#and my other actually original characters too

[shiftinghoesblog]

yapping about my drs ❕❕

okay so this was a request from one of my moots to do this so yeah!!

i have no clue where to start but i’ll talk about some of my desired realities that i shift to but probably mainly non group shift ones so personal ones 🫦

INFLUENCER

- this is one of my most recent drs i’ve been scripting and not gonna lie the main reason i’m shifting here is because of my man 🤭 he cosplays gojo... so you probably know as to why but besides the point, i was raised a nepo baby and younger sister to meghan thee stallion. i am a content creator, influencer (duh), fashion designer and i live with my s/o in the upper east side of new york🗽. i scripted that my first shift will be during christmas eve because who wouldn't wanna experience the city that never sleeps during the festive season and with your partner 😩 it’s gonna be the dream. i have a mad crazy friend group but i love them all because we’re so hot, cool and sexy. i did script that megan’s parents are still alive in my dr so let’s not worry about that. 💀 i dreamt about this dr a couple of times actually and about my s/o 😍, a couple of my friends. really looking forward to this dr.

OUTER BANKS

- i think i shifted here like twice or a couple of times but didn't realise it because i did mention to y’all about chilling with kiara and sarah, another time i did find myself surfing like literally just living the life through the waves and my ass thought it was a dream. looking back i doubt it was, in many instances to be honest. in this dr i am the sister to kiara and my s/o is pope 😌 i grew up a kook but i transitioned to a pogue when i joined the others. i’m the reason behind kiara and sarah making up and i’m close with rafe since kiara and sarah were best friends and probably would have sleepovers together. i scripted that cleo’s lesbian lmao 😭 you know why. i wiped the plot out a little and also made everyone graduate already so that school is out of the way when hunting for the gold.

AVATAR: THE LAST AIRBENDER

yep, i have an atla dr yay! in this dr i’m the oldest sister to kiara and sokka. i’m a waterbending master and my s/o’s zuko??? enemies to lovers kinda vibe. definitely part of the gaang and i’m shifting here because atla is part of my childhood. i have the ability to also create ice and other powerful combat skills so i can't wait to experience this universe.

LEGENDS OF KORRA

i also have a lok dr because why not, i’m the little sister to korra the avatar but i’m gonna prove to everyone that i’m also capable to make a difference and i scripted that i can blood bend.. so ain't no one gonna touch me as well still being able to water bend. my s/o is bolin because he’s so underrated for real.

THE ORIGINALS

in this dr, i’m a hybrid so vampire and werewolf and an adopted mikealson. i live in new orleans and my parents are rebekah and marcel even though their not my bio parental figures because they are already dead 💀. also hopefully i can survive when dahlia comes in because i scripted that my first shift will be during season 2 😓 well shit wish me luck y’all. at least i’ll get to see baby hope aw.

FAME

i have a fame dr because i love attention 🥰 my main profession is being an actor and i’m known for my role in the vampire diaries. i also play robin in the one piece live action and act in many more projects, a nepo baby in this dr too because almost all my family members are well-known. my s/o is caleb mclaughlin? he plays lucas in stranger things and our characters in the show dated so that’s how our relationship sparked.

TWILIGHT

i love talking about drs so yeah i have a twilight dr where when i first shift, i’ll be human but i get turned by a villain in order to send the cullens (my friends) a warning like it’s “game on” so i’m gonna have to mentally prepare myself because i’m gonna basically die 😭 lmao. my s/o is jacob because i’m team jacob simple and it’s a slow burn 😀 woop woop.

SOME OTHER DRS

waiting room - i plan on permashifting here, chill, script, feel free, play with my cat, breath fresh air.

better cr - a better version of my cr and my s/o is jiung from p1harmony, i live with jenna ortega, i attend a boarding school in london, i also model.

wednesday - i’m the sister to bianca and my s/o is kent, i’m a siren and psychic medium.

fate: the winx saga - it’s so underrated i see no one shift here but it’s like the winx live action adaption on netflix, the only dr where i didn't script an s/o.

ateez - my s/o is san and i’m the only female and 9th member, main rapper, performer and maknae.

streamer - i go by lemonpie and my s/o is cory kenshin 😚.

victorious - grew up watching it and i’m andre’s sister.

soloist - i’m a k-pop soloist in this dr and my s/o is blackpink jisoo (yes I’m wlw) she’s so 😍😍😍.

singles inferno - this is a dating reality tv show but at the end of it i end up with wonho (ex. monsta x) i’m besties with song jia.

GROUP SHIFTS

not gonna lie they piss me off if they don’t put the damn effort

one piece (anime) - so far my most enjoyable one is the one piece (anime) shared dr because we talk almost everyday. anywho my s/o is sanji ahhh my vinsmoke baby! i’m the little sister to the asl brothers and my devil fruit is similar to aokoiji so ice ect. i am part of the straw hats and joined them during the alabasta arc.

kard - the k-pop co-ed group basically, me and the person barely talk so you see why i prefer my personals drs.. yeah. my s/o is enhypen’s jay 😍 and my positions are sub-rapper, sub-vocalist, producer and maknae. i’m always a maknae in k-pop group drs for some reason 😭.

the legacies - person dipped on me and didn't even fill any of their sections so! i’m poly with hope and josie, i’m a werewolf and witch.

harry potter - i’m the head girl of slytherin and my s/o’s draco, i scripted fred’s death out. also shifting to the half-blood prince era.

teen wolf - i’m a tribrid in this dr so i’m gonna be unstoppable!

the vampire diaries - a bennett witch, cousin to bonnie.

one piece (live action) - i’m a phoenix hybrid in this dr and also part of the straw hats, grew up around shanks.

private romantic - umm this dr ticks me off low-key because the person that i’m group shifting with ghosts me 😝 i didn't script an s/o for a reason i’m just gonna ditch them for jonathan daviss 💀💀💀 like imagine fumbling manon (I'm shifting as manon from katseye in this dr) i don’t want that person as my s/o anymore and like we’re “friends” here, miss me with that shit.

my hero academia - the group shift is dead bro no one is fucking talking in the group chat, one of them quit shifting, the other i was pfp matching with changed their damn pfp without telling me. script ain't finished too, they all called it a day. and y'all wonder why i don't wanna join no group shift no more.

this was lengthy but y’all asked to yap about my drs other than jujutsu kaisen which you already know about that dr and spill some tea so i did exactly that, i hope you enjoyed and this better not flop, i spent hours typing this 🥳.

@angelic-daiquiri

[fuckyeahmhawkefenris]

I promised myself that I would never ever bring it up because I have enough stress in my life already and these discussions take up a lot of time and energy and require a lot more witt and eloquence than I posess.

But.

This wound has been out there for many many years, and I feel that now it starts festering again, and since I have taken it upon myself to preserve our history, I feel that it would be simply wrong to remain silent when I have something to say.

So, you probably know I make fenhawke renders in XPS using models extracted from da2.

My Fenris model uses these textures

But I must point out that I had to manually edit them to look like this, because the original game textures look like this:

(I believe they do, because the dude who shared the models only did the extracting, and is not known for editing textures)

Want to know why I did what I did?

Because I spent much much MUCH more time looking at fanart of Fenris, than playing the actual game, and at some point it started feeling wrong to me to have him so pale. My vision of him was influenced by the fandom.

That doesn't change the fact that THAT's how he looks in the game.

Can you see where I'm going with this?

Come and tell me that it's impossible to take him for a generic white dude.

Racism is bad, duh

Whitewashing dark skinned characters is bad, DUH

Many of you may have gotten immersed in the wide world of modding (I can't do it, all known mods change too much about Fenris for my liking, and I need him to have his iconic features), but

can we please stop pretending that Fenris in the original game was obviously depicted as dark skinned?

Because that's some stupid bullshit that had caused and still causes a great number of people, mostly artists (often casual fans), a lot of distress, and outright promotes bullying hiding it behind an image - illusion - of social justice.

Yeah, in 2014 we got Dorian and Krem and some others in DAI, finally seeing what people of Tevinter look like.

But guess what? In 2012 we had no idea, and could only guess. Back then we actually had discussions about this, offering opinions and not being afraid to talk? In 2012 we did not really know how to portray Fenris, and artists made their own choices.

In da2 the only tevinters we encountered were

For the best, probably, because had they been depicted as dark skinned, that would have likely become a case of some very unfortunate implications. Looks pretty hopeless to me, either way.

ETA: and of course I forgot Fenris's SISTER

I'm not saying that racism is not an issue in this fandom. It is, obviously, like anywhere else.

But can you imagine a person who played DA2 (exclusively, without getting into DAO or DAI or trying to explore the fandom and looking at more fanart), taking a liking to Fenris and deciding to make fanart of him and sharing it with the fandom, and then having angry anons come to their ask box accusing them of racism? For depicting Fenris in the only way that is known to them?

Think about it for a minute.

I've witnessed a number of such happenings over my time here, and I've been around since 2012.

If you take the time to look at our old fanart, you'll find various depictions of Fenris. Some darker, some lighter, but back then NOTHING could be considered wrong, because we had too little to go on.

It would have been funny had it not been so bloody SAD to see older pictures circulating the net and read comments filled with rage and hurt over whitewashing brown characters.

I get it, you want to fight for justice, but THIS is not JUSTICE.

That right there is some act 3 Meredith level of lunacy seeing blood magic everywhere and condemning innocent mages.

Before you decide to go harass an artist who made a picture that does not match your vision, take a few minutes to think about how justified it would be. Weigh your options and at least choose your words carefully.

I shudder to think how many potential fans had been put off and turned away from this fandom, left wondering wth is wrong with us.

[yuurei20]

Hello YuuRei! Slight spoilers for Book 7 JP content below, if you don’t mind me asking! I saw Trey’s new Book 7 SSR get translated as both ��Queen’s Court Chef” and “Queen’s Chef Coat.” I tried to look into it myself and learned that “coat” and “court” are the same (form what I understand, at least), so I was wondering if you knew which translation to go for, or is both technically correct? With Heartslabyul, honestly court works, too. Thank you so much and Happy Near Year! I hope you are doing well! ☺️

Hello hello! Thank you for this question! ♣️

You are correct! ^^ コート is both "court" and "coat"!

For a long answer:

Yana has done this before, with the Bloom/Broom series that is technically both the word "bloom" and the word "broom"!

We were never shown a romaji name for this series--it only appeared in katakana, where it is both words simultaneously--so if you were to ask "well yes but which one actually was it?," the only answer is: both!

This is one of those things that the Japanese language can do but English cannot, so EN was forced to choose one or another, and they went with "birthday bloom"!

And it happened again during White Rabbit Fes, when Epel says he has heard of someone called "ogama Duke" and Deuce begins to panic because "ogama" means cauldron.

But it also means "scythe" and Epel, who heard his information over the phone and never saw the word written down in kanji, assumes that it is the "scythe" ogama rather than the "cauldron" ogama.

More here!

For a super long answer:

The Japanese language has a lot of different words pronounced the exact same way and differentiated only by kanji: god (神), hair (髪) and paper (紙) for example, are all the same sound (kami).

This means there is a lot of potential for puns! And Yana has always been very big on wordplay, to the point that a pun was the entire basis for her kuroshitsuji manga:

There is a short comic at the end of the very first volume that shows a phone call between herself and her editor where she is telling him how she wants to create a manga about an amazing butler.

The Japanese language 「あくまで」 is used to emphasize that something is being limited or focused on something in particular, like 「あくまで執事ですから、私が決めることではありません」 (as I am only a butler it is not my place to decide).

It is also pronounced identically to 「悪魔で」, which means, "as a demon."

So in Yana's original manga series every time the demon character says "I am a demon butler" all the other characters are hearing it as "I am, ultimately, just a butler."

Since the characters can't see the kanji in his word bubble, he is technically saying both things simultaneously.

And similar wordplay is hidden throughout a large amount of Twst!

Rollo, for example, ends many sentences with a common way to end a question that is pronounced the same way as a word for "bell."

The very first line of Glorious Masquerade is that exact pun:

Kane no oto ga kikoeru kane

There is also Idia's "pretend I'm a bug and ignore me" (both "bug" and "ignore" are the same sound, "mushi"), Riddle's "Rose trees, tear his body apart!" (both "rose" and "apart" are the same sound, "bara") and more!

[momomogos]

*The Death....

DFtR au by @muzzlemouths

Who knows, I was just scribbling freely and it turned out like this?

I found it in my draft pile from three months ago.It was originally like this:

Actually, I never understood dftr! Sun's behavior…

I thought about it for a long time…

From my understanding of the Grim Reaper, the Grim Reaper exists to warn people to cherish life, and the summer camp members' past actions were extremely bad, and their crimes were enough to punish them.

Sun's character is actually full of pessimism. After seeing that justice in the world cannot be upheld and seeing the tragedy happen again, he chose to let despair permeate himself and become the Grim Reaper to judge the sins of others…

Oh, maybe I am too involved?

[plat3uau]

I honestly do not know where to begin or how to even write a decent looking introduction, so allow me to just drop this and leave…🤣😭

Okay, but jokes aside, since I’ve been getting really into visual storytelling lately, I just thought “Huh, why not test it out with Jingluo, and capture their dynamic while trying to add a fairytale-like elements to it?”

Also, I genuinely want to become even more expressive through my art, overall… and I guess it’s also an excuse to draw even more stuff related to the two (shhhh, and excuse me for the repetition.😫😫)

Notes on the title (that I think might be needed): I know the matter of language isn’t relevant to the game’s plot at all, but for some reason I’ve developed the headcanon that Luocha is good at picking up languages, as he travels a lot. (I see him just… being very quick at adapting and blending in with the locals’ way of doing things, in that kind of sense. <3)

We don’t really know much about him as for now (still waiting for that lore drop, though!!), but judging from his appearance and aesthetics (so please take this with a grain of salt), he looks like (at least to me) a character from a place based off Europe or the West… So because of that, I had the view that Luocha might have had a harder time actually writing down/learning by heart the Chinese characters (or at least the writing system there) commonly used by the people in the Luofu, when he first set foot there (I mean, I thought of that as it’s a region very much inspired by Chinese culture), since most European languages use the Latin script as for their writing system.

So hopefully this explains why there are two inscriptions: the one on the left side of the canvas is actually written by Luocha, and the other one being the translated version of the title!🥰

(P.S. I tried to translate the title in Chinese to make the Luocha’s writing seem… how to say, more believable? More real? Anyways, I ended up with “我在你身边”, which translates into “I will stand beside you”, so not super faithful to the original title, but I believed that the essence of the general meaning of the original one was still there, so I decided to go along with it.

I’m no native speaker here nor a translator, just a person who studied some Mandarin for a while. T - T❤️)

(P.S.S. I’ll try to keep you updated! My creative process is usually quite slow, so I was thinking that maybe I could share some of the wips with you all. Or you know, just to document some of my thoughts, that kind of stuff. ^_^

Alright!!! I wrote too much, and honestly, BLESS your heart for reading through my stream of consciousness, lmao. But I genuinely appreciate it, I really REALLY mean this.🥺❤️

Thank you so much for taking your time to do so. To whoever reached this point. <3)

[haine-kleine]

what I find the most annoying about s2's drop in quality is not even the disservice done to the characters and the story of s1 but how the writers weaponized fanon and it actually WORKED. all the things fans wanted to see are there - the found family themes, Caitvi, Jinx's healing and joining the 'good guys', Viktor coming out of Jayce's shadow and doing his thing, Mel going from a damsel in distress to a badass mvp, Jayvik, Timebomb, did I mention Caitvi,...

but here's the thing: while all of those things do indeed happen, they happen with minimal or no development at all. this is why on a closer inspection s2 feels like fanfiction, and for an official show that's a bad thing. not because fanfiction in itself is bad, or that fulfilling fan's wishes is inherently bad, but because fanfiction is commonly motivated by self-indulgence. we take the characters we like and put them into situations we want to see them in. in fanfiction there's no strict need to development, you can do whatever you want with the characters and no one is there to stop you. if the character in the show ends up in point b, a fanfiction writer has no obligation to outline how they get to point c, they can just start with the character where they want them to be.

but fanfiction rules only work for fanfiction. when you write your original show which painstakingly developed each and every character and throw them around like chess figurines where you need them to be, this breaks the suspension of disbelief. I spent my s2 watch from act 2 onwards with that feeling. all the development is neatly cut out and the characters go to the points they are supposed to go with barely any work of the writers involved.

Jinx is supposed to be more mentally stable and become responsible? a child literally drops on her head and immediately becomes obsessed with her. Ekko is supposed to forgive Jinx and see past her current unstable, destructive self? he is transported to a canon divergent!au with the singular purpose of hanging out with au!mentally stable!Powder. there's no development of his relationship with Jinx afterwards, all we get is a beginning of a conversation and the next time we see them they are suddenly besties/in love/option c. Jayce needs to kill Viktor and so he does, his reasoning? the visions from the alternate universe™ told him to. how awfully convenient. how does Viktor himself go from a good hearted, motivated to help others but keenly critical of his and Jayce's methods man from s1 to a crazy messiah who watched The end of Evangelion too much? the visions from the hexcore are controlling him! i can't even.

the problem is not even the (bad) direction the story took a deep dive towards but the execution. they barely bother to develop the characters and when they do at all, they use the cheapest tricks, heavily sprinkling fanservice on top so that people don't pay too much attention. the worst victim of this writing is Vi, who is such a non-character that after her failure in act1 she literally has to be dragged around by Jinx or Caitlyn. the same girl whose single-minded motivation to find her sister sparked half of the s1 plot. and now she lets her sister go kill herself because the writers want her to have hot lesbian sex with Caitlyn. who went from a good-hearted but naive and privileged girl to fascist war criminal and then back to a good guy and the only way the could show this development of hers is throw Vi at her like they are dolls and making them kiss.

in conclusion, theoretically, disappointingly, from the characters' development standpoint, s2 has pretty much everything we could wish for after s1. unfortunately, the level of writing execution equates to turning off sim's freedom of will and manually making them do everything that would make fans happy.

and if I wanted that, I would just go to ao3.

[kierongillen]

HEY GILLEN!! i have a few questions for you, if you don't mind answering them! what was in your mind for S.W.O.R.D's ending? abigail brand is one of my favorite characters and i just need to know what you had planned for her and beast -- and unit too, honestly.

also -- which pheonix host is your personal favorite? if you have an opinion on that!

It's hard, as the things which got us there never happened and so the emotional through line isn't there.

Excuse the roughness of this. There's a lot more, and I'm always aware whenever I describe a half idea, what's missing is the craft in executing it.

The final scene would have been Brand with UNIT back in his cell, while Beast has packed his bags and is leaving SWORD forever.

The context: UNIT had escaped, as another UNIT turned up, and been the big bad. The story seemed to reveal that our UNIT was actually a penitent war weapon who wanted to be punished, while this other UNIT was the real unrepentant monster. UNIT and SWORD have to stop him, and they do.

In the moment when the other UNIT is defeated and is killed, there's a mind to mind conversation between the UNITs - where basically the other UNIT reveals this is all about buying the original UNIT cover. They'll trust you now. This is all for the greater good. These two UNITs were old lovers (for those who have read the battleworld SHIELD mini may see what I was riffing on there - the idea of SHIELD was, in part, me doing fanfic versions of stories you never read. Me writing a happier ending for the two UNITs)

In short, for the greater good, UNIT forsakes his great love. Anyway - Brand and Beast had split up, because Brand was always putting the work first, and generally pushing Beast away. There was a whole lot along the way (the basic plot of the book was it was beauty and the beast - but Beast is the beauty and Brand is the beast.) She was closing him off, at every chance we got, as she had to protect the earth.

When this meeting is going on, Beast is leaving SWORD, out the station, back to Earth.

Brand and UNIT are doing a normal meeting, and everything is by the book.

At one point, UNIT just breaks off from the serious briefing and tells her: It's not worth it.

This throws her. She doesn't understand what he means. Your whole thing is about the greater good, UNIT. What do you mean?

To sacrifice love for duty? If you were an immortal being like I am... perhaps it's worth it. The dividends are larger. But your life is very short, Agent Brand. It's not worth it.

So it's a big moment for UNIT in terms of that awful bittersweetness of him clearly thinking he's made a mistake... and also for Brand. This robot, which she still distrusts to some level, who she views as a cold and calculating thing... is telling her this.

Unit is basically her. She is turning herself into a robot. She doesn't want to be a robot. She doesn't know it, but senses the truth - even the robot doesn't really want to be the robot.

It gets through to her.

She runs through the Sword Station.

We have the full "stopping Beast boarding the plane" scene, and we end on the big kiss.

Aww.

I think of that Beast and Brand a lot. There was a fork in the timeline for them, and I didn't realise when writing SWORD we were already past it - the Beast who became a genocidal monster was already appearing in another thread of Marvel's tapestry. I think that timeline as the one where Brand influenced Beast more than Beast influenced Brand - or maybe better phrased as the SWORD timeline was one where the relationship made them better, rather than making them both worse.

(I sort of allude to this briefly in Immortal X-men issue 1.)

They were great stories - Brand and Beast were two of Krakoa's greatest villains - but I'm still a little sad for them. Brand and Beast were the first couple in the MU who were briefly "mine", so I can't pine a little for that timeline where they kissed.

[ovaryacted]

Randomly ranting about AI.

The thing that’s so fucking frustrating to me when it comes to chat ai bots and the amount of people that use those platforms for whatever godamn reason, whether it be to engage with the bots or make them, is that they’ll complain that reading/creating fanfic is cringe or they don’t like reader-inserts or roleplaying with others in fandom spaces. Yet the very bots they’re using are mimicking the same methods they complain about as a base to create spaces for people to interact with characters they like. Where do you think the bots learned to respond like that? Why do you think you have to “train” AI to tailor responses you’re more inclined to like? It’s actively ripping off of your creativity and ideas, even if you don’t write, you are taking control of the scenario you want to reenact, the same things writers do in general.

Some people literally take ideas that you find from fics online, word for word bar for bar, taking from individuals who have the capacity to think with their brains and imagination, and they’ll put it into the damn ai summary, and then put it on a separate platform for others so they can rummage through mediocre responses that lack human emotion and sensuality. Not only are the chat bots a problem, AI being in writing software and platforms too are another thing. AI shouldn’t be anywhere near the arts, because ultimately all it does is copy and mimic other people’s creations under the guise of creating content for consumption. There’s nothing appealing or original or interesting about what AI does, but with how quickly people are getting used to being forced to used AI because it’s being put into everything we use and do, people don’t care enough to do the labor of reading and researching on their own, it’s all through ChatGPT and that’s intentional.

I shouldn’t have to manually turn off AI learning software on my phone or laptop or any device I use, and they make it difficult to do so. I shouldn’t have to code my own damn things just to avoid using it. Like when you really sit down and think about how much AI is in our day to day life especially when you compare the different of the frequency of AI usage from 2 years ago to now, it’s actually ridiculous how we can’t escape it, and it’s only causing more problems.

People’s attention spans are deteriorating, their capacity to come up with original ideas and to be invested in storytelling is going down the drain along with their media literacy. It hurts more than anything cause we really didn’t have to go into this direction in society, but of course rich people are more inclined to make sure everybody on the planet are mindless robots and take whatever mechanical slop is fucking thrown at them while repressing everything that has to deal with creativity and passion and human expression.

The frequency of AI and the fact that it’s literally everywhere and you can’t escape it is a symptom of late stage capitalism and ties to the rise of fascism as the corporations/individuals who create, manage, and distribute these AI systems could care less about the harmful biases that are fed into these systems. They also don’t care about the fact that the data centers that hold this technology need so much water and energy to manage it it’s ruining our ecosystems and speeding up climate change that will have us experience climate disasters like with what’s happening in Los Angeles as it burns.

I pray for the downfall and complete shutdown of all ai chat bot apps and websites. It’s not worth it, and the fact that there’s so many people using it without realizing the damage it’s causing it’s so frustrating.

[mournmage]

I dunno about you guys but one of my favorite things to think about if you're playing a blood mage (which I love to do) is to go "hm, when is the absolute Worst time in canon for the rest of the party/other possible onlookers to find this fact out, and what would the aftermath of that look like?"

For Origins honestly I think either during Broken Circle or the duel with Loghain if you had your mage Warden fight him are contenders for worst moments. Doubly so if youre also elven. Broken Circle is already off the deep end full of blood mages and you've got Wynne by your side who is Not going to trust you if you reveal yourself in that moment, and it'd be really hard to hide it with all the templars around in the aftermath. During the Landsmeet Loghain is already trying his damnest to slander the shit out of you to everyone in attendance, and its worse if you arent a human cause he makes some very pointed remarks. Pulling out blood magic to win whats supposed to be a fair duel against him, even if the Wardens dont forbid the use of it, is going to look like not only are you vying for power for the Wardens by stooping to the worst level, but also like you don't care about getting your hands dirty and possibly using people to get there, and thats Not the image you want to send this close to the time you need unity from everyone, especially when they already feel used in some cases.

I havent finished 2 yet but so far I think the Arishok duel is pretty fuckin up there on the list of "worst times to reveal youre a blood mage" because not only has Meredith made it clear your ass is on Extremely thin ice already even in a state of emergency, you really dont want the people to claim you as a champion when you're also a blood mage and give them more fuel for a possible mage uprising. Can you imagine the face of the city being one of the worst things that the Chantry preaches about and how it would look to show them that you can use such powerful yet harmful magic to be a protector?? Devistating for the image the Chantry wants to put out and putting the biggest goddamn target on your back at the same time.

And the thing is, in All of these circumstances, it'd Make Sense for a blood mage to tap into their abilities because theyre particularly hard fights and moments that you're in real actual danger be it political or fight related! The Arishok duel in particular is HARD, I died to it so many times even just playing on casual and he legit has a move where he'll ram Hawke thru with his sword, so I don't imagine Hawke comes out of that fight without some severe injuries. But I tend to metagame a lot to stay in character, so I tried avoiding using my blood mage abilities there because the image of Hawke whipping that out while everyones watching just felt so wrong and too risky!

Its just something I think about, how blood magic can reshape the narrative for your Warden/Hawke if you wanted to have them publicly reveal it at some point. The consequences would be horrible at any point tbh but theres some moments that would have more fallout than others depending on whos watching and if they might sell you out for it.

[unofskylanderspages]

... Give us the headcanons-

well, they're not super extensive. like i said, there's not a lot of canon info on her (at least that i've encountered personally) unfortunately, so a lot of my headcanons/ideas are about filling in those many gaps.

edit: i lied. it was extensive. it's like 1k words of just headcanonning my bad 😭

most of mine are about goldlings themselves as a species, since we canonically don't know any other than her.

according to her bio, in every iteration, goldlings are mentioned to be very wealthy, all of them, seemingly without discrimination. however, there's really no hint as to why, or where this supposed wealth came from.

honestly, i'm not totally settled on what that was, either. it doesn't seem to be related to technology or mechanics, since sprocket being into all that was supposedly odd. they also don't seem to be pursuing this thing any further, either, just hoarding and wallowing in the wealth they've amassed from it.

personally, and now maybe i'm projecting a bit, i think they may have been a more artistic race, putting a lot of time, effort, and money (obviously) into both creating and consuming art. while it began as a genuine joy and interest in it, they began to monetize it more and more until the profit became a greater priority than the passion. that drove the race to its current status, sitting in their pooled wealth, their artisan skills and passions left far behind.

however - and now we're finally getting into sprocket herself - a cultural shift into a focus on technology may be in the somewhat distant future of the goldlings, if sprocket and her uncle are any indication.

again, like i noted in the original post, i think she and her uncle were of the same techy mind, since it was his workshop that she spent almost all of her time in. by that, i mean that he also felt detached from the wealthy world of the goldlings and instead found interest in creating and tinkering with his mechanical inventions.

i think that he was more or less the black sheep of his family for this interest/passion of his, with sprocket more or less falling into the same role in her family, although this time she had his support. i think the two were incredibly close.

i think she's just as smart, crafty, and handy as her uncle, if not more than him, since again this time she can learn from him directly as well as on her own. being the odd-ones-out in the family forges a special bond between the two.

additionally, while i don't think i'm the first to think of this, but it's something that i've adopted into my personal beliefs: i think that spy rise was the creation of her uncle. i know that technically, according to his bio, he was created by a detective or something, but with how little we know of her uncle, who's to say he wasn't one?

and realistically, i know that whichever cores return in subsequent games has no impact on the lore implications of the game, but in my lore, the characters on the roster for that game are the ones actually handling that story/plot/mission/etc. so of course she would offer to go handle the cloudbreak mission, that's her cousin that needs her help!

i imagine that those two were awfully close, too, both before and after her uncle's disappearance. she never had a hand in making him - he let her watch and learn, but this was solely his project - but she was around when he was activated for the first time. for a while, they were one odd little family before the uncle's kidnapping.

between the two of their intellects, it probably didn't take them long to figure out that it was Kaos - or someone in the Kaos clan - that took him, but i doubt he wouldn't have left an obnoxious sort of calling card to mark the scene of the crime anyway.

as for her actual skylander life, i think she does and doesn't miss her old life. i mean she doesn't miss the luxury and riches of the goldling lifestyle/culture, but she misses the life she had with her uncle and spy rise, if that makes sense?

at the start, like many other skylanders (i'd assume, at least), she intended for her stint as a skylander to only last until she found her uncle, hoping to return to that life they had before. i'm not saying that all goldlings are inherently selfish, but when you live a life where you can have anything and everything you want at the snap of your fingers with all the wealth you've had since birth, there's always that subtle greed and selfishness you can't shake; all sprocket wants and cares about in the beginning is that peaceful life, where her little family can get to ignore the plights of others that she witnesses as a skylander.

but even between both her and spy rise searching for him in their skylander work, every trace and clue they find turns up dead or cold. kaos's swift understanding and utilization of the arkeyans couldn't have come from nowhere, and the evilizer machines popped up too soon after his discovery of petrified darkness to have been unaided by some mechanical prowess. but, maybe for better or worse, the uncle never appeared to them.

inevitably, as her time as a skylander goes on, she finds more and more joy in her duties and putting all her skills to work (including frequent work on keeping the dread-yacht functioning during the giants saga and working on it alongside sharpfin and his crew in the swap force saga) and decides to stay on full-time, even after (determined that she'll find her uncle eventually) she rescues her uncle.

obviously, her cousin is a skylander, but as he's stationed in the cloudbreak isles, they don't often cross paths. she makes other friends as well, eventually getting close with gearshift, but again, her duties as a trap master often keep a distance between them. in the downtime they have, they're awfully close, as the only two girl tech skylanders, a robot and a mechanic, just seem to get each other on a deep level. perhaps this, too, is yuri? 👀

...anyway that's uh. far more than i expected/intended to write, especially considering that it's pretty much just about her backstory/bio or whatever, but it just kept coming to me idk.

anyway. that's my sprocket spewing for the day.

[quibbs126]

So my brain had another thought recently, and so I figured, how else to convey this idea than through another meme redraw?

I swear, I don’t know why I’m doing it so much now

But anyways, I essentially have this mental image of Starscream, Soundwave and Shockwave all being roommates in the TFOne-verse, whether that was always the case or if that only happened after Megatron took over an essentially kicked Starscream out of his room (and/or Starscream didn’t want to share with him). I just think it’s a funny mental image

But I also have a specific mindset with this dynamic, in that Soundwave and Shockwave are dating/married, while Starscream and Skyfire were a thing in the past, but with Sentinel’s betrayal Starscream hasn’t been able to see him in 50 years. So basically he’s stuck unwillingly third wheeling while not being able to be with his own partner, and he just kind of has to live with this

Anyways, I just thought it was funny and wanted to share it

[royaltea000]

YO! Being a drawing, what’s there to be afraid of!

[sysig]

Those wacky skeletons ♥ (Patreon)

[humming-fly]

Theatre Kid (Derogatory)

[sentientcave]

Masquerade

You've come to this masquerade ball to finally dispatch the man you've wanted dead for nearly ten years, but he's always ruining your plans, one way or another.

Contains: 2nd POV OC (sorry about all the blushing), werewolf MMC (sadly he doesn't do any fun werewolfy things he's just a guy with sharp teeth here), vague fantasy setting, murder attempts/reminiscence of murder attempts, a long and storied history only alluded to, what do you do when your bitter enemy turns out to be a silly little guy who just wants you to love him?, oral sex (w receiving), P in V sex, this spawned a whole ass novel and it's so so different but this lowkey holds up.

See end for Notes

~10k words - NSFW - 18+ MDNI

“My, don’t you look exquisite,” a voice purrs in your ear.

You freeze in place, glad that the mask hides the colour that springs to your cheeks. You feel like a naughty child caught with your hand in the cookie jar, an unwelcome guest at his masquerade. You thought you could escape notice, slip through the crowd of finely dressed nobles and plunge your knife into his chest at last. But he had managed to find you first. You weren’t ready. You hadn’t been to the garden to pick up your hidden cache of weapons, you had nothing but your silver hair-stick to dispatch him with.

His heavy hands land on your shoulders. “Don’t muss up your pretty hairstyle just yet, darling,” he whispers in your ear, his voice rasping like sandpaper. It’s as if he can read your thoughts. Or perhaps, after all these years, you’re simply predictable. “There will be plenty of time for that later.”

You flinch at the cold press of his mask against your bare shoulder. You shouldn’t have disguised yourself as a guest. You feel defenceless, wrapped in silk and sheer chiffon, a neat little morsel delivered straight into the wolf’s jaws. He could shift in a second and shred you into little pieces, like he had threatened to do so many times before. You try to still your frightened, thumping heart, and pull away, turning to face him at last. “I’m afraid I’m not sure what you mean,” you say, because it’s worth a try at least, but he’s laughing before you can even finish, the smiling mouth of his gold wolf mask mocking you. His yellow eyes glitter from it’s depths, watching you.

“Oh darling, I would recognize you anywhere. I hoped you would be unable to resist my invitation.”

“Your invitation?”

“Yes, dearest. All of this was for you. I knew you could not resist the chance to get so close to me again.”

“To kill you,” you remind him hoarsely.

He chuckles and takes your hand. “Perhaps. For now, a dance, I should think. You haven’t danced all night.”

You dig in your heels, trying to resist his insistent pull, but he simply wraps an arm around your waist and tugs you closer. “I don’t dance,” you tell him sharply. “Let go of me.”

“You’re a liar,” he replies, spinning you into place, one hand on your lower back, pinning you against his chest, and the other still clasped around your wrist, sliding up to engulf your hand. He simply tugs you along with him as he moves, sweeping you along to the music, holding you so unbearably close. He could lift you off your feet with ease, if he chose to, and you don’t have enough power to resist. His scent clouds your mind, cedar soap and clean, animal musk, one of many hints of the wolf that dog him even in his human shape. “You forget, I knew you in your past life. Or have you forgotten that I once sat in your father’s halls? I have seen you dance.”

It was so long ago now, another life, before he was only the wolf to you, and before you were the thorn in his paw, that you almost had forgotten. You had hardly given him a second thought at first, he was just another visiting knight, here one day and gone the next, handsome, but beyond the concerns of the girl you once were. “You failed to make an impression,” you tell him sharply, although it’s not true. You do remember his yellow eyes watching you one night, though he never asked you to to dance. He never spoke to you at all.

Not until after. He saved you, of course, from the bloodbath, because he had claimed you. He hadn’t so much as said a word to you before he burst into your bedchamber, monstrous jaws dripping with your fathers blood, yellow eyes wild. You still remembered beating him back with the fire-place’s iron poker, and jamming the tip into his chest before you ran for your life.

“I knew you were mine from the first,” he continues. He seems frighteningly aware of your thoughts, as if his own version of the memory is playing out behind his own eyes. “My lioness, avenging her wicked father with a poker. I still bear your mark, just above my heart.” He presses your entwined hands to his chest for a moment. “I’m certain you remember that, at least.”

“Unfortunately.”

“The only unfortunate part,” he says patiently. “Is that I did not take you as my mate that night.”

His words lance through you like lightning, burning everything in their path. Your knees nearly buckle, and if he were not holding you so securely, you would sink to the floor in a useless puddle of silk. How dare he make you weak, after everything he’s done to you? But anger gives you strength, reinforces your spine with steel, and you wrench away, glaring at him, wishing you could set him ablaze with your eyes.

The music falters. You look up, at the musicians gallery, then around the room. Everyone watches, pretending not to, jewelled masks concealing furtive eyes and whispered words. Your own mask feels insufficient, lightweight and flimsy under the wolf’s eyes when your eyes return to him. He takes your arm, his grip tight, but not bruising, and guides you out of the ballroom, into the cold night air. The dark gardens are just a little too far for you to jump down from the wide stone balcony, and there are no stairs leading down. If you jump, you’d probably break your leg, and then you’d be helpless.

“What do you think of our home?” he asks. “Have you snooped around yet, my darling? Planned all your exits and hidden away your weapons and armour? I made sure you’d have plenty of opportunity. I know how you love to prepare.”

“I’m surprised you haven’t found them already.”

“I have been busy with other preparations,” he says mildly. “But I thought I smelled something of you in the corridor by the library.”

You flinch, only confirming that you had in fact been there, hiding your leather armour inside a large vase. “Preparations for what?”

“Your homecoming. The king has made it clear that it’s time to reign you in, or he will have someone else deal with you.” He pulls the mask off at last, setting the golden wolf on the balcony. Sweat glimmers at his temples, catching light from the ballroom behind them. He offers you a wry smile, his sharp white teeth flashing. “I’ve been too lenient with you.”

“Lenient?” you ask, incredulous. “I’ve been trying to kill you.”

“Those who attempt such things do not usually live long,” he reminds you. “I don’t often show mercy. I’ve allowed you to live free, in the hopes that you would come to me willingly, in time. Now it seems I can no longer afford to continue our little game. You will stay with me, or someone else will be sent to arrest or kill you.”

You press your palms into the smooth railing, wishing desperately that you could absorb the cool, dependable steadiness of stone through your skin. You look at him for a moment while he stares out over the dark gardens, his yellow eyes tracking movement you can’t see.

He’s always dressed in black, like a man in mourning, his black curls cropped short around his slightly pointed ears, beard neatly trimmed. He wears little jewellery for a man of his station, just the yellow-gold signet ring with it’s heavy, dark blue sapphire on his finger, and the gleam of jet buttons down the front of his tunic. You were more used to seeing him in his armour. The heavy black plate suits his brutality better than black-embroidered silk.

Silk offers no protection, no shield over his wicked black heart.

You pull the hairpin from your own neatly arranged curls and move fast, striking at his chest, but he catches your hand easily, his amber eyes meeting your fury with amusement. “You just can’t help yourself, can you?” he asks. “Stubborn creature.”

He plucks the pin from your hand and spins you around, pushing you into the railing with the oppressive weight of his presence. Your protests are weak and hardly noticed, but you fall silent when you feel the rough pads of his fingertips on the back of your neck. He gathers your hair up and pins it back in place, not as neatly as you had done earlier, but sufficiently.

“What are you doing?” you ask numbly.

He turns you around, still standing far too close. You stare forward, at the point where his skin meets the collar of his tunic, your eyes glued to his pulse. You wish for teeth as sharp as his own, so you could tear out his throat. His fingers curl under your chin, nudging your face up, forcing you to look him in the eye again. “Just returning your pin,” he says, smirking. “Why do you seem so flustered, darling?”

“Why don’t you just kill me?” you ask. Your hand lifts up to knock his away, but you touch him instead, fingertips ghosting over his knuckles. You know he’s capable of crushing you with hardly a thought. You’ve spent the last ten years learning all you could about him, hunting him down again and again and again with a single-minded determination. He likely could have killed you a thousand times over, if you’d been just a little less careful, or he a little less eager to capture you instead. He should have killed you. You don’t know how to stop anymore, you don’t know how to let go of the terrible anger that burns you up every time you think of him. You want him to suffer, to lose everything, to hurt the way he hurt you. “I’ll never stop.”

There is a flicker of sadness in his eyes, and it pings against your heart uncomfortably. “I never could,” he says, all traces of his smirking, superior air gone. His thumb strokes along your jaw. “I begged the king for your life. Your father may have been a traitor, but you were an innocent girl, and I do not enjoy killing innocents.”

“I’m not innocent anymore.”

“No, I suppose not. But you’ve committed no crimes that I cannot forgive.”

“I don’t want your forgiveness.” Your voice is hardly more than a hoarse whisper. You want to shout, but his hand on your skin seems to leech all the power out of you.

“You have it regardless,” he whispers back, low and intimate as a lover. He touches his forehead to your mask, his eyes boring into yours, twin suns scorching everything in their path. “And someday I will earn yours.”

“Never,” you hiss. You return to your senses and push his hands away, shoving hard against his chest. “I hate you. I’ll always hate you.”

He tugs your mask off and tosses it to the side, tired of pretense. “If you hate me so much, why does your heart beat like that?”

“I’m afraid of you,” you snap.

He laughs harshly. “No you’re not. You’ve never been afraid of anything, my darling. It is one of the things I love best about you.” He leans in closer, the tip of his nose just brushing yours. You can feel his breath on your skin, the sharp smells of whiskey and mint setting your nerves on edge. For a moment, you think he’s going to kiss you, and you freeze, heart pounding, face turned towards him, waiting for the axe to fall.

But he withdraws instead, leaving you to face the consequence of unrealized want. His words prick at you like the point of a sword. Love. As if he would know the first thing about it. As if he knew you.

But he does know you, you realize with a start. He made you. His actions had set you on your path, and his choice not to kill you, each time that he should have, had created the determined, single-minded, furious woman that you had become. The carefree girl who you had been was long gone, dead the first time the wolf’s jaws closed around your throat. It burns you to think that he’d shown you mercy all along, that you had escaped capture or death by his leave, rather than by your own cunning and skill.

His eyes remain on your face, reading your thoughts like you’re a book laying open, waiting for him to happen by and discover all your secrets. “You have become worthy of me,” he continues ardently, pressing your hand to his chest again, anchoring it with both of his own. “I would have kept you like a bird in a cage if I’d taken you then. A pretty thing to amuse me and adorn my halls. But you are no trophy, my love. You will not survive in captivity. Even now, with the king’s sword hanging over your head, I will not force you to stay.”

“Is this some sort of trick?”

“I used to wonder the same thing. A cruel trick of fate, that my mate would hate me so fiercely.”

“You killed my father,” you hiss at him. You yank your hand away, desperately stoking the anger that has kept him at bay all these years. Each time he calls you mate and darling and love your resolve quakes, and you have no sword in your hand to make him regret it, like you usually would.

“He was a traitor. I had orders.”

“And what comfort will that be when your orders are to kill me?” you ask, sneering up at him. “What will you do when your orders are explicit and undeniable, and you are to kill me on sight?”

“I’ll never see you again.”

You aren’t sure what you expected, exactly, but it always trips you up when he speaks plainly. “What’s that supposed to mean?” you snap.

“What do you think it means?” He hurls the words back at you, his anger lighting from your own. “It means I would pluck my own eyes out before I’d kill you. If the king ordered me to hunt you down I’d stay one step behind you until we reached the very ends of the earth. If he came outside this very moment and told me to snap your neck—” He shudders, shaking his head like a dog shakes off the rain, and when he looks back at you the anger is gone, hidden away again behind his steely resolve. “Loyalty only goes so far. He knows not to make an order I cannot follow. If he truly wants you dead, he’ll ask another.” He glances over his shoulder, keen yellow eyes fixing on a point somewhere inside. “I hope it does not come to even that.”

“But why?”

He lets go of your shoulders and turns around, stalks a few feet away, and turns again, pushing both of his hands through his hair in frustration. Because I love you!” he snarls. “You had me the first day you tried to run me through. Oh I wanted you from the first moment I laid eyes on you, beautiful thing that you are, but it was the first moment that you tried to cut my heart out that I knew there could be no other. You have no idea what it’s like, to love such a stubborn, foolish, bitch of a woman? Do you understand what it will do to me, when you leave? But I have never been able to keep you by force.”

“But you let me go,” you say numbly. “You said—”

“Let you go?” He laughs, striding back towards you. “Oh my love, you misunderstand. Just because I couldn’t kill you does not mean I didn’t try to keep you. But you have slipped every chain I’ve placed upon you. I’ve never pulled my punches. I would not disrespect you so.”

“You called it a game—”

He inclines his head towards you. “I did. Perhaps I should not have. But it was easier to think of it as a game. A test of my own worthiness. I admit, I have always looked forward to your attempts on my life. It’s good, I think, for a man to be beaten once in a while, to keep him sharp. Otherwise he forgets to be vigilant.” He sighs, touching the edge of an old, silvery scar on your shoulder, brushing a loose strand of your hair out of the way. “Besides. We’ve both made our marks upon the other.”

“I’ve gotten you more times than you have me,” you say, lifting your chin imperiously. “Two or three times I really thought I’d finished you off.”

“Are you so certain of that?”

You think about it. “Yes.”

“Care to make a wager, dearest? If you’ve left more marks on me than I on you, you may ask anything of me.”

You draw in a steady breath. “And if I lose?”

He grins. “Not so confident now, are you? I only want what is freely given, so you needn’t worry. You can name your own penalty.”

“How magnanimous.”

“I can be,” he says. “Now, shall we inspect each other here, or would you prefer somewhere more private?”

The thought of being alone with the wolf makes you shiver, but it’s not revulsion that you feel, it’s something far worse. The dark, cold balcony seems a world away from the golden ballroom with all it’s legions of beautiful, elegant guests, but it’s only panes of glass that separates you from them, hazy from condensation, opaque enough that you doubt anyone can see through them. It makes no material difference, in the end, but it’s winter, and the cold seeps through your dress easily, your skin only warm where he touches you. “Ah, yes,” you say nervously. “Perhaps somewhere more private.”

“And warmer,” he adds. “As stunning as you look, I do not believe you are dressed for the weather.”

As if on cue, a snowflake descends from the dark sky. You reach out your hand, catching it against your palm. A moment later, the sky is thick with snow, fat, fluffy flakes catching the light and turning the world white. You look back at him. He looks softer, somehow, with that little dusting of snow catching in his thick curls, melting flakes glittering like diamonds on his shoulders. For the first time, you’re struck by how young he looks. He was a man grown at your first meeting, and you had always thought of him as much older, but you know now that he couldn’t be ten years your senior. You suspect it’s much less than that.

It changes something in your perception of him. Softens him.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” he asks, stepping in close again. Although you’ve hardly moved an inch since you came out to the balcony, he’s full of restless energy, moving away and back again like he’s tethered to you by some invisible string. He tilts his head to the side, his keen predator eyes practically glowing in the soft light.

You were glad your face was already flushed from the cold. “I was just thinking. You look so…” You trail off, thinking of the best way to phrase it.

“Handsome?” he suggested. “Strong? Irresistible?” He wiggles his thick black eyebrows, grinning wickedly, making you laugh despite yourself.

“I was going to say young, actually,” you say. “I was wondering what sort of boy you were.”

He holds a hand out to you. “I’m sure there’s a portrait somewhere, if you’re curious. Now come along, pet, I don’t want you catching a cold out here. I do have a wager to win.”

You hesitate. All the ancient, bitter anger and sadness wars with something new in your chest. It’s been so long since you wanted anything more than vengeance. Ages since the last time you felt deep, aching want for someone’s hands on you, if you ever even had. The obsession between you, at least, was mutual, and you had traded the excitement of romance for the thrill of the hunt, the clash of your sword against the wolf’s. His taunting sounded better than flowery poetry to your ears, and you could not help but seek him out every time the loneliness of your new life became too much to bear. He had been your focus, your centre, your reason for existing for so long that you can no longer deny what this is.

Love is not always kind. Between the two of you, it’s become a desperate, wretched thing, living on scraps of attention and hungry looks traded in battle.

His fingers close around yours, and you realize that you’ve reached out and taken the offered hand. You look at him, and he’s smiling in a way you haven’t seen before, half-hitched up on one side, almost shy.

He twines his fingers through yours and leads you back through the ballroom, slipping around the edges of the crowd like the wolf he is. No one seems to pay either of you any mind, although you feel curiously bare without your mask, as visible as a hare in a field to the eyes of a hawk. But your hunter is holding your hand, his thumb stroking over yours soothingly, like he can sense your unease.

Despite that small reassurance, you’re grateful when you step into a nearly empty corridor. A few well-dressed servants carrying trays bustle between the ballroom and the kitchens at the far end, but your wolf leads you the other way, through a few hallways littered with decorative items and portraits of long-dead nobles with eyes that seemed to follow you. You had been there only a few days earlier, but it looks different now. Perhaps it’s that you aren’t on constant guard for the wolf. He’s already here, holding your hand, pretending that he’s not watching you, just as you pretend to look at the portraits and statues and expensive looking vases you pass by, stealing glances at him only when you think you can get away with it.

The silence between you is almost comfortable, both of you too caught up in your individual tumble of thoughts to put anything to words. It’s impossible to tell what he’s thinking. You wonder if he feels like he’s won already, but there’s none of his usual taunting or his infuriatingly handsome smirk. He looks serious, black brows lowered in a sort of pensiveness that you’ve never seen from him. Of course, you had only once gone so long in his company without attacking him physically, and you had been tied to a chair, at the time.

“Do you remember, a few years ago, the hunting lodge just above Lake Pym?” he asks.

You laugh. “I was just thinking about it. Why?”

He stops in front of a door and leans against the frame. “Do you think you’ll be able to go as long without trying to stab me this time around?”

“That depends on whether or not you tie me up again,” you quip back.

“Don’t say such things,” he warns you, opening the door and holding it open, letting go of your hand for the first time in ages. Your fingers feel cold without his touch. “You’ll give me ideas.”

“You’ve made far too many confessions tonight for me to believe that you didn’t already have ideas,” you tease. Funny how easily that comes, like you’re old friends and not enemies. A tidy little fire burns in the stone fireplace, with a cozy arrangement of rugs and furs laid out before it. A low table sits ready, carrying wine and glasses and a few plates of the sort of interesting finger-foods that they had been serving in the ballroom. Raising your eyebrows, you look back over your shoulder at him. He hadn’t spoken to anyone on the way in, which meant that it had been all prearranged.

He closes the door behind himself and leans against it, grinning sheepishly. “I live in hope.”

The room - his room- is neat, a big bed with four posts carved like small trees, green-velvet curtains tied back neatly, is the first sign that he might actually like colour. You imagined him always in sombre black and white, dark hair, white teeth, dressed like the reaper and often so employed. But perhaps he isn’t as stark as you’d always thought. His furniture is solid and well-made of warm-toned wood, and the bookshelves that flank the fireplace are stuffed with books, the odd space cleared out for knick-knacks and trophies. You had never considered that he might like to read. It isn’t something that has ever come up before.

The wolf sits down on the furs and nudges a black lump by the fire. The shape uncurls into the biggest, fattest, blackest cat you’ve ever seen and pads over to you, sniffing your skirts suspiciously.

“You have a cat?” you ask, because it seems unlike the picture you’ve built up of him over the years. Another thing you missed. You had been so focused on him as an enemy that you had hardly stopped to consider him as a man. You sit, and the cat drapes itself across your lap, purring already in anticipation of a good scratch.

“I don’t have a cat,” he corrects you loftily. “Smudge is the matriarch of a proud line of excellent mousers, and she is a valued member of the household. One cannot own a cat, I have learned. One co-habituates with cats.” He leans over and gives the cat a little scratch under the chin, his knuckles just barely brushing your knee as he withdraws. “She isn’t usually very friendly, but she must recognize a fellow assassin when she sees one.”

“I’m not much of an assassin, I’m afraid she’d be terribly disappointed in me. I’ve failed to kill my only target, and I have been at it for quite some time.” You give the cat a scratch behind the ears. “I’m sure her record is much more impressive.”

He frowns and looked at you in a funny way. “Have you never taken a life?”

“I’ve tried very hard to avoid it. You’re the only person I ever wanted dead, and I— I wanted to be better than you. I wanted my hands to stay clean, so I could beat you and still keep my sense of…” You look down at the purring black puddle of fur in your lap rather than at the wolf. “Oh I don’t know. Righteousness, I suppose.”

“So sweet that you wanted me to be your first,” he teases.

You know he means first kill, but you turn pink anyway, and there is no cold wind to blame for your rosy cheeks this time. There were many firsts that you had missed out on, in your bid for vengeance. “Perhaps I still do,” you snap, not thinking about the double meaning until after the words have left your mouth. You scramble to clarify. “My first kill— Not— Ugh.” He begins to laugh, and you cover your face with both hands, wishing the floor would open up beneath you and swallow you whole. “Stop laughing!” Your voice is muffled by your hands, but there is no way that his keen wolf’s ears don’t hear you perfectly. “That’s not what I meant!”

He snorts. “I know, pet. It’s a bit late for that, I should think.”

You peek at him between your fingers, and his eyebrows shoot up.

“Darling.” He leans over and gently takes hold of your wrists, prying your hands away. He is mercifully no longer laughing, but the look in his eyes only makes your face burn hotter. “Please don’t tell me that you’ve never taken a lover.”

“There was never a good time,” you manage to squeak out. It was half true. There had been offers, and moments when you’d been sorely tempted to share someone’s bed for the night, but the few fumbling kisses you’d shared with young men had failed to thrill you the way that crossing swords with the wolf did.

He sits back with a groan. “You’re always throwing wrenches into my plans.”

“How on earth could that have anything to do with your plans?” you ask hotly.

“Darling, don’t be so naive. My plans were obviously to seduce you into my bed so I could out-perform every man who had ever touched you, forcing you to admit to yourself that we belong together. But I suppose that would have been too easy.”

“Too easy!”

“I would never imply that you would be easily seduced, my love, only that I am fairly confident that you would have a harder time denying what we are if I were to employ my considerable athletic ability with the task of making you come undone.” He smiles ruefully. “But seduction isn’t fair if you’re a virgin. I’ll have to win your heart the old fashioned way.”

“The old fashioned way?” You stare at him, incredulous. “What, you’re going to court me?”

“I’m certainly going to try,” he says, turning toward the table to pour you a glass of wine. “It’s the long road, but you’ll find I’m usually more than willing to take the scenic route.”

“You’re insane,” you say weakly, accepting the offered glass. “You must be.”

“Must I be? Like you said, I’ve made far too many confessions tonight, you must know that I do not mean this as some passing fancy. I think it would be a waste to continue this bloody crusade of yours. For both of us. I confess my bias in the matter, as I rather enjoy living.” He shrugs, looking at you over the rim of his own glass. “Do you? Has your life been all you wished for, these past ten years? You’ve forgone comfort, education, friends, romance, children— Do you want none of those things?”

“Of course I do—”

“Then take them. Everything you want is yours if you stay.” He takes a sip of wine and winces, face screwing up like a child tasting something bitter. “Ugh, I hate wine.”

“I know. I was wondering if you were going to drink from that glass you’ve been waving around.”

“I just wanted to indicate that it wasn’t poisoned.” He sets the glass to the side, still grimacing. “Just in case you were wondering if I was still trying to trick you.”

“It had crossed my mind.”

“Perish the thought, my love.” He stretches out in front of the fire, propped up on one elbow. “I’ve laid down my arms. If you must end this once and for all to free yourself, so be it. But I do think my alternative is better.”

You set your wine to the side as well and reach back to pull the silver hair-stick from your curls. You consider it, for a moment, pressing the point into your fingertip, not quite hard enough to draw blood. He watches with an inscrutable expression, making no move to disarm you. The cat slips out of your lap and stretches, moving off into the shadows again, either unaware or uncaring of the danger to her house mate. Or perhaps she’s simply more aware than you that there is no longer any danger.

You reach out and place the make-shift weapon on the rug in front of him.

The crackle of the fire is the only sound for a long moment. The wolf was rarely rendered speechless— getting him to shut up was usually the more difficult task. But he simply looks at you, like you’ve performed a miracle in front of his very eyes.

You slide one of the plates of food off the table and set it on the floor between you, something to hopefully distract his attention a little. You pick up one of the little triangle pastries and take a bite, catching crumbs with your other hand. You eat two more, realizing that you haven’t eaten in hours, and wait for him to break the silence.

He sighs and rolls onto his back, tucking both hands under his head. Firelight dances over his skin, burnishing his features like well-polished bronze. Although you have known him a long time, you’ve never studied him like this, while his eyes are closed and his usual grin is smoothed out into a peaceful smile. He looks noble, like a hero from the epics you used to read as a girl, more like you remembered from the days before everything changed.

“You’re staring,” he says without cracking an eye.

“How would you know? You haven’t opened your eyes in ages.”

“And how would you know that, if you haven’t been staring?”

He has you there. “Alright, fine. I suppose I was. I was just thinking about… about before.”

He opens his eyes. “How long? We do have a rather storied history, don’t we, love? I myself have been thinking of Lake Pym.”

You smirk. “I bet you have. I had a feeling you were rather enjoying yourself.”

“I was. It would have been more fun if you were a more willing guest, or if I at least didn’t have to keep you tied to a chair the whole time.”

“You wouldn’t even let me feed myself,” you lament, though you can’t help the traitorous note of amusement in your voice. “It was terribly humiliating.”

“Revisionist drivel!” he snarls playfully. “I did untie you so you could feed yourself, and you tried to stab me. You forced my hand.”

You blink. “I suppose I did.”

He leans closer. “I suspected you just wanted me to take care of you. You were too proud to ask me for what you wanted, so you forced the situation. And snapped at my fingers the whole time like an absolute menace.” He holds up his right hand and displays a white mark around the first knuckle of his thumb. “That’s one, by the way.”

“I only bit you because you stuck your finger in my mouth,” you reminded him.

“Ah, I suppose I did get a bit carried away, didn’t I? There was just this moment when I touched your lip…” He reaches out as if he wants to repeat the remembered gesture, perhaps hoping for a better outcome, but he hesitates, dropping his hand. You almost wish he hadn’t. “Are you still too proud, my love?”

“Yes,” you whisper.

He senses your weakness. The way the answer drips with doubt like blood from a wound. “Will you let me kiss you?” He moves closer, anticipating your answer before it leaves your lips.

Your breath catches in your throat. “Yes.”

At long last, he closes the distance between you, hands cradling each side of your face. He just barely brushes his lips against yours, and holds you back when you try to chase him, his familiar wolfish smile lighting up his face. “Not so fast, my darling. You’ll have to ask nicely, if you want a proper kiss.” He unbuttons the cuff of his black shirt only a moment later, his eyes dropping away from yours for a moment, and then rolls up his sleeves. “Two and three, respectively,” he says, pointing out two more scars along his forearms. They were both from similar situations. Two times that you had disarmed him and made him bleed for it. You reach out and touch the silvery marks, feeling the smooth gap in his arm hair and the fully repaired muscle underneath the flawed skin. “You’re a better swordsman than I,” he says, reaching up to unlace the top of his tunic. “I might have had the edge of experience, at the beginning, but you quickly caught up to me, didn’t you? It was a good thing you were so scrupled about killing people other than me, or I’d have lost far too many good men to your blade.”

“You’re just trying to flatter me.”

“Is it working?” He pulls the tunic and shirt off in one go, baring his chest. There are a few scars there that you could not claim, and two that you can, although your eyes are drawn to one in particular. The ugly, uneven star right next to his heart, where you had run him through with the iron poker on the night of the wolf. “This one is my favourite,” he tells you, pressing one of your hands to the scar. “The first time you tried to kill me. Jon had to half-heal me himself, or I wouldn’t have made it to a proper healer in time. It’s partially why there’s such a scar. He’s always been terrible at the more subtle magics, but if you want something blown up, Jon’s your man.”

You laughed. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Make sure you also note, in that treacherous little mind of yours, that he will not employ his considerable magical gift with the task of making me explode. He is still rather fond of me, even after all these years.”

“It is good, I think, to have a king that is so well-versed in the art of restraint,” you say mildly.

“Oh yes, I imagine it is.”

“So is it really just the five scars?” you ask. “That’s all?” Despite the truce the two of you had settled into, you felt strangely disappointed that your obsession with killing him over the last decade had resulted in only a handful of scars. It all felt like a waste. You try to console yourself with the knowledge that he heals more rapidly than most men. The scars you have left are despite that.

“There’s one more, on my thigh, but I imagine you probably don’t want me to take my pants off.”

You do want him to take his pants off. “Yes, that’s very thoughtful of you,” you say instead. “I suppose you’ve won, anyway. I have a lot more than six scars from you.” You had expected that his life as a warrior would have marked him more significantly. You’re covered in scars, faded and fresh alike, and there is no getting around the fact that you feel like you’ve stitched yourself up so often that you look as worn down as your oldest, ugliest shirt.

The disappointment in his eyes is gone so quickly that you aren’t entirely sure you hadn’t imagined it. “Well, I suppose I’ll have to take your word for it, won’t I?”

“You’re just trying to get me out of my dress,” you say hotly.

“Obviously. You look very lovely in it, of course, but I have been hoping for the chance to peel it off of you.”

You shake your head. “I think you’ll be a bit disappointed.”

“Never. What would possibly deter me at this point, darling? If stabbing me through the heart didn’t erode my affections, what could?”

“Oh I don’t know,” you say thoughtfully. “I could have scales, or a tail—”

“I have a tail,” he reminds you. “And I’m quite positive that you’re human, so I’m not worried about scales. Or strange birth-marks or stretch-marks or scars, either, by the way.”

You take a deep breath and stand up, turning your back to him. “It would help if you could undo all these buttons for me,” you say, sweeping your hair in front of your shoulder. “There are so many of them.”

He jumps to his feet and scrambles to help. A few buttons plink to the floor, torn free in his haste. “I’ll have it fixed,” he says hastily. “And I’ll buy you new gowns. As many as you can stand.”

You glance over your shoulder, nervous laughter stilling on your tongue when you see the look in his eyes. You turn forward again, sliding your arms through the sleeves and shimmying the gown to he floor. He gives you a hand to steady yourself as you step free. “I— I don’t want— I won’t stay.”

He hums in response, gathering up the gown and laying it over the back of a chair.

“I won’t,” you repeat yourself, as if the words will sound convincing the second time. They don’t.

“I already told you, darling, I won’t make you stay. It’s up to you.”

He draws you back to your seats in front of the fire, and you offer him your arms. You’re riddled with fine scars, most of them faint, little nicks from his blade. His hands slide up to your shoulder and gently tug the capped sleeve of your chemise to the side, baring the imprint of his jaws. His thumb runs across the marks, his other hand landing on your knee.

“I wondered if I’d bitten you that night.” He moves closer, his tongue moving over his sharp canines as he sighs. His fingers trail down your arm as his touch drops away. “You never turned, so I wasn’t sure.”

“It doesn’t always take,” you say, using his shoulder to help you back up to your feet. “I think it depends on the moon. New moon, that night. If you were any other wolf you never would have shifted.”

“I suppose that makes sense.” He settles back on his heels, looking up at you. “I can’t say I’ve thought about why some bites take and some don’t. I’m not as observant as you, my love.”

Laughable, when his senses are many times greater than your own. It’s not his observations that are the problem, it’s the connecting cause and effect, thinking about consequence for more than a moment. He’s faced so few consequences in his life that it doesn’t come naturally to him. You, on the other hand, are a mess of consequence, action and reaction measured and weighed, failures poured over until you can see every mistake you’ve made, follow the tracks to how things could have been, if you’d done it all just a little differently.

You pull your skirt up so you can untie the ribbon that holds up your stocking, and he slides it down to your ankle. “This one’s only indirectly your fault,” you say, angling your leg so he can see the trail of pocked scars that wrap around your knee and up your thigh. “When I jumped down that ravine. Scraped myself up on the rocks.”

He tuts, hands reaching for these scars too. It’s just an excuse to touch you, certainly, but you make no move to stop him. You just hold your skirt up, giving him unfettered access to your skin. His amber eyes flick up to your face, and he leans forward, pressing his lips to your knee.

There’s no halting the soft “Oh” that falls from your lips, but he would have heard even the softest catch of breath. There’s no hiding from him, and it terrifies you, leaves you so unsteady.

His eyes flutter shut for a moment, his exhale warm against your skin. “You shouldn’t show me any more,” he tells you. “I find myself wanting to kiss every inch of skin you show me, and I worry that you won’t stop me if I try.”

You sink back to his level and pull your stocking back up, tying the ribbon around your thigh again. “Would that be so bad?”

He groans and lays back on the furs, hands neatly folded on his stomach. “I am trying to be a good man for you, darling. You deserve more than I can give in one night. I need at least a few weeks to make you fall hopelessly in love with me before I can do anything that would tempt me to take you to bed.”

You run your palm over his stomach, feeling the soft pelt of hair over his warm skin, letting your curiosity guide your fingertips. You feel the expansion and contraction of muscle as he breathes in and out, tucking one hand under his head so he can watch you more easily, his eyes barely open.

You have to admit, he is handsome, especially relaxed like this. Only a few short hours ago you would have found the idea of him kissing any part of you abhorrent, but now you find yourself similarly compelled. You take his hand and kiss his knuckles, the tips of his fingers, the palm of his hand.

“Come here, you little minx,” he growls, trying to pull you down on top of him. You pull back, and he lets go, still worried about pushing you when you’ve made so many overtures in such a short time.

You had expected him to hold on tightly, however, and overbalance, tipping over the other way with an inelegant little squeak. He laughs as he sits up, and you do too as he helps you back upright. He lays back again, and there’s no resistance when he takes you with him this time. He tucks you into his side, and you look down at him, chin propped on your hand.

“I rescind my earlier statement,” he says.

“Which one?”

“You don’t have to ask nicely for a kiss, darling. I worry that you’re too prideful to admit that you might like one, but if you can steal one whenever the mood strikes you, I might be lucky enough to receive a few impulsive ones that your good sense isn’t fast enough to stop.”

You huff. “Is this your way of asking for another?”

“It’s my way of asking for as many as you might want to give me,” he says. “There is, of course, a standing offer of anything you might like that is within my power to supply. I think it prudent to remind you.”

He’s a ridiculous kind of man. You’d always thought his tendency toward verbosity was just him grandstanding, but now you see it for what it really is. He wants to be understood by you so desperately that each sentence becomes overwrought, less clear for his efforts to imbue each word with meaning. Your own tendency toward blunt, inelegant language is an almost laughable counter. You say little, and hide everything you can, and he reads you plainly. He speaks like a poet, puts everything out in the open, and you misunderstand him on purpose.

Perhaps that’s why you didn’t see this for what it is a long time ago. If you were not so determined to make an enemy of him, perhaps you would have noticed the softness in his eyes, the way he looks at you as though you’re the sunrise and set, like you’re the moon and all the stars in the sky.

You kiss him, before he can open his mouth to speak again. There’s nothing lacklustre about the way your lips slide over his, the way your breath mingles, the way he makes little noises of satisfaction, unable to be quiet even with his tongue flicking over your top lip, encouraging you to open up for him. Angling your head to keep your noses from smushing together, you oblige, letting him lick into your mouth, his arms circling you, holding you tight against his body.

You can't put a name to the feeling that sparks between you, but it's the thing that's been missing from every kiss you've had before.

The heat, the need of it all burns away all that remains of your carefully maintained resolve. He loves you, fool that he is, and you're not sure you could survive without him now. Is that what love is? To mourn even the thought of their absence from you, to cling tightly and never let go? To sink into each other until you're one, two halves of the same whole?

He kisses you until you're breathless, lips swollen from the tug of his sharp teeth, jaw curiously sore from moving in a new way. You pull back first, braced on one arm as you look down on him. He's beautiful, more than human, wild-eyed and fey, but solid and warm beneath you in a way only a man could be. His imperfections make him dearer to you, not just the marks you've drawn on his skin, but the gap between his two front teeth, the way one brow arches a little more than the other, giving him that permanently skeptical look that had always made you feel he was making fun of you. The crooked smile, the notch in one ear.

You know his face more intimately than your own, but you still want to look at him, especially through this new lens.

“I don’t think I want to wait,” you admit. You’ve waited long enough, haven’t you?

“Are you certain?” he asks.

“I don’t see what difference it makes, really.”

“It makes a great deal of difference. I’ve taken enough from you, I don’t want you to regret it.” He gazes up at you, tracing along your jaw with careful touch.

Your heart races rabbit-quick in your chest, and although you're the one looking down at him, you feel pinned in place by the wolf's eyes alone. "Then make sure I don't," you say softly. "I can even promise not to make another attempt on your life until the morning."

"Darling…"

"Please. I don't know how I'll feel tomorrow, but tonight I think I want your hands on me."

"You think?" His fingers catch around the back of your neck, as though he's waiting for some cue before he pulls you back into his arms.

“I know.”

He pulls you down for another kiss, rolling the two of you so his big body stretches over yours, your underskirts bunching up as he slots his thick thigh between yours, pressing against your core. He holds most of his weight off of you, but you’re still trapped beneath him. For the first time in a long while, there is no panic, no desire to fight furiously for freedom. You feel quite content where you are, especially when his thigh flexes, rubbing against you firmly, sending a shower of sparks through your belly. You gasp against his mouth, your hands skimming down his sides gingerly. When he does it again, you dig your fingers into the muscle of his back reflexively, murmuring apologies as his lips leave yours and slide down your bared throat.

“Don’t,” he growls against your pulse, dragging his tongue roughly over your skin. “Don’t apologize. You won’t hurt me.”

His teeth graze the slope of your shoulder, finding the older scar from his lupine jaws. You let out a shuddering gasp when he bites down lightly, not even hard enough to leave a mark. There’s a part of you that wants him to leave a mark, a bruise if not something more permanent, but you’re not sure you’ll be able to convince him out of gentleness tonight.

He kisses down your chest, grinning up at you when he reaches the top edge of your corset. “You are still wearing far too much clothing, my love. Come here.” He stands in a smooth movement, and you’re untethered without the weight of his body against yours, but only for a moment. He helps you to your feet and leads you to the bed, taking a seat on the edge and pulling you between his knees, turning you so he can loosen the laces of your corset.

You shed the garment as soon as you’re able, as well as the extra petticoats. Your chemise is thin, loose material, obscuring little, but you leave it on while you sit beside the wolf, toeing your heeled slippers off and nudging them under the bed and out of the way. Hands folded, you wait, heart beating like a drum. You feel so strange, almost outside your own body, watching him unlace his boots and tug them off impatiently.

He stands to strip off his trousers, and you quickly avert your gaze, looking down at your hands rather than see him in his fully undressed state. You have a rough idea of what you’d find, you’ve been in the public baths more than a few times, and even doing your best to be respectful, it’s hard not to see something. But seeing something in a setting where everyone is minding their own business is a lot different than seeing something up close, especially when you might be expected to do more than just look.

“We don’t have to do this, love,” he says, kneeling in front of you, clasping his hands around yours. Your eyes fly back up, landing on his face. His chuckle makes your cheeks burn. “If you’re nervous—”

“No,” you say quickly. “I want to. I’m just— I hate not knowing what I’m supposed to do.”

“I wouldn’t worry about that darling. It’s your first time, I should think the responsibility rests on my shoulders. All you have to do is tell me when you like something and when you don’t.” He leans forward, forcing your thighs apart to accommodate the bulk of him, and kisses you, all sweetness. “And if you want to stop, we stop. Anything more than that can wait at least until the second or third time.”

It sounds so simple, put like that.

“Besides,” he adds, giving you a wicked grin as his hands move to your hips, the movement rucking your chemise up further on your thighs. “You’ve always been a quick study.”

Well, he’s right about that. His lips find your throat again, pressing languid kisses down your chest until he reaches the edge of your chemise. His eyes flick upwards, seeking permission before he goes further. You untie the simple knot with one hand, the other petting through his soft curls.

He noses aside the thin fabric to find your nipple, latching on with a contented hum. The act sends tremors down into your core, intensifying as his tongue flicks across. You pull in a shuddering breath, and your exhale becomes a whimper when his teeth nip at you, his other hand coming up to grope at your other breast, his touch warm and appreciative before his grip slides down to your hips and he tugs you to the edge of the mattress.

He pulls away from your breast and kisses you properly again. “Do you want more?” he asks. “Can I taste your pretty cunt, darling?”

The desire in his words sends a shiver down your spine. You nod, and he sits back on his heels and kisses all the way up your thigh, although he pauses and pulls back to your other knee, kissing his way up again, this time sinking his teeth into your inner thigh, not hard enough to really hurt, just enough to make you jolt, your pearl begging for any kind of friction. When he passes over your cunt to mouth at your other thigh, you whine, shifting even closer to the edge of the bed. You can feel your cunt dripping, the air strangely cool on your wet skin.

A pair of mischievous eyes glance up at you. He’s doing this on purpose. He started all of this, and now he has the gall to tease you. Glaring in response, you grip him by the hair and pull him in, determined to put his clever mouth to better use than smirking and biting you when you need him elsewhere.

To his credit, he makes no complaint and does what he’s directed, slipping his tongue between your folds, lapping up the slick arousal. His big hands push your thighs up so he can get a better angle, and he kisses your cunt with as much passion as he did your lips, if not more.

The feeling is electric. His mouth scorches, sets you alight in ways you’d never imagined, the occasional scrape of his too sharp teeth against you thrilling. It’s too good, has you fighting his grip even as your fingers are still tightly wound into his hair, holding him close. It’s too much, but if he stopped it would be so much worse.

If he minds your writhing, he doesn’t show it. You can’t help the sounds he pulls from you, but he’s louder, as though this is more for himself than for you. He groans when your hips buck against his mouth, pants when he lifts himself away enough to breathe, his amber eyes gleaming, fixed on your face, except the few times they flutter closed, just for a moment, savouring your taste.

His nose nudges your pearl as his tongue presses inside you. You grip him so tightly to your core, your hips shaking so hard that you’re surprised you don’t break his nose. The hot, molten cataclysm that’s been pooling somewhere behind your belly button overtakes you, sweeping you away, limbs seized, unable to out-swim the current. You can’t see past the stars in your eyes even after your legs relax and you force your hand to unclasp his hair, finger by finger, so you can lay back on the mattress, breathing hard.

He crawls up onto the bed and pulls you toward the centre, a self-satisfied grin on his face. His cock presses into your thigh, insistent for attention, the tip peeking out and leaking against your thigh. He ruts against you when he kisses you again, his close-cropped beard soaked with your arousal. You can taste yourself on his tongue, tangy and bitter-sweet.

You lay twined together, forehead pressed against his as you both catch your breath. One hand gently brushes up and down your spine, the other pulling your leg up over his hip. “How was that?” he asked.

There may not be words for what you feel. Maybe there are, but they’re beyond you right now, washed away with all the resistance in your body. You settle on nice, which makes him laugh.

“Only nice, hm? I suppose I’ll have to work harder.”

“Better than nice,” you assure him. “I— I liked it a lot.” It’s still insufficient, so you kiss him again, hoping he won’t ask any more questions.

He does, after a long moment. “Are you ready for more?”

“There’s more?” you ask. “Or— for you? Do you want me to—”

“No, there’s no need for you to do a thing, love. The next part is for both of us.” He rolls onto his back, taking you with him effortlessly. He reaches past you with one hand while he kisses you sweetly, tongue pushing into your mouth at the same moment you feel his cock slot against your entrance. He pushes in gently, halting when he meets resistance, fucking shallowly into you until you relax enough to let him bury himself deeper into your body.

You tuck your face down against his chest, focusing on the feeling of his cock stretching your cunt, so deep inside you that his presses against your womb. He tries to keep himself still, but his hips buck slightly, tearing a groan from your chest. There’s no stopping the way your cunt squeezes down on him in response, nor the way your hips grind against him. He makes a choked sound, breathing out shakily when you push yourself up to look at him.

The angle change nearly has you collapsing back down, but he takes pity on you and flips you both so he can take the lead. “Hello, pretty thing,” he says, giving you another kiss and a firm grind into you before he starts moving his hips, slowly working himself in and out of your cunt, lips settling against your ear so he could tell you how well you’re taking him, how good you feel around his cock.

Any ability to respond is quickly fucked out of you, your breath punched out with every deep thrust, your world shrinking down to a handful of sensations: his lips on your ear, the weight of his body and the delicious drag of his cock against your inner walls.

He works his hand between you to rub at your pearl, the heel of his hand pressing down on your lower belly. The thought that he can feel himself inside you with your hand is one of the last fully formed ones that cross your mind, because he growls and picks up the pace, unrelenting until you’re shaking and babbling and clinging so tightly to him that you’re certain you’ll leave permanent marks.

He drags you up another precipice and throws you over, his forehead pressed to yours, watching your face as you shake and cry out. He ruts into you, and you can feel him fill your cunt, his cock twitching, rooted firmly inside you. He doesn’t pull away, just throws himself onto his back, holding you tight to his chest.

His heart beats like a drum under your ear, slowing gradually as he catches his breath. His cock slips free, and you stiffen slightly as his spend leaks from your swollen cunt, spilling onto his belly. He pops his head up as soon as you tense, and huffs out a laugh, kissing the tip of your nose.

“Sex can be a bit messy. Come on, love. Let’s get cleaned up.”

Your legs wobble when you try to stand, but he happily slides a supportive arm around your waist, leading you into the adjoining tap room. Once you’re both cleaned up, he coaxes you out of your sweat-soaked chemise and wraps you in one of his shirts and you both sit back down in front of the fire.

You pick up your abandoned wine glass, holding it with both hands as you eye the wolf. He looks content, satiated, like he’s had his fill of you. There’s a little tremor of unease that settles in your belly. Now that the chase is over, will he still want you? Do you still want him to want you? At the beginning of the evening you had been determined to kill him, and now…

He looks back at you through half-closed eyes, and unfurls his arm. “You’re too far away,” he tells you, voice a warm purr. “And you’re thinking too much.”

It’s still unfair, how easily he reads you. An open book, pages left open for him to flip through at his leisure. Despite your trepidation, you walk forward on your knees and sit against him, knees tucked under his arm. His fingertips trail up your thigh, over your knee, down your calf, and back, over and over, as he waits for you to speak.

“What happens now?” you ask at last. “Do we go our separate ways?”

Hurt flashes across his face before he can hide it behind a neutral mask. “If that’s what you want.” His fingers continue retreading their path while silence builds between the two of you. At last, he pulls in a fortifying breath. “Is that what you want?”

There’s raw desire in his eyes, not tempered in the least by your coupling. He offers you everything so easily that it feels like it must be a trick, but he wouldn’t work so hard to hide his feelings if he didn’t care for you, if this were a trap. If you stay, it has to be your choice, not made because of his own want for you to remain by his side.

The anger that kept you warm in all your years out in the cold is gone. Killing him won’t bring your family back from the grave, it would just place another soul in one. The desire for revenge truly burned out a long while ago, and you couldn’t admit that only embers remained. It was why you were so desperate to end it tonight, to close the chapter and look forward to something new.

It’s so like your wolf to ruin your plans. This time, you’re not sure you mind.

“I’d like to stay,” you say at last.

He’s on you so fast that you drop your wine glass, spilling red over the furs. It’s hard to stop laughing enough to kiss him back, trying to point out the mess to him. He growls something about not giving a damn as he gives up trying to kiss you through your smile, and presses his lips to your pulse instead.

In the end, with all the history between the two of you, what’s one more mess?

It's been almost five years since I started writing this short story, and I had fully expected not to finish it. I was caught up in the story in the peripherals, the potential history between Cat and Valter. This scene no longer fits in the overall narrative, even if there are still threads of it that remain unchanged, so I feel like it's safe to share. I'm working on the third draft of The Night of the Wolf, sorting out the mess of my second draft (so many changes it might as well be a second first draft) and I think there's a very real possibility that I can actually finish it, and that's in no small way thanks to all of you. I have been writing for a long time, but it's only been in the past year that I've shared my work with anyone, and it's been a really lovely experience. Thank you for reading my silly fanfictions, thank you for reading this, and I hope to share more bits of original work going forward, if there's any interest. (But don't worry, I'm still gonna finish the fanfictions. I show no signs of stopping yet)

C. T. Cutter

(Also, special thanks to my best human person @dragonnarrative-writes for making me finish this and being so so kind to me about my work and encouraging me always. I am bad at accepting compliments but I appreciate them all the same)

Image Credits: 1 - 2 ~ Dividers by @/cafekitsune

[dreamsy990]

Iso from Valorant is asexual (headcannon)

@lavacane @swipamous @skys-trash-bin @feralcringeman @verathena14 from your headcanons here are some aroace doodles. sorry i meant to post these a while ago but i got half done and then got held up for a bit by responsibilities and also i forgor. but here!! meant to do a couple more but i just wanted to get this done so!! here

bonus for athena heres sora with a different flag. for funsies