suit that I used at prom and I'm going to wear the earrings my mom got me for my birthday last year." He looked at you all confused "earrings? When the fuck did you get earrings?" He grabbed your earlobe trying to feel the hole. "Shit, back when I was younger. Maybe ten or twelve years old." His eyes widen "ten! I've never seen you with earrings on?" You laughed while trying to fix your hair. "I really don't like to have them on, I just did it to prove a point." he let go of your ear "wow." Yeosang started to brush his teeth "baby, you never really taken me out on a real fancy date till now and I think this calls for something special like earrings" he spits into the sink “I’m sorry, I’ll take you out more only if you wear your earnings more... I want to buy you some next time.” You smiled “okay babe” yeosang turns back and continued to brush his teeth.

Seonghwa

You were in the bathroom removing your makeup for the day. It’s also your first time without makeup around your boyfriend so you were pretty scared on what he’ll think. “Hey, babe help me with this please.” You asked seonghwa. He gets up from the bed and walks to the bathroom “what’s up?” He leans into the door frame while he watches you take out some makeup wipes. “Help me take off my makeup, please.” He walks over to you and grabs the wipes from your hand, you jump onto the sink as he places himself between your legs. “Why do you want my help? You know how to take off make.” You just shrugged your shoulders “bonding moment?” He just laughs. “Okay...” he then starts to rub down on your neck “I can’t seem to get this mark off your neck though.” You where confused but instantly realize on what he was talking about “ow! Babe your scrubbing on my tattoo.” His eyes widened “tattoo? When did you get a tattoo?” He scrubbed the makeup around the tattoo off to see better “I’ve always had it... it’s a mark that my little brother made me before i moved out here, so I got it tattooed.” He took out his phone and shined a light on your tattoo “that’s so cute babe! I’ve always wanted to get one but... I’m scared.” You laughed a bit “it doesn’t hurt that bad... its like getting pinched” he took a picture of it. “What are you doing?” He started typing on his phone. “Nothing just telling everyone how my boyfriend is a badass!” You laughed then removed the left over makeup while Seonghwa texted everyone in his contacts.

San

You and San only have been physically dating for only a couple of months and he hasn’t really seen your body because your relationship was built mainly online, so he has yet to explore. You both just finished a hour of workingout and decided to take a quick shower. You took off your shirt and went in the shower room, a couple of second later San jumps in with you “what are you doing, we’re going to get in trouble!” You yelled out “only if you tell.” A small smile grew on San’s face. He place his hands on you hips while yours were covering you nipples. He slowly pulled you into him. You slowly moved your hands from your chest and placed them around San’s neck. San instantly started to suck on your neck which caused you to moan. San laughed “you okay? How long has it been since someone has touched you like this?” He questioned “you’re my first, San.” Something about that turn San on. He started to look at you and noticed the piercings on your nipples. “Woah, when did you get these?” San rubbed his thumb across one of them causing you to twitch and moan a bit. “Oh, wow! You’re sensitive!” San’s look completely changed after finding out about that. He looked like a person who hasn’t eaten in years and finally found food and you where that food. “San relax... stop looking at me like that! San!..” San bit his lip and moved closer to you “San?...San!” You moaned out while he played with your newly found piercings with his tongue.

Wooyoung

Wooyoung and you were trying to see on who can learn a dance the fastest. You both decided on to do (name of song) since it was pretty cool dance and the song was a bop. After a couple of hours of trying to figure a move, you started to get hot, so you removed your shirt. Wooyoung hasn’t noticed since he was to focused on beating you, until your fell on the floor from tripping on your shirt that you threw on the floor. “What happened? Are you oh... um, why are you shirtless?” You just laid there looking at the ceiling. “It’s hot Woo, I just need to catch my l breath” Wooyoung walk toward you and sat beside you. He was starring at the movement of your chest going up and down, then notice a date tattoo below your chest. “What? You have a tattoo?” He instantly tried to rub it off your skin. “Yea it’s your birthday if you didn’t noticed.” He sits on your pelvis trying to get a better look at the black ink. “Really! It is!” He just smiled “babe that really sweet but what if we break up?” You laugh “well it better be for a good reason cause I don’t plan on doing any break ups!” Wooyoung lays his head down on your chest “babe I’m all sweaty!” You yelled out “I don’t care, I want to hug you!” He looked up at you, you see tiers build up in his eyes. “Awe babe.” You pinch his cheeks then wrapped your arms around him.

Hongjoong

It’s been a long day at work for the both of you. Hongjoong was preparations for their comeback and with you were helping San create a dance. Both of you entered your apartment “Ugh! I’m so tired. I just wanna shower, I smell like a dog!” Hongjoong laughs “I never heard anyone say that. ‘Smell like a dog’ can I join?” You wrap your arms around his waist “sure babe.” Hongjoong kissed you lips and took off his sweater. You removed your clothes and wrapped a towel around your waist. Hongjoong just enjoyed his little show. “Are you gonna come?” Hongjoong bit his lips, You teased him by dropping the towel on your way into the bathroom. Hongjoong reajuste himself before noticing the little detail on you left butt cheek. “When did you get that?” You stepped into the shower. Hongjoong starts removing his clothes “Uh, like a couple months ago. I got drunk with some friends... It’s a compass.” Hongjoong gets in behind you rubbing your tattoo with his thumb. “Is it to represent me? Or... what?” You turned around and ran your wet fingures through his hair “well duh! Who else?” Hongjoong smiled and kissed your lips. “Next time put it where I can see it” you smiled “this is the only place where only you can only see it”

Jongho

“Babe!” You grabbed jongho’s hand “they have a pikachu onesie... and an eevee one!” Jongho smiled over his boyfriend nerding out over Pokémon. “Babe which one do you want? I like them both so I don’t care which one I am! Are paying attention to me? Hello! Babe!” You waved your hands in his face “huh? What happened? Nothing... I-I like them both!” You pout “let’s try them on?” Jongho said, you eyes widen “really!” You grab his arm and rushed to the changing room. There was only one large room so you both went in. You started taking off your clothes as fast as possible, Jongho just watched you, enjoying the view of your almost naked body. You turned around half naked and noticed Jongho’s eyes watching your every move. “What?” He just shakes his head “nothing, just watching you... do your... thing? What’s that?” You looked down to see what he was talking about. “This?” You picked at the belly piercing you had. You looked back up at Jongho “yea... when did you get that?” You shrugged “back in high school, a girl was practicing how to do them and I let her do mine” you continued putting on your eevee onesie “why in the name of Pokémon would you let anyone do that to you?” You turned your back to him “zip me up.” He does what you told him “it was free for starters and I wanted to do my ears but I was afraid that she was going to rip my ear off.” You turned to him and put on your hoodie. “You like it?” Jongho smiled and patted your head. “You look like my cute little eevee!” He kissed you and changed into his onesie “Ah! My baby boy looks so freaking cute as pikachu!” You instantly hugged him “okay babe let’s go pay for these and head home” you nod and change back to your clothes.

[officialtrashbin]

Silent Blue

The Black Order Fandom asked for both Corvus/Supergiant and Corvus/Proxima angst, so I put it into the same story. Enjoy!

Rating: T+, implications of sexual situations

***

Corvus didn’t know he was asleep until the sensation of falling jolted him awake. He was seized first by panic and then by the immediate understanding that something wasn’t quite right in the world, and for the first time in years, his heart was pounding with something other than anticipation for battle. Instinctively, he reached over and grasped the sheets to his left, only to find the bed as empty as it had always been. His hands trembled as they bunched up the linens, which felt much too slept in, and much too cold, to have been anything less than occupied by another body in another life.

His mind stumbled, forgetting something that hadn’t quite left him. Whatever it was, he realized it must have made him happy—otherwise sleep wouldn’t hurt him this badly.

***

Dwarf hadn’t stopped looking at him. In fact, Corvus’ little brother had spent all morning nosing about, entertaining small talk and, gods, even made breakfast. Corvus glared suspiciously down at the plate of minced meat broiled in herbs, and asked, “Have you done something that warrants pleasantries to ease my inevitable wrath?”

“No, Brother, of course not.” Dwarf exchanged a glance with Supergiant across the round table, who put her tumbler of tea to her lips as an excuse for an absence of words. “I simply wished to express my gratitude to my favorite broodmate. You’ve been working quite diligently as of late.”

“Dwarf,” Corvus said, “I am your only broodmate.”

“How surprising,” Maw uttered from where he sat at Dwarf’s side, munching modestly on eldroot. “I assumed your species killed the weak ones.”

Corvus ignored him and reluctantly took a seat beside Supergiant. He glimpsed around the table. There was a particularly large gap between himself and Maw, and a red flag went off in the back of his mind.

He said, “We’re missing someone.”

The reaction was immediate. Like being shot or stabbed, not the weapon itself but the impact of it, piercing. Dwarf went ramrod straight. Maw’s unwavering gaze averted to the floor. Supergiant set her hand upon Corvus’ shoulder and quickly told him, “Great Corvus, you worry about nothing. It has always been the Four Dreadlords. What makes you believe otherwise?”

“I don’t…I don’t know,” he replied grimly, rubbing his temple like there was something that didn’t belong in his skull. He wondered if his head always felt this heavy. “I have an unusual feeling in my chest. In my mind. Do you sense it? Something is missing and it troubles me.”

“Stress,” Dwarf interjected.

“Yes,” Supergiant agreed. “That must be it. What shall I do to ease your worries?”

Corvus looked at the bracket of sunlight that spilled through the squared window and fell across the empty spot—the anomaly of existence, he thought: to be around so much so often that even the void of space felt full to bursting, and all nothingness was unwelcome where it had once reigned as everything.

Thunk.

Dwarf’s elbow struck the table. The silence rattled and shook apart, and Corvus was jolted violently from his thoughts. He saw Supergiant was still watching him, anticipating his answer to the question he found himself forgetting. All but his mind seemed resolute.

He speared a cube of meat through with his foreclaw, and ambitiously lifted it to his teeth.

“Nothing,” he lied. “There is nothing you can do for me.”

***

When Corvus became an established hunter, he learned first that the scent of his prey was the same constant as a memory: made distant by time. He could retain his recollection of it just enough to always track the hit. Unfortunately, there was no telling just how long it had been since he last got a whiff of the scent in the room that didn’t belong solely to him. He searched quite valiantly for answers where there was none to be found, taking in the close scents of the pillows and sheets, which smelled like him, but also, something distant. Something forgotten. The foot lockers were full of his clothing, yet ruffled through—items shifted around in a hurry, re-folded just as desperately—but it all looked misplaced, as if there had been a search in haste only to turn up nothing.

He didn’t know what he was hunting for. Frustrated, Corvus gathered his glaive and exited his room.

From the shadows of the corridor, a familiar voice told him, “Searching for what isn’t there is little better than an exercise in madness.”

“Perhaps I’ve lost my mind,” he said. “Tell me, has something beyond my control caused this, or have I truly abandoned my sanity in the pursuit of universal extermination?”

Supergiant shrugged passively. “You received a nasty blow during the Battle of Estobi last week. Your glaive healed your physical wounds, but there is a chance the mental damage was irreversible.”

“Impossible—”

“Is it?” She crossed her arms over her chest and gave him a weary glance. “Or, maybe you have so many thoughts lately, that they are beginning to blur into one continuous consciousness.”

“Supergiant, drop the façade. I can always tell when there is something wrong, and I want my answers. You may give them to me, or I will have them out.”

She pressed her lips into a thin line. For a while they held each other’s eyes, and finally, the woman exhaled a sigh. “Shall we make a deal?” she asked him, holding out her hand. “I will take you along the path you believe has the answers. When we reach the end of it, if there is something there, I will tell you all you want to hear. But if there is nothing, you promise me, you will drop this obsession over thin air.”

“It is not an obsession,” he deflected.

“Agree to my terms or drop the subject, Corvus Glaive. We have important matters to focus on.”

He diverted his gaze to her hand, then back up to her face, and then down to her gesture again. Slowly, he reached forward, and they sealed the agreement with a firm grasp.

Supergiant went to his side. Something shifted sideways in his chest, that uncomfortable feeling again, falling upwards—someone should have been in her place. “I wish,” he said to her then, “I could understand what it is I am experiencing. Tell me—tell me I haven’t yet lost my mind.”

She put her hand on his shoulder. If it was a gesture meant to be reassuring, it didn’t work.

“Not yet.”

***

Supergiant went with him to the outskirts of their outpost on Titan. Corvus followed the tingling under his skin and the scents of everything around him, through almost all the base and along the perimeter, unyielding, even as the hours passed like long shadows beneath their feet. She’d be lying if she said she wasn’t exhausted by his determined push ever forward, but, they had shook on it, so she committed herself to his desperate want for understanding.

They came upon the edge of the plateau, where the ground dipped down into a deep crater, trapping them between a wasteland of stars and the deep earth. Corvus exhaled heavily and perched on the flattened surface of a stone.

“Perhaps,” he said, “I am going about this the wrong way.”

Supergiant crossed her arms again. “I see few options when you yourself do not even know what you are looking for.”

“I—can you truly not feel it? Look into my mind, if you must, I am telling you. It feels as if there is a hole in my chest.”

She lifted her shoulder at him. Her hips skewed right, a stance she only took when her guard was down; something he would know anywhere. The edges of her face were darkened by the shadow within her hood, giving her abyssal eyes the same context as the sky above them, which seemed to yawn open and swallow them whole, its maw spanning the far flanks of the horizon. Corvus was rendered still by how far away everything seemed—even Supergiant, who stood a mere stride out of his reach—and he corkscrewed his eyelids shut and tried to focus on the sensation. He’d been here before.

The nights on Titan were frigid in this hemisphere. Something spoke in the back of his mind of concern for Supergiant and he asked her, “Aren’t you cold?”

“No,” she said plainly. “I am never cold. My suit is thermo-insulated, as it’s supposed to be. Even if I was, what are your intentions to deal with it? Take me in your arms and stifle me with your own torrid heat?”

He furrowed his brow and said, “You sound biting.”

“Irritation is a natural reaction to those who waste my time, Corvus Glaive. If you’re quite finished being convulsed with melancholy, I would appreciate returning to our duties with the Order.”

Corvus rose to his feet and went to her. “This was your idea,” he said thinly. “You refuse to admit to whatever it is you know, and for that, you are wasting your own time.”

“There is nothing to say,” she struck back. After a moment she added, gentler this time, “Corvus, please listen to me. Why do my words fall so helplessly on deaf ears? Have I ever led you astray?”

“You haven’t—”

“Then why are we still out here?”

He reached a clawed hand upwards, sliding delicately under the hem of her hood to cup her cheek. She felt jagged, more than he was anticipating, and much to his surprise she allowed him the unprofessional closing of their distance. Her expression softened.

“You have my apologies,” he said. “You—you are right, Supergiant. I am worried about thin air. We’ve come all the way out here, yet I’ve failed to locate what upsets my spirit. Still, if I might—if I might try something, before we turn back.”

Supergiant glimpsed at his mouth, split half-open to reveal jagged teeth that looked sharp enough to tear flesh, then back up to his deep eyes. “If it will give you rest, do as you wish.”

He leaned in and touched his lips to hers. She went rigid. He was quite warm, quite gentle for the General of the Mad Titan Thanos. His affections were tender when his methods were not. Subconsciously, Supergiant’s hands went to his hips, drawing him closer, relaxing into him as he deepened the kiss. She tilted her chin, he slid his tongue in; teeth, rough against her lower lip, but she couldn’t grasp the dangerous sensation of being this close to them because he quickly broke off, set his shoulders, uneasy, and receded away.

She went pointedly quiet. They had barely kissed for more than a few moments but she was winded, and so was he, panting evenly, trying to control it. He put the meat of his palm to the corner of his mouth and caught the dripple of spit that might not have been only his.

“Corvus,” she said, her voice unreliable, as if he might find something else beneath it, “why did you do that?”

“I wanted to,” he replied. “I awaken from these dreams I cannot remember, dreams of blue and war and death. Will you…help me understand it?”

“You know what you ask of me.”

“Do I? It seems there is a lot I do not know.”

Supergiant looked at him pensively. He wanted to press for answers but didn’t know which way to go to gaze underneath the blanket over her words. She spoke like the depressed key of an old piano. There was something not quite right underneath.

“I have never been with anyone else before.”

“I know. You may reject my offer, if you wish.”

“No, it’s—” She looked like she had more she wanted to say, but instead she told him, “That is fine, Corvus, just not here.”

“Of course,” he said, gazing into the noir mists of her eyes. He thought of unseen places beneath cold, soft earth.

He took her hand in his and led her back the way they had come.

*** 

They wound up back in his bedchambers, despite her attempt at persuading him to hers, and Corvus felt how rigid she went when she gazed upon the bed. That was an answer to one of his questions: she knew something he didn’t, but she was giving him information out of order, further jumbling his mind as it tried to piece together where, exactly, the lines became cracks. It was a challenge to play mind games with a parasite. She was in his head always, even when she didn’t mean to be. It made him feel inadequate.

He took her cheek in his hand and said, “You may still change your mind. I will never think any differently of you.”

“I will be—fine,” she forced out. “Fine.”

Corvus nodded. Slowly, he kissed her, and it felt like he was awakening again—the jolt, heart slamming against the cage of his chest, hands trembling. He reaffirmed his mouth on hers but it was difficult to focus on the sensation when his chest hurt so terribly. Maybe he was dying. Still, he thought of: his lips on the expanse of blue skin along a soft inner thigh, his hands prying legs open, a delicious wetness on the flat of his tongue.

“Have we done this before?” he asked.

She startled, caught off guard. Corvus knew that meant she had to stop thinking about everything, which the Order couldn’t afford to do, and there was a terrible coldness that lanced through his chest. “No,” she answered quietly, “I told you that I have never been with anyone else before.”

“Then why is this familiar to me?”

“We haven’t—” Something was going awry. The surreal isolation of the dark enveloped her, and she stumbled over her own thoughts. “Are you—Corvus, what did you remember?”

Oh. No, no no no.

She wasn’t supposed to say that.

In a flash, Corvus threw himself away from her, slamming her back-first into the wall, and he was screaming. “What did you do, Supergiant?! What did I—who, did I forget?!”

She steeled herself, eyes blown wide open despite how she pushed back against his unholy strength. “Corvus, unhand me! This isn’t—”

“Answer me!”

“I did what you told me to do!”

“What did you do?!” He fisted her cloak and slammed her back again, his terrible, animalistic nature ripping its way out from under the surface of his skin. She was jolted against the wall, something popped in her chest and she felt an intense warmth spread through her torso, as if someone had cracked an egg and let it ooze inside of her.

“Corvus, listen to me! You do not want this! Let it go.”

“I can’t!” He shrieked, flying into a frenzy. “How dare you! How can you stand there and ridicule me without remorse? You, who tore my mind in two and have the audacity to tell me to let go! Let go of what, Supergiant? Let go of who?!”

Supergiant fisted her hands in the collar of his cloak, but she succeeded only in bringing him closer, his malicious expression close enough that he could snap his jaws and take her throat out.

A single, traitorous tear gathered at the corner of her eye.

She whispered to him, “You do not want this.”

“You have no right to say otherwise! Tell me what you’ve done to me! Tell me who! Tell me why!”

Defeated, she raised her hand to his forehead and gave him what he wanted.

***

 The crack of lightning. A wall of blood.

Then, blue.

 ***

 Her name was Proxima Midnight.

She was everything, and then she wasn’t.

 ***

 He opened his eyes, winded and brimming with satisfaction, and then—blue. A fan of azure hair filled his peripheral vision. “Midnight,” he said desperately, “my love,” but the pain of all that existed outside the space between them became a distant ache. Wherever he had been before this was made inconsequential in her presence.

Proxima reached across the thin ravine between their bodies and pulled him into her. That was how this went for someone like him: surrender, embrace, accept. His lips dipped into the divot of her neck, and he took in the scent of their after-sex, bodies slick with sweat, his hand falling complacently on the dip of her stomach. He splayed his fingers across her skin.

“My love,” she uttered, “what crosses your mind?”

“It is in these moments that I wish the nights were longer,” he whispered, his voice reverberating through the deep chasm of the memory. “I can never get enough of you. Is that a strange feeling to have, even though we are together most days?”

She said something to him, but it faded. Distant. Incoherent.

 ***

 When the noises faded back in, he opened his eyes once more. She was looking up at him, beyond him. Over the horizon, he heard the screams of the falling, the Outriders and armies of Thanos bringing slaughter and conquest through the city. Something wet slid dangerously through his fingers.

“My love,” he said, “do not leave me alone. The nights are so, very long without you here.”

She didn’t answer him.

It was difficult to speak, he realized, with only half a body left.

As the fires burned around him, Corvus dipped his head into the crook of her neck and took in her scent. Ash, blood, the electricity of the air. There were no words for it, only that aroma of familiarity.

She smelled like home.

 ***

 “Enough!” He shouted, slamming Supergiant back by her shoulders. She cried out as another stab of acute pain shot through her chest and broke her hold over him fully. “Why did you take her from me?!”

“You asked me to!” Supergiant shot back. “You told me to erase your memories!”

“Why would I do that?”

“You know damn well why, Corvus Glaive!”

They fell into silence, the proverbial tension of ragged breathing and wanting to say more but having said it all already. Gradually, as his memories returned, his resolve crumbled and he moved forward on reflex, taking Supergiant in his arms. He dropped his head into her shoulder. She pressed her hands to his back. For a long while they held each other, unsettled and quiet as the darkness.

“The nights are long,” he muttered. “They are unending.”

“Shall I take it all away?” she asked. She had asked it then, too, after the burial. He recalled that now, like déjà vu, the sensation of living through the present all over again. Back then, he had said yes because it would have made things easier. Now. Now, he wasn’t so sure.

“No. Not…not yet—let me see her, one last time. I have to see her. I have to tell her—”

“Corvus, you mustn’t do this to yourself. Let me take it away…for good this time.”

“Please.”

Supergiant sighed, her breath unnaturally cold, even through the thick material of his cloak. She lifted her hand to the back of his skull and gave him what he wanted.

 ***

 When he went under, coaxed into sleep by her power, she guided his body to the bed and set his head against the pillow. The tear burned a terribly hot path down the furrow of her cheek. She smeared it away with the back of her sleeve and went to the door, where Dwarf and Maw had heard her mental call sent out, and gathered now in the alcove. “He is asleep,” she said to them, casting her hood up. “Not for long…though I may prolong the effects, if you so wish.”

“I knew this would never last,” Maw said.

“We need Corvus at his best,” Dwarf added, “but I do not—I cannot allow you to execute the fallback policy.”

Supergiant scoffed humorlessly. “We are without other choices.”

Maw and Dwarf looked at each other pensively.

“Are you certain this is what you want?” Dwarf asked. His words were like a bruise, swollen and ugly with the truth of what happened here. It hurt to touch. To know what resided beneath.

“No,” Supergiant said, “but it is what I must do.”

Maw exhaled. “This feels quite unnatural.”

“It is what he wanted, when we took our vows. Do you forget?”

Maw was in pain too. They all were. Death was what they had all sought yet Proxima was the adhesive that kept them together, before it, but for what came after—they didn’t yet know. There no one way to explain how hard they had all taken it, how personal this was. Supergiant had once fallen off a cliffside, head-over-heel, down the steep incline and that was what it felt like now, to cope with the agony of losing her: the tilted carousel of motion, the sharp jabs of pain in her back and stomach and shoulders, the incoherent blur of sky and ground that couldn’t be deciphered one from the other.

“In the morning, things will be different,” she said. “Please, leave me to do my work.”

Maw went first. Dwarf didn’t go until Supergiant shut herself back into Corvus’ bedchambers. His opinion, all he wanted to say to her, was pillowed under the surface of his chest. Supergiant told herself it was for the good of Thanos’ dreams. That was what mattered.

She would do all that was necessary to preserve the Order.

 ***

 Corvus didn’t know he was asleep until the sensation of falling jolted him awake. He was seized first by panic and then by the immediate understanding that something wasn’t quite right in the world, and instinctively, he reached over and grasped the sheets to his left. His hand met Proxima’s, and she stirred, startled, as he grabbed hold.

“What is it, my love?” she asked him, rubbing the weariness from her eyes.

He turned his head to face her. “Midnight, my dear Midnight…I had the most terrible dream…”

She put her hand on his cheek. “Ssh, I’m here.”

“But for how long?”

“Always,” she said, stroking the arch of his cheek with her thumb.

Slowly, the stillness of the night settled over him. He pulled her close, burying his face in the crook of her neck and trying to remember her scent. It was all desperation. The love he wanted to give her forever, the love he never wanted to forget—all was rendered silent in his mind, coursing through him as gently as the wind. Here, he felt alive, and safe.

“Always, my love,” she repeated, more firmly. Her hand went to the back of his head to hold him close. “Even worlds apart, we will find each other again.”

Corvus realized he couldn’t open his eyes. Sleep was overtaking him, even as he dug his fingers into her back to anchor himself to her, to this, to right here and right now.

“I don’t want to let you go,” he whispered against her skin. “Please, Midnight—”

Proxima’s voice was cold steel, always the one certainty in his life. Hands against his skin, lips to his forehead. She was everything.

“Sleep well, my love. There is nothing left for you here.”

***

 He awoke to an ache in his temples and a deep pang of fear in his chest, but as quickly as the feeling lingered it dissipated, and he knew immediately that he had been dreaming. That was unusual, for someone like him.

Turning over in bed, Corvus was met with the familiar visage of dark eyes and blue skin, and he saw she was already awake.

“Wife?” he said, attempting to brush the bangs from her face, only to find she was without hair. Ah, how silly of him. Instead his fingertips traced the arc of her cheek bone downwards, to the curve of her chin.

“Good morning,” Supergiant said, turning her head to gaze at him. The warmth in her eyes returned. “You look tense. What is it, my love?”

It felt like he was forgetting something.

Corvus furrowed his brow, perplexed, but found that all was right with the moment and smiled, taking her hand in his.

“I just had the most terrible dream…”

[positivelyominous]

Oxfordshire - 2008 AD (Again)

(Previous) (First) 

Azruba’al stumbled hastily out of the cab and tugged nervously at his bowtie. To remove at least a little complication from the evening, he had assumed the form he’d first met the current generation of Sisters in. Cutting around the back of St. Beryl’s Church, Azruba’al jogged to the rear entrance, clutching the picnic basket tightly in his arms. There was a man sitting on the little terrace there, next to the dustbins, smoking a pipe and looking troubled. He glanced up at Azruba’al as he approached and made to greet him.

“Er, hullo–“

“So sorry, can’t stop to chat, very late.”

The man next to the dustbins watched the other man’s form disappear into the building. He let out a small, helpless puff of smoke. First the unexpected contractions, then the oddly behaving staff, and now some strange fellow in a big coat rushing through the back doors with a picnic basket. Mr. Young had liked the look of the hospital when he’d brought his wife inside; it was clean and modern -but not too modern- and the presence of the nuns gave it a warm, serene feeling. But now he was wondering if everything was all right after all…

⧗

“Blast that stupid machine,” Azruba’al snarled under his breath, striding through the empty hallway, “Half an hour late, I am half an hour late! Please don’t have started without– well, they wouldn’t, would they? I mean they couldn’–“

He was so lost in his own thoughts that he nearly ran right into a black-robed figure coming around the corner.

“Oh! Good grievance, I–“

“Master Azruba’al! You’ve come at last!”

The demon in question straightened up, a look of relief brightening his pudgy features.

“It’s so nice to see you again,” said the nun, who was known amongst her Sisters as Mary Loquacious*, and was preparing to live up to her name, “I was barely out of Sunday school the first time– Hell’s teeth, you haven’t aged a bit! I–“

“Yes, yes, it’s lovely to see you again too, dear girl,” Azruba’al interrupted, quickly. He knew what would happen if he let her pick up steam, “I am rather late, I believe?”

“Oh yes, forty-six minutes and twenty-six seconds exactly,” Mary replied, with a cursory glance at the watch pinned to her breast.

Azruba’al scowled, “Right, you’d best be quick about it, then.”

He pressed the basket into Mary’s arms, “Here he is. Get him to the Cultural Attaché as quick as you can.”

“Oh my star– this– it’s him? The Adversary? Destroyer of Kings? Angel of the Bottomless Pit, Great Beast that is Called Dragon, Prince of This World, Father of Lies, Spawn of Satan and Lord of Dark–“

“Hell’s sake, yes! Yes, it’s him, now hop along, there’s a good girl,” cried Azruba’al, nearly pushing the woman back around the corner, “We don’t want him to be forty-seven minutes late, do we?”

“Of course not, Master Azruba’al,” said Mary Loquacious, lifting one of the lids of the basket to peek at the Long String of Epithets That We Shall Hence Refer To As The Adversary, “Ohh, look at him! He’s got his daddy’s complexion!”

“They’re all like that at first,” said Azruba’al absentmindedly.

“No horns, though,” she remarked.

“I’m leaving, now,” said Azruba’al, letting go of the woman’s shoulders.

“Too young for fangs, and– oh! Yes, Satan keep you! Good night!”

Azruba’al was gone before she’d finished speaking. Mary gave a little shiver of excitement and bustled quickly down the hall. She could hardly believe it. Here she was, Sister Mary Loquacious-You’d-Best-Not-Get-It-Wrong-Again, cradling The Adversary. For all her years as a Satanist -which were indeed all of them, having been born into the faith- she’d never imagined that she would be at the thick of their greatest hour. No more tea-and-cookies duty for her. Speaking of, she’d meant to take a tin to the American Cultural Attaché…

“There you are!”

Sister Mary’s thoughts were interrupted by the arrival of a very flustered Sister Grace Voluble.

“They’re getting antsy in there, they think something’s wrong! Have you got the– oh, for Hell’s sake, Mary, just a tin! They don’t need a whole picnic!”

Mary glanced down in confusion before puffing up a little, smugly, “I don’t have cookies. I don’t have a picnic, either. What I’ve got is the One We’ve All Been Waiting For, The Adversary, Destroyer of Kings, Angel of––“

“Oh, thank the Fallen One,” interrupted Sister Grace, making to snatch the basket out of Mary’s hands.

Mary drew away, indignantly, “Master Azruba’al has entrusted me with the Child.”

Sister Grace looked as if she was about to argue, before thinking better of it.

“Well you had best get him to the nursery and tag him so we can deliver him to his ‘parents’. We can’t pretend to be weighing them forever.”

Mary nodded primly and marched towards the nursery.

There is a game teachers use to explain probability to their pupils. Each child receives a chart and a bag with a variable amount of red and blue tokens inside. They are instructed to remove a single token from the bag without looking, note its colour on the chart, then put it back in and repeat to their hearts content†. The point of the exercise is to show that the probability of drawing a red token or a blue token changes depending on how many of each token there are. For example, if there were two blue tokens, and one red token, it would be less likely to draw out the red token without looking. It would be even less likely, say, if someone painted the red token blue by mistake. Even if you were looking straight at the tokens, you wouldn’t be able to tell them apart.

There were three rosy-pink babies in three blue swaths resting in three hospital bassinets. Sister Mary had just wheeled in the last one, the most important one, and was heading towards the worktable for a pen and a tag. At that moment, another Sister entered.

“Mary! What are you doing in– oh! That’s all three, thank Bowels, we can finally send them off!”

Before Mary could protest that she hadn’t tagged the Adversary yet, and what if he got misplaced, the newly arrived Sister was chivying her out of the room, insisting she get those biscuits.

Mary let out a deep, disappointed sigh as the nursery door slammed behind her. Well. At least she’d get to meet the Cultural Attaché.

⧗

Mr. Young had returned to room three by this time. He found his wife asleep, and no baby to speak of. Luckily, a nearby nun explained that the child had been taken away to be examined, and Mr. Young decided it best to retire to his wife’s side in case she woke up and panicked in the interim. By the time his son was finished being ‘examined’ and was delivered into the grateful arms of a flustered Mrs. Young, Mr. Young felt as if he’d been there for an eternity. And it was about to get longer.

“Hello! Oh, your Lady wife’s awake, then, good!”

Another nun was bustling into the room, bringing with her a tin and the air of someone who was about to sit down for a long, enthusiastic chat.

⧗

Harriet Dowling was laying in a cot in room four, surrounded by a complement of six security men in imposing black uniforms. One of them was carrying the latest and greatest in videotelephone technology, through which Harriet was meant to see her husband, the American Cultural Attaché. Thaddeus Dowling was technically on the line. He just wasn’t there visually. Spiritually, he was sandwiched next to his wife with a cool cloth and a strong hand to squeeze. Physically, he was on a business trip.

It was Sister Faith Prolix who was the first to congratulate Harriet, and, coincidentally, the first to suggest a name for the baby now cradled comfortably in his mothers arms.

Wormwood was a bit unconventional, yes, but the kindly Sister Faith was ever so convincing. Besides, Harriet didn’t much feel like naming the child ‘Thaddeus’ at that point.

⧗

The demon Azruba’al hurried through the night, too distracted to even think of calling another cab. He needed to make an urgent phonecall. A phonecall his people wouldn’t be too pleased about, but hopefully one they’d never discover.

⧗

There was a third baby. It didn’t have a tag, and presumably, didn’t need one.

Sister Constance Pleonastic had it in the backseat of the church’s old station wagon, driving it down the darkened midnight road. There were only two families, after all.

“I really can’t believe it’s finally come,” she prattled on to herself, faithfully upholding her convent’s chiefest tradition, “What a time to be alive. My grandmother would have killed to be in my place… if those Warrens hadn’t got her first.”

There was an orphanage in the nearby town. There was also a lake. The baby in the backseat was growing fussy. It could feel that something was wrong, somehow. This was not the same dark, rumbling thing it had been in before, and the endless, droning voice did not belong to the gentle hands that had wrapped it in soft blue.

It wasn’t quite ready to be the The Adversary, Destroyer of Kings, Angel of the Bottomless Pit, Great Beast that is Called Dragon, Prince of This World, Father of Lies, Spawn of Satan and Lord of Darkness. It wouldn’t be for another eleven years. It did, however, possess something of a defence mechanism to ensure that it at least had a chance of getting there.

And so it was that at that moment precisely, a large black cat came padding out of the bushes on the side of the road and into Sister Constance’s headlights.

The cat yowled. The station wagon swerved.

GOOD EVENING, SISTER CONSTANCE, said Death, helping a very dazed Sister Constance Pleonastic up from her body, I AM SURE YOU ARE VERY DISAPPOINTED. BUT TAKE HEART THAT YOU WILL STILL HAVE A SEAT TO THE FINAL SPECTACLE, EVEN IF IT IS LOWER THAN THE ONE YOU HAD PREVIOUSLY.

After sending the unfortunate woman on her way, Death was preparing to leave for his next appointment when something else at the scene caught his attention. Not a death; those were a constant everywhere you went. Creatures big and small; something was always dying. No, this thing was quite unorthodox, as it existed in the living world. There was wailing from the backseat of the ruined car. A wailing that Death would have ignored, had it not come from this particular source.

Death knelt in the wreckage, gently pushed aside the cushion of airbags, and lifted a blue bundle into his arms.

I DID NOT EXPECT US TO MEET SO SOON, he said, thoughtfully, as the child immediately quieted in his embrace, BUT I SUPPOSE IT IS NOT AGAINST THE RULES. I HAVE YET TO RIDE. AND YOU HAVE YET TO CALL ME.

Even still, the child needed protection. It needed a home.

Without another word, Death drew a pitch-black wing of oblivion over the infant, and the both of them disappeared, leaving nothing behind but the smouldering wreck.

———————————————————————————————————

*It was called a Chattering Order for a reason. To explain it properly, however, one would have to do the authorial equivalent of joining up. Hopefully, the name says it all.

†Certain hearts grow content faster than others.

[setaripendragon]

The Light of a Pole Star - Part 1

This idea just sort of possessed me after that Royed Soulmates fic I wrote. Because there was one version of soulmates that wasn’t on the prompt list that I really, really love; Reincarnation. And then I thought of how amazing that would be in FMA in general, and then this happened. Idk how many parts there’ll be (four? five?) but I’ve got the whole thing pretty much finished, I just gotta fix a few scenes and figure out how to split this monster up XD Disclaimer: I watched FMA and FMA:B a long time ago, and I never actually finished either of them anyway, so although this is meant to be sort of canon-divergent, I probably messed up somewhere. (There are also some little nods to some of my favourite fanfics out there, including Son of the Desert, because it’s amazing.)

Ed shouldn’t remember. Oh, there’s all the stuff the Gate shoved into his head that he remembers and Al doesn’t, and he probably shouldn’t remember that either, but that’s not- That is so far removed from him, such impersonal knowledge. It’s the same – he figures, anyway – for anyone who passes through the Gate. Just knowledge drilled into them soul-deep and agonising. It’s fine.

It’s the memories that bother Ed the most.

Because he shouldn’t remember. He shouldn’t remember what Aerugonian wine tastes like, and he shouldn’t remember the customs of the Imperial Xingese Court, and he shouldn’t remember the exact combination of old parchment, dusty leather, and warm sand smells that permeated the Great Library of Xerxes. He’s never even left Risembool. He shouldn’t remember how to navigate Aquroya’s canals, or the back streets of Central City’s slums. He’s Edward Elric, and yet he also remembers being Natan bin Mordechai, and Yi Feng, and Leon Blackburn, and Lucia Guardia, and Proteus of Atossa.

It’s too much for his eleven year old mind to hold. Centuries of memories, so many different versions of eleven. Eleven in Xerxes had been less than half way to adulthood, but eleven in Drachma had been old enough to start work as an apprentice. Sometimes he loses his childhood in Risembool in amongst climbing through Xingese orchards and scampering across the flat roofs of Ishval.

It isn’t until someone grabs him by the front of his shirt, hauls him up and shakes him, and he looks up into coal black eyes that he comes back to himself. Because he knows those eyes. In different shapes and colours across the centuries, they’ve been there. They’d met in a library, in a sickroom, in a workshop, in an alley, in a bar, in the market, in a temple. So many differences, so many variables, but Ed – his name is Edward Elric – latches onto the soul underneath, which has always remained constant.

It’s the anchor he needed. Even after Mustang’s left, it’s just easier to put the pieces into the right places inside his mind. He drags himself out of the mire of centuries, and demands automail from Granny. He can do this. He doesn’t know how, because he wasn’t always an alchemist – how could he not always have been an alchemist?! – but he’s going to get Al’s body back. And Roy Mustang is going to help him.

He’s pretty sure everyone can tell something’s different, but Al puts it down to failing to bring Mum back, and Winry puts it down to the trauma of his injury, and Ed’s not entirely sure they’re wrong. It’s all of that, and maybe that’s why it’s so much harder to push the memories away. It’s easier remembering a life that isn’t really – is – his, than dwelling on what he’s done in this life.

“Okay, pipsqueak, spill it.” Granny commands, a couple of weeks into his recovery, when he’s sitting on the back porch, looking out over the fields and comparing them to the rice fields in Xing. Looking at his automail and comparing it to automobile engines.

“Who’re you calling pipsqueak, tiny old hag?!” Ed snaps, turning to glower at Granny.

Granny glowers right back. “What’s wrong?”

“What do you think?” Ed retorts bitterly.

“If I knew that, I wouldn’t be asking.” Granny fires back without missing a beat. Then she sighs out a large cloud of smoke and puffs rapidly on her pipe for a moment. “You’ve got a lot to be upset about, I’ll grant, but I know you, Ed, and this isn’t what you’re like when you’re wallowing. This is what you’re like when you’re lost inside that big brain of yours.”

Ed snorts before he can help himself, because, okay, that’s accurate. And maybe… he can’t tell Al or Winry, he can’t burden them with this, but Granny… She’s lived through two of Ed’s lifetimes, more or less. “When were you born, Granny?” He asks.

“1839.” Granny replies, slow and confused. “Why?”

“Did you ever see much of the war with Aerugo?” Ed continues without answering.

After a beat of suspicious silence, Granny nods. “I saw a lot of soldiers come through while I was studying in Rush Valley. And I worked with the medics near the front for a few years when it got bad. That’s where I met my husband, as it happens.”

Ed smiles a little wistfully. “There’s this little town, not that far south from South City. Walston. You know it?” He begins, and Granny is outright frowning now, but she nods again. “It used to be over the border, but the military used their brand new horseless carriages to out-manoeuvre the Aerugonian troops and take it in 1874. It was pretty close to a river, which made it an ideal new base to operate from, so all the support people, the medics, the cooks, and of course their new engineers got carted in and dumped among the locals for the next however long it took to conquer the next town. Which was a recipe for trouble even ignoring the fact that the only place worth visiting in the evening was Valentino’s Bar.”

“I remember.” Granny murmured. “Ed, how the-”

“Oh, you were actually there?” Ed asks in surprise, blinking at Granny and trying to find a fiery automail mechanic in his memories. “Huh. Maybe we met.”

“What the hell are you talking about, Edward?!” Granny snaps, losing her patience.

“You didn’t happen to meet an engineer by the name of Lexi Spitfire, did you?” Ed asks.

Granny stops, mouth open in preparation to demand more answers, and gives Ed a deeply unnerved look. “Short, curly brown hair, freckles, always bickering with the barkeep?” She asks.

“I was not short!” Ed grouses. “I was perfectly normal sized, thank you very much! Just because Aerugonians tend towards unreasonably tall does not mean-” Granny makes a worrisome noise, kind of like a ‘glrhk’, and sits down heavily on the porch steps, staring up at Ed like she’s seen a ghost. “Granny?” Ed asks, maybe frets, a bit, because while he’d sort of hoped his knowledge of things he couldn’t possibly have been there to see would convince her he was telling the truth, he didn’t want to give her a heart attack.

“That was- Fucking hell…” Granny breathes, and then she shakes herself and goes right back to staring at Ed in shock. “I remember walking into that bar and hearing that exact rant. Spitfire was trying to haul the barkeep over the bar-”

“And Val was being a smug bastard. ‘Oh, sorry, is it too far for you to reach? Should I lean down a little to make it easier?’” Ed quotes with a snarl. “Wasn’t so smug with a bruise the size of my fist around his pretty little eye, was he?”

“What the hell happened, Ed?” Granny demands. “If you’re even still Edward-!”

“I am!” Ed interrupts quickly. “Jeez, Granny, I think you’d have noticed if I wasn’t me by now.”

“I thought so, too, but then you started talking like someone else!” Granny yelps.

Ed sighs, and looks back out over the fields of Risembool. “Not really. I mean, different name, different face, different life… same soul.” He pauses and shrugs. “I think. I didn’t exactly get an explanation. It was just suddenly all there, in my head.”

Granny draws in a sharp breath, but she doesn’t yell. She doesn’t say anything for the longest time, and Ed lets it settle, lets her have the time to absorb everything he’s said. He thinks he remembers her, now,  thinks he remembers toasting with her to the notion that machines are just better than men. Thinks he remembers drunken conversations about how automail works, how engines work, how many people they’d seen die already because their machines weren’t quite good enough. He thinks Val had cut them off at that point. He thinks he remembers Val carrying him – her – to bed and tucking her in like the fucking stupid sap he was under all that bullshit. “So… Spitfire’s dead, then? I had wondered.” Granny says finally.

“Yeah. 1889. Car crash.” Ed tells her.

Granny snorts. “Ironic.”

“Tell me about it.”

Central City is both familiar and not, and it takes Ed a day just to get his bearings. He goes for a walk, past the university, which is bigger than it used to be, and through the wealthy districts that are basically unchanged from two hundred years ago, and into the slums, which go from painfully familiar to completely wrong and back again every few alleys. He finds a brothel where he remembers a dilapidated ruin he’d slept in for several months as a child a long, long time ago, and pauses, staring at it and trying to get a grip on the sheer irony.

“Brother…” Al says, audibly judging him.

“What?!” Ed huffs. “I was looking at the architecture, Al!”

“The architecture?” Someone drawls in a husky smoker’s rasp, and Ed turns to see an older woman leaning in the doorway, a cigarette between two perfectly manicured fingers. “Well, that’s a new one.”

“Could do with a few more gargoyles, if you ask me.” Ed informed her with a sharp grin. Given her age and her perfectly ostentatious make-up, he figures she’s the proprietress of the brothel. “You’d be the eponymous Madame Christmas, I guess?”

“That’s me.” She confirms. “And you’re way too young to be a customer, kid.”

Ed snorts, because that’s funny. If he adds up everything he remembers, he’s more than five hundred years old. “Not looking for work, either.” He points out dryly.

“Good.” Madame Christmas says, with a whole weight of emphasis behind her words. “The hell are you doing in this part of town, then, kid?” She demands. Doesn’t mince words, this one. Ed decides he kinda likes her.

“Just looking around. Getting a feel for the city.” Ed answers.

“You should go home.” Madame Christmas instructs, in a tone that very much expects to be obeyed. Ed’s never really responded to that sort of tone. Not in this life, not in any other.

“Eh.” He shrugs. “Don’t feel like it.” That earns him a glower, and replies with another knife-sharp grin, just daring the woman to push the issue. She blows out a tight stream of smoke, rolls her eyes, and capitulates with a long drag of her cigarette. “Besides, the guy we’re staying with is a fucking creep, so I’ll take any excuse to get out of there for a while.”

“Oh?” Madame Christmas prompts, one eyebrow arching slowly.

“Brother, Mr Tucker isn’t that bad.” Al protests, but it’s weak and they both know it.

Madame Christmas’s other eyebrow rises to join the first. “What’s he done?”

“Nothing.” Ed waves a vague hand in the air. “It’s not… He’s fucking shifty. He won’t look at me head-on, he’s nervous all the damn time, except when he thinks no one’s looking at him, and then he gets this- this sharp look, like there’s broken glass behind his eyes. You know what I mean?”

“Oh, yeah.” Madame Christmas confirms, and she’s watching Ed with her own sort of sharp look, now, only this one doesn’t give him the creeps at all. “We see a lot of men on the edge of doing something dangerous in our line of work.”

“Exactly.” Ed agrees, pointing at her.

“Fair enough, kid.” Another puff of the cigarette, and then she stubs the butt out in a little portable ashtray she pulled out of her pocket. “But there are better places to sight-see in this city. Safer places.” She informs him, giving him a pointed look. “So get out of here.”

Ed accepts that, and turns to go, but hesitates, and turns back a moment later. “Just out of curiosity, do you employ boys here, or just girls?” He asks.

“Brother!” Al yelps.

Madame Christmas gives him a clinical once-over, and then a dryly amused look. “Come back in about five years, kid,” she tells him, “and I’d have people paying through the nose for you.” Al gives a scandalised sort of squeak, but Ed’s just mildly flattered by that assessment.

“I told you I’m not looking for work. I was just curious.” Ed corrects, marvelling at the strange synchronicity of his different lives. “Klaus would’ve laughed himself sick if he could see this.” He muses quietly, but not quietly enough, apparently.

“Klaus?” Madame Christmas prompts.

Ed shakes his head. “No one, just… just an old friend, sort of.”

Madame Christmas gives him a deeply sceptical look. “You’re way too young to be talking like that, kid.” She informs him, and Ed shrugs, because he can’t exactly argue without looking insane. Instead of saying anything, he just waves, and sets off down the street.

“What on earth were you talking about, Brother?” Al asks once they’re well out of earshot of the brothel. “We’ve never known anyone called Klaus.”

“Says you.” Ed retorts. “I could have friends you don’t know about.”

“No, you really couldn’t, Brother.” Al says, deadpan.

“Ouch.” Ed laughs, and then sobers up as he tries to figure out how much he ought to tell Al. “It’s just… something I remember, from- from the Gate.” He says eventually, shoving his hands into his pockets and slouching a little. He doesn’t know why Al doesn’t have the same problem as him. Maybe because he doesn’t remember the Gate at all, but that doesn’t seem right to Ed. The only thing he can figure is that he remembers because the Gate pulled him apart, pulled him open and everything that had been wrapped up inside had spilled out, all the things imprinted on his soul but tucked away out of sight had been laid bare and forced into the light. But he doesn’t know, and surely if that was the case, Al should remember, too, whether or not he remembers it happening.

“Oh.” Al says quietly. They walk in silence for several long minutes. “The Gate showed you… things to do with… with prostitutes?” He asks eventually.

Ed huffs a laugh that doesn’t have much humour in it. “Sort of. I don’t really want to talk about it.”

“Okay, Brother.” Al agrees. “But if you… if you ever do, you know I’ll listen, right?”

“Of course, Al.” Ed confirms, rapping his knuckles lightly against the side of Al’s breastplate. “Come on, I’ll race you back to the main street.” He says, and then bolts, laughing at Al’s indignant cries of ‘BROTHER!’ echoing behind him.

“Met your new recruit today.”

“What?!”

“Mmhm. Weird kid.”

“Weird… how?”

“He’s a lot more grown-up than he looks.”

“Yes, well, I knew that much.”

“Also said he got a bad feeling about that Tucker bloke.”

“Really? That’s interesting.”

“Very. Articulated it well, too. You’d think he’d seen people that fucked up before.”

“Fucked up?”

“I’ll talk to Helen about it, see if she can’t give me some better insight.”

“I see.”

“Perhaps you ought to look in on the man, too. Make sure he’s doing okay.”

“I will. And what exactly was Edward doing in your part of town, anyway?”

“Sightseeing.”

“���Sightseeing.”

“Mmhm. Stopped to appreciate the architecture.”

“The… architecture?”

“Thinks we should add some gargoyles to the front of the place.”

“Good heavens. I hope you’re not going to take his advice.”

“Mmm…”

“Madame!”

“Heh, don’t get your panties in a bunch, Roy-Boy. No; no gargoyles.”

“Good. I’ll see you soon.”

“You’d better. Good luck.”

“And to you as well, Madame.”

Ed feels sick. Ed has seen a lot of awful things before, but there’s something so much more awful about the botched, mangled chimera that used to be Nina Tucker. Maybe it’s because all those memories are… just a little detached. Old and faded and worn. This is immediate, right in his face, so starkly fresh that he can still smell the ozone of the transmutation.

There’s a bang upstairs, footsteps, and Al calls out, shouts for help, maybe. Ed’s barely paying attention, because he can barely breathe, and his mind is racing. Because while he can’t clearly remember the knowledge the gate pounded into his head, he does remember five different lifetimes of learning alchemy, and there has to be something in there that could help.

“Shit.” Ed’s head snaps around to stare. Roy is standing at the bottom of the stairs, looking into Tucker’s lab and staring in pale-faced horror at the whimpering chimera in the middle of the room. “Where’s Tucker?” He asks, the moment he registers that Ed is looking at him.

“We- we knocked him out and put him in one of the cages.” Al informs Roy, because Ed can’t find his tongue. Can’t find even a scrap of attention for anything happening in this century. He’s back in Xerxes. Back in Xing. Because Xerxes hadn’t had laws against human transmutation like Amestris does, their concept of biological alchemy had been entirely different, and possibly – probably – more accurate. And Xingese alkahestry was focused on and centered around healing, the body and the soul, in harmony.

Pieces start coming together in Ed’s mind, and he scrambles up. “Edward?!” Roy demands, as Ed lunges for the desk. “Brother?!” Al yelps, when Ed comes up with a piece of chalk. He needs to draw this one out, because it’s so, so fragile, so tenuous, and if he’s wrong- He needs to draw it out to make sure he’s not wrong.

“Get Nina out of the way, Al.” Ed orders, dropping to his knees and clapping to clear the array already laid out in chalk. Nina-the-chimera flinches, whines like a beaten dog, and Al leaves off questioning Ed in favour of coaxing Nina out of the way.

“Edward, what on earth do you think you’re doing?” Roy demands, stepping up to Ed’s shoulder as he starts drawing out the array.

“Tryna fix it.”

“Edward, there is no fixing it.” Roy tells him, stern and aching. “You can’t undo a completed transmutation.”

“It’s not complete.” Ed retorts. “Bungled patch job piece of shit. Soul’s out of alignment with the body. Shit, Tucker didn’t even account for souls in his circle. Did he even study anatomy? I mean, shit. No, that’s wrong-” Ed scrubs out the beginnings of a sigil and steps back for a moment, eyeing the circle. “If you account for the lóng de màibó, there needs to be-” Nodding, Ed dives back in again, putting the details into place in a flurry of inspiration.

“The what?” Roy asks.

It’s a good thing Ed’s almost done, because that question knocks him clean out of his head-space. For a moment, he sees double when he looks up at Roy. Fuller lips painted blood red, longer hair bound back with jade hairpins carved to look like plum blossoms and butterflies, narrower face that only emphasised the cunning behind dark eyes. But this is Roy, not Xiaoli, and of course he doesn’t know what the Dragon’s Pulse is.

“It’s a- Never mind.” Ed shakes his head and finishes the array. “Okay. Okay, Nina?” He calls, turning to where Al and Nina are crouched together at the edge of the room. “Hey, Nina. I think- I think I can make it stop hurting, if you’d like?” He offers.

“Big brother?” Nina rasps, and Ed’s heart breaks.

“Yeah. Could you come here a sec?” Ed asks, and Nina gets up and staggers over, butting her head against his chest and whining. “Hey, it’s going to be okay. Big brother will make it better.” He promises, and drops a kiss onto her shaggy head before backing away. “Stay right there a sec, okay?” He prompts, when she makes to come after him. She whines, but sits down hesitantly.

“Edward, are you sure…?” Roy asks.

Ed chews on his lip. “Eighty-two percent.”

“Brother, isn’t this… this is human transmutation.” Al protests weakly, coming to stand beside Ed.

“Technically? Maybe not.” Ed hedges.

“What do you mean?” Al demands, bewildered.

“Technically, if Tucker could get her here without having to face the gate, then I should be able to… well, to heal her without crossing that line, too. I don’t think I can… I can’t make her human again, is the thing, but I think- I’m pretty sure I can make her… better.” Ed tries to explain. Then, before he can second-guess himself, he drops to his knees and places his fingers on the edge of the circle. It immediately lights up bright white-blue, and Nina screams.

Ed screws his eyes shut, because he knows that sometimes healing hurts, but this is worse than anything he’s seen before. Not surprising, given that her entire body is a patchwork mess that needs streamlining.

The light dies, the screaming stops, to be replaced with the harsh, wet, gasping sobs of a child. “Nina?!” Ed calls.

“B-big brother?!” Nina calls back, all herself, without any rough, raspy dog-vocals. Ed goes boneless, even as Al and Roy both gasp. He scrubs out part of the outer circle to make sure the array can’t be reactivated, and then crawls forward to where Nina is naked and shivering on the floor.

“Hey, hey there.” Ed murmurs as he scoops her up and cradles her against his chest. “Does it still hurt, Nina? Can you- can you tell me if it hurts?”

Nina presses her face into his chest and sobs, but she’s shaking her head as she does it. “No. It hurt so bad, but- but it’s b-better now.” She mumbles weakly, and then dissolves into wailing, crying so hard she’s shaking with it. Ed looks down at her and grimaces. He’d been right when he said he couldn’t make Nina human again. Her proportions are just a little off, and she’s got a fine coat of golden-red fur over her back and limbs and climbing up her neck, and her nails look more like claws, and Ed’s pretty sure she’s got a tail now. But she’s not in pain anymore, and that’s all Ed could ask for.

Dark cloth appears in Ed’s vision, and he looks up to see Roy offering him his black great coat. Trying for a smile of gratitude and falling miles short, Ed takes it and bundles Nina up in it. They wait in silence as Nina cries herself out and then falls asleep still half in Ed’s lap and half on the floor. “Let me-” Roy murmurs softly, and Ed doesn’t even hesitate to let him scoop Nina up into his arms. He clambers to his feet and stares at her tear-streaked sleeping face. Her face, at least, looks mostly normal, although there’s something about the shape of her eyes that looks not-quite-right.

“Where are you going to take her?” Al asks, and Ed snaps to attention at the thread of fear and steel he hears in his brother’s tone.

He looks up at Roy, and Roy looks back with a pained grimace. “Somewhere she’ll be safe, I promise.” He swears.

“Where?” Al presses, sharp and high and angry. “Because I know you know what the military would do with her if-”

Roy gives a singularly humourless laugh. “You don’t need to worry, Alphonse. As far as any official report goes…” He trails off and glances towards the stairs. Only then does Ed even realise that Hughes and Hawkeye came with Roy. He scrubs at one eye and wonders at how bad his tunnel vision had gotten.

“Unless we can come up with a suitably convincing mess, I think we’d best go with missing.” Hughes interjects grimly.

“We could vaporise him.” Ed suggests darkly, jerking his thumb at Tucker.

Roy looks startled, and then thoughtful. “Claim it was Nina and that Tucker fled, and then at least the manhunt would be for someone they’re definitely not going to find. I’ll… handle that when I get back.” He sighs, looking down at Nina.

“Back from where?” Al asks belligerently.

“My mother’s.” Roy replies wryly, and all the fight goes out of Al. “She’ll take good care of Nina.”

“Let me take her.” Hughes interjects. “You need to be done with him when Military Police catch up.”

Roy nods, and hands Nina over. Hughes cradles her like she’s precious, and there’s a momentary look of heartbreak on his face. Then he’s gone, back up the stairs, and Roy is turning towards Tucker. “Hawkeye, if you could take the Elrics upstairs? I’ll join you in a few minutes.

“Sir.” Hawkeye replies, and then turns and gestures for Ed and Al to precede her up the stairs. Al moves towards her, but Ed doesn’t. “Edward?” Hawkeye prompts, her tone surprisingly gentle. It really doesn’t help with the sick feeling bubbling in Ed’s gut.

“Do you know how to make it look like a failed human transmutation?” He asks Roy.

Roy goes still, and hesitates long enough to answer that Ed doesn’t need him to actually say the words. “Not specifically, but I can make a good enough guess.” Roy says finally, decisively enough that if Ed didn’t remember, if he hadn’t had nearly a dozen adulthoods to draw on, he might have let it nudge him from the room. But he did, so he doesn’t.

“Not as good as I can.” Ed points out.

“Brother!” Alphonse protests, horrified.

“It’s fine, Al.” Ed snaps. It’s not, it’s so far beyond not fine it’s not even funny, but Ed’s been in the military three times before. He’s seen how ruthless they can be, how gleefully malicious they can be. He remembers how casually they can toss aside the lives of even their own people. If there’s anything – anything at all – that he can do to protect Nina from that, he’ll do it.

“You don’t have to do this, Edward.” Roy tells him, quiet and solemn.

“No, but I’m going to anyway.” Ed replies, meeting his gaze. “I couldn’t save Nina, but maybe- maybe I can help keep her a little bit safer now.” He hesitates, but this is Roy. This is Val and Malka and Klaus and Xiaoli and Dimka and Huang. If he can’t trust them, he can’t trust anybody. “I- I don’t think I can… kill him, though. Can-”

Roy looks like Ed just stabbed him. “I can handle that part, Edward.” He assures him.

“Yay, teamwork.” Ed jokes weakly. Roy flashes him a smile that’s hollow, but his eyes are touched with gallows humour, so Ed will take it. “You should- you should go with Hawkeye, Al. You- you don’t need to see this.” He says.

“I hate that you keep hurting yourself to protect me from things.” Al tells him, in a quiet, wounded voice that stabs straight to Ed’s core.

“Tough shit.” Ed replies, a little more brusquely than he meant to, what with the sharp pain in his heart. “I’m the big brother, that’s my job.” Al gives an angry grumble, but he leaves with Hawkeye. Ed shares one more weary, determined look with Roy, and then they get to work.

[franeridart]

Merry Christmas!! I hope you are happy, and have a good New Year! 😁

Thank you!!! I hope you had a wonderful Christmas and will have a wonderful New Year too!!

Anon said:aaaaawwwnnn the good ol' platonic (or not, depending on the interpretation) bak*deku

I’m not anti anything anon, so you never gotta worry about that! I have ships I like and ships I don’t and ships I’m indifferent about, but I’m a firm believer in the ship and let ship principle~ sadly bkdk is strictly platonic for me (I see them too much as sibs for it to work in a romantic way, at this point), but I do adore their relationship and the way Horikoshi is writing it TT^TT it’s def one of my favorite Bakugou relationships, such a wonderfully complex story 💕

Anon said:Have you ever thought about drawing Bakushima as different ships? Like, from different shows. Put them in their outfits and such? I thought that wouls be pretty cool. Sorry if someone has already suggested this! I thought maybe Black Butler style ? Fruits basket, Death note, ect. ❤

I have in the past drawn them in AUs inspired by characters from other fandoms, if that’s what you’re asking! At the top of my head I can remember drawing them as Black⭐Star and Tsubaki from Soul Eater, Doumeki and Watanuki from xxxHolic and Jacuzzi and Nice from Baccano!, but I’m sure those are not the only ones... I’m never against that sort of AUs, if you have anything you’d like to see ask and I’ll see if I know the fandom you’re thinking about! :D

Anon said://squints// did your.... Did your lineart imPROVE??? holy maples Fran ur killing me with ur art I wanna survive my last 7 months of high school--

If you think so, then I’m seriously happy and glad to hear it! Thank you so much!! I feel like I’ve been getting sloppier actually, ngl, but I have been trying new tools for the line, so maybe that’s the difference you’re seeing!

Anon said:Gonna say anonymously caz' i'm too embarrassed to reveal myself for now, but I love your blog and art so damn much!!! Been following you for two years and you really inspired me to draw and really to stay in touch with bnha. Again, love you so much and hope you a merry Christmas!!!

Ahhhhh anon thank you so much!!! I’m happy I can make you keep up with bnha, ngl!! And I hope you’ve had a wonderful amazing christmas too!!!

Anon said:Sero with the long hair can murder me

He wouldn’t!

Anon said:what do you think of bakukamijirou 👀

I don’t ship it, sorry :( as far as shipping Bakugou goes, I only ship him around if Kirishima is involved - I do have a few Baku ships I like just for the aesthetics (like with Jirou, or Todoroki!) but I wouldn’t really call it “shipping”, I just like to see them next to each other cause their designs work well together haha

Anon said:Hello? Yes. Hi. Dave I love. Thank you.

I’m so happy to hear that!!! TT^TT thank you so much!!!

Anon said:Kamijirou cures my depression :3

WELL IF THAT ISN’T A MOOD!!

Anon said:Have you every considered a voltron au for your ocs? I know youve made a voltron au befores so i was wondering if you ever did it for anything else (i really love all your art have a lovely day

I’ve never, actually :thinking: the vld fandom is very scary to me so I try to keep away from it, ngl! I’ve also not watched past the first season of the cartoon itself so by now I don’t think I have the necessary information to make AUs based on that fandom, but the concept of my kids in space or piloting mechas is a wonderful one nonetheless haha

Anon said:Ah man I love dav so much. It makes me so happy when you post your sweet green haired boy. Day: brightened.

:sob: thank you SO MUCH!!!! TT^TT it makes me so happy to hear you like my boy!!

Anon said:I love and appreciate every variety of your ocs

THANK YOU!!!💕💕

Anon said:You: This is my boy. | Me: I love him so much and his hair and his shirt- 👌

Thank you so much!! His hair and clothes make less sense every time I draw him, but I have fun with it so I’m glad you like them anyway hahaha

Anon said:Hey! Who is he? He looks cool

Thank you so muuuccchhhh!!! His name is Dave!! He doesn’t really have much of a story, but he’s a uni student and likes music, philosophy and cats! He has a bunch of friends I draw him with now and again, and they mostly spend their time avoiding studying and being generally ridiculous :D

Anon said:Just wanted to let you know your art style is GORGEOUS. You're one of the few people on this site whose art always makes me excited to see it. I'm a huge Bakushima fan to begin with but your Bakugou is just...oof. lol I don't know if it's the hooded eyes or the undercut but you make him HAVE it!

That’s such high praise oh my god! TTOTT I’m glad you like how I draw my boy, he makes me so happy to doodle !!!!! 💞💞💞

Anon said:The two art post with "An unexpected sappy thought" and "Bunch of stuff from yesterday I finally managed to finish" were both flagged. i tried to send them to u, but couldn't. Just thought you should know if you haven't been notified yet! sorry that i cant be much help. (also the protest starts in like 10 min for me, so youre probably off already if youre doing it) sorry for bothering!

Anon said:hey your post (a colored fanart) of kirishima and bakugou cuddling w/ song lyrics as the caption got flagged, just thought i’d let you know if you didn’t see it :( stupid tumblr

These are pretty old asks at this point but I wanted to thank you for the heads up anyway! I have gone through my posts twice already and new flagged things always pop up, so the fact that you took the time to let me know was seriously huge help! Thank you so much!!

Anon said:hi i just saw your year summery-thingy and i just realized that i have followed you for more than a year now and i just want to say thank you for all the beutiful art i have seen !! you are truly one of my favorite artist i hope that you are well

Ah man thank you so much!!! I’m so so happy to hear you’ve been following me that long, it’s incredible to me!! I hope I’ll manage to get out of the slump I’ve fallen into soon enough orz meanwhile thank you for sticking around!! 💕

Anon said:Seeing your art summary makes my soul feel the urge to have your beautiful kiribaku art in a book. Have you ever thought about making a little zine with some of your illustrations? Or selling prints ;___; You're absolutely amazing!

Oh heck thank you so much for being interested in something like that! I’ve actually thought about something of the like, but if I ever did it would be a small zine with pieces made specifically for it! I have to research the whole thing a bit more, but in case I’ll reach a point where it’s a concrete possibility I’d first post something to check the actual interest in it between everyone! ;^;

Anon said:... Why BakuJiro tho?

Why not! They are good friends, have a nice dynamic, and their styles match together well! And Jirou’s so tiny next to him, I like the idea of Baku hugging her a whole lot as it might have become obvious by this point haha

Anon said:7w7r I see you there

I dunno what this is about but !!! neat!!

Anon said:Soooo,,, DabiHawks or Hawks single? I have curious for how would a drawing of them be made by you

I’ve said this a couple of times before, but I’m really only interested in dabihawks if Dabi is Touya at this point! I might change my mind if Hori develops their relationship more, but right now that’s how it is... and until I have more concrete proofs of Touya and Dabi being the same person I don’t wanna get too involved with the ship, in case I end up disappointed haha

Anon said:Fran, have you ever posted a selfie before? For some reason, I imagine you looking a little more like Kuroo from Haikyuu!! Haha.

I haven’t! I prefer being behind the camera instead of before it hahaha a couple years ago you would have been right! By now I have too much hair for it, tho lol also, I wear glasses and have a bunch of piercings and earrings that Kuroo doesn’t have (but should have, cause it’d be hot 👀👀👀)

[hailqiqi]

The Stars Aren’t the Same for You and I

A dance that was a bad idea, a kiss that should never have happened, and too many questions with answers nobody wants to hear.

Too happy for a Sunday night? Have some angst! Guaranteed to get you properly depressed for the impending work-week ahead.

Shout out to @sp4c3-0ddity and @fromageinterrupted for the beta-reading, with special thanks to @fromageinterrupted for the title because anybody who knows me knows I’m shit at them.

Words: 2,910

Read it on AO3 here.

Keith still wasn’t convinced it was a good idea, but even his mom had insisted that they needed a break. So here he was, standing around outside the base as the sun began to go down, waiting on the last few members of their party to arrive.

Shiro, Hunk, Lance and himself all wore some version of a button-down shirt and slacks. Allura was already ready — she seemed to have been born ready for fancy occasions — and was wearing her blue dress, her arm linked through Lance’s, while Coran was also wearing his normal uniform. They were heading to a makeshift bar on the edge of the city on Marco’s recommendation, to let loose and have some fun ‘for once’ (in Shiro’s words).

Shay had declined the invitation, saying that large crowds weren’t really her thing. They weren’t really Keith’s thing either, but the others seemed to be excited about it so joining was the right thing to do, right? Plus, Pidge had flat-out told him she’d need the support.

And speaking of Pidge…

“There you guys are! What took you so long?” Hunk waved over his shoulder, and Keith turned to see Romelle and Pidge jogging up to them.

“I’m sorry, but do you know how difficult Pidge’s hair is to style?” Romelle made a face, and Shiro laughed.

“It doesn’t look like you ended up doing much with it,”  he said. “Both of you look nice though.”

Pidge flashed him a smile, touching a hand to the bun at the back of her head. “Honestly, we gave up and just went with something simple and a headband.”

“No, you look really good!” Lance exclaimed. “I kinda wasn’t expecting you to go all out.”

“Yeah, well,” Pidge shrugged, embarrassed, then did a quick twirl. “We’re going to a salsa place, right? Gotta wear a dress and heels for that.”

Lance raised an eyebrow at her, his eyes bright. “You’re gonna dance with me later, right?”

Keith frowned, but before he could say anything Pidge had latched onto his arm, her tongue stuck out at Lance and a finger pointing at Allura. “You have a girlfriend who has never salsaed, and I promised Keith earlier that I’d teach him how to dance. So probably not.”  

She finished with a laugh, but there was something tense in the line of her shoulders as she tugged him towards the cars, despite the banal chatter starting up behind them.

Yep. Keith definitely had a bad feeling about this.

 —————

 The club was less of a club and more of a tent, but hey, it had been years since Lance had last been at a place like this so he was determined to enjoy himself.

Unfortunately, it turned out his girlfriend didn’t really get human dancing so he was resigned to mostly drinking, which — honestly? Wasn’t really his thing. Lance was the life of the party and he lived on the dancefloor. Drinks were just a bonus, and he could count the number of times he’d gotten tipsy at a party on one hand (‘tipsy’ had been left in the dirt a while back tonight, though).

When they’d first arrived he’d tried to show Allura how to move, but she’d been more-than-a-little freaked out at the idea of his hands on her waist (and even more scandalised at the idea that human women danced like that with men they didn’t even know). Lance didn’t get it — so he could kiss the girl but not hold her? — but stuck it on his list of ‘weird things about having an alien girlfriend’ and chivalrously held her hands while they danced for a while, which was totally fun and all but not really how he wanted to dance with his girlfriend at a salsa place.

Right now, Allura was dancing with Romelle, taking turns leading like a couple of kids at a wedding, both of them laughing raucously the whole time.  His lips curved up in a smile — it was nice to see Allura let loose a little, she was always so proper — but a shard of envy stabbed at his heart. He wanted to be out there, dammit, not sitting on the sidelines like a loser.

Even Keith was dancing.

Sighing, he scanned the crowd for Pidge. Allura wouldn’t mind if he danced with Pidge — she’d said so herself — but Pidge was hot tonight and apparently had no time for him. He’d tried to ignore the way jealousy had curled in his gut every time he’d seen her dancing with a new partner, reasoning it was just because he’d hardly seen her lately. Maybe he could ask her about that when he finally got a chance to ask her to dance.

If.

 —————

 “You’re popular tonight,” a voice drawled from beside her.

“Apparently,” she replied, rolling her eyes as she turned to face Lance. “Having fun?”

“Honestly? Not really.” He shrugged, leaning back against the bar and stuffing his hands in his pockets. Pidge dragged her gaze away from the way his shirt clung to his broad shoulders and focused back on her drink, faking a sympathetic noise as he continued, “My girlfriend doesn’t wanna dance with me, and apparently the only girl I’m allowed to actually dance with has got a line of guys a mile long waiting for their turn.”

Pidge snorted. “It’s it not my responsibility to dance with you just because your girlfriend doesn’t like salsa.” Besides, one of those guys might end up being worth keeping around for a while, and then I can get over you. She hadn’t found anyone she clicked with yet, but the night was still young, and either way she’d been having fun until Lance came to ruin it with his moping.

“Fine. One dance, though?” He was looking at her hopefully, his hand held out for her to take, and Pidge hesitated. “C’mon, we haven’t danced since before we lost the castle, and you always said you’d dance with me once we got to Earth.”

Yeah, but that was before you started dating Allura. The words were on the tip of her tongue but she bit them back, instead placing her hand in his with a sigh. “Fine. One.”

Lance’s face lit up, and Pidge died a little more inside.

 —————

 Dancing with Pidge was fun.

They’d danced together a lot before, back before they’d had to shove the castle in a black hole to save the universe. It was always a late night thing; he’d spent more sleepless nights than he could count in Green’s hangar or on the observation deck with Pidge, talking about Earth and what they missed, and more often than not they’d end up digging through his phone or her laptop for music and laughing their way through a couple of songs in pyjamas and slippers. Pidge had been a dancer before the Garrison too, so dancing together was a nice mix of messing around and professional challenge.

Tonight was different, though. Maybe it was the tequila running through his veins making him dizzy, or the heat of the dancefloor, or just finally getting a chance to hang with one of his best friends after months of barely seeing them. Maybe it was because the music was so loud he could actually feel the rhythm pounding in his soul, vibrating through his body from the subwoofers.

Whatever it was, it was electrifying.

Sweat dripped down his collar as they moved through the crowd, laughing when he accidentally spun her into a couple dancing nearby. He pulled her close again to steady her, grinning when she placed her hands back on his shoulders and leaned up to half-shout in his ear: “This is a lot harder when we’re drunk!”

They pulled back a little, Lance brushing a sweaty strand of hair behind her ear as he leaned in to answer, “Are you sure it’s not the heels?”

“No!” she answered, smacking his shoulder for good measure. “I was fine before!”

“Ah, then it must be my dashing looks distracting you!”

She smelled like alcohol and the rainforest after a downpour, and he immediately missed it when she laughed and pulled away to place her hand back in his. “You wish. Again?”

He nodded, hand firmly around her waist (she was so tiny! And warm!) and together they counted the beats before stepping off again. They made it through the next song without crashing into anyone else, and then the next, stepping around each other, moving back and drawing close as they moved with the beat.

A stumble, and suddenly she was warm against his chest, looking up at him with flushed cheeks and laughter in her eyes.

Lance couldn’t look away.

 —————

 Pidge wasn’t sure how it had happened.

One moment she was laughing up at Lance, leaning against his chest from where she’d tripped on a return and he’d caught her.

The next moment he was kissing her.

Pidge inhaled sharply, caught off guard, but the exhilaration rushing through her veins was intoxicating and she found herself melting. The arm around her waist was strong yet the warm palm on her cheek was oh-so-tender, and as she wound her own arms around his neck she briefly thought that tequila tasted sweeter on his lips.

Her head was swimming. It was intoxicating. He was intoxicating. Why hadn’t they done this before?

The answer cut through the haze of her mind like a bucket of cold water, and suddenly she was wide awake.

His brow furrowed when she pulled away, placing her hands on his chest to firmly push him back as his eyes fluttered open. Steeling herself, she forced her gaze up to his before saying, “Lance.”

He offered her a boyish, lopsided smile that made her heart flip. “Yeah?”

“Lance,” she repeated, swallowing. “Lance, you have a girlfriend.”

It was almost comical, really, the way she could pinpoint the exact moment it dawned on him, and in any other situation she would have been in hysterics. Right now, though, all she could do was watch the colour drain from his features and try not to cry.

“I…” He stared at her, mouth opening and closing like a fish, and she couldn’t stay there any longer.

“I need some air,” she said firmly, gaze on the floor as she tucked her hair behind her ear. “I’ll see you at work tomorrow.”

Pidge turned her back on him and began to weave her way through the crowd. She didn’t look back.

 —————

 Despite her young age, Allura understood all too well how everything could change in an instant.

Altea had been peaceful and happy, until it wasn’t. Lotor had been a good man, a beacon of hope in an otherwise bleak reality, until he wasn’t. She had been enjoying watching Lance — a man she felt she could come to truly love despite his odd habits and their frequent culture clashes — dance with one of her best friends...until she wasn’t.

She watched Pidge push him away, her face distraught as she spoke words Allura couldn’t hear, and all she felt was a wave of numbness washing over her as she thought: Not again.

Pidge disappeared from view, lost in the sea of bodies on the dance floor. Lance stood alone listlessly, his expression lost as he ran his fingers through his hair — his stupid, soft hair that she’d been running her fingers through earlier. Then he turned his head and looked right at her.

Their gazes met across the room, and Allura suddenly realised that she had no interest whatsoever in hearing whatever he had to say. Not now, at least. She stepped back, raising her hands to ward him off before he could consider approaching her, and turned away, dismissing Romelle’s concern with a plea for air.

Later, she would need to make a decision. Possibly more than one. However, right now her thoughts were a tempest of tumultuous proportions, tumbling over each other as nausea roiled in her stomach, and she knew there was a high chance that she would do or say something that she would later regret.

So, instead, she left.

Her feet carried her outside, where the back of the gathering opened up onto an overgrown building site. Large blocks of some synthetic stone littered the ground, poking out through the weeds like small islands, and groups of revellers were crowded around the closer ones, lounging on them or using them as tables. The music and light spilling from the bar faded with each step she took, allowing the cool breeze of an Earth night to calm her thoughts; and she soon found herself thinking back to happier times spent slipping through the gardens at night as a teenager.

The stars here were wrong, though; as alien to her as anywhere else, now, and while the Milky Way splashed across the sky was certainly beautiful it wasn’t anything like a Sky Ring. The blue light of the Balmera, at least, was familiar, and she could take some comfort in that.

However, that comfort was short-lived when she spotted a familiar silhouette perched on a block.

Pidge.

Allura froze, hesitating while she weighed her options. Pidge was facing away from her; it would be simple to just turn and go before she became aware of her presence. Although she knew she would need to talk to her eventually, Pidge was not someone she particularly wanted to talk to right now. The red-and-white stripes of Pidge’s dress only brought to mind the way Lance had been looking at her as they danced, his eyes alight with an exuberant joy she’d never seen when he looked at her, and stirred the beginnings of a bitter anger in her stomach.

Before she could turn to leave, though, the line of Pidge’s shoulders shook, and she realised with a start that the younger girl was crying.

The anger vanished as quickly as it had come, replaced with a quiet sympathy. Pidge hadn’t asked for any of this, either.

She walked forward.

“Pidge? Are you all right?”

Pidge whipped around, startled, her eyes widening when she saw Allura approaching. “Allura! Allura, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean…”

“It’s all right,” she assured her, coming to a stop next to Pidge’s perch. “I’m not angry with you.”

“No, Allura,” Pidge shook her head, looking up at her earnestly, black tear marks on her face. “I shouldn’t have—”

“Pidge,” Allura said firmly, “You did not ask for Lance to kiss you. I have no reason to be angry with you.”

“Allura, I kissed him back.”

A breeze blew through the field, making the tall grasses around them sway.

Allura looked at Pidge, uncomprehending. “What?”

“I kissed him back, Allura,” Pidge repeated, her head hung low as she curled in on herself. “It wasn’t… I didn’t not want him to.”

“Why?” The question hung between them, but Pidge simply looked away.

The peaceful chirping of Earth’s nocturnal insects suddenly felt like an inappropriate soundtrack as countless memories and half-dismissed discussions seemed to all make sense at once. The green ear-covers Lance always had in the morning, which clearly weren’t his. Coran’s subdued concern over their friendship when Allura had announced her courtship to him. How Lance had alternately pouted and moped for the last month when Pidge wasn’t answering his communications as quickly as she apparently had before, putting him in a bad mood that not even Allura was able to lift.

Her voice was quiet as she asked: “You like him, don’t you?”

A heartbeat. Then—

“Yeah. Yeah, I do.”

“How long?”

“Longer than you.”

Pidge’s tone was uncharacteristically bitter, and when Allura snapped her gaze to her she was already hunched over, shame in her eyes. “I’m sorry, Allura. That was uncalled for.”

She ignored her. “How long?”

“Um…” Pidge breathed deeply and looked away, her fingers fiddling with the fabric of her dress. “From before we met you. About four years.”

Allura felt her eyes widen as she processed Pidge’s reply. “Four years?!”

Pidge nodded miserably. Allura stared at her, an unpleasant thought taking hold in her brain.

“Is that why you dressed so nicely tonight? Because you like Lance?”

“Sort of, yeah,” Pidge admitted, and the smouldering anger caught fire and rose to her throat. “I was hoping if I dressed nice I might meet someone new, and then it wouldn’t be a problem anymore.”

For the second time that night, the flames were doused immediately. “What?”

“That’s how it works, right?” Pidge gestured at her, her lips curved into a cruel parody of a smile. “You get pretty and then some guy comes and sweeps you off your feet.”

“Oh.” A few more dots connected, and Allura inhaled sharply. “You’ve been avoiding him.”

“Lance? Yeah. Yeah, I have.”

“He’s been very upset about it.”

Pidge let out a watery laugh. “Good. Screw him.”

“I’m afraid I don’t know what that phrase means.”

Pidge laughed again, but the sound soon turned to sobs as the tears began to flow. “Allura, I’m so sorry. I…” She rubbed at her cheeks furiously, half-choking on the words. “I never wanted to like him.”

Me neither.

“I know.”

“I just wanted you two to be happy together.”

Allura looked up at the stars — the same stars Lance had grown up looking at, the same stars that had inspired him to become an explorer and set him on the path to meeting her — and all she felt was empty.

“I believe you.”

[monstersandmaw]

Some submissive monsters pleeaassseee any kind really just sweet and doting and sub I’m begging you

Edit which I’m including in all my works after plagiarism and theft has taken place: I do not give my consent for my works to be used, copied, published, or posted anywhere. They are copyrighted and belong to me.

Have nearly 3000 words of powerful yet submissive alien. I hope this suits? Sorry I sat on it for a while - I hope you remember asking for it… 

NSFW, with a little warning for brief mention of needles and wounds.

___

You encountered more kinds of xeno-anatomy in your first sixmonths aboard the ship than you’d seen in your whole six years of med schoolback on Earth. This was an alliance battle cruiser, so you had a regular stream of everyshape and size of soldier imaginable coming through the med bay.

The ship’s doctor, Maehve, was a seven foot tall J’Hantahriwho brooked no nonsense when it came to her med bay. It tended to keep thenewer recruits from going there on a whim to get out of training exercises, andsoldiers who had a firm hand tended to sit still long enough to get patched up.

Maehve had four stomachs and you suspected that all of themwere made of iron, because you’d never seen her so much as flinch as shetreated detached shells, torn limbs, shattered horns, acid-spit burns, rupturedthese and broken those. She also liked to boss you around, which grated. Youached to be the one giving orders for a change, but with your rank, the chancesof that were lower than your chances of finding a decent chocolate bar on board.

One sol, the First Officer himself was brought into the medbay with a huge blaster wound in his ribcage. Apparently a mission to a hostileplanet for negotiations had failed and they’d barely made it out at all.

The hulking Kharmorian was even taller than Maehve, and hewas twice as wide. His skin was black as ink, and covered in microscopic flecksof pearly white, like stars in the endless view from the observation deck. Sixeyes, arranged three on each side of his head, glared out from a flat face,with slit nostrils that flared occasionally as his pain mounted. Thick, viscousdrool was occasionally known to slip from a mouth that was full of razor sharpteeth, cylindrical, transparent, and gleaming like polished crystal, and hisjaw unhinged to gape wide enough to swallow your entire head whole if he wasreally in a rage. Or in the canteen after a workout.

In short, he was nine foot of pure muscle, and rumour had ithis saliva was poisonous. But that might just have been his temper.

And here he was, cursing in his guttural, native Kharmorian,and looking like he was about to try and eat Maehve whole, her chitinousplating be damned. Inadvisable, youthought with a smile.

His muscles were gorgeous as he gripped the edge of thestretcher, snapping and snarling as Maehve lowered her mandibled face towardthe wound and chittered angrily before prodding carefully with one of her morehumanoid hands. She had a lot of hands.

He hissed at her, and as his mouth opened, you saw the hugeteeth, transparent and beautiful in the harsh light of the med bay. He had two tongues, you discovered, biting yourlip to keep from smiling. He was really very beautiful, if… intimidating.

“Don’t you dare take that tone with me,” Maehve rattled,utterly unfazed by his display, her dry voice full of command.

To your astonishment, the massive First Officer went utterlystill. His torso was still clenched, however, and Maehve twitched her head likea mantis. She cuffed him on the side of his head. She actually cuffed the First Officer as though hewere no more than a disobedient child to be disciplined.

“Lie back down. Don’t move.”

Again, an almost imperceptible shiver ran through him, andhe went slack on the gurney.

“Good.”

His legs, thick and muscular and speckled with morepearlescent white dots, shook and he tipped his head back, all six of his eyesclosing.

Interesting.

His name was Ornorx, and he stayed in the med bay for aweek. During that time it was your job as Maehve’s assistant to care for him,to change his bandages, and to give him his injections to ward off infection.Kharmorians, you discovered, had very tough outer skin, but once it wasdamaged, they were surprisingly vulnerable to foreign pathogens.

At first, he was every bit as aggressive and terrifying ashis reputation suggested he would be.

You knocked on his door before entering the little room setaside for him, and he immediately began to growl. The low rumble of it filledthe room, resonating strangely in your ears as though there was an additionalmuch lower frequency that you could barely hear. Perhaps there was.

“Don’t think I’m going to let you anywhere near me, human,”he snarled, saliva thick on his teeth as he opened his mouth.

“Don’t think I’m so easily intimidated, First Officer Ornorx,”you said tartly, hoping you sounded a lot braver than you felt.

He opened that disconcerting jaw at you then, as wide as itwould go, and hissed and screeched softly.

“Stop that. And lie down, or you’ll undo all Maehve’s hardwork,” you barked, trying your best to imitate the tone of voice the J’Hantahridoctor had used with him when he’d first been brought in.

To your astonishment, his teeth clacked shut and he lay backdown on the bed, meek as a lamb.

“Good,” you said, recalling another detail of that firstencounter. And exactly as expected, a shudder ran through him. “Very good,” you purred softly as youapproached with the fresh dressings.

He looked up at you then, an odd light in his six eyes.

You smiled down at him, soft, rewarding, but with a hint of somethingelse. You liked this. You liked having someone as powerful as him givethemselves to your control. You were growing hot between the legs just thinkingof it. Oh shit. Not now.

He made to sit up then, and without thinking you shot out a handand pressed it into his hard chest. He had ridges of bone and muscle that werevery obviously different from your own anatomy, but at the lightest pressurefrom your splayed fingertips, he sank back down.

“Stay there,” you said in an even, rich voice. “Don’t movewhile I do this.”

Again, he shuddered, and you smiled.

You developed a pattern after that; a kind of dance betweenthe two of you. The moment you entered the room, he would snarl at you, fangsdripping, jaw unhinging, two tongues laving along his sharp teeth, in a displayof power and threat.

On his last sol in the med bay, you tried something new.Instead of speaking to him after his usual snarls, you simply cocked aneyebrow.

He twitched his head at that and went still, keeping all sixof his eyes on you, like a predator in a cage.

He looked massive onthe tiny med bay bed, his taloned feet sticking out from under the sheet, hishuge shoulders rippling with tightly corded muscle. Honestly, he really didlook like a predator, ready to spring from his lair and devour you. You wantedto feel those tongues on your body. You’d brought yourself to completion, everynight since he’d been brought in, thinking about both those tongues workingacross your skin while you stood over him, a collar around his neck and a ropein your hand.

You’d seen a sweeter side of him too. You’d been doingcombat training as well to bolster your skills, and had taken a viciousbackhand to the face from an armour-plated Anjari, and the bruise had spreadacross your cheekbone and eye-socket to leave a tender welt. The moment he’dseen it, he’d tilted his head to one side and asked you who’d hurt you.

You’d brushed it off, but if you’d said you hadn’t added hisconcerned expression to your mental picture of him desperately trying to pleaseyou while you teased and dominated the living daylights out of him, well… you’dhave been lying.

Having cocked one eyebrow at him, having not opened yourmouth, having not deigned to look at him longer than a heartbeat or two, yousighed and set down the tray of dressings and syringes on the far side of theroom. You pretended to check your coms device, idly running your thumb over thescreen, feigning interest in some old messages in your inbox.

You could feel himwatching you.

“Something more interesting than me?” he snarled.

“Be with you in a moment,” you commented without looking up.

He growled again, that oddly resonant sound that made heatcoil in your groin. You longed to tell him to make that sound again, just foryou, but you kept scrolling.

Then, to your astonishment, the growl changed timbre. Itrose, finishing in a desperate, if extremely short, whine. You looked at himthen.

Were the little pearlescent pin-pricks on his skin glowing?He had a few on his cheekbones, forming two perfect little half moons under hiseyes, and you’d definitely never noticed them before. His skin was so black itseemed to absorb all light. It was truly beautiful.

He was no longer looking at you, his eyes focused on theceiling, body rigid, as though with embarrassment.

You inhaled slowly, as though displeased, and slid your comunit back into your pocket. “Impatient, are we, First Officer?” you drawled.

Coming to a halt beside his bunk, you stared at him, onehand on your hip, the other holding the tray like a cocktail waitress.

“Miss my touch that much, did we?”

He didn’t even have it in him to growl at you this time. He justlicked his lips and stared back at you. You’d been sounding him out all week,and you were now almost 100% sure he wanted this.

One final test, just to be sure.

You held your tongue for a moment, wondering. You could getkicked off the ship for this. If you were wrong, you could be sent back toEarth in disgrace. But what was life without a little risk?

You began to prep his dressings, but when you were done, youheld the scissors out in front of his mouth and said, “Hold these.”

Unquestioningly, his mouth opened and he wrapped bothtongues around the closed blades of the scissors, drawing them down to restbetween his teeth. His eyes never left your face. His clawed hands nevertwitched.

“Good,” you smiled. Dareyou do it? “Good boy.”

He whined at that and closed his eyes. Drool began to leakfrom the corner of his wide mouth in a way that made you think of ball gags.

You leaned close to his face and put a hand on his smooth,cool chest. His two sets of lungs weren’t enough to help him draw in breath asyou whispered, “Now… Don’t move. But tell me if this hurts too much.”

A huge, shivering tremble rippled through his enormous body.One of his two thick, black tongues uncurled from the scissors in his mouth andhe tried to mop the saliva from his lips as it dribbled down his chin to hisneck.

“Leave that,” you scoffed, and the tongue stopped. “I toldyou not to move.”

It was as you looked down and lifted the covers just enoughto reveal his wounded side that you saw the sizable tent in the sheets furtherdown his body.

His breath was wheezing now, like a horse run too hard fortoo long, and you stared at the hard ridges at the base of his neck. Hissecondary nostrils, connecting directly to the secondary lungs, had opened,something you’d never seen before. He was more desperate than he was lettingon.

In a smooth motion you slid the sheet all the way back and heldyour breath. He was completely naked beneath the covers. Your eyes didn’tlinger, though it was unbelievably hard to tear your eyes away from the two, ridged cocks that had slipped out froma slit in his lower abdomen, both dripping with white fluid, one slightlylarger than the other.

Deliberately, you ignored them as best you could, andfocused on dealing with the wound. It was almost healed, and didn’t really needthe dressing you were about to apply. “Keep still,” you murmured, pressing ahand on his torso, between the wound and those two weeping cocks. They squirmedslightly as your fingers splayed across his skin; flexible and muscular, theywere very beautiful. He was fightinghard to retain his composure.

“This might hurt,” you smiled, readying the syringe. Youlowered the needle to the ragged edges of the blaster wound, and when you hadlined it up, just pricking the skin, you turned your eyes to find his alreadylocked on you. “Don’t. Look. Away.”

He nodded and his cocks both twitched, writhing now withmore intensity, white liquid leaking down their length and pooling on thatmidnight skin of his. The pinpricks of white all over his skin began to glownow. As you emptied the syringe into him and pulled it away, you smiled. “Verygood. You didn’t move at all.”

Then he let out a low whine that disintegrated into a raggedsigh.

Saliva had run down his face and soaked into the pillowbeneath his head, and you moved your fingers slowly up to take the scissorsfrom between his teeth. “Give me those.”

He released them instantly, his two tongues working aroundhis mouth to clean himself up. You decided to let him this time.

“Two tongues, two cocks,” you chuckled. “You reallyare full of surprises, aren’t you, First Officer Ornorx?”

“You have no idea,” he panted.

You smiled. You certainly had some idea by now. “Well, perhaps when you’re all healed up, you canshow me what else you’ve been keeping from me,” you said.

As you pulled the sheet back up his body, you deliberatelyskimmed your fingertips torturously over his two cocks and his entire bodylurched wildly.

A cry left his lips before he could stop it. “If you so muchas breathe a word…” he hissed, chest heaving, eyes rammed shut.

You turned to face him then and traced your fingers over thehalf moons on his cheekbones as tenderly as you could. “I’d never hurt you likethat,” you smiled before crossing to the door of his room. He whimpered desperatelyas you turned your back on him.

At the threshold you paused and looked over your shoulder.He was staring at you hungrily, mouth open, drooling softly again, one handalready under the covers, moving slowly.

“I’ll make sure you’re not disturbed for a while either,”you said, by way of giving him permission, and he jutted his chin to theceiling. “Try not to move too muchthough. Don’t want you undoing all my hard work. Understood?”

He grunted something softly, hand working his cocks harderbeneath the sheet.

“First Officer?” Your tone wouldn’t have been out of placeon the bridge.

“Understood,” he rasped.

“Good.”

And with just that one word, he came.

It was three sols later that you heard the knock at yourcabin door.

Opening it, you saw nothing but darkness, pricked withpoints of light. Casting your eyes upwards, you found a familiar face toweringover you. He said nothing. All six eyes stared at you with an unreadableexpression.

“Yes?” you asked coyly.

He stood there a moment longer, and for a second you thoughthe was on the point of leaving. But then he opened his mouth to reveal thosestrange and beautiful teeth. “Please?” he hissed, loud enough for only you tohear. “I can’t stop thinking about you. About… About what you did… for me… I…”he swallowed thickly.

Without a word, you stepped aside and held the door open.

He moved into your cabin and turned and stared at you. Thebruise on your cheek had a matching cut now and he brought his fingers to yourface. “You’re hurt?”

“Give me something to take my mind off it,” you smirked.“Let’s lay down some rules. The sooner we get started, the sooner you can makeme forget about that. Deal?”

“Deal.”

That wouldn’t be the first time the First Officer would findhimself on his knees, his body bound, cocks exposed and leaking, his dangerousmouth gagged and drooling, his muscles shaking, while you stood over him. Hewould come to you after training drills, after difficult meetings, afterdangerous missions. First he would see to his crew, and then he would come toyou, desperate for you to take his mind elsewhere.

The time he returned from a mission that nearly cost four ofhis team their lives, he came untouched, painting that incredible torso of hiswhite with the release of both cocks in under ten minutes. He’d also taken along time to come down after that. But with your gentle ministrationsafterwards, he did. That was the first time he told you he loved you.

What you loved most about him was the fact that someone sopowerful, who terrified all kinds of living fluid out of his crew just bylooking at them, could be so beautiful and gentle and soft, with his head inyour lap after one of your scenes.

You smiled as he purred sonorously, spent, exhausted, andutterly mellow, while you traced lines over his smooth skin and watched thosepoints of light dance and flare beneath your skating touch.

Masterlist

[imdolaneless]

Platonish? Pt.2 (G.D.)

Summary: Y/N and the Dolan twins have been best their whole lives, they were basically attached at the hip, however Y/N’s friendship with Grayson has always been slightly different from her’s with Ethan, something that’s been stirring up problems in their relationships despite the fact their completely platonic or at least… platonish  

A/N: here it is guys, I know it took me like 90000000 years to write this but it’s finally done, I struggled so much writing this for some reason idk why, but I worked really hard on it and even though I don’t love how it turned out I hope it doesn’t disapoint, (also heads up she’s a thiccy)

Warnings: you guys already already know I fucking swear

Word Count: 9136

MASTERLIST

Part 1 / Part 2

2 months. It had been 2 months, since the night Jenna cheated on Grayson. 2 months, since he came to me as a friend broken hearted and in need of comfort. 2 months, since I drove him out to my special spot to watch the stars. And most importantly, 2 months, since I realized I was in love with his dumbass. Something that I had somehow managed to keep a secret over the past 8 weeks. Needless to say it was 2 of the longest months of my life.

Since the breakup Gray and I had been spending a ridiculous amount of time together. Which to be honest is extremely confusing for me. On one hand, I love spending time with him, just being around him makes me feel lighter and happier. On the other, I am not about this whole cliché unrequited love bullshit that I'm dealing with, and the more time I spend with him the harder it makes it for me to move on.

I sighed, collapsing on my living room couch listening to the roaring of the storm outside. I watched as flashes of lightning illuminated the sky, allowing myself to get lost in the unique rythme of the downpour. But my thoughts were soon interrupted by the sound of someone aggressively pounding on my door.

I reluctantly got up, and opened the door to reveal a very wet Grayson, fist clenched in mid knock.

"Took you long enough" He grumbled, pushing past me.

"What are you doing here?" I asked closing the door behind him.

"It's monday, we're supposed to watch the bachelorette" He shrugged, pushing his soaking wet hair out of his face.

"Where's Ethan?"

"He's facetiming Maddie and then he'll be right over..." He shivered, his teeth chattering.

"Look at you, you're soaked" I said gesturing, to the puddle that was slowly starting to form beneath his feet.

"Really?! I hadn't noticed!" He said sarcastically, his teeth chattering.

I rolled my eyes at him, "Just wait here smartass."

I left him standing in the front entrance, while I went to go make some hot chocolate. Once that was done, I grabbed a white fluffy towel from the nearest bathroom, before heading back . When I returned he was staring at his phone, brows adorably furrowed in concentration.

I gently placed the two mugs on the counter top before drawing his attention to me asking, "Who're you texting?"

"Eh, no one important" he shrugged with a small smile.

I found it a little weird that he was being so vague with his answer seeing as he was usually so open about everything, but I brushed it off. If it was important he'd tell me.

"Okay, well then catch." I said tossing him the towel.

"Thanks," He smiled wrapping himself up.

"No worries," I said passing him his cup.

He eyed it suspiciously, "What's this?"

"It's hot chocolate relax" I rolled my eyes.

He smiled gratefully, taking a sip.

Gray moaned in appreciation, "You're the best, what would I do without you?"

"Probably crash and burn" I teased, as he took another sip.

"Yeah you're probably right" he agreed, smiling dimples and all, and I swear it knocked the air straight out of my lungs.

My throat went dry, and I look down at the floor suddenly very focused on my feet, resenting the whirlwind of butterflies that had suddenly taken over my stomach.

"Do you want me to see if I have one of your hoodies somewhere that you could change into?" I offered, in a lame attempt to change the subject and ease some of the awkwardness I was feeling.

"Yeah that'd be ni- hold on, is that mine?" Grayson smirked, gesturing to the deep purple crew neck currently adoring my torso hanging till about my mid thigh.

I looked down, running my thumb over the tiny champions logo on the sleeve. "Huh, yeah it is I didn't even notice" I shrugged.

"I've been looking for that one everywhere, how long have you had it?" He asked, trying his best to look pissed, but failing miserably.

"I don't know a few months maybe? Since before you and Jenna broke up for sure" I replied.

"Well can I have it back?"

"What right now?" I asked taken aback.

"Yeah that'd be nice..."

"Are you serious?!"

Gray smirked, yanking his wet black tee shirt over his head revealing his toned abs, before extending his hand expectantly.

"Asshole." I scoffed, shaking my head. My heart was hammering against my ribcage as pulled off the sweater.

"Wait Y/N no I was just jok-" He trailed off, his eyes raking up and down my body. "...fuck"

Cheeks flushed, I dropped the bundle of fabric into his out stretched hand. "Here."

All the playfulness that was previously present, now gone replaced by tension. Grayson's beautiful hazel eyes darkened, mixed with what looked like lust and something else I couldn't quite place. I saw him glance down at my lips for a millisecond before taking a small step closer. He gently tucked a lose strand of my hair behind my ear, his hand caressing my cheek. I swear I felt my heart stop, he opened his mouth to say something but before he got the chance, my front door swung open with a dramatic crack of thunder revealing the third member of our trio, Ethan.

We immediately jumped away from each other, staring at Ethan like deer trapped in headlights.

"Okay what the fuck did I just walk into?! Why are you both half naked?!" Ethan exclaimed gesturing to Grayson and I.

l cleared my throat awkwardly, crossing my arms in an attempt to cover myself up.

"It's not what it looks like"Grayson mumbled blushing furiously.

"So you and Y/N weren't both shirtless in her front hall looking like you were about 5 seconds away from a pregnancy scare?" Ethan smirked raising an eyebrow.

I opened my mouth to argue, when I actually took in what Ethan was wearing, "Dude why the hell are you wearing a rain smock?" I giggled, he was enveloped in one of those yellow garbage bag like things that they give you at places like Niagara Falls, the hood covering his hair. Needless to say he looked ridiculous.

"Okay, first of all. It's a rain poncho not a rain smock, there's literally no such thing as a rain smock. Secondly, have you looked outside because if you have you might've noticed, it's actually raining! Sorry I'm not a freaking fish and I didn't want to get wet." Ethan huffed.

Grayson and I exchanged a look and burst out laughing.

"Bro you look ridiculous" Grayson chuckled.

"Kind of like an angstier version of Coraline" I agreed.

"Word, or like a walmart version of that sketchy sailor from spongebob."

"Okay enough," Ethan playfully glared at both of us, "I'm not the one who needs to explain my choice of outfit here, especially since I seem to be the only one actually wearing clothes" he scolded.

Ethan had an amused smile on his face, but I could tell he was starting to get fed up with our bullshit, the poor kid just wanted answers and rightfully so. However that didn't stop me from losing it every time I looked at him for too long, I think the fact he was still wearing a hood was too much for me.

"Y/N!!!!" Ethan whined.

"I'm sorry E but I just can't take you seriously with that thing on" I laughed.

"Okay enough about the poncho" He snapped, harshly yanking it off. "All I want to know is why you're wearing nothing but a bralette and adidas shorts while Gray's shirtless. I mean I know you guys have been hanging out a lot recently, so if you're togeth-"

"Relax dude, I was just wet from the storm because unlike you I didn't feel the need to wear a rain smock" Gray started cutting ethan off.

"Rain poncho but go on" "...and Y/N happened to be wearing one of my sweaters, and I jokingly asked for it back when she offered to get another one for me to change into, she took it seriously and here we are. It's not that deep" Grayson finished explaining.

Ethan looked at me for confirmation before saying, "Are you sure that's it because, when I walked in things seemed kind of... intense"

"Between me and Y/N?" Grayson raised his eyebrows.

"Yeah man I don't know, on my life it looked like you were about to kiss or something" Ethan shrugged.

Grayson laughed at this, "Us? Come on you know that would never happen in a million years, we're completely platonic"

Well that hurt.

"Yeah exactly, we're just friends" I agreed weakly, trying to ignore the stabbing pain in my chest.

"See?"

"Uh huh..." Ethan mumbled his eyes focused on me, like he was searching for questions or something that only I could answer.

"Okay well I'm going to grab a shirt then I guess we can start the bachelorette..." I said, I was starting to feel exposed under Ethan's gaze and not because my current lack of clothing.

____________

15 minutes later we were all squished on the living room couch, watching  yet another group of guys argue about 'who was really there for Becca'.

I was sitting in between the two boys, Ethan as always was getting really absorbed in the show. However Grayson seemed distracted. He was checking his phone every 5 seconds, and it was constantly buzzing. I tried to ignore it, telling myself it didn't matter what Grayson and that I couldn't care less about who was blowing up his phone. But as the episode progressed it got harder and harder for me to block it out. I made it till the rose ceremony, Becca was just about to give out the final rose when Grayson's phone buzzed for about the 100000000th time this evening.

"K bro seriously who are you texting?" Ethan asked his tone laced with annoyance.

"I'm not texting anyone" Grayson lied.

"Bullshit, your phones been going off nonstop this whole time. Which is weird because the only two people you text religiously are right here"  Ethan scoffed.

Grayson opened his mouth to protest, but Ethan raised his hand to stop him, and continued to say, "So if you're not texting me, and you're not texting Y/N, who the hell is so important that they have you practically glued to your phone, because I think we both know damn well it's not mom or Cameron."

Grayson looked down, an embarrassed smile graced his features, "Her names Nicole..." he blushed. "We've been talking for awhile and I don't know..."

My heart started beating faster as I was filled with dread.

"Well are you into her?"  Ethan asked.

"Honestly? Yeah I kind of am..." He smiled, his cheeks still tinged pink.

My face fell, and it felt like someone had knocked the wind out of me. I listened in absolute horror to Ethan teasing Grayson as he continued to gush about this girl. I tried my best to mask my emotions, but the amount of hurt I was feeling was making it incredibly hard.

"Are you going to ask her out?" Ethan asked with a small smile.

"I don't know dude we'll see, I'm supposed to meet up with her later tonight so hopefully that goes well" Grayson grinned, pushing his floppy brown hair out of his face.

"Well good luck bro, I'm happy for you" Ethan chuckled.

"Thanks," Grayson said checking his phone for the time, "I've got to get going though, I'm supposed to pick her up in 20 and I want to change first, I'll see you guys later"  He got up, his eyes still glued to his phone.

"Bye Gray" I said softly.

"See you at home" Ethan said, but he looking at me with that same intense stare from earlier, like he was trying to figure something out.

Ethan stayed silent, waiting until Grayson was gone, before saying "You okay? You look a little sick..."

"Yeah I'm fine, just tired" I said lamely, avoiding eye contact.

"You're a terrible liar Y/N" he clicked his tongue.

"I don't know what your talking about" I sighed.

"Oh really? So you expect me to believe you went from being more or less fine, to looking like someone just told you you're whole family had been murdered and you're the prime suspect, in the matter of 30 seconds because you're 'tired'"  He said raising his eyebrows skeptically.

"Framed for the murder of my family? That's a new one, most people would just go with the classic 'just saw a ghost' expression. Props for creativity E" I said avoiding the subject, starting to tidy up the mess the boys and I had made.

"Cut the crap Y/N you've been off all night what's wrong?"

I grabbed mine and Grayson's hot chocolate mugs, heading to the kitchen "Nothing's wrong like I said I'm just tired"

Ethan's footsteps followed close behind me, as I placed the empty cups in the sink.

"Why won't you just tell me the truth?" he asked, pushing himself up to sit on the counter.

I just ignored him, turning on the sink filling it with hot soapy water as I started to do the dishes.

"Does it have something to do with Grayson? Did he do something?"  

I could feel my heart rate speed up, as I focused all my attention on scrubbing the plate in my hand. "Don't be ridiculous..."

"Okay so it is about Grayson..."

"No" I lied.

"Why can't you just tell me it's not like you're in love with him or anything"

I froze, my heart pounding.

"Oh my god..." He said realization taking over his features. "You are aren't you? You're  in love with Grayson!"

I dropped the plate in the sink, soap and water flying everywhere, "What?!" I squeaked, my voice cracking.

"Holy shit you are!" He hopped down.

"Shut up I am not! " I argued taking a step back trying to distance myself from him.

"Y/N..."

"Ethan seriously i'm not in love with your stupid brother" I lied, turning away from him to wipe up the spilt water.

Ethan grabbed a towel and started helping me, "Deny it all you want, but like I said, you're a terrible liar and you're not fooling anyone"

I sighed in defeat, looking up to meet his gaze "What am I supposed to do?"

"I don't know, grow a pair and tell him?" Ethan suggested.

I laughed humourlessly "Yeah okay, and when he inevitably rejects me therefore ruining our friendship for all of eternity then what?"

"Wow, and I'm the extra one."

I glared at him.

"What makes you so sure he's going to reject you?"

"Come on Ethan I'm not naive, I know damn well he doesn't feel the same way. In his eyes we're as platonic as it gets"

He scoffed, "Okay what is with you two and that word? Both of you continuously use it as if you say it enough it'll somehow become true. Though you guys may not have realized it, you guys are not, never have been, never will be, 'platonic'. Platonish, maybe but don't kid yourself. There's always been something more than friendship there and you're blind if you think it's one sided"

"I'm not telling him, and neither are you" I said stubbornly.

"You're making a mistake" he sighed.

"Yeah well what else is new."

Ethan and I finished cleaning up in silence. I could tell he was disappointed with my decision but I honestly didn't care it was for the best.

_______________

It was pretty late by the time Ethan left, so I was already in bed when Grayson texted me.

Gray :): hey, u up?

I stared at the three words displayed across my screen, getting more and more frustrated with both Grayson and myself. Why does he think he can just text whenever he feels like it and I'll automatically be there? The days of me dropping everything for Grayson are over. It's 3 a.m. whatever he wants can wait till the morning, which is when your average friend would be up. I slammed my phone down onto my bedside table with a new found resolve, I would not be a love struck puppy anymore and I would treat him like I would any other friend. Of course all this lasted for all of about 5 seconds, before I caved.

Y/N: yeah, what's up?

Gray :) : come outside.

I sighed, pushing off my covers, grabbing a hoodie from my closet before making my way downstairs as quietly as possible, as to not wake up the rest of my family. I opened the front door to find Grayson perched on my porch steps.

"What are you doing here" I asked, sitting next to him. The storm had left a chill in the air, making me shiver as I pulled my hoodie tighter around me.

"Couldn't sleep." He shrugged, turning to face me.

"How'd your date go?" I asked trying to keep the bitterness out of my voice.

"It went." He said, his beautiful hazel eyes clouded with something I couldn't recognize.

"Was it really that bad?"

He shrugged, "No it was fine it's just... I don't know..."

"Oh. Well are you going to go out with her again?"

"Not sure, what do you think I should do?" He asked, he looked conflicted and I could practically see the internal battle he was having with himself, though I couldn't figure out what had him so confused.

"Well I think you should do whatever makes you happiest, and you seem to really like her so why not give that relationship a chance."

"Really?"

Yeah no, I think you should tell Nicole to fuck right off and date me instead because i'm hopelessly in love with you and honestly i'm shocked you can't see it.

"Yeah really, if you think she's good for you and she'll make you happy then I'm all for it." Lies.

"Hmm okay, thanks" He said standing up.

"What is that it?"

"Yeah it's getting late I'll see you tomorrow" He shrugged.

"Hold on did you seriously drag my ass outside in the middle of the night, just to ask my opinion on a girl i've never met?" I asked dumbfounded, as he started to walk away.

He stopped and turned back to face me one last time, "I'll see you tomorrow Y/N" he smirked.

"Wow I hate you."

"You love me."

Little do you know Grayson, little do you know.

____________

I stayed up almost all night, my mind racing with different scenarios and a million what if's, all of which involved Grayson. Shocking, I know. Everything with Nicole was messing me up more than I thought it would, and they'd only been on one date. I can't even imagine how bad I'll be if they end up getting into a serious relationship.

I wanted so desperately to be okay with this to be able to move on, and I honestly thought I could do it. I believed I could watch him start a relationship, and fall in love with someone else and I'd be fine. Unfortunately, the more I actually pictured it the more unbearable ththought became. Which after many hours of thought lead me to the terrifying conclusion that Ethan might actually be right. Unless I want to remain trapped in a purgatory of pining and pain, I'm gonna have to do the one thing I planned to avoid at all costs. I have to tell Grayson I'm in love with him.

I had plans to hang out with the twins and Maddie in the evening, but I decided to come earlier in the day so I could hopefully catch Grayson alone making it so there were less opportunities to chicken out. I stood in front of the familiar front door trying to build up the courage to knock, which is stupid if you think about it because nine times out of ten I'd just barge in. Today was different. Today for probably the first time in my life,  standing on my best friends doorstep I was nervous. Forget about butterflies it felt like every living creature had gotten together to throw a rager in my stomach. I anxiously fidgeted with my hair tie that I always kept around my left wrist. I had probably been standing here for a solid 5 minutes now and it was definitely starting to look suspicious.

I closed my eyes taking a deep breath. I could do this, rule number 1, don't be a bitch. So before I could overthink myself out of it, I lifted my fist and knocked on the door.

Not even a full ten seconds later I was greeted by Ethan, "Oh shit, hey Y/N what're you doing here?" he asked awkwardly scratching the back of his neck.

"I need to talk to Grayson." I replied avoiding eye contact.

"Cool, about what?" He said, glancing behind him still blocking the door frame.

"Well after some thought, I decided you were right..."

"Right about...?" He mumbled, clearly distracted by something or someone else.

"What do you think Ethan?" I asked sarcastically, his strange behaviour starting to put me even more on edge then I was before.

"Oh my god you're gonna tell him how you feel..." He said, shock and realization taking over his features.

"If you ever let me in your house" I halfheartedly teased about the fact his body was still blocking the entrance.

"No, no yeah totally, or we could grab breakfast or something first. Talk everything through, you know make sure you're ready?" He suggested.

"Honestly Eth I'm kind of scared shitless right now, and I just want to get it over with. After though I doubt I'll want to stick around so we can grab Maddie and go?" I said making a move for the door.

"Yeah okay I'll text her." He said pausing to get out his phone, "Or actually you know what would be even better? If we went now, yeah now that I think about it let's just go now"

At this point, I was starting to get annoyed I mean just yesterday he was practically begging me to tell Grayson I was in love with him. Now when I finally decided I was ready to do it was like he was doing everything in his power to stop me.

"What is up with you today? You're acting weirder than the time after Gray and I accidentally walked in on you and Maddie"

His cheeks turned pink at the memory, "I'm just hungry Y/N is that a crime?"

"Then grab your girlfriend and go get food and if you want I'll meet up with you guys later, now if you could just excuse me" I said rolling my eyes, before ducking underneath his arm and pushing my way into the house.

I started walking towards the living room, but before I could take two steps, Ethan was in front of me.

"Seriously E?!" I huffed, this was getting ridiculous.

"He's not even home right now" He tried, but I could tell he was lying through his teeth.

"Oh yeah," I said narrowing my eyes suspiciously, "where is he then?"

"Uhhh," he started his eyes fleeting to the living room for a millisecond before returning to meet my gaze, "he went for a run?"

"Uh huh, yeah okay well I'll just wait for him in the living room then" I said pushing past him yet again.

Ethan caught my wrist is his hand causing me turn around to face him, "Y/N please, let's just go you can tell him later" he said his eyes pleading with me.

I stared at him for a few seconds, before indignantly yanking my hand out of his grip and  strutting into the living room.

"No Y/N wait, don't-" Ethan tried to warn me, but it was too late.

I stood frozen in horror taking in the scene before me. I don't think I've ever regretted anything more than I regret ignoring Ethan just now. Because there sitting on the sectional, was Grayson but he wasn't alone. Oh no, he was currently being straddled by someone who I could only assume was Nicole, in the middle of a very heated make out session.

They pulled apart almost immediately once they realized I was there. Nicole looked confused and startled, while Grayson looked shocked.

"Y/N" He breathed gently pushing Nicole off of his his face consumed by guilt.

I felt like all the air had been sucked out of my lungs. It was like I was trapped underwater, everything happening in front of me distorted. I could see Grayson's lips moving but everything coming out of his mouth sounded muffled, same with Nicole. It felt like I was drowning.

I guess they noticed something was up, because Grayson was now saying something directly to me.

Yet still my brain couldn't process it. It wasn't until I felt Ethan's hand on my shoulder that I finally snapped myself out of it.

"Y/N did you hear me? I asked if you were okay" Grayson said, his eyes searching mine for any indication as to why I was acting like this.

Slowly I looked down at Ethan's hand, then back up at the twins. Both sets of matching hazel eyes focused on me, Ethan's gaze sympathetic, Grayson's filled with guilt and concern.

I realized they were waiting for me to say something, so I cleared my throat before forcing a smile and saying "Peachy, sorry I interrupted your date" I forced a laugh, the words leaving a bitter taste in my mouth. "And you must be the infamous Nicole" I continued turning my attention to the stunning brown eyed girl who was nervously playing with the ends of her thick dark curls, looking incredibly confused.

"Yeah, and you're the best friend right?" she asked politely.

"Yeah, Y/N, nice to finally meet you" I smiled, pushing away the overwhelming urge to cry.

"You too, and wow sorry if this is a weird thing to say but you're so pretty, and I love your outfit" she smiled genuinely.

"Thanks so much I love your dress, it's like yellow was made for you" I complimented, my heart aching.

Of course she was nice, god forbid she's gorgeous and a bitch.

Her kindness however was only making things worse for me, I needed to get out of here, before I have a complete breakdown. "Well, I came to see if Grayson wanted to hangout but clearly you guys are busy so I'm gonna go but it was nice meeting you Nicole" I said my voice cracking, and I quickly turned to leave practically sprinting out of there.

"Y/N wait!" Grayson called after me but I was already halfway out the door.

"Bye guys" I yelled before slamming the door behind me, I could already feel the tears starting to fall.

I heard the twins loudly arguing about something is the distance, then Ethan burst out the door.

"Y/N-" Ethan started to call after me, but I was already halfway across the street and there was no way in hell I was turning back.

I ran into my house and up to my room slamming my door closed, before I collapsed on the floor in a fit of sobs.

For hours, I sat there unmoving, crying hysterically, letting out all my sadness anger and frustration. So far this was hurting me more than any break up I'd ever endured. I felt weak, completely helpless and the fact that Grayson had that much power over me, terrified me more than anything else.

I angrily wiped away my tears, yanking my phone out of my pocket. I quickly scrolled through my contacts to the all to familiar name whose number I'd left unused for months. I opened a new conversation, typing a quick message before shakily hitting send.

Grayson's P.O.V "Fuck." I cursed, while I watched the tiny orange ball bounce off the side of the plastic rim as I missed yet another fucking shot.

I'd been shooting on the mini-hoop I had attached to the back of my door for a solid 45 minutes and I'd only managed to sink 3. I grabbed the ball that had rolled next to my bed, lining up for another shot, which of course didn't go in.

I groaned in frustration, chucking the stupid toy at my wall. Ever since Y/N walked in on Nicole and I earlier I hadn't been able to focus on anything but the absolute emptiness in her expression when she looked at me. To almost anyone else she would've looked fine, happy even. She had joked around after her initial shock, smiling, while  making polite small talk with Nicole, but her smile didn't reach her eyes.

When she ran out I wanted nothing more than to chase after her the only thing stopping me was Ethan. I fought back at first, my anger and annoyance getting the best of me, because I just couldn't understand why he wouldn't let me go after her. I eventually gave in when he reminded me that Nicole was still here and it'd be a real dick move to just leave her here alone.   So I'd gone back to the girl I should've been thinking about instead of going after the one I couldn't get out of my head. Not that that helped anything because Nicole had left shortly after, telling me that we'd be better off as friends because it was clear I had a lot of shit I needed to figure out. Whatever the hell that means. Not that I was that torn up about it anyway, she was nice and all but I couldn't help feel like something was missing.

I sighed, running my hands through my hair messing it up yet again. I rolled off my bed walking over to my window which happened to be aligned with Y/N's. I looked out at her house half expecting to see her curled up watching something on Netflix, her hair pulled back in a messy bun with her adorable glasses that I know she hates. But her room was dark. I checked the time on my phone, 11:45.

Weird she never goes to bed this early, it takes her forever to fall asleep.

I went to go text her, check in make sure everything's alright, when I noticed a car pull into her driveway out of the corner of my eye. A few seconds later I saw her jog out, wearing one of Ethan's hoodies. I don't know why but that rubbed me the wrong way as it always did when I saw her wearing something of his. My irritation only grew when I watched a guy get out of the car and give her a huge hug.

Who the fuck could she possibly be going out with?

I glared at them my jaw clenched as I watched them walk around the car him opening the door for her. It was only when I caught a glimpse of his stupid smug face and wild brown curls that I realized who it was. Her fucking ex. The dumbass that broke her heart because of his own insecurities. One of the only people it this world I absolutely loathed. Y/N was hanging out with Mitchell.

An unjustifiable overwhelming wave of rage flowed through me as I watched them drive off together. I stormed out of my room practically slamming the door behind me, and stalked across the hall angrily pounding on Ethan's door.

"Gray what the fu-" Ethan started to say, wearing only a pair of adidas sweats, his hair a mess.

"You will not believe what I just saw" I cut him off pushing past him into his room, where a stunned Maddie wearing nothing but one of Ethan's tee shirt, was laying on his bed. "Hey Madds"

"Hey Gray" she waved awkwardly, I could tell she was still surprised by me barging in.

"No offence Grayson but I don't give a shit about some dumb squirrels fighting over an acorn again, now get out." Ethan said unable to keep the irritation out of his tone.

"Okay first of all they were not just 'fighting' over an acorn they were full on dueling with sticks and all and it was fucking sick. Secondly that's not why I'm here. I just saw Y/N getting into a car with Mitchell" I said scowling, the thought filling me with a whole new surge of anger.

Ethan raised his eyebrows in surprise, before quickly covering it up with disinterest. "So what why do you care?"

"I care because she's my best friend and I don't want that asshole to hurt her again."

Ethan rolled his eyes, "I honestly don't know why you hate Mitchell so much, he's a pretty nice guy yet you act like he's the devil reincarnated."

I stared at him in shock, he couldn't possibly be  serious, "I mean he's the world's biggest tool, who never deserved Y/N and broke her heart for no reason but other than that yeah he's a real stand up guy!"

Ethan and Maddie exchanged a look, before Ethan said with a smirk, "Sounds like you're a little jealous there bud"

"Me? Jealous? Please!" I scoffed, "I just think Y/N deserves someone who will actually treat her right for once, because she's one of the most amazing girls I know and I don't understand why she wastes her time with shrimp dick."

Now Maddie and Ethan were both staring at me with shit eating grins, "You're so right he he's insanely jealous right now!" Maddie smirked.

"Oh fuck off Madeline I am not" I glared my cheeks heating up.

Maddie just laughed, "Awh look at him he's blushing!" she teased, of course making me blush more. "Does Grayson Dolan have a little crush on Y/N?"

Ethan lost it, he was laughing so hard he started wheezing.

"You guys suck." I said frustratedly getting up. If I wasn't blushing before I sure as hell was now, and I could feel my heart rate skyrocket.

"No Gray wait don't go, we're sorry!" Ethan said clearly trying to hold back his laughter.

"I hate you."

"Come on bro don't be like that, this is clearly bugging you so let's talk about it" Ethan pleaded.

I contemplated his offer for a second, before ultimately reclaiming my spot on his bed. As much as I didn't want to admit it I know talking about it with him would help me clear my head.

"I just don't know what she sees in him, she's a million times better than he'll ever be" I sighed, "Maybe I should go find them..."

"Wait? What?!" Ethan asked startled.

"Yeah I could check snap map or something, and go make sure she's okay..."

"Dude absolutely not. You're not going to crash her date" Ethan said looking at me like I was absolutely insane.

"But-" I started.

"No Grayson, I'm not going to let you stalk our best friend." Ethan cut me off.

I opened my mouth to protest, but Ethan stopped me before I could say anything.

"No Gray. Think about how crazy you sound right now! You're acting lowkey psycho, just wait until she gets back to talk to her later like a normal person" He scolded.

Ethan was right. I was being ridiculous. Like some sort of crazy overprotective boyfriend and we aren't even together! I don't know what got into me, I was not, never had been, never will be that guy. There was just so many things going through my brain that'd I'd gotten a little riled up.

I looked at him guiltily, "You're right, I don't know what's up with me today, sorry dude"

"You don't need to apologize, just chill." He said sympathetically.

I nodded, standing up walking towards the door. "Thanks guys," I said, pausing before adding, "Oh and since I know the second I leave you guys are gonna finish what I clearly interrupted earlier, Maddie try and be quieter our parents are sleeping and you wouldn't want to wake them up, that'd be a nightmare for you two to explain"

Now it was their turn to blush, Maddie looked embarrassed while Ethan looked pissed, "Oh my god shut the fuck up assface" Ethan glared chucking a pillow at me.

I narrowly dodged it chuckling "Use protection!" I called, bolting to my room before Ethan had the chance to throw something harder than a pillow.

I scrolled through my snap memories while I waited for Y/N to get back. Most of them were of Ethan doing something stupid, but a few were of Y/N. I clicked on a video she'd taken a while back while we were driving around one night listening to music, when out of nowhere Lay all your love on me from the Mama Mia soundtrack came on. She'd been obsessed with that musical when we were kids, making us watch the movie over and over again until Ethan and I staged an intervention. I had whined and complained asking her to change it but she just turned it up and sang at the top of her lungs. In the video she was singing the chorus as loud and as off key as she could, making faces and zooming in and out while I watched her from the drivers seat with an amused smirk. I remeber I'd tried to act annoyed but she was to damn cute I couldn't keep a straight face. When the video ended I had a stupid smile on, remembering how shortly after that video was taken she'd managed to convince me to join in on the duet which ended with us both laughing our asses off. It had been a good day.

I scrolled down to the next snap with Y/N. It was another video except this time I had taken it. This one was more recent, it was from one of our movie nights a few weeks ago and I'd forced her to watch IT for the first time even though she's terrified of clowns. In the video she was snuggled into me, with her fuzzy blanket almost covering her eyes. We'd been eating popcorn and the bowl was resting on her lap. It was at the part of the movie where pennywise jumps out of the old film projector the kids where looking at. Obviously that scared Y/N shitless and she'd jumped sending the popcorn flying everywhere, screaming and cursing under her breath, while I was pissing myself laughing and teasing her in the background. I had ended up sleeping over that night and I remember waking up with Y/N in my arms, even though when we went to sleep we were on opposite ends of the bed, feeling nothing but pure happiness.

I continued to look through the old snaps and the more I looked the more they're actually were of Y/N. Videos of her attempting to learn fortnight or singing and dancing obnoxiously around the room. Random ones of her playing with my hair or flipping me off. Pictures of her with food all over her face, or passed out on my shoulder during long car rides with Ethan. Some selfies we took after she got me to do face masks with her. So many pictures from when we go out for food weather it's fast food in the car or a legitimate meal at a restaurant. All of them bringing back fond memories like the time we went cliff jumping or when we took her to get her first tattoo.

However, the one picture that made me stop everything I was doing to stare at it, was one taken only about a week and a half ago. We'd gone to the beach earlier in the day, and her, Maddie, Ethan and I had all gone back to our house for a bonfire. She had on one of my hoodies, shocking, (I swear this girl never wears her own clothes) and I'd pulled her on to my lap so I wouldn't have to go get her a chair. In the photo she was laughing at something someone had said, her eyes lit up with happiness, the light from the fire making her look like she was glowing from the inside out. What made me uneasy about it was how I was looking at her, I was starting at her with the biggest smile, like she was the most amazing thing I'd ever seen or some shit. Ethan must've taken the picture without me noticing because I don't think I'd ever seen it before. An overwhelming feeling of adoration and longing surged through me, we looked like a couple.

I put my phone down next to me, Maddie's words replayed in my head. Did I like Y/N? I mean we'd been friends for so long I didn't think it was possible to be or to want to be anything else. She was beautiful there was no denying that, not so much in an in your face super model kind of way, no her beauty was more natural, unfiltered and as cliché as it sounds she took my breath away. The more I think about it, the more I realize the butterflies I'm always ignoring when I'm around her and yesterday at her house, I had wanted to kiss her. The only reason I didn't was because Ethan walked in. But that didn't mean anything right? I had just gotten caught up in the moment. I couldn't like Y/N. I looked back down at the picture of us the warm feeling in my stomach spreading to the rest of my body, causing panic.

I hurried back to Ethan's room, not even bothering to knock this time. Him and Maddie were in a heated make out session but thankfully they were still clothed. Or at least mostly clothed.

"Seriously Grayson?! It's like your trying to have a repeat of last month! Get the fuck out!" Ethan screamed, after him and Maddie pulled apart.

"Why'd you take this picture" I ignored him shoving my phone in his face.

He grumpily snatched the phone from my hand to get a better look, "I don't know dude you both look happy, it's a good angle, the fire adds a nice aesthetic," he shrugged handing it back to me, "Can you leave now? We were kind of busy..."

"We look like a fucking couple Ethan" I exclaimed, sitting down on his bed.

Ethan groaned in frustration, "Yeah? So what?"

"So what?! I'm freaking out! I can't have feelings for her, she's Y/N!"

"It's just a picture Gray it's not a big deal" Ethan sighed. "Besides so what if you do like her? I think you guys would be good together."

"Bro, do you have any idea what a gross cliché that'd be?! I don't like her like that. I can't." I said, but I sounded unsure. At this point it was more like I was trying to convince myself rather than Ethan.

"You're being so dramatic right now" Ethan sighed, putting his head in his hands, "You've literally got yourself worked up over one stupid picture where you guys look like your a little more than friends. I mean you said it yourself, you don't like her like that, so why are you still here? What's the problem"

"It looks like I'm in love with her Ethan! It's not supposed to look like you're in love with your best friend!" I frustratedly ran my hands through my hair.

Maddie whom I'd completely forgotten was there, looked from me to Ethan with a small smirk, "E should we tell him or do you think that'd make things worse?"

"Tell me what?"

"Nothing it's not a big deal, it's just that you always look at her like that, you have since we were 12" He shrugged. "It's worse when you talk about her though because then you get this really stupid expression on your face kind of like you just got really good head or something"

I felt my cheeks heat up, "I do not!" I weakly argued.

Maddie laughed slightly, "I don't agree with my idiot boyfriends analogy, but yeah you totally do. It's like someone will just mention her name and you get this big dopey smile on your face it's hilarious"

I looked at my brother and his girlfriend looking for any signs they were messing with but I found none.

"What does that mean?" I said quietly, my heart pounding, terrified of what it could be.

Ethan's expression softened, his earlier frustration had almost completely vanished, replaced with a knowing smile as he and Maddie exchanged a look.

"I think you know damn well what it means Grayson I just think you're too much of a fucking pussy to admit it to yourself."

I thought about everything, the butterflies, constantly finding some excuse to touch her or be near her because of the almost electric feeling that came with it. How her smile lit up a room, how I was always so fascinated in how her eyes would change depending on her emotion and what she was wearing. How I knew basically everything about her yet she never failed to amaze me. Ethan was right I knew what it meant, and I swear that realization made my heart drop to my ass. Your P.O.V I had texted Mitchell earlier with the poorly thought out intention to try and get back together. That being said I was fully expecting him to ignore me. Our breakup wasn't the messiest but it hadn't been all sunshine and roses either. What I didn't expect was, him to not only text back but to invite me to hangout as well.

He'd picked me up, greeting me with a hug and a smile and we drove around for a few hours. We talked through everything he apologized for how he ended things, and I apologized for being too blind to realize my own feelings. He told me about his new girlfriend, his eyes lighting up as he talked about her and I found myself being genuinely happy for him. I ended up cracking and filling him in on my whole dilemma which he was very sympathetic to. In the end we decided we'd stay friends and I was happy.

"Well thanks for everything Mitchell I really needed this." I said as we pulled into my driveway.

"Of course, and hey let me know if you want me to set you up with my friend Anthony" he said.

"I might have to take you up on that" I laughed, getting out of the car.

We said our goodbyes and I watched him drive away. When I looked back I finally noticed the floppy haired, hazel eyed boy who'd been causing me so much heartache recently standing at the end of his driveway.

"Grayson what are you doing out here?" I asked, my heart beating rapidly in my chest.

"I came to drop this off," he said lifting up his purple champions sweater I'd returned to him the day before.

"You came to give me your sweater?" I asked confusion taking over my features.

I guess the question caught him off guard because he started stuttering, "Y-yes I mean, N-no, I mean y-you like it so m-much I-"

"Why are you really here Grayson?" I sighed.

He walked closer to me, "I wanted to talk." he said quietly "I see your hanging out with Mitchell again"

I swear I saw a spark of jealousy ignite in his eyes.

"Yeah? So what?" I said indignantly, crossing my arms over my chest.

"So? He hurt you! Why would you want to be around him!" He said, I could tell he was frustrated.

You hurt me! More than he ever did and looky here i'm still putting up with your bitch ass.  "That's in the past Gray, things are different now" I rolled my eyes.

"How Y/N? Please enlighten me." He scoffed.

"We're friends."

"Yeah until you 'accidentally' wake up in his bed"

"Do you really think that lowly of me? We've been best friends our whole lives I thought you knew me better than that..." I said, the overwhelming feelings of hurt and disbelief consuming me.

"No Y/N you know that's not what I meant, I just don't trust him with you." Grayson tried to explain.

"You don't trust him with me? What the fuck does that even mean?!" I said, I could feel the anger bubbling up inside me, this was getting ridiculous, "You don't get to judge who I hangout with or what I do with my life. I'm a big girl I can make my own decisions."

"So what are you going to do, fuck around with him until he gets tired of you and breaks your heart again?" Grayson glared, his jaw clenched in anger.

"Wow, okay. Fuck you Grayson." I spat, I could feel the tears threatening to spill, which only added to my frustration, I was tired of crying. I took a few steps backwards trying to create distance between us.

His expression immediately softened, his eyes filled with guilt and regret "I am so sorry Y/N I didn't mean-"

"No fuck you." I cut him off. "You're acting like a jealous dick and for what?! Because I was hanging out with another guy?! That's bullshit Grayson! You were literally making out with Nicole this morning! You're not my boyfriend, you always make that perfectly clear to anyone who asks, so why the hell do you care so much if I end up fucking Mitchell or not? It's not like I haven't done it before, we dated for like 6 months..."

"Because it makes me sick to my stomach thinking about you with him, his hands on your body... I just... I don't want to fucking picture okay?! I've hated all of your past boyfriends and until today I had no fucking clue why, because I mean we're just friends right?" Grayson ranted, laughing humourlessly.

I opened my mouth to say something, but Gray continued before I got the chance.

"Except, I can't stop thinking about you, and when I'm with you I swear my hearts about to beat out of my chest or some shit, but still I tried to convince myself we're just friends. I threw myself into half assed relationships to avoid what I was really feeling because the second I admitted to myself it made it real. But today I was looking through some old videos and pictures of us and I realized, as cheesy as it sounds, I'm the happiest when I'm with you. You're funny and kind, and you're strong, and you're really fucking pretty. It doesn't matter where I am or what I'm doing I always want to be with you, and I can't keep ignoring it forever. So I'm sorry I was an asshole, and I'm sorry if this ruins the friendship but Y/N I'm in love with you. I'm so in love with you it scares me because I have no idea what'd I do without you in my life, I honestly don't think I could handle it."

I stood frozen in shock, letting his confession sink in. There was less than a foot of space between us, his hazel eyes filled with so much emotion, I found it hard to breathe.

I guess I was taking to long to react, because Grayson's somewhat hopeful expression started to falter.

"Y/N, please say something..." He said softly, his eyes searching mine for some kind of indication on how I was feeling.  

The vulnerability, in his voice was enough to bring me back to reality. Now our faces were less than six inches apart.

I broke out into a huge smile, "Wow Dolan, I always knew you were obsessed with me, but I have to say, that was unexpected"

He groaned, placing on of his hands over his heart, "Oh my god you're the worst. I pour my heart out to you and that's your response? I hat-"

I cut him off by gently placing my lips on his kissing him slowly. He didn't react at first, apparently too caught off guard to move. I started to pull away, but Grayson stopped me. I guess at that point he'd finally processed what was happening because he wrapped his arms around me pulling me closer and deepening the the kiss. His soft lips moving perfectly in sync with mine I smiled, my whole body felt like it was on fire, but at the same time I had shivers running up and down my spine.

After what felt like an eternity, yet still not enough time we broke apart breathless.

"I love you too." I said softly my voice barely above a whisper.

His whole face lit up with the most breathtaking smile, that made my stomach explode with butterflies, as he leaned in to kiss me again.

"Even though you're an asshole sometimes" I teased, biting my bottom lip.

"Me?! You're one to talk! I told you I loved you and you response was 'I knew you were obsessed with me.' Who does that? You almost gave me a heart attack!" he said indignantly, pulling back slightly.

I laughed "Sorry Gray, but in my defence you caught me completely off guard."

He playfully rolled his eyes, closing the distance between us and kissing me softly.

"I love you, even though you're a little shit sometimes" He said giving me another quick peck. "Be mine?"

I smiled kissing him again.

"Is that a yes?" He grinned.

"Yes." I rolled my eyes, unable to keep the smile off my face.

Still smiling, Grayson started to lean in, but before our lips could touch, we were interrupted.

"FUCK YEAH CAM OWES ME 50$ HAH!"

We turned to see Ethan and Maddie standing in the doorway of the Dolan house, with messy hair and minimal clothing.

"Ethan shut up can't you see they're having a moment?!" Maddie said smacking him lightly upside the head. "SORRY GUYS CARRY ON"

Grayson shook his head slightly, cheeks flushed, closing the gap between us. I kissed him back intensely, while we flipped off Maddie and Ethan who were obnoxiously cheering.

"So much for being 'Platonic' huh?" I said softly.

Grayson let out a breathy laugh, "You know, I think I like this better anyway"

[jayne-hecate-writer]

A whole new me-ish...

Dear friends, it has been so long and I have become a new person! Well, no, not really. I'm still me. I still have a filthy mouth and a foul mind, but writing has taken a back seat to the other things I have started creating.

Since the Covid lock down I have been experimenting with model making and painting, taking a particular interest in lighting said models with LEDs, better known among us nerds as Light Emitting Diodes. LEDs come in many shapes and sizes, plus they produce a very good variety colours, they also draw relatively little power and finally, they can be run from a watch battery. As you can see, there is lots to like with LEDs, but there is a downside, to them if you want to use a lot, for a start you need to use more power than you get from a watch battery. Connecting LEDs to a larger battery pack or power supply is a great way to pop them completely, or build them up into a slowly failing system. The way to avoid doing this is to use a resistor, to reduce current flow into the LED and prevent it burning out. Calculating the value of resisters is fairly simple, but I have to reply on the resistors I can salvage from the various pieces of broken equipment I have access to. In this case, I was able to scavenge the resisters and LEDs from the three broken printers I had in my stocks of trash electronics.

Now speaking of F**king printers, I made a discovery while taking apart my failed Cannon printer/scanner. It had a reservoir inside where the ink got dumped during use. Basically, it had a series of tubes that took the ink from the head and dumped it into a wads of cotton wool at the back of the machine, that made the inside of the printer case absolutely filthy with wasted ink. The two HP printers I dismantled, did not have this system and it led me to wonder, was this the cause of the constant need to replace ink in the Canon? Was it really continuously pumping horrifically expensive ink into the waste bin? If this was the case, what a terribly wasteful system and I can confirm that having seen this system, I will never buy a Canon printer again. I am sure that it had another purpose, other than to rapidly waste ink, but it was a terrible system in which a brand new ink cartridge lasted less than a week.

My model projects started fairly simply, with a small Hotwheels car that I found and then painted, as reported in a previous blog post on here. The second model was a scratch built Star Wars Pod Racer, made from recycled bubble bath bottles, hand sanitiser bottles and bottle tops. Again I fitted different coloured LEDs to resemble engine glow and the strange energy binding that holds the jet engines together. I made the base from scrap wood and cardboard and added stones and pebbles from the garden, all covered with a Papier-mâché and baking soda. The paint was acrylic from the local cheap shop and it is surprisingly good.

From here I moved onto another hotwheels car, this time with a zombie theme and full LED lights. I went on-line and found an inch tall figure from the TV show Walking Dead, who was a character called Daryl. In the show he wore a lot of black leather black leather according to the photos I found on line and in this case, used a large kitchen cleaver. With model railway grass and another twig from the garden to look like a felled tree, the scene was set and I was very proud of this creation. So much so in fact, that I gifted it to a very dear friend of mine who like me loves a good zombie movie.

The next project was a repair and build for a Snap On Tools branded toy break down truck that my lovely wife had been given along with a set of Snap On sockets she bought when she was working as a motorcycle mechanic. Over the years, the truck had been played with by children, dropped into toy boxes and it was looking really rather second hand. The wing mirrors, door handles, rear facing lights and both cranes needed repairing or replacing and I sculpted the replacements parts from superglue and baking soda or from lumps of solder, all of which I carved with files and a scalpel. The broken parts were repaired and finally the truck was stripped down to the component parts and thoroughly cleaned, before being put back together. Once the truck was finished, it really needed a place to sit, so I designed a garage from the 1950s for it to sit in, with an old style petrol pump and a couple of oil barrels.

The petrol pump was a 1/24 scale resin model kit purchased on line and the rest of the garage was built using recycled cardboard and lollypop sticks. I used a series of garden stones and then a tub of sand brought back from Bermuda by a close family friend, some time ago. The sand was a lovely pink colour, made up crushed coral and shells. It is perfect for modelling because it is not the boring granular sand of my local beach, which is gritty, fine and easily wind blown sand. By this time I was experimenting with colour washes, applied to painted base coats. The depth of the colour achieved is just lovely and the lighting effects really bring out the glow of the paint. With the garage finished, a few Easter egg details were added that only the most observant nerd will notice. But there was still a large hole in the model that needed to be filled somehow. Dearest wifey went web browsing found a scale model of a Vincent Black Shadow motorcycle and it fitted perfectly into the gap, to be illuminated by a soft white LED. Once finished, I could not have been more pleased than when Wifey took the model and plugged it in. Oh yes, this time I had used a PSU or power supply unit with a timer circuit to run the LEDs as a night light in our hallway to the bathroom. Given how many of  the LEDs I had used to light the garage forecourt, the shop window and parking bay, mains power was really the only option. On this occasion, I purchased a set of pre-wired LEDs that already had a resister fitted in series with the LED, meaning that it is safe to run them on the mains power.

My next model was a Motorcycle diorama, a classic Kawasaki Zephyr, a model kit found on e-Bay that was then imported from Japan. The kit was perfectly formed, it was hard to believe that they had been moulded from plastic, however the detail was so fine, my old eyes needed a magnifying glass to see them clearly for paint or glue. Once the bike was fully assembled, I built a small ten centimetre squared street scene, with a graffiti covered wall and a drink machine for the bike to sit with. The Pepsi dispensing machine was purchased from e-Bay yet again, for just a few pennies and it is beautifully printed onto photo-paper, meaning that the finished model when assembled is exquisite. The nearly completed model once again needed something else and I was at a loss of what to do. Yet the thought of lights never strays far from my mind and I designed a street lamp with an orange glow to look like an old sodium lamp. My childhood was spent in the gloom of sodium lamps, both here and abroad, when catching ferries at four in the morning to travel across Europe. The lamppost was made from a sliver of scrap wood and some tissue paper to give it a concrete like texture, with two orange LEDs secreted in the head. Once finished, I was not overly happy with the result, but by that time, it was too late to go back. The lighting effect was really nice though, but the weathering and fake litter were really effective additions, making it look like the bike was parked on double yellow lines in a very run down city street.

This led (snigger) me into my most recent model, another Star Wars inspired diorama, this time in 1/18 scale, with Hasbro Clone Trooper action figures and an old, rather broken Maisto motorbike. Normally, Star Wars has little to do with motorcycles, but while filming the Obi Wan Kenobi series, Ewan McGreggor was photographed during a break, sitting on his own motorcycle reading a copy of a motorcycle newspaper, while in his full Obi Wan costume. This was all the inspiration I needed and I found that the broken motorcycle model was just the right size for the action figures. Once again, I devised a plan, found the LEDs and used the parts from my destroyed printers. I even managed to use the scanner light head, at first using a variable resistor to adjust the glow. Sadly I over ran the strip and the LEDs burned out. Luckily I had a spare to play with and used a recovered resistor to run it instead. This has the opposite problem to the variable resistor which had too little resistance, being too high a resistance to allow a full glow from the strip of LEDs. I gave one of the Clone Troopers a bong made to look like it was made from the leg of a battle droid, with a flickering orange resister to show the burning spice in the bowl. The other clone was given a spray can of bright blue spray paint, modelled from plastic scraps and superglue. Again, once the model scenery was constructed, I really enjoyed the weathering and dirtying of the street. The washes have made all of the plastic parts look like rusted metal girders or filthy litter soiled streets or heavily corroded chemical pipes. I absolutely love the process of weathering, taking something shiny, well painted and nice looking and turning it into something filthy, damaged and rusted, with just a few washes of colour and stain.

So this is what I have been doing, as well as writing the occasional short story for a Christmas book release, editing the writing club book in time for another Christmas release and even working on the sequel to my first novel, Letitia. So how does this make me a new person? Well, I have finally embraced the fact that I am an artist and I absolutely love playing with paint. I may not be able to draw particularly well and I certainly cannot sculpt in clay or stone, but I can build and paint model scenes scratch build my own kits from trash to compliment the model kits or other parts acquired else where. I have to be honest, it is all such fun.

[meriibrittane]

Donna and Harvey AU in Paris

A/N: Hi! This is an idea I had while reading one of the fics and I thought I could write one based in Paris since I visited Paris a couple of times and I have just the right idea of where Harvey were to take Donna on a romantic trip.

Hope you enjoy!

Donna felt strange when she saw the note on her desk. Why is Harvey being so mysterious leaving her a post-it? She took the little square paper, pink, rose scented and all - it was from her office no doubt- carefully folding it in two as she made her way to the elevator, prepared to join him at the rendez-vous point.

Harvey felt his chest popping open. He grabbed his phone to check one more time that he didn’t forget anything. Everything must be perfect for the next few days. He saw his reminder for like the dozen times to not forget the flowers when they arrive and he was just trying to remember the name of the lady he should be calling for this when a beautiful redheaded made her appearance around the corner, walking the short distance to him like she was modeling at the NY Fashion Week.

She was wearing a black dress, knee-length with a chic, dark blue hem, making her look elegant and office at the same time. On top she had a faux-fur coat in the color of teal that leaned carefully to the sides.

“Hello stranger” she said with a smile, “I assume we are taking the weekend off to go to the mysterious location?” she accentuated the last couple of syllables while one of her fingers was seductively drawing circles on his tie.

“More like the whole week” Harvey added while popping out two plane tickets from his inner pocket.

“We really are going to Paris?!” Donna couldn’t believe her eyes. Usually she is one step ahead of every surprise he tries to pull on her but this time he really took the effort to make sure she stayed out of it.

“You didn’t see that coming, now I can say I have one on you.“ and as he said this words he opened the door for her before they both got in the car and set off to the airport.

...

Paris was just what Donna had hoped for. Of course Harvey chose the luxurious suite at the Ritz hotel in Place Vendôme. From their balcony they could see the Eiffel tower in its whole splendor and had it not been the brinks of winter they would have easily eaten breakfast lunch and dinner on the terrace.

“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me?! We are in Paris and you think we are not going to see the famous Printemps? Boulevard Haussmann is a must see, I am telling you, besides..”

Harvey was carelessly leaning on his elbow in bed next to his girlfriend and he said not a word preferring to smile as he watched her being silly but at the same time enormously happy. Seeing her like this made him feel like the luckiest man in the entire world. “...besides, I really feel like I need to upgrade my purse collection. A classical Louis Vuitton feels like everything i need right now.”

“Everything?”

“Well not really” she leaned to give him a peck “this is perfect, Harvey, really, I feel this is the happiest I’ve ever been”

“Then how about tonight we celebrate our happiness with a dinner at Le Jules Vernes at the top of the Eiffel Tower?”

“Whaat?! I thought it’s nearly impossible to get a decent reservation there and it must cost like crazy..”

“Have you met me? I’m Harvey Specter” he added with his famous smirk

“Well aren’t you a fine brag”

The weather at the top of the Eiffel Tower was perfect. Even though the weather was cold, the sunset skies showed unbelievable colours brought together to form the most romantic view. The wind was still.

The concierge showed them their table, with Donna happily holding Harvey’s arm. She was wearing her faux-fur again, this time over a red laced dress that screamed sexy from top to bottom. The cleavage was in a V-shape with the red lace carefully setting on both her breasts like it belonged there. Going down she had this beautiful motive on her side that complimented her curves yet so naturally. Her hair was like never before brought up in a loose but elegant bun, with strands of auburn hair that left her face so sit on her pale shoulders.

Harvey was beginning to feel nervous. He had planned this moment for a long time now. He knew he was gonna propose to her almost from the very first day he met her. How he was gonna do it he only figured these past months but once he decided that Paris was the best way to do it he never for a minute felt like it could go wrong. Until now.

Apparently, the table he required was no longer available, they were escorted to a more private one, but with less a view. When he objected to these decisions apologies flowed but Donna managed to calm him down with her easy-going composure like she always does.

When she talks it’s like all the gas on his fire suddenly dissipates and all of a sudden the weight on his heart lessens by the pound.

“This feels like quite the date. I didn’t know I needed this so much until now” she looked around trying to take everything in.

“You look like quite the date really. I think Paris suits you very well.” As he said those words her doe eyes were glitching in the dim light and he thought she looked more beautiful than ever.

The entrés arrived just as the Eiffel Tower was lighting up and seen from inside its sparkles made it feel like they were surrounded by stars. The main course was exquisite, duck sautée with a touch of pomegranate sauce but now it was time for dessert and Harvey’s heart rate enhanced dramatically.

“This was so good but I really don’t know how I’m gonna fit in the dessert” Donna said with a nod.

“Neither do I” Harvey said more to himself as apprehension about what was about to happen hit him.

“What did you say we were having for dessert?” Donna asked while taking a sip of her champagne glass.

“Uh, I..” he struggled to come up with words for this one but he was saved just in time by the waiter that pushed a silver plateau with a round cover on their table.

“This is the specialty for today in France as it is the epiphany. La Galette des Rois. Voilà!” with this he lifted the heavy lid to uncover a really simple pie decorated with beautiful floral striations on top. Harvey’s eyes looked confused as he tried to get a sense of everything. He remembered saying to them before that he wanted the ring to be included neatly into their final course but he did not expect this, he was puzzled. Where was the ring.

“There is a tradition” he explained as he cut the cake in two and settled each one with a piece “that says that whoever finds the féve-the charm inside the cake will be lucky all year long. Bon appetit!”

“Oh dear, now I have to eat it to see if I’m gonna get even more lucky than this” Donna smiled cheerfully and without any clue she firmly plunged her fork into the piece of cake but alas something shiny was revealed. She looked at it with disbelief and then she looked at Harvey  who was barely managing sitting down. Lifting up he pushed his chair in the other direction making room for him to kneel just in front of a perplexed Donna.

She could not believe her eyes. This charming but yet troubled man was really going to ask her to marry, her best friend and lover has made their already romantic trip to Paris even more perfect.

“Donna, I.. I know that sometimes I can be a pain in the ass but I also know that without you I’d be lost and I love you more than anything, like I never loved anyone and..”

“Harvey”

“Please let me finish or I might never really come to say everything I want to tell you tonight”

“Okay” she conceded as her hazel, perplexed eyes now became more glassy and full of love for the man in front of her.

“You know, I think I knew it from the first time we met, that you were different, you were something special and I was not gonna mess it up. Maybe this is why it took me 13 years to finally end up here and I’m sorry for all the times I’ve caused you pain. I will try to make up for it every day in the future because I want to spend the rest of it next to you. Donna...will you marry me?”

Donna’s features were lightening up at his words “Yes Harvey I will” she said as she was tearing up a bit. He gently put the ring onto her finger, at the same time getting up with Donna’s hands in his arms. Their faces now inches apart, looking into each other’s eyes it felt like time and space were dilating, they forgot where they were or for how long they remained there. The look of pure happiness Donna could see in his eyes was making her stomach fall and she could hear his heart beats like his chest was popping out.

I actually wrote this in January close to Epiphany Day, thus the twist with the Galette. For those of you wondering, it’s a tradition in France to eat a pie with a lucky charm hidden inside. Whoever finds it will be lucky the whole year long.

Hope you liked it, actually this is my first time writing something of the sort ^^

Feedback is well appreciated

[parkbearum]

Red Carnation

Description:The looks he gave you,the way he talked and his attitude made it all harder to bear him.Mafia exo!

Genre:Smut+fluff

Chanyeol X Reader

Part 1

You put the brush down after finishing the last part of the painting.You had been staying at this hell-hole for 3 weeks now and after your small talk with Mr.Park that night,he had gotten careful when he spoke to you or was around you in general.You had told him that you did not want his pity act but all you had in return was silence and cold eyes as usual.

You asked him for many things in the past week.Clothes,food and some more and one of those things was your brushes and some canvases.You were supposed to submit a work 2 weeks ago and since you didn’t have the permission to go out,you decided to stay in and paint as much as you want.

After he saw you speaking sign language that night,he asked you how you knew it and to your surprise,he said it was okay if you did not want to mention it.You calmly said that you had to learn it in order to speak to your brother,who was now resting in his grave.

 After you told him you had no one,instead of abandoning you or just leaving you to be,he had the urge to protect you and that’s why you were being kept at his house for a week now.He had asked you to come and stay over at his house but didn’t tell you why.You actually wanted to resist at first but remembering he was a rained killer and the head of a big mafia,you just nodded.

The truth was that he was concerned about you.

He had been following a group of serial killers for a while and he was suspecting that maybe they had learned where his man lived and he didn’t want you to get killed there.His man were trained,skilled and they knew what to do at a point where you had to sacrifice a few of them but you were just a girl he brought over to his building a few weeks ago just because you had seen too much.

Even shin knew it was a lie

He actually wanted to be around you.He was planning to kill you or just abandon you in a place where no one knew like he did to many people at the end of their first week but you were different.He wanted to know more about you and to everyone’s surprise,he listened to you when you talked other than just yelling at you.

You made your way upstairs to see a Mr.Park who was talking calmly on the phone.People might think that he was just talking casual stuff with his friend by his tone,about how he had a great weekend and his college friends but the truth was far away from that.He was talking about how he wanted the professor on the building at 5 am tomorrow and how they should kill him if he doesn’t speak.

He was a different man indeed.

You stared at him for a while after realizing that he was too busy.You made your way downstairs to make some tea to drink while you painted.It was a slow day for you while the man upstairs just robbed a bank,as usual.You had questioned why he kept you here,you asked him many times and shin,even some of his men too but all they did was look at you.They did not really talk.

You heard footsteps behind you as you colored the white canvas with black paint,tea still hot.You also made Mr.Park some tea in case he wanted to warm up a bit.It had been raining the whole week and it did nor seem like it was going to change.

“Thanks” he said while he took a sip from the tea.

You nodded,not wanting to speak much to the tempered man standing next to you while you sat on the floor and continued to paint with a cold expression.

He had so many questions for you.From where you came from to why you were so quiet but he was not a man of talking,neither were you.You both needed some time.

He sat next to you,taking a look at you drawing.

“Are you an art student?” he asked slowly,fixing his white shirt which was fitting him tightly.

“No” you said,an awkward silence between the two of you as you finished your painting.

You realized that if you didn’t talk to the tall guy standing right next to you,this prison life wouldn’t get any better,At least knowing him would be interesting,you thought.You took your mug and sat on the floor,leaning to the cold walls ans you faced the very handsome man who was examining all your features.

“I just like to paint” you said as your hands covered the mug before hearing the voices of a lighting from outside.

“You can paint the walls of the building” he said slowly,making sure you understood.”If you want I mean.They’re plain anyway” he said as you looked carefully at his features like he just did to you.

He was undeniably handsome.You thought all the mafia leaders would be scar-eyed man in their thirties but the black haired young man proved you wrong.He had big ears which made him only more attractive along with his big,brown eyes,His lips looked like a pink cloud,making him look even more attractive than before.

“I would love to” you said in a low voice just when he lifted his eyes up,only to meet yours.

It made both of your hearts clench for a small moment.

“Do....you have a real name?” you asked hesitant still from what you observed his reaction would be like,but he proved you wrong.

“Chanyeol” he said looking at your face which was now shadowed by your hair.

“Oh” you said smiling a bit to show him your appreciation.

“You’re not from here,Are you?” he said,still staring at you.

“No..I actually don’t know where I’m from” you finished your sentence in a breath,staring at your hands.

He just looked at you with soft eyes.

“I was raised by the government and I didn’t have a home so I don’t really know much about myself” you said smiling brokenly as the man adored every single word that left your mouth.

You were far more beautiful than he could imagine.

“It must be famous for it’s beauty,I can tell by looking at you” he said,regretting a bit at how direct he sounded.

And you could almost see stars in his eyes.

You had been waiting for Shin to start the movie and It was getting tiresome.It has been a boring week except your little talk with Chanyeol and since he was out of town for a few days,you had figured out that it would be nice to have a movie night with Shin instead of sitting at home,doing nothing.

“Okay.You wanna watch.....?” he asked with a confused expression as you opened your mouth to say absolutely nothing.

“You dunno?” he asked and you nodded,making him whine at how silly you were and how he needed to spend 20 minutes on choosing the movie.You just nodded like you always did.

After a while,he picked out the movie and started to play it.You tried to focus but you were too busy thinking about how horrible your life was getting lately.You heard a few key sounds from the door but chose to ignore it as Shin had told you that Chanyeol wouldn’t be back for at least 2 days.You were too tired and you didn’t want to think of another stuff you had to deal with.

He slowly made his way into his apartment.He had panicked to see the lights on but after he remembered you were in,he let out a sigh he didn’t know he was holding in.He was supposed to come back 3 days after but he already did everything he had to and he also wanted to surprise you.He knew he was nothing more than a thug to you but he wanted to be special in your heart,even though he was still scared to admit it.

“What the fuck?” said a familiar voice from behind and Shin immediately stoodu up like he knew something bad was going to happen,so do you.

“Hi Mr.Park” said shin as he ate the last bit of popcorn left on his hand.

“What’s-” said Chanyeol before you cut him off,you did not want to trouble shin so you had to take the responsibility.

“I called Shin and wanted to have a movie night” you said in a breath and you could see Chanyeol’s eyes relieve a bit.“So It’s my fault” you finished your sentence and signaled Shin to walk out of the room.

“Relax.I’m not going to shoot him” he said sarcasm mixed with his cold tone.

“I’ve seen you do it” you said not breaking the  eye contact.You could feel your blood freezing but you were not ready to give in just yet.

“Shin,get out!” said chanyeol,ready to kill him.

“I’m coming here to my apartment,after a long job I had to care of and all I see is my assistant and the girl who was ‘so scared’ hooking up.Now” he said taking your chin between his fingers so that you were looking directly at his eyes.”What’s that all about?” he said in a low voice.You were still amazed how calm he was after yelling at Shin.

You were staring at his new dyed red hair with amazement and he could tell that you were amused.

“I-I was bored so I called him in.You don’t let me talk to anyone so I thought Shin could help me with that” you said,still looking at his hair.

“You dyed your hair” you said,finally giving in and meeting his soft eyes.

It was his first time looking you with soft eyes and you were truly amazed at how much his eyes expressed.

He smirked before letting go of your chin and you just stood there looking at him.He seemed really tired despite the fire coming out of his eyes.

“We can watch a movie” you said pointing at the tv.

“I’ll pass” he said and just when you were expecting him to walk away,he got closer to you and made a relieved voice.

“You smell nice as always” he said leaving in awe.

“You hungry?” you blurted out when he was still close to you,not wanting to miss the chance.

“You can cook?” he said in amazement when you nodded.

You made your way into the kitchen and cooked him some pasta,him looking at you every second.You were really uncomfortable with the way his eyes were looking at you but you did not want to anger him so you just stayed silent while he watched you in awe.

After serving the pasta,you waited for him to react.His eyes lit up and for the longest time ever,you saw the sparkles in his eyes.You gave him a wide smile,making him forget about all his worries.

You went to his bathroom to take a towel for the one downstairs until you heard footsteps from behind.You turned around to see him standing 2 millimeters away from you.He was so close that you could feel his eyelashes on yours.You didn’t open your eyes,unable to see what was coming next.

“Look at me” he said taking your wrists on his hand and putting them on his chest.You blinked a few times before opening your eyes only to meet the brown eyes you were missing so dearly.

“I missed you” he said whispering.thinking you hadn’t heard.

“I missed you too” you said,unable to control your thoughts as he pressed his forehead against yours.

Just like he made it all up,the song from the first night you had met him started playing while his soft lips caressed yours passionately.

“We’ve come too far”

You could feel his skin burn while it touched yours,making the world seem like a blurry place.He kissed you deeply while his hands found your waist,making you gasp.

He was a good kisser.You tried to fight for dominance but after a while all you could do was to let him take the lead.His expert hands found their way to your hips,holding them gently while your hands welcomed his new hair.

“I don’t think we can go back”

You had no idea how long you had been waiting for this,To feel his body move against yours as one.He slowly carried you to his bed after you wrapped your legs around him.He made sure you were comfortable before hovering above you to kiss you once again.

You could feel his anger,his lust,his desire and passion by the way he kissed and his body moved.It was too much for you to handle as his body fit perfectly with yours.While you melted into his passionate kiss,his hands found the corner of your shirt,pulling it above your head to meet your body.

He had never seen something as beautiful as you.

“You make me feel so vulnerable“ he said  as he kissed you slowly.

As the music went on,you pulled his shirt up to see his defined body.He caressed your body so gently and with so much affection,making you forget all the bad thoughts you had about him.His hands held your hips as he sucked your neck,making sure he left a mark.You let your hands roam on his hair,amazing you at how soft his hair was.

After he was done sucking at your neck,he kissed you once again before lowering himself so that he could pay attention to your breasts.He gently kissed them at first,slowly getting eager as low moans left you mouth while he sucked your breast.

His hand found its way to your core,caressing it and making you moan from the back of your throat.He got harder by the second while you grinned your body into his,wanting some friction.He kissed your belly and started to get lower and that was when you started seeing stars.

He kissed your core before getting rid of the wet material.You could feel tears forming in your eyes as he sucked your core so eagerly,like he was eating his last meal.You pulled his red locks as he made stars form in your mind.

“Goodness” you said as he pulled away and took a look at you before wiping his mouth.

“You’re the goodness” he said as he hovered above you once again,making you feel wanted more than ever.

“I’ve been craving you” he said as he took off his boxer and kissed you once again “since the first time we met” he finished his sentence while he lined himself into your entrance.

You took his face in your hands,to his surprise,and kissed him deeply as he entered you.He waited for a while for you to adjust his size as you kissed him.You moved your hips when you felt ready,making him go at a whole new pace.He made sure you were okay as he thrusted deeply into you,making your back arch with pleasure.

“Gosh,You feel so good” he said as his pace got sloppier.

Your hands continued to caress his hair as he picked up his pace and made your body shake as well as his.All you could see was the starts and all you could hear was the sound of the mattress hitting the wall along with chanyeol’s deep moans while he made love to you.

You felt yourself getting closer to your climax as he held your legs up so he was getting deeper now.You could see the small drops of sweat on his forehead as he moved at a quick pace.

You dig your nails into his back as you came,feeling euphoric as he came too.You lost it when he let a low,deep moan leave his lips and gripped the sheets while he rode out his orgasm.

You both needed a moment after you reached your climax,only to meet each other’s eyes.He gave you a wide smile before kissing you.

“I know It’s going to sound cliche and stupid” he said as he took your hands into his.”But I want you” he said while he kissed your hands.

“You’re lucky” you said as you took caressed cheeks “cause I was just about to say the same thing” you finished you sentence as you hugged him and you heard the last lyrics of the music.

“Seeing someone everyday,

  staying the night together

  With late cigarettes between our lips”

The song is Hug me by South Club and 100/100 recommended.I hope y’all are having a good day and reminder that requests are open!