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marichive · 6 months ago

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𝐋𝐈𝐎𝐍𝐄𝐒𝐒 : 𝐏𝐀𝐑𝐓 𝐓𝐖𝐎

Writing / roleplay prompts collected from the POV chapters of Cersei Lannister in A Feast for Crows & A Dance with Dragons , the fourth and fifth books of the ASOIAF saga. Feel free to adjust pronouns / etc. as needed.

tw: dark & mature themes, death, violence, suggestive / sexual content

❝ This must be answered fiercely! ❞

❝ She should be on her knees, begging for my help. ❞

❝ The ironmen live their whole lives at sea. ❞

❝ What has emboldened them? ❞

❝ Carrion crows make their feasts upon the carcasses of the dead and dying. They do not descend upon hale and healthy animals. ❞

❝ Reavers do not come in such strength. ❞

❝ She is making excuses for her brother. ❞

❝ The enemy of my enemy is my friend. ❞

❝ If he thinks that I am going to walk into his trap, he is a bigger fool than you. ❞

❝ He is as insolent as his sister. ❞

❝ Sad to say, all of us must deal with scum from time to time. ❞

❝ At least he has the sense to beg. ❞

❝ The castle will be yours within a fortnight if I have to tear it down with my bare hands. ❞

❝ Your courage takes my breath away. ❞

❝ You have a gallant brother. ❞

❝ Young men are overbold, and think only of the glory of battle and never of its dangers. ❞

❝ This plan of his is fraught with peril. ❞

❝ Why would you laugh? ❞

❝ Why? Elsewise I might weep. ❞

❝ That one has outlived any usefulness he ever had. ❞

❝ I had another sort of champion in mind. ❞

❝ What he lacks in gallantry he will give you tenfold in devotion. ❞

❝ So you say. Words are wind. ❞

❝ Might I ask about the armor? ❞

❝ Play me for a fool, and you’ll die screaming. ❞

❝ These walls have ears. ❞

❝ What hour is it? ❞

❝ Little sneaks, the lot of them. ❞

❝ Vapid, weepy creatures, always telling their tales and trying to worm their way between us. ❞

❝ An empty bed is a cold bed. ❞

❝ Let him weep in hell. ❞

❝ I was concerned when I woke and found you gone. ❞

❝ He does not have it in him to defy the Iron Throne. ❞

❝ She has made many friends about the court. ❞

❝ A few suitors does not concern me. ❞

❝ She repaid my kindness with betrayal. ❞

❝ I would be very sad if you ever betrayed my trust. ❞

❝ I will never give you cause to weep. ❞

❝ I want only to be close to you. To serve you, however you require. ❞

❝ And for this service, what reward will you require? ❞

❝ It pleases me to please you. ❞

❝ You hurt me. ❞

❝ It was the wine. I drank too much wine. ❞

❝ Our marriage was a melee. ❞

❝ You have a strange look in your eyes. Are you unwell? ❞

❝ I was just . . . remembering. ❞

❝ Has she lost her wits? ❞

❝ She’s . . . she’s not in a good way, if you take my meaning. ❞

❝ No, stay. One of us should get some rest, at least. ❞

❝ Gods be good, what has happened to your face? ❞

❝ Drink this. The wine will calm you. ❞

❝ Stop that weeping and tell me why you’re here. ❞

❝ Am I the only one here with a pinch of wits? ❞

❝ Your cretin of a husband wrote his own death warrant. ❞

❝ A splendid plan. Dare I ask how it went awry? ❞

❝ Sellswords have no pity. ❞

❝ An arrow gone astray, a fall from a horse, an angry boar . . . there are so many ways a man can die in the woods. ❞

❝ Where am I to go? What will I do? ❞

❝ You are weary and sick of heart, that’s plain to see. ❞

❝ I cannot have her spreading tales about the city. ❞

❝ Her grief has made her witless. ❞

❝ I am surrounded by enemies and imbeciles. ❞

❝ Why does he insist on vexing me? ❞

❝ Grin all you wish, you’ll be screaming soon enough. ❞

❝ When the time comes, I shall swat you as if you were a fly. ❞

❝ Too much wine and too little sleep. ❞

❝ Does that feel good? ❞

❝ I am the queen. I mean to claim my rights. ❞

❝ Do as you will with me. I’m yours. ❞

❝ You claimed your rights, but in the darkness I would eat your heirs. ❞

❝ She sounds as if she is being gored. ❞

❝ My sweet, how shall I pleasure you? ❞

❝ Tell me what you would have of me, my love. ❞

❝ His wounds are grievous. ❞

❝ Tell me. I want to know all of it, from the beginning to the end. ❞

❝ I do not want her to hear these tidings from a stranger. I will tell her myself. ❞

❝ How did he die? ❞

❝ I would spare you the worst of it. ❞

❝ Dying is not dead. ❞

❝ I know what you want. Get out. ❞

❝ Now you know how I felt, the night he died. ❞

❝ Let me be avenged at long last. ❞

❝ I see you are as lovely as the tales. Even beyond the Narrow Sea we have heard of your great beauty. ❞

❝ It is my hope I can at least offer you some balm for your pain. ❞

❝ I bring you justice. ❞

❝ It was a proud name once, before he dishonored it. ❞

❝ I suppose it was too much to hope for. ❞

❝ I ought to have him strangled. ❞

❝ It saddens me to see you so careworn. I say, run off and play and leave the Hand to hear these tiresome petitions. ❞

❝ We could dress as serving girls and spend the day amongst the smallfolk. ❞

❝ You are a wicked thing to tempt me so. ❞

❝ Drunk on gods, the lot of them. ❞

❝ Do not presume to preach at me. ❞

❝ They peck at you like a murder of crows. Every one wants a piece of your flesh. ❞

❝ I won’t let you hurt her. I won’t. ❞

❝ When I kissed her cheek, I could taste the salt of her tears. ❞

❝ Turn away. There is nothing here for you. ❞

❝ Never wake a sleeping sorceress. ❞

❝ You will not like my answers. ❞

❝ When will I wed the prince? ❞

❝ You will wed the king. ❞

❝ I require something stronger. Something that will not let me dream. ❞

❝ What did I just say? Have your ears grown as feeble as your cock? ❞

❝ Some doors are best left closed. ❞

❝ No harm will ever come to him as I live. ❞

❝ Blood magic is the darkest kind of sorcery. Some say it is the most powerful as well. ❞

❝ Swords have two edges. ❞

❝ The very men who guard her could be used to bring her down. ❞

❝ Her lovers are not like to confess, knowing it would mean their heads as well as hers. ❞

❝ I did my best to ease his passing. ❞

❝ I provide her with sleeping draughts and . . . other sorts of potions. ❞

❝ Are you blind or bought? ❞

❝ He stood in her way, so she put him in his grave. ❞

❝ My loyalty has always been to the crown, to the realm. ❞

❝ What I want to know is why she has need of you. ❞

❝ I’ll hear the truth, or you’ll wear chains. ❞

❝ I know what moon tea is for. ❞

❝ Get off your knees and try to remember what it was to be a man. ❞

❝ Moon tea. How foolish of her. Why would she do such a thing, take such a risk? ❞

❝ She has appetites he cannot satisfy. ❞

❝ She may claim he never touched her, but I will not believe it. ❞

❝ My son has been betrayed. ❞

❝ She has a lover. ❞

❝ She’s got a pretty little neck. A good sharp sword will go right through it. ❞

❝ I am awash in roses. ❞

❝ Treason is treason, but we must have proof. ❞

❝ We need to catch them during the deed. ❞

❝ She is too shrewd to be caught so easily. ❞

❝ Their names will live in shame. ❞

❝ It is in your blood. ❞

❝ Will you consent to serve? ❞

❝ It is easy to see why you are her favorite. ❞

❝ The man will confess before the night is done. ❞

❝ I am sorry if the guards were rough with you. ❞

❝ Her scheming forced this on me. She has soiled me with her treachery. ❞

❝ I must be strong. What I must do, I do for him and the realm. ❞

❝ Piss on your prophecy. ❞

❝ In a world so full of treachery, that was worth a few kisses. ❞

❝ She is no worse than most men. ❞

❝ A bath will set you right, my sweet. ❞

❝ It will go hard on him, to lose them all. ❞

❝ There is more of sly than shy in her. ❞

❝ Stay with me. I do not want to sleep alone. ❞

❝ Please, not my children, do not harm my children. ❞

❝ Did I scream? I’m sorry. ❞

❝ Why does he frighten you so? ❞

❝ I want to see my son. ❞

❝ All I do, I do for him. ❞

❝ I was never so sweet and innocent. ❞

❝ In this world the weak are always the victims of the strong. ❞

❝ You did me a valiant service once, but now I have a harder task for you. ❞

❝ Aye, and I have something hard for you. ❞

❝ It’s you I want. ❞

❝ You may take all the kisses you like. ❞

❝ Are you refusing to obey me? ❞

❝ The thing is, the best lies have some truth in them. ❞

❝ I would not want it said I made a liar of you. ❞

❝ Give me an hour, and meet me in my bedchamber. ❞

❝ We waited long enough. ❞

❝ You can keep the crown on. I like you in the crown. ❞

❝ First we must dance the dance and never miss a step. ❞

❝ A sweet face often hides a sinner’s heart. ❞

❝ I do not believe a word of this. ❞

❝ He is young and lusty, I will grant you. ❞

❝ A fool he may be, but he wears his folly honestly. ❞

❝ I am free of your croaking malice at last. ❞

❝ The smallfolk are fond of her. ❞

❝ They will not take well to this. ❞

❝ It must not come to blood, and I mean to see that it does not. ❞

❝ You are mistaken. A lion never cries. ❞

❝ I pray that I never offend you. You are terrible when roused. ❞

❝ Any mother would do the same to protect her children. ❞

❝ When do you mean to bring that boy of yours to court? ❞

❝ Last night I confessed to the Septa that I wished to scratch her eyes out. ❞

❝ Damn them all to the seven hells. ❞

❝ I love them all, and they love me. ❞

❝ He will never have a wife that you don’t hate. ❞

❝ I am not your daughter, thank the gods. ❞

❝ You are being foolish. I am only here to help you. ❞

❝ I will teach them what it means to put a lion in a cage. ❞

❝ Do not presume to touch me. ❞

❝ I need you now as I have never needed you before. ❞

❝ I love you. I love you. I love you. ❞

❝ I ask only as a mother, fearful for her child. ❞

❝ I was lonely and afraid. ❞

❝ I did not know who to trust, so I . . . I used the only means that I had to bind them to me. ❞

❝ Did you take him into your bed to win his loyalty as well? ❞

❝ He was kind and gentle and I needed someone. ❞

❝ Do they say I am a skinchanger now? A warg? ❞

❝ There is no shred of truth to it. I deny it. ❞

❝ I fucked him on the morning of my wedding. ❞

❝ It is good to see you smiling again. ❞

❝ You are still angry with me. I hear it in your voice. ❞

❝ He wanted me more than I ever wanted him. ❞

❝ Let them slaughter each other, the realm will be the better for it. ❞

❝ She was just a child, my precious princess. ❞

❝ No harm will come to me today. Only my pride will suffer. ❞

❝ I will not give you the pleasure of hearing me beg. ❞

❝ Hair grows back. ❞

❝ Remove your shift. ❞

❝ Do you find this amusing? ❞

❝ One day I will have your tongue ripped out with hot pincers, and that will be hilarious. ❞

❝ I will see you safely through the city. ❞

❝ My blood and my betrayer. ❞

❝ That was not supposed to happen. ❞

❝ I would have made her a good marriage. ❞

❝ If he’d only done as he was told, we would have never gone to war. ❞

❝ I can do this. I must. ❞

❝ Vain and proud she was, before. So haughty you’d think she’d forgotten she came from dirt. ❞

❝ I am a lioness. I will not cringe for them. ❞

❝ These creatures have no sweeter joy in life than jeering at their betters. ❞

❝ They think that this will break my pride, that it will make an end to me, but they are wrong. ❞

❝ I am not afraid. I am a lioness. ❞

❝ All hail the royal teats. ❞

❝ Have you forgotten who I am? ❞

❝ You do not need to drag me. ❞

❝ It will be over soon, it will be behind me, then I can forget. ❞

❝ I am beautiful, the most beautiful woman in all of Westeros. ❞

❝ He never loved me, but he saw that I was beautiful. He wanted me. ❞

#rp memes #rp prompts #roleplay prompts #roleplay memes #inbox memes #rp prompt #[memes ; mine]#[memes ; literature]#[memes ; for muse]#[memes ; general]#[memes ; sentence]

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flydotnet · 3 months ago

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Bad Things Happen Bingo! The event where I give myself stupidly niche requests according to this marvelous card… or something. It’s been three years dawg. (Red cross is the completed prompt, character headshots are prompts I’ve already filled).

Besides, if I didn't mess up in the first place, this wouldn't have happened.

This fic is quite a long time in the making. I started working on it last year, before I even had the idea for Rice Vinegar, a previous entry in this bingo card series. I was reading/catching up to the absolute banging series that is Brimstone in my Garden, Roses set on Fire by @inkblackorchid. I was on my yearly YGO kick, this time mostly 5D's-related (it's either 5D's or Arc-V, I've come to notice) and reading Snapping Jaws and Piercing Horns (which you absolutely should read, btw, but I have a sneaking suspicion that, if you're reading this, then you've at least heard of SJPH), when the idea for this fic came to me. I really like the friendship between Aki and Crow that the series sets up during the WRGP arc, because it's got my two favourite 5D's characters involved and also it's got canonical whump material linked to it and I'm a sucker for that stuff. Everything was here for success; I was unemployed at the time so I had a bunch of free time on my hands, the inspiration was crisp and I could fuck around and find out with writing new characters I hadn't before. Issue: I hated what I was actually writing.

Since I was reading InkBlackOrchid's works, I was like "God, I need it to be as good as hers". Problem is, I don't have her writing style at all, all the while I was somehow attempting to pastiche how she writes Aki's POV. The result was a very spiteful narration that doesn't even fit Aki at this point of her character development or even the story I was trying to tell in the first place, and a lot of clumsy descriptions. It was bad, y'all. Now, that was the first draft. I had abandonned it at first, thinking I'd just never do anything with it nor with the idea I had, but I just happened to look at my AO3 subscriptions, remembered the banger 5D's fic series, and finally went on InkBlackOrchid's Tumblr. Reading her Autopsy of Crow series of posts reminded me of my WIP and made me want to finish it so I could throw my two cents in the 5D's fight.

I mention Brimstone in my Garden, Roses set on Fire this much because my love for this series is a genuine explanation for some elements of this fic. I like its version of canon so much I wrote established Faithship into this fic as if they were actually dating by this time of the series, forgetting that actually didn't happen in 5D's proper. Sorry not sorry on that front, btw, I've always shipped them and I don't think I'll stop anytime soon. The very first version of this idea wasn't even going to delve into Aki losing her powers after her crash pre-Team Catastrophe (my very own guilty pleasure of a duel, I actually really like it lol), but since I was so inspired by something that did, I figured I had to tackle the question as well. I hope it doesn't fall flat on its face. Be Careful what you Wish for had me by the gametes.

Wow, I had a lot of things to say for something that's kind of just whump I decided to write on a whim like a year ago, huh. I don't even know if my characters sound right (as in, I think my Aki is OOC, she's too open if that makes sense?), it's my first rodeo and it's scary but hey, getting out of your comfort zone is how you improve, ain't it? I don't know if this story is good, I didn't really rewatch 5D's before writing it, just pantsed it out based on memory and what I rewatched earlier this year (I think it was this year? I remember writing a post for my side Tumblr back then mentioning Max Verstappen out of all people and I wasn't into F1 until late 2023. Anyway).

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Outside the Comfort Zone

Summary: Aki passes by Yusei and Co.'s living quarters to retrieve a copybook. Crow makes it way harder than it has any right to be. (or: a recently-ish powerless Aki finds herself having to care for a very stubborn, unwell Crow, and it goes as well as you'd expect.)

Fandom: Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's (set during the WRGP arc)

Word Count: 4K words

AO3 version available here.

Event run by @badthingshappenbingo

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There’s something off with the garage of Poppo’s Time, today.

Oh, of course, most of it is obvious: the air’s still, there’s a distinct lack of mechanical clicking and Yusei isn’t here. It’s a minutia of various little details that, added together, make the entire place tilt forty-five degrees to the left.

It’s, unfortunately, not just these which make her feel this way. Frankly, if it was, Aki would’ve already gone out the door and back home. She’s just here to recover a copybook and it should’ve only taken her mere minutes to do that; yet there she is, ten minutes after stepping on the other side of the door, still without her biology copybook, still in a home that isn’t hers, and unsure of where to take the situation next.

The reason might just be the odd-looking Crow that’s standing in the way between her copybook and her.

Is she friends with said Crow? Yes? Maybe? “Friends” sounds a bit strong for their relationship, she’d say; there are no strangers to each other, and she likes sharing a room with him enough to consider them on friendly terms, but they don’t share enough emotional intimacy for them to be friends. At least, that’s how she sees it – maybe he sees it another way.

(Or maybe they’re already friends, and she’s just too afraid of rejection to admit it to herself – better be safe than sorry, even around the most transparent person she knows).

Whatever their relationship is, what Aki knows without much doubt is that Crow isn’t looking like himself. His stance is slouched and unsteady, his hand is holding the doorway just a little too tight for comfort and his eyes look mussed. It’s like his gaze, while explicitly trying to focus on her, is instead looking at something right behind her – as if seeing through her, which is a thought Aki truly has no time to unpack.

“Oh, hi Aki,” he tells her with an indignant wave, head bobbing along with the sway of his hand.

“Goo – good afternoon.”

His smile turns into a puzzled expression, which doesn’t help the impression she’s gotten so far. He looks around, his left eye twitching and his brow furrowed, then looks back at her when it seems like he hasn’t found what he wanted.

“You not hangin’ out with Yusei?”

Aki almost freezes.

“What do you mean?” She asks back, a shiver going down her spine.

Crow’s brow furrows even further, finally pointing her in the direction of the dark rings under his eyes.

“What do you mean, what do you mean? You come here to hang with Yusei, right?”

“He’s… He’s not here, Crow,” her voice staggers against her will. “He’s in Peru with Jack. I just came her to get a copybook I forgot here.”

The reminder, as useless as it should’ve been, seems to have confused him even further.

“Why the fuck would they go to Peru?” Crow asks, anger sipping in his tone. “That’s on the other side of the damn planet!”

He then hacks a lung out, prompting Aki to jump out. It’s harsh, not unlike the coughs she’d get when she was ill as a child and it seemed like the world was melting around her, psychic powers mixing in with the fever – the powers who, like so many people before, have abandoned her.

The silence is too heavy. She can’t let herself falter now. She may be in danger – scratch that, she’s fine, Crow is the one who needs help as far as she’s concerned. They’re friends, or as close as it gets, and she needs to step up now that his foster brothers aren’t here.

“They’re there to follow on a lead Bommer gave them.”

Her heart sinks a little further when all she sees is confusion. In fact, anything she says seems to result in confusion.

“How? That guy’s dead, y’know,” he gulps with a wince. “I know. I watched it happen. And, like, the dead don’t send emails.”

It’s an understandably difficult thing to swallow, she’ll give it to him. To this day, and despite her (former) psychic powers and links to the extrasensory through her Signer’s Mark, she still has little idea how Carly or Misty have managed to rise from the dead. It’s beyond either of their comprehension.

What shouldn’t be for Crow, however, is the whole travel thing. He was there when Yusei and Jack announced they were going. He must’ve been there to fret over them and their budget like Jack likes to complain about. So how come he cannot remember any of this? Why is he so—

“What time is it already?” Crow asks out of the blue.

It takes her aback, but she looks over her phone screen anyway.

“It’s fifteen to six in the evening.”

His face gets splattered in surprise.

“Shit! I’ve got a shift to attend to!”

“What shi—”

His hand lets go of the doorway.

“Sorry to leave this quick, Aki, I’m in a hurry—”

He walks past her, but before he can make it past her, he folds in half into another coughing fit. Fearing the worst, Aki runs to catch him with her arms, the click of her heels almost hiding the harsh sound of his cough. Heat sips through his clothes and through her gloves, ringing the final alarm that finally allows her to deduce what it was that bothered her so much about his appearance.

Despite the audible pain in his breath and the grimace on his face when he moves his arms, Crow still tries rising to his feet on his own. He weakly bats her away with his hands, but he has to lean against the nearest wall to stay upright. It’s an unreal sight, knowing how stubborn and enduring he truly is. Where is the man who was driving with an injured shoulder mere weeks ago?

“Is this shift really that urgent?” She makes no attempt at hiding her ever-growing concern. “You don’t seem like in any state to go to work…”

“What day of the week are we on?” is all he says back to her.

“It’s… Wednesday? Why?”

Crow’s face finally lights up.

“Oh! I’ve got some time ahead of me then.” He chuckles, but it dissolves into a cough, and she can’t keep her grimace to herself. “I thought we were Monday, for some reason?”

“You honestly seem very out of it,” she ends up bluntly stating instead of going along. “I really don’t think you should go work today.” Or tomorrow.

“Can’t afford not to,” he croaks back, but it lacks any sort of sting.

What looks to her like a dizzy spell ends up taking his resolution out, his whole body pitching forward. Once more, almost in rhythm, her body moves on its own as a result, her arms catching him in his fall.

Heat lingers on her hands even after she has finished bringing him to his room.

Unlike most of Team 5Ds, Aki has never had to care for someone else. She has none of Yusei’s instinct for help nor Crow’s experience with dealing with children. Usually, when faced with this sort of situations, she’d entrust the person in need of care to someone with a lot more ease in this domain – as it turns out, most of the time, it’s asking Jack’s childhood friends to handle his problems, much to his protests. As such, she’s never had to play nursemaid before, and nobody has trusted her with such a role until Yusei came along, and for once, she hadn’t wanted that to change (except for Yusei, but this is a situation that’s unrelated to her current predicament).

Whatever she’s used to, unfortunately, is now out of the realm of possibility. The two people she could ask about it on any other occasion where the need could rise up are respectively currently in Peru with terrible reception and too busy refusing to stay in bed for much longer than a minute to give her a precious hand.

And, you know, you don’t usually ask someone who’s sick to take care of themselves, let alone help you in the process.

Very much to her misfortune, this is all without taking into account that Crow is as stubborn as a patient as he is in every other thing. It was to be expected, of course, and Crow is nothing if not stubborn; but it hasn’t made anything easier. If anything, she should’ve seen it coming as soon as he was too beyond himself to know where his housemates were and why.

Still, it doesn’t mean she shouldn’t try her best in this situation. What friend would she be if she left a comrade in need on his own, harmful to himself? (And she craves for empathy, a part of her whispers, the part of her who misses her powers for the bond she enjoyed having with Black Rose).

Despite a losing battle against his own voice and the way his limbs tremble whenever he tries holding himself out of bed, Crow is insisting that, no, he’s fine to go work, and she has no reason to worry, because it’s not his first rodeo… or something along those lines. Admittedly, it’s difficult to understand everything when he’s struggling to push the sentence out of his throat to begin with, let alone articulate his thoughts.

All that ends up doing as a result is annoying her, because this is oh so similar to Yusei but in all the wrong ways, but that’s once more beside the point. She isn’t here to lash out her annoyance at Crow being an idiot, she’s here to make sure he doesn’t die an idiot.

“I’m tellin’ you, I’m fine,” he whines, a hand already back at gripping the edge of the blanket.

“Why are you so insistent on pretending you are?”

(She doubts it’s because of a martyr syndrome like Yusei’s).

“I’m not pretendin’ anythin’. I’m actually fine.”

His voice is feeble, his words tremble out of his mouth.

“Crow, I know you’re not. Please stop making this harder than it has to be.”

He deflates with a single, wheezing sigh.

“It’s Satellite nature, I guess,” he shrugs with a slight smile. “Both Yusei and Jack got it too, y’know.”

“Speaking of Yusei, right now you’re just like him in that regard.” She lets herself sigh. “Pretending like you’re fine when all signs point to the contrary.”

“Yeah, it’s… Y’know, when you were sick in Satellite, unless you had someone to shelter you and cover your back, ‘t was like signin’ your death certificate.” He coughs again, and it keeps dragging on, worsening, and it pangs at her heart every single time. “Guess that never went away, even now.”

“Even for something like a work shift?”

“Especially for a work shift. Do y’know how tight our finances are? Jack sure don’t seem to, that asshole!” A barking cough interrupts him. “Fuck this shit, I could be literally anywhere else but here. Plus…” He turns to her, and despite the evident weariness on his face and in his eyes, his gaze is sharp. “You should be doin’ better things with your time than watching over me, though.”

Aki rises an eyebrow.

“Such as?”

He shrugs again as a response.

“I dunno. Studyin’. Playin’ cards. Drivin’ a D-Wheel. Tryin’ to… sort through what mess that must’ve been for you, these past few weeks.”

The last bit hits her a lot harder than the previous ones. Having to replace Crow in haste due to a mysterious crash, the conflicting sentiment of her first race as a member of Team 5Ds, her own crash, and now, having to grapple with the sudden and unexplained disappearance of her powers… It’s been a lot of turmoil. Too much, in fact.

Despite all of the pain, it’s somewhat heartwarming to have someone genuinely worry for her, even if it tugs at an uncomfortable heartstring. It means she has the company she so desperately looked for and thought to have found in Divine, now truthful and actually what she needed. Yet, she feels uneasy when she has to show vulnerability in front of them, afraid of what they could take advantage of, of hidden intentions that may be hiding beneath a smile. Letting go of her masks has been terrifying, even if it’s the right thing to do.

For the longest time, she could protect herself with her powers. They were her curse, they were her blessing. They made her unlike the others but allowed her to connect with Black Rose and all of her deck. She misses them even now as she’s within the warmth of Team 5Ds; who don’t judge her for them like the others. Who care for her, like Yusei has ever since meeting her, like Crow is at the moment. Even in pain, they care.

The least she can do is pay them back now that gets the chance to. Now that her powers have left her more vulnerable than ever and created a void she can’t seem to fill on her own.

“I’ll be fine not brooding about it for a while,” is all she tells him in response.

Because it’s the truth. Sometimes, letting the dark clouds consume you is worse. It’ll always be worse, no matter how easy it looks.

“You sure? Because watching over an ill guy gets boring real fast.” He gives her a small smile. “I’d know, I’m usually the one doing the watching.”

She replies with a smile of her own.

“A bit of calm would do the both of us some good, I believe, after all that happened.”

He closes his eyes with a deep sigh.

“Can’t go against that, I guess.”

“Take some rest. I’ll be here by the time you wake up.”

It’s not intended to be a lie to make him feel better about sleeping.

“If you’re lookin’ for it, the medicine is in the cabinet in the bathroom. Pretty sure we got the right stuff at least.”

“I’ll go get it.”

That, and a basin of water, and everything she can remember from hazy memories of childhood illnesses.

Yusei once told her to write down thoughts that were confusing to her, as a way to at least alleviate the black clouds in her mind. He helped her pick a cute-looking notebook for it too, just the size of her uniform pockets, red with an embroidered rose on top of it. It seemed too fitting not to pick it, and Yusei seemed even happier about it than she was. She isn’t sure if what she’s writing in it right now makes sense, but it feels nice to have a place where to dump all of the thoughts that’d usually fester and poison her mind nonetheless.

The loss of her powers continues to leave her at a loss. The best way she can describe the feeling is a bittersweet void it’s left behind: she’s finally normal, like she wished for so long when pretending to be a witch, yet now that she is, it’s like this life wasn’t for her. She misses the bond she had with her Monsters, now that she can’t caress Black Rose Dragon like she could for so long. It makes her feel lonelier in a way that’s wrong to her. It’s like she never knew what she actually wanted out of life, out of the world.

Writing down this loss, this void and this coldness is what’s helping her process some of it. It onsets the way the melancholy would’ve taken ahead of her before she met Yusei and the others. It allows her some lookback and to keep her head out of the water until she can find a solution or get used to a new situation. It feels… soothing, at times, despite it just being scribbles on paper.

A hand strangles her arm, her hands lets go of her pen, her notebook falls to the ground.

“What—”

“Who the hell are you?!”

Shaken, she stares back at her assailant – a frazzled-looking Crow, his eyes glazed over and his pupils dilated. His breathing is erratic, coming out in little wheezes, his teeth gritting.

“I…”

Aki has no idea what to do. A stranger attacking her is no surprise, but a friend? Clearly, something is very wrong with Crow, and she has trouble connecting the dots as to why he’s in such a state. Did she not look after him hard enough? Is she just as neglectful as she was when she was isolated and lost, manipulated, used as a weapon? Is this retribution for that, to be forgotten by those she cherishes?

He lets go of her arm, seemingly against his will – it seems like he doesn’t have enough strength left to actually fight her. She can hardly breathe normally, every gasp of air coming quicker than the last, but she has to compose herself back anyway. She’s the one who’s supposed to fix things here, and now, she doesn’t want to destroy anyone further. Perhaps she can still find redemption.

“What’re you doin’ here?!”

Crow’s voice is unsteady, made all the worse by the cough that’s dried it into being hoarse, and his words slur together, making him very difficult to understand. Aki wishes she knew what do say back, but…

“I’m – I’m looking after you,” she explains back, because calming him down seems like a good idea.

He cocks an eyebrow at her, doubt just barely readable in his half-closed eyes.

“Who’re you?”

“I’m Aki. I’m Yusei’s girl… I’m his friend. I’m your friend.”

His hands grab at her shoulders.

“What’s tellin’ me you are, huh?!”

She looks around the room, trying to ignore how uncomfortable the pressure from his knuckles on his shoulders are, and the heat sipping from them almost right into her skin, before finding a sign of reassurance.

“See this basin of water?” She points it with her finger, he follows it to the bottom of the chair where she sits. “It’s mine. I was trying to keep your fever in check.” That sounded like a good idea, at the time. “I’m admittedly… not great at it, unlike you are, but I’m trying.”

His gaze slightly clears up – and then his eyes flutter close and don’t open up, leaving him in her arms once more.

It’s sort of a wake-up call for Aki, as she puts him back to bed. She should’ve kept a keener eye, but instead got lost in thoughts. She was so sure she had done all of the right things already, yet there she is, only realizing after the fact she wasn’t careful by being attacked by a delirious guy who mistook her for the enemy. Talk about failing at the mission you assigned yourself.

She takes off her gloves and puts a hand on his forehead – his fever has gone back up when she wasn’t looking. It makes sense, miserably so. But this is no time to mop for herself, she must be more like Yusei. She must help out her friend even if she has her own issues. She can’t do anything about her powers, but she can do something so Crow doesn’t have to see things that aren’t there.

So she picks up the washcloth that fell onto his lap and twists it cold again, determined to correct her mistakes.

Aki is staring at Crow when he finally opens his eyes again. They’re clear, able to follow the way her hair sways when she backs up from the bed and back into the chair. Her back is trying to make her pay for the unnatural positions she made it endure, but it’ll have to bear through it for a bit. She’s not letting him down now.

“Hey,” he tells her, stifling a cough.

“Glad to see you awake again,” she confesses. “How are you?”

“Erh… Sore. Sick. You know the deal.” He sits up with the help of the headboard of the bed. “How long was I asleep for?”

“I’d say… an hour or so.”

“And you’re still here?” He chuckles, even if it dissolves yet again into a coughing fit. “Gah, forgot how much that sucked.”

“I… I didn’t want to leave you alone like this.”

“Don’t worry, I went through worse. I’m a big bird, I can deal with it on my own.”

The way she’s staring back at him must’ve looked suspicious, because he looks concerned, now, and it’s like cold water seeping through her socks.

“Hey… Did something happen?”

“No, nothing. It’s… it’s not important.”

“Tch, you’re like Yusei. ‘Not important’ my ass.”

“I don’t think I should tell you about it.”

“You’re not makin’ your case any easier. Shoot ahead anyway.”

Aki looks at her hands on her lap, her knuckles almost white. Her skin looks slightly red, especially without her gloves.

“You weren’t yourself earlier,” she manages to get out, “and you thought I was some sort of enemy.”

She can’t bring herself to look up and see what his reaction to that is. Her head’s weighing heavily on her neck.

“Shit, did… I did something to you, right?”

“You… You tried to attack me, yes,” and she realizes how bad that sounds, “but it’s nothing. You weren’t yourself and it wasn’t a big deal. I’m fine.”

“You don’t sound like you are, though… Shit, I’m so sorry, Aki…”

She rises a careful eye, only to see pain distort Crow’s pallid face.

“It shouldn’t have happened,” she replies. “I should’ve done a better job.”

“Hey. Look at me, Aki.”

Hesitantly, she does – and finds no anger, no disappointment in Crow’s eyes, only compassion.

“You didn’t have to put up with my shit, and I was trying to push you away, but you did it anyway. Attacking you was wrong no matter what. You’ve got a lot to deal with at the moment and none of this is me. Don’t beat yourself up for not handlin’ everythin’ perfectly.” He smiles. “So, thanks, Aki. Don’t worry about good ol’ me, I’ll handle myself from now on.”

Silence follows.

“Though I get why you’d doubt that. We don’t really have a good track record when it comes to that stuff, do we.”

“Not really, no,” she manages to chuckle. “But friends need to trust each other.”

“You catch on quick!” He coughs into his elbow. “I’m sure it’s starting to get late, your parents may be worried. You should head home.”

“Can I… Can I stay here for a little longer? At least until Bruno comes back from whatever errand he may be running. I’d… feel better if I knew someone could watch you over.” Like she’d like it if she was as vulnerable as Crow is right now. “It keeps me occupied too.”

He gives her a sympathetic look from which she wants to recoil, but stops herself from doing.

“Make yourself a home, then. Yusei’s bedroom should be available.”

He winks, right in time for her face to warm up.

“Thank you, Crow.”

“If you need an ear to talk to and I ain’t sleepin’, don’t hesitate, okay? I promise I won’t bite your head off this time.”

“I’ll keep it in mind, thanks.”

She doubts she’ll bother him with this when all she’s tried to make him do today was resting, but she very much appreciates the reminder. It’s always nice to know she’s not only accepted, but also cared for by people whose honest intentions she can be sure of.

It’s making her feel welcome, and just for that, she’s more thankful – her and her missing powers, her and her conflicting feelings it, her and her past that she’s just now feeling comfortable with disclosing anything about. Her and the ghost that may continue pursuing her in the future, but which are leaving her mostly unscathed for now.

Perhaps that’s what home is – and it may just take the shape of a friend’s bedroom, or of a garage.

#bad things happen bingo #struggling against the caretaker #yu-gi-oh 5ds #izayoi aki #crow hogan #implied faithshipping because it's my one 5ds ship dammit #bthb #who knows what this fic's actual worth is wooops

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jackoshadows · 2 months ago

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GRRM deleting this little bit where Arya dreams of Jon smiling sadly and them both saying 'Winter is Coming' made me curious about the house Stark motto, how frequently it comes up and who says it in the books. Surprisingly very few characters, mostly all Northerners, including Theon Greyjoy. Non Northerners who mention it are Tyrion, Littlefinger and Renly. Ned says it twice in a Catelyn chapter, however it's absent in his own POV chapters. The 3ER says in in Bran's dream. It seems important in the context of the North and the Starks and yet it's possible GRRM downplays on it a bit in the middle books when the Starks are defeated and on the run.

With respect to the Starks mentioning or thinking about their house motto:

Ned frowned. "He must learn to face his fears. He will not be three forever. And winter is coming.""Yes," Catelyn agreed. The words gave her a chill, as they always did. The Stark words. Every noble house had its words. Family mottoes, touchstones, prayers of sorts, they boasted of honor and glory, promised loyalty and truth, swore faith and courage. All but the Starks. Winter is coming, said the Stark words. Not for the first time, she reflected on what a strange people these northerners were. - Catelyn I, AGoT

---

"Maester Luwin, I trust you as I would my own blood. Give my wife your voice in all things great and small. Teach my son the things he needs to know. Winter is coming." - Catelyn II, AGoT

---

"Why?" Bran said, not understanding, falling, falling.Because winter is coming.Bran looked at the crow on his shoulder, and the crow looked back. It had three eyes, and the third eye was full of a terrible knowledge. Bran looked down. There was nothing below him now but snow and cold and death, a frozen wasteland where jagged blue-white spires of ice waited to embrace him. They flew up at him like spears. He saw the bones of a thousand other dreamers impaled upon their points. He was desperately afraid. - Bran III, AGoT

---

"Oh, of a certainty," said Moreo. "Though perhaps I should hold it for them until we return to Tyrosh. For the sake of their wives and children. If you give them the silver here, my lady, they will dice it away or spend it all for a night's pleasure.""There are worse things to spend money on," Ser Rodrik put in. "Winter is coming." - Catelyn IV

---

"Denys Mallister writes that the mountain people are moving south, slipping past the Shadow Tower in numbers greater than ever before. They are running, my lord … but running from what?" Lord Mormont moved to the window and stared out into the night. "These are old bones, Lannister, but they have never felt a chill like this. Tell the king what I say, I pray you. Winter is coming, and when the Long Night falls, only the Night's Watch will stand between the realm and the darkness that sweeps from the north. The gods help us all if we are not ready." - Tyrion III, AGoT

---

She perched anxiously on the edge of her bed. "You are too young to be burdened with all my cares," he told her, "but you are also a Stark of Winterfell. You know our words.""Winter is coming," Arya whispered. - Arya II, AGoT

---

So young, Catelyn thought, trying to remember if she had ever been like that. The girl had lived half her life in summer, and that was all she knew. Winter is coming, child, she wanted to tell her. The words were on her lips; she almost said them. Perhaps she was becoming a Stark at last. - Catelyn IV, AGoT

---

Beyond the castle lay the market square, its wooden stalls deserted now. They rode down the muddy streets of the village, past rows of small neat houses of log and undressed stone. Less than one in five were occupied, thin tendrils of woodsmoke curling up from their chimneys. The rest would fill up one by one as it grew colder. When the snow fell and the ice winds howled down out of the north, Old Nan said, farmers left their frozen fields and distant holdfasts, loaded up their wagons, and then the winter town came alive. Bran had never seen it happen, but Maester Luwin said the day was looming closer. The end of the long summer was near at hand. Winter is coming. - Bran V, AGoT

---

"You know," Mormont grumbled. "How is it that everyone knows everything around here?" He did not seem to expect an answer. "It would seem there were only the two of … of those creatures, whatever they were, I will not call them men. And thank the gods for that. Any more and … well, that doesn't bear thinking of. There will be more, though. I can feel it in these old bones of mine, and Maester Aemon agrees. The cold winds are rising. Summer is at an end, and a winter is coming such as this world has never seen."Winter is coming. The Stark words had never sounded so grim or ominous to Jon as they did now. "My lord," he asked hesitantly, "it's said there was a bird last night …" - Jon VIII, AGoT

---

"The feast makes a pleasant pretext," Ser Rodrik explained, "but a man does not cross a hundred leagues for a sliver of duck and a sip of wine. Only those who have matters of import to set before us are like to make the journey."Bran gazed up at the rough stone ceiling above his head. Robb would tell him not to play the boy, he knew. He could almost hear him, and their lord father as well. Winter is coming, and you are almost a man grown, Bran. You have a duty. - Bran II, ACoK

---

"Why?" Lord Rowan asked her. "Look at them. They're young and strong, full of life and laughter. And lust, aye, more lust than they know what to do with. There will be many a bastard bred this night, I promise you. Why pity?""Because it will not last," Catelyn answered, sadly. "Because they are the knights of summer, and winter is coming." - Catelyn II, ACoK

---

"My lords!" Catelyn said. "We ought to be hammering out the terms of an alliance, not trading taunts.""A man should never refuse to taste a peach," Renly said as he tossed the stone away. "He may never get the chance again. Life is short, Stannis. Remember what the Starks say. Winter is coming." He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. - Catelyn III, AGoT

---

"Cubs still have that soft fur, my lord," one of his men pointed out. "Make you a nice warm pair of gloves."Bolton glanced up at the banners waving above the gatehouse towers. "As the Starks are wont to remind us, winter is coming. Have it done." - Arya X, ACoK

---

"That is true," said Jojen, "and a wise thing to say, if the days were still growing longer . . . but they aren't. You are a summer child, I know. Tell me the words of House Stark.""Winter is coming." Just saying it made Bran feel cold. - Bran I, ASoS

---

Arya didn't care what Tom's stupid songs were about. She turned to Harwin. "What did he mean about ransom?""We have sore need of horses, milady. Armor as well. Swords, shields, spears. All the things coin can buy. Aye, and seed for planting. Winter is coming, remember?" He touched her under the chin. "You will not be the first highborn captive we've ransomed. Nor the last, I'd hope." - Arya IV, ASoS

---

She still went nightly to the godswood to pray, and Tyrion wondered if she were praying for his death. She had lost her home, her place in the world, and everyone she had ever loved or trusted. Winter is coming, warned the Stark words, and truly it had come for them with a vengeance. But it is high summer for House Lannister. So why am I so bloody cold? - Tyrion VII, ASoS

---

It was still dark when Jon returned to his chambers behind the armory. Ghost was not yet back, he saw. Still hunting. The big white direwolf was gone more oft than not of late, ranging farther and farther in search of prey. Between the men of the Watch and the wildlings down in Mole's Town, the hills and fields near Castle Black had been hunted clean, and there had been little enough game to begin with. Winter is coming, Jon reflected. And soon, too soon. He wondered if they would ever see a spring. - Jon VIII, ADwD

---

Septon Cellador made the sign of the star. Othell Yarwyck grunted. Bowen Marsh said, "Some might call this treason. These are wildlings. Savages, raiders, rapers, more beast than man.""Tormund is none of those things," said Jon, "no more than Mance Rayder. But even if every word you said was true, they are still men, Bowen. Living men, human as you and me. Winter is coming, my lords, and when it does, we living men will need to stand together against the dead." - Jon VIII, ADwD

---

Even the godswood was turning white. A film of ice had formed upon the pool beneath the heart tree, and the face carved into its pale trunk had grown a mustache of little icicles. At this hour they could not hope to have the old gods to themselves. Rowan pulled Theon away from the northmen praying before the tree, to a secluded spot back by the barracks wall, beside a pool of warm mud that stank of rotten eggs. Even the mud was icing up about the edges, Theon saw. "Winter is coming …"Rowan gave him a hard look. "You have no right to mouth Lord Eddard's words. Not you. Not ever. After what you did—" - Theon I, ADwD

---

"Winter is coming," Jon said at last, breaking the awkward silence, "and with it the white walkers. The Wall is where we stop them. The Wall was made to stop them … but the Wall must be manned. This discussion is at an end. We have much to do before the gate is opened. Tormund and his people will need to be fed and clothed and housed. Some are sick and will need nursing. Those will fall to you, Clydas. Save as many as you can." - Jon XI, ADwD

---

"These prices, though," protested fat Lord Belmore," these prices are more than fair.""You say more than fair, my lord. I say less than we would wish. Wait. If need be, buy the food yourself and keep it stored. Winter is coming. Prices must go higher." - Alayne, TWoW

Jon's bond with Arya is the epitome of soulmatism in asoiaf and their relationship is the most emphasized as indestructible and unconditional love. No one else comes close to that, and it's crazy how obsessed Grrm is with them. But the fandom seems to have a hard time accepting this, even in a completely platonic sense, and prefers to treat it as irrelevant because they are afraid of something romantic happening lol It's funny bc they don't even need foreshadowing. Their story is written in bold. Obviously, something massive and special comes from this. But even experts pretend not to notice so they can push outside Arya's importance in the endgame

Exactly! Honestly, this is why I find it strange that people downplay their bond so much. It's like they cannot comprehend that a main character of the series would like or have a type based on a gnc woman; but that doesn't lessen their relationship. Their bond is incredibly important; if it wasn't, George wouldn't harp on it so much.

Did you see the part that George omitted from the draft of Arya III, ACoK?

When Arya's eyes finally closed, it seemed as though her brother Jon was with her. He smiled at her, but something in his eyes looked sad, and she knew he had something important to tell her. They said it together. Winter is coming.

(I'm writing something based on this lmao)

I feel like this was replaced, very subtly, with Ghost's lonely sound and Arya hearing the long howl of a lonely wolf while in Harrenhal.

#House Stark #Winter is coming #GRRM

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traumxrei-archive · 3 years ago

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(pov i forgot to write “have fun with the event” in my last message lmao whoops)

Okay but consider, #10 with Floyd please? i think it’d be cute!

(sorry this is the first time requesting writing from someone hkakdjaj)

anyway, i cant wait to read everything, (actually i can, take your time :]), have fun writing!

-🍓

【 somewhere only we know 】

prompt #10: This wasn’t meant to be a date, but he had such a good time and now it’s 2 a.m. and he should really go back… (ft. floyd leech)

gender neutral! reader, 600 followers event ficlet

author's note: HI STRAWBERRY ANONNNN !! it's been a pleasure chatting with you so it's also exciting to finally be writing your request woo~ i had a bunch of fun writing this bc. i love writing floyd sm, and i'm real excited to see how you'll enjoy it so i hope you liked it hehe <33

"C'mon Shrimpy~" Floyd giggled softly as he watched the Little Shrimp struggle to catch up to him. He was in his merform, so he had the advantage, but it was fun to see them try nonetheless. "If Shrimpy doesn't speed up, Imma leave you in the dust."

"You said that a million times already, and look at you now," They huffed, though he could see the slightest trace of smile. "You could run laps around me in your merform and yet you're still waiting."

"That's cuz I feel like bein' nice today."

"Uhuh," They finally caught up to him before he flicked his tail, smoothly sailing ahead of them once more. "Shouldn't we go back to the others?"

"The others?"

Oh. Floyd had almost forgotten about them.

They were all initially at the Atlantica Museum but it got boring real quick for Floyd. It was the same as he remembered when he was a little guppy. And it was boring. He needed some real fun so he staged a little Shrimp-napping. Just a little one. He was sure no one would mind if he borrowed the Little Shrimp for a bit, right?

So that's where they were now. He had taken them around the Coral Sea for a bit and now they were making their way towards Floyd's favorite spot.

"It's probably been hours now," They reminded, sighing before attempting to catch up to him again. "You're sure they aren't looking for us?"

"Nope!" Floyd said, his voice clipping at the edges from the clack of his teeth. They always felt longer when he was in his eel form. He gave them a big grin that he hoped was pointy and sharp. "I lefta message for Azul. Don't be such a party pooper, 'm tryna show you something cool here."

"I'm just worried about them," They said, flailing around as they spun in the water. "Azul said that Crow–"

"Meh, I didn't bring ya here to talk about Azul," Floyd frowned, letting his tail curl around their waist. "You're here to be with me."

"And I am here with you," They said, huffing. "Now stop squeezing already, my ribs are starting to hurt." Floyd tittered again at the frowny expression on their face. They were always so cute. He was right to Shrimp-nap them!

"Mm, maybe it'll be faster if I hold you 'n swim," He pulled Shrimpy closer. He could see them starting to protest. "But you said 's been hours! 'M tryna help here, Shrimpy. Plus I'm a big eel, I'll keep ya safe."

They scrunched up their face in contemplation before sighing, "Fine, where do I go?"

Floyd whooped before turning around, "Here, here~ Hold on to my shoulders ti~ght or else you'll be taken by the currents." As soon as their hands gripped at his shoulders, he did an experimental flick of his tail.

He heard the startled yelp they let out, "Wait Flo–"

Floyd made sure to place his hands over theirs before properly propelling himself forward. There was a screech from them, and he felt them squeezing for their life as he sped up even more. It was kinda funny to him, because usually he was the one doing the squeezing, yet look at him now! Being squeezed so nice and tightly. (Not that it hurt at all. He was stronger than them after all.)

When he finally slowed down, he could feel their head curled up right against his shoulder. He just couldn't resist commenting, "Curled up like that you're lookin' like a real Shrimpy now!" And maybe he should've anticipated the smack that was landed on the back of his head, but right now he couldn't even mind about that. He was too amused by their actions to think about being angry in any capacity! That was the magic of the Little Shrimp.

"C'mon, c'mon," Floyd tugged at them so they would be next to him. "The underwater breathing potion's supposed to run out soon, so we're goin' up!"

"Wait what?" They blurted, unable to keep their annoyed composure. "We've been wandering around that long...?"

Floyd chuckled as he brought them closer to the surface, "Shrimpy really has no awareness of their surroundings."

"You wanna talk about having no awareness?" They bumped his elbow with theirs. "I might've drowned if you weren't fast enough."

"But you didn't."

"...But I didn't."

Floyd broke the surface first, feeling the cool night air gently brush against his slick skin. They followed soon after, hair a mess from being underwater.

"What is this place?" They murmured and Floyd simply smiled. He didn't just swim that fast for no reason. The start of winter was when they would be the brightest after all.

"It's bioluminescence. Pretty, right?" Floyd said, letting clawed fingers trace over the glow of the ocean. "Read it in a book once, 'n I've been coming here ever since. Come, there's a lil cave to sit in." He slowly led them towards the cove, the water splashing gently against the sand; the motion causing the algae to flare brighter in pulses.

"This is amazing Floyd," They breathed and Floyd tilted his head.

Was it the lack of light, or did he really want to see the way their eyes sparkled at that moment? No doubt they had that look on their face, the same one they'd get whenever he showed them something particularly cool. It was the whole reason Floyd even bothered to take them around in the first place. He just...he wanted to see that look again. He placed a hand on their chin, tilting their face toward him so he could see.

They blinked, "What's wrong? Is there something on my face?" And maybe if Floyd wasn't so much of a coward— someone who hid behind easy smiles to hide his anxieties— maybe he would've kissed them right then and there.

But he was a coward, and a big one to boot, so he just smiled lackadaisically, "Just got some seaweed on ya, Shrimpy." They puffed out their cheeks and it startled a real laugh out of him as he watched them search their head for the piece of seaweed that wasn't even there in the first place.

"Floyd Leech I swear to the Seven-"

"Eh~ I brought you to my special place 'n you're getting mad at me?" He made a show of pouting, and he saw their expression flicker and- It wasn't long before they mumbled a promise to get him a treat when they got back.

They were so kind to him, the Little Shrimp was. And always so patient. It was something he liked about them. Another being the fact that they could be stern when they wanted to be. The hard stuff could wait. Confessing and kissing and all that, he would do it when he was feeling braver.

For now he sidled up to them, unwinding and coiling his lower body so that the light would continue to envelop them. It was late into the night, but that didn't matter to him. All Floyd wanted was to see that look on their face again. And again and again and again.

thank you for reading the floyd shenanigans ! if you'd like to read more, check out my masterlists :D

#/trau's milestone event #UGH #MY HEART #i'm still thinking about the beanfest tweel rot #morays are cowards by heart #it loops in my mind daily #floyd leech #floyd leech x reader #floyd x reader #twisted wonderland #twisted wonderland fics #twst fic #twst fics #twisted wonderland headcanons #twisted wonderland scenarios #twst x reader #twisted wonderland x reader #/trau writes #/trau fics

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trulivin · 5 years ago

Text

Golden Eyes

A/N: SURPRISE! I finished it last night. Thank you so much for this request! I really enjoyed writing this piece. I did make the reader kinda Shu I would say because she’s called serpent at the Menagerie but feel free to change it to suit your appearance! Also, I hope I kept to the character. I felt like Kaz wouldn’t act like this really in his mind, and I don’t know somehow I ended up flopping back and forth between their POVs. BUT hopefully it worked out.

This also has potential for a part 2 so let me know if you would like that. Anyways, send feedback and keep requesting! I could honestly write about Kaz all day LMFAO! Enjoy! (Word Count: It’s really long whoops)

Kaz Brekker X Reader, Six of Crows

Warnings: Some abuse, cursing.

*Oh look I made another aesthetic lol*

Kaz Brekker didn’t know why he did it. Three years after getting Inej out of the Menagerie, he found himself having the same conversation with Tante Haleen. “You are not taking another one of my girls, Brekker,” the lady snarled. “I have the money,” he shrugged, his face impassive. “I don’t care. You took one of my clients’ favorites three years ago,” Tante hissed at him. “You haven’t even let me tell you what I’m going to offer,” Kaz said. The peacock let out an odd noise, rolling her eyes at the teenage boy. Why does he even want this girl? She thought to herself.

Truth be told, Kaz really didn’t know why he wanted this girl either. He just happened to be walking by the Menagerie a few nights ago and heard a lot of screaming. Tante Haleen had made a public display over beating this poor girl into tears in front of what seemed like everyone in Ketterdam. Usually, the woman would give her punishments in the confines of her office, but this time it was different. The girl’s screams still echoed in his mind.

It was a particularly still and soundless night as Kaz walked back from a successful deal he had just made. He was personally enjoying the quiet walk and the stars with the only sound of his cane tapping on the ground every step he took. However, his peace was soon disturbed when a high pitched scream rang out. Kaz immediately stopped, looking around for the source of the noise and realized he was very close to the Menagerie.

“You ran another one of my clients off, girl!” Tante Haleen’s voice rang out. Kaz heard a faint sound of a belt snap and a girl crying. “I-I didn’t mean to,” a voice cried. “Didn’t mean to? Pff! You’ve always been a defiant whore. Trying to run me out of my own position! Girls like you need to be taught a lesson,” she sneered. “I swear, I’m not!” the young girl pleaded.

There was a faint crowd gathered around the main entrance to the building. Kaz approached silently, sticking to the shadows. There, in the middle of the ground was a partially-clothed girl, no younger than him, cowering under the peacock who was clutched a strap of leather in her hands.

“Who would want your job anyway?” the girl half muttered to herself resulting in Tante yanking the girl up but her hair. If that young girl wasn’t in the middle of being beat up, Kaz would have been impressed with the girl’s snark.

Kaz noticed the girl’s tear-stained face full of fear. A shiver ran up his spine as he watched the old woman continue to scold her, and for a fleeting moment, the girl cast a panicked look around the crowd and met his eyes. Beautiful golden eyes met his and he stood there stoically, studying her face until Tante brought down another hit. The girl screamed again, tearing her gaze away, and Kaz forced himself to walk away.

Her eyes burned into his memory as he finally made it to the Slat. Kaz talked with Per Haskell for a few minutes before heading to his room. He sensed Inej following him and when they reached the top, she asked, “So it went well?” Kaz nodded as he shuffled papers around his desk. Inej said something else, but he barely acknowledged it. He was too busy trying to figure out how to help the girl.

Inej watched as Kaz was rummaging through papers and eyed him in confusion as she noticed he was pulling money together for some reason. She could tell he was distracted by something, and quite frankly had never seen him act like this.

“Why all the money?” Inej asked, snapping her fingers in front of his face. Kaz jumped ever so slightly, meeting her dark eyes. Inej caught his quick scare and was even more baffled that Kaz Brekker was so skittish. He was almost never like this.

The girl’s golden eyes flashed through his mind for a moment before he cleared his throat. “I need to buy something,” Kaz muttered, turning back to the papers. “What do you need to buy?” she asked skeptically. “It’s none of your business. If you have a problem with it then get out,” he snapped. Inej was caught off guard with his moodswing, but shot him an annoyed glance and slipped out of the room. She wasn’t in the mood to deal with Kaz’s attitude anymore.

Kaz jumped again when he heard his door slam. He had no clue why he was acting like this, it wasn’t him. Someone else’s pain was their problem, not his, but the girl’s watery eyes still burned in his mind like the sun on an extremely hot day.

“Thirty-thousand kruge,” he said after Tante hadn’t responded. “Did the old man give you your allowance early?” the woman sneered at him.

“No.”

She looked a bit taken back at his bored demeanor, and then narrowed her eyes at the boy. She despised him for taking away the Suli girl three years ago and she was wary in letting another one go to Kaz Brekker or Per Haskell. Tante never really knew who was actually in charge.

“Well, are you going to take it?” he asked, impatiently.

She mulled over it for a moment and sighed angrily. She could never pass up money. All of my girls are replaceable I suppose. “Yes,” she said irritated. “So she’ll be working for that old man of yours?” she asked as she signed the contract. Kaz scribbled his signature down and snatched the paper up before she could really read everything on it.

“Actually no,” he said with a wry smile. “She belongs to me. And technically, I’ve paid off her contract.”

The woman’s eyes almost popped out of her head. “I-You--little rat!” She snarled at him. “You can’t have her!”

“Yes I can. Now go get her. I have other things to do today,” Kaz said coolly. He was ready to get out of this place. It reeked of filthy men and other spices that made his head spin a bit.

Tante Haleen glared at the boy but said nothing before slipping out of her office. She returned a moment later with the golden-eyed girl behind her. “Well, it’s your lucky day, serpent,” the peacock snapped at her, “You get to go with Mr. Brekker here.” The girl’s eyes snapped to Kaz’s just like the other night and he could’ve sworn his heart jumped as the blazing color pierced his. He studied her face for a moment, noticing the dark bruise under her left eye and her swollen cheek. Under the damage, he also saw a very beautiful girl who looked as though she had been put through years of abuse under the hands of Tante Haleen.

Unfortunately, he also noticed how, behind her bright eyes, there was absolute terror coursing through her. “It’s been a pleasure,” he smirked a bit turning back to Tante Haleen. “Are you ready?” Kaz turned back to the girl. She nodded, wide-eyed and somewhat confused. Kaz slid past them and out the office door.

Y/N’s head spun as she followed the teenage boy out of the Menagerie. What did he want? Why did he buy my contract? What the hell is going on? How is he walking so fast with a freaking cane? All sorts of questions flew through her mind and her swollen face was throbbing giving her a slight headache.

As they made it to the doors, Tante Haleen’s voice called after her, “You better watch your back girl! I’ll get my serpent back and you’ll die in chains here!” Y/N’s head whipped around in fear, looking at the evil woman. “That won’t happen. You’re safe now,” the boy’s raspy voice said from behind her. Y/N turned back to him and practically ran out the door he had opened for her.

Once they were on the streets and far from the Menagerie, the boy finally slowed his pace. Y/N swallowed nervously and asked, “So who are you exactly?” “Kaz Brekker,” he replied without so much as casting a glance in her direction. He kept on winding through the crowd making sure Y/N was still with him every so often.

Surprisingly enough, Y/N had heard of a Kaz Brekker. The notorious ‘bastard of the Barrel’ or Dirtyhands. She just never thought she would ever meet him. Clients would always complain about being crossed by Brekker. They’d say, “I’ll rip those gloves off his hands and feed him his own fingers if I ever get a hold of that damn boy!” It was strange seeing the gloves fit over his hands. Y/N couldn’t seem to stop staring at them, wondering why on earth he wore them in the first place.

“And you?” he added a few moments later, snapping her out of her thoughts.

“Oh, um I’m Y/N,” she said.

Kaz inwardly smiled to himself for the first time in a long time. He thought it was a very pretty name to match her pretty eyes. What the hell is wrong with you?

He managed to maintain his expressionless face and turned to look at the girl, “Well Y/N you are officially free under one condition.” Her eyes narrowed at him as she began to grow more comfortable in his presence.

“What?” Y/N asked.

“You’ll become a member of the Dregs.”

“And if I don’t?”

“You lose the protection from us, and you very much could end back up there,” Kaz said. He didn’t necessarily want to say he owned the girl. She was free to do whatever she pleased, but if she were to go off on her own she would most likely be back where she started. Not to mention, Kaz would be out thirty-thousand kruge. The girl had a fire behind her eyes and he thought she could potentially be quite useful. He just wasn’t sure what her limits were yet, but he also didn’t want to lose an investment. She’s not just an investment, a voice in his head scolded. Shut up. You know I’m right. Ugh.

Y/N thought for a moment. She knew about the Dregs and all the other gangs in Ketterdam, but she again never thought she would ever be tangled up in them. However, anything was better than the Menagerie, and she was decent in a fight so she could handle whatever the Dregs threw her way. “Anywhere is better than there,” she eventually agreed. Kaz nodded in approval as they continued on.

Finally, the pair arrived back at the Slat. “Just let me do the talking,” Kaz said to her before opening the door. The main floor was crowded with a variety of looking people playing cards and gambling. Heads turned as the door was open and everyone caught sight of Kaz with a girl in silks trailing behind him.

One guy smirked at Kaz making Y/N cringe. “Wow boss I’m surprised they let you take this one out of the building!” the guy called. Kaz shot him a hard glare and snapped, “She’s not here for work. A new investment so shut up. She’s one of us now.”

Investment? That didn’t sound any better, Y/N scoffed silently. Thankfully, though, no one in the room looked familiar. None of these people had been clients.

The guy, Y/N noticed, seemed to cower under Kaz’s gaze. He seems to have very high authority in here, she noted. Just as quickly as they entered, she was following him up rickety steps. Kaz led her into an office on the second floor, and Y/N was faced by an old man.

“Y/N this is Per Haskell. Per Haskell, Y/N,” Kaz introduced and the old man grinned. “My new member?” he smiled. “Mine,” Kaz interjected, “Sir.” “Ah yes yes, you used your own money,” Per Haskell dismissed him, slightly annoyed. “It is still my gang you know,” he said. “Of course, sir,” Kaz replied.

Y/N stood quietly watching the two exchange words as if she weren’t standing right there. She could see right through Kaz and his act towards the old man. He may have sounded respectful towards Per Haskell, but Y/N had the sneaking suspicion that he could care less about the man’s opinions.

“So, sweetie,” Per Haskell interrupted her thoughts. Y/N jumped in the slightest at the name. You’re not at the Menagerie anymore, and he was never one of your clients, she told herself. Kaz studied her and saw her back stiffen as soon as Per Haskell had opened his mouth. She was nervous. “What can you do? Weapons wise of course. And how do you hold up in a fight?” the man asked. Y/N seemed to be taken off guard a bit, but regained her composure, feeling more confident in herself again.

“Well, um, before I was taken, my father taught me how to defend myself. And I’m pretty good at target practice,” Y/N mumbled, heat rising to her cheeks realizing this whole gang thing wouldn’t be like target practice. The man obviously knew it too and chuckled a bit before turning to Kaz. “You sure picked a good one this time, boy,” he said sarcastically. Y/N’s cheeks flushed even more red. And they flushed even darker as Kaz’s gaze rested on her for a moment. Y/N couldn’t help but be upset at herself for sounding so stupid in front of Kaz Brekker. Why do you care what he thinks of you? She questioned, averting her eyes away from him.

“I think she’ll work out just fine, sir,” Kaz responded in an even tone. Y/N couldn’t figure out what he was thinking. His face remained unreadable with every word he said. “We’ll see,” Per Haskell said, the air in his tone signaling this conversation was over. Kaz simply nodded and turned to walk out of the office. He locked eyes with Y/N before pushing open the door. She followed quietly behind him still unsure of what really was happening here.

They made their way up more steps when a voice stopped them in their tracks. “Y/N?” a familiar voice rang out behind her. Y/N turned around to see an oh-so-familiar Suli girl. “Inej?” Y/N half gasped. A grin broke out on the girl’s face as she bounded up the steps, pulling Y/N in a hug. Kaz raised a brow.

“You didn’t tell me you were bringing Y/N here, Kaz,” she glared at the boy. Y/N was shocked she had the nerve to do that, but Kaz remained oddly quiet.

The thought that Inej had known her never crossed his mind.

“Well you know now,” Kaz said coolly. Y/N could see slight impatience in his look now. “Obviously,” Inej rolled her eyes and added, “Leave us be. I’ll show her around and she can stay with me.” Kaz narrowed his eyes at her, but didn’t say anything as he stepped aside letting the two go.

In reality, something told him he didn’t want Y/N out of his sight. There was a lot of testosterone in the building and Y/N’s pretty features would surely stand out. But her reaction to Per Haskell’s words told Kaz she was more worried than she was letting on. He’d seen that look in Inej plenty of times to know it had been just as rough for Y/N as well. Tante Haleen had told him Y/N had been with her for five years, and according to the peacock, she was also a handful. He couldn’t imagine what Y/N had been put through because of her defiance, but he knew he didn’t want anyone getting any ideas.

Up on the floor above, Inej had gotten Y/N settled in her room. “I never realized Kaz bought your contract too,” Y/N said quietly. Inej laughed and rolled her eyes a bit, “He didn’t buy it. Per Haskell did. Kaz just put the idea in his head so he could get the money. I still have to pay mine off. That’s why I work for him.”

“Oh,” Y/N said, remembering what Kaz had said to Tante Haleen. He had put his own money up for her. Why?

As if Inej sensed her question, she said, “I don’t know why or how he got the money. But obviously you must’ve caught his attention. I’m telling you like I always have, it’s those golden eyes of yours.” Y/N let out a light laugh, but brushed her comment off. “It’s good he did though. We need more fighters like you. Don’t get all shy on them, I know how you get,” she added. Y/N rolled her eyes a bit, “I don’t like strangers.”

“Yes, but that doesn’t mean you still can’t kick ass. I’ve seen you do it before.”

“And you’ve seen my ass get kicked right after,” Y/N said sourly. She had tried more than once to get out of being with some of the clients, earning her plenty of bruises. But, it was always worth it when Y/N had managed to leave some bruises behind as well. “Listen,” Inej said seriously, “You’re safe now. Kaz, in his own twisty way, will protect you. He may seem like a heartless, emotionless, dark person, but deep down he cares. Of course in his own weird way.” The two girls shared a laugh and Y/N couldn’t help but think she was right. There was nothing to be afraid of anymore.

A month seemed to pass in a blur and somehow Y/N had found herself restless. She slowly earned respect amongst the Dregs, but now everyone seemed to coddle her. Even Kaz would hardly ever let her out of his sight. He hardly spoke to her and she found herself pouring her heart out to him. She told him about her family and what happened when she was taken, along with everything that happened to her in the Menagerie. All Kaz did was listen and nod.

Y/N was annoyed she could never figure him out, and told herself she was going to stop telling him her entire life story, but somehow wound up back in his attic. Some days they would sit in silence as she sat by the window, and some days they would have little conversations. He answered most of her questions she had for him, but he always gave a round-about answer when she brought up the gloves. Sometimes he would just ignore her so Y/N would just drop it.

The only thing Kaz really wouldn’t let her do was go on jobs. She was antsy and felt more at ease than she had in a long time so she could easily go shake someone up for some money. “Can I go with Jesper?” Y/N would ask. “No he, Inej, and Specht can handle it,” Kaz would reply. He was never rude to her when she asked. He would just find some excuse for her not to go.

In reality, Kaz didn’t want her to go because he could still see the slight changes in her body whenever someone, particularly a man, would brush by her too close. One time Jesper had slung his arm around her in a friendly manner, and Kaz saw all the color drain from her face. Her golden eyes even seemed to lose their brightness. He didn’t want to put her through what some of the jobs required and risk her getting hurt, although he wouldn’t admit it. So, he didn’t make her do anything, and left her extremely bored and annoyed.

And unfortunately, some of the Dregs seemed to notice this as well.

Instead of questioning Kaz, they all assumed it was because she couldn’t do anything. Some would say, “It’s alright gold-eyes, I’ll be back. Don’t worry I don’t need protection!” or “I think someone needs to go with her to make sure she doesn’t fall over and hurt herself.”

Finally, one day, Y/N was sick of the teasing. Specht, Rotty, and Jesper were teasing her about how her eyes made her look soft because they were such a pretty color. She rolled the golden orbs. “You know, you all assume I’m no good, but none of you actually have had the decency to let me hold a pistol or a knife,” she snapped. Jesper looked a little surprised by her outburst, but Specht and Rotty grinned mischievously. “Ok then, pretty-eyes. Why don’t we do a little target practice then,” Rotty snickered. Per Haskell managed to spread the word around of their first introduction and it seemed to stick. Y/N glared at him but nodded. The boys sprung up and in about ten minutes the main floor was set up with a variety of targets.

A crowd seemed to gather and Inej was by her side instantly. She had also yelled at plenty of them saying, “Y/N is perfectly capable of taking care of herself.” But Y/N didn’t want her help. And she also knew Inej’s words wouldn’t make them shut up.

“So this is how you hold a knife,” Specht said slowly as if he was talking to a toddler. “Har har,” she glared. Y/N yanked the set of knives he had from his hands and went to stand in front of the target. She heard snickers across the room and some people placing bets.

Y/N huffed before clearing her head. Feel the blade in your hand. It’s supposed to be a part of you so when you throw it, it will go in the direction you want it to. Her father’s voice rang out in her head. She closed her eyes for a moment, allowing silence to fill her ears.

Kaz had come down to see what was going on and saw the room had turned into a shooting range. He was about to break up the semi-circle, but stopped once he saw Y/N in the center of it. Her eyes were closed and he watched along with everyone else. Kaz was curious to see what she really could do.

In an instant, Kaz saw her eyes open, and watched as the three knives she held fly through the air and land in the dead center of three different targets. Her eyes immediately found his, and the liquid-gold was burning bright. He sucked in a breath as her eyes burned in his. Kaz couldn’t help himself. Her eyes were his favorite.

Y/N felt his presence as soon as she rid herself of the knives. Her eyes found his watching her with a glint of approval. His mouth even quirked up in the slightest. A grin broke across her face at the thought that Kaz would be proud of her. Somehow they had gotten close over the past month and he had a special place in her heart causing her to always seek his approval. And though he would never admit it, but Kaz always found himself wanting the golden-eyed girl around him and only him.

Everyone around the room seemed shocked at what had happened. Big Bolliger, however, interrupted the silence, “That was luck!” Eventually, others chimed in in agreement. Y/N saw that little quirk of Kaz’s mouth slip back into his hard look. “Then go stand in front of the target and have her throw again,” Kaz spoke from behind everyone. They whirled around, immediately falling quiet. “Well?” Kaz gestured for Big Bolliger to step up in front of the target. He gulped, but no one questioned Kaz. Rotty gathered the knives and handed them back to Y/N silently. “If she hits him then we know it’s luck. If she doesn't, well then I think you all will have gotten your answer if she can do anything or not,” Kaz said.

No one said a word. Y/N should have been nervous, but she wasn’t. This was the first time she had been truly happy in the month she had spent here. She knew she could do it, and this would shut everyone up for good. Y/N took a deep breath and closed her eyes again, honing in on her father’s words.

Kaz watched her eyes flicker open again and just like last time she placed the knives exactly where she wanted them: above Big Bolliger’s head, to the left of his ear, and to the right.

Y/N smirked, satisfied with herself, but also got a bit carried away. Jesper was standing near her so she grabbed one of his pistols and shot right in between Big Bolliger’s legs before handing Jesper back his prized possession. Everyone seemed to be standing there gaping. Inej was smirking, and Kaz had a twinkle in his eye. She was even more proud of herself.

“And she can shoot too,” he said. The crowd was still shocked as everyone stared at her. “Alright clean it up,” Kaz snapped, waving his arm. The Dregs jumped into action setting everything right. “It’s not like you haven’t seen anyone shoot before,” he muttered to himself, before signaling Y/N to follow.

Once they were upstairs, Kaz admitted, “I will say I’m impressed. But like you said when we first met. Target practice.” Y/N glared at him, her sour mood returning. “I could’ve taken his eye out you know,” she said bitterly. Kaz didn’t seem to care about her tone with him.

“I don’t doubt that either,” he replied. “But it is different out there when you’re in the moment--”

“How can you of all people think I don’t know that?” Y/N snarled, cutting him off and finally letting her anger bubble over. “I told you everything!” she hissed.

“I told you how those men enjoyed a twelve-year-old girl! How I fought so many times and had knives pulled on me and took constant beatings from that wretched woman! How I was put in chains after I tried running away! I know what everyone thinks of me!” she shouted.

“I know they all think I’m this weak, doe-eyed school girl who can’t throw a punch! They whisper behind my back, throw snide comments around, make bets! And I take it! I take it like every hit I took in that damn whore house.”

Kaz heard her voice crack with her last sentence. He had underestimated her abilities and never really thought how tough she really was. He was always too busy silently fuming over how mistreated she had been growing up.

“I know what they are thinking,” Y/N repeated herself. “And I don’t want you to think the same thing,” she mumbled quietly. Y/N’s eyes went wide as she realized what she just said out loud. “I--I just--,” she started but Kaz raised a hand. She shut her mouth and let him speak. “Do you know why I picked you?” he asked. She shot him a confused look. “I saw you that night Tante Haleen had thrown you on the ground in front of everyone.”

Y/N’s breath hitched. She remembered seeing those dark eyes in the shadows of the crowd. A shiver ran up her spine thinking about that night.

“I will say I have underestimated your abilities, but I don’t think like those other idiots downstairs,” Kaz sighed, letting his mask slip a bit. “I,” he paused for a moment. The two voices in his head were back: Why are you acting like this? Because she’s a pretty girl. Just another girl. She’s more than pretty if you think about it. Doesn’t matter. You’ve gotten to know her and you know she’s like you in a way. No. Admit it. Shut up.

Swallowing a bit of his pride, Kaz spoke softly, “I don’t want to see you get hurt like that again. You don’t deserve it.” It was true. Even if she didn’t talk much for the first few weeks she was with him, he found she was quite pleasant to be around. Y/N was kind to whoever she met no matter what they said about her, and she carried herself with a sort of confidence she probably didn’t know she had. And those damn eyes of hers too.

Y/N’s face softened at his words. “Oh,” was all she could manage to slip out. Quickly, though to avoid extreme awkwardness, Y/N gave him a mischievous grin. “So you do care?” she commented. Kaz let out a breath and rolled his eyes, thankful she didn’t want to endure the moment after him opening up to her. “The Kaz Brekker has a heart,” she chuckled as he glanced down back at his work.

“Yes, but most of it was buried with my brother,” he said shortly. The room was silent and Kaz looked at Y/N. Her grin was gone and she gave him a sympathetic look. He never usually wanted sympathy for Jordie, but somehow Y/N’s kind features brought him a sense of comfort. “I’ll tell you some other time,” Kaz said simply.

She approached his desk slowly until she was right in front of him. Taking a deep breath, Y/N glanced down to his gloved hand resting on the top. She hesitated and took it in her hand. Kaz sucked in a sharp breath before letting it out. Her hand was warm and felt smooth even through his gloves. A part of him wanted to feel it without the leather barrier. He noticed the scars that danced across her knuckles and all the way up her arm.

Kaz’s gaze trailed across her skin and up to the bright eyes that were watching his every move. He suddenly felt very conscious of his hair and tie. “I’ll be okay,” Y/N said softly. He took her appearance in once more and nodded. “Go see if Jesper will let you tag along on his job,” Kaz added. Y/N gave him a small smile before releasing his hand. A part of him ached for her touch again, and his hand felt oddly cold after she let go.

Y/N silently made her way to the door. “I had a sister,” she said, turning to look at him again before disappearing back downstairs, her golden eyes burning through Kaz’s heart.

___________________________________________________________

Yay! To the nonny who requested, I hope this is what you were looking for! I have yet to make one with Kaz and the reader kissing because he’s very difficult to write for and I hate straying away from how the character actually is. But also I can do a part two with Jesper’s job and the aftermath plus her interaction with Kaz afterwards. Just let me know!

#six of crows imagines #kaz brekker x reader #kaz brekker imagine #kaz brekker #kaz brekker fic #imagines #multifandom #fandom imagine #multifandom imagines #fandom imagines #inej ghafa #jesper fahey #nina zenik #grisha #grishaverse

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andhumanslovedstories · 5 years ago

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Recent country songs that have made me literally gay gasp as a gay woman, in order of how much they make me want to write an essay on gender and queerness

HONORARY MENTION BUT JUST BECAUSE I THINK THIS IS TECHNICALLY AMERICANA NOT COUNTRY (but genre is fake) AND THIS SONG ISN’T RECENT (2014 and I’ve been listening to it faithfully since then) BUT I ONLY RECENTLY LEARNED IT’S A COVER AND THAT’S MADE ME RECONTEXTUALIZE IT: “Murder in the City” by Brandi Carlile, a cover of The Avett Brothers where she changed the words “make sure my sister knows I loved her/make sure my mother knows the same” to “make sure my wife knows that I love her/make sure my daughter knows the same” which fucking. fucking gets me. Especially since the first time that I heard this song, I assumed it was from a man’s point of view because of that line, and then I learned that Brandi Carlile is a lesbian and I was caught up in my foolish heteronormitivity, and then I learned it was a cover and thought oh okay I guess the song is originally from a man’s pov and it’s cool she covered, and then I learned she changed those lines to make a song that already feels deeply personal to her to explicitly include her love for a woman and the family they’ve made together. And that’s just. It’s all just a lot.

3) “Fooled Around and Fell in Love” by Miranda Lambert featuring Maren Morris, Elle King, Ashley McBryde, Tenille Townes and Caylee Hammack, because the first time it came up on my spotify, I saw the title and was like “hey dope I like this song” and then I heard the first line was still “I must have been through about a million girls” and I realized none of the words or pronouns were getting changed and I was getting the song I’ve always wanted and deserved: a high production value, high energy, big girl group tribute to being a lesbian fuckboy who Fooled Around And, oops can you believe it, Fell in Love.

2) “If She Ever Leaves Me” by The Highwomen, sung by Brandi Carlile who is, as mentioned, lesbian, but since I’m apparently still chugging my comp het juice, I was still trying to figure out if this song--a classic “hey buddy keep walking, she’s my girl and she’s not interested” song with an interesting element of the singer being aware the relationship might not last anyway--was gonna be explicitly queer. And then there’s the line, “That's too much cologne, she likes perfume,” and I was like OH HOHOHOHOHOHOHO!!!

This is immediately followed by the lines “I’ve loved her in secret/I’ve loved her out loud” which is also deliciously queer in this context, with this singer and that juxtaposition, but the line that really fucking got me is my favorite of the song: “If she ever leaves, it's gonna be for a woman with more time.” This is two women in a complicated relationship. This isn’t just a “keep walking, cowboy” song, it’s a song that uses that framework to suggest a whole ass “Finishing the Hat”** relationship, and that’s so interesting to me. Like a song that isn’t just explicitly about two women in love but one that conveys very quickly a rich history between the two of them. And in a genre where the line “Kiss lots of boys, kiss lots of girls if that’s something you’re into” was revolutionary representation.

(Fun fact, “Follow Your Arrow” was partially written by Brandy Clarke, another country lesbian! Another fun fact, so is basically every other good country song. Brandy Clark, please write a big lesbian country anthem, I know it will immediately kill me on impact.)

To quote one youtube comment, “”lesbians how we feeling??” and to answer by quoting some others, “As a closeted baby gay in the 90s, who was into country, this song would have changed my life”, “I just teared up. So many happy tears, as a gay woman raised on country music, this is something that's definitely been needed. Thank you Brandi. Thank you highwomen”, “This song means more than I can say in a youtube comment”, and “Lesbians needed this song :)”

It’s me. I’m lesbians.

**ANOTHER HONORARY MENTION EXCEPT IT ISN’T RECENT AND IT ISN’T COUNTRY SO I GUESS THIS IS JUST A MENTION, BUT I AM INTERESTED IN THIS SONG--“Finishing the Hat” by Kelli O’Hara. A very good Sondheim joint, that’s about making art, the costs of its obsessive and exclusive nature and the incomparable pleasure of putting something into the world that wasn’t there before. It’s such a traditionally male narrative that I’m thrilled to find a wonderful female cover of it. I’m not even fussed about her changing the gender from the lover who won’t wait for the artist (except that the shift from “woman” to “one man” sounds so clunky) because there’s value turning this song into a lament of the men who won’t love artistic women. But I do also wish she’d also recorded a version that kept the original gender so it would be gay. OKAY BROADWAY TANGENT OVER, BACK TO COUNTRY.

1) “Highwomen” by The Highwomen, ft. Yola and Sheryl Crow. I can’t even express the full body chills the first time I heard this. Like repeated, multiple chills renewed at every verse of the song. This really closely parallels my experience with “Fooled Around and Fell in Love” up there, because when I started it I was like “oh dope I know what this cover will be” and then the lyrics started and I was like “OH MY GOD I DIDN’T.” In the case of “Fooled Around” it’s because I was amazed that they kept the original words. In the case of “Highwomen” I fucking transcended because they changed them.

So I grew up on Johnny Cash, obsessed with a couple of his albums but largely with a CD I had of his greatest hits. (Ask me how many times I listened to the shoeshine boy song. Hundreds. Johnny Cash told me to get rhythm and I got it.) And my FAVORITE was “Highwayman” from the country supergroup he was in, The Highwaymen. The concept of the song is that each of the four men sing a verse about a man from the past and how he died. It’s very good. The line “They buried me in that grey tomb that knows no sound” used to scare the shit out of me. I didn’t expect to have a song that targets so specifically my fear of being buried alive in wet concrete.

(If you haven’t heard the song, by the way, listen to this version to properly appreciate it as a piece of music. If you have, watch the fucking music video holy shit this is a work of art oh my GOD.)

So I was predisposed to love this cover before I even heard it. But then I heard it. And they rewrote the song to be about historical women. And it’s like. There’s layers here okay.

Neither the Highwaymen nor the Highwomen are signing about famous people. This isn’t a Great Man tour of history, it’s about dam builders and sailors and preachers and mothers and Freedom Riders and also Johnny Cash who flies a starship across the universe, as you do.

In the 1986 version, it’s a song about the continuity of life--the repeated idea is “I am still alive, I’m still here, I come back again and again in different forms.” The highwayman is all the men in the song. He reincarnates. The song is past, present, future. The title is singular, masculine. The same soul, expressed through multiple voices, multiple lives.

In the 2019 version, the title is plural, feminine. Highwomen. This song is about women. Each verse asserts the same motif as the 1986 version--“I may not have survived but I am still alive”--but there is no implication of reincarnation. Each woman is her own woman. This version has a final verse that the previous versions lacks. The singers harmonize. It’s not a song where one voice replaces another, the story of this One Man progressing through time. It ends in a chorus of women saying “We are still alive.”

We are The Highwomen Singing stories still untold We carry the sons you can only hold We are the daughters of the silent generations You sent our hearts to die alone in foreign nations They may return to us as tiny drops of rain But we will still remain

And we'll come back again and again and again And again and again We'll come back again and again and again And again and again

Another fun fact! The first time I heard them sing “We are the daughters of the silent generations” I died! But luckily I came back again and again and again.

This is a song about the continuity of history. It asserts that women’s historical lives matter and that they continue to matter, long after they died. This is a song about legacy as well, the legacy of nameless women who worked to protect the ones they loved and make the world better. They don’t die by chance. They are all hunted down by political violence, by racism, by misogyny, for stepping outside their prescribed roles. But, as Yola (who btw fucking CRUSHES THE VOCALS ARE YOU KIDDING ME?????? HOLY SHIT MA’AM) sings as a murdered Freedom Rider, she’d take that ride again. And at the end of the song, she joins the chorus but does not disappear into it. Her voice rises up out of crowd. And the crowd calls itself “we”. These women are united but not subsumed into being One Woman. This is about Women.

And then, outside the song itself, there’s the history of this song about history. It’s originally by Jimmy Webb and was covered by Glenn Campbell. This cover inspired the name of the supergroup that covered it, the group with Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson, Waylon Jennings, and my man Johnny Cash. And it’s like holy shit! What an amazing group to collaborate! Hot damn!

Then, it’s 2019 and here’s The Highwomen with Brandi Carlile, Natalie Hemby, Maren Morris, and Amanda Shires. The name is obviously riffing on The Highwaymen. Shires set out to form the group in direct response to the lack of female country artists on the radio and at festivals. And they name themselves after a country supergroup, and they put out this song, a song connected to massive names in country music, and they center all of this on women and womanhood and the right of women to be counted in history and to make history and to talk about the ways we have mistreated and marginalized women, in a group that started because one woman was like hey! we’re mistreating and marginalizing women!

I just think this is neat! I think there’s a lot here we could unpack! But this post is 100 times longer than I was planning and work starts in a bit so uh I’m gonna go get dressed and listen to The Highwomen on repeat for the next hour, “Heaven is a Honky Tonk” is another fucking bop that improves on the original, it would be dope if they’d collab with Rhiannon Giddens, okay byyyyyyyye

#don't even know what to tag this bc for one there's way too many links for this to show up in any tags!!#country music #long post #surprisingly long post!#feel free always to rec female country/americana/folk/bluegrass to me esp if it's gay

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icanheareternity · 4 years ago

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mid-year book freak out tag

yayyy thank you @bloody-wonder for tagging me. always a pleasure talking about books with you (and reading your amazing rants hahaha <3)

1. Best Book You've Read So Far in 2020?

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller and the All For The Game series by Nora Sakavic. They were both amazing reads for totally different reasons. It’s been 5 months since I read it and I still sometimes find myself thinking about Patroclus and Achilles and wishing them happiness in the Underworld. As for AFTG I have no words for how amazing and engaging the story and the characters are, I think Neil and Andrew will forever be two of my favorite characters.

2. Best Sequel You've Read So Far in 2020?

Well obviously The King’s Men by Nora Sakavic.

3. New Release You Haven't Read Yet, But Want To?

The Switch by Beth O’Leary, I loved her debut novel, The Flatshare, it was very impactful to me. I’m just waiting for the right mood to strike so I can read her second novel.

4. Most Anticipated Release For Second Half of 2020?

I’m very excited for the manga edition of Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell. The first volume is going to be released on october (I’m thinking about buying it as a birthday present for myself, since I turn 25 at the end of october). Rainbow is my favorite author and Fangirl is definitely one of my favorite books.

5. Biggest Disappointment?

The Raven Cycle :( I had such big expectations for this series and it just didn’t live up to it in the slightest. The main characters were amazing though, and they deserved a better book.

6. Biggest Surprise?

The Foxhole Court. Seeing as book one of the AFTG series didn’t have any romance whatsoever, I wasn’t expecting to like it so much (considering I’m a sucker for romance and almost never actively pick up a book that isn’t straight out a romance novel).

7. Favourite New Author?

Alice Oseman, I think? I’ve been accompanying her web comic Heartstopper and loving every bit of it and am also on my way to reading all of her novels.

8. Newest Fictional Crush?

Richard Campbell Gansey III. As I said before, he deserved to be in a better series, but I loved his voice in the books, all the chapters written on his POV.

(I feel like I should put Neil and Andrew from AFTG in this category too but I’m not confortable having a crush on either of them since they belong to each other)

9. Newest Favourite Character?

Neil Josten and Andrew Minyard. I JUST LOVE THEM SO MUCH.

(and I have mentioned the AFTG series way too many times in one post)

10. Book That Made You Cry?

The Song of Achilles, I cried through the whole last 90 pages of the book and then for 30 minutes after that in fetal position in the darkness of my bedroom.

11. Book That Made You Happy?

I guess the book that made me laugh out loud the most was The Lightining-Struck Heart by TJ Klune.

12. Favourite Book To Movie Adaptation You Saw This Year?

Emma. I looooooooved the movie so much, it’s such a fun adaptation with an amazing cast (Johnny Flynn <3) and good photography.

13. Favourite Review You've Written This Year?

I don’t write reviews, I’m too lazy for that.

14. Most Beautiful Book You Bought So Far This Year?

I don’t usually buy physical books because they are too expensive, so when I buy one is because they are already my favorites. This month I bought Carry On and Wayward Son by Rainbow Rowell (I’m on my way to having all of her books on physical copies), and also The Song of Achilles.

15. What Books Do You Need To Read By The End of The Year?

Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo and Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Sáenz.

i’ll tag @jostens-pitch @anawkwardbibliophile @junebbbuggg @sharing-a-room-with-an-open-fire

this was fun (and it just made me realize that i still have so much to read this year)

#tag game #books

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ill-skillsgard · 5 years ago

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Play The Victim - Henry Deaver X Mistress

Warning: 18+ mentions of sex/cheating/mature themes. *this part contains heavy spousal conflict/themes of an abusive nature/masturbation and mentions of pornography* Please read at your own discretion.

Note: Hey, so I wanted to write a piece from Henry’s POV because I feel like it’s important to know where he’s coming from. I feel like male domestic verbal abuse doesn’t get enough spotlight, especially when it comes in a more subtle form than physical abuse. This takes place before Henry ever meets Mistress and it’s a longer piece. I hope you enjoy it! Kisses.

Read more Henry x Mistress imagines here > Masterpost

She placed a single piece of popcorn on her tongue and let it melt a little before chewing. Her eyes fixated on the TV, and mine were on her. I shuffled closer and laid my arm around the back of the couch. For a split second, her eyes darted to me, and she gave a soft grunt of acknowledgement.

Tonight was my night. I was coasting on the high of landing another huge client, and my superiors were treating me as an equal. Our house was clean, polished and dusted. Our stomachs settled from dinner, and I stretched my legs out in front of me, relaxing into the sofa until my head met her shoulder.

At first, she didn’t move, but after a while, she squirmed. I let my arm fall to her shoulders. They were tense and drawn together, her neck stiff as a pole. I kneaded her skin with my thumb until she pulled away.

“What are you doing?” She asked.

I smiled. “Rubbing your shoulders, silly.”

“Why?”

“You’re all tense,” I replied. She shrugged my arm off, and I frowned. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

“You sure?”

She sighed. “Yes, Henry.”

“Why do you feel like you’re made of wood then?” I poked at her, hoping it might cause a smile.

“I’m fine,” she dismissed.

“All right,” I said with a sigh and laid my temple on her shoulder again.

“Don’t you have your own space?” Her question had no playful inflection.

I chuckled. “This is my space. You are my space.”

When I tried to cull her in, she resisted and pushed me away with her palm on my chest. “You’re bugging me. I’m trying to watch our show.”

“I’m bugging you?”

“Yes!”

“Wanting to cuddle bugs you?”

Mary let out another sigh rimmed with impatience. “Henry, I already told you. I’m trying to watch the show.”

I didn’t push her any longer. Instead, I scooted a foot away from her and dropped my hands into my lap. It was the fourth time in two weeks that she had spurned me from getting close to her. I could blame it on naivety, but I assumed her resistance was hormonal at first. After more than a week, I figured it couldn’t be that. Mary had been acting strange and distant, cold to me over the phone, unreceptive to my advances and displeased whenever I complimented her.

Until that point, our dry spell hadn’t bothered me. All couples go through it, or so they told me. Our marriage hadn’t always been the best of them, but I could count on taking Mary out on a date at least once a month. A date that ended with sex at least three out of every five times. But it had been long since my odds were that good. It had been long since she wanted to go out with me at all.

I asked myself what could cause her overall disinterest. It wasn’t only me. She hadn’t kept up with her friends either. She was only enthusiastic about work. It comforted me to know she found pleasure in something, but in the back of my mind, I resented that it wasn’t us.

Mary was going away on a business trip tomorrow. She would be gone for a week, and I longed for some kind of affection before I was wifeless. I had settled too many times for masturbation now, and I felt justified in my worry that there was something wrong. Something deeper than lethargy or mild depression, something that had to do with me.

That night, while we lied in bed, Mary pretended to fall asleep as soon as she touched the pillow, but I was onto her. It was a classic move. I shuffled close to her and hooked my arm around her ribs, kissing the back of her head.

“I’ll miss you when you go away,” I whispered.

She chuckled. “It’s only for a week.”

“I know, but you haven’t gone away from me for that long since...”

“Since last month, when you left on a week and a half long business trip?”

“Well, yeah, but that doesn’t count. Our bed will feel so empty without you, honey. At least when I sleep in a hotel room, it doesn’t feel like something is missing.”

“It’s the same thing,” she forced an unconvincing yawn.

“What? You won’t miss me?” I touched the curve of her hip tentatively, then slid my palm lower, kissing her bare shoulder.

“I won’t be gone long enough to miss you.”

I scoffed and shook my head. “What are you saying? I miss you every day when we’re not together, babe.”

“You’re such a sap, Henry.”

“So what? You married me.”

“Yeah,” she sighed. “Now, will you hush up? I have to be up early.”

Hush up was her polite way of telling someone to shut up to their faces. But it wouldn’t impede me. I had to persist. I couldn’t remember the last time we had sex, if it was good, or if she just let me have it because she finally tired of me asking. And as much as I hated flat out begging, it looked like my only resort.

“Henry, I said stop.”

“Mary,” I whined. “Come on. You haven’t given me any in weeks. Months, even. I’m dying over here.”

“Well, die quietly.” She shifted away and pulled the covers with her.

“Are you serious?” My tone came out harsher than I intended, but once it was out in the air, it encouraged me. “Mary. What is wrong? You’ve been avoiding me like the plague. What did I do?”

Another drawn-out groan rolled from her throat. “Oh my God, Henry. Nothing is wrong. I told you I have to go to sleep! I have to be up at five AM.”

“No. This isn’t about right now. It’s about the last, oh, I don’t know, three, maybe four months of no sex.”

“It has not been that long,” she spoke to the other side of the bed.

“Yeah, it has.”

“Oh, have you been keeping track?”

“Yes!” I exclaimed. “A month is understandable. We’ve been busy, but not busy enough to never have the energy. Two months is concerning, but now it’s been even longer, and I’m thinking of things I really don’t want to be thinking about.”

Mary shot up, turned on her bedside lamp and whipped a look at me. The strap of her nightie fell down her shoulder, and it was the most erotic thing I had seen in a long while. “Oh, you’ve been thinking, have you? What have you been thinking about?”

“I don’t know! Lots of things!”

Mary scoffed, her smile composed only for berating me. No hint of warmth filtered through. “Lots of things? Tell me if you think of anything specific. Until then, goodnight.”

“Are you cheating on me?” The question fell from my tongue before I weighed its gravity.

She jumped out of bed, grabbed her pillow and yanked the entire duvet in one motion, rolling it into a ball to take with her. “You’re ridiculous if you think I would ever cheat. Even thinking that is insensitive and rude! You know I have strong feelings against that kind of thing!”

“I have strong feelings about you not wanting to fuck your husband.” I couldn’t stop myself. Mary recoiled in disgust as though I had just vomited on myself. The horror in her eyes grew when I sat up. “You say that I’m insensitive, but you won’t even let me touch you. It grosses you out when I want to be close to you. How do you expect me just to sit back and accept that my own wife wants nothing to do with me?”

“This is silly—”

“No, it’s not silly, Mary. It’s serious. What is the matter? Are you sick? Is there something going on that you’re not telling me?”

“I don’t have to put up with this,” she claimed before leaving the room.

I wanted to cry out and demand she come back and face me, but I was already reeling from my blow-up. She stomped down the stairs, and I was alone. I lay back down with my arms and legs spread out, taking in deep breaths until my heart stopped pounding. I had never raised my voice at a woman before, and I feared that whatever was going on inside of Mary’s head was made twice as bad by my outburst.

When I woke up the next morning, Mary was already gone. She hadn’t come to say goodbye, and it left me with a sinking feeling in my chest. That morning, I called in sick. I couldn’t bring myself to leave bed until I was so hungry I could hear my stomach gurgling.

I moved about in misery, skipping my morning shower and deciding not to shave. It didn’t matter because there was nobody to tell me otherwise. Even if Mary saw my five o’clock shadow, she couldn’t use the excuse that it hurt when she kissed me to make me shave it off. She didn’t kiss me anymore.

A raw and sour dread burrowed into my stomach. No matter what I did to distract myself, I couldn’t push the thought out of my head. I pictured her meeting up with a man—may be one of the jackasses from her office—and sneaking off for a secret affair. No, I shook my head. Mary wouldn’t do that. She grouped cheating in with murder and assault. But the thought cemented itself into my head, weighing me down all day.

I even called her office to confirm her schedule. The secretary told me they were already on their morning flight. It was reassuring for a little while, like putting a bandaid on a wound that needed stitches.

My reflection in the mirror mocked me. I combed my hair and tried to think of things about myself that were good. All my life, they had told me I had a pleasant face and a killer smile, but I didn’t feel the least bit attractive. My hair was plenteous and shiny, my jawline strong and masculine. When I grinned, I showed dimples and my resting expression was calm. The colours of my eyes swirled like a funhouse kaleidoscope, and I had a solid body, broad shoulders, large hands and long legs. By most standards, I was a handsome man. But when I looked at myself for too long, I didn’t feel that way.

Maybe she noticed the beginnings of my crow’s feet or turned off by my body hair. When I flashed my teeth, they were still white. I lifted one arm and sniffed myself, then blew hot air into my cupped hand. It couldn’t have been my hygiene, for I kept up my appearance with diligence. So what was it about me she disliked?

I could only stare at myself for so long before it seemed I was looking at a stranger.

After a few hours of moping, I sat in the living room and turned on the TV. There was nothing interesting playing this time of day, but I surfed through the channels, hoping to find background noise. A questionable talk show piqued my interest, and I put it on, only to see a skinny blonde girl swinging around a pole, censored breasts flashing to earn her a beaded necklace. With a scoff, I changed the channel. Commercial. I changed it again. Infomercial.

The question arose of why we paid money for thousands of channels when nothing good ever played. I settled on an old Western for a few minutes until it cut to another commercial. Impatient and tired of watching the same ad for toothpaste, I flicked through several more channels until I passed something that caught my attention.

A brunette on the screen wearing a poor excuse for a school uniform, hair tousled in pigtails, mounted on a desk hooked me. She beckoned the camera with a manicured finger, and I grimaced. I had found the porn channels.

It felt wrong even to observe the preview advertisements. There was no sex happening, but for 12.99 a month, I could have unlimited access to a catalogue of thousands of adult movies. My feet began to tingle. Then I thought about Mary laid out on a desk like that, wearing a tiny skirt, breasts falling out of a too-small top. A shiver flew up my spine. Yeah, right. She would never entertain the idea of dressing like that for me.

But it didn’t stop me from imagining it.

The next channel showed two girls sitting together in a hot tub; fake breasts barely contained in matching bikini tops. This channel boasted a collection of the most hardcore films available in crystal clear HD for only ten dollars a month, a bargain compared to the last. I scoffed and meant to change the channel until the women began kissing each other. The shiver came back as a hot wash of sensation crackling through my body.

Busty MILF Takes Two at Once. Tiny Teen Newcomer Strips for the Camera. Casting Couch Cumshots. Monster Cock White Boy VS Carmen Chavez. Anal Beauties #7. Slutty Neighbor Comes Over For Some Sugar. Cougars on Spring Break. Freaky Tattooed Whores Swallow it All. Piss On My Face. Cock-Hungry Nympho Squirts On Command.

I felt dirty just reading the titles of some movies, yet I still chose one at random. The heat of shame loomed over my shoulders at once, but I couldn’t look away. I hadn’t seen a naked woman in a while. I almost forgot how exquisite all the curves and dips were, how satisfying a pleasured moan could sound.

The movie I chose was brash and not in line with what normally turned me on. The woman howled as her partner thrust into her ruthlessly, slapped her, pulled her hair and spit on her cheeks. It was worse than a horror movie, and my erection felt like a betrayal. She smiled and asked for more. I couldn’t believe it.

Soon, my pants dropped around my ankles, my underwear binding my knees, and I was touching myself to the thought of taking Mary like that. She would never allow me to arrange her body in such a position. She would never look up at me with her teeth clenched, giddy from the feeling of me inside her.

I suppose that’s why fantasies existed.

The woman scooped up her breast and licked one puffy nipple, and I groaned from the sight. Her pussy was so bald it looked as though she had never grown pubic hair before. That was something entirely new for me. Mary kept herself natural between her legs, which never bothered me, but seeing how pristine and glossy one looked with nothing to hide it was one of the most amazing things I had ever seen. I felt like a young boy discovering women for the first time.

Before I knew it, I was stroking my cock in time with the couple’s thrusts. I closed my eyes and imagined my wife’s lips wrapped around the head as I tugged and massaged and squeezed myself. When I looked down, a clear drop of pre-cum coasted down my slit. The woman in the film got on her knees, took her partner’s balls in her mouth, and I lost control.

To say I made up for months of no sex with several self-inflicted orgasms would be a minimal claim. I cranked out a few intense orgasms, impressed by the amount of cum I had stored inside me. The last one was hardly a dribble, but it still felt good to feel that hot wave of arousal burning through my groin.

Then the shame set in as I anchored to the couch, sweaty and panting. I had used half the tissues from the box next to the sofa, and the sounds of pained moaning continued to echo through the living room. “Shit,” I whispered, grabbing for the remote control to change the channel to something more virtuous.

Disgraced by my lack of self-control, I cleaned up and disposed of the mountain of cum-hardened tissues, showered and changed into a fresh set of clothes. I shaved, adjusted the ring on my finger and looked at myself in the mirror once again. My cheeks scorched red, and I felt like I didn’t know the man looking back at me.

The next day at work, the remorse followed close at my heels. Every woman that gave me the barest flash of a smile turned into the star of a mental porn-flick on a loop in my head. I shook the thoughts away, but my assistant came in wearing a low-cut blouse. Her chest looked fuller, and her skin was smooth and enticing, perfect for stroking and rubbing and... Shit.

“You feeling all right, Henry?” She asked.

Her cherry red lips around my cock.

“Oh, yeah. I’m fine. Still a little out of it, but I’m okay.”

Those nylons ripped open at the crotch.

She giggled. Oh, Lord. “What are you wanting for lunch today?”

Your pussy spread out on my desk like a meat platter.

“Probably something light,” I replied, avoiding her eyes.

Sit on my face and let me tongue-fuck your—what the hell is wrong with me?

“There’s a new Mexican place down the block. Just opened up. I’m craving taco salad.”

I’m craving taco salad, too.

“That sounds good. I’m not picky.”

She’s smiling at me. Oh, my god. She knows. Everyone knows what I did.

“Sounds good, Mr. Deaver. After lunch, we should go over those reports...”

The words came out of her mouth, but I stopped listening. When she paused and gave me a queer look, my heart stumbled.

“You sure you’re okay? You know, if you’re still sick, you should go home. Get some rest. You look like you haven’t slept a wink.”

I laughed nervously. “I’ll be fine. Thanks, Cassie. Some lunch will do me good.”

She smiled again. She wants me. No, she doesn’t, what the hell? She has a husband. You have a wife. A wife that... Loves you? A wife who thinks to put your cock in her mouth is the most revolting thing imaginable. Missionary sex for the rest of your life if she ever lets you put it in her again. You’re pathetic.

Tortured by the voices of my guilt, I vowed never to watch another second of porn again.

A few days passed by, and my inner monologue quit raking at my back. I forgot about what I did, having gotten my lust mostly under control. I still thought about the possibility of Mary cheating on me until I picked her up from the airport.

Her colleagues were with her, and when she saw me waiting for her, she gasped, smiled and approached me. She threw her arms around me and tilted her face up for a kiss. I clamped my hands against her cheeks and kissed her for the first time in weeks. When she pulled away, she tossed a look back at her associates. Half of them I knew, and I gave them a genteel wave.

It didn’t take me long to realize her affection was for show. When we got home, she ignored me again, gave tired answers to my questions and asked for some quiet time. I respected her wishes.

A week later, while in bed, I couldn’t close my eyes. The question racketing in my brain would not let me be. I had to say something.

“Will you ever want to have sex with me again?”

Mary turned over and stared at me the way one might when given terrible news. This was how she liked to make me feel bad. Wide eyes bore into me as her lips thinned out into a bare grimace. She shook her head.

“That’s a very lewd question.”

“Is it, though? I mean, you’re my wife. Shouldn’t I be able to talk to you about sex?”

She had no answer to fire back at me. There must have been a voice telling her I had a valid point. It’s not as though we were two teens waiting for marriage. I was allowed to talk about it, and she was allowed to ignore me.

“I’m not feeling up for it tonight. Maybe tomorrow,” she offered.

Tomorrow came and went, and my dick remained dry.

Then another day dragged by, then another week, and another missed date night. I was losing the minuscule amount of hope I had. Bringing it up stung. I would rather fire an employee than skirt the subject of sex with my wife. I began going through a tiring parade of emotions. Guilt gave way to anger, then anger to shame for feeling impassioned about my plight. I should be thankful that I had a wife. Some men couldn’t get a date to save their mother’s life. Although what was a marriage without affection? Then I felt bad for wanting sex in the first place. Why was I not happy with what I had? There were people worse off than me. I had money in the bank, nice clothes, new cars, two homes and a stable job. How could I possibly feel sorry for myself?

There was an explosion. Not in the literal sense, but one that burned just as hot and caused an enormous amount of destruction. Enough that I feared I could never rescue the pieces of my smouldering marriage, and even if I could, they would never fit back together.

Mary summoned me into the kitchen. She stared at her phone screen, ignoring me as though she hadn’t just called my name.

“Yes, honey?” I greeted her, leaning over to kiss her cheek but got pushed away.

“What were you doing on Monday, the thirteenth of this month?”

The question stumped me. “Uh, working?”

“No, you weren’t.”

“I work Monday to Friday, same as you.”

Mary glared at me. Then I noticed her hands shaking. Something was wrong. My mind scrambled to find the answer.

“You see... I thought that, too. Until I called Cassie and asked where you were, and she informed me you took a sick day.”

My complexion must have blanched, for she gave me a wicked grin she reserved for when she won an argument. I faltered and stumbled over my tongue, looking for any way out before the tick of her inner clock reached zero, and she erupted.

“Oh,” I said. “Right. Yeah, I was sick that day.”

“Sick? Sick in the head, maybe! I’d say you were downright disgusting!”

“Mary—”

“Tell me, Henry, did you thoroughly enjoy watching Schoolhouse Sluts? Did you enjoy getting off to watching another woman getting... Getting ploughed senseless?” She screamed this at me.

“Mary, it was an accident. I didn’t mean to press it!”

“Liar!”

Shit. Shit, shit, shit.

“Honey, please, will you just listen to me?”

“No! I will never listen to you defend your disgusting behaviour! This is downright sinful of you! Is this your way of getting back at me? Is this what you do when we’re not together? You porn-freak!”

“No, it’s not! I swear to you, I don’t watch... Porn,” my nerve faded as her eyes flashed hot.

“Apparently, you do! And you spend money on it!”

“Good God, Mary. What do you want me to say?”

“Admit it! Stop trying to deny what’s showed up on our cable bill!”

I rubbed at my eyes, lost for what to say. My cheeks were aflame, my feet buzzing like they had fallen asleep. The shame I had immediately after ordering the movie was nothing compared to this.

“Did you not stop to think, ‘oh, my wife pays the cable bill. Perhaps I shouldn’t ORDER PORNOGRAPHY’!”

The shrillness of her voice grated my nerves. Maybe she was right, but there was still a part of me that stamped its foot and told me I deserved sexual expression.

“Maybe if you fucked me once in a while, I wouldn’t be jonesing for release! And what I do in my own private time is none of your goddamn business!”

Mary looked as though I’d backhanded her, and I was certain that’s how she took my exclamation.

“You are the most selfish man I have ever met. And if you think I will even so much as consider letting your filthy hands touch me again, you’re wrong. Dead. Wrong.”

“Great! Shouldn’t be much of a stretch for you, anyway, considering you haven’t slept with me in, oh, I don’t know, three months now? Four? A quarter of a year. I don’t remember making a celibacy pact with you!”

“You’re always working! Always busy! And when you’re not, I’m always busy!”

I rolled my eyes and scoffed at the ceiling. “We sleep in the same bed every night, Mary. You can’t be bothered even to kiss me anymore. What am I supposed to make of that, huh? And then you act all happy to see me in front of your friends. You’re so fake. There’s something wrong with you. This is borderline abusive!”

“Don’t you dare try to play the victim, Henry!”

“I am a victim!” I thumped my chest. “You won’t tell me what is wrong! If it’s not me, it’s you, and if it’s not you, then what? Are you not attracted to me anymore? Do you find me repulsive?”

“Right now, I do, yes.”

“Fantastic! That’s great for us. So how much longer will it be, hm? At this point, it’s not just about sex. It’s about your general aversion to me. Do you want to stay married to a man you’re not interested in for the rest of your life? Do you want to hold me down with a boot to my throat and get mad at me when I need to get off because you haven’t touched me since the Spring? You owe me an explanation!”

“I don’t owe you shit, Henry,” she spat, then turned around and left.

The worst part was not the days of silence that proceeded. It wasn’t her staying at the house while I stayed at the condo. It wasn’t her pretending like I didn’t exist or the feigned pleasantry whenever our paths crossed in a professional setting. It wasn’t having to answer questions about my wife nearly every day by people that did not understand my suffering. No, I managed that. What hurt me the most was considering a divorce from the woman to whom I had pledged my life. The person I wanted to love simply did not return the sentiment.

The real hurt came when I walked down the hallway to our bedroom and passed the pictures of our wedding day when we signed the marriage license using my grandfather’s pen. It was somehow failing to keep her in love with me. It was unrequited love and defeat.

And there is only so long you can spend wanting somebody that doesn’t want you back before you wonder why you ever wanted them at all.

#henry deaver x mistress #bill skarsgard fanfiction #bill skarsgard imagine #castle rock fanfiction

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magssteenkamp · 5 years ago

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“Unexpected help from Spirit”

Title: “Unexpected help from Spirit”

Pairing: Dean x OFC, Sam Winchester, Bobby Singer’s Ghost

Word Count: 2K

Warnings: swearing I guess? This is my first fic not sure what else to say…

A/N: This is my first attempt at writing a FanFic since I read such a lot of them I thought well I should do that… little did I know what a process this is, to all the #fanficwriters out there you guys are awesome!!! Special thanks to @thehunterwholived, my heart twin who was my Beta readers and to @jay-and-dean for all the Tumblr tips...

Summary: This story plays out in SPN Season 7 Episode 19 - “Of Grave Importance”

Meet Cat, she has the ability to see and communicate with the spirit world but has learned at a young age to hide it. She meets the Winchester brothers at The Pier Front restaurant where she is helping out the owner for the day. She can see Bobby and tries to hide it but he realizes that she sees him and he tries to get a message to the brothers...

Chapter 1 - First meeting…

Cat’s POV…

My name is Catori La Fae or Cat to everyone other than my mother. I’m 29 years old and for as long as I can remember I have been able to see and communicate with spirits. My parents never realized how aptly they named me since Catori means “Spirit”. I learned from an early age to keep quiet about my abilities. No one wants to know that they are being followed around by a deceased relative, I mean what if you wanna go to the loo?

I’ve lived in Bodega Bay all my life and currently, I have the pleasure of helping a friend out in a little restaurant on the pier. Although my Mother still runs The Crow’s Nest Hotel in town, I like to help out the owner of The Pier Front restaurant, Sally, especially since I get to have my favorite Coconut Cream Pie on the house, Sally, makes the best pies. It's a warm sunny afternoon with the lunch hour rush in full swing, I walk over to two new customers that just sat down in a corner booth in my section. The first thing I noticed was the surly old mad standing next to one of the seated men and the second was that both men were really good looking.

But as I walk away I can feel his stare at the back of my neck and I know my hope was in vain. Returning with the brother's drinks I can see the resemblance now… I overheard them talking about Annie being late for their meeting. *Here you go, gentlemen* I say placing their drink order in front of them. Chewing on my lip I wonder if I should mention that I know Annie and that she was staying at The Crow’s Nest Hotel. Annie Hawkins approached me a week before after hearing gossip about my “gift” asking me about the old Van Ness House and the stories about it is supposedly haunted. *Are you waiting for Annie?* I ask them then try not to cringe when they turn to me with sharp eyes. *Do you know her?* Dean asked, trying to hide his suspicion but you could hear it in his voice thanks to your natural sensitiveness. *Oh, she stays at the hotel in town that my mother runs. I have met her there and recommended this restaurant to her actually.* Sam smiles *Would you be able to give us directions, should she get held back and then we can meet her there? She’s an old family friend.* The old trucker next to me mumbles something that sounded very much like idjits and I tried not to react to him. *Let me get your food for you and then I will be happy to give you directions* and with that, I turn to collect their orders.

One was taller than the other by a couple of inches by the look of him leaner, but cute with longish shaggy brown hair and a boyish smile when he looked up at me. The one that really caught my attention and who the older man was looking down at, was ruggedly handsome with the most gorgeous green eyes I have ever seen. He had short auburn hair that was currently tousled from running his fingers through it before giving me a smile that could melt the panties right off a girl. I cleared my thoughts, flicked my thick plait back over my shoulder and smiled at them.

* Hi my name is Cat and I’ll be your waitress.* handing them the menu’s I continue *Can I recommend the Smoky Clam Chowder made with homemade bacon and our famous Coconut Cream Pie for dessert?* With the mention of Bacon mister gorgeous perked up and mister cute rolled his eyes. Out of the corner of my eye, I can see the old man with a weathered truckers cap on looking at me with interest. Oh no, they always know I can see them… I try to ignore him while I give my full attention to the men taking their orders. Mister gorgeous orders first giving me an appreciative look and biting his lower lip before saying, *Well Cat since you recommended it, I will have the Clam Chowder, Pie, and a beer, please. Sammy, are you going to be eating rabbit food again or will you listen to the beautiful lady’s recommendation?*

“Sammy” rolling his eyes at mister gorgeous grumbles *It’s Sam, Dean you know it, I’m not a kid anymore.* Sam looks at the menu and then smiles at me *Don’t mind my brother, I’ll have the grilled line fish with a garden salad and ice water, please.* He says handing me the menu back. I take Dean’s menu I repeat the order back to them and when they nod their approval I answer *Great I will be right back with your drinks.* Turning around the man in the trucker’s cap is standing in front of me bracing myself. I keep my chin up and walk through him while shuddering and hoping that he would think that he made a mistake and leave me be.

Dean’s POV…

Dean watches her walk away, sliding his tongue over his lower lip and biting it. Her dark brown french plait swinging down her back. He’s never seen ice blue eyes like hers and he definitely appreciates the curve of her ass in those tight jeans she was wearing. Sam kicks his brother under the table to get his attention. *What?* Dean growls, as Sam, gives him his best bitch face. *I was just enjoying the view.* Dean smirks at his little brother taking a swig of his beer. Then sitting uncomfortably pulls out Bobby’s old flask placing it on the table to the side of them. Sam, rolls his eyes at his brother *Really Dean?* Dean shrugs and gets comfortable while waiting for Cat, was it… an apt name since that plait of her’s was swishing like a cat’s tail… Sam continues and forces Dean out of his musings.

*Look what I found* Sam pushes his smartphone towards Dean showing him an article about Dick Roman. He has funded more archaeological digs. *What could he be looking for?* Sam wondered out loud what the Leviathan was up to. *No clue man.* Dean says sliding the phone back to Sam and smiles when he sees their sexy waiter walking his way with the food and by the smell of it, it’s gonna be good. *Who cares at the moment a pretty lady is bringing me food that smells amazing* Seeming to have heard the last bit of the conversation Cat smiles at them while putting the dishes down in front of each of them. *And I promise it will taste just as good as it smells.* She winks at Dean who immediately starts tucking in *Mmh things good…* Dean mumbles with his mouth full and Sam just shakes his head and takes a bite of his fish which melts in his mouth.

Smiling up at their waitress Cat Sam says *Thank you this is really good.* She smiles at them and then goes to turn when she seems to remember something. *Oh I still have to give you directions, let me write it down for you and I will be right back.* With that, she swings around and rushes back to the counter. Dean swallows the delicious Clam Chowder and takes a swig of beer. Sam looks at Bobby’s flask then up at Dean. *You know Bobby and Annie had a thing right?* Dean frowns *Wait really?* Sam shrugs *Yeah… it was a foxhole thing. Very Hemingway.* taking a sip of his water. *Huh, she and I went Hemingway this one time too.* Dean looks down at his food. Now it’s Sam’s turn to cringe saying *Well that happens…* Dean looks up at Sam surprised. *Wait what you too Sam?* Sam looking apologetic stumbled over his words *Um, well um, we were working on the same case... both stressed… what can I say I didn’t have a soul.* he says shrugging. Dean takes a deep breath *That’s a lot of Foxholes* and sees Cat walking back from the counter with a piece of paper and a slice of pie. She seems to be frowning at something over his shoulder but he only had eyes for the pie in her hand at that moment to see the flask on the table move slightly.

Cat’s POV…

I go over to the counter, grab a to-go container and an extra big piece of Coconut Cream Pie. I also grab some cutlery and napkins, putting everything into a paper bag. I ring up the bill and walk back over to the guys keeping my eyes on them ignoring the trucker in the hopes that he will not try to approach me or want me to do anything for him. *Here you go, gentlemen, Dean* giving him a wink *an extra big slice of pie and the bill for you Sam.* Dean peeks into the bag with a huge grin he looks at me and then Sam. *Sammy tip this beautiful lady well, she’s awesome!* Sam laughs at his brother’s antics and hands me back the bill with some cash. *Well hope you find your friend guys and if you decide to stay awhile I will probably see you again.* You give them a wink and just as you are about to turn around your eyes meet the trucker’s *I know you can see me girly, no use in trying to ignore me. I need to let these boys know that I am still here, you need to let them know "Bobby" is still around!* Briefly closing my eyes I shake my head and walk away. Only to hear him shouting Balls!! In frustration at my back…

I almost stumble when I see the trucker move the flask on the table and I try my best to hold my composure as I place the slice of pie in front of Dean with as big a smile as possible to hide my reaction to what clearly seems to be a spirit that’s following the men *it must be connected to the flask if it can move it…* looking over to Sam still smiling I had him the note with the directions to The Crow’s Nest Hotel *Here you go Sam, may I call you Sam? The directions that you asked for. Tell my Mom, Morgan, that I sent ya and you shouldn’t have any problems.* Sam smiles sweetly *Sure only if I can call you Cat.* At the same time, Dean takes a bite of the pie and gives an almost pornographic moan making Sam blush and look at his brother. The trucker looks at him and once again I hear a faint idjit. I give a laugh while looking at Dean *That good huh?* he looks up at me emerald eyes sparkling *Are you kidding me this is awesome!!*

He takes another bite and groans again with his eyes closed and his head was thrown back. I smirk at him and Sam rolls his hazel eyes at his brother *Do you want to be left alone with that pie Dean?* Dean looks up at Sam, giving him a dirty smirk. *If it was any better you might just have to, yeah!* We all laugh and even the trucker seems to find Dean’s antics funny looking down at him with a half grimace half-smile. He clearly seems fond of the guys there is no mistaking that, I can feel the proud love for them coming from him.

I made the mistake of watching him too long and he suddenly looked straight at me. Shit!!! I quickly looked at Dean who had finished his pie and was licking his spoon clean. A little bit of coconut cream was left on his chin and I had the sudden urge to lick it off myself. Shifting my weight and clearing my throat I motion toward it. *You have a little something there.* I point to my chin and he smiles, swipes it off with a finger and pops it in his mouth, sucking his finger clean. Fuck that’s hot! Come on Cat mind out of the gutter…* He pulls his finger out with an audible POP! *Anything else I can get you guys?* Dean looks down at his now empty plate. *Can I get one of those slices to go?* He looks up at me hopefully while Sam laughs, finishes his water and looks at me. *Looks like it will be one more slice of pie to go and the bill please.* I smile nodding at Dean *Sure you can be right back with the bill and your pie.* As I turn I catch the eye of the trucker and he gives me a knowing look. I have been caught out...

________________________

***FEEDBACK IS GOLD***

Tags: @jay-and-dean @roonyxx @deanwanddamons @thehunterwholived @waywardsistershy

#supernatural fanfiction #dean winchester fanfic #dean x ofc #series #spn #sam winchester #bobby singer #supernatural dean winchester #my first fanfic #original female character #magssteenkamp

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lupienne · 6 years ago

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Comic Negan Fic Recommendations

Welcome to my compiling of compelling Comic Negan fanfiction! If you’re looking for fics that focus more on Negan’s comic incarnation, well, here you go!

I used to try to update this list monthly, but it’s going to be probably every few months from now on. New additions are at the bottom and in italics.

As of this update, I’m also including fics I’ll describe as (Exception To) These are fics that are either based off TV Negan or seem to be based off him, but I still think Comic Negan aficionados will enjoy as well.

As always, if you like a fic, please leave the writer a comment or give them a kudos/like/reblog or whatnot. Writers appreciate your support and feedback so very much!

(updated on Sept 1, 2018)

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In no particular order:

Stigmatic by 217. Follow Negan’s POV as he leads the Saviors in what starts off as comic canon, before venturing into wonderfully AU territory. Also featuring 217’s most excellent OCs; she is truly a master at crafting real, well-rounded and interesting characters. She also has such a talent for writing Negan true to the comics and yet making her own unique version of his character as well. The plotline of this story is always moving forward as the Saviors travel through the highs and lows of life in the apocalypse. On ff.net On A03

217 has also done some AU series within the Stigmatic verse:

Phlegmatic: which is an AU take on Alice and Negan if they had met before the ZA. On ff.net On A03

Haematic which is another pre-ZA AU take where Negan struggles to raise his and the late Lucille’s daughter, Lulu (and her pet lobster, Crusty!), all by his lonesome. On ff.net On A03

Fics by WattStalf. She has quite a few Negan fics, most of which are nice bite-sized reads and quite enjoyable. Here’s three of my favorites.

His Favorite Girl Smut involving Negan and his favorite girl… why, who else but Lucille the Vampire bat?

Making Like A funny and sexy Negan/Rick fic.

One Night Stand Negan and Olivia smut. Hell yeah.

And here is her complete TWD list

A Wolf at the Door by Misterkingdom: A very well-written fic where Negan makes sure Rick knows who the King Dick Motherfucker is around here.

Beautiful Tragedy by 217: Yet another gem by this master writer of ole Negan. However, RM (aka ‘Rude Motherfucker’) the OC of this story, doesn’t see Negan in the most flattering light. One of Negan’s (aka ‘Dumpy’s) wives, she uses his perks to support her ongoing drug addiction, that is, until Negan takes note…and he doesn’t approve. The dialogue in this story is absolutely a riot, as RM’s mouth and thoughts are every bit as vulgar and outrageous as Negan’s! On ff.net On A03

217 also has quite a few shorter fare for those that balk at lengthier stories (but trust me, they are worth every word!) My personal favorites are The Cleansing which is a pitch-back affair, Negan’s Number What? (a birthday present to me a few years ago, and the hottest Negan/Sherry smut EVER!), and Non-NEGotiable which is a Stigmatic smut where Negan loses a bet and his ass to Alice. On ff.net On A03

The Life of Negan & Lucille by TeamCarlisle: Based off the ‘Here’s Negan’ backstory, it’s Negan and Lucille’s pre-apocalypse days before it all fell apart. Sweet and yet heartbreaking, it’s a treat to see Negan in his pre-Savior days. But get your tissues out for this one!

Recollection by 217: Another goodie by 217, this is based off the ‘Here’s Negan’ backstory and contains part of his life with Lucille. On ff.net On A03

Embracing the Apocalypse by Embracetheapocalypsewithme (SomewhatSlightyDazed) Sanctuary and the Saviors has gained a new member, Rebecca, who struggles to find a foothold in this new society, but soon has captured the attention of Negan. He himself has been newly reinstated as the Savior’s leader and is also on unsure ground, unlike his previous bout of leadership. The two share a similar sense of humor and a need for a new start, but nothing is ever easy in the post-apocalyptic world.

This is yet another story that captures the charm, awkwardness and humor of Comic Negan, and features a very funny OC as well. Very much worth a read!

SomewhatSlightyDazed also has several shorts (mostly smutty, but a few aren’t.) They’re great for a quickie. A quick read, that is. ;) My personal favorites are: Post-Apocalyptic Driving School, Guys Like Him (Olivia and Negan, always a treat!), and Double-Dare (Smutty threesome with Negan and his wives. Yum!)

Through the Valley by Dusty Cookie Another merry jaunt into Sanctuary and the lives of the Saviors. Several Saviors, while out on a run, spot a female apparently living all on her lonesome and think she might be a good asset for Sanctuary. Now Negan just has to convince her she has a place there, and our story begins. :)

Dusty writes an absolutely fantastic Negan and her OCs are also well-written and interesting. Her dialogue and overall writing style is also so entertaining, witty, and just a pleasure to read. Try Chapter 1, and you’ll be hooked! On ff.net on A03

Dusty also has several short fics that are all equally great… but watch out for that catty Miss Fiona in The Hand that Feeds!

Tender Prey by bigcatsandkatanas I’m very bad and haven’t reviewed this one yet. I haven’t read a lot of them, so maybe it’s a bit pre-mature to say, but I think this is my favorite Regan fic. We have a bit more of a humble and lonely Negan due to his incarceration by good ole Prick Grimes, and it makes for one smutty tale I adore. Negan is written really great in this and despite being mostly smut, it’s also got some nice character moments for Negan. I really like it.

Gifts by redheadedwhat A nice little Negan/OC smut for your reading pleasure. Some humorous bits and of course, some very lovely smut.

Hurt by opheliadawnwalker3 Perhaps leaning more towards TV Negan, this is still a really good (and heart-wrenching) short about Negan and Lucille and her very bad news.

Satellite Days by Kinkozan After the Whisperer War, Negan has been living in an old outpost from the Savior days, and he finds himself in the company of Toni, another survivor who isn’t quite welcome around her old communities anymore either. They must try to survive in their new environment, as well as survive each other.

Backspin by Kinkozan Negan’s wife Charli’s plans of giving him a much-deserved spanking and trying to assert herself in the relationship might come back to bite her in the ass. Smut and angst.

Lupienne’s Negan fanfictions. Here’s my additions to the Comic Negan bookcase. I have a long WIP involving Negan and the boring domestic affairs of his wives, as well as a few shorter reads that are mostly of the smut variety. On A03 On ff.net (I don’t have them all on there, but if you prefer reading on this site…)

Enigmatic by 217: Based off Here’s Negan 15, where Negan receives a nasty wound from a fellow survivor. Upon going to clean out his wound, Negan meets an OC who is all too eager to give him some ‘healing.’ On ff.net On AO3

Love(d) by Dusty Cookie A pre-ZA short with Negan and Lucille. Dusty doesn’t just tug at your heartstrings, she rips them right out of your body.

WIP by Metal Butter Metal Butter mentioned a prisoner Negan fic they were writing, and upon my request, posted a snippet of it! It’s not complete, but it’s awesome just as it is. I love the way Negan is written as he narrates from his prison cell. Also contains shades of Regan. Yum!

In the Twilight Kingdom by Embracetheapocalypsewithme (SomewhatSlightlyDazed) Filled with grief over his recently deceased Lucille, Negan struggles to live and find a reason for doing so in the dangerous new world of the apocalypse.

Decomposition by 217: “Do you know what decomposition is? Answer the goddamn question.” A dark short of Negan’s thoughts as Lucille claims another life.

Bedtime Stories by Embracetheapocalypsewithme (SomewhatSlightyDazed): What happens when Negan finds out some of the Sanctuary women have been writing porn about him?

Last Chance Revival by 217. This fic follows an AU, non-ZA Negan as he tends bar in a rough part of town, where the highlight of his night is watching quirky OC’s Murphy’s ass leave the bar in her tight leopard print spandex. On ff.net On AO3

Heart in a Blender by Bigcatsandkatanas. A Negan/Rick fic set in a non-apocalyptic AU verse. Negan, lonely and despondent after his divorce with Lucille, decides to take a chance and use a dating app. When he accidentally matches with Rick Grimes, it’s the start of an awkward friendship (and maybe more?) Bigcatsandkatanas writes an excellent Negan, from his personality to his dialogue.

I Bless the Rains Down at Sanctuary by Redheadedwhat. Negan’s wife Tallulah discovers the hilarity of a drunken Negan. And an important question is pondered…just what did happen to the band members of Toto after the apocalypse?

Exhaust by Spliced-up Angel. An AU take on All out War. What if Negan hadn’t lost that last battle? Told from Carl’s POV, the young Grimes struggles to adapt to Negan’s rule over Alexandria. Since the story is all from Carl, Negan isn’t painted in the most flattering light. His dialogue is hilarious and poor Carl finds himself in a few embarrassing situations due to Negan’s lack of shame.

The tumblr Masterlist for Dusty-cookie. Suitable for liking, rec’ing and reblogging!

Dixon Dallas by 217. An AU smut involving Negan as a porn star :D

Priorities by Dusty Cookie. A fluffy short, perfect for snuggling up with on a cold winter day!

Happy Fucking Birthday by Dusty Cookie. Negan gives the present of smut to his favorite birthday girl.

Careful What You Wish For by Dusty Cookie. More glorious smut! I only wish for more!

The tumblr Masterlist for Embracetheapocalypsewithme. Great for reblogging and giving this writer more exposure. Do it!

An Enemy of the Crows by redheadedwhat. A chance encounter with a crow will change Negan’s life forever. :)

Cursed Land by Embracetheapocalypsewithme (SomewhatSlightlyDazed on AO3). This tale begins with a map with a blacked-out section Negan refuses to speak about… a fic to read with all the lights on!

The Love You Take by Embracetheapocalypsewithme (SomewhatSlightlyDazed on AO3). A lonely, exiled Negan investigates mysterious music he keeps hearing at night…

Yes, Mistress by Embracetheapocalypsewithme (SomewhatSlightlyDazed on AO3). Negan gets some new jewelry for Sherry to wear. She isn’t exactly enthused about it…but Negan can be pretty convincing ;) Glorious smut!

I’ll Always Be With You by Maggie Monster. Lucille has passed on, yet she has never left Negan’s side.

Irrational Fears by Embracetheapocalypsewithme. Even the fearless Negan has some irrational fears.

Hush by Dusty Cookie. Nothing like some public sex to get Little Negan all riled up ;)

Illicit Intervention by 217. This fic takes place before the apocalypse and involves Negan’s troubled marriage to Lucille and the woman he finds outside of it.

After Life by Dusty Cookie. Angsty Negan and Lucille.

Untitled (Regan smut) by Likeagoddamn cat. Some nice Regan smut based off Negan’s infamous ‘sad eye contactless handjob’ line from the comics.

His Beautiful Lady by Dusty Cookie. Negan foot-fetish smut! The world needs more of this! ;P

217fanfic’s Tumblr masterlist, suitable for reblogging and bookmarking. :)

Help Me Out by genevievedarcygranger. Prisoner Negan, Rick, and comments about handjobs lead to some Regan goodness.

Fics by Bunnylouisegrimes. Bunny is a new writer to the Negan scene and here’s some of her works I’ve enjoyed. Since I believe she writes more for TV Negan, these are (Exception To) :)

Lullaby of a Dead Man - Negan finds himself betrayed and fighting for his life.

Regret An intro to Bunny’s OC and a look into Negan’s regrets.

My Imaginary Friend isn’t that Imaginary AU in which Negan is the guardian to a young girl who is very special to him.

Gone Away, Out of Reach by Marium. (Exception To) TV based/AU and heavy on the angst. While in his cell, Negan learns some tragic news.

Fuck You by Annablack1102 (Exception To/seems comic-Negan enough to me) Sub Negan, smut, and strap-ons....what is not to like?

Ok guys, that’s it for this update! Happy reading! I’ve got a big ole reading queue to catch up on, so hopefully come next update, I’ll have another heaping pile of fictional joy for ya’ll.

(Reblogs of this post are appreciated to help give these writers more exposure. :))

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shsummertimefest-blog · 7 years ago

Text

I Need to Tell You Something

Enjoy, @magswoods!

You said you liked Malec, fluf, angst, happy endings and fake relationships, all things that I like too, so here you go! This was a lot of fun to write and I hope you have as much fun reading it! ♥

Title: I Need to Tell You Something Rating: T Word Count: 2724 Tags: No Supernatural, Celebrity AU, Actor Magnus, Actor Alec, Fluff, Angst, Pining, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Background Clary/Izzy, POV Alec Summary: Alec needs to get his name out there, preferably without resorting to drama and scandal. He agrees to a PR relationship with Magnus, who needs this too but for different reasons. But now that the time of their "break up" is getting close, Alec's not so sure he wants things to end.

[Read here]

Inviting Jace and Izzy over for a movie night seemed like a good way to distract himself. The only other thing that somewhat managed to take his mind off his problem the past week, was exercise; but after putting himself through some gruelling workouts, his body needed today to rest.

It works, at first. They argue about what movies to watch and what food to order. Then Alec has to defend his ice cream from Izzy, though he still loses half of it in the battle. They settle around midnight, with him and Izzy on one couch, her toes tucked under his thighs, and Jace half-asleep on the other couch. Slowly but surely, Alec’s thoughts drift back to what occupied them before his siblings arrived. He hopes they don’t notice, because that will only to questions he doesn’t want to answer. These hopes are soon smashed to pieces. Now that they’re no longer occupied by the movie or food, Jace and Izzy’s focus has shifted to him. Their not so subtle, curious glances–that he refuses to acknowledge–prick his skin.

He feels Izzy shift as she reaches for the remote and pauses the movie. For a moment, nothing can be heard but the sounds of New York that manage to make their way up to his apartment.

‘Can you please tell us what's wrong?’ she asks, her voice a sisterly combination of annoyance and worry.

‘Nothing's wrong,’ Alec huffs.

Jace sits up and raises his eyebrows. ‘You invited us for a movie night.’

‘So?’

‘You only do that when something's bothering you,’ Jace explains.

Alec slouches, his cheeks heating up. There are times he wishes he wasn't so close to his siblings and they didn’t know all his tells. ‘I don't do that,’ he protests.

‘You did when you came out to us and were worried about mom and dad’s reaction,’ Izzy says.

‘And when you wanted to switch your major from Business to Acting,’ Jace adds.

‘When you decided to be an out actor, and not go back in the closet until your career took off.’

Alec holds up his hand. Fuck, they’re right. He takes a deep breath, not sure where to start.

‘So you know how Magnus and I are supposed to break up tomorrow?’ By the looks on Jace and Izzy’s faces, they already know what he's going to say next: Izzy’s beaming and Jace is smirking. ‘I don't want to,’ Alec finishes.

‘I knew it!’ Izzy crows, throwing her arms around him to give him a tight hug.

Jace gets up and sits down on Alec’s other side, forcing Alec and Izzy to scoot over so they can all fit. ‘Have you told Magnus yet?’

‘Would there be a movie night if I had?’

Alec leans forward hiding his face in his hands. How does one tell their fake boyfriend you don't want it to be fake anymore? He groans. How did he get to the point where that’s a question he has to ask himself?

Being an actor is something he’s always wanted. He doesn’t care if people know his name or recognize him on the street, as long as he gets to play the parts that he wants. He’s one of the lucky few who got noticed early in their career, and quickly got access to bigger and, mostly but not always, better parts. Lately though, the fact that people don’t really know his name, but more as that guy from that movie or as the brother of Jace, lead singer and keys for The Nephilim, and Izzy, personal trainer and activist, has become a bit of a problem. Parts he sets his sights on are being snatched up by people whose name is bigger, even if their resumé, or their talent, isn’t.

‘You need to be more accessible, relatable,’ his agent said when he talked about it with her.

‘I have two annoying siblings and I like animals,’ he said. ‘That’s pretty relatable for most people.’

She smiled indulgently. ‘Yes, we all love your Instagram. You have a beautiful face, you love your family, you have a nice house, cute pets, and you’re smart. You’re pristine, almost angelical. People don’t know what to do with that.’

‘You’re saying I should have a scandal?’ Alec asked, raising his eyebrows, because that just sounded stupid. He never understood how people got involved in all that drama.

‘I think a boyfriend will be enough for now,’ she said. ‘And I know the perfect person.’

‘No.’ One thing Alec always said was that he would never have a PR boyfriend. The concept’s ridiculous, reminding him of the marriages of European nobility when having a title was still the only thing that mattered. They put a number on your influence, wealth, and looks, then find someone compatible. Ridiculous.

‘He needs this, too,’ his agent said. ‘He had a very public breakup with a vindictive ex, and the press keep hounding him about his love life. When people see him with you, they’ll back off. At least a little. You’re private, dependable. You’d be helping him more than he’d be helping you.’

Playing on his charitable side, a low blow. Alec could see his agent knew it, but she also clearly didn’t care.

‘Who is it?’ he sighed. If this guy really needed help, hanging out with him for a couple months, holding hands so the vultures could snap a couple pics of the “happy couple”, maybe wouldn’t be such a terrible thing.

‘Magnus Bane.’

Alec’s eyebrows shot up. Magnus was pretty much the opposite of him: bright, enigmatic, constantly in the spotlight for his movies, clubs, and dating life, always mixing business with pleasure. And yes, he was gorgeous, there was no denying that.

Izzy had told him about the break up when it happened, her girlfriend Clary was a friend of Magnus’. They’d stayed with Magnus for a couple days to make sure he wouldn’t do anything stupid, like call his ex.

‘And he’s okay with this?’ Alec asked.

‘It was his idea. Even mentioned you as a possible “boyfriend”,’ his agent grinned, knowing she had him right where she wanted.

Their story is simple: they met at a party and hit it off. It’s not far from the truth. They have met at parties before and gotten along great, only the part where Magnus called Alec the next day to see if he wanted to get a drink is a lie.

Fake dating Magnus isn’t a hardship. Despite seeming like polar opposites, they have a lot in common, and Alec thinks there is real chemistry between them–people probably wouldn’t have bought their “relationship” so easily if there wasn’t. It was a little awkward at first, but the more they hung out, the more Alec got to know Magnus, the more he liked him. Until he realized that he liked Magnus. Magnus isn’t just beautiful and charming, he’s also sweet, and smart, and funny. Every time Alec does something nice for him, his face lights up, whether it’s bringing Magnus’ favourite food when he comes over, or tells Magnus he likes how his hair looks that day. The realization wasn’t much of a shock, but it made the knowledge that everything between them was fake and that he couldn’t have it very painful. He tried to put some distance between them, but knowing that Magnus was out there was a like siren call. Alec couldn’t stop himself from seeking him out.

He should be happy, the ruse worked. He got a call from a producer, offering him a job initially given to someone else, and the press backed off of Magnus, giving him room to breathe. But he’s not happy. The fact that they got what they wanted means it’s time for it to end. They’ll stay friends, an amicable “break up” is important for both of them, but it won’t be the same. No handholding, or kissing, no tucking Magnus into his side as they walk to their favourite restaurant. Then they’ll start hanging out less often, fewer calls, until eventually all contact will fade away. They’ll go back to chitchat at parties they both happened to be invited to.

Alec leans back into the cushions, rubbing his face. The thought of Magnus becoming a stranger again hurts.

‘You need to tell him,’ Izzy says gently. She wraps an arm around his shoulder, and he slides down far enough to lay his head on her shoulder.

‘What if I’m just imagining it?’ he asks. ‘What if I didn’t just fool the public and the press, but myself, too?’

‘There really is only one way to find out,’ Jace says.

‘By possibly making a fool of myself,’ Alec sighs. ‘I swore I would never get pulled into a mess like this, and then I do it to help a guy out, and I fall in love with him.’

Jace and Izzy go very still beside him. Alec looks up to find them staring at him with wide eyes.

‘What?’

‘You need to tell him,’ Izzy says. She untangles herself, races from the room to come back and throw Alec’s jacket and boots at him.

Alec fumbles to catch them, and is about to ask what the hell is happening, when Jace pushes a set of keys into his hands.

‘Take my bike, it’ll get you there faster.’

‘What is happening?’ Alec asks.

Izzy takes his hands and smiles. ‘You just said you’re in love with Magnus.’

‘I–’ Alec hesitates. Is he in love with Magnus?

‘Close your eyes,’ Jace orders.

Alec frowns, but complies when Jace nods impatiently.

‘When you think of your life in ten years, is Magnus there?’

Alec can see it clearly: a lazy Sunday afternoon, the sun shining, their pets having taken the best spots in the shadow, Alec reading a script by the pool, Magnus ruffling his hair as he makes his way inside to get them a refill for their cold drinks.

He opens his eyes. Jace and Izzy are looking at him like they know exactly what he saw.

‘You need to tell him,’ Jace repeats Izzy’s words.

‘It’s 1am,’ Alec protests.

‘It’s Magnus, I’m sure he’s still up,’ Izzy says. Things aren’t moving fast enough for her and she starts putting his jacket on him for him.

‘He has a meeting tomorrow. He went to bed early.’ Alec’s thoughts are tumbling all over each other. The fact that he’s in love with Magnus is too big, so he focuses on simpler things, like tightening the laces on his boots.

‘I’m sure he’ll forgive you once you confess your love,’ Jace grins. ‘Go!’

‘I– Yeah. Okay.’

Alec straightens his jacket, and clutching Jace’s keys, runs out the door. He’s in love with Magnus.

Holy shit.

He’s in love.

With Magnus.

He races through traffic to get to Magnus’ as fast as he can. When he comes to a screeching halt in front of the garage doors of Magnus’ building in record time, it’s a minor miracle he didn’t get pulled over. He’s sure there’ll be some tickets, but he’ll pay Jace back. He punches in the code, and impatiently taps the handlebars as he waits for the gate to open. He parks in the first open spot he sees, bangs through the doors, and starts running up the stairs. It’s not until Magnus opens the door and looks him over with a confused smile, that Alec realizes he must look like a sweaty mess. He should’ve take the elevator.

‘Alexander, what are you doing here? Is everything okay?’ Magnus asks.

Alec’s breath catches in his throat, and he nervously switches Jace’s helmet between his hands. He should’ve thought of what to say. He figured he’d know once he got here, but with Magnus looking sleepy in his robe, no makeup, messed up hair, and downright adorable, his mind is drawing a blank.

‘Why don’t you come in?’ Magnus suggests. He gently takes Alec’s hand and leads him inside.

Alec meekly follows Magnus to the living room. They come to a stop by the windows overlooking the water. He can see the little lights of the boats and the city reflected in the water, and the lights of the city on the far shore. He turns to face Magnus and blurts out, ‘I don’t want to break up.’

Magnus’ fingers tighten around his, which to Alec, somehow, registers as Magnus feeling the same way, and he dives in, pressing his lips against Magnus’. It takes him a split-second to realize that Magnus didn’t actually say anything, that the little squeeze of his fingers might just as easily have been from surprise. He begins to pull back, an apology already forming on his lips, but Magnus places his hand against his cheek to keep him in place. There is no way for Alec to misinterpret that. He fists his hands in the lapels of Magnus’ robe to pull him closer, and relaxes into the kiss. It gentles, sweetens, becomes the best kiss Alec has ever had. They’ve kissed before, little pecks on the lips and cheeks for the cameras, but this one is just for them.

As much as Alec wants to keep kissing Magnus forever, the adrenaline from the ride and the race up the stairs soon has him out of breath. He pulls back and rests their foreheads together. His heartbeat is loud in his ears, the only other thing he can hear are his shaky breaths. He lets go of Magnus’ robe, his fingers grazing the bare skin of Magnus’ chest on their way down. It’s smooth and warm, tempting Alec to touch it everywhere, but they’ve only just had their first kiss. He continues down until he can rest his hands on Magnus’ hips.

‘Finally,’ Magnus breathes. His hand has moved from Alec’s cheek to his neck and he’s playing with the short hairs in the back. His other hand is gripping Alec’s shoulder.

Alec pulls back so he can look at Magnus, and raises his eyebrows. ‘Finally?’

‘Darling, I’ve been flirting with you every chance I got from the first time we met. You really didn’t know?’

Alec’s cheeks heat up with a blush. He smiles and shakes his head. ‘I honestly didn’t really expect you to flirt with me.’

Magnus’ smile is so radiant and fond that Alec has to kiss him again. Magnus’ mouth is more level with his than before, and Alec realizes he must be standing on his toes. To help, he slides his hands from Magnus’ hips to his thighs and hoists him up so Magnus can wrap his legs around Alec’s waist.

‘As much as I approve of this development, I do have to get up early tomorrow,’ Magnus murmurs against Alec’s lips.

‘Sorry.’ Alec completely forgot about Magnus’ meeting. He tries to put him back on the floor, but Magnus tightens his legs and digs his fingers into Alec’s shoulders, like a koala bear unwilling to let go.

‘You can stay. If you want,’ Magnus suggests. He looks nervous, like he’s scared he’s giving too much, too fast.

‘Okay,’ Alec smiles.

He’s never stayed over before, but he knows where Magnus’ bedroom is, and without putting his, now very real, boyfriend down, he walks them there. After quickly brushing his teeth and stripping down to his boxers, he slides in next to Magnus. They turn on their sides, arms pillowing their heads, searching for each other’s eyes in the dim light.

‘I’m glad you came tonight,’ Magnus says.

‘Even though it interrupted your beauty sleep?’ Alec teases.

Magnus chuckles. He scoots closer until they’re almost touching. Alec drops onto his back, and wraps an arm around Magnus to pull him on top of him. Contentment washes over him. He wishes he could bottle this moment up and keep it forever.

‘I love you.’

Magnus stills, except for his fingers that twitch against Alec’s arm. Alec is about to say that it’s okay if Magnus doesn’t say it back now. Technically, they only started dating fifteen minutes ago.

‘I love you, too,’ Magnus says.

Alec traces Magnus’ smile, small, happy, and full of wonder, with the tip of his finger. He’s going to have to change his stance on the whole PR boyfriend thing, because as it turns out, it’s pretty great.

#magswoods #shgiftfest17 #fic #malec

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